Quick update:

Went for my latest prenatal visit yesterday. Dr. Paul gave me an ultrasound to get Veronica's measurements and, therefore, approximate size. We got to see a blurry image of her little face (nose like mine and chubby little cheeks!), her little heart beating, one of her arms with a hand in a fist, and a confirmation that she is, indeed, a girl.

Then Dr. Paul gave us the skinny on how big she is. I'll give you an estimate on what she's supposed to be right now: I'm at 34.5 weeks. My uterus should measure around that. My baby, according to the BabyCenter.com chart (which you may or may not be able to link up to without being a member, I don't know), should be between 4.73 and 5.25 lbs.

My uterus measures at 41 weeks, and Veronica is approximately 7 lbs. My due date is not for another 5.5 weeks, and she still has another 2.5 weeks to go until her birth would not be considered premature.

Adding to all this, Dr. Paul has greatly restricted my work hours now, down to 25 hours a week (or 5 hours a day - I talked it over with our HR director and we agreed that 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. would work best for all involved.) I'm swelling up something fierce, and Dr. Paul admits that it could be causing or at least worsening the palsy. Plus I've been getting exhausted, and it's hard for me to move around (understandably so, considering I'm already the size of a woman who's overdue to have a child.) She said too that the swelling would go down with the more water I drink, and the more I lay on my left side. So off I go to chug some more agua and lounge on the sofa - which really isn't as fun as it sounds, at least not with mid-Saturday TV. :-P

To all those who read this and e-mail me, my sincerest apologies. I will catch up here on my correspondence and see how all of YOU are doing, I promise. In the meantime, though, I keep getting a little worse.

I'm getting more tests done for the blue-lips thing, as it continues from time to time and still exhausts me. The next test is on Monday and sounds totally unpleasant; I'll let you know just how bad once I go through with it. None of this seems to connect to the Bell's palsy, which gets better and worse throughout the course of any given day. It doesn't bother me until I try to walk by someone and just smile at them - which I can't do. Or try to laugh and feel only half my face reacting. Like I told Jason, you take things for granted sometimes. Like having a blink reflex in both eyes, or being able to drink pop out of a can without dribbling half of it down your shirt. Both of these conditions bother me, as I get exhausted and cannot even close both of my eyes to rest.

My mom has come in for a visit. She has cleaned every surface of this house twice, and the nursery has transformed under her care from a hodgepodge of baby goods to an actual room. I am very appreciative. But now that she is leaving tomorrow, I am pulled under her energy, and Jason's second wind, to go set up where all the wall hangings shall go in Veronica's room. I am too tired to even describe, my only joys right now being my baby's rumbling in my belly and the occasional tingles I'm starting to feel under my right cheek and the right side of my lips. And honestly, I can't tell you which one makes me happier right now.

More worrisome medical news:

When I posted that last entry, I failed to mention my tongue being numb the past three days. I failed to mention my watery eye and the numb right side of my face. Why? Because after the blue-lip thing turned out to be nothing, I didn't want to whine over nothing.

It got so bothersome, however, and so worrisome as well that I let Debbie, my office manager, in on it after I'd called my family doctor for an appointment. She insisted I call my OB/GYN, whose office insisted I go to the hospital via EMT.

So long story short, an ambulance ride from work to the emergency room, with Jason following behind (as he was already on his way to take me to my family doctor's appointment), and several doctors/EMT's/nurses running tests resulted in a benign but troublesome diagnosis: Bell's palsy.

This means pretty much what I'd mentioned above, plus some: I can't tightly close my right eye, if I can close it at all. I have a highly lopsided grin right now; when I laugh, I look like Popeye. I even drool a little when eating or drinking sometimes, as my lips don't have proper coordination on my right side. I'll have to wear an eye patch to sleep in, plus hydrate my right eye all day, every day, for a couple weeks. (Of course, contact lenses are right out, no pun intended, if you can believe that.)

What sucks is this: First off, they don't know what causes it. It's damage to a nerve, but they think it could be viral. Or it could be inflammation that's common in pregnancy. Whatever it is, they don't know how it's caused. The second thing that sucks is that they don't know how long it will last. I've heard two weeks to eight weeks to possibly permanently (although Bell's is supposed to be a temporary condition.)

I'll start taking anti-viral meds and steriods tomorrow for this, both prescribed with the OK from my OB/GYN, to make it better. I'm going to follow all the instructions and try to work my facial muscles on that side as much as possible, trying to get the nerve to awaken - it can't hurt.

I'm just sick of all this worry, just before Veronica's birth. It's not like I don't have enough to worry about as it is. And frankly, it's a vanity issue too. I don't want to be this Popeye wife. And when Veronica is born, I want her to see her mommy's smile, her real smile, and not these lopsided lips that have replaced it for who knows how long.

