Unreasonable and Tired.

These things kind of go hand in hand, probably.

I am very tired, due to the fact that I was up most of the night with a coughing baby.  Oh, how I worry when Katja gets a cold or anything!  She has had a bit of a runny nose for about a week, along with crusty, crusty eyes (in the morning, when she wakes up), but I thought that maybe it was allergies or something, since she was spending more time outside.  We had Friday off together, and she seemed mostly okay, but started coughing a bit more.  By Saturday, she was really mucousy and off and that night, in the middle of the night, she spiked a temp of 102.4 that caused her to tremble and shake, and caused me to bring out the tylenol (I have been trying not to medicate fevers, in order to let her body do the work to get rid of whatever is ailing it).  She was fine by the morning, but was coughing a lot and had a very runny nose.

Her energy was pretty good yesterday and you wouldn’t know she wasn’t feeling well, except for the cough, which seems to cause her distress.  She took a nice nap yesterday, was fine throughout most of the day, and then was not so fine in the night.  She fell asleep about 7 and then woke up, crying, at 8ish and would not fall back asleep until about 9:30.  She slept until 1ish, when her coughing woke her and me up, and then she kept coughing ALL NIGHT LONG.  I think she was sleeping through it, but I certainly did not.  Oh, and she had another little fever in the night, but since it didn’t seem to affect her, I just let it go.

I realize that this is probably all normal, but I can’t help but think that something BAD will happen, because I am an unreasonable woman.  After the whole RSV thing, I just worry so darn much about her.  She is still so little!  I just want her to be okay!  I know that there are still things going around, like whooping cough and influenza, and I am afraid she will catch ill and DIE.

We took her to daycare today and she just kind of laid on the floor when I dropped her off (this could be due to her being tired, though, since we woke her up before she would have liked).  I think they would have called by now if she was seriously ill, but I can’t help but worry.  WHY DO I WORRY SO MUCH?

Sad face.

Hypochondria and breastfeeding; baby milestone; other life things.

It is not fun to be a hypochondriac.  At all.

The night before last, I woke up in the middle of the night because I was suddenly terribly itchy.  Specifically, I was itchy all over my boobs.  I eventually got back to sleep, but woke up at my normal time, still itchy and also kind of stuffed up and run down, like I am coming down with a head cold of some sort.

I did everything I could to not itch, but I felt pretty miserable by the end of yesterday.  I took some children’s benadryl (all we had) when I got home and lathered myself up with lanolin.  That seemed to help relieve me of the itchiness for a while.  I talked to Steve about it and told him I was afraid I had cholestastis of the liver and that I needed to get that treated.  That was maybe a dumb thought, but hypochondriacs are not always rational.

Last night, I fell asleep fine, but woke up at 4:15 with a headache, itchiness, and stuffiness.  FUN!  I could not get back to sleep.  I have been running on caffeine and fumes since then.  I am still terribly itchy, despite more benadryl and lanolin.  I made the mistake of googling “itchy breasts” and one of the first results was about a terrible form of breast cancer!  That had me worried!  Though, I am also kind of hive-y elsewhere, so I don’t think that that is probably the case.  But, YOU NEVER KNOW.

Then, when I was pumping, I noticed that there was a little stringy bit of milk on my nipple.  (Wow, the things that I write – so TMI!)  I thought that maybe I had a clogged duct, because of the fact that Katja’s latch on that side kind of bothered me last night (due to the itchiness), and maybe I didn’t feed her as much from that side as I normally would….then, this afternoon, it happened again!  I am not in pain, but I am itchy and uncomfortable.  I felt woozy for a while and was afraid that I was coming down with mastitis.  Then, I started worrying about getting thrush and even went so far as to order some Grape Seed Extract JUST IN CASE.  THEN, I started worrying again about breast cancer, since I had itchy boobs and stringy milk (two little strings, mind you, not like my entire pumping output was full of strings).

UGH.

I am itchy on my eye, my nose, my neck, my right arm, my breastbone, and my boobs.  This is probably not “breast cancer”, but probably either an allergy thing or related to the head cold that I am definitely coming down with.  But, still, what of the possible clogged duct?  Or, is there something else that is causing the stringiness?

Hypochondria.  So fun.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that in there, I was also worried about developing some weird acute infection and just toppling over here at work.  That was a thought that ran through my head when I was feeling kind of weird earlier today.

