I look like a dork but at least I look like a pregnant dork.

[same_sky]

30w5d - Here's a picture taken this morning, as promised. Please ignore the fact that the ribbon that ties is flipped up. The other pictures we took had the ribbon right, but there was flash and you can see my undergarments in a startling fashion, so I won't be posting those.

I have an Easter lily in a champagne glass on my desk, because my husband is the most awesome person I know. He also made me ice cream, and didn't even comment when I requested that he add more butterscotch. Well, he laughed, but there were no words.

My lower belly has gotten significantly worse today, and as of this afternoon, I can barely walk. Yay. I think I have SPD. I'll ask about it next week. I kept trying to get people to agree that it was normal to have a sore belly in pregnancy, and everyone kept saying, "umm.. yeah, I think I was a little sore" or the equivalent. I have a very hard time doing anything that requires me to put my weight on one leg instead of both, such as walking, rolling over in bed, getting in and out of the car, putting on clothes, etc. Everything fits, from the weird back pain I had (that pretty much stopped the day I broke my rib. Not sure what to do with that info) to the clicking noise when I walk to the standing on one leg thing. I would like to stop having weird personal problems now. Because I'm still feeling like I'm having a good pregnancy, but GEEZ can I have a good pregnancy that doesn't HURT so darned much? I don't have time to cover this topic fully. Will revisit at a later date.

Does anyone actually use fresh parsley in every recipe that calls for it? Seems like most of my recipes say that you should add fresh parsley. I have done it before--I used to keep it in the fridge, cleaned and ready, but then I got bored with that. Mostly, I just throw in a few shakes of dried parsley for color (if I even do that) when I think something looks boring without it. I know that it has a flavor, but does anyone actually miss the presence of parsley in a dish? Or even notice that it's there? I can't taste it unless I chew on it separately. Maybe I'm missing the parsley tastebud. My dill tastebud is somewhat impaired, too--I don't think it has much of a taste either, unless perhaps in pickle form, but M assures me that dill is a very strong flavor. I think he's lying. Do you think parsley is an essential part of a recipe, or do people just add it (as I suspect) to be all fancy?

This is an important question that keeps me up much too late at night.

And I am still hungry. I had dinner twice and then ice cream. And I didn't tell the XM radio story. Let me just try something new and skip all the tangents. XM radio? Sucks, and they stole $150 from me, and me hates them. I might elaborate more tomorrow, but if not, remember that the key point is that they are a bunch of jävla skitapor. At the moment, I am so sleepy that I don't know what to do with myself. I am not drunk, I promise. Just tired. Very tired. Is it really just Thursday? Not Friday yet? Gah.

Comments

[carrieb.livejournal.com]

I've never used parsely in a recipe. Sometimes I'll use basil instead. Not that it is really equivalent. Dill has a very strong taste, so you do have a defective tastebud there.

And you are so so so so so cute! I love your preggers belly!

Pregnancy is painful! That baby puts a lot of pressure on everything. I didn't have a sore belly, but man oh man did my sciatia hurt. Actually, teh more I read about sciatica the more I decided I didn't really have it. I just had an intense burning on my side kind of inside my fat. It was weird. But guess what! I barely remember it now. Ummmmm. . not that it helps you any to know that in a few weeks you'll have other things to think about. Like the back pain from carrying around an infant. Get that car seat out now and start packing a bag of sugar in it. Seriously.

So do you think you will be having a c-section b/c of this rib thing? I can't imagine they'd let you labor with your rib like it is, but hopefully it will be healed, but how will it heal with the baby constantly pushing on it? I was so scared of a c-section but mine turned out great. Forty-five minutes of labor was more than enough for me. I'm not big on that whole "I am woman, hear me roar" thing. Obviously I'm a woman. No penis here. Don't need pain to prove it. My one word of ass-vice is to go ahead and let the baby have some formula even if you are going to breastfeed. Then maybe the baby won't get jaundice if your milk doesn't come in and you won't have to watch your poor baby be put under the lights (though my hospital totally sucked to even have the lights--they make blankets with lights embedded in them) and you'll get to go home earlier.

I'm in rare form tonight. I seriously need some sleep. I just bought my mommy a plane ticket! I'm excited! And sleepy!