One thing I've found out damn quick: Just like regular clothes can slim you or make you look fat, so can maternity clothes make you look varying degrees of pregnant. The blouse I'm wearing today: OK. The nightgown I wore last night - EEK. I looked like I was carrying 5-year-old twins.

Since I seemed to have grown to such gigantic proportions in said sleepwear, I let Jason measure my belly last night. We found out that my waistline is at 48 inches. Yup, I'm 4 feet wide. As he also measured my height at 5'2", he grabbed a calculator and figured out that my girth is 77% the measurement of my height. This would really explain why there are slugs that move faster than me.

And why our kitty Pita has become such a hazard...You'd think that, after my ex-boyfriend's buddy Eric accidentally stepped on her while wearing steel-toed combat boots 7 years ago, she would've developed a healthy, lifelong fear of feet. But no, she's always hanging around mine, like a small fluffy pillow that is somehow attached to my ankles. Since I can no longer see my feet and only work on blind faith that they are still there, this means Pita has developed into a F.M.M.H. (Furry Mobile Moving Hazard - not redundant if you realize that while she's moving, I am too. I'm mobile, she's a hazard to my moving. So there, any naysayers to my grammar. You may be right anyway, but at this point I don't care, I just want to take a nap.)

Maybe I should buy and wear said steel-toed combat boots to keep Pita from being underfoot, not as a weapon (please!) but as a sight to bring back unpleasant memories of what happens when you're a little kitty who runs under people feet. But as previously noted, I look ridiculous enough in maternity "fashion" as it is. And who knows, I could already be wearing steel-toed combat boots for how heavy my legs feel anymore. Not like I can see what's on my feet, anyway. :-P

So last night was our first childbirth class. It was interesting and informative and all that stuff, but I'd have to say the highlight was seeing other women, as large as me, having trouble getting up off the floor and walking around with swollen ankles. I don't feel quite so much like a large freak at this point.

We went over a lot last night, but probably the least helpful item to me was the relaxation techniques. I just can't relax. I think too much to do so. Like when our instructor gave us a scenario to go over in our heads while our eyes were closed:

"Picture yourself in a field of flowers."

Oh no, not this. Too cliche. Too hokey. OK, I'll go along with it....

"It can be any type of flowers you want!"

OK, I'm in Lompoc. Or Carlsbad. This is great.

"It can be daisies. Or lilies."

Oh shit, it has to be all the SAME flower....

"It can be daffodils."

Ooo, I love daffodils.

"It can be roses."

ACK. Why would you do roses? Too many thorns. Prickly. ACK.

"Or carnations, or tulips...."

Tulips are nice. Nah, too Dutch. I'm picturing windmills now.

"...any flower you want."

Daffodils it is, then. Yay me, I'm relaxed.

"You're walking around your field, and you're picking your flowers."

Why? Daffodils can't possibly be easy to pick.

"You're picking them in bouquets of four."

Good, my hands won't get too full.

"And you're picking four bouquets of four."

That makes sixteen. SHIT! Where am I going to put all these damn flowers? I can't carry that many!

"You're carrying a basket, like a picnic basket."

Oh, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. My daffodils are looking like poppies now. Is Toto in the basket too?

"You're putting the bouquets in the basket."

Duh. "Somewhere over the rainbow...."

"You're tying each bouquet with a ribbon."

ACK!!! I can't do this! I'm picking four daffodils but I can't hold them together AND dangle this basket on my arm at the same time, let alone tie them! I can't tie them with one hand! Maybe if I toss them in the basket and kinda tilt it so they all fall together...

"You're putting your bouquets in the basket."

WAIT!!!! GO BACK, dammit, I'm not done tying up the first bouquet yet!

"And you're walking through your field of flowers...."

No I'm not, I'm cursing these fucking flowers for not tying together. The ribbon's slipping off. It's a mess!

"Now open your eyes. Feel the action."

Hey, there's the ceiling. I'm in Dr. Paul's waiting room. Thank god.

See what I mean? I tell Jason my thought process and he asks "And we're paying money for this class? Work with me!" He tries to tell me that maybe, MAYBE, the flowers have velcro on the stems and therefore will be held together without the bow. "Pffft," I scoff. "That's just silly." (Let's not even get into when part of the relaxation techniques told us to recite a poem or prayer or the like in our heads; my noggin instantly popped up "It's the End of the World as We Know It" but I started stressing when I realized I couldn't get past "That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes and aeroplanes, Lenny Bruce is not afraid....")

In other news....

