22 & 23 Weeks

Missed another week, oops!  It was pretty uneventful.  Jelly Bean's movements have scooted higher so I can see them now and occasionally I can see her knee as she rolls over.  It's been fun!  Monday I go in for my 24 week appointment and hopefully all is still fine.  I have some tired days and some heartburn, but otherwise I'm feeling pretty good now that I'm solidly into the second trimester.  I think my weight has jumped up a bit though... probably up about 12 pounds total now according to my scale at home but we'll see what Dr. B's scale says on Monday and whether she's upset with me!  I can say that I've had a bit of a sweet tooth but I've been trying to keep it under control. 

The other factor could be stress.  About once a week I have a meltdown about money and whether I should change jobs or not and all that.  I did have an interview for a full-time position at a veterinary office in Edgemont, about 25 minutes from home, which would've been a good job but they didn't offer it to me.  I decided that was okay, since I'll be taking maternity leave and will probably have trouble keeping up with a full-time job in the next town while breastfeeding a newborn.  If they had offered it to me, I might not have taken it anyway because of that.  Right now, it's hard enough taking care of B and myself and getting everything done that we need to do, plus helping Mom out while she has a marathon cold/asthma/bronchitis thing that happens to her annually.  I don't think I physically could work away from home more than I already am, considering how much I need to sleep on the days I'm not working.

B saw his surgeon on Tuesday and they decided it was time to do a referral for more surgery.  The drain should've cleared it up by now, but there's a hard clod in there that just isn't breaking up the way it should and they can't put a big enough tube in there to pull the bigger chunks out.  Dr. G is in the process of getting the referral paperwork together, but the doctor he was going to refer us to works out of a clinic in Denver that has no financial aid program and would require payment at the time of service.  No matter what kind of cash patient discount they would give, we wouldn't be able to cough up enough that day to cover a surgery like this.  This whole thing has stretched my parents pretty thin too so I've been trying to get ahold of Dr. G to get him to refer B to someone at a hospital that has a charity program of some sort so we can handle this.  No calls back yet of course, so Mom's busy researching every liver specialist from here to Minneapolis.

Mom's church is going to be selling cinnamon rolls at the local home & garden "Spring Fling" at the civic center here for our fundraiser.  That should help us catch up with living expenses a little bit, at least. :) In the meantime, I've decided to start spreading the word about my indiegogo campaign so that after the financial aid paperwork goes through we might be able to pay off the other clinics and avoid bankruptcy.  It's a shot in the dark to hope that enough strangers will contribute to keep us from having to file bankruptcy, but it's not the end of the world if we do.  It will be on B's credit alone since we're not married yet, so if we didn't get enough from the campaign to pay everyone off he'll file and we'll wait to have the wedding until he's through the process.  He has no credit to ruin, but I've been working hard for years to build and maintain mine so hopefully we can keep it away from my credit and we'll still have a chance of being able to get car or home loans when we need them.

I belong to an online group of other moms due in July and these ladies are amazing!  They sneakily chipped in together and ordered the infant carrier/carseat/stroller system I registered for on amazon.com!  I cried when I found out, that was so sweet of them to help us out with one of our big purchases! It's incredibly humbling when people step up like that.  I can't express my gratitude enough!

Hopefully I can keep my emotions under control a little better for the rest of the week.  Any bets? Ha!

21 weeks

Baby Jelly Bean girl is one active little booger most days!  Every few hours I can feel her thumping around in there.  She's not keeping me awake at night yet, but maybe that's coming next.  I do have to turn over a lot in my sleep thanks to our worn-out mattress.  Alas, the odds of getting a new one are still pretty slim since we're still just barely living on my little paychecks.  We should be able to get food stamps this month once I get all the paperwork together, but energy assistance ran out so we owe the propane company.  If it's not one thing it's another.  Sigh.

