Twenty twenty twenty-four hours to go, I wanna be sedated...

Actually, I have no time for sedation. There is laundry to be done, nursery items to be organized, bags to be packed. There's thank-you notes to write up while we still have time, as well as e-mail correspondences to catch up on because hey, I want to talk to my friends one last time before the whole world changes before my eyes.

There is the attempt to refrain from burning my copy of The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy, once one of my favorite pre-natal tomes, after reading last night that they consider pre-scheduled c-sections to be only for women who have placenta previa, triplets, or a vain desire to keep tight vaginal muscles combined with a doctor willing to screw the insurance company to pay for the procedure. As I have neither triplets nor placentia previa, I really do not appreciate the implication here. Nor do I appreciate the fact that every other woman on the planet will consider me to be that vain - already I'm getting the comments of "you're so lucky," along with my mom being relieved that "you don't have to go through all that" and congratulating me for making the right choice, as if I actually had one. I had my Lamaze instructor telling our class to keep positive thoughts around April 26 for Maranie to go into labor so she'd feel what having a baby is really like, then following that up with a ten-minute homily on how it doesn't matter how your child is born in the long run. Gee, thanks. :-P Even better was Jason's sister using his congratulatory call for the (drug-free) birth of her child on Thursday to start slamming me for using painkillers at MY delivery. ("It's not like you can have a cesearean without them" he told her tersely just before getting off the phone, thus unfortunately putting him in the middle of the latest round of Sister v. Wife, which of course is not where I like for him to be.) Isn't it nice to know that I get to celebrate the birth of my first child with the knowledge that I'll be burned at the stake by every mother on the planet for something that's beyond my control?

Then there is the attempt to get as much of the birth announcement order finished as possible before the birth, so the items will be availalbe ASAP after Veronica is born. While we've picked out the style, the font, and the font color of the announcement, we're having great difficulty with the wording, wishing to add the term " - insert fanfare here - " or some similar nonsense but not finding a good way to actually do so. (And you just know, don't you, that the phrase will result in the delay of the order as some twit from the company calls me and says "Yes, Ms. Warren, um, we don't have an option for sound effects in our cards" while I'm banging my head up against a wall, wondering just how stupid people can be.)

Then there is the attempt to find a place for Veronica's four thermometers. I don't know how this happened, but Jason's in the nursery now trying to organize it and just did a thermometer roll call. We have a temporal artery thermometer (read: forehead), an ear one, a rectal, and an oral. Kinda scary to think how many orifices we can take her tempature in now, isn't it? :-P

And finally (not really, but it's called I don't have time to mention anything else right now!) I need to get showered and be presentable by the time Susan stops by to test out the key we had made for her, so she can make a run for us if necessary. (Darren is also our gopher, but he lives farther away, plus he normally works second shift; Susan is perfect for evening runs to the house or wherever, if necessary.)

So here's the last posting of Maranie not equalling "Mommy." Wish me luck tomorrow. Wish Jason luck. Wish Veronica luck. We're all three going to need it.

And the countdown has begun. We're not even talking weeks now, it's down to days.

First off, the results of my latest prenatal visit: Status quo, with a little more info on why I'm getting a c-section. Not only is my pelvis fused together tighter than the Hoover Dam (which would make sense, since I'm also retaining as much water as said structure), but the baby has not "dropped" either. She is no where near my pelvis, which is why there's no pressure on my cervix to dilate or anything like that. This also explains too why I'm measuring so large and look so enormous, as my kid is "floating" as the doctor described it. The downside to this is, Veronica is now estimated to be born at a weight somewhere between 7.5 lbs and the upper 8 lbs. This is still very healthy, don't get me wrong, but the fact that I'm not giving birth to some huge baby means that, yup, I'm apparently just FAT. :-P

In the meantime, I've been counting down stupid things in my head. Stuff like "This will be the last Monday I'll be at work and not be a mom." "Wednesday night will be the last new episode of 'South Park' I will ever see before I become a mother." Upon taking off my bra last night, I looked down and realized that, a mere week into the future, I'd be using these things to feed my first child. (When I shared this with Jason, he took the observation a step further, noting that breastfeeding is the first time women actually use their breasts. He said that this is most likely why so many women have problems breastfeeding - if you had wings all your life but they were strapped to your back, would you instantly be able to fly the moment they were cut free? A point to ponder when Veronica fails to latch on for the umpteenth time next week....)

