The Seversons

Thanks for the well-wishes from our last post. I am actually somewhat mobile now and sleeping through the night, so I’m much better. I’m crossing my fingers because I have to stop my meds tomorrow afternoon due to pregnancy awesomeness so I’m hoping I don’t feel worse again after that.

Now that I’m past dealing with the pain, I’m a little annoyed at yet another period of being a lump. This summer I was the exercise champ, I was totally in shape. Then I got really sick in August and couldn’t exercise for a month. Then, after I got back into the swing of things, I got awful morning sickness for two months that kept me from moving. Then my physical therapist had me back off so we could get my back fixed. And now I’m on doctor-ordered rest for a week or two. I’m amazed I haven’t gained 20 pounds. I am really looking forward to getting back into shape, though I won’t be able to even make an attempt to start until I can actually take deep breaths again. (One weird thing about my condition is that I haven’t sneezed in days. I need to sneeze and regularly think I’m going to, but I can’t take a deep breath and I never actually get to sneeze without the power behind it. It’s very weird.)

Today, to pass the time, I got back to work on my knitting. My current project is a baby blanket with several different panels that are woven together. It’s much more complicated than my last project but I’m surprised at how well it’s going. Here’s a look:

You can’t quite see the details perfectly at this angle, and the panels aren’t woven together yet, but you can see the colors and get the general idea. I think it looks quite nice. I still plan to make another easy blanket in the heart pattern I did last time after I finish this one. And now Eric thinks I may need to make one for him. Don’t expect these to just get cranked out, though. I’ve been working on this current blanket for over a month and I’m not halfway done yet. (You’re all getting homemade vanilla for Christmas anyway.)

Since our big ultrasound it’s been a weird adjustment.  While we still regularly call him “Nugget” (he’ll be called that until the day we die, along with various other nicknames, some of which have already been decided upon), it’s very strange to be able to call our baby by his actual name.  And I hadn’t realized that once we knew he was a him that he would become so much more real to me.  Now knowing he’s a boy means I can actually visualize much more clearly the fact that he’ll be a baby, a toddler, a child, etc.  I wasn’t expecting things to get so vivid so fast.  It may also have something to do with the fact that I have two friends who gave birth in the last week.  Eric promises to upload the ultrasound photos soon, which instead of the classic profile shot have a head-on where you can actually see his little eye.  I’ll post a link to our photo gallery once we have them.

I am a little bit doped up, so hopefully I can keep myself in line for a news-filled post.

First off, we did have the big ultrasound today.  It was really nice to have Eric along for an office visit, since I have so many and am usually by myself.  The nurse performing the ultrasound was great.  (Apparently we are the type of people who think it’s funny when someone says our kid looks like Skeletor.)  Not knowing the gender of the baby has been harder than I’d expected.  Even with the Nugget having its own gender-neutral nickname, inevitably “he” or “she” slips into the conversation at some point.

I recently admitted to Eric that while I was without a preference when it came to the sex of the baby, I’d always had an expectation of having an oldest child who was a girl.  Because I’m an oldest child who was a girl.  However, we’re set since Eric is an oldest child who was a boy.  (He pointed out today that he’s the oldest son of an oldest son of an oldest son.  Impressive.  I know I’m an oldest daughter of an oldest daughter, but I have no idea about how it looks past that.)

When it came to finding out the sex of the baby, it was kind of obvious.  As soon as we were oriented to head and body and legs and such, it did not take an expert.  So get ready for Baby Boy Severson to be greeting us all in about 5 more months.  The name has already been decided after much wrangling on my part.  Eric tends to say no to pretty much any name in existence and had already rejected our name of choice until I cunningly found a way to sneak it back in as a possibility.  I’m very excited because middle names have been off the table until we found out what we were having, and I’m sure you’re not surprised that my list is already compiled and Eric is not even home from work yet.  (And I already know which one he’s going to pick, too.  I’m that good.)  It is somewhat surprising that Eric doesn’t enjoy picking names more–he makes me do all the work–given his previously blogged naming talents you’d think he’d get a kick out of it.