B is still about the same.  He had a CT scan yesterday to look at the progress and the abcess is half the size it was when they started, and the doctors are happy with that, so we keep going with the drain.  It's frustrating for both of us because it will take another 4-6 weeks at least to get it cleared up so he still won't be able to work, but now they put a smaller tube in so he's in a lot less pain than he was.  The bigger tube was kinked and poking into the wall of his liver, pushing on a broken rib, and laying on a nerve that shot constant pain up into his bad shoulder... ow!  At least he's feeling better today so he can probably start helping a little more around the house, which he hasn't been able to do since they put the bigger tube in in the first place.  Every little bit helps. :)

I've been agonizing over whether to get another job or not.  I'm already stretched thin enough that I have meltdowns at least once a week (not helped at all by pregnancy hormones, but still) but part of that is money stress.  Getting more income into the house would help a little of that, but it's not like I have all kinds of free time right now anyway, between both of our doctor appointments, aid applications, baby shower stuff, starting to plan wedding, keeping us fed and the house in some sort of order, getting the bills paid, and keeping the hospitals happy with piles of paperwork.  I don't think I could physically work any more than I do already without letting half of that slip, and none of it can afford to be put off except for the wedding, which I haven't really worked on yet anyway.  I have this niggling feeling in the back of my mind that if I go to work full-time it will take care of a lot of our problems, but now I'm not so sure.  Monday afternoons are often full of appointments, both for me and B, and there's another month left of Symphony (which I WILL NOT give up, period), and I know at some point my appointments will get closer together.  That pretty much takes Mondays out of the running for being regular work days.  Then Tuesday I'm always running around like mad trying to get errands done that can only happen during business hours since that's my only day to do it.  How do people get anything done if they're at work all the time?  Maybe when Symphony's over I could wait tables or something on the weekends for a few months until Jelly Bean comes.  Hopefully B can go back to work around then and we can get our feet under us a little bit before I'm worthless.  I'm fairly sure I won't be able to handle going right back to work full-time after she comes either.  I know we can't afford to miss more than 2 of my paychecks so I know I won't get much time off, but it seems pointless to get a full-time job now when I'm pretty sure I won't want to work full-time with a newborn.  Switching jobs is stressful anyway, with new training and getting used to a new schedule and everything. 

I was very excited about an interview I had earlier this week but now I'm thinking it's not such a good idea.  They haven't called me back or anything yet so it may not be an issue anyway, but I had a strong feeling yesterday that I needed to decide what to do before they do call.  Every few months I have this same dilemma for some reason or another and I keep coming back to the fact that I need to be writing in my spare time.  My music will never get off the ground if I don't work on it, so it's time that I treated it like a job and put some real time into it so I can reduce my dependency on the struggling small businesses in this little town.  I'll never become my own person with my own career if I keep jumping from one little job to the next in the hopes that one of them will take me somewhere.

Week 20 - halfway!

First things first... IT'S A GIRL!  She has all her parts, from what I could tell everything measured within a week of everything else (for things that I saw a time/gestation stamp on), and she's got a lovely profile!  I saw Dr. B just after the ultrasound so she hadn't had a chance to look at it yet but if there were any issues or if they needed a better look at something, she would call.  That was Monday, so I'm just going with the "no news is good news" idea.  We have a name picked out but we may keep it quiet for a little bit.  I really hate when people nitpick my choices since it makes me second-guess myself and that's the last thing I want to be doing with my daughter's name.  The people we have told love it though, so I don't know why anyone else would have a problem with it.  :)

Still clear sailing from my end on this too.  I'm having a little difficulty getting comfortable to sleep but if I put the pillow in the right spot I'm fine.  I've only gained 5 pounds since my 8 week appointment, but you wouldn't know it looking at the size of my belly!  It doesn't feel as big as it looks so mirrors still surprise me a bit.  Looking down, it doesn't seem all that big.  Chiropractic adjustments are getting a bit more uncomfortable too, even though he adjusts the table to make room for the belly.  Oh, and by the way, yes most of my maternity shirts are striped.  Why, you may ask?  Well, apparently it's either that or solid non-fun colors.  Yippee.  Oh well, as long as it's not green I won't look too much like a watermelon. :P

Last weekend was a symphony concert, which meant I was in the car Monday like usual, then after work Thursday and Friday and again on Saturday, plus sitting in 2+ hours of rehearsal each time.  Needless to say, my back didn't agree with that very well.  My muscles actually settled into how out my spine was so when I got adjusted yesterday it ached quite a bit.  I should have an ice pack on it now but I keep forgetting to bring one in to work.  What was rather funny was that the little girl would wake up during the lyrical movements and kick around at every rehearsal and the concert.  It wasn't the loud movements like I expected, it was apparently the ones she liked or something.  Born dancer maybe?  Yay!  We started rehearsals for the April concert already, which will be interesting trying to get my horn chops back up to play the Mahler after being on cello for the last one.  Guess I need to buckle down and actually practice a few times this week so I can actually get through the thing.

