sticks & stones break my bones, but GERD makes me cry.

i broke my ankle. it's a hairline fracture, but it's a fracture & i walked on it ALL week in arlington & DC last week. today i gave up tho, bc it now hurts so bad i can't chase the little dudes around anymore, & spent all afternoon in dr's offices while people tried to tell me it hurts bc i'm pregnant. i finally pitched a total hissy fit & demanded an x-ray & eval by a non-OB, & sure enough it's totally unrelated to me being preggo. duh. this isn't my 1st pg, & i was the queen of swollen appendages with the boys, so i'm pretty sure i know what a pg-swollen ankle feels like. sigh.
so now i'm in an air-cast & supposed to be "off my feet". HA. we'll see how that goes. mostly it just hurts & i don't know what i'm going to do to stay off my feet.

in even worse news, conrad gained ZERO since his last dr. visit, & the puking has returned depite the prevacid. after an appt today & a big pow-wow with our pedi. & his partner (both of whom specialize in this stuff) they think he's a candidate for surgery. basically, it's really bad that he's not gaining & is in fact losing weight, that we can't take him off medicines ever without making things much worse, & that there's been no improvement in his reflux, (which is now offically diagnosed as GERD), since birth.
so we got a referral to a pediatric surgeon who will get the final call. i'm praying we have other options available before we have to resort to surgery, bc it's not minor stuff this time. it's inpatient, requires rehab & abdominal surgery HURTS. i'm super scared just thinking of him having to go through this. we're waiting on the surgery folks to call & set up a consult, & in the meantime if anyone wants to send some good thoughts, vibes or prayers conrad's way, we'd be grateful.

pre-travel insanity, or it never rains but pours

some one in our family has had a dr's appt EVERY freaking day this week. we're supposed to leave tuesday, & have not so much as reserved our rental car. (actually rental van, but whatever.) conrad is an itchy, pukey mess, the birds have to go to the vet tonight (scout has feet issues from her previous life-- she's a rescue), all morning tomorrow conrad & i have dr's appts, meaning val will be there too. i have no real laundry done & tons piling up, since all i've been washing are all-cotton baby jammies/towels for conrad's bath/wet jammies business. we have to shop for critter food for our animal sitters next week, N some how injured his arm & is on perscription pain killers & an icing/pt routine for a week, your truly is in constant pain from this stupid pelvic symphasis & sciatica crap (i thought these would be better with a singleton... nope, still hurts like a b*tch!), & we're going to DC on tuesday! yay!

i'm not really bitter about going on a trip, it's to see my grandfather buried afterall, & n has never been to DC so hitting a smithsonian or two will be cool. i'm just stressing all the extra work & the pain we're all going to be in. (except val, bless his heart!) this is SUCH an awful time for a trip, & con's allergist (who i talked to again this morning) is all worried about traveling with his skin in such bad shape. sigh. he does have (another) doc appt tomorrow morning, so the doc can re-evaluate his skin then & give us some better advice.

all 3 of my men are currently soaking in the tub, so i'm going to go ambush them all with a camera so we at least get some laughs out of all this bathing/wet jammy/injured daddy chaos. :)

mental health report

thanks for all the kind thoughts & support yesterday...

my mom showed up & literally kicked me out of the house. so went to noodles & co, had a giant bowl of thai curry soup, which i ate very slowly, without anyone telling me to hurry (N) or crying (the dudes) & it was lovely. i was so tired i couldn't think of a darn thing to do with myself after that, & after an hour of sitting in my car contemplating life, decided i could handle a movie, so i went & watched a christmas carol in 3D, bc that was what was playing when i got to the show. & it was either surprisingly good, or i was so glad to be somewhere quiet & dark i would have liked anything i saw. & then i went home, had a glass of milk & passed out by 730. i don't think i spoke 10 words to N, not bc i was mad, but bc i was so exhausted. when i called this morning tho, i told him we should talk tonight & he seemed amenable.

let me just throw out there as well, N is a huge help. yes, he works alot & yes, he works long hours. on his off days he does take down time for himself, & it is well-deserved. he also helps with housework, does all the yardwork, & is great with the babies. the "daddy" issues we have are no more nor less than the "daddy" issues faced by most new parents. (dads just are not moms. if you don't know what i mean, then woopee for you, but i'm guessing most moms know just what i'm talking about.)

after some contemplation & a long talk with my own mom, i think the problem is not that i need more from N, but that i need some real time to myself. not just the occasional shower (which i consider personal hygiene, not down time) & not a solo trip to the grocery store (which is a chore, let's face it). i need "just me" time. & after complaining that i only really have one babysitter (my mom) i realized i also have N. (duh.) he gets "down time" on his days off, & darn it, i should too. just bc i'm home all the time doesn't mean i don't work. i do, & i work hard. the difference is i don't get any scheduled time off. there is no weekend for a SAHM. all i really need from N is a couple hours a week, where i can leave the house & do something entirely for me that involves not a single chore, & that is what we are going to talk about tonight.

