Still More Of Me To Love

Greetings from your favorite dugong! Not only is my physique tending towards the marine mammal look (though I look considerably less svelte than a real dugong, I'm afraid), but my attempts to forestall rib pain by keeping my arms close to my chest may soon result in their becoming flippers.

Still feeling like I'm being stabbed and rather peeved at Dr. Russian for not really listening to me about it. She says it's a bruise (though how I am supposed to have hit the bottom of my ribs with anything, given the significant convexities surrounding that area, I've no idea) and to go easy on the meds. I say it's a torn muscle or pissed off cartilage and it hurts like heck. Since the treatment is the same for both theories -- wait, wish, and pray it gets better before the Bean can kick that high up -- I suppose it doesn't matter. I mostly have stayed off the percocet, but some nights (like last night, for instance), that's just not possible.

Ah, well. Dr. Russian is, after all, Russian. Disregard for non-lethal injury is as inevitable a part of her character as the praise she heaped upon me for eating meat. I will gladly accept her boredom with my ribs, given that she is similarly unbothered by my having already gained as much weight as the practice "wants" me to put on over the course of the entire pregnancy.

I'd be lying if I said the weight gain didn't bother me at all, but I'm doing my best not to worry about it. I don't think there's much I can do about it -- I'm hungry most of the time, and we eat pretty reasonable kinds of food. I guess I'm just one of those women who gains a lot in pregnancy. My weight has mostly been stable in adulthood, so I hope that losing it won't be too terrible.

At any rate, one member of the household seems pretty happy with the situation. (He's usually more of a boob-man, but those are getting pretty sizeable, too -- and don't think he doesn't cop a feel.)





Now that's my kind of Perfect Moment Monday.

Midwinter

You know it's the dark time of year when you find yourself eating breakfast by candlelight.



Those are kitchn's ricotta pancakes, by the way, and quite tasty they were, too.

Hope you are keeping the fires alight -- and dry, fellow New Yorkers.

Items From Our Catalogue

Item: This post is coming to you from my dismal office, as I wait an hour for the next bus to ferry me to the train station, the first step of my 2+ hour commute. It will be even longer tonight, because I missed the early bus. I had (somewhat irresponsibly) let class out early so I could catch it, and then I spaced out and missed it anyway. Is this "pregnancy brain" (gag) or ordinary incompetence?

Item: I have become too lazy/dull/generally pathetic to participate in my own meme. Will this be in the DSM-5?

Item: You should check out (and submit to, in all senses of the word) starhillgirl's very fun new tumblr blog, Lunch. Make your lunch famous on the internet! I'm going to pull a fast one and call my Thanksgiving Sandwich entry my Come And Eat post for this time.

Item: I made half as much sweet potato pudding this year, since Sugar had requested a savory sweet potato dish. I should have made more pudding -- it was gone in a day, and I only got one sandwich out of it. The savory option is currently dying a quiet death in the back of the fridge.

Item: All that frantic eating seems to have led to another growth spurt. Internets, I am certifiably enormous. I am back to running into things every five minutes. I am in denial about the fact that turning sidewise to slip by objects or people has become comic in the extreme. (Imagine it -- I, not un-wide, approach a narrow passage. I pause, turn 90 degrees, thus rendering myself twice as wide, and proceed to shove my way through.) I would say picture to follow, but I think we can all agree that said picture is more likely to actually happen if I don't make any promises.

Item: While spending a very nice weekend with friends outside of Boston -- and the fact that I can call the weekend very nice, despite how much of it was spent dealing with a teething toddler, a sudden lack of heat and hot water, and an obstreperous landlord ought to give you some idea how wonderful these friends are -- I discovered that I could cleverly heft my (considerable) self out of their comfortable but very low armchair by pushing down on its arms and hovering my butt in the air such that my legs swung perfectly underneath me. I was very proud of being strong (and short) enough to manage the feat and performed it more than necessary.

Item: Pride ever goeth before costcochondritis, as it turns out.

Item: This is plenty bad, but how much worse it would be without Dr. Russian, who was on call last night when I left a tearful message with the answering service, after a day of increasing agony. "Take the percocet!" quoth she. Good doctor, that.

Remember This Game

Hello from the calm before the cooking storm, chez Bionique. My mother is here, which has forced us to begin to make inroads in the junk filling the "spare" room (of course, no room can ever be truly spare in a New York apartment), at least to the extent that the aerobed can be jammed in there. Tomorrow, I will wear myself out cooking Thanksgiving dinner, as I love to do. I am still trying to decide which sweet potatoes to make: Sugar prefers them savory (being sufficiently sweet enough on her own, I reckon), but while I like them savory, I LOVE cold leftovers of sweet potato pudding, gobbled on its own or as a dense layer in the "Thanksgiving sandwich" I look forward to all year. (A Thanksgiving sandwich is turkey, sweet potato pudding, cranberry sauce, gravy, and any other leftovers you care to stick in there, all cold.)

Besides sweet potatoes of one or more kinds, we'll have turkey (we are not vegetarians, only lesbians), cornbread and pecan dressing, biscuit, maybe some mashed potatoes (lest we die of carb deficiency at table), a few pies, a non-wheat dessert (the surprisingly lovely almond cake from IKEA? candied pecans and baked apples?) and whatever other oddments occur to me in the next 24 hours. (Gravy, ice cream for the pies, and other such condiments are implied, of course; and cheese, bread, nuts, and pear paste to build the appetite. Can't be too careful.)

