 |
| Current mood . . . |
On the weekend, we spent both days completely shut up in our place. One day was spent trying to sanitize the second bedroom after the rat was caught. Cleaning up rat blood, feces, and urine and worrying that there may be more around ready to invade your place is not a restful weekend and though my husband did most of the cleaning, I couldn't help but worry that this would happen again. I looked a bit more at housing and was even more depressed at our prospects of ever getting out of this place and into a place that's actually big enough and has storage enough to work for having a baby.
As the days until birth tick down, I'm starting to panic. I can't believe how much people are charging for just a floor of a house. From my sister's experience looking for a place while she was pregnant, I know no one will rent to us any place that shares walls. And entire houses to rent are in very, very short supply in Victoria since everyone is rushing to cash in on the lottery of British Columbia real estate. And of course very, very short supply means very, very expensive for places that wouldn't have even rented 10 years ago.
And it's hard to plan when we don't know if we're going to be able to move or not. Should we buy anything baby related or wait? Should be packing bit by bit or will we be stuck here forever? Will we be "renovicted" from this place? Should we just move away from this country all together and start anew somewhere where there's actually a reasonable prospect of owning or renting a decent place for less than 50% of our take home pay (and 50% would be a good scenario here, many people pay much more on the west coast to either rent or own a place)?
 |
| What is with this real estate and rental market? |
Maybe this is why I can't sleep at night or rather why I fall asleep with difficulty and then wake from nightmares with panic attacks and can't sleep again for about two hours.
And I picked up another cold or some sort of awful virus somewhere. It manifested on the weekend. I had just been getting over the last of the sinus congestion from my last cold when I was hit by a very, very sore throat and more congestion. Then I was visited by violent stomach pains and nausea for a couple of days. I'm still feeling crumby. I guess this is the trade-off between being pregnant in the summer and being all hot and icky vs. being pregnant in the winter and being cool but constantly sick (pregnancy lowers the immune system response, so the body doesn't reject the fetus).
 |
| Ugh, sick again. |
While the anxiety and panic attacks had subsided a bit after taking Loxapine, my PRN, for a day last week, they started ramping up again for me mid week and I had to take Loxapine again early yesterday morning in an effort to get some sleep. I'm afraid that I'll have to go on it for a while to try to crush this mixed episode so that it doesn't worsen or continue to haunt me for the rest of the spring. The last thing I need is to feel worse or to end up hospitalized in the psychiatric ward.
 |
| Blooming spring bulbs from my husband. |
And on a related note, as I mentioned above, I'm really having trouble sleeping. My husband and I have tried looking at some of the overwhelming array of pregnancy pillows online to find something that will help me sleep on my side(apparently around this time is when sleeping on the back becomes bad for the fetus and mother due to compression of the vena cava, so sleeping on the side is considered optimal) instead of spending the night rolling around between pillows like a restless wanderer who disturbs both my husband and more importantly our precious prince of a cat.
 |
| Do not disturb. |
The selection is just so vast though. And naturally, since it's maternity related, they're expensive. There are review articles on maternity pillows, websites have tens and tens and tens of them, all with sometimes hundreds of reviews and ratings, all contradictory. And the stores in Victoria only have one or two of a type that seem useless to me as they are one sided, meaning if you have to flip to your other side, you have to take the whole body pillow with you. I'm looking for the U type that looks like a giant U or horseshoe and apparently takes up about half of a bed. They allow you sleep on either side without having to move it over when you flip over. That seems like it might work best for me, although chequered reviews of them exist, so I can't be certain that it will work out. And I don't want to choose a bad one so I tried to find one in person to actually see and touch, however, after a fruitless trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond and The Mothering Touch today, I have determined that I'll just have to read some more reviews and then order online. Then wait . . .
But I'm getting really desperate for a good sleep. I know that my prospects for good sleep are disintegrating by the day, but I'd like to grab a few while I can, especially because sleep is especially important for those with bipolar disorder (and part of the reason I'm not sleeping is this mixed episode that I'm currently having too, but good sleep will help me get out of it, so it's really a vicious circle). I've been looking on Amazon, but of course I'll have to check out eBay, Bed, Bath & Beyond and Toys 'R Us which apparently have a vaster online selection, and just generally Google to see what comes up. That's the problem with everything pregnancy and baby related and the existence of the internet, one could spend years searching for something now. There's just so, so, so much.
I am 19 weeks pregnant today. This morning, my husband and I drove out to Victoria General Hospital to have a fetal ECG. This was booked because there's a slightly increased risk of heart valve defects in the fetuses of patients taking Lithium Carbonate (I take this for bipolar disorder), Ebstein's anomaly (according to some older studies which some say are highly flawed, but are still followed to be on the safe side).
 |
| Lithium Carbonate. |
I was feeling pretty sick to the stomach from being up early, not sleeping much, and whatever this weird virus is. The fetal ECG is done by ultrasound (external). The bladder does not have to be full (thankfully).
 |
| Waiting for the fetal ECG. |
 |
| Awesome hospital waiting room lighting. |
The doctor spent a while pressing the ultrasound probe into various areas of my abdomen (ow, bladder, ow, ligaments stretching out with the growing uterus) and having me turn to one side and then the other and then back onto my back to image different sides of the fetus' heart and to observe its rhythm and all the different valves, ventricles, and chambers. He pronounced that he could not see any valve problems, chamber or ventricle problems, rhythm problems, or anything that would indicate that there was a heart abnormality. The fetus' heart rate was 147 bpm when he measured it. He said between 110 and 160 is normal in pregnancy (in early pregnancy the heart rate can be as high as 180 and in later pregnancy it goes down towards 120). He printed out a picture of the fetus and a couple of the heart for me when I asked if I could have some for my blog (no pictures are allowed in the hospital ultrasound area for "privacy" reasons even though you're in a private room). My husband was amazed to see the fetus kicking during the ultrasound and the spine and ribs and everything in such detail compared to the last time he saw an ultrasound of the fetus, which was November 10th. There's definitely more detail to see now.
 |
| The silhouette of the fetus. |
 |
| The fetus' heart plus the ECG line below at 147 bpm. |
 |
| Close up of the fetus' heart (the white square in the middle is adhesive from the new roll of paper that the doctor put into the printing machine). |
Next week, we have the detailed developmental ultrasound on January 31st (I'll be 19.5 weeks pregnant). My husband will be able to be at that. A week and a half after that, I'll be at my maternity doctor, Dr. Down, to find out if the fetus is male or female. I can't believe I'm almost halfway through the pregnancy (20 weeks). I'm still stunned every time I have an ultrasound or I'm at the doctor's office when I hear the fetus' heartbeat or see it moving. I just can't believe I'm pregnant or that it's still alive (my husband confessed that he was holding his breath at the start of the fetal ECG this morning wondering if there would still be a heartbeat, the miscarriage we had in June has not been easy on either of us). This whole process is so overwhelming and after the struggle we have had to get here, I realize how lucky I am to be pregnant. I will never take that for granted.
 |
| 19 weeks pregnant. |
No comments:
Post a Comment