In other news, Katja had her one year check-up on Tuesday and is doing so well.  She started taking tentative steps on the day before her birthday (Saturday night) and has been doing it sporadically since then.  She is almost 21 pounds (50th percentile) and 29.5 inches (65th percentile).  Her head remains very large.  Must be because of all those brains in there.  We don’t need to go in again until 15 months.  Her doctor did talk about night weaning (not going to do that yet) and other things, but I just did the “smile and nod” that I always do.  We ARE trying to get her in her crib for at least the first part of the night.  We have yet to succeed with that.  Did we create a monster?  Maybe!

Life things:  I am taking a day off tomorrow, which is definitely needed.  I am getting my hair done and am so excited about that.  I also need to renew my driver’s license and possibly work in the house….though, I may just end up sleeping.  WHO KNOWS?

More Worrying.

I am probably a little bit crazy.  I mean, I think that most people are a little bit, so I don’t think it is a bad thing.  It’s this worry.  I can’t get rid of it, even though I am trying to.

I still have not heard from the clinic, so I am assuming that that means that the numbers are in the realm of what they expected to see for an infection that has gone into the lymph nodes.  But, there is still this little nagging part of me that thinks that they have not called me because they know we’re going in on Friday and they want to wait to tell me in person the words that I don’t want to hear:  Your daughter has cancer.  Or, some variation on that sort of thing.

Last night, Katja seemed pretty okay….until about 9:00, when she woke up and started to cough.  She started to cough so hard that she threw up multiple times on me.  SIGH.  She has done this before, and I didn’t think much of it at that time, because I thought that it was within the realm of “normal”.  Like, if you have a big coughing fit after you just drank some milk, maybe the muscles that cause you to cough would also cause you to throw up?  I know that that sort of thing can go hand in hand with reflux and whatnot (not that she has that), so I had never thought that it was an “issue”.  But, what if it is?  WHAT IF I HAVE MISSED SOMETHING and by missing that, I have caused her health to take a steep decline?

My head is a dangerous place.  It goes from healthy to dying faster than you can snap your fingers.

The throwing up caused me to cry a lot last night, but then she nursed back to sleep and was fine.  She nursed in the night and was fine.  She woke up this morning and was smiling and seemed herself, until she coughed a little more and threw up just a teeny amount.  She doesn’t sound congested and I know her lungs were clear when they listened to them on Monday, so this cough and the throwing up?  What could it mean?  WORRY!  I’m crazy.

This is also crazy:  I just looked through as many pictures as I could find of Katja’s neck and I was trying to see if I could see a lump there prior to recently.  I am just so afraid that I have missed this.  It doesn’t look like this lump was there before, but it is so hard to say.  She had her well child check up on 10/28 and got a clean bill of health then, but now I am double clutching — did the doctor check her neck, then?

(I just talked to a co-worker, who stopped to see how I was doing, and I started crying about Katja, and she validated me that it is perfectly normal to worry and not crazy at all?  Is that so?)

UGH.

This is turning into worry blogging again.  I hate that!

I will now leave you with an attempt that we made to take a Christmas picture.  I did not succeed.  I am going to have to try again with those two. Maybe we will do that tonight.

UPDATE:  Katja’s doctor just called, and, of course, when she said, “This is Dr. L”, I thought she was calling with BAD NEWS.

But, she wasn’t!  She was calling to reassure me to let me know that this is really really normal and that while they can’t say anything with certainty, she is pretty sure that it is just an infection and that they see this all the time.

So, that was good to hear. I will try to breathe easier now.

the worry

Katja hasn’t been herself since last week. Oh, she’s still a remarkably good-natured baby, but she is not quite herself. She was waking up in the night and crying (howling, even!). Some of it, I thought may have had to do with the travel to SD or the possible teething or who knows what.

She had a fever on Tuesday at daycare, and I stayed home with her on Wednesday before going to SD later that day. She had a fever on and off all weekend and on Sunday, it went back up to 100. That same day, I also noticed that she had a huge swollen lymph node on the side of her neck. Like, the size of a candy easter egg, maybe, or even a little bigger. I don’t know how long it had been there and now I am worrying that that had been there a while and somehow, I did not notice.

I took her in yesterday to get everything checked out. Even the doctors seemed to think that her lymph node was big. That said, they did find that she had an ear infection and they suspect that that caused an infection in her lymph nodes. They did draw blood to do some lab work on that to determine what is going on and she started an antibiotic last night. We will go in on Friday to see if everything is getting better and if it is not, they may need to do some imaging to see what is going on in that lymph node – is it bacterial? it is a viral infection? or, the one I worry about the most, is it something worse, like cancer?

