after-effects

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It’s been a few days since the whole house break-in incident, and I have to say, I’m not doing so well. I’m not usually prone to anxiety attacks, but something about pregnancy hormones, plus Dave being gone, plus the whole “strangers were inside my house while my baby and I were asleep” thing has turned me into a giant mess.

Case in point: Catie drew this picture on her Magna-Doodle. When I asked her what it was, she said, “That’s Mommy’s sad face. See the tears?”

I asked Catie what this was. She said, "Mommy's sad face. See the tears?" Oh god.

There is absolutely nothing about that picture that doesn’t break my heart.

The night after the break-in, I woke up what felt like every 20 minutes, totally panicked at some teeny-tiny noise. Even though I knew that the locksmith had replaced all the locks on the doors, and I’d verified that they were all locked at least 3 times, I still couldn’t relax. At one point, I ran into my mom in the hall because I was sure I had heard a noise and I went flying out of bed. And yeah, I had heard something. My mom had gotten up to use the bathroom. That was it.

The irony, of course, is that I had to cancel my OB appointment on Thursday morning because I had no purse and no keys to get to the doctor’s office. And I had already been planning on discussing some of my anxiety problems with my doctor. Then this happened, and… well, let’s just say that I thought I was having anxiety before, but this cranked it up to 11.

So I called the doctor’s office on Friday morning, and I basically unloaded on this poor nurse about all the stuff that’s been going in my life lately and how stressed out I am, and oh GOD I certainly don’t want to sound like I’m drug-seeking, and I don’t want to take anything that could hurt my baby, and I don’t want to take anything that will turn me into a zombie, but I really need some help here, and I’m sure I’m not the first pregnant lady they’ve ever encountered who has had anxiety issues. The nurse was fantastic and so nice, and said she’d talk to my doctor and call me back immediately. She did, and they called in a prescription for some xanax for me. They also re-scheduled my appointment for Monday morning so I can get in to talk to a doctor immediately.

[Side note: Who knew that xanax was on the list of medications that are OK to take when you’re pregnant? I certainly didn’t.]

My brother was so worried about us that he drove over from Charlotte on Friday afternoon to spend the night. That was a nice distraction, especially for Catie.

Catie says, "Hey Chris, we're like rock stars!"

She really does adore her uncle Chris.

And I have to say, knowing that my brother was sleeping on the couch downstairs did help me relax. Just knowing that he was there and would hear it if anyone tried to break in was a very welcome relief, and I was able to sleep a lot better that night.

(Btw, you already know this if you follow me on Twitter, but the day after the break-in, we were on our way to the police department to get a copy of the police report, and I had a tire blow-out. Bent the wheel base and all. And nobody has my particular wheel model in stock. So I’m driving around on the spare since the ordered one won’t arrive until later this week. Fabulous. And don’t ask how much it’s going to cost because it makes me want to cry to just think about it.)

My mom leaves on Tuesday, and I am totally terrified of being alone in the house after that. (Well, not alone, but I’ll be the only adult on the premises.) Dave offered to fly home early, but I told him not to. I miss him terribly, and yes, selfishly I absolutely do want him to come home right now. But I also know that this is his last chance to get some one-on-one family time before the baby comes, and he’s been needing this vacation for a long time.

I might ask my brother to come back again next weekend. Or maybe Catie and I will take a road trip someplace on our own. I haven’t decided, but I’m pretty sure that we need to do Something Fun to snap ourselves out of this funk.

home invasion

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So, my mom got in late last night, as I mentioned. Catie was totally psyched to see her Mimi, and instead of being tired (as she should have been at 10 p.m.), instead she was totally wired and hyper.

Rockin' some serious fashion at the airport.

So, we got home and didn’t get Catie in bed until sometime around 11:15. My mom and I sat at the kitchen table talking for a little while after that, and I collapsed in bed a little after midnight.

I had an OB appointment at 10 a.m. today, so I got up, got dressed, and got ready to leave while my mom and Catie settled in on the couch to watch a movie together. Only when I was ready to walk out the door… I couldn’t find my purse. Which was weird, because I always leave it in the kitchen – usually on the table or a chair.

My mom and Catie helped me look (Catie likes to use her “I’m a good finder!” street cred; she has found Dave’s lost glasses and keys more times than I can count), but we couldn’t find my purse anywhere. My mom said she remembered seeing it in the kitchen right next to hers, because we both have black purses.

