Alanna Risse

This weekend was our Baby Shower! My friend Mo did a bang up job, distributing onsies to people so they could decorate them. It was a good turnout and everyone had a good time. No scary baby shower games like sniffing melted candy bars in diapers, trying to figure out which candy bar it is. Just friends and laughs and food. Most of which I couldn’t eat. But the good part was, it meant I didn’t have to keep most of the leftovers. I did somehow manage to end up with 24 hamburger buns that I can’t eat. They are taking up space in my freezer. Do you want them? They are so carb heavy, I probably won’t even be able to eat them after the baby is born. They are insanely huge and fluffy, so if you’re into that sort of thing, they’re all yours.

I love the onsies, they are so super cute. What a great idea. They are still hanging up in the living room because I don’t want to take them down. We got lots of very adorable loot too. Funny thing was, all the wrapping was in green, same color as Juniper’s room. Green is obviously the new black. We got some fundage for our stroller so I can’t wait to get down to Segal’s and plop down some loot on our Bob stroller. Gotta get Mississippi used to it before the baby comes, she’s got a problem with strollers, wheelchairs, bikes, scooters, and skateboards. Basically anything with wheels.

We had guests from Bend, our old neighbor from our last house came, some of Tom’s band mates, the Guru crew, and even my friend Marc who I’ve known since I was 20. Oh! and Gus, who I’ve known since I was 18. Gus wins!

Here is my advertisement to drink water.

Here are me and Summer comparing our nose butts.

So… 6 more weeks. I’m loosing weight. I eat and eat, and I can’t seem to gain. I’ve lost about a pound and a half in the last month. This bums me out. I never thought in a million years I’d be bummed about loosing weight. But I have a net gain of 12 pounds right now and I’m supposed to be gaining a pound a week, I seem to be instead loosing a pound a week. A healthy weight gain for pregnancy is between 25-35 pounds. I’m essentially on an atkins diet, so it’s really hard to get enough calories to gain weight, especially with my added caloric needs. I spend all my energy trying to eat more and get some good walks in. I really need this job to end. Things aren’t looking very optimistic that I’ll be out of here by the end of next week, but I NEED to leave my job. They’ll just have to figure it out. My tailbone hurts, my stomach hurts, I need some time in the pool, I need more rest, more exercise, more food.

Aside from how good I am at bitching, I mostly feel pretty good. My stomach has been sore, Juniper is really pushing and poking at my belly and the hernia gets painful when she does that. Wait, I wasn’t going to complain anymore! So yeah, feeling pretty good, except for that tailbone, and the belly, and some roids. No swelling in my feet or anything, no headaches, I mostly have good energy except for in the early evenings, when I’m finally done with work and should be swimming or doing yoga. My windows of opportunity for exercise are closing earlier and earlier. I couldn’t take my after dinner walk last night. I turned back and let Tom go one without me, and went home and cried on the couch. Yep! I’m doing great! Couldn’t be better! No complaining here!

My belly is growing quickly these days. My shirts are riding up a little more lately and I’m thankful for Bell Bands. Six more weeks and hopefully six more pounds. On the good side, Juniper gets all the nutrients first, so it should all be ok, I’ll just emerge a more leaner mommy. Right? Everything’s going to be ok. I see the midwives this Thursday so they can reassure me about the weight situation. My fasting numbers are slowly getting better. Those were the only ones that have been bad. I have been trying the recommendations of the dietitian, which happily involved a few fruits and grains. But I’m discovering I just can’t have any bread or potatoes, those are big sugar bombs for me. I’m still experimenting with grains, a little with dinner doesn’t seem to hurt, might even be helping. Morning and afternoon grains seem to be a bad idea. I’m slowly starting to see patterns. I’m really curious to see what my glucose levels are after the pregnancy. I know my fasting numbers will probably go back to normal because I take a fasting test every year. But I wonder what numbers I’ll have after a normal meal with carbs.

Juniper, you are very rambunctious inside my tummy, we’re getting very excited to meet you. Dad especially is getting excited to meet his little girl. We were trying to come up with the perfect genetic combination from the both of us. Hopefully you’ll get Tom’s eyes and my teeth, Tom’s immune system and my hair. Well, the hair part is debatable. Hopefully you won’t start going grey at age 12. Anyway, hope you’re enjoying it in there.