There is actually more news.  It’s been a very eventful few days.  After two months of being unable to move due to morning sickness and a month of getting a little physical therapy to get my back in better shape for pregnancy, I’m finally back to working out again.  I started up on Friday and Saturday, and that’s probably why I didn’t think much of the pain I had in my chest.  I figured it was a pulled muscle or something.  Then I woke up Sunday morning, barely able to move back and forth.  There is nothing quite like the feeling of someone taking a chainsaw to your rib just because you leaned back in your chair.  I was ready to wait it out and see how it went until Sunday night when I couldn’t actually sleep.  I can’t sleep on my back due to the pregnancy, and I’ve never really been able to sleep sitting up.  Laying on my side was the most uncomfortable position possible with my chest pain so there weren’t a lot of options left.  I got maybe 2 hours the whole night and I woke Eric up Monday morning to tell him he wouldn’t be going to work.  I needed to get to the doctor and since the pain often came when I moved my arms, driving myself in wasn’t a good idea.

We called the OB who sent us to our primary physician who sent us to the ER.  And thus began a romantic 10-hour stay in a little section of a room separated by a curtain.  I say romantic because it was almost like going back on our honeymoon since it was the same hospital I drove Eric to on our wedding night when he had what was eventually determined to be a stone in his salivary gland.  This time it was my turn to have the extreme pain and random diagnosis.  It actually helped to be pregnant in this case, since as a normal person I probably would have been patted on the head and sent out the door with some aspirin.  But everyone freaks out when you’re pregnant so instead I got the full battery of tests.  (Eric was very excited to see them ultrasound my heart.  And when I told him that the contrast dye they give you in a CT makes you go warm so fast it makes you feel like you peed your pants, he laughed and said he’d never heard that before.  Though I am not the only one.  I googled it.)

Overall it was about as pleasant as hospital visits get.  There was a television.  They had on a tennis match.  The procedures weren’t at all painful.  And sitting still is actually the way I was most comfortable.  (The only problem was that we watched House.  And they found out the kid was sick from the contrast dye he’d had for an MRI.  This happened just before I got my own contrast dye for a CT.)  Many precautions were taken to protect Nugget, and he certainly seemed to be having a grand old time wiggling around to let me know he was okay.  He was still very okay this morning, in fact the kid barely sat still through the whole ultrasound.  Actually, there was one other major problem since I wasn’t allowed to eat while waiting for all my tests.  Personally, I think withholding food from a pregnant woman for over 10 hours should be recognized as cruel and unusual punishment.

In the end, I was diagnosed with pericarditis, which was good and bad.  Good because the descriptions of it say the pain is very significant, so I didn’t feel like a wuss.  (Eric said I was quite “stoic” about the whole thing, especially since I gave my pain a 6.  He says I have a high tolerance for pain.  I think he’s wrong.)  Bad because while the treatment is very simple, it’s all stuff I’m not allowed to take, like NSAID’s and steroids.  Have I mentioned recently that pregnancy is intent on making my life as difficult as possible?  Because it totally is.  Luckily we got a chance to see the OB this morning after the ultrasound to get the go ahead for some available meds.  So I’ll have at least a few days worth and hopefully it’ll clear up soon.  It generally goes away on its own.  I was just happy to be able to get to sleep last night.  Not that we got to sleep for long, since we were discharged quite late and our ultrasound was scheduled first thing in the morning.

Everything is still a little weird.  Those neverending hospital visits are never very gratifying when you talk about them.  You simply can’t condense the monotony of sitting for so long and not knowing what’s going on and having the IV stuck in your arm into a conversation.  Not that I’m doing much talking.  My orders are to do very little.  Which isn’t a problem, since there’s still a good amount of pain associated with movement.  Guess that new dresser from ikea that’s sitting in a box will remain unassembled in its box for a while longer.  I’ve already had two naps today and hopefully I’ll have made up all that lost sleep soon.

This week, Eric is finishing up his Outpatient Medical Oncology rotation and taking a big exam, so he’s not stressed at all.  I will be using my doctor-recommended sedentary resting period to put some final touches on our online registry which I’ll post in the near future.  And I’m planning to try and get Eric to actually walk around a baby store with me after he finishes up his test to show him all the stuff I’ve been looking at online for the past few weeks.  Once it all checks out, we’ll link the registry here and on facebook.  As for a shower, no plans have yet been made, so we’ll figure that out in a while.

This weekend I flew in to visit my siblings in Austin and had a lovely time.  On the way back, however, my flight ran into some problems.  I can fly because I’m a rational person.  I tell myself the statistics of actually coming to harm in a plane, especially compared with the drive to and from the airport.  But I am not always really successful at talking myself into it.  It’s weird, especially because a few years ago I was flying 5 days a week with absolutely no concern about my safety.  That bubble has burst, especially since I got married.  Now I am always fearful of plane crashes.  One day I just looked out the window from my seat and realized just how far down the ground actually was.  Poof!  Suddenly I felt like I was just suspended in midair in a tin can that would suddenly come crashing down.