I went outside to double-check that I hadn’t left it in the car, and that’s when I noticed that the garage door was open and the door from the garage to the house was unlocked. Apparently the previous night, I’d been so tired that I hadn’t thought to double-check all the locks like I usually do. (Dave usually checks them when he’s home, but since he’s been gone, I’ve been extra vigilant about it. Or at least I had been, until the exhaustion kicked in on Tuesday night.)

Then we realized that my mom’s purse was gone too.

I called the local police department. They sent an officer over. He said he was surprised that someone would come in the house, because in this area, typically most crime is just teenagers looking for cash, so they’ll check cars to see if they can find any unlocked doors and then grab what they can. Coming into somebody’s house definitely kicks it up a notch, because how do the thieves know if we have an alarm system, or a dog, or maybe just a pissed-off homeowner with a gun? He also said that usually with purses, they shake them out to grab what they want (the wallet or the cash inside it), then ditch the purse because they don’t want to get caught with it later. He walked around outside and checked our neighbors’ yards and and trash cans to look for any discarded purses. No luck there.

The big issue? My keys were in the purse. And Dave’s keys are with him in England. So I was essentially stranded. And there are thieves out there now, who have keys to my house and both of our cars.

OH! And! When the cop and I went out into the driveway together, I noticed that the driver’s door on Dave’s car was ajar, and I know for a fact that it was locked. So apparently they used my keys to open his car and check to see if there was anything worth stealing in there. (There wasn’t, thankfully.)

The Subaru dealership brought me a replacement key for my car for a whopping $10 (they took checks without photo ID, bless them), and my mom and I disconnected the battery leads on Dave’s car, so if the thieves come back and try to steal it, it won’t start. (Dave’s car is parked in the driveway, mine is inside the garage, and therefore a little safer.) I considered putting a note on the steering wheel, like, “Hahaha! Good luck, mother f*ckers!”, just in case they come back and try to steal the car. But my mom suggested that maybe it’s not a good idea to antagonize the bad guys. She’s probably right.

Anyway, with my new car key in hand, I got my birth certificate and social security card from the “Important Documents DO NOT LOSE!” envelope upstairs, and I set off for the DMV. I got a replacement driver’s license, and that plus my PIN number allowed me get some cash out of our bank account.

I had a locksmith come out and replace all the locks on all the doors of the house. He also took checks without a photo ID, so God bless him too.

My mom and I basically spent the rest of the day calling credit card companies, health insurance companies, AAA, and everything else imaginable to get all of our cards replaced. Between the two of us, we had about $500 in cash (I had just gotten $200 from the ATM that day, my mom had $300 for travel stuff). So that’s a total loss.

Oh, and since my mom’s wallet was taken? She has no photo ID to get on a plane to go home next week. We haven’t quite figured out what to do about that yet. I once had my wallet stolen and used a copy of the police report to board a plane, but that was pre-9/11, so I have no idea if that would work now. We’re going to call the TSA tomorrow to find out what she needs to do.

I had to call Dave in the UK to tell him what was going on, since I was going to have to cancel some credit cards and most of ours are on joint accounts (luckily we still have different card numbers, so the credit card companies were able to just cancel mine and leave his alone). I think I probably scared the crap out of him when he answered the phone and I was crying. He was so freaked out that something was wrong with me or the baby, I think he was relieved to find out that it was just money.

And in the end, it IS just money. A huge inconvenience, to be sure, but it’s not the end of the world. We’re all ok. The main thing is that I am totally freaked out that people were inside my house while we were asleep upstairs. It’s basically my worst fear come true. What if they hadn’t been only looking for a quick cash grab? What could have happened to us? Even with all new locks (and the fact that I’ve checked each of them at least 5 times tonight), I’m still totally wigged out. I took a whole Unisom tonight (instead of my usual half) in the hopes of knocking myself out.

And before anyone asks, my Next Major Purchase? Will most definitely be a home alarm system.

I’m also now considering getting a very large dog. Or maybe a pet puma. Something mean and scary.

The intentionally broken bedtime

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It would appear that the combination of being on solo parent duty, being enormously pregnant, and being pretty much full-on racked with chronic anxiety (long story) has made me sort of forget about my blog.

But! We had a great time with my brother here last weekend. Even though I only got this one picture of him and Catie, when we went to IHOP on Sunday morning.

Catie & my brother at brunch this morning.

And on Saturday night, I managed to get this hilarious (very short) video of Catie singing “Just the Way You Are” by Bruno Mars. Apparently she learned it because it’s on a Kidz Bop CD that her teacher played at school, then we heard it on the radio in the car, and she was all, “Hey! I know this song!”


