Our Little-Uns ...

This is Haley, rescued at 6 months old.  She had climbed out of a 6 foot chain link kennel and was hit by a truck.  After nearly $3000 of rods and mesh to hold her front legs together, she can now run faster and jump higher than any dog I've personally ever seen.  Haley is 5 1/2 years old and she is a full-blood yellow lab.

This is Rain, he was also rescued at 6 months old, exactly 6 months prior to Haley.  Rain was dumped onto the Interstate over Lake Manchac.  He was trying to stop traffic and I decided to pick him up before he got hit.  He was making it very difficult for everyone on the road to avoid running him over because he would run into their lane and start jumping straight up and down.  I pulled over to the shoulder of the road and opened my passenger door and he jumped in, curled up on the seat and fell straight to sleep.  It was raining that day.  Rain looks like he is part chocolate lab and part pit bull.  The jackasses that dumped him tried to clip one of his ears then they probably noticed that he doesn't have a mean hair on his big block head.  Well, g

ood for us and better for him that I picked him up.  He's my "special" puppy.

This little girl is Rita.  I rescued her 15 years ago come June.  She was about 4 weeks old.  I rescued her from death row at the SPCA on Japonica St. in N.O.  She gets more awesome with every year that passes.  Why did I name her Rita?  See Animaniacs' characters Rita and Runt.  They were my favorite cartoon characters.

Please consider rescuing animals before purchasing them.  And don't forget to spay and neuter.

Labels

Gass Passer's post today inspired me to write this.  At first it was just a comment on her blog, but it has stirred up more feelings than I can write in a comment.  Those that know me well, know that I HATE, yes HATE LABELS!  It all started in elementary school I was labeled as a "B" student.  You may not think that is so bad since "B" comes just one notch below "A", but there were only two class levels and "B" didn't stand for "better"!  I realized that we "B" students were labeled when I got to high school and the talk around school made me realize that I was sheltered to the point of not knowing that I was good enough to go to the smart peoples public school or smart enough to apply to a university.  Luckily I did get into a Catholic school, but it didn't take long to figure out that we were the "red-headed stepchild of the Archdiocese", a school full of "B" and low-income students.  I am however proud of my alma mater because we had the best damn volleyball team in the city.  The "A" Catholic schools shivered in fear at the sight of our team.  I also belonged to the best class ever to walk those ancient halls.  Anyway, I digressed.   

One of the biggie labels that sticks out there is "Infertility".  That is one that is written on the forms at my doctor's office.  I didn't know that I was infertile until I read that, nobody ever really told me.  "Spontaneous abortion" was one for me also, as it was with so many others, so I've read here in the blogosphere.  When I went to get my RhoGAM shot after my first miscarriage, they gave me this card to carry in my wallet and on it was a box checked "spontaneous abortion".  I nearly came unglued.  How dare they ACCUSE me of having an abortion!  HeHe, yeah it's funny now, to think of how ignorant I was of these things.  I must have googled those two words fifty times.  

Anyway, I really think in this case only that insurance diagnosis codes should be listed as numbers.  That way I can have something else to google and I will not have to be reminded in BIG BOLD LETTERS that I am anything less than perfect.

Crawfish season is here!

Before I get to the crawfish, I need to update on all the other stuff.

Acupuncture is AWESOME!  A few days after my session, I woke up and my sinus congestion broke loose.  I felt half-normal!  I have NEVER had this happen.  As I may have mentioned earlier, since I started the heavy duty fertility drugs in November 2006 I would get sick every 6 weeks like clockwork.  It would go  like this:  stuffy head, post nasal drip, cough, chest congestion, fever, go to the doctor, start antibiotics and Atuss (love that stuff!) and 2 - 3 weeks later congestion breaks up and I seem to get well.  This time it lasted all of one week!  I still am suffering with allergies being as everything is in bloom and I'm allergic to everything, but I'll take this over a respiratory infection any day.

On the work front, I'm not going to be able to go back to my private massage practice.  I tried it and became out of breath quickly.  So, money will be tight, but we are having a baby!  The safety of the baby comes first.

This weekend has been very nice so far, despite the rain.  Yesterday my brother and SIL boiled crawfish at my parents' house, so we made the trip to the country for an extraordinarily relaxing and fulfilling day.  We had (of course) boiled crawfish, stuffed artichokes, other munchies and strawberry shortcake to top it all off.  I had two helpings of that!  YUM!  I wish I had brought my camera and taken pictures.  It's very unlike me to not have a camera in my hand, but since I've started gaining all of this weight (most of it starting with the OHSS in Nov.) I've been avoiding the camera.  I'm looking pregnant now, not just fat, so I really should pick up the camera and start snapping away again.  So, (hopefully) look forward to some pics on this site of my daily life and other more fun occasions.  I may even get creative.  Who knows?