B's slowly getting better still.  He still has the drain that he has to get twisted and flushed twice a week and it's still draining a lot of stuff but it's getting thicker, which theoretically means we're towards the end of the process now.  Maybe he only has a couple more weeks left of that.  He's had several job offers call back from applications he put in before the accident and he's getting anxious to be functional again, plus I'm ready to not have to support us entirely on my dinky paychecks.  I've put a few applications out myself, but nothing is forthcoming from those yet.  I feel like we need me to work more, but in the fall I won't be able to work full-time nor do I want to start a new job just in time to take maternity leave. I suppose I can't do everything on my own.  It's been pretty obvious to me for a while that I need to just work for myself instead of depend on the small businesses in this small struggling town to support me, the trick is getting that started, making it profitable, and surviving in the meantime.  It's been a balancing act that I've apparently been failing.  The market here is flooded with the typical work-from-home businesses and I'm not a salesperson, nor do I want to be when I'm not selling my own skills.  Tricky tricky.  Not sure what the answer is but all I can do now is keep trying.

18 & 19 weeks

I missed one, sorry!  The pregnancy has been rather uneventful except for the kicks several times daily (usually after meals or during symphony rehearsal lol but never when B can feel it) and the gradual but definite expansion of my belly.  I took this pic yesterday and I've had a couple of clients at work ask about it so it seems to be getting fairly obvious :) The good part is that I still haven't really gained any weight. I've gained 1 pound since my last OB appointment 3 weeks ago and at that one I had only gained 1-2 from my 8-week appointment so I really have the weight gain under control somehow.  I'm totally okay with this and rather proud of myself!  Considering the size of my middle, I must be losing weight somewhere else to make up for it.  Again, definitely okay with this.

I'm not dieting, I just can't eat much at a time because we're trying to eat dense healthy foods and my stomach doesn't have room to expand much.  It's strange... Mom and I have been reading about diet changes over the last century and the resulting obesity/diabetes/cholesterol/blood pressure epidemic compared to cultures who eat more traditional foods and are overall much healthier.  Traditional diets consist of natural animal fats (including the fat in milk, butter, cheese, etc.), organ meats, minimally refined olive oil, fish, heirloom or foraged vegetables, meat cooked with the bones, and very little grains or sugar.  Basically, substituting these natural fats with vegetable oil has caused a lot of problems... we need the natural saturated fats to digest vitamins and there's no real evidence that saturated fat is bad for you... the issue is hydrogenation damaging the chemical makeup of everything.  I could go on and on... but I noticed a year or so ago when I was eating steaks and fish for dinner most days that I felt better, my skin was clearer, and my periods were less uncomfortable.  Now we've transitioned to real butter and to 2% milk from skim and I feel great, plus my weight is staying stable so if I weren't preggo it might even be going down.  It seems contradictory but we're just not built to live on highly processed vegetable oil and corn syrup!

*steps off soapbox*  So anyway, that's going well.  B was only in the hospital for a few days, but they were unnecessarily worried about the cost of the antifungal medication and in the process of keeping him there and trying to get him financial assistance for that prescription (which would've cost $90 for a month's worth, name brand) they kept him there longer... which racked up that visit's bill to $14,000... talk about counterproductive!  What's even crazier is when we filled the prescription down here at our pharmacy, it cost $25 for 30 days.  Not kidding.  Why were they so worried about this???  Did it never occur to anyone that we'll have enough trouble paying these hospital bills?  Sigh.  Well, he doesn't have to see the surgeon again until late March but he has to go in twice a week to radiology to get the drain tube twisted around and flushed until the infection is gone.  Yesterday they changed out the tube because it was clogged up but it keeps clogging up today too and he's running a slight fever.  I hope we can get it unplugged but I'm getting a little nervous about it.   He goes back on Thursday anyway but I hope it clears up today.

I've set up an indiegogo.com campaign for us to see if we can make a dent in paying this thing so we'll see if that gets us anywhere or not.  It won't help with our living expenses until then since we won't receive the funds until the end of the campaign, but every little bit helps.  I think Mom's church is putting together a benefit for us so we'll see how that goes.  I don't know anything about it but as soon as I do I'll let everyone know.  I have a couple of applications out for full-time desk jobs so hopefully one of those will call back soon.  B got another job offer today and it's very frustrating for both of us that he can't accept any of them yet.  I didn't want to change jobs right before the baby comes, but I have to try because we just can't live on what I'm making, especially since he doesn't qualify for any aid whatsoever and our energy assistance for the year ran out already.  I'm in slight panic mode about that but I can only do what I can do. We just need him to get better and he's doing the best he can.