(Apparently you have to click through to see the video. Sorry about that.)

I can’t begin to tell you how much I love that.

Last night she put on another performance for me (after she dressed herself in a crazy winter hat, summer t-shirt, and PJ pants combo), this time singing her ABCs. She has a little trouble after J, but she manages to pick it up again quickly.


(Apparently you have to click through to see the video. Sorry about that.)

That kid cracks me up.

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Unrelated: my mom is flying up tonight, and she’ll be here for a week. It’ll be really nice to have the help with Catie, and I know my mom has been jonesing for some Grandkid Time. So that’ll be great. I love having my mom around.

The only problem is that my mom’s flight doesn’t get in until 10 p.m., and I typically get Catie to sleep around 9 or 9:30. (All of y’all whose kids go to bed at 7 p.m. and sleep soundly all night? Unless you’re going to share whatever drug you spike your child’s milk with, just shut up. Catie went to bed at 11 p.m. for ages, so I consider her current bedtime a HUGE victory.) And since I’m solo-parenting it, I can’t exactly sneak out to the airport after Catie is in bed, since there won’t be another adult in the house. And, you know, I’d rather not go to jail for felony child neglect.

So, I’ve told Catie this is our plan: tonight after school, we’re going to have dinner, take our baths, get in our pajamas, and watch some Scooby-Doo. Then we’ll go to the airport to pick up Mimi. (And yes, I’m wearing my pj’s to the airport too. I mean, it’ll be maternity yoga pants and I’ll probably wear a bra, but still.)

Considering that we’ll have to wait at baggage claim and then drive back home, I realize this means Catie probably won’t be getting to bed until close to midnight. So I’ve made the executive decision to work from home on Thursday, and keep her home from daycare. There really isn’t any need to subject our sleep-deprived cranky selves to the rest of the world. So we’ll have a “chill out at home” day with Mimi, and hopefully recover quickly.

I do have a sneaking suspicion that she’s going to make me regret keeping her up so late, though…

The solo parenting gig, thus far

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Dave left for England on Tuesday night, which means I’ve been doing the solo-parent thing for the past three days. So far, it’s going ok. Catie and I kind of have our weektime routine down: we get up, she goes to daycare and I go to work, we come home, have dinner, and do the whole bedtime routine. It’s been pretty easy to just coast on auto-pilot, honestly.

I told her I'd turn on cartoons if she smiled.
“I’m just taking it easy on her for now. Next week I unleash hell.”

A few things I’ve noticed, though:
1. I don’t sleep well when I’m the only adult in the house. Now, look, I didn’t meet Dave until I was 28 years old, so it’s not like I’d never lived alone before. But I was always in a tiny one-bedroom apartment. In our current house, I lie in bed and think things like, “Hmm, if someone broke in through the garage door, would I even hear it upstairs?” And I worry about things like what would I do if a fire broke out, things like that. Not exactly conducive to a good night’s sleep, obviously.

Oh, and related: I get very jumpy about unexplained noises in the middle of the night. Which is why I’m just about ready to throw Beaumont outside for good. Seriously, cat, it’s 2 a.m. Do you have to jump up on the kitchen counter and knock over a whole bunch of stuff now? (To be fair, he is totally thrown off by Dave’s absence. The past two nights, he’s been asleep in the hall when I got up in the morning. It’s like he’s trying to keep an eye on both Catie’s room and mine at the same time. “We lost one human, gotta keep a watch on the last two!”)

2. While the routine itself is pretty manageable, I forget how much Dave does in the evenings to help out. Because I’ve noticed that by the end of the day, my body just aches. I know it’s pregnancy-related (since it’s mostly my lower back and hips that hurt), but it’s like I hadn’t taken into account how little “sitting on my butt” time I would get while Dave was gone. I miss my sitting-down time. A lot.

3. I’m really lazy about meals when I’m the only one who eats “grown-up food.” Last night we had mac & cheese with a side of broccoli. Not exactly health food, but whatever, it was easy. (And I love that Catie will eat broccoli.) (Although we did have cupcakes for dessert. You can’t be good all the time.)

4. Trying to wash a four year-old’s hair in the bathtub when you’re 7 months pregnant. I have nothing else to add to that, except: good GOD. And, ouch.

7 months. Holy Moses.
This is not a shape that is meant leaning over the side of a bathtub.

