December6

December 6, 2001

Week 29

I don't think a week can go by without some kind of drama occurring. This past weekend, my Grandma Zamrazil died. I was gone Saturday morning to a Babies 'R' Us registry "seminar" where they drag you through the whole store - mostly with people very early in pregnancy who could handle that a lot better! - and tell you everything that you "need" to add to your registry. I went with mom and we actually had a really good time, despite the sore feet and back and having to stand there while we heard all about why we should buy, for our convenience and the safety of our baby of course, the Cadillac of Baby Strollers. Yeah right, never mind the fact that it actually WEIGHS about as much as a Caddie too, I wouldn't want to drag that behemoth anywhere even if it could fit in my trunk. Anyway, the presentation went on for a long time (I did get breakfast and a cute little koala bear stuffed animal out of it!) and then Mom and I went through the store to finish more of my registry. Then it was time to rush home and run out the door again to make it in time for my friend April's baby shower. That was a lot of fun, too, so my day was becoming extremely exhausting but very fun overall...

Then Saturday night I got a call from Nan. Grandma had died. It was shocking news of course, as a phone call like that always is, but it wasn't completely unexpected either, that it happened in this timing, because of last Monday being the second anniversary of the day Daddy and Pat were killed in the car accident. Apparently Grandma had a really bad stroke, and then kept having them all week long, and didn't recover the rest of the week. She died Saturday at about 2:15. I really honestly thought that she wouldn't have made it as long as she did - with Grandpa already gone 10 years, and then when Daddy was killed she really started to do even worse health-wise. She managed to make it two years, which I'm grateful for, and I also found out from talking with my cousin Lynn that Grandma had mentioned several times recently that she was just ready to go. She also told me that for a couple hours on Saturday, her breathing became really labored, and then at one point Lynn said to her that it was okay for her to go, and soon after that was when she died, so it was all very peaceful and on her time. She was ready to go home to be with God. I'm very grateful that I was able to get down there to see her twice in the last three years (each time I left her I always wondered if it would be the last time). They all live down in Orlando, so it's hard to get down there very often. I also had to miss the funeral on Tuesday (it was just a simple graveside service; she was buried right with Grandpa, just across from where Daddy and Pat are too) because being in my third trimester, I shouldn't fly, and a straight 20+ hour drive would have been really hard on me too even if Nan and Phil would have done all the driving, so there was pretty much no way I could get to go down there for it. I would have really liked to be there, but I know everyone understands - it is a long way away. Besides how far away it is, I also don't have any money for a trip right now and I don't have any extra days off of work for vacation either. I really need to save up the remaining few I have for the baby, since (as it CURRENTLY stands, if I end up having to come back to work right away) I'll only be getting 6 weeks maternity leave without using vacation days carried over from this year. So, I'm sad for me and I'm sad for the family, but I'm not sad for her. I know she's now where she wanted most to be. One of the hardest things for me is knowing she'll never meet our baby, and Natalie will grow up not knowing her in any way other than pictures. It's sad that she'll be even farther away from knowing her Czech heritage. I have Grandma's recipes (and now I'm even more glad I made knedlich soup last Monday -what timing!) but when I make them it is nothing like hers. I remember she was the first person down there that I called to tell that I was pregnant, and she was so excited for me. She'd been praying for me for a long time for this baby. (She knew we were having fertility problems.) Sunday morning was probably the hardest on me of the whole week, because there's a little old lady at my church who I've always thought looked and acted a lot like Grandma Zamrazil, and when I saw her that morning I just started really crying. Other than that though, I've been feeling okay. Lynn is going to send us copies of the obituary from the paper, and the funeral cards, which will be good to have. And I told everyone that I was going to try to make it down for a visit sometime soon to show off little Natalie! :) I'm really, really going to miss her. It is comforting, though, to think that now she's back with my grandpa, who she was married to for over 50 years, and also my dad. She was never the same after both of them were gone. (I've also been making sure I keep Aunt Darlene in my prayers right now; with now her husband, father, mother, and brother gone, it's just her and her daughters (my cousins) and their kids. That has to be really hard on her, even if she is also relieved that grandma is no longer in any pain.)

