Pregnancy illness #546: Bronchitis

Ever hear that pregnancy decreases your immune system's effectiveness?

#proof

I thought I had a cold Wednesday and Thursday, no big deal. Then Thursday night I started coughing pretty bad and my chest started to hurt. I was up in the middle of the night coughing for like an hour and a half before I finally got out of bed and took a shower, and then was able to go back to sleep. At work Friday morning, my cough just kept getting worse and worse until I knew I wasn't going to make it through the day without losing an organ (or, lets be real, peeing my pants).

So I had to be that asshole who left everyone in the lurch. Luckily my primary care doctor had a cancellation, so I was able to get an appointment there instead of waiting all day at urgent care. It got a little scary for a second when she said they were ordering an EKG to make sure my symptoms were just a lung infection, and not something wrong with my heart. After that, I was relieved that it was only bronchitis. The doctor said to rest.

Someone else had other ideas.

I'm sure we can all agree that bronchitis isn't fun, especially with a little tiny person pushing up against your lungs (and, often, a bigger little person pushing against them from the outside while trying to climb you like a jungle gym).

When it's too cold for the actual playground, he creates his own. It's me. 

I definitely can't complain though, since the baby isn't at risk, my other baby can't catch it, my husband can't catch it (because, man flu, can't handle that), and I even got antibiotics. Most importantly, if I had to get sick, the timing could NOT have been any better.

 And of course, the real reason:

HOW does he only improve with age?

I'm only halfway through the season though, because Saturday Eric took over parenting and I spent the day pretty much like this.

I DID NOT MOVE.

I think that maybe the nesting instinct is beginning, just a little bit. We didn't have any plans this weekend, so I had a bunch of random stuff in my head I wanted to get done around the house. Obviously, none of that happened because I spent the entire weekend either sleeping or coughing. I did find my copy of "What to Expect When You're Expecting" and started to look over the section on labor and delivery, and then remembered how much contractions hurt and decided to stop. I really need to be healthy for spring break, because that's when it's on in terms of baby prep.

Unrelated - are we ever getting a Game of Thrones trailer? It's less than two months until the season 6 premier and there's only a lame teaser trailer that shows absolutely nothing. Is HBO just planning on keeping everything under wraps? The only things I've done to prepare for this birth, other than skimming what to expect, is get Dalton a cute brother shirt from Target and verify with Eric that we can stream GOT in the hospital on the tablet if we end up staying on a Sunday night. Things like pre-registering at the hospital, adding my friend who will be watching Dalton to my daycare emergency contacts...I'll get to all that. Eventually.

Thoughts on Fuller House? The first episode was epic. It brought me so much happiness. I've enjoyed the rest quite a bit, but I'm disappointed everyone (especially Uncle Jesse) were only special guests and aren't around for most of it.

Our 24 hour vacation

This one time we drove from Baltimore to North Carolina to hang out for 24 hours.

Like, we stayed in NC for literally 24 hours. 

Our good friends from college live there. We used to visit all the time, and then we all had babies.

Beautiful, photogenic babies.

It's been way too long since we visited, so I decided we were going, come hell or high water, before the baby comes and we never travel ever again. Since we have a three day weekend for President's Day, and we are getting close to the point where I'll be humongous and unable to travel, it was now or never. We were all going to have a romantic Valentine's Day weekend together.

We left Saturday morning, because I still have nightmares about the one time we tried to travel after bedtime. It was like Ramsay Bolton level of torture. We arrived about 5pm Saturday night, and immediately enjoyed a relaxing Mexican meal out with our other friend, and three kids ages two and under. Entertainment included, but was not limited to: drinks being spilled, vomiting episodes, and general chaos. 

Then we came home and put the babies right to bed. HA. Kidding. Like babies go right to bed. Is that something babies do? 

In the grand toddler tradition, Dalton isn't exactly a huge fan of sleeping in new and strange places. He will NOT go to sleep ever if I'm anywhere in his sight, because like Aerosmith, he doesn't want to miss a thing. He suffers from FOMO (fear of missing out). BAD. He was asleep in the bed cuddling with Eric, but apparently not deeply enough, because he woke up when I came in and was like YES IT'S PLAYTIME. Long story short we eventually got him to sleep at like 10:30pm with me hiding next to the bed, on the floor out of sight, and Eric pinning him to his chest. Parenting win. I'm starting to feel really bad that friends take the time to set up pack and plays when we visit because they are pretty much useless. Then this described the rest of our night.

Cosleeping = NOSLEEPING

A combination of YAY CUDDLING I LOVE THIS and being awoken from a peaceful slumber by the 13th kick in the head that hour.

In one of my short bouts of sleep, I had a dream that our friends kicked us out due to the impending snow storm (which at that point we all thought was just going to be a minor dusting). I told everyone about it in the morning and we all laughed. Then we checked the weather for real and they were like hmmm yeah actually you're going to need to leave. 

It would be utterly ridiculous to drive all day Saturday then leave Sunday morning, so we stayed, hung out, did Valentine's Day photo shoots.

I mean....I just can't. 

And just because I'm already that parent.

We moved our romantic Valentine's Day dinner up to 3pm. More of a linner, really. Coke marinated ribs and corn fritters. Amazing.

Our little Valentines

Then, since we were already facing my nightmare of driving after bedtime, we met up with my cousin and her family on our way out. And took zero pictures. Such a fail. But she has a blog, so you can look at her adorable kids and imagine them in Panera with Dalton.

