Starting to prepare

There are about a million things to do to get ready for a baby. We were pretty well just waiting and hoping for the best during the first trimester (other than doctors appointments and such). Now it feels like we need to start actually planning in earnest, because the due date is less than six months away and the to do list is long.

One of Jeff's very helpful qualities is that once it is decided that we are going to do something, he likes to just get it done. There is not a lot of indecisiveness or second-guessing, and it can be excruciating for him to have to wait. This makes the practical work of checking things off the to do list much easier.

Currently, Jeff and I each have our own offices at home. Our house has three bedrooms, and right now we sleep in one of them and I have a room and Jeff has a room. This is an unnecessary luxury, and it was already decided ahead of time that my office would become the baby room and my desk would move into Jeff's office. In order to do this, it was necessary to rearrange the basement to make room for a recliner that has been in my office (for reading, although it doesn't often get used), and for extra storage space to hold my yarn and knitting accessories. On Thursday night we went down to the basement to talk about how to rearrange things, and then basically Jeff just did the major work of moving furniture. We have since bought cube shelving with fabric baskets to use as drawers for storage, and now the only thing left related to rearranging the basement is purchasing a storage cabinet (a big shelf with doors on the front) to store our board games.

It is exciting to be doing things to get ready for the baby – now that the recliner has moved downstairs, there is room in this bedroom to start getting some baby things. We have signed up for a prenatal class that starts in June, and tomorrow Jeff is going to call some childcare centers to get our names on their lists – most places here don't take kids younger than eighteen months old, but apparently the wait lists can be up to several years long to get into some of the better places, so it is definitely not too early.

I think that our lives might be moving into the "all baby all the time" phase, but we are also trying to enjoy our time together in these last few baby-free months. We went out to dinner and dessert on Friday night, and even though we stopped and bought some maternity pants on the way home, we hear that it is important to do these kinds of things now, because after the baby comes it might be a very long time!

Pregnant for real

Being really and truly pregnant has been a long time coming. The fact that this is something that we have wanted for so long but that has been so hard to achieve, has made me very cautious about it and has made it seem hardly real. For the whole first trimester I was pretty scared about miscarriage, knowing that it is common and more common among "old" moms, which apparently is me (over 35!). So I think for the whole first trimester even though I knew I was pregnant there was a part of me that didn't really believe I was pregnant.

I have also been fairly lucky when it comes to pregnancy symptoms. I have not vomited a single time, which I really didn't expect given what some of my friends have been through. There were definitely things that I experienced, but it wasn't until after about ten weeks that any of those things felt especially different from just bad PMS. I was bloated, irritable, and tired, and those were my major issues. So I guess I sort of felt pregnant but at the same time felt like I didn't have super strong evidence that this was pregnancy. I was happy to get to the end of the first trimester because that marks the end of the greatest risk of miscarriage, and also because starting at about ten weeks I have continued to feel more and more pregnant, and this has felt more and more real.

On Thursday I went in for an ultrasound as part of prenatal testing, and was totally surprised to find out that our little human is starting to look extremely human, even this early on. The baby was also doing all kinds of wriggling and moving and even sort of jumping around, which I absolutely did not expect to see so early on. I've read all the stuff about prenatal development and knew that babies start to look very baby-like at this stage, and that there is a lot of movement occurring, but somehow I didn't expect to see it. It made things seem so much more real! Here are some of the ultrasound pictures:

I am also finally starting to look a little bit pregnant. I have been unable to button my pants for the last eight weeks (at first because of bloating, and then because my belly really is getting bigger), but for the most part nobody besides me and Jeff can tell that I look any different. However, I have been wearing maternity pants for a couple of weeks, and recently bought some maternity shirts as well because my regular shirts were riding up so high that it was clear that they did fit properly even if it wasn't entirely clear why. But today Jeff got home from being away for five days at a conference, and when he saw my belly he was a bit surprised by how far it was sticking out from my body. Somehow this is nice, because I'm starting to feel pregnant instead of just bloated and fat.

One little rant for today: I have been reading lots about healthy pregnancy from many different sources, and they all have the same (or at least very similar) guidelines for weight gain during pregnancy. There is basically a very narrow range that is considered normal, especially during the first trimester. Some people don't gain any weight during the first trimester, or even lose a little, due to feeling sick and vomiting. The guidelines say that at this point (I am at fourteen weeks today) I should have gained between 1 and 5 pounds, ideally about 3.5 pounds, and I have gained 6.

