Saturday, March 24, 2007

Stress Test vs. Non-Stress Test

A few years ago, my father went to the hospital for a stress test. They had him run on a treadmill while they monitored various heart-related things. The end result, as my mother tells it, is that he went straight from the treadmill to a gurney to having surgery for a blocked artery that had been previously undetected. The particular nature of this type of blocked artery is apparently nicknamed 'the widowmaker'; it's what killed John Ritter. So, stress tests are our friends for catching hidden things.

I had a non-stress test a few days ago, ordered by the on-call doctor when I called circa 6pm to find out if I should be worried that I'd gone a day without feeling any wriggling in my belly. He was all, "yeeah, come on down right now and we'll do a non-stress test to check you out." Since I knew a stress test involved running on a treadmill, I figured a non-stress test would involve lying in a bed. Do you know what? It totally does.

Here is what a non-stress test is: I lie on a bed while a nurse hooks up two little round monitors on my belly - one to monitor contractions (this one proved unnecessary for me), and one to monitor the baby's heart rate. It took a while to find a good place for monitoring the heart rate, because the baby was turned around, facing in with her back to us. The nurse said that that position is probably why I couldn't feel her moving. They keep the monitor going for 20 minutes, and they look for at least two spikes in the heart rate in that time - the baby's heart rate spikes when she moves around, so they're trying to monitor for movement.

I don't think I've mentioned this before on the blog, but D and I have a theory that the baby does not like it when people try to listen in on her business. She does not care for wiretaps. She squirms at my OB appointments when they listen for her heartbeat with the Doppler thingy, and at the second ultrasound in January, she stuck her tongue out at us and threw what the tech described as a bit of a tantrum. (I'm sorry to say this, but she probably gets that attitude from me. D's very even-keeled.)
Anyway, so baby hates wiretaps, and this non-stress test clearly put her off, because she was all about moving around to evade the heartrate monitor. Which, of course, was great! Good Fetus! Squirm away! She was good at squirming, which meant the nurse kept having to readjust the monitor thing to re-find the heartrate, but once we were all done, she brought the read-out sheet to the on-call doctor, who cleared me to go. I never met the doctor, which is too bad, because he might end up being the one on-duty when I have the baby, but not being a priority just means that everything is going well.

And everything is going well - there's been plenty of squirming since the test; I guess baby realized that if she takes a day off, she might get her privacy interrupted, so she's not about to take another day off. Won't she be pissed when she finds herself in another ultrasound next week!
That's right, we're going back in. I'm still carrying bigger than I'm supposed to, so maybe Bob the Tech can figure out why.

Nurse Mittens Seems To Be Prescribing Bed Rest

I love my cat.
I have to say that right off the bat, because the other night I had to do some furniture rearranging to insure that I didn't kick her or toss her out a window.

Lately, Mittens has taken to meowing at me whenever I'm awake. Constantly. She's always been a vocal kitty, but this now is with the non-stop all-the-timingness. The only time she'll settle down and not meow at me is if I'm in bed or on the couch. If I'm sitting in a chair, that's pretty good; sometimes she'll leave me alone. But if I'm up and about cooking dinner, getting dressed, straightening up... it's meowmeow meow meeeroooowww meow meow. I can get her to shut up if I pick her up and carry her around with me, but that hampers my ability to do whatever I'm doing. If only she could tolerate the Baby Bjorn, that might solve some of the problem.

So, back to the other night. I was cooking dinner, and therefore meowmeowmeowmeow. Meow. Underfoot. I'm very proud of myself for not kicking her, even gently. I didn't have any closed door behind which I could put her: the bathroom wouldn't work, because I'm in and out of that pretty regularly with my pregnancy bladder; the door to D's study with her litterbox is wedged open by the current placement of the treadmill; the baby's room is off-limits; the bedroom and stairwells seem like a bad choice if she gets angry and pees all over. So instead, I grabbed our 6' folding screen and blocked off the doorless entry to the kitchen, and closed the doored entry to the kitchen. Access Denied, Mittens!
She still meowed from behind the screen, but at least she didn't yowl, and I couldn't see her, so it was easier to ignore.

I like to think that this bodes well for my parenting skills. I might be denied sainthood for my lack of tolerance of the whining, but at least I can have the presence of mind to come up with a safe solution, right? Right?

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

IF YOU LIKE cleaning your sink, YOU'LL ALSO ENJOY descending into death

I was looking at the FlyLady's book on amazon.com, and I noticed that the little buy-these-books-together-and-save seemed awfully strange.

Buy Sink Reflections: Overwhelmed? Disorganized? Living in Chaos? The FlyLady's Simple FLYing Lessons Will Show You How to Get Your Home and Your Life in Order--and It All Starts with Shining Your Sink!
and get My Descent Into Death: A Second Chance at Life at an additional 5% off Amazon.com's everyday low price.

Please let me know when Sink Reflections has a foreword by Anne Rice, because that will be worth reading.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

MYSTERY SOLVED!!

From: DCgal
To: JJ
Subject: Re: Package

That would be me!
I had wondered when I placed the order about whether it would be clear it came from me... there was no card or note option, but I thought maybe I'd at least appear on the packing slip! At any rate, I'm glad to have solved your mystery and more importantly, I'm glad the fishies arrived safely. I really liked the idea of calming ocean sounds putting your girl to sleep. Hope it is a success!

-----Original Message-----
From: JJ
To: DCgal
Subject: Re: Package

OH MY GOD ARE YOU THE ONE WHO SENT THE MOBILE????

-----Original Message-----
From: DCgal
To: JJ
Subject: Package

I just wanted to touch base because I had a little something for the baby shipped your way a couple of weeks ago and I just wanted to make sure it arrived.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Desperate ...to be prepared for my toddler!

I found the Simple Me Boutique through babygadget, which highlighted their custom capes. For those who don't know, babygadget is a design site that basically posts innovatively-designed baby/child gear that tends to be pretty and expensive. I mean, really? A custom cape? Can't I make that with a sewing machine and a fiver worth of Jo Ann Fabrics? Maybe some velcro...

Anyway, what prompted the post was the outrageous photo for this diaper bag. Enjoy!

Monday, March 12, 2007

Aurora Borealis Tattoo

Stretch marks. I had gotten so far without them, I thought (hoped!) I would be spared, but no such luck. Mostly they reach out like purple sunshine from where low-rise jeans would sit, but there are a few next to my belly button, which I'm blaming on the baby; I think she's trying to poke out my belly button, and she keeps missing. What's weird is that this is not at all where I feel stretched - my skin feels tightest high up on my belly, not down where the marks are.

And the parade of indignities marches on.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

And Now: The Downfall of Humankind

Oh yes! By all means, let's buy tissue boxes with photos of our babies on them, so the babies are spitting tissues!
My, that sounds neat-o! I especially like how the baby's mouth looks like the mouth on a blow-up doll! Not at all disturbing!