BTW, exercise is coming along slowly.  I went swimming twice this past week.  I was able to swim for 10 min straight, freestyle, the first time and 15 - 20 min straight the second time.  Both days after swimming I started dragging big-time, so if I have an appt. to go to that day, I will have to get my swimming in afterwards.  I'm looking forward to my endurance increasing.  Also, I did the prenatal pilates dvd once.  I have lots of progress to look forward to there also, but it is a great workout and I'm looking forward to having "hot-legs" by October.  As for my abdominals, well, I work those everytime I blow my nose.

Damn the trees ... (Allergies)

Other than the month of October, this is usually my favorite time of year. I don't know if it is because of being pregnant or just that my immunity has sunk to a new all time low, but my allergies have me laid-up right now. I think all of the fertility treatments brought me down to start off with. Since November 2006 I had been sick every six weeks, then that stopped about six months ago. So, I guess I had it coming. Anyway, hopefully acupuncture will help keep this from turning into bronchitis.

My appt. with Dr. L was on Wednesday and we had another u/s which we were able to get on DVD. I'm so excited to be able to have these recorded. We have a new picture (u/s) of the baby's face (again my fascination with the skull), I've decided to call him "skeletor" for now. See?

He's about 3 inches long and he was doing this Billy Idol move that I've been known to do from time to time. The doctor said that everything looked great and don't worry about the bleeding thing if it happens. (Yeah, right!) I only gained two pounds since my last appt, which I think was 3 weeks ago, anyway, I think that was all sweater and jeans since it was a little colder here this week. So, the weight thing is going well. I have to go back in two weeks when he will do the AFP blood work and then set up an appt for me to see a perinatologist.

I've started to work on the exercise plan. I'll post later about how that is going. It involves a pool, but I can't go right now because my head is all snotty.

Thanks, Ms. J, for checking in. It motivated me to write this post now rather than later.

A leap of faith ...

... to actually go to church today.  I haven't been to church in three months, mostly because of being on bed rest.  A couple of times when I had the chance, I consciously opted out of going to church including Easter Sunday.  I just keep remembering that Sunday on April 17th of 2005 when I had just found out that I was pregnant, and I hadn't yet figured out what the doctor meant when he said come in on Monday so we can do another Beta to find out if it is viable.  Sure I knew what viable meant, but how could that have anything to do with me being pregnant.  Pregnant is pregnant, right?  Not so!  Anyway, I was so excited and I dressed up better than usual for church that day.  Robert and I walked in for 9:30 mass and the usher asked us if we would like to bring the gifts up that day.  Wow!  What an honor!  He must be able to see that today is a very special day for us, so I excitedly told him yes.  So, we did and I was very happy.  After mass I drove over to another church thirty miles away to hear my cousin give a concert.  My cousin is a tenor and I adore hearing him sing and, I got to see my aunt and uncle and tell them that I was finally pregnant.  Well, thirty minutes into the program I started getting the most God-awful pain I had ever experienced in my right hip.  It just got worse and worse until I had to get up and leave because it was getting hard to hide it.  By the time I got home I was in the midst of a full-blown miscarriage.  I didn't need a doctor to tell me this even though I had never experienced one before.  You just know.  

One day last summer I confessed to the priest that I had missed a lot of church and that I had sort of a fear of going to mass because of this bad experience, even though I'm not really a superstitious person.  I also told him that that Sunday two years earlier seemed like a real special day because we were asked to bring the gifts up and we had never been asked before.  He told me that it may be that that child was the real gift that we were meant to bring to God's altar and it was His way of saying that it was loved and will not be forgotten.

So today, at 12 weeks and 1 day pregnant, after having the strange bleeding this past week, I took a leap of faith and went to church.  I actually thought this morning that if I went to church, God would want me to give to Him this child too.  Then I realized that if this baby was meant to go to heaven before we meet then it was His will and there is nothing that I can do to stop it.  

I don't think I will be able to bring the gifts up again if ever I'm asked, but I'm not superstitious!

It's aaaaaa ......

Well last night we had a little scare.  I had some bleeding and today when the doctor's office called to give me the results to my tests and cultures (still no STD's - go figure!), I told them about it and the doctor wanted me to come in for a more complete ultrasound.  So, off we go to Mandeville again.  In the u/s we saw all of the cranial bones (awesome!), the feet and hands and tooth buds AND it's still early, but we saw a boy package!  I know it's not a fool-proof way of telling the gender, but our instincts were telling us it's a boy, so until a later u/s show's something different, we are having a son!  I will post the beautiful picture tomorrow.  I wish I had asked for a picture of the cranium.  When I took anatomy in school I was obsessed with the skull.  All you A&P'ers know what I mean!

(Left) The bright white spot on the left is the back of the baby's left heel. The next white spot below that one is the back of the right heel.  The right butt cheek is turned down and not seen very well.  So, the u/s tech was pretty certain the stuff in between is boy stuff.

(Below) Picture of baby facing face-down. The head is on the right.