Oh, the worry. THE WORRY.

I got a message in my email this morning saying that there was new information in her chart (I have access to the girls’ charts online, which is really handy!) and discovered that it was her test results. When I looked at the numbers and what the “norms” are, her numbers looked bad. To me. A non-medical professional. I have not gotten a call, yet, though, to tell me that the numbers are crazy bad. They said they would call if things looked really abnormal. It could be that the numbers are what they would expect with a lymphatic infection. Or, it could be that they have just not gotten around to calling me yet. SAD FACE. That is what I fear. I am so effing scared that my baby has cancer and I can’t stop crying about it. Maybe that is a ridiculous fear. It’s just an infection, after all…. But, stranger things have happened.

She was such a trooper during all of the poking and prodding. She really is the most remarkably mellow baby ever. She has such a good disposition that I didn’t even know she was sick, aside from the howling in the middle of the night. The doctors also remarked on what a good baby she was. And, the running gag over Thanksgiving was me saying, “well, Katja is a little crabby” and my mom or someone else would say, “OH, she is NOT crabby! She’s perfect!” but, they just don’t know what crabby is for her. Anyhow, she only cried at the doctors when they cleaned out her ears. She was fine for everything else – just looking at people with her quizzical little face (those eyebrows help with the expressions).

Poor thing. I am so flipping worried that I cannot concentrate now that I am at work and I also just had the worst pumping session ever (for me). UGH. Can I just fast forward to Friday and hear that things are okay? Or better? I just want to hear that it is an infection and NOT CANCER. Is that too much to ask?

It is not lost on me, either, that around a year ago is when everything went wonky with the pregnancy. I fear that something BAD is going to happen with the baby now, too.

(I have never claimed to be reasonable when it comes to the worry.)

oh, the Worry!

So, Rowan is watching a DVRed episode of America’s Next Great Restaurant and Katja is sleeping in her bouncy chair, which is clearly good parenting on my part.  Right?  I wanted to piggyback off my last post, which was cut short by a crying baby (to be honest, she was just whimpering a little bit and wanted to eat and that was easy enough).

I wanted to talk about the WORRY.  I’ve had anxiety on and off my entire life.  I remember being scared of nuclear war when the USA invaded Libya back in…1986?  I think?  I don’t remember, because I was in Kindergarten.  I repeat:  I was in Kindergarten and scared of nuclear war and THE END OF THE WORLD.  Totally normal.  Recent news developments have somewhat triggered this fear, but I try to live in blissful ignorance these days to world events.  It is better for me.  Trust me on that.

Most of my teenage/college years were fine.  I don’t really recall having any anxiety issues, even when I did strange things like fly off to Scotland to meet total strangers from the internet (because, whatever!).  My anxiety started when Rowan was a toddler and got really bad during my divorce.  And, it has never really gone away.

That’s the background.

I think that I have covered the anxiety during the pregnancy, and have touched on what has happened since.  I don’t think that I am “post-partum”, but I definitely have anxiety and I guess that I am technically post-partum since I did recently give birth.  But, really, this is just how I am.  I have to worry about something, sadly.  I wish I didn’t.

I have mostly worried about Katja and her eating.  Breastfeeding has not been easy this go-round.  I mean, clearly, she is growing (based on her appointment), but my problem is that I don’t always feel that she is getting anything when she is eating and that I don’t feel as if she is growing.  Sure, I can see that she is now in 3-6 month sized clothes and has an adorable double chin, but my emotions are a whole different thing and I cannot reconcile logic and emotion.  This, by the way, is basically the story of my life.

Last week was hard.  I had myself all worked up all week about her growing and my milk supply and, oh my goodness, i was terrible.  I think that I cried almost all day on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  Or, if I calmed myself down, I would then get all teary later on and wail, “but, what if she’s STARVING!?” to Steve.  I’m sure that I was loads of fun to be around.  Friends and family would comment on Katja and how much she’s growing, and it would just make me sad because I couldn’t really see it the way that everyone else did.  All I could think of was how she couldn’t possibly be getting enough and once I got in the worry spiral, it was nearly impossible to get out.  Until the appointment when I got a little validation.

Oh, and now I have a baby who is awake in her bouncy chair, so I’d best go deal with that.

Five Weeks

Today, Katja is five weeks old.