We love you Grandma Zamrazil!

I had my latest doctor appointment on Monday morning. My total weight as of that morning - 24 pounds!! After not gaining weight - and even LOSING many times! - for several months, I gained 20 pounds in the last two months. I told the nurse it MUST have jumped so high again from my appointment two weeks ago only because of the orange drink I had just ingested for my glucose tolerance test. I'm sure that's it, really... Speaking of that test, it came back good, at 115 - no gestational diabetes for me! My second rubella test did come back that I'm not immune, though. So hopefully I haven't come into contact with anyone with german measles since May, and hopefully I won't for the rest of the pregnancy either. By this point though, if I would, it doesn't stand as much of a chance of hurting the baby as it could have earlier. I will have to get another vaccination for it, though, after she's born. So it looks like Natalie and I will be going in for our immunization shots together! (Hmm, I wonder if there are any concerns with getting this vaccine and breastfeeding? I'll have to remember to ask about that next time. ) Dr. Teague didn't seem concerned about my weight gain though. When she measured my belly, she told me the baby grew a LOT in the last two weeks (I think it even shocked her, she hardly ever says "wow!" when it comes to those things!), which I could have told her just because of my clothing situation alone. She really had another growth spurt, and now suddenly I do not fit into more than half of my maternity clothes. Even the ones I had last wore pretty comfortably just two weeks ago. Last week I made the mistake of trying on each of the four maternity dresses that I own, and every single one of them, if I could even get it to go over my belly, looked obscenely too tight. I couldn't believe how horrid one of my favorite dresses looked, this was one very flowy, billowy dress that looked really good just a couple weeks ago, and now the seams were being pulled so tight around my middle that you could see where the person who sewed it made a crooked seam! And I won't even mention what the dress looked like from a side view, ugh. I think from hereon out I'm going to be sticking with either pants or at least skirt separates, because in one-piece dresses I just feel like one big lump. I've seen lots of pregnant women who look really good in one-piece dresses, but I just look very, very round, I don't really know why. I just have to keep telling myself, it's normal, and it is just all tummy! My arms and legs are still as much sticks as they have always been! It's just such a shock that it has happened so fast though, that I could go from one week being able to wear something MADE for someone who is pregnant, and the next week that same piece of clothing doesn't have a chance of going over my belly. I also think I'll probably be wearing the same pants and shirts that I wear to work to our AI Christmas party this year, nothing to dress up in for me! And I still have -let me check really fast- 78 days to go until my due date! (Today is Day 202 by the way!) I just can't imagine how I'm going to look two months from now, if she keeps up this rate of growth anyway! Oh, I'm now officially going to the doctor every two weeks (I went two weeks ago just because of the leg pain that I was having.) I've got all my appointments now scheduled through my due date. I'll be going every two weeks through January 16, then after that I'll be going every week until I deliver. I'm even scheduled for one on February 25 - since she's consistently been measuring a little big, if I make it that far, that appointment probably will be nothing more than to schedule an induction, probably!

One more thing I wanted to add this week: I got a pregnancy pillow! It's called a Snoogle and it's a lovely, but odd-shaped, thing. It's like a full body pillow but it's sort of horseshoe (or, as Phil describes it, Christmas ornament hook) shaped - it goes around your head, behind your back, between your legs, and then under your tummy, for full body support instead of the gazillion pillows I was using (which was really irritating because I'd have to wake up to re-adjust them all through the night - not to mention I'm now not taking up most of the bed from Phil anymore, which I'm sure he's enjoying!). For the past three days that I've been using it, I still am waking up often through the night because I just do that a lot these days (I think third trimester lack of sleep must be God's way of preparing you for night feedings), but when I do sleep I feel like I sleep a LOT better than I have in a LONG time, and I've actually woken up not feeling more tired than when I went to bed, which is how I'd been feeling lately. I love this pillow. I feel completely supported all around my body, and it keeps me from rolling over on my back but it supports me in front too so I don't get achy. It sort of feels like I am "spooned" all night, plus the added support under my tummy too. I'm really enjoying getting some sleep again. Maybe I'll stop being so grumpy when I wake up in the mornings now (but don't count on it Phil, it IS still morning, afterall) Now if I could just figure out a fool-proof method for getting rid of the hearburn, acid reflux, and abdomen and sciatic nerve pain, I wouldn't mind being pregnant for a lot longer! (ha, ha, ha, ha...)

