The Beginning

Two years ago, I shared my deepest secret with Lorie.

“I really want to be a mom.”

By which I obviously meant, “I want to spend nine months puking my brains out at 10 pm, having raging insomnia, gestational diabetes, and oh yeah, bed rest?  Give me some of that.”

Pregnancy was an interesting ride from the first moment.  Somewhere around February 20th, 2009 I developed my yearly oh-my-you-have-a-sinus-infection-and-no-I-don’t-know-what-those-white-bumps-on-your-tongue-are.  Honestly, that’s what my doctor said and he threw 1000 mg of augmentin at it.

As my head started to clear and rationale thought resumed, I began to wonder about important things such as do we have clean laundry and oh yeah, when DID I get my last period? January? No….. DECEMBER?OHNOIDON’TKNOW! Once I realized that my sense of smell had reached super human levels, I thought a quick trip to Target was in order.

I peed.  I waited.  And the second blue line showed up immediately.  Not faint.  Not questionable.  BLUE.

I called Ismael and demanded that he come home from work immediately so I could talk to him. In retrospect, he probably thought he was in some major trouble, but he agreed to come.

Impatient, I did what any rationale woman would do.  I called Lorie and shouted the news to her, while shaking, standing in my kitchen.

Almost immediately I began puking around 10 pm almost every single night.  I never really had morning sickness, but a few hours after dinner I would be ragingly ill.  Eventually I learned that any form of dairy and cereal for dinner was a good thing and I bought box after box of Special K and Kashi cereals.

About the same time, I stopped sleeping.  Night after night, I’d fall asleep, wake up three hours later and be completely awake for the rest of the night.  I would like to issue a heartfelt “sorry” to my students and coworkers that year, right now.  I could not have been a good person on so little sleep.  I guess it was training for the coming year.

I was so relieved when school let out for the year.  I had a summer to sleep. Thank you God.

My second trimester went fairly smoothly.  Because I am heavy, my doctor rightly had some concerns about my pregnancy and we proceeded cautiously.  Level II ultrasounds every few weeks and monitoring my blood sugar.  Every ultrasound was a special treat and I was able to check in with Adam often.  Around the beginning of August, my fasting blood sugars began to show increases and I was treated to a new medicine to lower them and constant pricking my fingers.  Fuuun.  Oh and goodbye carbs…which was sad, sad, sad since my only pregnancy cravings were chicken sandwiches from Burger King and ice cream in any form, any time, from any place.  Neither of them was kind to my glucose level.

When I started school in the fall, I did surprisingly well for the first month.

By mid-September, I was ready to be home and asleep. Desperate for it.

I realized at the end of September, I had overstayed my usefulness when a student with chronically late homework came to my desk with excuse number 1957114 and I simply held my hand up, almost in his face, and told him to simply “go away, I will deal with you later.”    Later that afternoon, the NST on Adam looked great, but even after an hour of laying in that wonderful recliner, watching Dr. Phil on their flat screen with the monitor strapped to my belly, my blood pressure was crazy high.  Something like 180/110.  My doctor sent me over to the hospital to be monitored and then informed me I was done working and was to be home on bed rest until my scheduled c-section on October 10, 11 days before my actual due date.

For the first two days,  I was all like, “Hallelujah, Sweet Jesus, I’m so happy to get some sleep.”

For the final two weeks, I was all like a two year old near the end of a long trip, “are we there yet? are we there yet?”  because bed rest sucks.

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