We have had a fairly good week, in that I have only freaked out minimally about something being wrong.  That is what I do, apparently – worry, worry, worry.  I am worrying away these early weeks.  Either I worry that she sleeps too much (because, really, she does sleep an awful lot) or that she is not eating enough (because I still worry about my milk supply, which does not help said milk supply) or that I can’t comfort her (on those fussy days where she isn’t sleeping, but doesn’t seem to want anything and it feels like I have no milk to give her [even if I do]) or insert probably any other thing a mom could worry about and I will have worried about it.

Oh, anxiety.  It’s such a fun thing to have, especially when combined with all the post-partum hormones and sleep deprivation and all that.

For the most part, though, it has been a good week.  Last weekend, on her four week birthday, my mom and youngest siblings were in town, so we hung out with them.  We had our first “Mom and Baby” class on Monday.  This is a weekly thing that goes through April 4th, I think, and is full of moms of newborns  to discuss life with said newborn.  I am the only mom who has another child other than the baby, but since Rowan is rounding on nine (holy crap!), a lot of this feels all new to me.  I have forgotten what life with a newborn is like and what is normal and what is not (hence THE WORRY).  I thought that my pregnancy was emotional and exhausting, but it turns out that there are people who are worse off than I was, and talking to some of these moms helped to put things into perspective.  On Tuesday, we visited Steve at work.  The rest of the week was pretty uneventful, now that I think about it.  We didn’t do much, but we saw some people.  Steve’s sister Laurie came over on Wednesday and Brooke came over on Friday.  We hit up Target today.  Fun times.

I have been having my doubts about nursing, and on Thursday, I hit another low, where I had a fussy baby frantically trying to nurse from me and me feeling like I was completely empty and drained and could not give her what she wanted.  When she finally got to sleep that night, I fell asleep, but woke up in the night and started to cry.  I want SO badly for nursing to click and work with us, the way that it did with Rowan, but I don’t know if it is going to.  My anxiety is not helping.  I am giving myself some more time, and taking things day by day, but if it continues where I am doubting and feeling frustrated, then we will consider formula, I think.  We’ll see, though.  Yesterday and today have been better, with that.  Though, she’s been so sleepy these last few days that I feel like she is starving.  Can a baby have good output (wet and poopy diapers) and still be starving?  WHY DO I WORRY SO MUCH THAT SHE IS STARVING?  Or developing properly?  UGH.  With Rowan, if she had had a day where she was sleepy, I would have just been like, “hallelujah!  The baby is sleeping!”  With Katja, I just don’t do that. Sometimes, I feel like a crazy woman, and I suppose that the worry is crazy.

I do think that a lot of my worry regarding the nursing stems from the end of the pregnancy, and being on bed rest for 7 weeks and worrying about that (and her, with her irregular heart beat) even though I felt fine.  It’s like, I cannot trust my body anymore, because I felt fine that entire time and yet was told that there was something wrong.  Then, I had to be induced and my body did not do things naturally.  This shit lingers.  And, someday, I will type up the whole boring story of her birth, to maybe help me process that, but today is not that day.  The thing is, though, I do think that I still just can’t wrap my head around the fact that we are here and she is perfect and I am okay.  Why can’t I just be okay with that?  Steve is supportive of me, but I don’t think he quite gets it.  I don’t know if anyone does.  *sigh*

But, we have now made it five weeks, and that is pretty great.  I know it gets easier with time and I think that I’ll feel more in tune with Katja as time goes by.  I know that I have done this before, and Rowan turned out to be okay (SO FAR), and I can do this again.

blah blah blah

Last night (and the night before and the night before that) was a terrible night’s sleep.  I usually sleep really well from 10:30 or so until 1:30, and then the rest of the night is just crap.  I toss and turn.  I don’t feel comfortable.  Last night, I felt like I couldn’t get a deep breath (this is an anxiety thing with me and pretty common when I’m feeling stressed out), so that was exacerbating the not being able to sleep thing.  I am a little sick of being on bed rest and starting to get sick of being pregnant (mostly because of bed rest; other than that, things are fine with that), but, at the same time, I am also not ready to bring a baby home.  So, I guess I have reason to be all anxious?

I am, officially, full-term at this point.  37 weeks and 5 days, to be exact.  I would like to be pregnant until at least 39 weeks, but I don’t know how much say I will have in that…  I have a say in terms of induction, as the midwives finally agree with me that it is okay for me to be pregnant for as long as I stay stable with my levels being what they are and the baby is healthy and thriving, which it is.  I don’t have a say in the baby deciding to come early on its own, obviously, and I would be okay with that.  That’s the way I would prefer things to be.

