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But first, a gripe: apparently it snowed a whole lot yesterday. Which is no big deal out where we live, since The Boonies seem to operate on their own weather system, so we get snow pretty often. (Something about the geography there, who knows.) Today, I got up, got dressed, braved the icy roads to come to work on my next-to-last day, and… alas, The Giant Software Company is closed.

I mean, technically I was able to get into the building, and I’ll be working today because I have stuff to do, but the company itself is closed. And I had an email from my boss telling me that I should stay home because the roads are so icy. It just didn’t occur to me to check my work email before leaving the house this morning. Argh. Oh well, whatever, I’m here.

So, yesterday was my 30-week OB check-up. I have this weird neurotic habit left over from when I was overweight: I always do a little calculation in my head of what I think my weight will be when I get on the doctor’s scale, because I hate being shocked by the number. I knew what my weight was at my last appointment (two weeks ago), and I know that gaining a pound per week is about average during the 2nd and 3rd trimesters, so I mentally added two pounds to that number, and that’s what I expected to see on the scale. I thought it was possible, given how weird my stomach has been lately, that maybe I hadn’t gained anything. However, I ate a ton over Thanksgiving, so it could’ve also been a little more than two pounds. But I had a pre-defined range in my head, so I felt prepared.

The nurse called me back, and we chatted for a minute - boy, isn’t this weather crazy, that kind of thing. Then I got on the scale. My jaw dropped. The nurse looked at the number, looked at my chart, then looked back at the number. She very slowly and carefully said, “Um, you do know that you’re supposed to be gaining weight, right?”

Not only did I not gain anything since my last appointment, I actually lost six pounds in the past two weeks. So apparently all this stuff with my stomach falls under the category of “decidedly not normal,” in spite of what I was starting to think. My OB told me to make an appointment with my primary care doctor to make sure that I didn’t pick up some kind of bacterial something-or-other. So I’ll be seeing her later this week. Fun. If I got dysentery or some obscure intestinal ailment from our stupid well water, I’m going to be really pissed.

The good news is that the baby appears to be fine - she’s still kicking up a storm, and her heartbeat is perfect. So it’s only my health that’s suffering, not hers. And I suppose that if my ultimate goal is to keep my pregnancy weight gain to a minimum, I’m doing a pretty kick-ass job - only 8 pounds at 30 weeks! But I’m also realistic, and I fully expect to regain that six pounds (plus some) once I’m not so dehydrated anymore.

Speaking of fluids, I think I need to go find some hot cocoa or cider or something, because it’s damn cold here.  

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I’m trying to think of a way to wrap up our little holiday weekend with a minimum of whining, but it’s going to be difficult. Thanksgiving dinner itself was awesome - Kris came over, and it was great to get to hang out with her for a few hours. The food was great, everyone was in a good mood, and a fine time was had by all.   

After dinner, things went a bit downhill. Dave went upstairs to bed for a couple of hours. Kris and I joked that he was sleeping off his turkey hangover, but when he came back down, he had a fever over 101, so it appears that he came down with whatever bug I had earlier in the week. Poor guy. His fever is down now, but he’s been feeling generally tired and achy and miserable ever since.

I also discovered on Thursday night that it’s apparently a really bad idea to spend all day on your feet in the kitchen when you’re 30 weeks pregnant. I was totally fine while I was preparing dinner, but afterward my lower back and hips suddenly started causing me excruciating pain. I’ve been doing my prenatal yoga DVD every day (sometimes twice a day) to try to stretch things back to normal, and it does seem to help, but I still don’t feel quite “right.”

Oh, and my stomach is still weird. It’s been going on long enough now that I’m starting to think it might just be how my body is adjusting to the fact that Baby Girl is getting bigger and bigger, and the fact that I don’t have as much room for my normal (albeit surgically-altered) digestive processes.

Overall, it looks like I’m in for a fun last ten weeks. I’m starting to understand all those women who say that by the time you give birth, you no longer fear the pain because you’re just so desparate to not be pregnant anymore.