This is a long enough entry so I need to end it now, but I did just want to mention one more thing: I will never take my film to get developed at Rite-Aid ever again. Last weekend I brought in my pictures to get developed, including belly pictures for week 27 (yes, two weeks ago, I'm slow I know), pictures of Mom and Phil finishing up the kitchen wallpaper, AND, among a few other odds and ends, a picture of our dug up front yard after the 7 ½ foot hole was excavated for the broken water pipe. They LOST the pictures! They have record of them being developed, but they were lost as they were sending them back to the store, and they have no way of tracking them to know where the envelope went to. It could be sitting in another store somewhere (in which case they may EVENTUALLY be found) or they could have fallen out of the truck in the middle of the road, for all anyone could tell us. They have no idea. As a scrapbooker, I was NOT happy about this. I'm just glad the pictures weren't of something really important, like wedding pictures or the birth or our baby, but for all they know, they could be! I'm probably just going to bite the bullet and pay twice as much for photo developing at Cord from now on, at least there they seem to know their left hand from their right. In any case, there are no new pictures this time like I thought there would be. Maybe my 27 week belly pictures will show up back at the store a year from now.

Ooh, I just realized one other thing: yesterday, December 5th, was the fourth anniversary of the day Phil proposed to me. And thus began all of this...



	December 6, 2001 Week 29 I don't think a week can go by without some kind of drama occurring. This past weekend, my Grandma Zamrazil died. I was gone Saturday morning to a Babies 'R' Us registry "seminar" where they drag you through the whole store - mostly with people very early in pregnancy who could handle that a lot better! - and tell you everything that you "need" to add to your registry. I went with mom and we actually had a really good time, despite the sore feet and back and having to stand there while we heard all about why we should buy, for our convenience and the safety of our baby of course, the Cadillac of Baby Strollers. Yeah right, never mind the fact that it actually WEIGHS about as much as a Caddie too, I wouldn't want to drag that behemoth anywhere even if it could fit in my trunk. Anyway, the presentation went on for a long time (I did get breakfast and a cute little koala bear stuffed animal out of it!) and then Mom and I went through the store to finish more of my registry. Then it was time to rush home and run out the door again to make it in time for my friend April's baby shower. That was a lot of fun, too, so my day was becoming extremely exhausting but very fun overall... Then Saturday night I got a call from Nan. Grandma had died. It was shocking news of course, as a phone call like that always is, but it wasn't completely unexpected either, that it happened in this timing, because of last Monday being the second anniversary of the day Daddy and Pat were killed in the car accident. Apparently Grandma had a really bad stroke, and then kept having them all week long, and didn't recover the rest of the week. She died Saturday at about 2:15. I really honestly thought that she wouldn't have made it as long as she did - with Grandpa already gone 10 years, and then when Daddy was killed she really started to do even worse health-wise. She managed to make it two years, which I'm grateful for, and I also found out from talking with my cousin Lynn that Grandma had mentioned several times recently that she was just ready to go. She also told me that for a couple hours on Saturday, her breathing became really labored, and then at one point Lynn said to her that it was okay for her to go, and soon after that was when she died, so it was all very peaceful and on her time. She was ready to go home to be with God. I'm very grateful that I was able to get down there to see her twice in the last three years (each time I left her I always wondered if it would be the last time). They all live down in Orlando, so it's hard to get down there very often. I also had to miss the funeral on Tuesday (it was just a simple graveside service; she was buried right with Grandpa, just across from where Daddy and Pat are too) because being in my third trimester, I shouldn't fly, and a straight 20+ hour drive would have been really hard on me too even if Nan and Phil would have done all the driving, so there was pretty much no way I could get to go down there for it. I would