Monday, December 5, 2011

I have thyroid cancer

For some reason my insurance company had a thing where if you go get a physical they’d give you money. So on the day of the deadline we remembered this and were like, “uhhhh… let’s go get physicals and get money” and called all the doctors and got an appointment.



I went in all frazzled with a tiny new baby and the doctor (who was awesome, btw, he turned off the lights and let me keep my white noise app going for the whole appt so the baby would sleep in a moby) felt my neck and said he felt a lump on my thyroid and I should have it checked out.
So I got an ultrasound and went and talked to an endocrinologist who said it was probably a postpartum thing and we’d check to see if it went away on its own in a couple months. And so they scheduled a biopsy for a couple months later which was last week and the biopsy person was like, “We’ll just take some tissue from this big nodule on the left. And what the heck, there’s a tiny nodule on the right, let’s get some from there, too.” Turns out the tiny one on the right is cancerous.
Papillary thyroid cancer. Apparently it's not too uncommon and is "very treatable." I have to have my thyroid taken out tomorrow. If they don't think they were able to get it all, I will need to take radioactive iodine to kill off the rest of the thyroid cells. This will really suck. I will have to stop breastfeeding because if I am lactating the radiation be stuck in my boobs forevar! Radioactive boobs! Not as cool as it sounds. Then I will have to eat an iodine free diet for a couple weeks (what the heck do I eat?). Then I will take the radioactive iodine and I won't be able to be within a few feet of anyone for several days, and not around Audrey for at least a week. And pretty much anything I touch will have to be thrown out or something. Yep. If I am knitting, it will be radioactive knitting. How's that for ya? (ok, that's not really how science works, but they make you get rid of everything anyway.)

So yeah. I'm really really hoping my surgery tomorrow goes well and we'll be able to go home for Audrey's first Christmas. My mom is here helping out for the week, so that is good. 

Ugh. 

Friday, September 16, 2011

Audrey P. at 2 months

Audrey keeps changing so much! Every 3-5 days she's a completely different person. It's so crazy. Here's a video of my babe hamming it up. She is just about to start laughing I think. And I figured out the other day that if we do tummy time draped over the boppy it makes her smile and talk so much! I heart her.




Thursday, July 14, 2011

I had a baby!

EmandAudrey


Audrey Elizabeth was born at 7:04 am on Sunday, July 10th (Sean's birthday, and 16 days after her due date). She weighed 7lbs, 5oz and was 19" long.

After the biophysical profile showed that she was in no hurry to vacate the premises, I went to see my midwives on Saturday. They knew that if I went all the way to Wednesday when the doctor wanted to see me again, I'd pretty much be guaranteed to be induced which isn't what we wanted, so they swept my membranes, gave me some "Start Up" herbal stuff, had me continue to use the breast pump, told me to walk around as much as possible, basically do everything that might possibly get this party started. At the appointment I was only dilated 2 cm and 50% effaced.

Around 4:30ish, my contractions changed from cute little Braxon-Hicks ones to "ummmm, this hurts" ones and were about 5 minutes apart, lasting for a minute, that whole deal. Around 9ish, the midwives came over to check me out. About the same time, a couple of Sean's friends showed up- apparently they were at a party down the street and were totally drunk. This has nothing to do with the story, but was totally random and ridiculous. I yelled at them to go away and got checked and was 4 cm, 90% effaced. The midwives told me to take some Benedryl and try to sleep and they took off. I don't like Benedryl (I would have slept through the whole thing and I don't think that would have been very helpful) so I didn't. My contractions started picking up pretty good right after they left, and we had the midwives come back around 11:30ish (right after they'd gotten home and gone to bed, natch).