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping that I won't end up with a rib-based c-section. It's actually feeling quite a lot better, and mainly, I'm only having trouble with it when rolling over and getting out of bed, and twisting too much.. but even those things are not a tenth as bad as they were. It seems (knock on wood) to be on the road to getting better, and so I have hopes that I'll be over it completely by the time I go into labor. The good news is that even though it is not physically possible to carry this child any higher than I am (she kicks me just under my bra line in the middle quite a lot), it doesn't hurt my ribs at all--even when she has kicked directly at the broken one. Not sure how that works but I am profoundly grateful.

I am not that keen on proving my womanhood, either, though the thought of a c-section scares me. I figure that if i have to have one, I have to have one, and it'll be okay. I'm still trying not to think about that part TOO much yet. ;)

[ms-jacket.livejournal.com]

I had PSD with Linnea. I just thought I was being a huge baby about it until I told my midwife that I just didn't feel like I could put up with the pain anymore. I saw a doctor who pushed on this spot on my pubic bone and I nearly kicked him in the crotch.

Tell tale signs: hard time sleeping because of hip/groin pain, walking hard (feels like your pelvis will separate), the clicking sounds which you have. . . If you do have it, find a chiropractor that works on pregnant women with this condition and it will help.

My LJ buddy Kimbis had it too and she warned me early on that I might have to break down and get crutches because it can get really bad by the end. I think the adjustments kept it from getting that bad.

Good news is that it has NOTHING to do with the labor and won't affect it in the slightest. Now your rib thing, I don't know. That just sounds awful in its own way. Hang in there preggo. ;-)

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

I have been thinking that it was just normal pain, too, until I started being more and more unable to walk instead of just uncomfortable to walk. It hit a pretty rough spell at the end of this week, but today it hasn't bothered me too much. I have been trying to follow all of the suggestions about sleeping with a pillow between my knees and not standing on only one foot, getting in/out of the car with both feet, etc. I'm hoping all of that is helping, or maybe it's just that I've had some time to rest. Although I'm sorry to hear that you had it with Linnea, I AM kind of glad to hear a real person agree with my self-diagnosis. ;) I'll ask about it this week at my dr. appt but I don't expect them to do anything about it... that would be expecting just a little too much! ;)

The rib thing, by the way, is getting MUCH better. As I told Carrie in an above comment, I only have pain with it when I move a bit too suddenly, and at night when I am changing positions or getting out of bed, and even then, it's a tenth of the pain from a few weeks ago. I do have hopes that it will be completely healed soon. It's so much better right now that I have a hard time complaining about it too much. Let's just hope that it continues that way.

[stress-kitten.livejournal.com]

Yeah... that sounds like your pubic symphasis... either that or your sacroiliac joint. Possibly both. Both were murder for my entire second and third trimesters. Bad news: Not much you can do about it. Chiropractic treatments can give you temporary relief for the sciatic pain (shooting pains down the leg, pain radiating from your lower back/hip area, pain down the outside of your leg - which seemed very counter-intuitive to me) and a sacroiliac/pelvic support belt can also help with both your SI and pubic symphasis, since they help maintain stability in the area. Otherwise, tylenol, ice and/or heat for the pain, and no more standing on one leg to do anything. I found I had to put on pants sitting down during the last trimester, using my hands and arms to move my legs, since moving them on their own was... uh... agonizing.

I too felt like I had a really good pregnancy. The last two months sucked royally even so. Don't feel bad about complaining every now and then, though. Even though it's a great pregnancy compared to many, your experience is unique to you and the discomforts may be less than what others deal with, but that makes them no less real.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

Oh, good, someone else agrees with me that it sounds like that's the problem! Bad that you know what it's like, of course, but nice to have backup. I am trying to follow the suggestions on not standing on one leg, sleeping with a pillow between my knees, etc, and I don't know if it's helping or if it's unrelated, but I'm feeling much less pain now than I did when I wrote this. I'm thinking of getting a support belt--that seems like it might be helpful too.

[stress-kitten.livejournal.com]

This is what I did with my pillows to help with the pain while I slept:

Two pillows and a neck pillow under my head.
One pillow under my torso/waist.
One pillow under my thighs (with a gap between the body/thigh pillows for my hip to go into)
One pillow under my calves.
One pillow under my belly.