Everywhere I look it seems that there are warnings about gaining too much weight during pregnancy, and that if you are outside the normal range (even just a little bit!) you might be headed for disaster. Well, I have not been eating junk food. I would say I am probably eating less ice cream than I did before getting pregnant, I am more careful about eating only whole grains (no more regular pasta or white pizza crust), and the foods that I have added to my diet are eggs, cottage cheese, and nuts. I am probably eating more healthfully than most people in general, and and being careful about getting all the nutrients I need to support a healthy pregnancy. But the message I see everywhere is that I am gaining too much weight. Rationally I know that this is not true, that I am healthy, and as Jeff says that I am gaining the amount of weight that is necessary for this pregnancy. But it is hard to ignore those messages telling me that I am doing something wrong, something that could affect my health for the rest of my life and also lead to a greater likelihood that the baby will struggle with weight forever.

I have a feeling this is only the beginning, and that there will be things like this that occur throughout the rest of pregnancy and then probably even more of them that pop up about parenting. How do you resist these messages and not internalize the anxiety? Do you just stop reading, or learn to be so secure in yourself and your choices that this stuff doesn't faze you? Or is every parent just very anxious all the time? I clearly have a lot to learn in this department.

Announcement

I have an exciting announcement to make, but before I do see if you can guess what this sound is:

Not sure? Sounds like a bunch of static? It is actually a very poor quality recording of a heartbeat of a twelve week-old-fetus that happens to be residing in my belly. I made the recording on my phone last week at an appointment with our obstetrician, who says that at this point everything looks good. So yes, we are going to be parents! In some ways it is hard to believe that it is real, and yet there is that recording, proof that a tiny human is inhabiting my body.

There is very much to say, but it actually took me about half an hour to figure out how to get that sound file off of my phone and onto the computer, and then from there onto this blog, so I'm out of time for today but will post much more in the weeks to come :-)

Scooting into Spring

A few days ago my travel scoot arrived in the mail. After a little bit of tinkering and figuring, we were able to get it set up and Jeff drove it around the house to make sure it worked. I don't particularly approve of using it in the house so I did not participate, and Jeff did scrape one of our baseboards, but he said it was pretty fun and at least after that we knew it was good to go.

Yesterday we folded it up, put it in the car, and took it to the museum. I was tired, and on the verge of a headache, and normally we would not have tried to go out. However, I really wanted to give the travel scoot a try and didn't want to wait another day, so off we went to the museum. It turned out to be great. We were able to get through the whole museum (some of it just kind of doing a walk/drive by, so we will have to come back to see those parts in more detail), and we were there for probably almost 2 hours. I would absolutely never have been able to do that before, especially if I was at all tired or headachy, and would have been completely dead afterwards if I had tried.

The travel scoot took a little bit of time to get used to, and I am still a bit tentative, especially around the many small children that were at the museum. Here is a (fairly unflattering, but that's okay) video:

Compared to a regular full-size scooter, this thing is much more maneuverable, and can fit in much tighter spaces. The basket on the front is also removable, making it even smaller. I feel like I couldn't do much damage, probably even to a small child, by running into someone/something on this. It goes much faster than you see here – up to 6 mph – so in a nice open space I could really move and might have to be more careful, but I can see looking at this video that I was being much too cautious. That's okay – I would rather be cautious the first time out than have a bad experience from not being cautious enough. I still need to practice a bit with folding and unfolding it, and getting it in and out of the car, as I had Jeff's help this time but I expect to take it places on my own in the future. Overall, I am extremely pleased and I think this will do exactly what I need it to in order to improve my ability to do the things I want to do.

Also notable about yesterday was that when we arrived at the museum I left my jacket in the car. It's confusing, because it was only just above freezing, but with the sun beating down it feels much warmer than that. The last couple of days have had highs above freezing, and if you look at the weather forecast every day in the foreseeable future is supposed to have highs above freezing, and in fact tomorrow is supposed to have a high of 6°C/43°F. There has been significant snowmelt in the last couple of days with highs around 1°C/33°F so I expect to see much of the snow disappear over the next week. The beginnings of spring in Saskatchewan are very happy hope-filled times, and I am anticipating good moods all around for the next little while :-)

Adapting

As I have mentioned frequently on this blog, the past two and half years or so have been all about working hard toward recovery, and adapting to my limitations. At times it has been a very difficult balancing act, and at times very emotional. However, lately it feels like these two things are not really in conflict with one another. I'm not sure exactly why – either my recovery has slowed so much that adapting to my current situation is really all there is, or I have changed how I think about it so that adapting feels like making steps toward recovery. I think it is a bit of both, and perhaps something else too that I can't quite identify.