Not like I didn't have enough make-believe crap to worry about, but an actual, legitimate concern has popped up: My lips are turning blue. It happened once at Babies R Us on Sunday, once when I was putting away laundry Sunday night, and again around noon yesterday at work. I went to my family doctor (my OB/GYN's office did not consider it to be a pregnancy problem, even though it might stem from my pregnancy), where they performed an EKG (normal) and scheduled me for an echocardiogram on Thursday, just to make sure my little ticker is, well, ticking properly. My doctor thinks, though, that the problem stems from my low blood pressure combined with my little body and this huge ole' baby attached. She said to drink more fluids, which I'll admit I don't get nearly enough of, but I also can't run off to the loo as much as I'd like already. So here I sit, about ready to float away while sucking down a grape soda that'll stain my lips so I can't tell if they're blue or not. I really don't care at this point, when all I want is a nap.

I've been horribly sleepy. I've been horribly moody. I've felt, in short, horrible. Plus huge.

Well, at least I'm not crazy: My doctor's appointment yesterday showed that I'm still measuring a little large. As in, I'm at 32.5 weeks of pregnancy, and my abdomen is measuring at 39 weeks.

Thirty-nine weeks.

This is just a tape-measure of my uterus. Part of it is my physical shape - I'm short, so the baby has no where to go but out. I wasn't exactly svelte before I got pregnant, so I know part of it is fat. And part of it is most likely water retention. But that's not all of it - my kid is big, that's all there is to it, and at the very least I get to see her on ultrasound again (this time in two weeks.)

So that's my big news (no pun intended), aside of course from the baby shower and an outpouring of generosity stemming from it. But I'm tired and feeling crappy (see above), so I'll mention that next time 'round so I can better convey how truly touched I've been by my friends and family as of late. :-)

I have blown up. Exploded. I'm even bigger now, and have morphed into the slowest bipedal creature on the planet. And to know I will get EVEN BIGGER for the next EIGHT WEEKS just kills me. I can barely walk now, and trust me, no one's strong enough to carry my ass around any more. :-P

I just read that Brooke Shields is due in May with her first child, also a girl. She said in an interview that although she has several names in mind, she has yet to pick one.

Please bear in mind that our favorite name for a boy was Gus. Then Emily Robison from the Dixie Chicks named her new son Charles Augustus in November, and now calls him Gus. Jason was pretty upset by this, pointing out that it could easily become a trendy name if just one celebrity names her kid that, and its lack o' pretention was one of the reasons we liked Gus. (And in case you're wondering, we're big Dixie Chicks fans.)

I have little to no opinion of Brooke Shields, but I'm telling you now, if she ends up calling her kid Veronica too, the woman's ending up on my Celebrity Shit List, joining such illustrious company as Martha Stewart, Anna Kournikova, John Edwards, and Avril Lavigne. Bleh.

Wow, it's been a while since I've updated this puppy, huh?

OK, now that the snowstorm of the century has ended, I have no excuse to not write, except one: I feel like total crap.

I'm HUGE. I am having trouble getting in and out of cars, or up from a seated position, or around in general. My back hurts. My stomach's getting all icky when I eat, from all the pressure on it. And let's not even talk about the sleep I cannot seem to get. I'm exhausted, mildly sick, and overall I just feel BAD.

At least I have somewhat of an excuse for feeling so huge: My last doctor's visit showed that Veronica's size is around 3 weeks ahead of schedule. My uterus was measuring at 33.5 weeks, although I was only at 30.5. (How do they measure a uterus, you might ask? Women who haven't been through this are instantly picturing some sort of medieval torture device, but they actually use a tape measure on top your belly. That's it. Ridiculous, isn't it?) My doctor said her size might even out, but then again, we took an unofficial measurement during the gender scan several weeks back, which showed a baby sized at 26.5 weeks when I was only at 24.5 at the time. This means that all the rude people who have asked "are you sure you're not having twins?" or the like are not entirely off the mark, if my baby's measuring almost a month ahead of where we should be. (Add that to the fact that I wasn't exactly svelte before getting pregnant, and my short height which means the baby has no direction to go but OUT, and you can imagine how gigantic I look.)

Big Baby also means a possible extra ultrasound and, if the trend continues, perhaps an early induced labor. Which I really wouldn't mind. The uncertainty factor scares the hell out of me; I don't mind going through childbirth, I just want to know WHEN. It's not like the due date means a whole hell of a lot - I'll have about a month-long window in which I could have the baby, and that's really not something you want to spring on a gal at any time, any where. And dammit, it would be nice if only to know that my legs will be shaved for the event.

And most importantly, having a big baby isn't unhealthy, from my understanding. I'd rather she be a little big than small, and my doctor will make sure she will not get so large that it will be unhealthy for ME. At least, not unhealthy at the time of birth. As for now, my feeling like crap can't possibly be good for either one of us.