7 weeks to go. Holy Shmoly. My belly has taken on weird new dimensions. I’m starting to stress. I feel time ticking away. They’ve been trying to hire a replacement for me at work. He signed today and it’s official. I means I probably won’t have to work through July 15th, and that means more than 3 weeks off before my due date. This is such a huge relief. I want to focus on my health and I don’t have enough energy right now to do everything. I want to enjoy my pregnancy too, and not just stare at a computer all day long, sitting on my butt. So that might be happening sooner rather than later. Last night and this morning I was a big stress ball because I thought things weren’t moving forward with the new hire, it had been 10 days since I’d heard anything. But bam, there you go, things are actually happening.

This weekend I tortured myself by going into La Petite Provence on Alberta St to get a coffee. Don’t worry, I didn’t eat anything. Mostly I just wished I could touch stuff and smell it. They had these HUGE free samples on the counter that were pretty torturous, but mostly I was happy just looking. I swear, after the baby is born, I’m going to have to do a “pump-and-dump” with some sugary treat, because I don’t want my baby getting a giant sugar overload, she has a high risk of having temporary hypoglycemia right after she’s born. But yeah, so tempted to do the pump and dump. I don’t even care about alcohol right now, I just want a little ice cream. Like one spoonful… mmmm so delicious and creamy. I love you very much, baby.

I went and saw a dietitian yesterday. She told me I should be very proud of myself for the work I’ve done to get my glucose levels down. She thought my morning numbers might be higher because I’m not getting a diverse enough diet, so she wrote me up a very nice plan that involves minimal grains/breads/rices and even some fruit. I had a dinner roll last night. It was soooooo good. But today at lunch I had 2 slices of bread and I didn’t like my glucose numbers afterward. Lunchtime 2 slices should theoretically be fine, but it definitely affected my numbers so I’m going to reign it back in. No reason to go hog wild with the bread. Just being able to have a little bit makes me day so much better. So I continue to play with my numbers. The bottom line from the dietitian was: 1. Eat at regular times every day. 2. exercise major muscle groups 3 times every day, preferably after meals. 3. Cut out the stress. Here’s hoping all this helps get that fasting number down.

If I were having a hospital birth, I’d have been given pills or shots along with diet and exercise. The dietitian said with numbers as bad as mine were for the three hour glucose test, she would have assumed they would have put me straight onto meds, but my food journal numbers tell a totally different story. I think maybe it was good for her to see what a huge difference diet can make. And so I cautiously nibble on fruit and breads. I was ok without them, so I only want them if they help me. I feel proud of myself that I’ve been able to keep it up as well as I have, and I’ve only gotten sad or run down on rare occasions. But man, when I do feel run down, when I can’t figure out what to eat all day, and I can’t seem to get enough calories, come dinner time, I’m a mess. I can barely find the strength to cook and feed myself. It’s hard keeping this diet up day after day.

I’m getting so excited to meet Juniper. Tom and I were wondering what she’ll be like. I know one thing, she’s going to have lots of energy, she is so squirmy. Can’t believe it’s just 6 weeks, 5 days now til my due date. I’m of course fine to wait but something tells me she’s going to be right on time. Your first baby is on average 8 days past your due date, this one seems like she’s going to hit the gate right at the sound of the bell.

This weekend is the baby shower! Wonder if anyone is coming. Wonder if I’ll be able to eat anything at all. Wonder if it’ll be a fun party. What am I going to wear?

I finally died my hair with henna. I’ve never used henna before. I got the red color. It is RED, so red, brassy orangy red. I’m now a carrot top. Pics someday…

So… we had to redo our sewer line. The best case scenario was that it would cost about $2400. If the water line got in the way or was damaged, it was going to be $1400 more. Turns out, through a series of unfortunate circumstances, our final bill totals more like $6200. Yikes. Not knowing this a couple weeks ago, we went out and bought some stuff. Stuff we could have lived with out, but stuff we wanted pretty bad, or maybe *I* wanted pretty bad. The first item on the want want list is this lovely glider chair:

It swivels, it glides, it reclines, it is water/stain resistant. I’d been looking on craigslist for one, but the used ones seemed to be ugly and seemed to be priced pretty high still. We got this one for a little over $500. I think it’s going to be in our home for many, many years. It will probably move to our bedroom if we ever pry it from our kid’s room.