To bring her birth even further into reality, I was instructed to get some pre-admissions blood work done. My doctor said at my visit last Friday that I could go in on that day, but Wednesday was the latest I could get it done. I opted to come back some time this week. Then the woman at the scheduling desk said I could park in the 10-minute parking when I returned, because I'd just be in and out of the place.

I went on yesterday and was there for over an hour and a half. Good thing I'd opted to park in the garage.

First, the desk women at pre-admissions started murmurring to one another when I handed them Dr. Paul's prescription, muttering phrases such as "I didn't think we did these things here anymore" before asking me to take a seat. I waited about 15-20 minutes while leafing through a copy of "Rosie" magazine, the only one in the waiting area that had nothing to do with sports or being active during retirement. Then they called me over to give a copy of my insurance card (I had it out before they asked), confirm all my info, and then sent me back to the waiting area. I continued to read "Rosie" and formed the opinion that the magazine going under didn't have to do with Rosie quitting or coming out of the closet; instead, it was due to the fact that the writing contained within is utter crap. This took another God-knows-how-long until a nurse came out and massacred my name. When I responded to the unintelligible M-word the preceeded "WARREN", she led me into a little examining room and left me there for another long period of time, at least to an exhausted pregnant chick. I pulled out the footrest and laid down on the bed. Finally some guy in a white coat comes in to take my blood and make small talk about is this your first baby, have you found out what you're having, yada yada.

The needle is in my arm when he calmly says, "You'll probably have to have this done again later this week, we can't use blood work from a week before for this sort of thing."

Um, listen here, assholes, isn't this something you should've told me BEFORE you tapped a vein after making me wait over an hour?!?!

Then he places a hospital bracelet on my arm and tells me I need to leave it on until the surgery, "unless you have to come back later this week, in which case you'll get a new bracelet." It has stickers on it to match me up to my own blood, and he says it should last the week. Then he tells me to have a good day "and a blessed day!", pronouncing it "BLES-sed". Oy.

One of the stickers falls off at home when I'm using the wrist assist on my computer, and the entire thing looks pretty skanky after one shower in it. This whole thing is making me, for lack of a better term, confused. So I call my doctor's office, only to be told by her nurse that they can do the blood work when I come in that morning for the surgery. This, of course, makes me wonder why I'd wasted an hour and a half of my time, plus two bucks for parking, in the first place.

With any luck, this will be the last time I get so horrendously frustrated before becoming a mom. :-P

We picked out our birth announcements. They are cute and tasteful. You'd think this would be a given.

*rubs temples in exasperation*

You would not BELIEVE the crap we've seen for birth announcements. We've seen sporting event ones that try WAY too hard to incorporate the baby's stats into, well, STATS. We've seen golfing-themed ones that announce the arrival of "the new caddy." We even saw a computer-themed one, which sounds cool until you realize it was a cartoon of a baby sitting in front of a laptop with the title of "OUR LITTLE SURFER GIRL HAS ARRIVED!" *sigh*

But the worst was a Western-themed one that I really, truly wish there was a link to. Amongst all the other "arrival of our buckaroo" nonsense was the following phrase:

"Ma's a little saddle sore, an' Pa is dancin' a jig."

I'd sigh at this point. Or rub my temples again. But I truly can't find any sort of gesture that would properly convey just how...stupid? awful? just plain WRONG? that card is. Here's hoping I can't find it online because no one was damn fool enough to purchase it.

I went to my latest prenatal appointment yesterday and got some news:

I don't know when, exactly, I might go into labor, but it won't be after April 28. Save the date, everyone, because I'm scheduled for a c-section that morning at 9:30 a.m.

Why? OK, here's the freaky part. As if the blue-lip phenomenon (which happened again today, once again at Babies R Us), the Bell's palsy, and the unusually large little girl I'm carrying weren't freaky enough, I just found out yesterday that my pelvis never opened.

