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. 

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.

I had a baby!

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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!




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




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! ;)