(& for the record-- the boys sleep fine at night. it's the naps where we have trouble & they are making HUGE strides with our new nap routine. there is no CIO involved, & while we still ahve some "off" days, in general it is awesome. they're sleeping peacefully as i type! i really think the last straw for me was this new pg. it really takes a toll on a body, growing another person.)

i can't

i just can't today.

we woke at 530, to val screaming in his sleep. i couldn't get him back to bed, so he & i have been up since then. conrad got up at 7, and after breakfast, they both threw up everything they ate. no fever, no coughing, they seem fine. of course, this morning, i'm puking up everything i eat too.
val won't let me out of his sight. cries horribly everytime i go anywhere not in his line of vision. conrad is being his usual cheery self, but my poor vally is having a rough day.

none of this would matter any other morning, but somehow it does today. i am tired, i am run down, i am not eating well or enough, & i have been alone in the house with my babies since wednesday, & let's be honest, even when N is home mom doesn't get a break. actually, i dont know that any of that matters either, except for the fact thst i have reached some undefineable limit.

i am done. i just can't today, & i knew it when i burst into tears at the thought of another day alone in the house. i called my mom, who will be here shortly to spell me, so i can leave. i am not going grocery shopping, or accomplishing anything that needs doing. i just need to be, without my husband, without my kids, by myself.

do i feel guilty? yes. do i need this bad enough not to care? hell yes. i made it 7 1/2mos without a breakdown & i just can't anymore.

i'm hanging on by my fingernails right now, & i don't know how to make things better other than to try to preserve my mental health. funnily enough, before this pg, i was finally feeling like i was on top of things again- the boys & i had a nice routine going & even though it wasn't perfect, i was getting things done, staying on top of the housework, cooking decent meals again, having sex with my wonderful husband, and basically feeling like ME more often than not.

now, i mostly just feel beat down. the best i have every day goes to my boys, & by the time that's used up & the kids are in bed, there's just nothing left. nothing left for anything but the most essential chores, very little wife left for N & virtually nothing for myself.

i need a vacation.

later same day: my mom called to say she can't be here til after 3. i'm so tired i actually feel ill. i just don't know if its even worth going anywhere at this point, just to come home in 3 hrs bc its sunday & everything will close. plus i'm so tired, i'm not even sure driving is a good idea.

i'm so tired. i just feel broken. my poor boys.

fuck. fuck fuck fuck.

a glimpse into life as a cop's wife

Maybe once a week, N comes home & when i ask him how his day went, he'll answer "i had a foot chase/car chase/fight today." Bc he loves this stuff, i always smile & say "wow, how cool! tell me what happened!" & he launches into a detailed description of his exploits.

some background about where we live: ypsi is a blue-collar, lower to lower middle class kind of town. we have some nice neighborhoods & areas & probably more than our share of trailor parks & mini-ghettos. some of the scarier parts of town are in what is known locally as "the willow", probably bc of its proximity to the old Ford's plant at willow run. anyways, parts of the willow are nearly completely black. (now before anyone gets up on their racial high-horse, being black has nothing to do with living in the willow or being poor or anything else. N & i also live in a mostly black neighborhood & we really like it here. it just happens to be a fact that the world is not totally integrated. racism still extsts & it exists in ypsi just like anywhere else. sucky, but true.) the willow, especially the black areas of the willow, are notoriously anti-cop, & not entirely without reason. last summer there was a really ugly incident where an african-american man in custody of the local sherriff dept died in the street, allegedly as a result of mistreatment. now, N & the state police had nothing to do with the incident, but bc they are cops, the anti-police attitude affects them as well.

so a couple days ago, N comes home & says he had a foot chase & fight. i ask how it went, here's what he tells me: he was making a traffic stop for bad plates in the willow. the man pulls into a driveway where lots of guys are milling around & tries to pretend like he doesn't know N was tailing him or talking to him. some dialog ensues, & the man gets beliegerant & refuses to follow N to his cruiser, & ultimately takes off on foot. N is pretty quick, so he catches the guy going over a fence & a fight follows. Now, N is a big guy-- 6'3", 200lbs & this man is maybe 5'9" & 160, but N can't control him. he can neutralize the man, but the guy has apparently had fight training, so he's manuevering out of N's holds. They scrap for about 5 minutes, N takes a few hits & finally pins the guy without resorting to his club or mace. he tells me its the 1st time he's ever not been able to totally handle a guy in a fight. (i believe him. i've seen him take down guys with a good 50lbs on him.) Now the general law is that police can stay one step ahead of their attacker. so once the man hit N, N cold have resorted to his weapons using non-deadly force. he chose not to, in part bc he was a white cop alone in a black neighborhood, fighting in the midst of a pretty large group of men, several of whom he's arrested in the past.

at this point in the story, i break with my usual role of confident wife, convinced of her husband's superior abilities, to stop N & say what the hell were you thinking? why didn't you use your club? you have a family to come home to, etc. he points out that it all turned out ok, & several of the guys in the background were actually telling the man to give up, that N was a good cop & he'd be treated fairly. i sigh, thinking, yeah but what if it hadn't turned out that way? & remind myself that i have to trust N's judgement on this stuff & that this is all part of being married to N.

i don't know why i'm relating this story, other than the fact that for the first time in a long time, i was afraid for N while he was telling it to me. generally, i don't let fear for him be a part of our lives. this is his chosen profession, he loves it, & he can't be effective at it if he's worried bc his wife is scared all the time, & i don't want our kids raised in a climate of fear. so it's not that i'm callous or willfully blind to the dangers he faces, i just chose to exist in a world where my husband will come home every night. every so often tho, the worries i hide seep through the cracks.


as an aside-- the man turned out to be high on all kinds of stuff, which is probably why he was so difficult to control.

I'm too grumpy to think of a good title....

today is a wrong side of the bed kind of day for me. i woke up cranky at 530 with conrad, & cant seem to shake the funk. i'm sure its somehow pregnancy related. ugh.
the dudes also seem to be picking up on my crankiness, despite my best efforts to keep a smile on for them. double ugh.

we're still having nap battles... con man will fuss & turn into the world'd grumpiest little man unless i rub his tummy til he falls asleep, & val has been having hysterics unless i rock him to sleep. this is a step backwards from where we'd been, but i do NOT buy into the "cry it out" philosophy. they are perfectly capable of going to sleep without my help (& they've done it before... i'm sure they'll do it again at some point) so i'm guessing they just aren't quite ready yet for whatever reason. i don't want to rush them into anything they aren't ready for, but i'm starting to feel pressure from the pending 3rd kid. the boys still get up once or twice a night for a bottle, which i don't mind-- they're hungry. but i don't know how i'm going to take care of 3 babies getting up at night, or 3 babies not wanting to nap despite being so tired their little eyes are watering. (yeah, i know moms of triplets do it. i am in constant awe of them, but that doesn't change the fact that i don't know how i am going to do it.)
i guess there's nothing to do but let them all proceed at their own pace, which is really what i'd prefer to do anyways, & just trust that somehow things will all work out. they always seem to, so i'm hanging on to that.

in other news, i managed to fall down the stairs twice yesterday. awesome. i did not call my doc, as i haven't had any spotting, & other than being sore from falling, i have no unusual aches & pains. i don't want anything to happen to this baby, but i just can't get excited about it. with the boys, i was so involved with every detail of their development, & now i can't help feeling like this kid is a total interloper. i was really looking forward to a few years of time with my boys, & now it's my boys + one. i know, the best laid plans of mice & men, etc, etc.... i need to just get my head around the fact that we're having 3, & get on board with the new program. maybe all the early u/s will help... it's not that i'm angry at this baby, more that i'm frustrated with myself for not being the mom i think i should be, both to this pending kid & to the boys.

isn't guilt great? sigh....

Obsessive Ruminating on Pre-E

So I think I have a cold. My throat is sore, I'm all stuffy & snotty (sorry, I know that's gross, but I figured since I already threw the words "mucus plug" out there, a little snot couldn't be much worse!), & I have a headache & am totally nauseous. Although those last 2 are probably the pre-e, which also generally makes you feel like crap. Normally I wouldn't be super concerned about a cold, but I have this random fear that if the boys have to be born this week & I'm sick, that I won't get to see them. (I'm totally going to go obsessively google this in a minute, which will probably NOT help, but I'll do it anyways.) I've also been obsessively watching my weight since we got home & checking for signs of increased puffiness in my face & hands. Is a lb a day acceptable for a pre-e preggo? Who knows.... I still have a double chin, & my hands are all dimpled (usually they're skeletal) but I think that's how I left the hospital. The docs all seemed very confident that if things got worse, I would KNOW. So I think I'm ok, & just super paranoid.