I think that I am slightly depressed.  Not dangerously so, but I am just sick of this.  I feel so isolated from people.  I hate that I don’t get to do what I want to do when I want to do it.  I don’t like the fact that I feel just fine, but am told that I am not fine.  I am sad these days.  Sadness Of Unknown Origins (SOUO).  I try to make my days slightly interesting, by figuring out something good to eat for lunch, say, or planning time to watch some of my crappy television (like The Bachelor), but it just doesn’t always work.  I was really upset on Sunday, because I had been looking so forward to the weekend – we had our shower and I got to see loads of people and it was overwhelming in a really nice way – and then, it was over, and Steve and Rowan were going back to their work and school lives, and I was going back to being alone.  I just tell myself that this, too, shall pass.

After my appointment on Monday, I was hoping that I could have a little more freedom from bed rest, as the midwife that I saw (who is quickly becoming my favorite) thought that maybe I could, since my blood pressure was really excellent (126/74) and my levels were all stable (still high with the protein levels, but stable).  She thinks that there is just an underlying kidney “thing” (?) with this pregnancy and that it is not preeclampsia.  Well, duh.  I could have told anyone that, and I am not even a medical professional.  If I had true preeclampsia, I think I’d have some other signs of it.  ANYHOW, she said she would call me if I could have a bit more freedom to do things, after consulting with an MD at the practice, but I did not get a call, so everything remains the same.  A sliver of hope, and then it was gone.  Granted, I have gone to Target two weeks in a row now, and also went to Rowan’s first basketball game on Saturday AND will continue to go to her games and go to Target and do things like that, so I am allowing myself a little bit of freedom….but, it would have been nice to have “permission” to do things like get a haircut (which I so desperately need).

Other than my own blues, things are just fine here.  Rowan is getting pretty excited about the arrival of the baby, as are we all.  She has also turned into a busy little kid with activities three days a week.  This was really good timing on my part to start signing her up for things, yeah?  Actually, these are all good things for her that help me out a little bit.  She has a craft class on Mondays after school, basketball on Tuesday nights, and a knitting class on Thursdays.  Busy kid!  She seems to enjoy everything, though, so that is good.  Steve is still nesting, kind of, and wants everything to be super in order.  I find this funny, because he used to be so messy and now it’s like Captain Order came to live with us.

We finally finished X-Files season 8 last night.  Man, that season started out so crappy that we stopped watching entirely.  But, after a three or four month break, we started up again and suddenly Agent Doggett didn’t seem so bad and I kind of got used to him.  It ended really well, though I know that Scully and Mulder aren’t in all of season 9 and that makes me sad.  We’ll still finish it, though, and then I can successfully check another series off my checklist.  These things are important, right?

baby update

I had my follow-up appointment for the blood pressure/high protein content in urine/etc. today.  Parts of it went as expected (I knew they’d want me to repeat all the tests and continue to tell me that I may develop preeclampsia), but parts of it went far worse than expected.  The ultrasound was….interesting.  They look for specific things for the biophysical profile, and the baby did not ever do one of the things they were looking for – the diaphragm moving for “practice breathing”.  This is most likely because the baby was asleep.  They also noticed that the baby has an irregular heartbeat.  Just now, at almost 33 weeks, this has been discovered.  So, after that, I was a bit upset, but went and waited in the lobby to see the midwife for my actual appointment.

My blood pressure was better than it was last week, so that was good.  But, because of the previous high reading, they wanted me to repeat all of the tests as I knew that they would.  Then, we talked about the fact that the baby didn’t do it’s diaphragm movement, so I had to go to Labor/Delivery to do an NST to see if the baby’s heartrate would increase when it moved and talk to the midwife on call there to figure out what to do next.  I was on the monitor for over two and a half hours.  My blood pressure was around 131/71 the whole time, except at the end, when the nurse took it and kind of fiddled with the cuff so that it completely inflated once without taking my pressure and then immediately reinflated and then gave me a reading of like 149/80 or something.  I think that was the cuffs fault and not an indicator of there actually being a high blood pressure issue.

I got sent home and told to rest until Friday, when I bring in my urine again and see a midwife.  I understand the problems with preeclampsia and I get the implications of having it, but I honestly don’t think that I have it.  NOW, I am more worried about the baby, of course.  I have an appointment on Monday with a pediatric cardiologist at some specialty clinic to do a fetal echocardiogram.  FUN.  Not.  Apparently, 95% of the time, these irregular heartbeat issues resolve themselves once the baby is born (internal rhythm versus external rhythm, I guess), but if it doesn’t, we need to know what to do.