(A primer for those who haven't been studying pregnancy-related things like I've been doing: When you're pregnant, cartlidge in your body expands because there's a little bit in the pelvis that can slightly separate the pubic bone, thus making a wider opening for the baby to be born. This is why pregnant women get overall joint pain, because the body can't send the signal to just loosen up that pelvic cartlidge; instead, it loosens up ALL of it to some extent. This pelvic opening happens to every mom-to-be, even just a little bit. Every mom, of course, except for ME.)

My doctor said I could get a second opinion, but frankly, my pelvis is closed so tightly that she couldn't even do a proper examination to see how my cervix was progressing. (This is probably the most graphic this blog has gotten so far; I could go into more detail but you probably don't want to read it, trust me.) There's still a chance that things could change, but my pelvis was supposed to have all this stuff happen gradually over the course of the past several months, not all-at-once in the next few weeks. Combine this with the fact that I'm supposed to be giving birth to Uber-baby, and you've got Instant Cesarean. (And if all this weren't enough to convince me, my mom and I discussed how my collarbone had to be broken for me to be born because I got stuck, and I wasn't that big of a baby - 7 lb., 13 oz., 19 inches long, and most of the weight was rolls of fat, as I was quite the chubby little newborn. Mom had an easier time with my sister, but she was only 5 lb., 15 oz., plus I've theorized that since my mom was only in her teens when she had my sister, then perhaps her pelvic bones weren't fully formed at that time and therefore were a bit more flexible. I don't know how medically sound that is, but I've heard weirder stuff than that be true, so I might have something there. My point being, this pelvic bone thing could be genetic.)

Jason and I have all sorts of feelings about this. Jason's first was both dismay and relief of fate, of all things - the genetic combination of my inflexible pelvis and his family's history of very large babies, which is unfortunate, but not as unfortunate as what could've happened had we been a couple in the last century, which would've left Jason a childless widower at 28. Let's face it, given the circumstances, we're very lucky that it's 2003. On a different note, I initially felt relieved at having a "stop date" - I hate uncertainty, as anyone who knows me can attest, so at least having a date I will not go past (and having it relatively soon) relieves me. However, I also know that while other women have these elaborate stories of when and where they went into labor, for how long, etc., I'm just going to have a tale of getting prepped for surgery. Yeah, I feel like I'm missing out somewhat - sure, I'm cracking jokes about my Lamaze classes turning out to be a waste of money, but it really does make me sad, even though I know the result will be the same - the birth of a beautiful baby whom I already adore. Plus surgery is scary (getting my wisdom teeth removed has been the most traumatic and invasive thing my body's been through thus far), as is the knowledge that I won't get to hold Veronica right after she's born and do all that snuggling and cuddling that new moms always seem to do minutes after birth - I'll be getting stitched up, no moving allowed. (I asked about that weeks ago, in a just-in-case scenario, not knowing it would be a definite thing.)

In the middle of all this, Jason's pregnant sister Anne freaked out over the date on which I will give birth - April 28, which is the same birthday as her husband's severely retarded brother. She does not think this bodes well; Jason has already mentioned that she will keep her legs crossed if she has to, or push all that much harder, to make sure that if labor arises around that date, she will give birth on the 27th or the 29th instead. (She's due on April 23, btw.) I know this is absolute nonsense, don't get me wrong - who knows how many millions of people have been born on April 28th and are completely fine - but to hear this sort of thing really doesn't help my overall state of mind.

I guess I should add some good news, this about the palsy: It's starting to go away. This week has been miraculous to me. I can close my right eye now, no problem, although the muscle responses aren't as strong as they used to be. (That's even getting better, though.) I can give you a full grin (although a full, toothy smile is still not there and I'm still really lopsided when I laugh.) I can drink pop from a can or a bottle and not dribble it all over, I can speak just fine (unless I lapse back into my West Virginia accent, which has nothing to do with the palsy but is just annoying sometimes), and I can even do my Billy Idol snarl on both sides of my mouth now. (Haven't seen it? Ask me next time you see me. It's priceless. I'll even throw in a couple bars of "White Wedding" for free.) The only thing that still isn't getting noticeably better is my right eyebrow and the right side of my forehead - it looks like I OD'd on Botox. Joan Rivers would run up to me and ask who does my work. You get the idea. But I'm just all shades of happy that, before I have Veronica, I got back the two abilities that I feel matter most: The ability to close that eye, for health reasons alone, and the ability to smile at her the first time I see her, for many more reasons than that. :-)

Um, I don't think my dad gets the concept of "palsy."

