Yesterday was another quiet day for little Kate, and they tend to make me a tad nervous. Not a lot nervous, since she’s still moving, she’s still obviously alive in there. But normally she is a crazy mover and shaker, and when she is just kicking here and there, wiggling around only a little bit, I can’t help but worry that there’s some reason that she’s quieter. I remind myself that this does seem to be her pattern – a few days of high activity, then a couple days of quiet movement. I just get the feeling that she sleeps a lot on those days. I can get her to kick me when I poke her, but she snuggles back in and falls asleep again. (I wonder if babies do that after they get out, too… have sleep days and active days.)

I was frustrated doing kick counts last night because she was apparently trying to nap again, even though she had just been active while I ate dinner. I wanted to go to sleep, but I really couldn’t until she convinced me she was just sleepy, and not in distress. Den finally ended up leaning over my belly, nose close enough to touch, and said, “Missy, stop scaring your mother. Don’t make me scold you for the first time!” I couldn’t help but laugh. She did end up waking up enough to reassure me (and then of course woke up even more when I went to bed).

As expected (well… hoped for), today she is wide awake and active as hell. (And then a tiny part of me worries that she’s too active. Yes, I realize that there is no getting around the worrying – it’s just going to stick with me!)

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I’m not really getting more uncomfortable yet, with the exception of her feet getting closer and closer to (and further up into) my ribs. Today she’s been happy about kicking me up there, so it’s kind of hard to sit and, well… sit. Even reaching for the volume in the car can cause a grunt, because she gets squished and frequently whacks me for my nerve.

But the rest of me… well, the rest of me is doing just fine. My lower back is feeling loose. It gets compressed when I sit and tends to pop and shift when I stand up and walk around – it actually feels good to feel it pop and shake itself out. My wrists haven’t gotten any worse with the carpal tunnel thing – actually, I think it’s gotten better than I was feeling a couple months ago. My pelvis feels fine, no cramping, no aching. Of course she feels heavy in there and, depending on her position, I feel like I have to pee a million times. Some days the ligaments along the sides of my belly feel a bit stretched, but very rarely do I feel any sharp twinges like earlier in pregnancy when things were growing up out of my uterus.

My hips are not happy with still sleeping on the futon, but at the same time I realize it could be a lot worse. I’m still able to shift my position around to keep most of my weight off my actual hip joint (though there are some days I must roll onto it while I sleep). It’s not the most comfortable, but it’s certainly not bad. And hopefully tomorrow night we’ll have our bed moved back in to our bedroom! (We both are very excited about that one.)

I do need to start getting more sleep, though.

I love my cats. I love my dogs.

I keep repeating this as I watch my cats wrestle on the futon and my dogs slide around the new hardwood floors. And while I wipe the fur off my brand new desk. (Also when my dog wakes me up at 2:30am for a drink of water.)

A long time ago I realized that I would never have Nice Things. That sounded fine to me, acceptable, the way of life. Now I have my own house, with newly refinished floors, and we slowly buy new furniture to replace the hand-me-downs and yard sale finds we have survived on for many years. And I think to myself, man, would it ever be nice to have Nice Things. I spend a few nights at my brother-in-law and sister-in-law’s house during the floor refinishing. Now they don’t really have all nice things, and they have an almost-two-year-old so there are toys everywhere, but there is no fur! The floors are shiny! No dog crates or gross bones! No half-ripped-apart cat tree!

But then I have a purring cat on my lap and a dog sleeping on the floor next to me. My lap and home would be very empty without them (and their fur).

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First night back in our own bed. HEAVEN. It feels absolutely huge (it’s a king size). I can snuggle up to my husband for warmth, and then shuffle over to my own side of the bed. And my hips don’t ache.

Of course it’s 3:40am and the question remains… why aren’t I in said bed?

I would far rather be getting kicked in an uncomfortable place while trying to sleep than laying awake wondering if she’s okay. (Though some nights I wish she’d aim about 2 inches over.) I lay in bed and whisper, “Ouch! Thank you.”

Not so fond of this waking up at 3am thing, though. Shouldn’t I be tired after everything I do during the day?

After seeing a rash of online friends deal with third trimester complications and early deliveries, right now I’m just feeling extremely thankful that so far everything is normal, I’m healthy, Kate’s healthy, and we’re all just hanging out for hopefully another 8 weeks. Though having our house look more and more finished – including Kate’s room – we’re both getting very excited/hopeful/impatient to have her here. (Here safely and full-term, of course.) But we just want her home. We’re counting down the weeks.

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In moving all of my stuff back into the bedroom I have ruthlessly gone through my clothes. Things were donated, things were tossed. And most of the rest was bagged up, labeled “pre-pregnancy”, and will be going down to the basement for the next few months. I neatly sorted and folded my maternity clothes and realized… I need more short sleeve shirts. A lot of what I have is heavier winter clothes and suddenly I am starting to feel the heat of this preggo body. Last week I was running late one day and unable to find my black undershirt, so instead I grabbed a very light turtleneck to wear under my shirt. Bad idea. By the end of the day I was sweating. Not good. No more turtlenecks. Even super light ones.

Well today was my 32 week appointment and growth ultrasound. First I’ll tell you what went well, and then I’ll tell you what didn’t.