Once they got back, I got in the pool (a kiddie pool with happy sharks and seahorses and turtles and things to cheer me on!) and that helped a bit. I was most comfortable just sort of sitting in there, which felt best but probably wasn't the most effective position. Oh well. Eventually they made me change positions, then get out for awhile to labor on the couch. Every time I moved it hurt way more than it did once I was settled. My body wanted to push when I was only at 7 cm, and trying to keep from doing so pretty much totally sucked. When it got really, really bad I was like "I'm going back in the pool now" and they checked and it was time to push. They let me push sitting in the pool for about an hour until they were like "ok dude, time for the birth stool so you can actually make some progress here." (My water still hadn't broken at that point.) So I got on the birth stool and pushed. About 4 minutes and a bruised tailbone later, they handed me my baby. That was a bit surreal. She was slimy and amazing. :)

They got us all wrapped up so we could all snuggle together on the couch for awhile while they cleaned everything up. They made an herbal healing hippie bath for me to get washed up and that felt great. Audrey joined me once they were done measuring her and doing whatever baby checks they do. Then Sean and Audrey and I took a nap while the midwives went to IHOP (jealous!). They came back, stitched me up, finished the laundry (how on earth did they get our towels so clean? I was sure they were totally done for), double checked that everyone was doing well and then left us. alone. with a newborn.


Luckily, she's the best baby ever. So calm and happy and easy to figure out what she wants. They came back and checked on us Monday and Tuesday and everyone was doing great!

So there you go. Awesome homebirth story. And awesome baby. <3 <3 <3


...and now I've got a placenta in my freezer.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

A+

Lil' Miss Stubborn got 10/10 on her biophysical profile, which means since I'm doing well and she's doing well, there's no good reason to induce us, and I'm still cleared for a homebirth. If she's not here by next Wednesday, I get to go back to check again. Overachiever baby.

Friday, July 8, 2011

42 Weeks

Yep. That's about it.  Going to the doctor in a couple hours to figure out what's up with Lil' Miss Stubborn.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Cute lil thing!

At my almost-40 week appointment, my midwives were like "uhh, dude, your baby your baby is breech, you should go get an ultrasound to confirm it since if she is you have to deliver at a hospital." So I went to get an ultrasound. It was so cool! The baby still seems to be a girl and she's soooo cute. Her face is in the upper left corner of that picture and her right arm is across most of it, if you can't tell. Somehow in between weeks 39 and 40 she'd managed to go from the nice head down position she'd been in for months to the exact opposite of that. Weird.  I went back to see my midwife and she pushed on my belly for about an hour and she was able to squish that baby back where she should be. It was pretty crazy. 

Now I'm 4 days past my due date with no end in sight. Ah well. She'll be here soon enough. 

Friday, June 17, 2011

Garden, blanket, baby, stuff like that

My garden is doing better than it was after the floods. I reseeded most things a couple weeks ago, so maybe the long growing season down here will be an advantage.  Most things are trying hard to come up this time.

The rosemary and basil (both growing in pots instead of the raised bed, argh) are doing great and I use them all the time. The carrots and pumpkins look like they might end up doing pretty well, too. Something weird and diseasey is going on with the tomatoes, but they are growing pretty green stumpy leaf things, so I'll just let them be, whatever. The radishes look pretty good (at least that's what the caterpillars think). The corn might end up ok, but I am not very optimistic that we have enough for them to actually be pollinated so we'll see about that. The spinach is the only thing that just refuses to do anything. Maybe it's a bad batch of seeds or something. Either way, I like watching everything grow!

Garden


I finished knitting the baby blanket. I think it turned out even better than I expected! It's a bit on the bright side...

Baby Adventure


I'm still pregnant. Luckily, I'm due next Friday, and due dates mean that that is the day the baby will be born, so yay! ;)

39 weeks

Sunday, June 5, 2011

It's awfully hot here

37 weeks

There's the belly. May as well put it first since I am getting used to following it around. It's been sooo hot, like in the 100's, this week. I have a feeling that being pregnant for the next 3 weeks till my due date and most likely the week or two after that are going to totally suck. At least I got cleared for a homebirth so any time that this baby feels like coming, I guess I just jump in my cute little smiling sharks pool and she'll just pop right out. ;)

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Baby adventure blanket

I've been making a baby blanket. It's not done yet, but it's getting there...