Second item on the want, want list was a gas stove to replace our old electric stove. Our stove worked, it worked ok actually, but it was starting to get on my nerves. The oven temp wasn’t digital and the nature of the knobs meant you really had no idea what temperature you were setting the oven too, also nothing to alert you that the oven was preheated. This makes bread baking very challenging. It makes any baking challenging. I also can’t stand those stupid electric coils, the pans are always wobbly on them and you end up with one side of the pan collecting all the juices while the other side is dry. This stove has 5 burners, a flat work surface, self cleaning oven, and digital controls. Me very happy.

This is what wound up happening to our garage and basement. When we got the initial estimate, it sounded like they’d just need to break up one square of concrete outside the garage, get the city to do some work in the alley, and just meet up the new sewer pipe in the alley. Turns out the water pipe was directly above the sewer line so they had to redo that, and they had to dig out the entire garage to get to it. Then as they were digging, they discovered we have Class “c” soil under our garage, very unstable. A city worker actually fell into a sink hole as he was working on the alley portion. So in order to save our 102 year old garage, they had to stop digging, and go into the basement in order to lay the pipe in. To be honest the whole description of work makes my head spin. Our water line was 60+ years old and the pipe was very corroded, probably only had a couple years left, especially after having to be disturbed by all the sewer work, so c’est la vive. But ouch, lots of money.

So now we have a new chair, a new stove, a new water line, a new sewer line, and a very damaged bank account, once that was supposed to help us get through my quitting my job to go and have a baby. Oops. Good thing our CSA is paid for.

But enough house stuff. I had an ultrasound on Tuesday. This is Juniper at 32 weeks, 2 days:

All is good, good organs, good position, good size, no chord around the neck. She showed off for us pretty good and I got to see her open and close her mouth a couple times. I feel 100 times better knowing she’s dong good in there. I met with the midwives yesterday and they are not at all concerned with my diabetes, my numbers look good and they have no reason to refer me out to a doctor. So we’re still full speed ahead with the home birth. Go Juniper! You will not be made of sugar and spice.

Ay yay yay. It’s been a crazy week. The results from my 3 hours glucose tolerance test were bad, and worst of all, the morning fasting number was bad. I definitely have gestational diabetes. I’ve been monitoring my glucose for a little over a week now and I’m having trouble getting that morning fasting number down. The good part is, the rest of the numbers are well within normal range just sticking to my diet. The bad part is, the morning number is the hardest to control. I’ve been researching and trying things out, and making a million phone calls. Yesterday morning I had come to accept that I will probably have to transfer to a Doctor, and forgo my homebirth, but after talking to the midwives, and talking to dietitians, there is still hope. My midwives have complete faith that we can figure this out. I had a great conversation with a dietitian at OHSU and hope to get in to see her on Wednesday. She was very understanding and it sounds like she’s creative, knowledgeable, and very willing to exhaust all other options before advising me to go on medication. My morning numbers aren’t that high, so there’s a good chance we can figure this out. In the meantime, I’m checking my glucose levels all the time, trying to get a good picture of what’s going on. Tomorrow I have an ultrasound to check the baby’s size and make sure everything looks good. I can’t wait to see her again.

My midwives have been amazing with all this. They have so much faith in me, and I really need that right now. They’ve been calling around, trying to find all the help they can get. They are amazing human beings. I don’t know how to thank them enough for all their help and encouragement.

I had a bad, bad, bad appointment with a naturopath last week. She was supposed to help me with my nutrition. Instead she told me to keep up the good work, go on the Paleo diet, and take some pills that frankly I think are probably dangerous for me to be taking along with my prenatals (don’t worry, I’m not taking them). She then put acupuncture needles in some emotional points and asked me to tell her what was really bothering me. Before I knew it, I was talking about my mother’s death and the whole appointment turned into an exercise in grief expression. And let me tell you, I do not need any help expressing my grief. So I left there all red eyed and sad, with no more idea about how to get my gestational diabetes under control than when I got there. And she wants me to see her every week. I think not. I think I’m very done with her. To be honest, I feel like she manipulated my emotional state in order to suit her own agendas, of which she seemed to have many. Sadly none of her agendas seemed to have anything to do with helping me lower my glucose numbers. Anyway, that didn’t work.

