Mommy and Me

Mommy and Me
Sharing life with you is fullfilling

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

You've popped

Some of the things we say in pregnancy are just funny to me.  When waiting for our bellies to finally show that we are pregnant we say "I can't wait for my belly to pop!"  and when it finally does show someone will say "Wow, you've really popped!"  And Later still when our bellies are hugely uncomfortable and we are ready to meet our little bundle of joy we comment about how we feel as if we will pop, explode, or rip open if our skin tries to stretch any more.  Some how it just seems backward to me.  We want to pop, we say we did, and then later we feel like we will.
I personally have started to 'show' my pregnancy, and for the first time discovered some very comfortable and cute ways to dress during my pregnancy.  I'm actually loving my limited clothing selection for the first time.  I bought a couple of summer dresses that I will be able to wear in or out of pregnancy, and pulled out some leggings I bought awhile ago and I'm wearing some of those short dresses that I can still fit with leggings under them.  I also for the first time get to wear shorts while pregnant.  I mean I've worn shorts before, but either didn't need my cute maternity ones or just plain didn't need them due to the weather.  This year, being that it is July and I'm half way through pregnancy I have needed a lot more of my summer clothing, and a lot less of the winter wear I had for both of my December born little ones.  I don't know if anyone else would call my clothing cute or not, but I'm certainly enjoying my options more this time.

Man it is hot right now.  I hope this heat lets up a bit in the next few days, it really is miserable.  The air conditioner is on, but unless I leave all the bedroom doors open with the fans on it is incredibly warm upstairs and comfortable downstairs, and cold in the basement... I think it is just the nature of the basement though because we have the vents closed down there, I've even gotten into the habit of leaving the basement door open all day to hopefully cycle some of the air.
The heat though leads me to an interesting yet horrible story from yesterday. 
I woke up much like any other day, had a good breakfast with a small glass of orange juice and asked my husband if he was ready to go on the walk he promised me the day before, he said no.... so I decided he could keep the kids at home and I'd go alone and get a much needed little mommy break.
We have a wonderful wide path that leads through the woods and down to the river, the walk there and back takes maybe 30 minutes.  I intended to do that and return home.  About halfway to the river I realized that I'd left my water at home, fearing that if I went home I may not get my walk at all I decided to just continue walking and be sure to get a good drink when I returned.   Once I reached the river there were a lot of people docking their canoes and tubes to get out of them and stretch their legs, I didn't feel like going down there by myself but really needed to cool off a little so I decided to adventure along the edge of the river down a path that I hoped would lead to another little beach pull off that I'd only just recently heard of.  Down the path just far enough that I didn't want to turn around the over growth on the path became really bad and I wondered if I kept going if I'd just end up losing the path anyway, then I spotted what might have been poison ivy and decided that walking through tall overgrowth in shorts was a bad idea so I turned off the path headed away from the river knowing that there was another much larger path that followed the back of my neighborhood, in that direction and hoping I would meet up with it and then continue my walk from there. 
Shortly after turning off the path I began to feel signs of dehydration, followed closely with extreme annoyance at the mosquitoes which seemed to think the humidity of the day and the short bursts of sprinkles the clouds above me were giving off were good reason to feast on my flesh.  Then their were the stupid fruit flies or cousins of them, that were swarming around my head and flying directly into my eyes, needless to say this walk was turning miserable very quickly.
I tried my best to keep a good attitude and just pray.  I prayed I'd find the path soon, that I'd feel a second wind soon, that the rain would either come or completely disappear, that the mosquitoes would leave me alone, and I prayed that I could maintain a good attitude, the last prayer was the only one that happened very quickly at all.  I amazingly kept a pretty good attitude, interrupted by a few circumstances and then quickly recovered.
Unfortunately unlike my attitude what I couldn't recover was my hydration.  I started to feel as if I was going to faint and sat down, got bit by a cloud of mosquitoes and moved on, then feeling even more faintish I had to stop and had no choice but to lay down in the dirty leaves and bugs.  Amazingly this close to the ground the bugs seemed not to be so interested in me, so for that I'm thankful.  A little while later I decided to slowly rise and get myself out of the woods, as laying there wasn't really getting me anywhere and I had no idea where I was.  All I knew for sure was that my house was north, the river was south, and the path that I originally came in on was west, but much too far away to try to venture toward it, so I opted to go toward what would either spit me out on the path I had been looking for, or my neighborhood, North.
I tripped and hurt my wrist, thankfully not bad and it was completely recovered after probably 10 minutes.  I swatted more of the stupid bugs, encountered a lot more poison ivy looking plants and walked on logs that were much too rotted to support me resulting in a few not so dangerous falls.  I laid down a total of three times, each time thinking when I finally found my neighborhood I was probably going to look like a cave woman, or a monster emerging from the woods. 
I had my cell phone on me but knew it would do me no good to call anyone until I figured out where I was, so I did try my husband a few times but when he didn't answer I didn't worry about it.  My dehydration lead to puking, which let me know that I was in serious need of getting out of the woods pretty soon.  While laying on the ground shortly after puking I felt the baby moving in my belly and thought what a good thing that was, since likely the baby had no idea how bad of shape I was in.
Not so long after the puking I finally met up with that stupid path I'd been looking for.  By this time I really had no idea which way I should head on it but chose a direction and called my husband again.  He answered this time and quickly realized that I needed help (thank goodness he wasn't laughing at me.. the girl who grew up outside and playing in the woods, and should know better than this.) I told him to pack the kids in the car and I'd call him back as soon as I knew where I was and I needed him to come pick me up.  I found houses shortly after that and he called to see what direction he should head in since I hadn't found a road yet, and I told him to head East as I'd wandered quite a ways past our house.  It didn't take long from that point to find the road, and once I did Patrick was there in a mater of seconds to pick me up.  Had I managed to go much further east (hadn't intended to be going east at all) I wouldn't have been in my neighborhood at all.  I was at one of the last streets in my neighborhood before a whole lot more woods separates our neighborhood from town. 
After getting home I soaked in a bath for about 30 minutes and drank a glass of water, ate a light lunch and took a nap. I'm glad to say that I'm ok, and am not worried one bit about the wiggly little baby inside me since it seems to be moving just as much or more than before my woodland adventure.
So what did I learn?  Stay out of the woods, stay on the path, take water with you, and don't go alone in the heat!  Pregnancy is not a time to adventure off by yourself.  One other wonderful thing to note is that while I was a little worried that the dehydration could lead to early labor, I didn't have even a single Braxton hicks contraction.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Poor vision