I talked to my mom and dad today on the phone. Mom had taken some pictures when she was here last week and they've already been developed. Naturally, I don't have much of a facial expression because half my face isn't cooperating. (I'd ask my readers to try it, but you really can't.)

So here goes the conversation regarding said photos:

Dad: "I thought you looked grumpy in all those pictures."
Mom (exasperated voice): "Thom, I told you, she didn't want to smile because of her face."
Me: "Um, I was trying to smile. Only half my face succeeded."

*sigh*

In the meantime, one of our homework assignments for Lamaze class is for the moms to write letters to our babies about what it's like to be pregnant with them. While I will do so, I'd like to point out that I could just be really lazy and print out a copy of this weblog. :-P

Best quote of the week regarding pregnancy is from our Lamaze instructor, Pat. Picture her: Middle-aged. Grey hair, short. Looks like a grandma. IS a grandma. She's very slender, always well-dressed, very short. Wears very nice but way too large glasses. Always has a serene smile on her face and speaks in pleasant tones, with pleasant words. You will never hear her curse or raise her voice. Extra note: She's a lactation consultant, and Jason and I have some disagreement over whether she introduced herself the first night as a minister's wife or as a minister herself. You see her now. You have an idea what she sounds like.

So here's the quote:

"(When you're in labor) you may experience some diarrhea. And at this point you're thinking, 'No. This is not cute.'"

Sorry, that's been cracking me up all week.

That's all for now, as I go back to what I've been doing most successfully today, which is sleeping.

*sigh*

Do reduced hours at work really count when you still have the same workload, and are still expected to get it all done?

I don't know how much rest and stress relief I'm really getting when I dream of billing foreclosure files, both at night at during daytime naps.

I guess dreaming of work is better than the random thoughts I'll have in the middle of the night. They're always disturbing, out of left field, and end just before I doze back off again. An example from last night:

I awaken because my leg is stiff. This is all. I have been sleeping peacefully. I readjust the offending leg to a more comfortable position. As I do so, this thought pops into my head, out of the blue:

"Babies are attracted to attractive faces. Attractiveness at its core is based on symmetry. Therefore, baby will be repulsed by an unsymmetrical face. Veronica will look at Jason and love him, but will instantly shirk away from me because my face is so uneven right now. We will not bond and she will not love me."

And then: ZZZZZZZZZZZZ......I'm back out.

This wouldn't be so annoying/disturbing/just plain sad if it were an isolated incident. But no, it's the only the latest one. As it turns out, I awakened this morning with amazing mobility in my right cheek, as I think I exercised it in my sleep after that insta-panic. But most of these have no positive outcomes, and only result in me feeling as if I've gotten five minutes of sleep in the middle of a noisy train station.

At least Jason and I had a nice time last night at our childbirth classes. I could go over second-level breathing and some other stuff, but nah, what psyched me was our tour of the maternity ward. And let's face it, the birthing rooms, postpartum rooms, etc. - who cares, because we got to look inside the nursery window. Ooooo.....Little newborns, just hours old, sleeping and crying and wiggling around. Every one of them adorable - but not nearly as adorable as Veronica will be, of course. ;-) I just kept looking at them and tried to imagine one of them as mine and Jason's, tried to better reconcile the rumblings in my abdomen with the beautiful little babies we saw in the window. I really, really can't wait to see Veronica now.

And despite all my stress lately, I'm actually feeling confident about the birth. Like I told Jason, "I'll be OK, because dammit, I don't have any other choice!" And it's true. It's not going to do me any good to completely fly apart, and it won't do Veronica or Jason any good, either. That doesn't mean I'm going to feel completely in control and happy happy, joy joy the whole time - please, I'm smart enough to know better - but I think I'll be strong enough to handle it. In fact, I KNOW I will. And that's because I have no other choice. :-) Now I'm just hoping that this good vibe lasts for the next several weeks, or at least during labor, although said good vibe would be a helluva lot better if I weren't so stressed out and could get a decent night's sleep.