Baby blanket

The pattern is An African Adventure

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Shorter hairs

I got my hair cut! Woohoo!
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Sunday, May 15, 2011

Karate & Stuff

I went to a karate tournament! I feel like I did pretty well all things considered. The things to be considered in this case are:
1) I am 34 weeks pregnant. Standing up from the couch is an ordeal.
2) I have only been doing this style of karate for a year, and am a white belt in it.
3) Since I have a black belt in a different style, I was in the black belt division and so I did kata from my old style.
4) I haven't practiced these kata in earnest with guidance from people who know them for over a year.
5) They are unfamiliar to the people judging me.
6) I had to sort of modify the bowing and kiai yelling and stuff to try to fit in with their style and it was weird.

There were 3 people total in the black belt women's division for weapons and empty-hand kata. I got 2nd in weapons and 3rd in kata. Woo!

Here's a video. Well, most of a video. Yeah.



Also yesterday, the wonderful people at knit night had a baby shower for me! They are so awesome and I am so glad I found such a great group of people to hang out with!!!

Here's what I look like at 34 weeks:
34 weeks

Friday, May 13, 2011

Kitty

I love this picture.
Kitty walk

This picture less so.
Kitty crib

I really don't like this one, but he is all better now so I guess it's all good.
Sick kitty

I <3 my kitty.

Monday, May 2, 2011

They're for poop!

It's probably not reasonable to be this excited about diapers, is it?
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Weather

The weather here sucks. We've had some kind of storm all but a couple of days for the past 3 weeks. By "some kind of storm," I mean almost always accompanied by a tornado warning. For those who aren't from tornado-y places, a tornado warning means that there is an actual tornado according to the radar or a weather spotter and you better darn well find a place to hide and the sirens are going off and it's loud and obnoxious and scary. Oh yeah, and people die. The tornado that struck 2 miles from my house killed 2 people. It also broke our patio umbrella and a whole bunch of trees in our little backyard.

I'd been planning to post about our awesome garden that we spent several weeks setting up, complete with a whole sprinkler system so I wouldn't have to go outside and get bitten by mosquitoes to water it. It's so cool. I've been growing seedlings inside since the last week in January and finally got to plant them and have been watching it grow and it's been so exciting. We've got 24 different kinds of plants (partly because I am way overambitious and partly because I'm not sure what grows well around here). 

Here is is yesterday, completely flooded with the 3-8 inches (depending on your source) of rain that fell and is still coming down like crazy. Poor little drowneded planties. 
Garden flood

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Cute

My favorite new game: Chasing/ pushing a teeny foot around my belly.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Nursery

I am so excited about this nursery. As in, "the kid's not due for more than two months and it's nearly completed" excited. It's pretty much been my main focus for the last little while, and it's been a very sewing machine/ paintbrush/ dyebath intensive process.  Awesome. Plus, the room is bright pink so you know it's going to be good. 

I've had the dresser and end table drawer things since my parents bought me this furniture set for my first apartment in college.  There is a matching twin bed that's waiting upstairs.  We ended up buying the crib to match the other pieces, and I think it looks pretty good! 

Here's the crib, obviously. It took forever to find bedding that fit in my idea, and I finally ended up just dying the bedskirt to be the vibrant shade of yellow I was looking for. I finally discovered Carousel Designs which has some pretty good stuff in bright colors (yay for not pastels!).  The rug in this pic is actually two of those funky nobby bath mats that I am going to sew together, and I'm going to get another one for next to the changing table dresser. I figure they're pretty cheap and fun and easy to wash. The flower on the right wall is a present Sean gave me for our 9 (?) months of dating-anniversary. So cute! And finally, I just finished painting the goofy spatter painted flowers hanging above the crib. That was so fun to make! I think it turned out pretty well, too.


(edited to add a closeup of the painting)




Here are the curtains and glider and bookshelf. It's really hard to find bright purple curtains, as it turns out.  At least ones that are tall enough to not look ridiculous.  You can see in the next picture that we ended up getting ones that were really short, so I got an extra one and cut it up to sew to the bottoms of the curtains.  You can't even really tell, which makes me really happy. And as you can see in the other picture, the glider used to be a pretty sage color that will look great in our living room once we outgrow the bright pink room, but for now I sewed a purple slipcover.  I used flannel, which is soft but good heavens the cat hair.  I'd originally intended to keep the cats off, of course, but um, clearly that is going well. It's their new favorite spot. I'm also pretty impressed with how many books area already on the shelf. I saved a lot of them from when I was little. :)


Curtains before:

Chair before:


Here's the dresser/ changing table.  There is no storage in this house so the closet in this room is already crammed full of other stuff so this dresser is really, really useful. And the painting in this picture was made by my brother! Yay!