have really liked to be there, but I know everyone understands - it is a long way away. Besides how far away it is, I also don't have any money for a trip right now and I don't have any extra days off of work for vacation either. I really need to save up the remaining few I have for the baby, since (as it CURRENTLY stands, if I end up having to come back to work right away) I'll only be getting 6 weeks maternity leave without using vacation days carried over from this year. So, I'm sad for me and I'm sad for the family, but I'm not sad for her. I know she's now where she wanted most to be. One of the hardest things for me is knowing she'll never meet our baby, and Natalie will grow up not knowing her in any way other than pictures. It's sad that she'll be even farther away from knowing her Czech heritage. I have Grandma's recipes (and now I'm even more glad I made knedlich soup last Monday -what timing!) but when I make them it is nothing like hers. I remember she was the first person down there that I called to tell that I was pregnant, and she was so excited for me. She'd been praying for me for a long time for this baby. (She knew we were having fertility problems.) Sunday morning was probably the hardest on me of the whole week, because there's a little old lady at my church who I've always thought looked and acted a lot like Grandma Zamrazil, and when I saw her that morning I just started really crying. Other than that though, I've been feeling okay. Lynn is going to send us copies of the obituary from the paper, and the funeral cards, which will be good to have. And I told everyone that I was going to try to make it down for a visit sometime soon to show off little Natalie! :) I'm really, really going to miss her. It is comforting, though, to think that now she's back with my grandpa, who she was married to for over 50 years, and also my dad. She was never the same after both of them were gone. (I've also been making sure I keep Aunt Darlene in my prayers right now; with now her husband, father, mother, and brother gone, it's just her and her daughters (my cousins) and their kids. That has to be really hard on her, even if she is also relieved that grandma is no longer in any pain.) We love you Grandma Zamrazil! I had my latest doctor appointment on Monday morning. My total weight as of that morning - 24 pounds!! After not gaining weight - and even LOSING many times! - for several months, I gained 20 pounds in the last two months. I told the nurse it MUST have jumped so high again from my appointment two weeks ago only because of the orange drink I had just ingested for my glucose tolerance test. I'm sure that's it, really... Speaking of that test, it came back good, at 115 - no gestational diabetes for me! My second rubella test did come back that I'm not immune, though. So hopefully I haven't come into contact with anyone with german measles since May, and hopefully I won't for the rest of the pregnancy either. By this point though, if I would, it doesn't stand as much of a chance of hurting the baby as it could have earlier. I will have to get another vaccination for it, though, after she's born. So it looks like Natalie and I will be going in for our immunization shots together! (Hmm, I wonder if there are any concerns with getting this vaccine and breastfeeding? I'll have to remember to ask about that next time. ) Dr. Teague didn't seem concerned about my weight gain though. When she measured my belly, she told me the baby grew a LOT in the last two weeks (I think it even shocked her, she hardly ever says "wow!" when it comes to those things!), which I could have told her just because of my clothing situation alone. She really had another growth spurt, and now suddenly I do not fit into more than half of my maternity clothes. Even the ones I had last wore pretty comfortably just two weeks ago. Last week I made the mistake of trying on each of the four maternity dresses that I own, and every single one of them, if I could even get it to go over my belly, looked obscenely too tight. I couldn't believe how horrid one of my favorite dresses looked, this was one very flowy, billowy dress that looked really good just a couple weeks ago, and now the seams were being pulled so tight around my middle that you could see where the person who sewed it made a crooked seam! And I won't even mention what the dress looked like from a side view, ugh. I think from hereon out I'm going to be sticking with either pants or at least skirt separates, because in one-piece dresses I just feel like one big lump. I've seen lots of pregnant women who