The things I’ve found out this week are that I probably have what is called “Dawn Phenomenon”. My body is dumping lots of glucose into my system in the early morning and because I’m not making enough insulin, my glucose numbers are too high. I’m trying Chromium, Vanadium, apple cider vinegar, exercise three times a day. I’m experimenting with what happens when I have a bedtime snack vs none, eating in the middle of the night or not, waking up early, testing my glucose in the middle of the night.

We still haven’t found a replacement for me at work. I am now attempting to hold down an 8 hr a day job, eat every 2 hours, exercise 3 times a day, not stress, get lots of sleep, research gestational diabetes, take care of the dog, and make a million appointments. I can’t do this for much longer. I think it’s time to have a talk with work. I have 8 weeks til the baby gets here and I’m not risking her to diabetes just for a few more weeks of work. I need to focus on this.

So that’s where that’s at. We played with diapers this week:

The ones I’m making are clear winners on the stuffed animals, though it’s hard to tell how they’ll work out on actual human babies. Fingers crossed they work out, because they are pretty neat.

We love our baby class. It’s every Sunday night for 6 weeks and this week was week two. We practiced laboring positions and I got lots of back rubs from Tom. What is there not to like? It’s been really informative and fun and I look forward to it every week.

Here’s me:

Despite getting quite large, and sporting all kinds of terrible stretch marks, I am always worried about not gaining weight. I seem to be staying at the same weight for some time now, though every time I think that, I go to see the midwives and I’ve somehow managed to put on a couple more pounds, so I think I’m still doing good. I’ve been on a modified diet since April and a really restrictive diet since May 28th. It feels like all I do is cook and forage for food.

I know I shouldn’t beat myself up about this, but I am. I feel bad for every tiny bit of sugar I had early on in my pregnancy. I wish I could take it all back. I know my baby is going to be ok, I know I’m going to be able to keep my glucose numbers under control, but right now I feel like every french fry, every bit of honey in my tea, that delicious huckleberry milkshake I had in Hood River, the occasional sodas, the skinny cow ice cream sandwiches, were all bad for my baby. I feel so sorry for it all. So baby, I’m sorry if I put you at risk. We have 9 weeks to go and they are going to be the healthiest weeks in my life.

Nine more weeks and counting. Strangers are starting to ask me when I’m due. So I must be finally past that is-she-fat-or-pregnant? phase. I still don’t feel big, although I think I probably look big. I feel like I’m looking at a funhouse mirror when I look at my reflection.

It’s been an easy hard pregnancy. I feel pretty good, but the potential gestational diabetes and the hernia are hard. Personal stuff has been hard. Work has been hard. And when I look back, I think, “yeah, that was a hard time in my life” and I give myself a pat on the back for being such a trooper. At the same time, I look back and I think “wow, that was easy, so much easier than I’d imagined.” I haven’t turned into a hormonal monster, I feel very active and mobile, I am in love with my husband, we love our house, and I’ve generally really enjoyed being pregnant. But this may be the only time in my life I will be pregnant and I am starting to feel those regrets, like wishing I could have had more time for swimming and yoga, more time for relaxing and reading, more quality time with Tom. But we bought a beautiful house and it’s really coming together, so I have much to be thankful for. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to look for and buy a house after having a kid. So all in all, it’s been a fun, hard working time so far.

I took the 3 hour glucose tolerance test on Monday. Uck, horrible. I had fooled myself into believing that it wasn’t going to be that bad, but it was, it was terrible. I felt awful for the rest of the day. I’m concerned because the tech did a blood sample at the start of the test to make sure I was in a safe range to chug all that glucose, without running the risk of going into a coma or something. My fasting glucose was high, way higher than it’s been when I’ve been testing it at home. I don’t understand what’s up with that. So I don’t have very high hopes that I passed the test. And that is pretty damn depressing. I had a terrible day Monday. Terrible terrible. And my computer wasn’t working well, work was all screwed up and I ended up frustrated, angry and depressed.

