Trisomymommy

Ultra busy

I'm in the midst of a brutal work crunch right now, so I won't be around much between now and Labor day.

In the meantime, here's an embarrassing anecdote for you.  I've had many, many, many ultrasounds over the years, and I have this weird science-geek fascination with the ultrasound machine.  Often I'm baffled looking at the images on the screen because I just can't figure out how they correspond to what I'm feeling on the inside.  I always wish I could take a turn with the machine and just play around with it for awhile until I could figure it all out.  Now, what usually happens at my practice is that some technician does a scan, then leaves me on the table for about 15 minutes until the doctor comes in to take a look and talk with me.  In that 15-minute interval, I'm always left there alone with a gooped up belly, lying right next to the ultrasound machine, and I am always tempted to give it a whirl myself.  Who knows?  Maybe being an ultrasound tech is my true calling in life and this would be my chance to find out.  At the last scan, I was a little irritated by the tech because she kept making weird little uninterpretable sounds in the back of her throat.  I couldn't tell if she had a cold, if it was a nervous tick, or if she was reacting to something shocking on the screen and just barely suppressing her horror, and so it made me tense and annoyed.  Then I got to thinking that this would probably be my last ultrasound with this pregnancy, and maybe the last prenatal ultrasound of my life, so before she left the room, I just blurted out, "Can I play with that while you're gone?"  She was clearly appalled and gasped an emphatic "No" and left.  Okay, fine.  So I'd just pissed off the throaty ultrasound tech, I didn't really care.  But then the doctor came in.  My favorite doctor in the world.  Whom I admire and respect and want to be like someday.  She said, "So... I hear you wanted to scan yourself."  Suddenly I started to feel sheepish.  She gently but firmly explained how valuable the machine was and what it would cost if I dropped the hand-held part ($20,000) and how important those tools are to them and she continued explaining, in so many words,  why this was such an outrageous request until I wanted to just go hide my red face in the very womb we were watching.  I guess it was rather impertinent of me.  I'm sure there is a note about this in my file and that I'll never be left alone with expensive medical equipment again. 

The moral of the story?  It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. 

In the end, one measurement was off and suggested a small chance of a bowel problem that would require surgery at birth, so I have to go back for another look in a few weeks.  They assured me this was very, very unlikely so I'm trying not to worry about it.  (Yeah, because I'm SO GOOD at that not worrying thing.) 

Oh, and she's a girl!

Update: 18 months

Miss B's gross motor skills continue to amaze me.  She now tries to stand up by pulling up on anything she can find, even flimsy, unstable things like floor lamps and wall hanging mirrors.  Her cruising is still not speedy, but it is much smoother than it was last month.  She had started out only going leftward, continuing that preference for all things left that she has shown ever since she was a newly-born, but now she can go rightward, making the other half of the world available to her as well.  We're working on turning corners, which seems to baffle her.  If she's at one end of the coffee table and I place a toy in front of her, but far enough away so that she has to turn a corner and then cruise to get it, she gets stuck trying to take the more direct route of going through the table toward the toy.  She wants to go as the crow flies, but without being a crow, nor being able to fly. 

Her feet / ankles tend to pronate when she's standing and cruising.  On our OT's advice, we're going to hold off on getting orthotics or braces in hopes that B will figure out ways to adjust her alignment herself.  I hope this is the right call.  I really want this kid to figure out walking as soon as possible.  We made the difficult decision of keeping her back with the younger kids in daycare until she can walk.  I'd really like her to be with kids her age who will challenge her linguistically, but this way seemed safer.  We will move her back to her peer group once she gets the hang of walking, which we're hoping will happen by January (when the next one is due).  Is that too ambitious?  I don't know.

She has mastered the standard baby crawl, which is adorable.  And now I need to update my expectations of how quickly she can move.  I keep being surprised at her location because I'll turn away and then turn back to find her somewhere far from where she was just a second ago.   Sometimes she straightens her legs and keeps her hands on the floor, and then just hangs out in that position for awhile, as if it's comfortable.  She has also learned to climb stairs, which is great fun for her and means I have much more childproofing to do around here.

She continues to sign "more" and "eat" and a combination that I like to call "moreeat" in which she quickly clasps her hands together and then smashes them into her mouth, all in one fluid motion.  She signs "eat" when I ask, "Do you want something to eat?" but she hasn't really figured out to use the sign without such a prompt from me.  Yesterday it was dinner time and I knew she was hungry, but she started fussing and crying rather than sign "eat".  When I finally asked the question, she responded with an adamant "eat," as if exasperated that it had taken me so long to ask. 

(T's claim that she signed "ball" a while back remains unsubstantiated.)

