Superoptimal

Sorry, I've been a little lax lately with the blogging. I am still having a lot of trouble sleeping, and it is making me grouchy, sad, and very stiff. Thanks to anomalous crowding of their appointment schedule, I also haven't had physical therapy in two weeks, which is probably part of why I'm so sore. The good news is, I've been walking pretty well -- the other evening I was walking around without the walker a bit and other than a slight waddle caused by my sore back and enormous beach-ball belly, you'd really not know I was having problems. I am a little more balanced, and the herky-jerky stuff seems much reduced. Now, I feel like the problems are mostly weakness and stiffness. Of course, weakness seems more and more an issue, the heavier and heavier I get.

Which brings us to yesterday's 28-week ob/gyn visit. I am gaining weight right on track, which is good -- considering how good I am at gaining weight when not pregnant, I thought my body might run totally amok under these circumstances, but luckily it appears not to be. This could be because random foods make me want to hurl, and because there is no room inside me for an actual stomach, so I don't eat very much at any one time. Mind you, I'm still huge, but I feel like it's kind of normal-pregnancy huge and therefore comforting rather than alarming. I am just sort of hoping that the way back to a normal-sized body will make itself apparent to me in a few months.

Anyway, the visit was good. I am healthy, all the things I bitched about are apparently normal (insomnia, heartburn, swelling, etc.), and although we haven't scheduled it officially yet, we planned Abby's arrival for November 16. Very odd, putting your baby's birth into your Family Time calendar, even if it's only in pencil, but I guess that's our reality, hers and mine. After Dr. Fraga (who was wearing my favorite pair of Manolos of hers -- creamy, spike-heeled sandals-- while I sported very snazzy Birkenstock sandals that are creasing my water-balloon feet), we went to Georgetown for my sonogram. Dr. Collea, the maternal-fetal medicine guy Fraga studied under (and therefore referred me to), did the scan himself, because Dr. Fraga had asked him to clarify something on last month's report that had us all a little freaked out -- the baby's heart was listed as "suboptimal" and there was something called an "echogenic somethingorother indicating a possible chordae tendinae." Fraga didn't know what this meant (which offended me a little), and she kept insisting that it was probably nothing even as she set up the consult with Dr. Collea. D and I, meanwhile, had watched the tech do the sonogram with the supposedly suboptimal heart, and we didn't notice any double-takes or bad vibes on her part; on the contrary, she kept commenting on how good everything looked and cooing to the baby as if she were lying in a fluffy bassinet instead of floating in amniotic darkness. Because everything had seemed fine then, D and I weren't too worried about Abby's heart, either, but we were still very pleased when Dr. Collea shooed bad thoughts with a wave of his hand, saying, "Oh, no, no, it just means that it was hard to see all the parts of the heart because of where the baby was lying, and the echogenic thing is completely normal and no big deal." Whew. Then he did a scan which, although it wasn't quite as maternally gooey as Giselle's had been, nor really as skillful (after all, she does this all the time), showed a perfectly healthy and happy little girl bubbling around in there, although she might have her daddy's RLS . . . she kicked up a storm. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the Chick-Fil-A sweet tea I guzzled on the way to the hospital. He also did something cool, which was to explain how she is situated in there, which I find hard to get just by looking at the screen. She is breech right now; her back runs along my left side, her feet are down south (or sometimes up by her head -- she appears to occasionally practice a jackknife diving move, or maybe she's doing a deeply skillful Folded Cobbler's Pose), and her head is probably what's squishing my stomach. She likes to grab her toes, or, if she's sleeping, put her hands curled up by her face, like her mama does.

So, we've got a perfectly fine little girl -- well, I say little, but not really. She is 2 pounds, 11 ounces, about 11 ounces bigger than average for her age, and my uterus measures about 2 weeks bigger than it should (if you know what I mean -- the measurement with a tape measure from your coochie to the top of your uterus is supposed to be the same as the number of weeks pregnant you are, by some amazing DaVinci-esque type of divine symmetry). She's a big baby. I could have told you that, even though I lack objective comparisons. I can just tell.

Abby likes sweet tea. She also likes the Irish lullaby, Toora Loora Loora. She likes the middle of the night, when I am trying in vain to fall back asleep (I can't remember the last night that I didn't see 2 or 3 a.m., wide, wide awake). And I like to think that she likes the way the kids kiss her through my belly, or hug her goodbye at the end of a visit. I know it won't always be smooth sailing once she's out here with the rest of us, but for now, I'm satisfied.