Tuesday, since work was slow, they told me to take the rest of the day off. I took Mississippi to the dog park to run some energy out of her, then took myself to the Hoyt Arboretum. I hadn’t been there yet. It’s one of those Portland places that’s been on the list, I just hadn’t gotten to it yet. I did a 3 mile hike. It was hard! I’m so much slower now than I was a couple months ago. It still felt great to be outside in the trees. I feel out of shape and wish I had kept up with a regular exercise schedule for the whole pregnancy. There are only so many hours in a day I suppose, and since many days require a nap, there’s not much I can do. I just try hard, and that’s all I can do.

We got our Green Mountain diapers in the mail yesterday and now I want to have a diaper changing party with Tom. Maybe tonight after dinner. Gonna round up all the baby sized stuffed animals in the house. We still probably only have less than half the diapers we need, but I won’t start freaking out about that until July. Maybe all those recommendations for the number of needed diapers are just way over the top. I feel like being dangerous and finding out the hard way.

The highly restrictive diet continues, and I miss carbs. I live off of veggies, meat, beans, dairy and nuts. I try to keep it interesting, but generally everything is heavy. Sure, lots of veggies are great, but it’s been hard to get enough calories, so they end up being paired with heavier stuff, which takes all the fun out of a nice light veggie dish. I feel hungry all the time. It’s not like a ‘hungry, grumbly stomach, I need to eat’ kind of feeling. It’s more like a ‘I can’t stand to eat another bite but I feel like I’m hungry down to my bones’ kind of feeling. I have trouble deciding what to eat, because I’m not hungry, but I am hungry. I have to make myself eat all the time when I don’t want to. I guess I’m doing ok though weight-wise. I thought I’d lost weight but at the last appointment they told me I’d gained 2 pounds. I really feel like they skipped last month’s weight on my chart somehow, but Tom swears they didn’t. I had a taste of Tom’s chinese onion pancake last night and I wanted to cry. It might have been the best thing I’ve ever tasted. And I can now taste even the slightest amount of sugar in things. I’m highly sensitive to the taste of it now.

I got a glucose monitor for home and my levels so far always seem to be normal. So either the diet is working or the monitor doesn’t work or the lab and my midwives are trying to torture me for the fun of it. We’ll see how the test results are and if things look ok, I will add some carbs very slowly, and track how I react to them with the home glucose monitor.

They are finally interviewing people to take over my job. There’s just one month to go before I’m supposed to be done. There’s so much work to be done between then and now, but this week I’m in waiting mode. Waiting for deliverables. I’ve been cleaning up my code and writing a document for my replacement, so everything is in one place for them. I’m very excited to start the next phase in my life and I wish it could start right now. It’s going to be a very, very long month.

We started our baby class and it’s great. Lots of fun. It’s a small class too, which is nice. The two other families are really nice and I look forward to spending the next few weeks with them.

I know I should take a picture. Maybe I’ll try later today.

Last night I sewed instead of working on my paintings. It’s my way of procrastinating. I suppose it could be worse. I could have procrastinated by sitting around, doing nothing. But lately, I just call that being pregnancy tired, and the only thing I can really procrastinate against when I’m “pregnancy tired” is sleeping. But yeah, last night I had energy that should have been used for painting. But things needed sewing anyway. I sewed this table cloth and napkins:

And I sewed some more diapers too. But I have 23 days until my deadline and 4 paintings to finish. I’ve only just barely started two. My energy levels wax and wane with this pregnancy, so when I have energy, which is so very rare after 5pm, I really should be cranking away on these paintings. Looking at charts and graphs about common pregnancy symptoms, it appears I’m scheduled more for tiredness in my third trimester so my hopes of finishing these, while holding down a full time job, doggy class, baby class, and getting all the house/baby stuff done might be unrealistic, but I’ve never missed this deadline. So I’m thinking about that a whole bunch.

Yesterday I had a meltdown. Probably calorie related. It’s been hard getting enough to eat. A bowl of cereal sounds like heaven to me right now. Easy, yummy food that requires no work. Mmmm cereal, I love you. Someday we will be together again and I will treat you with the respect you deserve. My meltdown prevented me from going to my old favorite prenatal yoga class in SE. I had to cry and eat hamburger and take a nap instead. I’m realizing I’m at that use it or loose it stage of pregnancy. And if I don’t get back into a regular stretching and strength routine, I’m gonna regret it.