It helped soooo much to be able to get a good night's sleep... even if it made it a pain in the butt to try and turn over, it was much preferrable to the pain in my hip making it impossible to sleep.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

Wow. That is a lot of pillows. Thanks for the picture--it was pretty hard to visualize! I'll have to see what kind of system I come up with. I am really not big on pillows in bed (except for my head) so it's an adjustment. Isn't everything in pregnancy an adjustment, though? :)

[e11en.livejournal.com]

Complain away! I don't think you've had a particularly "easy" pregnancy just because it didn't turn out to be high risk. Both of mine were easier than yours to hear you talk about it. The rib thing alone, while perhaps not a symptom of pregnancy, would put you up there on the uncomfortable for many months scale. I only ever got really uncomfortable when I was 9 months pregnant and it was 90+ degrees (which it basically was for both of them all that last month).

And I never use parsley. Ever.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

I am counting the rib thing as a symptom of pregnancy anyway. It might not be fair but I really don't think it would have happened if I wasn't pregnant! I think I feel bad about complaining because I honestly still feel like things are going really well. I don't know WHY I feel that way exactly, because while the baby seems to be doing really well, I personally have not been all that terribly comfortable since the middle of February and the sick that caused the rib to crack. I suppose it's better that I'm in this mindset instead of feeling down about how awful it is when nothing much is going wrong. :) I was going to write about this last night but decided that no one reads LJ on the weekend anyway so might as well save it for a weeknight. ;)

[courtesy.livejournal.com]

You look so gorgeous!!!! Not at all dorky! SO CUTE!! :)

And I am SO with you on the parsley shit. It's crap. Pointless. Useless. Dill does have a strong, nice, flavour to me but parsley? It's just to add colour.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

I guess M is right about the dill. Darn it. I don't know why it seems so bland to me.

Thank you! It's even cuter in real life, come see. ;)

[(Anonymous)]

You look totally cute! Sorry I haven't been more comment happy about your baby! I have been so busy but I think of you guys ALL the time!

[dbrus.livejournal.com]

DOH...that was me :)

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm so glad you realized that you were logged out because I was really wondering who that was! :) No need to worry about not being comment happy. It happens sometimes. I have been really bad about comments lately, too. Just keep thinking good thoughts and that'll be enough. :) I have been wondering how you guys have been doing, though!

[georgiamars.livejournal.com]

You look great! And I like the towels you made, really nice patterns.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

Thank you, on both counts! :)

[(Anonymous)]

hey there! i just got a comment from you on my blog, which, what? no one ever reads and then there you were! so i had to come see what you were all about.

anyway, SPD, i totally have it. get yourself some physical therapy. my pain started at 18 weeks and i suffered with it for like 6 weeks before someone took me seriously. PT made a WORLD of difference.

as for the parsley? i skip it totally too if it's just on top. if it's in teh recipe i use frozen. i love me some frozen spices.

dill though, i think that's REALLY strong too, personally, so that one i'd pay more attention too. :)

thanks for the comment!
christina

[stewlis.livejournal.com]

I love this pic of you, it's totally cute!

I second the chiropractor for the issues, I have a lower back thing like that where I can feel the joints disjointing as I walk and the only way to fix it is through the chiro, which of course I have no access to here in Japan so I just live with the many residual constant pains from that particular car wreck. Chiros are great for such things, though don't expect the "fix" to stay, especially with baby pressure going on, but it does afford some measure of relief.

What is the kanji character behind you? I was completely amazed to see such a thing in your house, and I don't even know why entirely, but just staring at such things on a daily basis everywhere makes them really pop out at me when I see them in what I refer to as, "normal" pictures (from home, of course).

Is your rib feeling better?

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Those are cross-stitch characters (one is behind me, so you can only see part of the frame) back in.. 2001? or so, when I was into that. They have captions--and what I liked so much about them is that they're in Swedish. One is Lycka and the other is Kärlek -- Luck and Love. It struck my fancy that we would have such a combo of foreignness, and also, they're pretty.

The rib is feeling quite a lot better. It's not great, but it's doing fairly well most of the time. :)