So, Dave and I have spent the past few days mostly just lazing around the house and eating excessive amounts of food. (Well, that second part is mostly me - he tends to sleep it off when he’s sick, and I’m the one who’s now eating every two hours.) This is the first time since Wednesday that I’ve taken the time to sit down at my laptop to check email and blogs and whatnot. Like I said, lazy.  

In other news: I only have three days left at my job, although I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. I’ll leave that topic for another post. I also have my 30 week check-up tomorrow, and a few other activities lined up over the next couple of weeks to keep me from going crazy while I adjust to being unemployed. Hopefully that’ll keep this blog from turning into one big ol’ “oh woe is me” crybaby fest over the next few weeks.

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So, it turns out that I might not be as much of a hypochondriac as I thought. The tummy issues that I was having last week (which we will not discuss in detail, because I’m sorry, but some things are just too gross even for me)? Well, that never really let up entirely - it’d go away for a while, then come back with a vengeance. I had noticed that with all the rain we’ve been having, our tap water had turned sort of cloudy, which is one of the problems that comes with getting your water supply from a well. I thought maybe that had something to do with my stomach problems, so I switched to bottled water over the weekend. No change.

Last night, after I got home from work, I started to feel really awful. I barely ate anything and went to bed early.

This morning, in addition to the stomach problems, I also had a fever (99.8 is pretty high for me, since my temp is usually in the 97’s) and even though I was warm, I couldn’t stop shaking. Dave took one look at me and ordered me back to bed, which was fine by me, since I don’t think I could’ve driven anyway. I emailed my boss to let him know I wouldn’t be in, and called my OB’s office.

Basically, the over-the-phone diagnosis from the nurse went like this:
* Bleeding? Nope.
* Discharge? Nope.
* Baby still kicking? Oh yeah, like a champ.

Then, she said, I just have the flu, and it’s nothing pregnancy-related. She said that if my fever went over 100.4, I should go see my primary care doctor, but in the meantime, I should take some tylenol, keep myself hydrated, yadda yadda.

I tried to eat some chicken soup, which made me completely ill, and I went back to bed for a few hours. When I woke up, my fever had dropped to 97.9, which is much more normal for me. My stomach is still iffy, but I mostly feel better. I don’t think it’s the flu, since historically, the flu equals major sinus problems for me, and I’m not having any of that. So really, I have no idea what’s going on with me right now. 

Hopefully I can get back to work tomorrow, though, since I only have a few days left before my official Reign of Unemployment begins (next Wednesday the 29th is my last day, for those of you keeping track).

Speaking of work, Dave’s phone interviews have been going very well (see? I told you he was a smarty-pants), and I don’t want to jinx anything, but everyone keep your fingers and toes crossed. Hopefully we’ll have some news on that front next week-ish.

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I came home from work yesterday with a splitting headache. I took a nap for a couple of hours, and it was worse when I woke up. My OB has given me the ok to take one of the two types of migraine medications that I used to take (pre-baby, that is), but I always feel guilty about taking it. I know it’s safe, just… eh. It worries me. Still, I was desparate, so I took one of my headache pills and lay down on the couch for a while.

I sent Dave off to get Chinese food for dinner, since there was no way I was going to be cooking anything. A few hours later, I started feeling really nauseated - almost like I was going to throw up, which I never do. (One of the perks of gastric bypass, as it turns out.) I tried to go to sleep, but by then, the headache pill had worn off, and the nausea had gotten worse. Now, if I had thought about this logically, I would’ve come to the following conclusions:

1. I am a person who is already pre-disposed to having severe headaches, so this is not really anything new, and should not be interpreted as anything pregnancy-related.
2. I had Chinese food for dinner, from a restaurant in our podunk little town that is not always known for using the freshest ingredients. Hence, that would explain the nausea.
3. I should really just take another headache pill and some Pepto-Bismol, and go to freakin’ sleep already.

Instead, what did I do? I decided to ask Dr. Google: third trimester, headache, nausea. Because really, when you feel like crap and can’t sleep, there’s nothing better to calm your nerves at 1 a.m. than reading a bunch of worst-case scenarios to thoroughly convince yourself that you are going to die within the next few hours.

