Baby Blessing: Weeks 22 & 23

It's finally starting to feel real.

All throughout the first part of this pregnancy and even as recently as my last Baby Blessing post, I've been amazed that this is really happening to me!  I have felt a little like Sarah in Genesis 18:12 when she says, "Will I now have this pleasure?"  :)

But when week 22 hit, things changed.  It's not that the joy and the gratitude disappeared; it's just that suddenly it all feels real--very, very real.  Maybe it's because of my aching back?  ;-)

Things are still going swimmingly in the pregnancy department, and I have nothing of any significance to complain about.  So I'm not complaining.  :)  Just stating facts when I say that I'm starting to feel the effects of growing a baby:  Braxton-Hicks contractions that show up randomly, various muscle aches that sometimes seize me suddenly and without warning, a spot in my lower back on the right side that hurts on occasion, a definite slowness to my body, especially as I change positions (i.e. sitting on the floor to standing up).  You know, the normal stuff.

I'm also rediscovering my limits again, to the tune of "I Can't Do All that I Really Want to Do."  My eyes see projects that should be tackled, but my body says, "That's gonna take a toll on me; don't you think that project can wait?"  I'm SO grateful for my mother's help these days with outside work.  This fall, she has raked up many bags of leaves that we'll use on the garden for mulch next year.  Back when I was feeling light and energetic, I raked up a few bags; but she has faithfully done many more.  She's also the Wood Queen this year, since she's the one that has done most of the wood-carrying from the woodshed to our porch and from a woodpile dumped in our yard by the man we just bought some wood from into the woodshed.  She keeps telling us how much she LOVES to work with wood, and this year I don't even try to convince her to take it easy.  I just smile and say, "Thank you so much for carrying in so much wood for us!"  :)

I suppose my achiness and slowness has the benefit of helping me relax, focus on what's important, and be able to receive help from others.  But to tell you the truth, I wasn't expecting this to hit me before I even got to 24 weeks.  Maybe by 34 weeks, but not yet!!  :)  I still have hope though that I'll recover some energy and stamina at some point during this second trimester; after all, there's a lot I want to do before the baby comes! :)

For a picture for this update, I only have this...

...the only picture of me during these two weeks.  We had some wonderful friends over for dinner last week, and Jeff suggested we take a picture together.  I think he or someone else quipped at the time that I could use it for my pregnancy picture, but I laughed it off.  Well, here it is.  Not the regular sort of pregnancy picture, but it will have to do.  :)

The biggest happening during these two weeks was my visit with the midwife yesterday.  Because of the position of our little girl during our 20-week ultrasound, the technician was not able to get the images and measurements of the spine that she needed, so at the beginning of my appointment yesterday, I had a short ultrasound to check that.  Besides seeing that our baby is still a girl ;-), we also saw that she was in almost the same position that she had been the first time (although she had moved enough that the tech could see what she needed to see).  Her position is breech--frank breech, which means, for those of you not up to speed on your obstetrics terms, that her little bottom is nestled down in my pelvis and her head is up closer to my ribs--not a good thing when it comes time to give birth.  When the ultrasound tech saw this, she simply said that the baby was breech and that there is still plenty of time for her to turn into a head-down position for delivery.  But when I saw the midwife, we talked further about it; and Tammie gave me some ideas for how to turn the baby.  The general impression I got from her was that this was something I should start working on now:  sooner, rather than later.  Tammie was the midwife who delivered Shav; and, remembering that experience, she said, "You give birth so easily!"  I know she'd love for me to avoid a C-section...as would I.

After that, I paid the bill and left the office feeling very anxious...but happy, too:  happy to have seen the baby again, heard her heartbeat of 136, and received confirmation that she's growing and doing fine...but also nervous.  My worry centered around two themes:  money and the baby's position.  

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I don't worry about money.  Ever.  That's Jeff's department, and he handles it just fine.  ;-)  Not only is he the one to make the money for our family, he's also the one who carries the burden of dispersing that money; and except for a few bills that I pay each month (music lessons for the boys, our Samaritan Ministries share, etc.) he takes care of all the rest of our financial stuff.  He does an exceptional job with it, and I never even think twice about the status of our bank account.

But I did yesterday.