look really good in one-piece dresses, but I just look very, very round, I don't really know why. I just have to keep telling myself, it's normal, and it is just all tummy! My arms and legs are still as much sticks as they have always been! It's just such a shock that it has happened so fast though, that I could go from one week being able to wear something MADE for someone who is pregnant, and the next week that same piece of clothing doesn't have a chance of going over my belly. I also think I'll probably be wearing the same pants and shirts that I wear to work to our AI Christmas party this year, nothing to dress up in for me! And I still have -let me check really fast- 78 days to go until my due date! (Today is Day 202 by the way!) I just can't imagine how I'm going to look two months from now, if she keeps up this rate of growth anyway! Oh, I'm now officially going to the doctor every two weeks (I went two weeks ago just because of the leg pain that I was having.) I've got all my appointments now scheduled through my due date. I'll be going every two weeks through January 16, then after that I'll be going every week until I deliver. I'm even scheduled for one on February 25 - since she's consistently been measuring a little big, if I make it that far, that appointment probably will be nothing more than to schedule an induction, probably! One more thing I wanted to add this week: I got a pregnancy pillow! It's called a Snoogle and it's a lovely, but odd-shaped, thing. It's like a full body pillow but it's sort of horseshoe (or, as Phil describes it, Christmas ornament hook) shaped - it goes around your head, behind your back, between your legs, and then under your tummy, for full body support instead of the gazillion pillows I was using (which was really irritating because I'd have to wake up to re-adjust them all through the night - not to mention I'm now not taking up most of the bed from Phil anymore, which I'm sure he's enjoying!). For the past three days that I've been using it, I still am waking up often through the night because I just do that a lot these days (I think third trimester lack of sleep must be God's way of preparing you for night feedings), but when I do sleep I feel like I sleep a LOT better than I have in a LONG time, and I've actually woken up not feeling more tired than when I went to bed, which is how I'd been feeling lately. I love this pillow. I feel completely supported all around my body, and it keeps me from rolling over on my back but it supports me in front too so I don't get achy. It sort of feels like I am "spooned" all night, plus the added support under my tummy too. I'm really enjoying getting some sleep again. Maybe I'll stop being so grumpy when I wake up in the mornings now (but don't count on it Phil, it IS still morning, afterall) Now if I could just figure out a fool-proof method for getting rid of the hearburn, acid reflux, and abdomen and sciatic nerve pain, I wouldn't mind being pregnant for a lot longer! (ha, ha, ha, ha...) This is a long enough entry so I need to end it now, but I did just want to mention one more thing: I will never take my film to get developed at Rite-Aid ever again. Last weekend I brought in my pictures to get developed, including belly pictures for week 27 (yes, two weeks ago, I'm slow I know), pictures of Mom and Phil finishing up the kitchen wallpaper, AND, among a few other odds and ends, a picture of our dug up front yard after the 7 ½ foot hole was excavated for the broken water pipe. They LOST the pictures! They have record of them being developed, but they were lost as they were sending them back to the store, and they have no way of tracking them to know where the envelope went to. It could be sitting in another store somewhere (in which case they may EVENTUALLY be found) or they could have fallen out of the truck in the middle of the road, for all anyone could tell us. They have no idea. As a scrapbooker, I was NOT happy about this. I'm just glad the pictures weren't of something really important, like wedding pictures or the birth or our baby, but for all they know, they could be! I'm probably just going to bite the bullet and pay twice as much for photo developing at Cord from now on, at least there they seem to know their left hand from their right. In any case, there are no new pictures this time like I thought there would be. Maybe my 27 week belly pictures will show up back at the store a year from now. Ooh, I just realized one other thing: yesterday, December 5th, was the fourth anniversary of the day Phil proposed to me. And thus began all of this...