March 27, 2008

Baby's growing and so am I

My pregnancy book tells me that this week the baby is about the size of a peach. How cute! This week I'm too big for normal pants & skirts. That's kind of fun, I suppose. I can't say I'm complaining. Maternity clothes are very comfortable! I'm still not big enough to need maternity tops, but that'll come in time.

Here's a photo of me on Easter Sunday (13 weeks). I wasn't ready for D to take the picture, but it's the best shot of the belly:


And just for fun, here are two pics for comparison. The first is me at eight weeks and the second is at 12 weeks:


What a difference a month makes, eh?

I have to keep a food diary for the next three days. I'm trying to eat as normally as possible so that my midwife can give me useful advice. I think if I tried to eat "well" for the whole three days she'd have a harder time knowing just what my struggles are. I think my biggest problem is that food is just too much work. A lot of the time I'd rather just sit and read or something than deal with getting food together. Yes, that's something I'll have to get over. I had a really bad habit before pregnancy of putting off eating as long as I could; it wasn't because I was afraid of gaining weight or anything: it was truly just laziness. I'd eat breakfast at noon, lunch at 4, and supper at 8, and this was with getting up at 7:30 or 8:00. Not really good. At least now I'm too hungry most of the time to get away with that, but I still do tend to put off eating. Bad!
Posted by lawwife at 17:05:13 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

March 21, 2008

If I rolled my eyes any harder, I'd pull a muscle

WARNING: This is a vent.

If you followed my story through much of my infertility journey, you may remember my experiences with The RE from Hell and his Staff of Incompetents™. At the time I was being seen by him, he really had only one person I dealt with: Tina the Incompetent. Sometime between my injectable cycle (June 2007) and my BFP, Tina went away and was replaced by even more incompetent people. Really, they make Tina seem like the patron saint of competence. So I got my BFP and called to schedule a beta. Of course, it was a Saturday and I had to leave a message. No one called me back. So I had to keep calling on Monday morning to get a human, who proceeded to act as if no message had ever been left. Sure. Whatever. And in the time between June and January, the practice had switched computer systems and had no (computer) record of me. Thankfully, by the time I showed up to talk to the doc, they'd located my paper chart. Yay! I got my order for the beta draw and proceeded to the hospital to be stuck. The phlebotomist told me the doc's office would have the results in two hours, so I waited four before calling. No, we have nothing, she said. Gah. I continued calling all afternoon, often getting an answering machine or voicemail, until finally just before closing I got through to a person who said they'd JUST gotten a fax. More likely? They just hadn't been looking. But whatever.

So now my midwife needs a copy of my surgery report. I know this two-pager is in my chart with the RE's office. I call and ask Christine the Truly Incompetent what I need to do to get a copy of this report. She says she'll email me the release form. After over two weeks and receiving no such email, I go online to the RE's website for his fax number and write a little release form of my own that D will fax from his office. Yeah. The fax number doesn't work. D tries calling the RE's office. Voicemail. He leaves a message asking them to call back with their fax number. No call. After over a week, I just call the RE's office again. I don't say who I am or anything, just ask for the fax number. I get it and call D with it so he can finally fax the stinking release, over a week after I wrote it and sent it to work with him.

Today, I get a call (wow, next-day service!) from the RE himself. It comes up as Restricted, so I don't answer. He leaves a voicemail for me. They cannot find my chart. So I'm to call the medical records department at the hospital for the surgery report.

Holy crap. Do the examples of incompetence just never dry up?
Posted by lawwife at 09:43:53 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

March 13, 2008

Sweet sounds

We had our first midwife appointment today. Well, we were supposed to. Hannah wrote us down for the 18th instead, but being flexible as midwives are, she just did an abbreviated appointment today. Hooray!

When I lay on the exam table for the heartbeat check, she mentioned that it might take a little longer than I'd like, just because it's still pretty early and stuff. But she smeared the gel on the doppler, put it on my lower abdomen, and thump-thump-thump immediately started coming out of the doppler speaker. How cool!!! Baby's heartrate was 160bpm, which is at the upper end of normal. Just perfect, since he's obviously an overachiever.

I go back in three weeks for a more detailed intake and for more info on proper nutritional choices, etc.
Posted by lawwife at 18:37:26 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |