A “Royal Mess”

Last week my sweet empathetic (drama king) husband camedown with a terrible chest/head cold and two days later I too had the same cold.  We were miserable.  I hadn’t remembered being THAT sick in a long time where all I wanted to do was shove tissues up my nose and chug an entire bottle of Nyquil (don’t worry-I didn’t).  Proof that this wasn’t your typical seasonal cold was that JCH ended up in the hospital.  (REFRESHER:  JCH has Cystic Fibrosis)  His body just couldn’t get rid of the mucus and fluid that was attacking his lungs and being sick took such a huge toll on his body.

If you were a “fly on the wall” or maybe “on my shoulder” you wouldn’t have believed what we were going through-it was honestly one of those times I just wanted my mommy.  I can take care of JCH when he is sick, and he can take care of me when I’m sick…and we seem to be able to take care of each other when WE are pregnant…but combine all of those factors and we are a royal mess!!!  Productivity in our household went to a screeching halt.  EVERY SINGLE BOWL AND SPOON in our house was dirty (since I’m only eating cereal for breakfast and dinner -gag reflux-cant help it).  Our house literally looked like a fraternity house.  It’s amazing how quickly MESSES pile up when you aren’t doing some daily housekeeping.  No clean clothes, no clean dishes, dirty Kleenex covering every counter and table, bills stacked up everywhere- YIKES!!!!  Good news is that we are both feeling much better this week.  JCH got out of the hospital on Monday and seems to have a more ambitious mindset towards his breathing treatments and physical therapy-lets hope that helps!

Thursday night when I finally laid down for bed “baby h” kicked me!  Up until Thursday night I had felt light flutters and butterflies but this time was the real deal.  After two or three kicks I rested my hand on my belly and could actually feel them on the outside too.  Last night “baby h” was so active that I stayed awake, heart racing with amazement.  It was only after about 10 minutes that I realized how worked up and excited I was and decided I needed to calm down and go to sleep. JCH is home but not back at work yet, so his sleep schedule is a bit crazy and he wasn’t in bed with me in order to witness it. 

Speaking of sleeping.  I’ve finally got a good system of sleeping comfortably.  I have always been a “belly sleeper” so I knew this wasn’t going to be an easy transition.  I’ve got a pillow on each side of me and use them to prop me on my side.  Needless to say, my pillows are now hogging the bed.  JCH didn’t have a problem before, but now that he has a PICC line and iv coming out of his arm he is too having difficulty getting comfortable when he sleeps.  As ridiculous as this sounds our conclusion was that we were going to pull the guest bed into our room and push it up against our queen bed…each of us would have our own bed (and own space) but would technically still be sleeping together.  Just as soon as we decided that JCH wonders aloud…"how are we going to move that bed—pregnant wife and all?" …to be continued on that note…lol

Anyway, "baby h" is growing fast and so is my belly.  I'm feeling pretty good (although nobody is aloud to ask me that because the second they do-I end up sick again).  I sadly still dont really have an appetite.  Like I said before I was more a food craving prego before I was prego than I am now.  I've gained 7 pounds total since first conceiving (YIKES) and the doctor said "get ready to start really putting on some pounds these next few weeks"---was that what prompted my lunges last night?  Only 5 more days until we find out if "baby h" is a boy or a girl!!! I'm dying to find out.  My mother in law was telling me stories about when JCH was a baby and I got so overwhelmed with joy, and excitement with the thought of meeting our little baby.  I just cant wait!!!!!

Drama Queen...and King?

I admit that I can be slightly over dramatic.  I also like to think this is a trait that only my husband and I joke about...well okay and my sisters...and my mom.  JCH gets such a kick out of it when I'm being a "drama queen".  He has taking a liking to the idea so much that he has begun to mimic my behavior.  Now I get to joke that JCH "fights me" for the tiara in the house...there is not just a "drama queen" in our house anymore, we now have a KING.   I'm a "drama queen" because I have "middle child syndrome"...and JCH competes to be the center of attention in the house (by being more dramatic then me) because he has "only child syndrome"...man we are a pair!!  I'm just now getting used to the idea of sharing my "royal behaviors" with him and now once again he is trying to "one up" me.

As you all are fully aware by now, I've NOT had an easy pregnancy.  I've heard of these so-called "easy pregnancies"...I have a coworker who was a bubble of joy, never once complained, she liked being pregnant, she didn't have aches and pains, or medical complications for that matter.  I'm still "sick as a dog", constantly have indigestion, constipation, lethargy, was plagued with an early medical complication, and now...have a husband who thinks he's pregnant too!!  I know I joked with y'all a few weeks ago that JCH thought he was having "empathy symptoms"...but this really isn't a joke anymore. 

JCH told me the most hysterical story about how he was at work and was apologizing to his coworker for a mistake that he had made and nearly started to cry.  He was beyond shocked with the flood of emotions and says there is no other way to explain it (other than that he is getting hormone surges from me)! I think it's because he is a MAN and apologies are apparently THAT hard-that it brought him to near tears (lol-only joking).  The next day he tells me about being on a telecom and being so mad that he had to hang up and walk around his building for a bit.  First crying, than furious? He must be pregnant!  If you know JCH you know he's a very mellow rational person...so all joking aside this does seem a bit unusual.  He is now being plagued with "nausea" (which he swears he's never EVER had before), and no appetite.  It really is funny to me...I really should have saw this one coming.  Mr. Only Child just cant let me be "the baby" who gets constantly pampered...he has to be sick from my pregnancy too.  Maybe we'll both be lucky and my pregnancy symptoms will "let up" a little bit.

Last night I was just saying that my bump hadn't grown much over the past few weeks...and than I wake up this morning and it seems as though overnight our little chudo doubled in size.  My belly just POPPED OUT!  We are set to take our "17 week" picture tonight so I will be sure to post a picture as soon as we do.  In the meantime, my BIG SISTER just so happened to text me today with a picture that was so fitting it's not even funny! I swear there is a strange connection between my sisters and I.  Happy Friday to y'all and I hope you have a fabulous weekend planned!

Picture-text from my BIG sister saying "this made me think of you"...
apparently I'm not the only middle child who is a drama queen. :)

Body Check

My womb…first things first…no more Subchorionic Hemotoma! It’s gone! The symptoms stopped a week or so ago and at Tuesdays appointment the doctor and ultrasound technician saw absolutely no evidence of it! WOOHOO! Not only am I pleased to not have that over my head (and in the back of mind) anymore…but that means JCH and I can resume our normal married couple relations (candle light dinner tonight? I think so!).  We weren’t scheduled for an ultrasound on Tuesday but I was having “growing pains” so the doctor wanted to have a look just incase.  Everything looked great…and we even got to see “baby chudo” long enough for him to wave hello (and he looked great too).

My stomach…“Morning sickness” symptoms are still in full swing.  While at the doctor we addressed the whole “I’m 15 weeks and still puking, gagging at nearly everything, and not able to eat much but cereal” thing.  Two potential culprits we decided we’d “take off the table” were the mucus drainage and the prenatal vitamins.  Apparently when you are pregnant your mucus membranes go a little crazy trying to protect your body from infections (mainly in your vagina-but also in your sinuses).  Mine is so bad that when I puke (WARNING-DISGUSTING) there is so much mucus in the toilet that I could probably fill an entire Gatorade bottle (I warned you).  Dr. C put me on Claritan to try to calm down my overactive (and seemingly overprotective) “mucus membranes”.  He also recommended that I switch out my prenatal vitamin for 2 Flintstones vitamins as prenatal vitamins are usually pretty rough on the stomach.  I’ve had 2 good days and 2 bad days since making these two changes so, “to be continued” on whether they were the culprits or whether I’m just one of those “lucky” pregnant women who suffer from “morning sickness” throughout the entire pregnancy.

My belly…is looking more like a “prego belly” and less like a “big lunch belly”.  It’s interesting how the size and shape change nearly everyday.  I’ve noticed such a difference in the past 4 weeks in how my belly looks and feels.  I’m becoming a lot less bloated and gassy and a lot more HUNGRY.  I eat just about every 2 hours and if I stray at all from that schedule my stomach feels so empty that it may cave in.  As hungry as I feel I still don’t really have an appetite, and therefore it becomes a 2 hour force-feed schedule.  I keep buying new things at the grocery store thinking that maybe “my little indian boy” just maybe doesn’t like what I’m feeding him, but I just end up with a refrigerator overflowing with nothing that either of us want to eat.  Let’s hope “baby chudo” isn’t as picky an eater when he joins us as he is en utero.

My mind…is all over the place.  Yesterday I left work a little early because I was having a hard time getting a good breath of air, my skin was crawling, and although my body felt exhausted and paralyzed I had a terrible case of restless leg syndrome.  I called JCH and he said it sounds like I was having an “anxiety attack”.  I PROMISE you, I don’t have anything crazy on my mind, I’m not stressing myself out, I’m getting enough sleep, I’m incorporating a little exercise into my days…so there really was no explanation, other than the hormones.  Oh crazy hormones...not crazy Casey! (reminds me of another scene from the movie Knocked Up)

My joys...JCH and I are having a lot of fun talking about “when baby arrives”.  His eyes light up when we talk about holding our little bundle of joy in our arms.  We talk about baby proofing the house, and what kind of parents we want to be (while also psycho analyzing ourselves and how are parents sculpted who we are).  We took our pup Teddy to the Vet early this week for his yearly check up and learned that his doctor teaches a class about “introducing baby and pup” at our hospital.  We’ll definitely be attending…it’s something we’ve been wondering about for a while.  Teddy is our little baby right now, and we don’t want “chudo’s” arrival to change anything about that.  We will just have to be blessed with two wonderful babies.  If our obsession with Teddy is any indication of what kind of parents we will be, we need to be cautious we dont raise a little rotten child…because Teddy is definitely spoiled rotten.

Yoga has taught me to do a little “self awareness” body check every once in a while…and I feel like today’s post was just me going through my check boxes to see “how I’m doing”…I feel much better now...and hopefully you can do a little "self awareness" body check to see how your doing too!  Happy Friday everyone!