Saturday, April 23, 2011

31 weeks

I really have 2 more months? I don't think my clothes are up for that challenge. Baby's doing great though.
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Friday, April 22, 2011

Projects: Baby sweater

So, I've been super busy nesting or whatever. For example, awhile ago I turned this BRIGHT PINK SPARKLY fiber into BRIGHT PINK SPARKLY yarn. Then I turned the yarn into a BRIGHT PINK SPARKLY February baby sweater. Complete with matching buttons.  Oh yes, exactly what a summer Arkansas baby needs. 




Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Crazy Hippie

After last week's excitement, my appointment with the midwives today was the best birthday present ever.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Ranty McRanterson

My OB sends out surveys after every visit. Here's what I wrote about the one for today:

"A pregnant woman should not have to wait in a waiting room for two hours with no food or water prior to taking a glucose test before even being seen by anyone. By the time I finally got around to the test I ended up passing out, which I doubt would have happened if I had been seen in a reasonable amount of time.

"When, after an hour of waiting (the sign posted at the desk says to check with them if you have been waiting for longer than 15 minutes), I politely asked the staff at the front desk if I would be seen soon, I was rather harshly informed that "if you signed in, we know you're here."

"Some of the nursing staff were at least kind enough to give me water and parts of their own lunch so I would be well enough to drive home.

"I am switching providers."

Gah. Plus I've already gained 27 lbs.  And I still have 12.5 weeks to go.

Monday, March 14, 2011

25 weeks

Here's me at 25 ish weeks.
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Tuesday, February 8, 2011

I am freaking productive today

Here is a list of things I do most days:
* Wake up by noon.
* Sit on the couch in my pajamas playing on the internet.

Here is a list of things I have done today:
* Woke up at 8.
* Got dressed.
* Went to the library to return books.
* Went to the post office to mail stuff.
* Went to the grocery store to stock up in case it snows.
* Called and made a doctor appointment.
* Cleaned out the fridge.
* Went to Old Navy and got new clothes for me and the baby.
* Went to the yarn store and used the gift certificate my mom gave me for Christmas.
* Went to Starbucks.
* Called and cancelled an order that supposedly shipped 2 months ago that I haven't received yet.
* Ate homemade French Onion Soup that I made last night after I mopped and vacuumed the floor. O_o
* Found and ordered a crib that coordinates with our other furniture.
* Found possible flights for a vacation to Phoenix in a couple months.

Later today I plan on making some salmon with lemon caper sauce.  And I'll either go to yoga or spin some pink yarn or start knitting some socks.  Probably the spinning.

It's craziness around here today!

Monday, February 7, 2011

20 weeks

This week I did lots and lots of spinning, and finished making 2-ply silk yarn I've had on the wheel since I lived in Iowa. It's 254 yds and 32g which I think is pretty good, or something. It's really shiny!




It's been snowing a lot sort of. I made a snowman to show Lindsey before she left for Mexico. The snow covered the snowman up to his midsection by the end of the day, but it melted the next day. Today I woke up at 7:45 and was surprised to see that the whole world was white, but I went back to sleep and by the time I woke up again it was almost completely gone.


Oh yeah, I'm getting really, really huge. My clothes don't fit. :(  On the plus side, everything looked good at the doctor this week.  Ooh, and we probably have a name.  We're not gonna tell you till she's born though.


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Sunday, January 30, 2011

19 weeks!

She's moving around a little bit now. It feels really, really weird.
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Friday, January 21, 2011

Everyone's having girls



Yay ultrasounds! Everyone I know who is pregnant is having a girl, including me! Now I guess we have to think of girl names...




That's what I looked like a week ago, at 17 weeks. I can't believe I'm almost halfway there.



I made molten chocolate cake. I'm pretty much crazy hungry all the time, and molten chocolate cake is yummy. Win!
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Sunday, January 9, 2011

tummy tum tum

Yay maternity clothes! They are the comfiest things ever. Here is me at 16 weeks.
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