So March It Is

February with its full moon this weekend passed with nada in the baby department. I'm still here at home, still in exponentially worse pain, and now gestating at over 36 weeks. Obviously they just aren't ready to come out yet. My body is definitely saying it has had enough, but my uterus isn't listening!

I had my weekly OB appointment and NST last Thursday, and things were same as usual. The babes did great on the NST (this time I drank OJ before the appointment so I wouldn't have to drink juice after a while there, and boy did that work!) My OB won't check my cervix yet, because even if I was dilated it wouldn't be any sort of true indicator of when I'd go into labor anyway. I could be at 1-2 cm for weeks, or go from 2-10 cm in the same day. So whatever. I also had my GBS test. My next appointment is on Friday. Maybe I'll get a cervix check then. He did say two weeks ago that he'd be okay with inducing/scheduling a c-section for 37 weeks-38 weeks, so I'm hoping that if I make it to Friday's appointment, I can say, "let's schedule that c-section for Tuesday March 9th!" (At 37 weeks, 2 days) I'm really trying to hold that date in my head so I know I only have 8 more days left, at the most. Believing that I could have more than that is almost too much for me to bear at this point. I'm in major pain here. This body was not made to carry 11-13 lbs of baby or gain 60+ lbs in a few short months and it reminds me of that every second of the day and night.

This weekend was a hard weekend for us in other ways, not pregnancy-related. We discovered my black lab Benelli has what appears to be a tumor in his mouth, on the top jaw, way in the back. He is 7 1/2 years old and had a cancerous tumor removed from his leg 3 years ago. We've always said he's a cancer survivor. It doesn't appear to be bothering him, so the earliest the vet can/will get him in is on Tuesday afternoon. If it is a tumor, we are thinking it isn't removable anyway because of the location. He's my first dog, he'll always be my first baby, and I'm not ready to lose him yet. As he's gotten older, I knew the day I'd have to say goodbye was getting closer and closer, but it just doesn't seem fair to have this happen at a time when my head and heart must be focused on other things. One of our baby daydreams while TTC was imagining our children trying to say his name and coming out with "Nelli." I could always picture toddlers trying to climb on top of him and pulling his tail, and Benelli taking it all like a champ. He has to stick around for a lot longer for those to happen. He'll always be my favorite dog and I love him so much. Please send good thoughts our way that we are wrong- that it is not a tumor and is something that is easily treatable.

I'll leave you with some pictures of my lovable, huggable dog that has been through so much with us in the past 7 years:

See how good he'd be with kids?

My Benelli

Killer Back Pain

This week has been brutal in the back pain department. I've always had a little trouble with upper back pain, but several times this week, the pain led me to tears. I engaged in some major intervention and booked a last minute prenatal massage, and that helped a little bit. I've been taking (probably) too much Tylenol, and feeling guilty about it. But the pain is keeping me from sleeping well and my days at work on my feet all day are torture without adequate sleep. I was back to 2-3 hour naps every evening this week, just because I wasn't sleeping soundly at night. I also called my OB's office to either get reassurance that the amount of Tylenol was ok, or a magical solution, because I cannot handle this for another 20 weeks, especially knowing that it will only get worse. My OB's nurse suggested putting in a referral to a Physical Therapist, so I am going there on Monday afternoon. Hopefully that will lead to something that will ease some of this intense shooting upper back pain that I've got going on. Besides going to work, it pretty much makes me immobile for the rest of my waking hours. I sleep, lay on the couch with a heating pad, sleep, work, and repeat.

I also decided to take things to the next level at work and be proactive. According to Dr. Barbara Luke in When You're Expecting Twins, Triplets, or Quads, "women (that are pregnant with multiples) who stand more than six hours at a time triple their risk of preterm birth... In the course of an 8 hour shift, an expectant mother of multiples should lie down and rest at least twice for a minimum of 20-30 minutes each time." While that is pretty much impossible at school, I did decide that I should attempt at least some semblance of her recommendation. I am lucky enough to have a 12' by 12' storage room in my classroom, so I hauled a cot we use for camping to school and set it up in my storage room. I have been able to lay down for about 15 minutes after lunch each day since I set it up. I feel silly about it, but I came to the conclusion a long time ago that my babies' health is top priority, everything else be damned. So now my kindergartners can really say that their teacher sleeps at school, because there's a bed to prove it. I hope if I actually DO fall asleep, they will wake me up when they get back to the classroom, or that could be a major problem...