Monday, April 30, 2012

The soon-to-be-new-mom freak-out hour

We're moving the induce-by date up to the weekend of May 19-20. The weekend is more convenient for everyone, and if the baby is delivered Sunday afternoon between 4-7:30 there will be a ring-of-fire (annular) solar eclipse occuring over the Bay Area. Pretty cool.

I had an appointment with my primary care physician this morning per my obstetrician's recommendation.  I'm experiencing some mild angina-like symptoms along with the occasional flutter (arrythmia) and given that I've had hypertension since Hell Year 2008 and pregnancy adds extra work for the heart, it's probably a good idea to get a cardiac check-up prior to the delivery marathon coming up in 20 days or so. The EKG showed mild sinus tachycardia -- not unusual during pregnancy, so that's good. Next time my heart races and my BP drops I'm supposed to drink water as my doc suspects my blood volume is getting low.

The fact that we're counting down in days now, rather than weeks, has me on the edge of freaking out. This pregnancy has happened very fast seeing as I didn't know I was pregnant until I was nearly 16 weeks. So that is part of it. It also seems like there is so much left to do, and I'm really impatient with my physical limitations right now. I'm bringing someone in on Thursday to clean the bathrooms and the floors, especially since we're having workmen in this week changing out the HVAC system. New furnace, new ducts, new A/C this week.

Fortunately, I've had some friends step up to help me figure out how to organize the baby gear and determine what is still needed. I'm normally a very organized person but all the tiny little baby clothes look alike to me. Now they've been sorted into bins for newborn, 0-3, 3-6, 6-9, 9-12 and 1 year +. After a lot of hunting around, I'm pretty sure I'll be heading to Ikea this week to pick up some Trofast frames and bins for organizing all the baby stuff. Once he's off on his own in his own room, the bins will be great for toy storage and the like, but for now, I'll use them for storing diapers, ointments, clothes, even as a changing table. So much STUFF.

Everything is going to change very soon. I've lived a mostly tetherless, responsibility-free life for the past 25 years, and now, at a time when my friends are becoming grandparents, I'm having my first and only child. All my adult life I avoided even having pets because I wanted to be free to go places and do things without having to worry about who was watering, walking, feeding, and paying attention to pets. I avoided getting married because it didn't make sense if I wasn't having kids. I even avoided accumulating much in the way of things (except books) because it seems to me that people become owned by their things and tied to a place because things need space.

And now there is a baby coming, and I can't return him to the store if he's too much bother ;) I can't just make a quick 10 minute trip to the grocery store anymore. Every move is going to have to be planned, every moment of the baby's time accounted for so that he's not unaccompanied.  I've never minded being tied-up, but the knowledge that I'll soon be tied-down is freaking me out. 5 years ago someone I was dating told me I was commitment-phobic, and at the time, I thought that was rubbish. But CW was right about a lot of things, and it looks like he was right about that, too. I should send him an email and let him know. Men do love it when women tell them they're right :)

2 comments:

  1. Yesterday my husband and I left our kids (now 11 and 14) to leave the state (to NY from NJ) to see a movie. Next month we are heading west for 5 days without them. It took a long time, but yes, you will eventually go to the store without them. And - by the way - even short moments of autonomy feel strange.

    Then again, the thought of being tied up has always scared me. Being tied down... is my normal now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kelly,
    Don't presume that everything has to feel "tethered" or "planned". We took our infant daughter along with us to all our usual stuff: football game watching at loud sports bars (she slept under our table), dinner at our favorite sushi restaurant (she slept under our table), etc. All we had to do was get the hang of her sleep schedule, and keep a diaper kit in the car and we were still pretty mobile and active.

    Don't rule out being spontaneous. It just takes knowing the windows when it works best.

    ReplyDelete

I'm not sure how good the Blogger spam comment filter is, so I'm moderating all comments for now.