The Dane-stralian family will be bringing green beans, cranberry sauce, and their very scrumptious nearly-3-year-old. I've been a boorish hostess and made it clear that no orange nonsense is welcome in cranberry sauce at my house, thank ye. Another friend is bringing a mushroom dish that apparently cooks for nine hours. I reckon we won't be TOO hungry after.

Meanwhile, what are YOU making (or eating) for Thanksgiving?

I thought perhaps it might be nice to play our old Come And Eat game this weekend, with posts about what you eat at Thanksgiving dinner or what you eat instead or what you do with the leftovers -- or what have you, my dear, benighted, unAmerican friends. (I admit that those of you with antipodean addresses are likely too high on the coming of spring to need a big feast to cheer you on, but the rest of y'all in northern climes must be dreading the dark, too. Nothing like a few thousand calories shoveled down in a single sitting to take the sting out of the coming of winter and/or prepare you for hibernation.)

So. Come And Eat, would you? Sign up below with the address of your food post, any time this weekend. Please paste the address of a particular post, not just your whole blog, so folks know where to comment.

My lady parts: an artist's rendering

Hi everybody. Thanks for your kind comments. I am feeling much better now, I'm not even taking Aleve anymore. Yay!

I had my post-op consult today. No surprises - the surgeon wants me to see a neurologist before I go on birth control to make sure it's safe, since I had a few migraines with aura in 1999. She told me I had to wait yet another week before going back to my regular workout schedule (fml, I just shouldn't have asked). And she showed me pictures of my own internal organs. Weird.

Apparently, my left ovary was very big and angry. It spent a lot of time threatening to beat up the right ovary. Both of my ovaries were bigger than my uterus, which made the uterus kind of worried.

BEFORE being stabbed

AFTER being stabbed

23 Weeks 6 Days And All's Well

Hi folks. We are okay, just busy. Sugar is mending pretty well -- her post-op appointment is tomorrow, so I hope we'll know more then. Poor dear hates percocet, though. Isn't that the saddest thing you've ever heard? (More for the rest of us....) I've managed to mostly keep the household from falling down around our ears while she's been sick, but it's pretty darn shambles-y. And my mother is arriving on Tuesday (probably because I spent last Monday's commute weeping at her over the phone).

No, no hormonal craziness at all, why do you ask?

Everything medical seems to be fine. I have passed my cervix checks; first growth scan (because of low PAPP-A at nuchal) is Tuesday. I met OB 4 of 4, the one with the scary, super-skinny picture, and she was fine. She did not yell at me for gaining so much weight, contrary to my expectation. (And boy howdy, I have gained some weight. I have now officially crossed into "I have never weighed this much" territory. Yikes.) I get tired more easily and walking is beginning to be strangely exhausting for someone whose life involves so much of it. Like walking in sand. I have discovered that wearing the good ol' Bella Band over my maternity pants is the secret to not having to yank them up every 3 steps, at least.

Must get back to salt mines grading. But hello! and We Are Not Dead!

Here is a picture of my best pumpkin impression:

what the hell is going on in there?

Up until about three weeks ago, I thought of myself as a basically healthy person. I felt lucky for being so healthy, and thought often about how unfair it was for Baby to have to deal with chronic asthma, migraines, and the frequent pain of severe endometriosis.

Then I had an ultrasound, the intent of which was to see if I still had a small polyp in my uterus, that turned up the fact that I had an 8 centimeter endometrioma on one ovary and a 4 centimeter one on the other (!). Faced with how huge 8 centimeters sounds and with the prospect of a more invasive surgery if I waited too long to have them out, I went in for a lap on Tuesday.

When the surgeon looked inside, she discovered some unexpected things. First, both my ovaries are sitting underneath my uterus. Second, the left ovary had become so enlarged that it was as big as the uterus. Third, there are adhesions from endometriosis everywhere in there. And finally, one of my tubes is blocked.

Wow. Ok. I don't feel good about this at all.

First, somehow I feel like I should have known there was something wrong in there. Maybe I could have done something earlier, if I hadn't been in denial, except I wasn't really in denial, since nothing really hurt. But still, how could I not know?

And proceeding from this somewhat irrational reaction, I feel like I've been running my life wrong. Or something. Should I have been more invested in being the one to get pregnant? Baby really wanted to be pregnant, and I didn't really feel strongly that I did want to, so it seemed totally right to have her go first, (or just to be the one to do it, if we only have one). But now it's looking like I won't have an easy time if I do want to get pregnant. Plus I'm older that Baby. But I was just going right along assuming I could get pregnant if someone put some sperm up there, like an idiot, so I had all the time in the world (or at least 6 or 7 years).

Not helping is the fact that my really nice and cheerful surgeon keeps asking me about when I want to get pregnant. I know she is happy she was able to preserve both of my ovaries and concerned that my sudden endometriosis seems severe, but, hello, we are expecting a baby in March. I'm not going to try to get pregnant right now, because that would be a nutty thing to do. I was lying in bed, addled from pain medicine, the day after the surgery, when my surgeon called to check on me. After ascertaining that I was recovering normally, she launched into a discussion of how I would probably have to do IVF. Ack! At least wait until I'm off the meds!

Baby has been a great a help through all this. The poor thing is exhausted from being pregnant and has also been doing everything for me for the past three days as I lie here and moan about how percocet gives me a raging headache and the urge to weep. I will be happy to be on my feet again, which right now feels like it won't be until the distant future, but will really probably be something like three more days. I've been a bit surprised at how this recovery is sucking, but I'm not sure why I didn't put together the fact that getting abdominal surgery = getting stabbed in the stomach. As Nick Swardson says - "no thank you to getting stabbed. I don't want any part of that process"

Now with working link to the funny! -- Ed.