Somehow, this pregnancy went from being super easy to all of a sudden being incredibly taxing.  The emotional toll this has taken is not good.  All I want to do is cry right now, but I’m trying to keep it together.

Oh, we did get an ultrasound shot, but couldn’t get a good look at the face, as the baby is all curled up with its feet and hands in front of its face.  Look at its nose!  It’s kind of big (and cute).

appointment

I had my 32 week appointment today, and it did NOT go how I wanted or expected it to.  I had kind of rushed there.  I was in late to work because Rowan had a dentist appointment this morning, and had to park up on the 4th floor of my parking ramp.  I took the stairs up, because that is what I do, and got a little winded while doing that.  Then, I drove over to another parking ramp, parked, and walked the 4-5 blocks uphill to the office.  I didn’t get a chance to just settle in at all before my name was called to go back.  Obviously, in many ways, this is good – they’re an efficient practice! – but, when your heart rate is up and you are trying to settle it down and you have had two appointments in a row with borderline high blood pressure, this is not so good.  The nurse took my blood pressure and it was, of course, high, at 151/73.  I told her that I hadn’t even had a chance to settle, and she did take it again in the office, and it was at 134/73.  I had the same midwife as last time, the one who was all alarmist about my blood pressure of 135/77.  She was a bit alarmist today, too, and now I have to have all the bloodwork/labwork (helloooooo, 24 hour urine collection!) to see if I have pre-eclampsia.

Needless to say, I am worried, perhaps unnecessarily so, and also annoyed.  I have to go back next week, no matter what the results of my labwork are, and I will have the calmer midwife, Marcia (why are all the calm women in my life named Marcia?), and maybe that will be better.  I don’t think that anything is wrong, but this is stressing me out and probably raising my blood pressure to have to deal with.  UGH.

I decided to take tomorrow off work, because I don’t want to have to deal with peeing in a jug at work (okay, and also, maybe I just wanted a day off?!???!!!!).  I will just kick it at home, maybe try some relaxation stuff that my aunt gave me and I haven’t had time to use yet, and pee in a jug all day long.  We were supposed to have friends come over tomorrow night, but I feel awkward about that (the peeing thing, again), though I think that Steve really wants them to come over.  We’ll see what ends up happening.

I feel all wonky right now.  My head feels funny (not headachey, just funny) and I feel off.  I am assuming it is the worry and anxiety.

Other than that, the baby sounds good and I am fine.  Well, I guess I’m not technically fine right now, but I feel mostly fine aside from feeling very scared.  I am scared of complications, scared of bedrest, scared of dying, and scared of what could be.  There is nothing to do but wait and see.

update on things.

We had the ultrasound 2 weeks ago, and everything looked okay.  The baby, still gender unknown, is developing exactly as it should be and so far, I am having an idyllic pregnancy.  Lucky me.  Physically, I would say that it has been really great, aside from aches and pains here and there, and more frequent waking up in the night due to being uncomfortable….all of which are really minor complaints.

I can finally start feeling the baby move now.  Apparently, I have an anterior placenta, so that was why I wasn’t feeling as many kicks earlier on.  Now, I feel the baby squirm and kick and move around in there.  Not always, but most days.  That helps to feel relieved.

I am still nervous about things.  Mostly really “worst case scenario” type of things that are tragic and awful and that I don’t want to talk about, and am trying not to think about.  I saw Marcia, my homeopath, on Monday of this week for the first time since March.  It was nice to be able to talk to her and be a bit of a cryface and not be told that I need to pull it together.  It’s my nature to worry about the things that I worry about, and she never tries to change that.  Instead, it’s about controlling it and reeling my overactive imagination in.  I took some of my remedy, and am supposed to call her back in a few weeks if I’m still having some of my crazy thoughts.  I feel better already, though, and am hopeful that this will help.  I do have a follow-up with her in December, so that we can talk about the birth of the baby and what I can do to work through that.  I had Rowan without medication and hope to do the same with this little one.

It’ll be okay.  I know this.

I am getting more excited about everything.  It’s about four months away, give or take.  That seems like so long to go, but I know that it goes by in a flash.  Time always slips away during the fall, as everything is so busy with school things and family and holidays and before we know it, it will be January.  It is exciting to think about what this little person will be life, and it’s fun to think of Rowan as a big sister.

I guess I have less to say than I thought.  Overall, I’m doing okay, pretty good.