Changing

Once I had a family member tell me about a friend who wanted to be a cartoon character.  To further his likeness of a cartoon character he bought 5 of the same shirt, and multiples of the same of pair of pants.  This way he was able to wear the same looking cloths every day, just like most Saturday morning cartoon characters.

Well, Mr. Friend.  I think I am starting to beat you.  Check this out:



I'm not sure why it goes into slow motion.  However, just as Pooh bear's tummy noticeably moves when he's hungry, my tummy moves too!  That would be Paily Jr. saying Hi.  It sometimes startles me how much my belly moves!  But it's pretty great!

(PS, I am well on my way to developing another cartoon-y trait.  I'll tell you about it when it happens.  You should totally be excited!)

The Best Invention EVER!

I've tried pretty hard to not be a super needy pregnant lady.  There are SO many things out there for ladies "with child" and I feel I've done a decent job of going without.  Honestly, half of the inventions are lame.  There are some things, like maternity cloths, that just weren't optional.  Hod also splurged once and bought me some of the best lotion ever.  Seriously, it's so smooth, and soft, and smells good, and isn't oily, and makes it so my ever growing body doesn't itch.  However, I learned that if you leave it in your car for 5 hours, and it gets hot, then it turns into putty and is no longer usable.  Luckily, the lady at the store likes us, so when I mentioned it, she offered to exchange it.  Yes!

Anyway, this post was not meant to be about my lotion.  (But it really is amazing.)  For the past month, I have found that by morning I am excited to get out of bed.  Not because I'm rested, but because my hips hurt so dang bad!  Most days I would limp around for about an hour and then it would stop hurting.  I tried to be positive about it, I mean, you're just supposed to be in a lot of pain when you're pregnant, right?  But it just got too bad.  When I spent an entire day limping, and wincing with every step I took, I decided it was time to do something.

Hod came home from work, and I told him, we were going to the store.  I had needs, and I was done sucking it up.  We came home with this:

Only mine is much cuter, cause it has a "reversible" pillow case.  (It's not really reversible, as they so willingly advertised.  The fabric on the front is different than the fabric on the back.  If that's really reversible, then I'm a monkey.)

I am amazed at the difference a body pillow can make!  Most maternity pillows are super expensive, but this wasn't.  And now I can sleep!  And some mornings I even wake up feeling rested!  It is the best invention ever!  I love it!  So, today is celebrate the greatness that is a body pillow.  Go ahead, party your own way, but just party.  Because this has changed my life!

I'm Roughly The Size Of A Barge!

Hod's two sisters are quite slim and trim.  I remember right before his sister K delivered her son, Hod commented on how large she was.  She was quite proud of her size.  It made me giggle.  For her, YES, she was very pregnant looking.  For my family, she looked like she was about 4 months along.  Hod said he couldn't wait to see me look like that.  I commented back that he, "ain't seen nothin yet."

I started out much larger than K.  And I have grown.  Despite the fact that I am not gaining weight, I am ginormous!  Let me show you how large I am.  (please ignore the out-of-proportion-ness of my hand.  I haven't yet figured out how to take a good self portrait.)

This is me almost a week ago.  Hod LOVES it.  And that's good, cause I'm not loving it so much.  Having struggled my entire life with being ok with my size... this is a little hard.  But at least I look pregnant.  No one would look at me now and think, "Wow, that lady is super squishy!"  Well, they wouldn't unless they are very uneducated on pregnancy.

Being short, I feel that I waddle like unto an Oompa Looma.  However, my skin is a much more delightful color.

The good news: I have less than 100 days left!  I am so excited to meet my dear sweet little girl!

That Was A Strange One

Last night, Hod and I were visiting some friends, and I started having an allergic reaction.  I discovered my first food allergy in 2003, and I'm quite aware of my body when it comes to food and possible reactions.  Did you know you can have an allergic reaction to something you ate 72 hours before?  After much contemplation, I realized that the only unusual thing (Or I can have a reaction when I eat a large quantity of a food... but I hadn't done that) that had entered my body were some crackers I got from a lady in my ward.  She is allergic to everything.  OK, not everything, just gluten, milk, and I think something else.

Apparently I'm allergic to crackers made for the highly allergic.  Strange.

