i really should do something useful

Monday night our LB came down with a fever. Poor kid. She hasn't been sick yet, so needless to say Tomek and I were a worried, nervous bundle of "omg what do we do?" She slept with us because otherwise he and I probably would have met countless times in the hall going to and coming from checking up on her. She was so HOT. :( And had a little cough. Her fever never went above 101.7F but we set alarms to go off every 2 hours anyway to keep tabs on her temperature. She hasn't been listless or anything other than a little more mellow than usual and wanting to be picked up all the time. Which I'm not allowed to do, so then she cries and it breaks my heart because I know she doesn't understand that the ONLY reason I'm not picking her up is because at this point it could harm me and the baby. So I spend a lot of time sitting on the floor so she can crawl into the small space still left on my lap, and we read. I'm so sick of Hop on Pop. Gah. But I'll always read it for her. :)

Yesterday, on top of LB being feverish, I had my obgyn appointment. We all went because it was the initial appointment and I thought she'd be explaining to me what was going to happen with the c-section, you know, put my mind at ease a bit.

Nope.

She went over all the bad things that could happen, finishing up with losing so much blood I need a transfusion and the placenta getting stuck resulting in a hysterectomy.

She asked me if I wanted to get my tubes tied and I said no because I think it's dumb to do something like that while I'm still healthy, capable and at a good age to have children. Who's to say that we won't decide to have a 3rd in a couple of years? Might not be in our plans right now, but you never know how things might be in 2 years or so.

She checked on the baby's heartbeat and it took her a little bit to find it. Then she listened for over a minute with a frown on her face. It was 120 bpm but she decided to send me to the hospital for a non-stress test anyway, to get a 20 minute reading of the heartbeat to make sure it was going up and down.

Poor LB was way past her nap time by this time, but it wouldn't have made sense (or so we thought) for Tomek to drive home with her, put her down for her nap then scoop her up again and come back to get me.

The obgyn scheduled me for another ultrasound at 35 weeks to confirm the placenta is still low, I see her again at 37 weeks on top of seeing my regular doctor and scheduling a trip to the hospital for my c-section orientation. All this with LB and w/o a car. Whee.

She scheduled my c-section for the 25th of February, then changed it this morning to the 20th of February. And oh BUMMER I was just perusing the wiki article on Feb 20th and that's Kurt Cobain's b-day. Ugh. I don't see why that guy is such a hero to so many people. I really don't get it. The others I recognized were Phil Esposito, Charles Barkley (pfft) and Cindy Crawford.

So back to the hospital and the non-stress test... the first nurse couldn't find the heartbeat at all. Just when I was getting really worried, the little guy started punching and kicking up a storm. Whew. But she still couldn't find his heartbeat. So she asked another nurse to find it. She had trouble, too, she could pick it up for a bit then would lose it again. She said it was the hardest heartbeat she'd ever had to find. And she graduated from nursing school the year I was born. 27 years. So I didn't get to lie there in peace and let my baby's heartbeats wash over me and soothe me. I sat/lay in a twisted half-on-back-half-on-side-half-sitting position with the nurse holding the sensor on my gooped-up belly and occasionally (I hate that word) pressing it into my belly.

But the heartbeat was normal, so that's good. We got home after 5 and LB and Tomek laid down for a nap while I prepped some chicken noodle soup. I laid down with them, too, and we got up to eat before 7. LB ate a LOT. And drank a LOT. Yay! :)

Last night was better, her fever was lower, although she's still pretty quiet and clingy.

Between her being sick and all this c-section stuff, I've not been thinking of much else. Maybe on the weekend...