27 Weeks

My pregnancy ticker says that today marks exactly 90 days until the end of my pregnancy...scary, overwhelming, insane, yet exciting as well!

I'm completely upset about a certain thing that has happened within the last week. Dare I say that in my mind, this is an absolute tragedy. Besides the obvious, this is probably one of the worst things that could have happened to me during this pregnancy. And it is...wait for it, wait for it, hemorrhoids! When I found this lovely surprise 2 days ago, I was on the verge of tears, I might even go as far as to say, I was having a melt down. I cannot explain how hard I've tried to avoid this, but I will try anyway. For the past 10 years or so (ever since my mom had surgery to remove them and I saw the incredible amount of pain she was in afterward) I have spent countless hours sitting, waiting, wishing to poo and refusing to even give the tiniest push to help it along. If you know me, you know that I have major poo issues resulting from lupus and the ever-so-lovely meds that I'm on, so there's a lot of time spent on the porcelain throne anyway, then all the more time when I, being so deathly afraid of the big 'H', won't give a little push. Basically, I feel completely defeated...like I've lost a 10 year long war that I've been waging. Why did I waste so much time trying to preserve my pooper if the big 'H' was inevitable anyway?! I mean honestly, like 1/4 of my life in the past 10 years has been completely wasted, and for what? NOTHING! Grrrrrrrrrrrrr. The thing that really gets me now is how I'm expected to push out 4 kids after this one and somehow still avoid the wretched removal surgery? Somehow I don't think I'll end up winning this battle in the end.

*Big Sigh* and moving on! Back pain=still there and worse, side pain=off and on, general muscle pain=yep, left shoulder/right hip pain=gone (:)), headaches=slight, diarrhea=all the time, exhaustion=I'm real tired, low b/p episodes=more frequent. So that's pretty much the breakdown and still, this is way better than before I was pregnant, so praise Jesus!

Embry's moving around like a crazy kid and I love her more everyday. I read in my pregnancy book that about 50% of lupus pregnancies make it to 40 weeks, the other half deliver early, wether from induction or early labor. I've gotta say, I wouldn't mind delivering a little early. I don't think Embry is going to be very big in the first place, but if she's on the small side then she'll be easier to push out...pushing seems to be the theme of this post. Anyhow, I have my next OB appt on Sept 2 and then after that the appts will be every 2 weeks instead of every 4 weeks. I'm going in for my gestational diabetes test on August 29 and then on Sept 5 we have our 28 week ultrasound at St. Joe's (where we normally go). After scouring Tucson it is apparent that there are no U/S places that will allow pictures or videos, so my dream has officially been dashed. Poop on their faces! The other big news is that I signed us up for the birthing classes at TMC, yahoo! There are 3 classes each from 9-12 on Saturday starting on Sept 6. I'm so excited to go, mostly for Tony's sake, but also because it sounds like fun to me.

Now, I've been watching 'Tori and Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood' (I'd underline that, but I can't figure out how) and Tori Spelling recently had her baby on the show. Well, she brought along her own hospital gown which was just adorable. It was black and white zebra striped with a gathered neckline and sleeves and a hot pink ribboned empire waistline. I've seen them before, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how fun it would be to have one. Well turns out that buying a cute hospital gown will run between $50-$100 (and I'm pretty sure you'd throw it away afterwards considering what's going to get all over it), and of course Tori's was on the high end of that range. Then I thought, how difficult could it really be to make a hospital gown? I mean it's basically a big cotton sack with some ties and snaps, but then I realized, it's probably a lot harder than it seems in theory and I wouldn't want to put my mom through the torture of trying to figure it out. Maybe I should get a sewing machine and try myself...hmmmm...

I will now bestow upon you my weight stats thus far according to my own scale and almost obsessive weighing. We'll say that my beginning weight was zero to make this all easier and go from there. Ok so...
starting weight: 0
lowest weight: -16
current weight: -8
If I were to gain a total of 15 lbs from my starting weight throughout the pregnancy, I'd be a happy camper. From what I've heard, you pretty much lose that much during delivery, so that would be awesome. Then hopefully my body can go back to its pre-prepreganancy weight and all will be well with the world. Once I go to the dr again I'll get all their numbers and post those for comparison. The problem is they didn't weigh me till I was 7 weeks along and had already lost quite a bit of weight, so they're a little behind.

And now for the 27 week pictures!