I was actually sitting at my laptop having this little internal debate: hmm, should I call 911 now? Or wait until Dave finds me unconscious on the floor?

Exhaustion finally won out and I went to sleep, only to have the most gruesome nightmares about pregnancy complications and dead babies and all kinds of other horrible things that I have ever had in my life. (Thanks, hormones!) I can’t even think about some of the things I dreamed last night, it makes me shudder. So even though by the time I woke up, my headache was mostly gone and the nausea had mostly passed, I still felt horrible since sleep wasn’t exactly the restful and restorative experience that it’s supposed to be.

Dave was watching TV downstairs when I woke up. Instead of a “good morning,” he was greeted with a “I don’t feel good and I need lots of hugs RIGHT NOW.” That probably doesn’t bode well for the rest of the day, does it?  

Oh, and tonight I’m supposed to meet up with the girls for dessert. Hopefully I can squeeze in a (dream-free) nap this afternoon; otherwise I’m sure I won’t be a whole heck of a lot of fun to be around.   

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As for that thing that I hinted at yesterday, which I said affected Dave more than me? Well, that turned out to have a very different outcome than what I was expecting.

The big secret was that Dave has started looking for a new job. His company is in the middle of a merger, he hasn’t been happy with his role there for a while and it wasn’t showing signs of improvement - in fact, it looked like things were only going to get worse after the merger - and it just seemed like the right time to move on. This was something that we had talked about months ago, and he’d been studying up on a lot of new technologies in his field so that he would be well-versed when it came time to start doing interviews.

As luck would have it, he started shopping his resume around last Friday, and over the next few days he was absolutely inundated with interview possibilities. (What can I say, I married a smarty-pants with a very impressive resume.) Some of the prospects seem quite promising, which is why this has been taking up a lot of our thoughts.

The catch that I personally wasn’t expecting? Dave got laid off from his current job yesterday. I think he had an idea that it was coming, but it certainly surprised me. It’s not a reflection on him at all, it’s just part of the whole “restructuring” thing that they’re doing as part of the company merger. Dave’s boss is basically a good guy, and he knows that I’m 7 months pregnant, and I think he felt a bit guilty for laying Dave off right before the holidays when we have a baby on the way. So the good news is that he got a really kick-ass severance package. Financially, we should be ok for quite some time. In fact, the way things are progressing with Dave’s job search, it looks like he’ll get an offer long before we have to start worrying about money.

So really, it’s not that bad, and considering my worrywart tendencies, I’m surprisingly calm about the whole thing. I’m kind of at peace with the idea that everything will work out for the best, and that we’ll end up wherever we’re supposed to be.

Which reminds me: Some of those promising job prospects are local, and obviously, those are the ones that I’m rooting for. (There’s one in particular that I have a good feeling about, so we’ll have to wait & see what happens there.) But some of them aren’t, and the non-local jobs seem to be in California for the most part. Which, ok, I love Seattle and I’d really like to stay here, but if we have to move, then that’s what we’ll do. The idea of getting our house ready to put on the market in the next few months, not to mention the idea of moving out-of-state with a newborn? That’s a bit stressful. But it’s manageable.

My attitude toward this is all about weighing our respective goals: I want to be able to stay home with the baby for at least the first 6 months (the first year, if possible). In order for that to happen, Dave needs to have a job where he’s happy, so that he doesn’t feel pressured into some kind of “sole breadwinner” role. I’d feel guilty for putting him in that position, he’d feel resentful toward me and the baby, and it just wouldn’t work. Yes, we could compromise - he could take a lesser-paying local job, I could go back to work full-time, and we could put the baby in day care. And I know that situation works out beautifully for a lot of families, but it’s not what either of us wants.

So if this all boils down to him taking a job in California, so that he’s happy and we’re financially able to allow me to stay home with the baby? Well… look out, California.