5. As for housework: I give up. I’ve called in the housekeepers. I can’t do it all by myself, so I’m just going to throw some money at the problem and stop worrying about it.

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My brother is on his way here from Charlotte to hang out with us this weekend, and Catie and I are both really excited. My brother is a great guy and Catie adores him, so it should be fun to have him around. No big weekend plans, just hanging out and enjoying some nice springtime weather. Should be fun.

Hope y’all have a nice weekend too, wherever you are.

and I don't think I'll ever drink fruit punch again

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I know y’all are dying to know how that whole 3-hour gestational diabetes test went down, huh? Well, here’s the breakdown:

My appointment was at 7:30. I arrived at the hospital on time, took a number, and sat in the waiting room. The registration dude (his name was Carlos, he was very nice) called me back, asked for my ID & insurance card, and… he couldn’t find my information anywhere in the system. Apparently my OB’s office forgot to send over the actual order for my test. And my OB’s office doesn’t open until 8:30. And of course, the hospital can’t do jack squat without the correct paperwork.

Back to the waiting room. I sat. Some random lady asked if I had a picture ID so I could be a witness for her living will, since she was about to go in to have her gall bladder removed and wanted to make sure she had her affairs in order. Umm..? Ok, sure, why not.

Eventually, my OB’s office opened, Carlos the Registration Dude got them on the phone, and they faxed over the paperwork. Then I headed back to the lab.

Very Nice Lab Tech (I didn’t catch her name) checked my fasting blood sugar, and gave me that vile Glucola drink. It was fruit punch flavored, and tasted more or less like a melted popsicle. Only more syrup-y. It was gross.

I thought I was going to have to hang out in the waiting room in between blood draws, but Very Nice Lab Tech told me they had a recliner in the back where I could sit and hang out in private, if I wanted to. Yes please! She dimmed the lights and pulled the curtain so I could have some privacy and rest.

The first hour was pretty miserable. I felt like I was going to barf, and even though I was exhausted, I couldn’t sleep because Baby 2.0 was flipping out on some kind of crazed sugar bender from the Glucola. (She was doing freaking barrel rolls in there, y’all. Not conducive for napping at all.)

After the first blood draw, I pulled out Dave’s iPad and my headphones. He rented “The Kids Are All Right” for me to watch while I was waiting. (Very good movie, I highly recommend it.)

Somewhere between during the 2.5 to 3-hour point, I had the most epic blood sugar crash of my life. I basically spent the last half hour white-knuckling the recliner while I had chills and cold sweats, and I was reasonably certain that I was about to die, based on how I felt.

When Very Nice Lab Tech came to do the last blood draw, I told her that I felt really light-headed and awful. She gave me some graham crackers and apple juice as soon as she finished my blood draw. That helped a little bit, but I still felt like I was staggering as I went out to my car (imagine feeling drunk plus having the flu at the same time – NOT FUN). I immediately drove across the street to the nearest drive-thru (which happened to be Burger King) and wolfed down a burger, fries, and Diet Coke. Super healthy, I know, but I was desperate.

So, I guess overall, the test was sort of along the lines of what I expected. But the one thing I didn’t expect was that it would make me feel sick for the rest of the day. I went home and took a nap, and still felt awful afterward. So that sucked.

And the other annoying part? I still don’t know the results! Very Nice Lab Tech said that they’d have the results that afternoon, but when I called my OB’s office this morning to find out what’s up, I had a very bitchy receptionist tell me, “Well, as soon as the nurse has the results, she’ll call you.” She didn’t come right out and say, “Duh!” But it was definitely implied.

I’d better be fine. If they tell me that I can’t have anymore Easter candy, I will cry. A lot. (And probably stash some away to eat after the baby is born.)

Edited to add: The nurse finally called back (only 24 hours after the lab said my results would be ready), and I don’t have gestational diabetes. Yay! Celebratory Easter candy and king cake for everyone!

the three-hour tour

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A couple of days ago when I wrote that post about anxiety (and y’all are awesome for the comments there, seriously, thank you), I was driving home from work and still feeling pretty jittery and stressed out.

Then my cell phone rang, and I saw that it was my OB’s office. That’s never a good sign, is it?