Most importantly, above all else, is that the baby is doing just fine. I knew on some level that she was, but at the same time I woke up this morning having somewhat of a panic attack. Not the immediate, hyperventilating, freaking out completely kind, but rather the kind of anxiety that sits hard on your chest, following you about your morning. Den asked me a few times if I was okay, because I was very short, and very unable to concentrate or converse. I was feeling some kicks, but not enough to completely reassure me. And she felt so low down, like she compacted down into my pelvis. I was just wrapped up in mental knots.

I’m not even sure that the entire reason for it was the ultrasound. We’re also at 32 weeks here, getting very close to my loss point. And the reminder card I got in the mail told me that the appointment today was to be with the Midwife I saw when I found out Devin was gone. I loved her, and all pregnancy I’ve been wanting to have an appointment with her just to show her how I’m doing and to say thank you… but at the same time today I just thought, I cannot have history repeat itself.

Regardless, I made it through my morning and drove white-knuckled to the hospital. (Den was meeting me there so I drove myself. It was raining pretty heavily and my car really needs some fixing because it’s not handling rain very well, so no, it was not a fun drive.) I was taken right in and got to see Katherine on the screen. She’s head-down still, calming my worries about her having flipped. And she was sleeping, explaining why she’d been quiet most of the day except for a few pokes. She had her arm over her face and was making little sucking motions – at first we thought she was sucking her thumb, but it appears she was just sucking on/against her arm. Her measurements are all still very normal, various parts of her measuring between 31w6d (which is exactly what I am today) to 32w5d. (It was her head that was measuring ahead! Abdomen and femur were right on.) Her estimated weight is 3lb 14oz, which is right about average (she didn’t give the percentile, I should have asked). Then the tech pulled out the 3d wand and tried to capture her little face for us. We got a half-view, due to the arm she was nestled into, but we also caught a big sleepy yawn! OMG how friggin cute.

So then we were led over to the midwife office and that’s where we started getting irritated.

We sat in a room for a little bit until the Midwife walked in. And much to my surprize it is not the Midwife who saw me when Devin died, but someone new. She introduces herself, sits down, observed that we just came from an ultrasound. I mention something about my monthly ultrasounds. She asks, “Why are you having growth ultrasounds?” I swear, even though Den and I didn’t actually look at each other there was this zap of highly irritated energy that flew between us. “Previous stillbirth,” I said tersely. “Oh sorry,” she looks down at the chart, “I didn’t read the chart yet.” No shit.

The rest of the appointment went well enough. She answered my questions. She asked some things about labor/delivery. She scheduled me for my weekly NSTs (non-stress tests) starting at 34 weeks (though that wasn’t simple). When I was laying down for her to measure and listen to the heartbeat she had Denis come over and feel the baby’s head, her back, her bum, as she pointed things out. That was pretty cool. She smiled the whole time and was polite. And yet. There was just something that I didn’t like, something that rubbed me the wrong way. How she’d phrase a question, or maybe I just never got over the fact that she didn’t read my damn chart first. Maybe I was annoyed that I just wanted to know The Plan for monitoring and appointments and she knew less than I did. Maybe I’m just not up for meeting new Midwives. She asked me if I had any preference for who I’d see for appointments, so she could pass it on to the receptionist, and I told her who I usually see. She pointed out, “[that person] probably won’t be at your birth, you know.” Yes, I am aware of that. But honestly? I don’t want to explain my situation to anyone else. The previous stillbirth, the IVF, the depression, the monitoring-even-though-I’m-not-high-risk. And if they can’t even read my chart before walking in my room – because it’s all IN THERE – then no, I don’t want to see anyone else. Give me someone who knows it all, then I can get on with what I’m actually concerned about at this point in time rather than re-hashing my whole freaking history. And when I don’t go over it all – like today, I didn’t mention the IVF part at all, it wasn’t relevant – then I feel like my caretaker doesn’t really understand where I’m coming from, doesn’t get the whole picture. And that means I don’t feel relaxed or comfortable.

But the true bugger of it all is that all of the various appointments I need makes it next to impossible for me to request a specific Midwife. If I was just going once every other week for an appointment it wouldn’t be much of a problem. But first I have to book my ultrasounds, and then book the midwife around that. Or, starting at 34 weeks, the NSTs. There was only one time slot open for an NST on the days I have flexibility, which means they’ll just have to give me whatever Midwife has an opening around that time. And all of that doesn’t even take into account Den’s schedule. And of course the day that I have off and Den has off half the time is Monday – and that’s the one day that they don’t do scheduled NSTs at the hospital, which means I now need to somehow majorly shift around my work load.

On one hand I think all of the appointments and ultrasounds are making me more stressed out – but at the same time, I’m pretty stressed out anyways. If it’s a week that I don’t have an ultrasound I worry that something’s wrong and we won’t see it; if it’s the week of the ultrasound I get anxious that we’re going to see something bad. I’m just anxious in general – I worry about all of her measurements; I worry that my weight is too much or too little; I worry that I’m measuring too big or too small. I really try to clamp down on it and just repeat positive affirmations and let it go, but it’s hard. My appointments at least give me something solid to hold onto. I am getting concerned about how the anxiety is creeping up, I may need to increase my antidepressants if I can’t get a hold of it. I really don’t want to become a raving lunatic. Throw in all the house disarray of the past few weeks and there are plenty of days where I am close!