Technically our moms are the cousins, but more importantly she has a 6 week old and her son will be two next month (exactly 6 months older than Dalton to the day!) so we got to see the #twoundertwo lifestyle first hand. Seems like a piece of cake! At least, for an hour, in Panera, with both parents present. I'm sure that's a completely accurate representation. Still, it was awesome to get to meet her family and spend some time together!

We left about 5:30. We originally thought we would just get a cheap hotel somewhere halfway in between, but upon closer examination of the radar (all teachers are also amateur meteorologists), it appeared that our options were either make it home Sunday night, or finish driving in a snowstorm. In the south. At rush hour. In the DC area. Which pretty much meant that no amount of toddler screaming would force us to stop, so I was braced for the worst.

I planned to drive for just an hour or two (since 6 hours of being a prego passenger is just not fun in terms of nausea/back pain) then let Eric take over. Dalton crashed not too long into the trip. And that's when I developed super human strength. I drove from 4:30-9:30 without stopping (aka two hours past my usual bedtime), then we stopped just long enough to fill the gas tank, switch places, and continue home. That's right, at 27 weeks pregnant, I made it from Panera in Durham, NC to our house, without peeing. SIX HOURS. Because parents will do literally anything to avoid waking a sleeping baby. And through some miracle, our sleeping baby slept the entire trip. AND went back to sleep in his crib without a peep when we got home, which has never once happened before. At least, we think so. We forgot the baby monitor camera in NC, so for all we know he played silently in there all night, but we didn't hear anything and he woke up happy.

It snowed all day today before switching over to freezing rain, so we were beyond glad that we decided to leave early. Plus, since Dalton slept the whole trip, I didn't feel like I missed any time with him, and Eric and I got to have hours of adult conversation.

And that was officially our last little trip as a family of three. I plan to stay put until well after this baby joins us.

Have you ever made a trip where travel time nearly exceeds your time in the actual destination? Sadly, this is not our first experience with that, but having a toddler adds a whole new level to it. Still, worth it!

Goodbye, Second Tri

Um, I'm almost in the third trimester. 27 weeks tomorrow (Friday). HOW did that happen so fast? The first trimester seems like it lasts years and then the second tri just flies. At least in my two experiences.

HOW

I finally took a bump picture this week. The last one was at 15 weeks. With Dalton, I took them weekly, religiously. This kid is already suffering from classic second kid problems.

Eric took this before my friend Lily's bridal shower. I felt like all the pictures from the shower made me look like a hippopotamus, so I'm posting this one that is flattering.

The well known "I'm pregnant not fat" pose.

I wouldn't say the second trimester has been the burst of energy everyone talks about. Maybe that's only with the first baby. I haven't felt crushing exhaustion like at the beginning, but I've been pretty tired. Maybe that's just life as an adult though.

When I don't cook dinner fast enough, he takes matters into his own hands. 

My main concern has been not being able to play/do things with Dalton, but luckily so far I've been fine. Sure, taking him to the grocery store by myself has me wishing I could lay down on the floor and nap halfway through the trip, but overall, I can still pick him up, sit with him in my lap, and chase him pretty easily.

I'm eating ALL the things and doing...not all the exercise. Last week I did actually exceed my goal of 3 workouts and did 4. This week...it's not going great. Although I did have some sort of stupid respiratory bug and was hacking up a lung for like 3 days. When I have run, the hip pain is crazy. I never really had that last time so it's annoying. I really need to just accept that I need to mix in other types of exercise for the next 13 weeks and give up on running, but it's my favorite. First world pains. I'm attempting a date with Steven Avery on the treadmill bright and early tomorrow, so we'll see.

I did the glucose test this past weekend.

Everyone's favorite way to spend a Saturday morning. Instead of breakfast and coffee, you chug this nasty sugar water (you get 5 minutes or less), sit in a lab for an hour (at least in my case, I had to go get the drink at the lab and then the receptionist made me sit in front of her and watched me drink it), and get blood drawn. Despite my horrific needle phobia, and also my fear of not being allowed to drink coffee in the morning, it wasn't bad at all. Now I just have to wait to see if I pass. Although ultrasounds are much more fun, since you get to see the baby, this test is so much less nerve wracking. It checks to see if you have gestational diabetes, so the worst case scenario (to my understanding) is that you have to be on a special diet for the rest of your pregnancy. Ultrasounds check to see if the baby is healthy, which is obviously much scarier.

The main pregnancy news is that I talked to my doctor and I am "officially" going to try for a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean). Of course, nothing we decide is official, since the baby is the one actually calling the shots. But if the baby is in position and everything looks healthy, she was optimistic about it for me. She even said I could get induced if I go past my due date (not that I'm dying to get induced, but this would be opposed to just having another c-section). I kept trying to talk myself in to just scheduling another c-section, since it made sense - having control over the birth, being able to plan ahead of child care, etc. It just didn't feel right though, so I'm going with my gut. If I end up having another one, that's fine, but I want to at least give myself the option to try to avoid surgery. Fingers crossed! I requested to join a VBAC group on Facebook, so I feel like that will most likely seal the deal.

Just because it's adorable.

I still really have no clue what sex the baby is. I've started to picture the baby as a boy, but it's hard to say if that's an actual feeling or just because that's been my only experience with having a baby. It's weird to me because I had such a strong, positive feeling that Dalton was a boy from 8 weeks on, and even had two separate dreams that the ultrasound tech said boy the night before we found out. Maybe I'll have a dream about this baby the night before he or she is born? I can only hope I'll be getting a full night of sleep before that happens.

Two trimesters down, one to go. I can't wait/I'm terrified and not ready.

Any other moms feel like the second tri flew by?