Monday is the big ultrasound/organ scan/gender scan!  News to come!

17 weeks

Thought we were kinda out of the woods for B's problems, but we're not quite there yet.  We went in yesterday for his post-op checkup, got his drain and staples out, and we were feeling pretty good about things.  They did a follow-up CT scan to make sure everything was looking alright and they found a baseball-sized abcess on his liver.  The damaged area has some dead tissue on it that could either reabsorb into the body or get infected and his got infected.  They admitted him right away and put a new drain in up where his chest tube was, which is unfortunately between 2 of his broken ribs so he's in some pain from that and very frustrated that he has to be in the hospital again.  We had a good week with him at home, as hard as it was, and he was feeling good before we went up for his appointment.  At least they caught it before it burst or went septic or anything like that, but the fact that the antibiotics he was on didn't prevent it from happening led me to believe that IV antibiotics wouldn't fix it either.  My hunch was right, they've figured out now that it's a yeast infection so they have to use different (and ridiculously expensive) meds for that and they're still not ruling out surgery in Denver.  At least they know what it is now and can start treating the right thing.  It should be a short stay, since we can handle a drain at home.  The trick will be figuring out what meds will work best for being at home or getting by infusion at the hospital down here.  I guess they're working on that today and also getting some financial aid going for us so I'll meet with the social worker when I go up after work.

As for the pregnancy, everything's still fine as far as I can tell.  I've had some nasty heartburn the last couple of evenings so that's not much fun to deal with, and apparently I ate the wrong thing for lunch today because I'm ridiculously gassy.  When B's in the hospital I eat badly, which isn't a good thing but time constraints and low appetite/energy from stress make good meals impractical. Sigh. 

Last night and today I could swear I felt some kicks!  Little flutters/pops starting at the front where I can almost feel them and moving around to the left side then back up front... that sounds like kicks, right?  I'd really like it if they were actually kicks and not just gut bubbles. :)

16 weeks

... and B's home from the hospital!  He was in his own room for about a week, and they started steadily removing drains and tubes day by day until he was ready to go home on Monday.  It was a long day for all of us, since we got him discharged just in time to eat lunch then hurry to sit and wait for my 16 week OB appointment.  Poor guy was a trooper, he waited until we got back to the car to take his pain meds but Mom and I could tell he was hurting.

My 16 week appointment went well, but it was way shorter than my previous appointments.  All they did was check my blood pressure and weight (still holding steady, go me!), then Dr. B used the doppler to find the baby's heartbeat, and that was it.  We were honestly in the waiting room 3x longer than that.  March 5th is the big ultrasound, since they can see all of the organs at 20 weeks so the gender question gets to just wait.  The verdict from everyone at first was boy, now people are starting to change their minds and say girl... I'm not dying to know but I'm tired of telling my mom not to buy things with ruffly butts yet! B's added a couple more names to the list but I don't really want to fully discuss those until we know for sure.  I also have a feeling that Jelly Bean will name his/herself... that one day the perfect name will just come to us.

Luckily, my symptoms lately have been pretty low, which is great considering everything else I've been dealing with.  I'm tired and haven't been able to eat a whole lot yet, and occasionally I'll have a growth spurt day but it doesn't cause quite as much of a nausea problem as it did previously.  I know I need to be drinking more but it's gotten harder at work since the few crystal light flavors i can get here don't sound good anymore and plain water doesn't sound good either.  Sigh. I need to do something else there, maybe mix up a jug of something at home to drink at work instead of relying on the little single-serve packets.  I don't know, something needs to change.

