Always carry clean underwear

Yesterday was 18 weeks.  Yay!  This is the hold your breath week, and then we get into completely new territory.  Lots of random thoughts from the last 2 days so this might wander a little bit.

**************************

I had a video shoot yesterday morning.  And I gotta say, I was a hot mess while doing my job.

Here's what I think happened.  I'm normally such a dietary garbage can that no matter what I eat, it doesn't really affect me.  I think those days are over, at least for the moment.  On my way to the shoot, I had my normal latte (good mix of a little bit of sugar, a little bit of caffeine and some protein from the milk to hold me over) and I also had one of those pieces of lemon loaf.  I think that particular breakfast spiked and then completely crashed my blood sugar.

About halfway into the shoot (they take about 90 minutes), I suddenly had to sit down, had some trouble catching my breath, I was shaking, and nearly vomited.  I tried to soldier on a few times, but finally had to take a real break, like 15 solid minutes, eat some fruit chewy things that I keep in my purse and down some water.  After the break, I barely pushed on enough to get the footage necessary to do my job and got out of there.  Called my bosses and told them that I probably did not make the best impression.

**************************

Found out this morning that I've put on 5lbs in the last 2 weeks.  Well, that would explain why I'm a little more huffy puffy lately.  And why I've felt like my belly has popped a bit.

My belly seems to be bulging out, and then deflating.  For a day, I'll feel like I'm huge, and the line around my waist will soften from being pushed out, getting towards round instead of a cut off line between fat rolls.  But then another day it will seem like I'm back where I was a couple of weeks ago.  Still 2 confirmed fat rolls that just read as fat and gross rather than cute baby belly.

At the ultrasound this morning, I was told that they had shifted positions a little bit.  So what I've probably been experiencing is that sometimes they are side by side (on my smaller, but just fat days) and sometimes they are one in front of the other (on my popped out baby belly days).

Either way, it's been a few weeks, so it's belly pic time!  Again, my original 10 week photo versus my now 18 week photo.

10 Weeks

18 Weeks

 Still no dramatic difference.  Oh well.

**************************

After my dropped blood sugar fiasco, I had a lovely lunch with Bleeding Tulip.  I don't think she recognizes it, but she's moved forward a lot in the last year.  She's been losing weight (looking good!), and has not only gone back to work, but was able to get a different job when the first one was, ahem, unpleasant.  In the last year, I've hardly been employed at all.  How she's managed to secure herself 2 jobs in this economy, that's pretty impressive!

When fighting the infertile fight, it's really difficult to acknowledge any life progress that isn't baby related.  So while she may not recognize that she's been moving forward in life, she has.

And again, I feel like a jerk.  The only thing I have to talk about is being pregnant and birthing plans, and blah blah blah.  All that stuff that I don't want anyone talking to me about when in the middle of the fertility fight.  And yet here I was, being that very person that infertiles want to avoid.  Sorry about that.

I was a bit overwhelmed with the shocking physical crash I was still kind of experiencing, and the fact that I'm so exhausted just walking 2 blocks to get cheesecake.  I was surprised by my own body failings and really preoccupied by them.

**************************

Wondering about the title of this post?  I'm getting to that.

**************************

I am proud of the fact that I did actually accomplish something yesterday.  After years of having free accounts at Bank of America, they've started charging me a $25 a month fee of some sort.  Guess what BofA?  I have 2 other bank accounts and simply don't need you!

But.....BofA had 2 things going for them that the other banks didn't have.  I had a business account there so on the rare occasion that someone writes a check out to the name of my business, I can cash the check, and they would also allow me to deposit checks made out to Alex which is how everyone knows me, but was not legally a part of my name until last year.

So I went to one of my other banks, and filled out all sorts of new paperwork.  I had to show them all sorts of identification and the court document acknowledging my name change last year, and write out signatures for both versions of my name.  Yay!  Now they will acknowledge that I'm Alex!  And just for fun, I opened a business account, even though I'm not going to be doing much business in the next year, so I can also deposit checks made out to my business name.  Woot!

This week, I go through every account that does an automatic deposit or withdrawal and point those to my other account, and then I close BofA for good.


**************************


Oh yeah!  Ok, really, I try not take what happens on forums as real life, but I've got to report on this.

Folks, the 4th grader in me that used to cry every day because she was unpopular and the other kids picked on her, she learned how to smile this week.

On the primary pregnancy forum that I visit, there are currently about 11,500 people there.  And they have recently begun elections to assign 4 new group owners (aka moderators) to the group.  A bunch of people expressed interest in the job (including myself), the owners of the website reviewed those people, and then came up with a list of nominees eligible for the job.  Well, I was weeded out.  No explanation, just that I was deemed to be not a good fit.  So I'm not nominated.

And to my absolute shock, people are voicing how much they disagree with this decision!  They are calling for people to vote for me even though I'm not on the nomination list because they want me as a group owner!  I'm getting private emails from people who are trying to contact the website owners for some sort of explanation as to why I'm not eligible.  There are threads happening about how much people wanted to vote for me and are just going to anyway.

Out of over 11k people, I'M FUCKING NOTICED!  And some of those people who noticed me, ACTUALLY LIKE ME!!!!  This is just incredible to me.  I'm someone that when I graduated high school, and they did a photo montage of every graduating senior, they forgot to add my picture.

Since this started, my face has been alternating between these two extremes:

  


**************************


Had my ultrasound and doctors appointment today.  I'll post pictures tomorrow, I haven't scanned stuff yet.

This appointment was meant to take up the hour between drinking the glucose crap and getting my blood drawn again, but due to massive amounts of puking up the crap, the second part of that test was cancelled, and I was just feeling like crap when I went in.

But the ultrasound went great!  Both are still evenly sized, and I'm starting to see specific body parts like a little rib cage, and hands full of fingers.  I think Baby B was sucking her(?) thumb.  She was also kind of buried in there and we still couldn't get a good look at her bits to confirm once and for all that she's a girl, but ya know, still about 80% sure from the last look we got a couple of weeks ago.

The hematoma is holding steady, potentially even shrinking.  So that's a good thing!  The kiddos are getting heavy enough that they are flattening it out.  It's now more of a thick string in there rather than a bubble.  Still trace amounts of bleeding, but overall it's diminishing.

Now that the girls are getting bigger, we had to get reacquainted with Wanda to properly check my cervix length.  Still at 4cm.  YES!!!  The book I'm reading about twins/multiples pregnancy says that if your cervix is 2cm or longer at your 20 week check up, that's an indicator that you're likely to go to term.  Since I don't think my cervix is going to cut in half over the next 2 weeks, I'm feeling really good about that!

Back when I first started having bleeding on a fairly regular basis, well over a month ago, I started carrying a clean pair of underwear in my purse in case I overbled a pantyliner.  While I was at it, I tossed in a pair of socks since I tend to wear non water proof shoes and I live in Seattle.

Oh by the way, this is my giant purse.  I can carry two 2 liters of soda in this thing without having to rearrange stuff to make room.  More pockets than I know what to do with.  So carrying around some extra clothing is no big deal.

So when I went to get dressed after my date with Wanda, I noticed that my underwear was damp.  Ewwwwww!!!  I must have had a little leakage while I was upstairs hurling my guts out.  And I'm not looking forward to putting them back on when it occurs to me, I have another pair in my purse!  Woot!  I pull out my clean fresh undies, get myself dressed, roll up my damp undies into a latex glove at the nurses station and I'm good as new!

And THAT pregnant ladies, is why you should carry around a clean pair of underwear in your purse!