Speaking of eating, she's eating very well.  I found that I can get her to eat pureed vegetables by mixing them with yogurt.  Peas and yogurt is not my idea of a winning combination, but it seems to work for her.  She also likes to feed herself macaroni, sliced turkey, waffles, hamburger, french fries, and all kinds of cheese.  She is doing better at drinking through a straw, although she spits out some liquid and needs a clean shirt after most attempts.  I don't think she is doing this on purpose, but when it comes to spitting food, it is definitely purposeful.  I'm trying to discourage this, as I find it unpleasant to have peas and yogurt land on my face.  I've tried to tell her "no spitting" when she does it, but that seems to have no impact at all.   In my first ever attempt at discipline, my new strategy is to say "no spitting" and then to walk away and turn my back, thus removing my attention for a moment.  My strikingly bold theory is that she'll learn that spitting makes me leave, and so she'll stop spitting.  Of course, this is all predicated on the assumption that she wants me around.

Honestly?  I know that she wants me around.  This kid likes me.  A lot.  That feels good.

Back

I'm back.  Well, not back at home, but back with the 'rents, having made it out of wacky fake resort hell.  I was so ready to get out of there that I left way too early for the airport and ended up sitting around for over two hours before my flight. I kind of appreciated the airport's honesty.  It was just being an airport and nothing more.  It made no attempt to be a climate controlled rainforest with boat rides on fake rivers and piped in music.  All is WYSIWYG at the airport

B suffered no injuries in my absence.  I was actually concerned about this.  I even left her insurance card with my mom, just in case.  She is trying to pull up on everything and cruise now, even without edible incentives, and yet she's still unsteady.  Two days before I left, under my father's watchful eye, she tried the ambitious move of transferring from a chair to a bookcase and fell headfirst into the bookcase, getting an impressive bruise on her forehead.  (Dad stood there dumbfounded, not realizing that his next move should be to pick her up and pat her back and sing the Miss B song to make her stop crying.)  The next day came the injury I'd been expecting and dreading for weeks now, and this one was on my watch.  She was cruising at the coffee table and fell, bumping her chin against it on the way down and biting her tongue.  The tongue is always out, and the teeth are always sharp, so it was only a matter of time.  It stopped bleeding within about 5 minutes, so it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, but it made me a little more nervous about leaving.   Anyway, she was fine in my absence and seemed very pleased to see me when I returned.

Tomorrow I will be 19 weeks along in this pregnancy and all is well.  I love the second trimester.  I have a normal amount of energy, food tastes good, I am able to concentrate again, and I seem to have acquired the liibiido of a 15-year-old boy, which is great fun.  I like this version of me. 

The problem is that now the big deadlines are looming and I have to pay the price for how I spent my first trimester -- strung out with worry and exhaustion, and leaving work early to cook fancy lasagnas or nap.  I will miss at least one deadline that I'd set for myself.  The two more important ones will be met, but I will be rushing and the work may not be as good as it should be.  Oh well, it's not as if my entire career is at stake.  Oh wait, yes, it is.  Sometimes I think that getting fired wouldn't be so bad, and then I remember how much I like my work, and getting paid, and having health insurance.  T could cover some of those things, but his work is much less stable than mine, so I'd rather not depend on that. 

Wow, this has been a very long nap for the B, which kind of makes me wonder if the monitor is really working.  I'd better go check.

Away

I'm away.  I wish I could say that I was at the big DS conference -- that would be fun.  Instead I'm at a work conference in artificial resort world.  This hotel is so enormous that you can walk for blocks on paved path next to a river, among trees and flowering plants, in a perfect climate, and momentarily forget that you are still indoors.  It's all fake.  An entire fake world.  Within the hotel.  The next sentence in this paragraph should try to contrast the inside of this resort with some detailed description of the gritty southern city that surrounds it, but the truth is that I haven't seen the outside of the hotel, so I have no idea what it's like out there.  Maybe they have fake trees, water, and air too.

B is staying with my parents while T and I deal with simultaneous travel obligations.  The only childproof space in my parents' house is a long, thickly carpeted hallway.  It is hard to commando crawl on thick carpet -- too much resistance.  So, the B is learning that it makes more sense to get that belly up off of the floor.  She has gone from the commando crawl to the wounded soldier crawl.  I know that it sounds like a step back, but it isn't.  She now crawls using both hands, one bent knee, and one straight leg out to the side.  She's getting faster, which means she needs much more supervision, which means I'm nervous about having left her with people who are well intentioned, but who haven't had to be this vigilant for about 36 years.   

Okay, I'm starving and am off in search of fake breakfast.

More later.