The first day B was home was a tough one.  With a combination of suddenly being off some of the meds the hospital had him on, the hard day Monday, then taking his antibiotics on an empty stomach, he couldn't keep anything down on Tuesday morning until I made him a can of chicken noodle soup.  He slept a lot after that, and had to figure out how to spread out his pain meds so he wasn't crying by the time he could have more, but since then he's been getting steadily better.  He's needed a lot of long naps, but that's to be expected.  He has lots of healing to do so sleep is the best thing he can get for that.  We're trying to work in some more solid food a little bit at a time so his body has more nutritional substance to work with but his stomach has been difficult with that.  We'll get there, slowly.  He still has one drain, but it's not draining enough to measure twice a day like the doctor wants him to, so we wait until it's full enough to get close to any of the lines on the measuring cup they sent home with us.  When that's done draining, it can come out, so it's a good sign that not much is coming from there. His incision is huge but it's healing nicely.  Yesterday we put some butterfly bandages between the staples because the staples are so far apart, but it's all healing up and pulling together nicely.

Ironically, B's had 2 jobs call back about applications he submitted before the accident.  One of Mom's friends said I should apply at the pharmacy as a clerk and study up to become a tech, since they'll apparently be needing someone soon that isn't an idiot.  I'm hesitant to leave this job, but I have to do what's best for all 3 of us and not just what I want to do.  There are no aid programs B qualifies for, so all bill negotiations are between us and the hospital, and there's no income for him until he can go back to work.  Hopefully with his Medicaid denial letter they'll be more willing to work with us on a payment plan. And hopefully he'll be feeling well enough next week to at least go to the interviews that he got called for this week, and possibly start working part-time light duty at one of those places until he feels up to doing longer shifts.  It'll be a while before he's healed, but maybe he can get a few hours of training done a week until he's able to step it up.  Both places said to call back when he feels better so hopefully one of them will work out.

Slowly, we're working out the kinks.  Everything's fine with Jelly Bean as far as I can tell, so I just need to keep on keeping on and hope the decisions I make are the right ones.

15 weeks and update

Luckily last week was an easy one as far as symptoms go.  I didn't have much nausea, all the weird meals agreed with my stomach pretty well, just understandably tired from all the driving and sitting in the hospital.  However today, true to form as it's an odd-numbered week, today I'm feeling a good deal of stretching accompanied by a gurgly gut and slight headache.  I probably haven't drank enough today so that should account for the headache, but we're apparently sticking with the every-other-week-growth-spurt thing.  At least it's somewhat predictable and it wasn't last week when we were sitting in the ICU.

We've bought a few baby things now.  We found a little tub with a newborn sling shaped like a froggie (none of my sinks are a good size/shape for baby baths), a couple packages of onesies in different sizes, a grey long-sleeved thermal onesie, and a sleep sack with ducks on it.  A high school friend gave me a bath set with ducks on it too, so that was very nice of her :)  I'm not sure if we'll find out the gender on Monday or not, it might depend on how well Jelly Bean cooperates.

Now for updates on B.  He got into his own room yesterday and he was very happy about that.  Still no surgery since the second day, but they're keeping an eye on things still.  He was making good progress and was in good spirits until yesterday, when back spasms/pinched nerve/something in his lower back started bothering him.  Today it's been constant all day and his epidural isn't doing much to help the pain.  His back's been bad for years so I'm not surprised that all this laying/sitting aggravated it, but we're frustrated with the fact that they're not doing anything to really help with it.  They just ask if he's pushed his pain button, which gives a higher dose from the epidural, but it only works every 10 minutes and is basically ineffective for this problem.  I really hope they do something soon... it kills me to visit and watch him writhing in pain the whole time.  It's worse when I call to check on him and I can hear the tears in his voice, knowing there's absolutely nothing I can do. 

For me, the worst part, aside from knowing his pain is out of my control, is the paperwork.  There's an auto claim for the accident, getting all the hospitals updated with the claim number and address, unemployment for B because he was laid off a week before the accident but right now he can't do the job applications so we need the doctor to fill out a form that's been sitting on the table ignored, getting the car's towing paid for (but not reimbursed because AAA is a waste of money), job applications and interviews for myself because he'll be unable to work for a while, financial aid through the hospitals (which requires tons of paperwork that's not at all handy), and wondering how bad the payments are going to be and how long he'll be out of work, plus what I'll do after JB's arrival.  Trying not to stress out about it since that will only make things worse, but this is just insane.

Monday is my 16-week appointment.  Hopefully B will be out by then, or maybe they'll let us wheel him over to the clinic so he can see the ultrasound, but he's missed the last 2 appointments because of work and I'd hate for him to miss another just because they wouldn't let him go next door for an hour.  I guess we'll see what happens.  That was possibly the longest week of my life.