Arg. I hate being sick, & I especially hate problems that have no defined course. Our peri explained pre-e to us as a "syndrome"; a collection of problems that taken together tend to follow a certain course & have been given the name pre-e. The signs of this stupid "syndrome" are so random & scattered, it's really hard to keep track of at home unless it gets bad. For instance-- while high blood pressure & rapid weight gain (like 10+lbs in a week) are indicators, so is protein in your urine (can 't track that at home), & hyper-reactive reflexes (found this out when everyone kept banging on my legs & then ducking so they didn't inadvertently get kicked by my wildly flailing limbs), & headaches (but these are also normal for pg, so aren't the best way to tell) & seeing spots or lights (ok, maybe when this started happening I should have done something) or blurry vision. There's also all kinds of things that go wrong with your liver & kidneys, & clearly we can't monitor any of that at home either. Sigh.... I'm dreading Tuesday bc I don't want things to have gotten worse, but at the same time I'm so anxious to check on my guys that Tuesday really can't get here fast enough.

Some random pre-e facts I thought were kind of interesting: this particular pg problem could actually be dad's fault. (I found this kinda funny, as so far everything that's caused problems for us has been unequivocally my body acting up, so I was glad to tease N that this one was all on him!) They think pre-e happens when the babies (or baby) start requiring more blood than their placentas can supply. So mom's body raises her blood pressure to increase blood flow through the placentas, which somehow also affects mom's platelet count, & her kidney & liver function (that part gets really technical & medical). But bc they think the whole thing is kicked off by hormonal changes in the placentas that tell mom's body to kick into high gear, & dad's genes are in the placenta as well, it could be dad's fault. (It seems there are studies that show some women develop pre-e with certain babies' daddies & not others, leading to the prediction pre-e may have something to do with dad's genetics.)
So really, pre-e is just mom's body trying to be a good mother by sacrificing mom's health for the health of the babies. Which would be fine, except that once mom gets sick enough, the babies get sick too. Which is why we have so many tests on Tuesday-- they're going to be looking at the blood profusion through the placentas, which I'm told is the first indicator that the babies aren't tolerating all this very well. We also have an NST for the dudes, & cervical check for me, since if all these contrax are further shrinking/dilating my cervix, we may not have much longer regardless of the pre-e.

Speaking of contrax... I had horrid, very uncomfortable (bordering on painful) that required that I "breathe through them" all yesterday. (I had no idea what they meant by "breathe through a contraction until I found myself actually doing it... kinda weird.) Anyways, they were like 20 mins apart ALL DAY. Exhausting. Although they finally let up when I went to bed.

I feel like we're on borrowed time.

Is It Fear?

I have felt "off" the past week or so. There's been some random pregnancy related changes-- more contractions (every 20-15 minutes for hours on end-- this is super annoying, as they hurt & don't let me rest), less movement from the guys, some crazy swelling, headaches, bizarrely rapid weight gain, still can't sleep, everything still hurts, etc. I think a lot of this crap is just because I'm huge (measuring 44weeks if you want to compare to a singleton pregnancy), & I guess there is enough physical stuff going on for me to be feeling "off" solely because of that. But I find myself hesitating to call my doctors about this stuff. If a friend told me she hadn't felt movement in 12 hrs, I'd tell her to call... & yet, I hesitate. (TMI coming up) Earlier this week, I passed a snot-ball (I refuse to call it a mucus plug since we don't know & I don't want to think that's what it was) & talked N out of calling the doc since I could still feel the boys moving a bit (or at least that's how I justified not calling.) I'm starting to feel a little crazy.
Why do I do this? I'm terrified of anything happening to our boys, & I would do anything to keep them healthy, & yet increasingly I find myself paralyzed when it comes to taking any kind of action when something wonky happens. What is wrong with me?

Freaking Out

Lately a lot of the girls I went through the TTC/pg journey with on the boards have been having their little ones (which is great) & talking about their new mom experiences (also great). But I have to be honest... they're freaking me out!!! Every time I hear about their completely sleepless nights, hysterical babies & everyday newborn struggles, I smile or cry with them (whatever is appropriate given mom's mental state), but can't help but think-- "you only have ONE newborn!" What on God's green earth am I going to do with TWO? Will I be able to handle the guilt that comes with knowing I can't possibly meet both babies needs at the same time all the time? If a mom of 1 baby only gets 3 hrs of sleep a night, what on earth is going to happen to me? Will I be able to find 10 minutes a day to spend time with my critters? (that may seem silly to some of you, but they're an important part of my life & I don't want to neglect our non-human family either.) Will N & I ever get to have sex again? (sorry if that's a little TMI...) Will I be able to handle breastfeeding twins? Will we be able to hold on to our sanity long enough to survive 2 newborns? What if (God forbid!) they get colic?

In short, I'm freaking out....

(Yes, I know we will figure all this out & be fine eventually... we will make it work because that is our only option, but dammit-- I'm allowed to have some paranoid fears & freak out once in while, right?)