A few months ago I took Fia to the eye doctor, it seems that her eyes have gotten worse since infancy rather than better and it was just time to get that sorted out.  Come to find out she actually had severely farsighted eyes with astigmatism in one of them.  The astigmatism really didn't come as a surprise, I myself have them, and it runs in my family for generations.  The severely farsighted diagnosis was however shocking to me. 
  I had noticed that one eye would turn in while she ate or concentrated on something hard, but figured she had a lazy eye, not one that was working WAY too hard to do small tasks.  It was also shocking that this beautiful little girl who has always had early small motor skills was having trouble with her up-close vision.  If anything I would have assumed perhaps she was near-sighted. Boy was I wrong. 
She has a corrective pair of glasses now that are adorable!  They are also twice as strong as the strongest pair of over the counter reading glasses you can buy.  Wow my poor girl has lived nearly two and a half years unable to see things clearly and did so well at hiding it.  Had I not sat directly across the table from her at meal time I never would have known that she was struggling in this way.
  So now that she has these adorable glasses and I've adjusted to the fact that she needed them, because believe me it was an adjustment, I've been looking into why she might need them.  Patrick has glasses, they are for near-sightedness, he (I think) didn't get his first pair until after high school.  I have the tiniest prescription you can get for reading glasses that I got when I was in middle or high school and my vision hasn't changed at all since then, though I've had it tested and gotten new pairs of glasses over the years. 
  I have an appointment set up for Caeden to have his eyes checked this month, I'll feel awful if he needs glasses too since he is even older than Fia, but I don't think he does.  So why would Fia need such a strong prescription when there really isn't much family history of needing glasses, at least not in childhood? 
  This led me to her birth, which is the only thing that was completely different from the rest of our family... she was born by C-section due to cord prolapse, which means she had a lack of oxygen leading up to her delivery.  I've heard of incubated babies getting too much oxygen and loosing their eye sight, but never heard of a lack of oxygen causing eye problems, though it sounds like it could be related to me.
  I did a mini search with my friend google, and found this website that though it isn't extensive in it's description it does offer some insight to Fia's vision problems.  Apparently the lack of oxygen could really be the reason she has vision problems.  Somehow above all the things I went through, all that I felt, didn't feel, and mentally and emotionally overcame, this is one thing that makes me want to turn around and sue the heck out of the hospital that delivered my daughter.  Now it isn't just me... I have some small amount of proof that not only did they mess me up, they also messed up my daughter with their impatience.
Would I sue them?  Probably not.  What good would it do?  But I hate that they did this to my baby and can get away with it.  I'm willing to bet that her eczema has something to do with that wretched c-section too... though honestly I really don't have proof of that, except that stress triggers more itching than normal.
Ok, I'm done with my mini rant.  Fia is adorable in her glasses and she is a beauty inside and out.