Now that I’m in a work countdown, I’m starting that list of all the things I’m going to do. Marathon appeared on the list. It’s been bothering me I never completed a full marathon. A half just won’t do, I want the full monty. Mostly the list consists of a regular daily art practice and lots of walks and jogs. Those two activities sound heavenly. I’m feeling really thankful I haven’t gained too much weight because it seems like recovery won’t be that bad. So I guess I’m ok living without cereal for a little while.

My baking scale came in the mail today. I was going to use it for all the fantastic whole grain bread I was going to make, but now I can’t use it for that. I weighed my cottage cheese, just to have something to weigh. It was pretty fun, but not as fun as weighing flour.

But speaking of weights, and waits for that matter, I’m going to do some exercise while I wait for some work assets to be delivered. ttfn. or… Should I paint while I wait? Shall I procrastinate on exercising but painting? Or procrastinate on painting by exercising? Or procrastinate by continuing to blog until I get my assets and I have no time to do either? Hmmm…

Here we go, we’re in the final 10 week count down (give or take). My blood pressure is 120 over 60, I’m steadily gaining 2 pounds a month, I feel fine and I’m still very mobile. I’m on iron supplements and I feel better. Baby is about 3 pounds and about 15.7″ long. Looks like she spends most of her time head down so I think I’m safe from breech. Because of the bad results form the 1 hour glucose test, on the advice of my midwives I’ve completely cut out all grains for now. They say some women are just really sensitive to grains and it’s better to be on the safe side. They’ve seen plenty of women do just fine as long as they cut out the grains. I go in for my three hour glucose screening soon. Today in our monthly appointment my midwife reassured me that often people get bad results from the 1 hour screening and go on to do fine in the 3 hour screening. So I’m trying not to panic too much. If it’s bad and I end up needing insulin, I loose my ability to have a home birth, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that things haven’t gotten that bad. Like I said, I feel fine. I’m totally dedicated to this no grain thing. I want my home birth, this high protein, low carb diet is best for baby, and maybe It’ll spare me from some of those common 8th month issues like swelling.

I’m still moving around quite a bit. I let Tom do all the heavy lifting but I was able to get some gardening done, even moved some buckets of dirt around. I am definitely slower than I was, but I just do little bits at a time and take breaks. I’m still cooking up a storm, cleaning, painting furniture, putting up shelves, all that fun house move-in stuff. I’m sleeping pretty good too. I have to get up once or twice but I get back to sleep pretty quickly. Tom says he’s proud of how well I’m doing. I’m proud too. Despite the issues like glucose, muscle tear, and a sore tailbone, I feel like this pregnancy has been generally pretty easy.

We took Juniper to see Nada Surf and Telekinesis. What a great show. We went early so we could get me a seat and it was so nice getting to stay on my butt the whole time. The little one kicked a lot, so either she hates live music or loves it. We’ve seen Nada Surf many times now. I wanted to tell them I’d seen them with a broken foot a few years ago and now seven months pregnant.

Our friends Gus and Cassie came over for lunch on Saturday and brought over some baby loot. They gave us this jacket, which I wish fit me.

So nice having people over. I made fried chicken, fresh biscuits, coleslaw and yams. The biscuits and yams looked good . I want more dinner parties. I love our new dining room. I wish all the people who came over for dinners in our tiny apartment in San Francisco could all come over for dinner at our new place.

This weekend was me and Tom’s 10th anniversary or being together. He had said we had to drop this anniversary and start using our marriage anniversary but the truth is, it might fall on or very close to our kid’s birthday, so we may end up switching back. Something tells me, even if we don’t have a baby by August 9th, we’re not going to have a whole lot of energy for celebrating. So we sorta celebrated this weekend. And that meant spending some good quality time together and with our dog. Trying to just enjoy the peace and quiet (sans the barking) of our lives right now. It was a really wonderful weekend. I wish it could have been longer.

Happy 30 weeks, little bug. See you in another 10 (ish).