The biggest issue that leads to limitations in what I can do is my mobility. I simply cannot walk long distances, or be standing for long periods of time. There are times when I push the limits by doing something like going to the mall, and I find that I usually have to cut things short because it becomes so difficult to walk that walking is taking all my attention and despite that I'm tripping over myself and running into things. After something like this I am so tired that I basically can't do anything but lay on the couch for the rest of the day. Because of this, there are activities that we might otherwise do but choose not to, like going to the museum, or the art gallery, or even the farmers market over the summer.

People ask why I get so tired, and why my ability to function physically seems to fall apart after a time, when there is nothing wrong with my body – the only "broken" part is my brain. I don't fully understand this but basically think of it as a lack of automaticity of physical functions that are supposed to be automatic. Because there is damaged tissue in my brain, I have to re-route signals from my brain to my body, and over time a slightly garbled signal gets compounded into a breakdown. These are the metaphors that makes sense to me, but what I know from my experience is that these problems with mobility end up limiting my life.

A little over a year ago I got my Segway, which I thought would go a long way to solving this problem. However, the Segway has quite a few limitations as well. First, it can't be taken to places like malls because the electronic security gates at store entrances can sometimes suddenly cause the Segway to turn off completely, which is a huge safety problem – once it turns off, it no longer balances so if that happened I would fall off. Second, people don't recognize it as a mobility device and it is not necessarily allowed to go everywhere. When people did see me riding it, they often assumed I was just trying to be cool, and I was asked more than one time if I was allowed to be using it where I was. Finally, it is really difficult to transport. It's extremely heavy, so even though technically it can be loaded into our car using ramps, it is not something I could ever do on my own safely. Also, because of the type of battery it uses it is never allowed on an airplane, ever.

For these reasons, when I went to the American Psychological Association conference last August, I rented a mobility scooter while I was there. I would not have been able to participate in the conference otherwise. I was always resistant to scooters, because they are very uncool, but functionally it was really useful in some circumstances – for example, one afternoon I decided to head over to the art museum that was near my hotel, and I would never have been able to do that without a scooter. It was also a huge and clunky, which meant that getting into some spaces was extremely difficult. My physical therapist also said that without a van equipped with a ramp to load it, transporting a scooter would be impossible. So despite having had a somewhat positive experience, it seemed like my mobility needs could not really be met with a scooter.

At the same time, I never completely stopped searching for a better mobility aid. About a week ago in one of my Internet searches, I came across a device called the travelscoot. It is a mobility scooter that is in some ways built more like a bicycle, with a metal frame. It is extremely lightweight (as in about 30 pounds), and can be folded up to fit into a travel bag (and into the trunk of even a very small car). It is approved for travel on airplanes, and can even be driven right up to the gate and gate checked with the strollers. It has a range of about 12 miles on one battery, and you can carry a spare which you can easily switch out. There are downsides – it is not so stable for very heavy people (not really a concern for me, as it is approved for use by people up to 320 pounds), and apparently the seat gets somewhat uncomfortable (which could be very problematic for someone with something like back pain, but is not really such a problem for me). The more I looked into it, the more it seemed like exactly what I need.

So last Thursday I got an appointment with my doctor, and she wrote a prescription for the travel scoot (prior to having mobility issues I had no idea that doctors could prescribe things like this, but they can). I ordered it as soon as I got the prescription, and the cost will be reimbursed by my insurance because it is a medical device approved by Health Canada. It is supposed to arrive by the end of next week, and I am super excited. We have tentative plans to go to a museum next Saturday that we have avoided going to the entire time that we've been here, mostly because it would tire me out. A year ago, I don't think you could have gotten me to use a scooter, because it would label me as disabled. Today, I don't really care about being labeled as disabled, I care about being able to do the things I want to do, and I am really hoping that this new mobility aid helps in that respect.