So I answered (yes, sometimes I talk on my cell phone while I’m driving, they haven’t passed a law here saying that I can’t yet, so shut it), and the nurse informed me that I failed my glucose test last week. Like, spectacularly. I believe she said that the typical blood sugar is supposed to be 65-80 and mine was like 145 or something. So, yeah, that’s pretty bad. Even though I’m mostly blaming it on the fact that they scheduled my test at 2 p.m., so it was right after lunch, and it just so happened that I’d gone to Waffle House for lunch that day. (I didn’t have anything with syrup on it – just eggs, bacon & toast – but it was probably still too carb-heavy.)

Anyway, the fact that I failed means that I need to go back for the 3-hour gestational diabetes test. Which, oh BTW, is a fasting test, which means you have to get there at 7:30 a.m.

And you know, in the grand scheme of things, this is not that big a deal, right? Obviously my health and Baby 2.0’s health trumps any minor inconvenience. I know that, I really do. But at that moment, when she told me that, I… god, let’s just say that I owe this nurse an apology at my next appointment, because I basically turned into a petulant child.

“But… but… I don’t wanna! No!”

And then I almost burst into tears. I had to work really hard to hold back the floodgates.

Now, leaving aside the fact that the test itself sounds like pure hell (and it does, the one-hour test was bad enough), there’s also the issue of scheduling. And the fact that Catie doesn’t even wake up until after 7:30. And did I mention that Dave is about to leave town for three weeks so I’ll be on solo parent duty?

Oh, right, I haven’t blogged about that yet: Dave is going to England for 3 weeks. And I am 100% supportive of this, because I know he’s been homesick for a while and I think it’ll be good for him to spend some time with his family and friends over there. And this is probably the last chance he’ll have to go before Baby 2.0 makes her arrival. So, it’s FINE that he’s going, it really is. It just throws a major wrench in the works, as far as things like scheduling early morning doctor’s appointments.

I told the nurse I’d have to call her back because I didn’t know what I was going to do. I’m sure she thought I was insane.

I got home, and I worried and fretted for hours. I talked to my mom, then I started to calm down a little. I looked at Dave’s itinerary: he’s leaving on a red-eye flight Tuesday night. (For some reason I thought he was leaving on Monday morning, hence my panic.) So the next morning, I called the nurse back and said that I could do the test on Monday or Tuesday morning if they could manage to squeeze me into the schedule, but after that? I’m screwed as far as childcare arrangements.

And God bless her, she found a way to get me in on Monday morning. The lab they normally use is booked, so she found somewhere else I could go instead. (It’ll be at the actual hospital where I’ll deliver Baby 2.0 someday.) I don’t care so much where it gets done as long as we get this over with as quickly as possible.

So, if anyone’s done this three-hour test and can tell me that it’s not all that bad? I’d really appreciate it. (Also, WTF am I supposed to do for 3 hours? I think I’m renting a movie online and borrowing Dave’s iPad to watch it while I sit & wait. But other ideas are certainly welcome.)

pregnancy anxiety stuff

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More often than not, I seem to be feeling really anxious and tense these days. There are a lot of contributing factors here, but I think it’s mostly pregnancy-related. I feel like I barely have a handle on the whole “working mom” thing right now, and the one kid I have is fairly self-sufficient. The idea of throwing a baby into the mix is… well, really freaking scary, to be quite honest. Babies are really needy (uh, in case you weren’t aware of that), and I’m just not sure how I’m going to balance it all when I don’t feel like I have a good handle on life as it is.

I think a lot of this is that I don’t exactly have fond memories of the first few months of Catie’s life. Looking back, I probably should’ve gotten on some kind of medication for post-partum depression, but I didn’t because I thought my feelings were normal. Now, I’m not so sure. I don’t think it’s exactly normal to feel like your life is a black hole of despair, no? I was just so exhausted that I couldn’t see that things would ever improve. And of course, they did improve, and relatively quickly at that. Sometime after the two- or three-month point, Catie started sleeping for more than a couple of hours at a time, and I slowly (slooooowly) started to feel more sane.

Still, the idea of enduring that again isn’t exactly something I’m looking forward to. Which is probably why it took me so long to come around to the idea of having a second baby, when it seems like a lot of my friends had their second babies ages ago. But it makes me feel like the Worst Mother Ever. What kind of pregnant lady isn’t excited about her upcoming arrival? I mean, of course I’m excited to meet this little person. I just wish there was a fast-forward button for that initial newborn phase. Is that awful? It feels awful.

And yeah, I talk about this stuff with my therapist. I don’t know if I also need medication or not at this point, I’m still trying to figure that out. Mostly, I just think how nice it would be if I could drink something fruity with vodka in it. But that won’t happen for probably at least three more months. Dammit.