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I really feel like I should be writing here more often, but there are a couple of major problems with that:

1. The crappy weather lately means that our crappy Internet connection is even crappier than usual. So our connection is, as Dave puts it, up and down like a whore’s drawers. I cannot think of anything more infuriating than typing out a whole long entry just to lose it all with a “server not found” page the second that I hit Publish. So I’m trying not to write too much when I’m at home. I could (cough) potentially (cough cough) update my blog while I’m at work, but I try not to do that either, because I’m a paranoid freak. Plus, the girl who’ll be replacing me at my job started yesterday, so she’s been hovering around my monitor a lot lately - since, you know, I’m training her and all - and that makes blogging even more problematic.

2. There is this one major thing that’s kinda-sorta-maybe-potentially going to happen within the next week or two, which really affects Dave more than me, but I’m not allowed to talk about it until things are at least somewhat more official. I hate being all vague and mysterious, but them’s the rules. Anyhow, that’s been taking up the majority of my brain-space lately.

So, new topic: Thanksgiving! It’s going to be pretty mellow this year, just me, Dave and Kris (it’s her first Thanksgiving on her own, so I invited her to come over and join us). However, I’m going to be doubling up on most of the things that I cook, so I can freeze half of it for Christmas. Since my entire family is going to be descending on us for the holidays, and I’m going to be something like 35 weeks pregnant then, it makes sense to get as much of the work as possible done in advance.

Which brings me to the very bizarre conversation that I had with my mom recently. I was looking over my Grandmother’s stuffing recipe (we call it dressing in the south, thank you very much), and I saw that it required one major ingredient - Pepperidge Farm cornbread stuffing mix - that isn’t available anywhere around here. I know this because I tried to make it for Christmas last year, and I had to use the herbed stuffing mix instead, and let me tell you, that is just not the same thing.

When I told my mom that I couldn’t find the exact type of stuffing mix, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She went to the grocery store in Mississippi, bought the cornbread stuffing mix, and MAILED IT TO ME. Because lord help us all, we cannot have my dad grumbling over the dinner table that my dressing isn’t as good as my Grandmother’s. I think my mom did it more for my benefit than anyone else’s, since I’m already a ball of hormones and if anyone gripes about my cooking, I just might lunge across the table and stab them in the eye with a slotted serving spoon.

Or, you know, maybe she just wants to make sure that her husband lives long enough to meet his first grandchild. Six of one, half dozen of the other…

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I had my 28-week pregnancy check-up today. Note: It is still. Raining. All the damn time. So our street? Is still flooded. But luckily my detour route was open, so it only took about 20 minutes longer to get to my doctor’s office than it should have. Grr.

Anyway, to sum up: Baby Girl’s heartbeat is perfect, everything seems to be going well, and I’ve gained a pound and a half in the past month. That brings the grand total up to 14 pounds. Again, I still don’t know how that’s possible because I feel enormous, but I’m not complaining. If I were underweight to begin with, there might be some concern that I’m not gaining enough. But since I was (ahem) nowhere near being underweight when I got pregnant, it’s fine. It just means it’ll be that much easier to lose the weight after the baby arrives, which I am quite honestly thrilled about. (Yes, I’m shallow. Don’t judge me.)

Oh, and remember how I said last month that I had found a lump in my right breast? I didn’t mention it to my doctor at my last appointment because I thought it had gone away. Well, apparently it didn’t go away, and now it’s a bit tender. So I asked her about it, and she poked around on my boob for a while to investigate. She said that it doesn’t seem like anything to worry about, it’s probably a milk duct or a lymph node. That was what I had originally thought, but it’s reassuring to hear it from a doctor.

This is the part where I learned something new: while she was checking out the lump in my breast, she said, “oh, and look, you’re already lactating.” Uh, what?? I looked down, and sure enough, there was… liquid. On my boob. Liquid that wasn’t there the minute before. I guess it was a result of all the poking around, but it was the first time I’d ever seen anything like that. So that was weird.

Although I must admit that I did enjoy telling Dave about it when I got home and watching him get all squicked out. Hee. Boys are so funny.

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