Anyway, while at my friend's house, I broke out in hives.  My doctor has told me that once I see hives, I have one hour to get some sort of fast acting allergy medicine in me (think Benadryl or something like that) before my face starts swelling up and I stop breathing.  Luckily my friend runs a pharmacy out of her house (not for real life, she just has a little bit of everything) and she hooked me up.

Benadryl always gives me really strange dreams.  I hate having drug induced sleep.  It does crazy things.  Let me share this dream with you.

In my dream, I was waking up at my Mom's house.  My sister L6 was there (which is funny, cause she's been staying with my Mom for almost 2 weeks now.)  I was kind of delirious in my half awake state (remember that in real life I was still dreaming) and realized that my stomach had shrunk and I couldn't feel anything inside of my anymore.  With panic I turned to my Mom and asked, "Where is my baby?!?!"  My Mom laughed at me and told me that I had delivered a few hours earlier.  I was so exhausted that as soon as the baby was out of me, I passed out.  Mom took me into her bedroom to meet my little child.  She was pretty darn cute!  I picked her up, excited to meet her, and she had the floppy-est head in the world.  Despite the fact that her neck looked a normal length for a newborn, her head moved like it was sitting on a 2 foot long piece of cooked spaghetti.  Upon further inspection, I also discovered that she had 5 piercings in each ear.  I had apparently given birth to a punk rocker.

As I looked at baby, I was considering all of the names that Hod and I are wondering about, and nothing felt right.  Even after meeting her, I still didn't have a clue what to name my baby.  Then I realized that Hod was missing.  I found him passed out on the floor of my Mom's family room.  L6 had been keeping an eye on him. I guess during my delivery the blood was too much, so he had passed out.  Then I got the story of how baby had come.

I had been sitting at the table, when I just kept moaning like something was wrong.  L6 finally realized that I was in labor (yeah, right... cause all I would be doing is moaning a little) and decided she should check my progress.  (Also strange, as L6 doesn't have medical training, and this is my first baby, so you'd think they'd just tell me to go to the hospital where I am planning on delivering.)  Turns out baby was already crowning, so L6 decided to play Dr and help get the baby here.  Everything went really fast, and baby came out looking great.  This is when I passed out.  Somehow, my unconscious body got everything else out of me, they cleaned up, and let me sleep.  The entire delivery lasted under 20 minutes.

I was kind of freaking out at this point, and I was sure I needed to go to the hospital.  Really, I had just delivered at 25 weeks, and baby was perfectly fine.  That didn't add up in my brain.  So, we threw some water on Hod to wake him up.  He was too shaken to drive, so he called a taxi service.  While waiting for the taxi, baby got hungry, so we decided to try nursing.  Of course, that worked perfectly on the first try, and even though I had delivered about an hour before, I had milk.  Also strange.  Hod wanted to burp baby, so I let him.  Oh, here's a random fact, Hod was sporting long hair that would put Fabio to shame.  It wasn't a good look for him.  Baby spit up in Hod's hair, and he FREAKED out.  Apparently he was very attached to his hair.

The taxi came, but the chick was in a hurry, and wouldn't let us put our car seat in her taxi.  I was trying to put it in anyway, but she just wouldn't let me.  I remember banging on the windows and shouting, "But the hospital won't let me take my baby home without a car seat!"  Halfway to our destination, Taxi Driver Lady had Hod sign some paperwork, where we discovered that this 4 mile trip was going to cost us $173.  I expressed some concern, and she decided to give us a deal, because she used to be one of my sister's (L7's) band students.  But her life had gone downhill.  She then played a song that told us her life story.  It was a pretty great song, that doesn't exist in real life.  It was all very dramatic.

Anyway, we got to the hospital, and no one would really talk to us, because everything looked fine.  When I cornered a Dr and explained that I had just delivered at 25 weeks, he just looked at me and said, "So, what's the big deal?"

In the end, Hod and I decided to just go home.  A car (with a car seat) magically appeared.  During the drive home, I woke up.  As in, back to real life, I'm awake now.

Baby is still inside of me, right where she belongs.  That was a really strange dream.  I'm not sure what to make of it.

I really don't like drug induced sleep.