It was so strange to me.  Let me explain...  We are considered self-pay, even though we're part of a FANTASTIC organization (seriously, I can't say enough good things about it) called Samaritan Ministries that shares medical needs with each other.  So we will receive help with our medical bills for this pregnancy.  But up front, we have to pay the costs; and if we pay at the time of the appointment, we receive a significant discount.  So, of course, we always pay at the time of the appointment!  Yesterday I paid for the ultrasound and then paid a little more on the balance we owe for the midwife care, but then I started thinking about what we still owe...and the blood tests and additional costs that are coming up...and the hospital bill, etc.  And I got more and more worried about all of it.

So then, I went to Walmart to pick up a few things before heading home.  I keep a running grocery list and jot things down as I think about them or notice that we're low in or out of something so I had a medium-sized list, but I knew that I didn't need to get everything on my list that day.  For most of the items, there was no hurry at all and they could easily wait for another day.  But I also knew that I only had $35 to spend (we try to buy all of our groceries with cash), and it wouldn't be enough to cover everything on the list.  I would need to decide what was most necessary to buy and then, more importantly, keep a running tally of how much I was spending so that I wouldn't end up with a total higher than $35.  

Normally, doing grocery shopping like this is not a big deal at all; and it shouldn't have been a big deal yesterday either.  But for some strange reason, it was.  I felt extremely uptight as I walked through the store, as if the black cloud of SCARCITY was hanging over my head and following me around.  We don't have enough food...and I don't have enough money to buy more...we don't have enough food..not enough money..not enough food...was the refrain that played in my brain. I kept thinking things like, "At least we have a bunch of dry beans in the cellar; I can cook a big pot of those and that will last us for a while.  Oh, but it would be nice to flavor it with bacon.  But I don't have any bacon and don't have enough money to buy any.  Well, I could use some of those pork backbone pieces in the freezer and boil the meat off them and use that meat with the beans.  It will be tedious, but yes, that's what I'll do so we don't starve."

As I sit here and type this tonight, I'm literally laughing at myself, because I know I wasn't thinking rationally AT ALL.  The truth is, we have so much food in this house that we could eat for weeks--if not months--on it.  And the other truth is, Jeff has a job and works hard and, so far, the residents of our town have still decided to get haircuts and we still have income.  So why in the big ol' world was I stressed?!  

Ridiculous.  Absolutely, positively ridiculous.  I sure was a nut case there for a few hours.  So why am I writing all this here?  So everyone can laugh at me?  :)  Actually, it was such a strong feeling--and such a weird one--that I decided to include it here; it's always encouraging to look back on my moments of temporary insanity during pregnancy.  ;-)  Can I just blame it all on the hormones?  :)

I said I was worried about two things, and that's true.  Besides the "we're going to run out of food!" hysteria, I was also feeling really nervous about Baby Girl's position.  With the boys, we'd never had a serious concern about a breech baby; all of them had kindly turned head down when needed and not given us any alarm about that aspect of delivery.  Four weeks ago when we had our ultrasound, I didn't even think for a second about the fact that our girl was breech; after all, there was so much else to think about during that ultrasound!!  :)  And besides, our baby was so small that she could easily flip around and do somersaults and handstands and all kinds of other contortions.  (And believe me, it often feels like she's doing just that!)

But suddenly, when the little one was again in that position yesterday, the demon of fear grabbed hold of me and shook me as hard as he could.  "She won't turn," I thought.  "She's obviously comfortable in that position, and I just have a feeling she'll stay in it.  I'll try to do the things Tammie told me to turn her, but it won't work and I'll be a failure.  If I go to the chiropractor, it will cost us a bunch of money (see above worry about finances).  If the baby does turn, she'll probably flip back to the breech position anyway.  I just know I'm going to end up with a C-section."  

After the boys were in bed, I got online and googled "frank breech birth" which was perhaps not the wisest thing to do since I scared myself half to death with all the information and pictures and videos I discovered.  That was a serious case of TMI!

Last night, the thought of a C-section seemed dreadful, and "full of dread" is a pretty good way to describe how I was feeling!

Today I realize that a) there really is plenty of time for Baby Girl to turn and b) even if she doesn't, a C-section is not the end of the world!  I know quite a few women who have had C-sections; and although the recovery is undeniably longer and more painful, it's not a big deal when you consider the result.  If my daughter stays breech, I will gladly go under the knife for her...and I'll say a prayer of thanks that we live in this day and age when modern medicine can so effectively intervene in potentially life-threatening pregnancy conditions.  So if she turns or if she doesn't, it's still a win-win situation with a live, healthy baby as the reward (provided something completely unexpected doesn't happen in which she or I die, but that happens so rarely that it's hardly worth mentioning).

What was I so worried about anyway??  ;-)