It’s not a new fear, actually.  My mother didn’t help much.  As a teenager, the two of us were waiting for a flight once and Mom was schooling me in plane safety.  She used to be a stewardess so she knows far more than I ever want to know about such things.  She assured me that as long as we weren’t in a very small plane or sitting on the wing or flying in a storm, we should be fine.  I’m sure you can guess what followed: a flight through a storm in a small plane with lovely seats right on the wing.  Still, her advice is useful.  I may not listen to the safety lecture (because I know it by heart) but I always ALWAYS look for the nearest exit and remember the number of rows.  (Even though they claim lights will come on, they may not, or they may be obscured.  If you remember the number of rows you can count the seat backs even if you can’t see a thing.)  I have no preferred seat, really.  On the aisle, you could be crushed by falling luggage.  In the window, you have to climb over the crushed-and-now-unconscious people sitting on the aisle.  Either one has its potential pitfalls.  Obviously I think about this too much.

Anyway.  Despite my fears, I’ve always had excellent plane luck.  Like the time when I got bumped up to first class.  And the number of times I’ve walked right up when it was time to board.  And my very very low percentage of delayed flights.  And my excellent odds of getting the one seat on the whole plane that has no one sitting next to me.  But when you fly often, you’re bound to catch some bad karma.  Like the time I had a middle seat between two gigantic men, who also knew each other and talked over me the whole time.  And the time I had the only leftover seat in a row taken up by a family with a multitude of kids, all of whom got airsick.  And the time I got bumped and stuck in Miami.

On this flight, it was definitely bad luck.  We left just fine, but around an hour in, the captain turned the fasten seatbelt sign back on right before beverage service.  It was a little weird, especially since there was no turbulence.  And then we kept turning, which you usually only do at the beginning and the end of your flight.  Sure enough, over the loudspeaker he announced that we were not going to make it to Atlanta.  Instead we would have to stop at the nearest airport: Baton Rouge.  There was a “vibration” in the right engine.  You’d think, flying as often as I do, I would have noticed, especially since I sat on the right side.  But it was a smaller plane, only 4 seats in a row, and those are usually kind of bumpy and loud.  I couldn’t tell at all.

My rational side kicked in again.  I reminded myself that planes are diverted relatively regularly and that it doesn’t mean we’d come crashing down in flames.  Nor did the flight attendants seem unusually upset.  Plus I have this superstition that if you fly right after some plane has crashed you won’t.  And since that plane was so recently in the Hudson, I thought luck was on our side.  Still, that didn’t keep me from staring obsessively out the window.  When I finally saw the runway, I admit I felt incredibly relieved.

But then we were stuck in Baton Rouge.  It has about 10 gates.  It was early evening.  There were only 2 more flights leaving.  And while the bar was open, the pizza place and the frozen yogurt place were closed.  There were no other options and we weren’t allowed to leave the secured area.  Luckily, being a starving pregnant woman, I had asked for extra cookies on the flight and still had a pack.  I also picked up a granola bar and a paperback thriller from the news stand before it closed.  I didn’t know how long we’d be there.  I refused to spend the night there.  I was forming a plan to rent a car and drive the 8-ish hours home myself.  It was over an hour before we had any news.  And then finally they told us we’d have to switch planes, but that we would get back into Atlanta that night.

I did make it home, though I got in about 4 hours late.  I’m still not sure how I made it all that way with just airplane snacks, but I did stop and eat a burger before I drove home.  You know how sometimes your travel is so bad that it feels like you’ve just come back from war?  That’s how this was.

Happily, I’m back and not scheduled to fly for several more months.  It’s less than two weeks until we get the big ultrasound and we’ll be sure to update.  I have popped a little bit recently.  I now look actually pregnant instead of just kind of chunky.  The baby remains a vegetable: now a sweet potato.  (Which makes me think how much I love sweet potato fries.)  My only “craving” is a near-constant longing for Krispy Kreme donuts.  And we’ve past the “quickening” phase.  I can now feel tiny movements, though they’re not strong enough yet to feel from the outside.  It feels like there is a feather brushing against my insides.  Hopefully the baby will be feeling nice and active when we get to take a look in a couple weeks.

Update: I wrote this before the plane crash in New York.  Crappy timing, huh?