Catch up in pictures

I was a bridesmaid in my sister in law's wedding at the end of October. Observe my ridiculous bulbous bouffant and make up.  (macademia... gazebo!)

Kaylee was the most adorable flower girl ever.

I got a serger and my first project was making underwear for Kaylee

Since I reopened my right ear I decided to buy earrings to keep them open. Awesome funky purple earrings.

I voted in our local primary!

Kaylee demonstrated how good of a helper she is with feeding the critters.

She got her first ear infection. 

We had unseasonably warm November days to play outside.

I went for a hike at the local nature center and enjoyed myself immensely.

I worked on my adult coloring

On chilly weekend mornings I enjoyed a hot cup of coffee and watching my critters.

We totally jumped the gun and reassembled the crib for Babydos. Note the future nursery mess.

We cleaned and slightly rearranged Kaylee's room.

I started sanding a changing table for the nursery that I found on a facebook swap page.

More adult coloring from my mandala book.

Kaylee wanted me to draw our family.

The cats steal my snoogle. Also proof that they get along for when they don't.

Eric entombed Kaylee in wood blocks, much to her delight.

I've been making leotards for Kaylee.

Gwyn oversees Eric's work on some organizational modifications we're making to the barn.

Like a spot to store plastic t-posts that I don't need in the winter.

And new shelving to keep the feed room part of my tack room better organized.

I took Gwyn for a walk and just about died from the effort of hiking through sand. Gwyn enjoyed getting out with other horses for our trail 'ride' with friends.

I got a huge blister for my efforts. I suspect hiking boots that no longer fit.

I got awesome fabric to make more clothes that are all about girl empowerment in STEM fields.  This panel shown says "Experiment Like a Girl" and has a picture of Marie Curie. It will be for me. I have smaller ones for Kaylee as well as coordinating fabric.

The deer are cleaning up our windfall apples.

Kaylee fits in her locker at school.

She also insists on brushing her own hair after swimming in the 'inside pool'

We got our first snow storm of the season. Almost a foot of snow eventually fell!

Eric cleans my truck off for me.

Kaylee gives the baby hugs.

I enjoyed a cup of jesus hate (peppermint mocha, actually)

Selfies with Gwyn today

Kaylee wears her "Yeti Crab Sweater" 

Selfie with Saffron

Nommy lunch

More selfies with my fuzzy beast

New, WARM boots!

Christmas decorating today

Lights in the window

That darn procrastination demon strikes...

I put off/completely forgot about Kaylee's health form that needed to be filled out for preschool. Partly because it was rather involved in getting filled out and things with lots of steps sort of intimidate me into not doing anything and partly because I really don't like talking on the phone.

BUT! I finally got it done (her pretty much getting an exclusion from school kicked my butt into gear, I'm so bad at adulting)

Things I had to do to fill out a form:

Find a primary care doctor, set up appointment for weeks out because new patient appointments were booked up
Call her old pediatrician to get her vaccination records
Learn that I can't just verbally release those, I had to fax a medical release form
Get annoyed
Contemplate just getting a moral exemption to make the form simpler but feel morally opposed to taking that route when the child is FULLY vaccinated
Call old pediatrician -again- and ask about medical release, learn a doctor's office will acquire records sooner, WTF, and even if you have the appointment, you still need to wait for records to arrive to fill out vaccine history
Ask old office if they will verbally recite vaccine history so you can have the form completed, office tells you they'll call you back
Office calls back and gladly verbally gives you vaccine history, you thank them profusely and fill out the form


Still to do:

Take Kaylee to her new appointment tomorrow where she will get her flu shot and have her form filled out. This will also be her VERY belated 3 year check up. Oops.  Moving screws you up, yo.

Turn in form next week and pray to the flying spaghetti monster that she can still be enrolled now that her form is complete.



I did have coffee today, which might explain how this all got done. And Eric worked from home so I felt like I was under observation to be productive. Guess it worked.

Stuff about things

I'm so behind on posting but after the day I've had... oi!

However, it's kind of a lesson learned sort of day. The lesson is this:

If leaving the trailer hooked up to the truck overnight, make sure ALL running lights are turned off and/or the trailer hook up is unplugged.

I went to go get Kaylee ready for school today and my truck was dead. D.E.D dead.  The door locks wouldn't unlock, I had to actually use a key (First world problems) but it does emphasize how dead the battery was. There was no juice left. So much for my planned walk on the Polly Ann with Gwyn.

Kaylee, of course, insisted we still go to school so I hooked the bike trailer up and biked the 1.5 miles to her school in town. Boom! Her teachers were horrified and insisted that they bring Kaylee home. Something something blah pregnancy blah something. Whatever, I'm not a fragile porcelain vase.  I walked 1.5 miles yesterday and 3.5 the day before (more on that... eventually? who knows)  I'm staying active, come hell or high water.

Pregnancy, is in that weird "no more morning sickness not yet pregnant enough to be impacted" so it's easy to forget sometimes that I am pregnant. I'm starting to feel flutters from Babydos, so that's cool, but it's not reliable yet. Yay second trimester. If I wasn't painfully reminded twice a day by a self injection that I can't ride I might forget completely. I'm still wearing my old clothes and I haven't gained weight at all, just like last time.

I made a quilted table runner for halloween. Three of them, two are gifts though only one has been mailed. I also just got a serger for my birthday so I'm looking forward to experimenting a little more confidently with knits. The need for pregnancy clothes is close at hand so I'll be able to make my own. I already have the patterns and fabric, I just wanted a machine to really get a more professional finish on my edges.

Huh...

I was reading a post from another Mom asking for help with her daughter and everything the mother was describing was like a flashback to me as a child. The mom was concerned about her daughter's potential for success since it seemed like she hit every single marker for Inattentive type ADD.

So I look up the traits for both childhood and adult ADD.


Aaaaaaand I fit pretty much the entire description. It's a little scary how damn accurate it is for me. But it also explains quite a lot about how I handled high school (decent, with incredibly management on my parents' part), college (okaaaaaay) and graduate school (HAHAHAHAHA) It explains why I was so successful with my job at Bio-Rad (highly structured with time deadlines throughout the day and week) but failed miserably at the crime lab (highly unstructured with minimal to no deadlines even week to week). It

I'm not sure what to do with this. It does give me an avenue of support to reach out to if I want an official diagnosis to get some behavioral therapy and possibly medication, though I'd rather seek out therapy options first before medicating. I might push for medication if I go back into the workforce, to give me the best chance at success. Right now I think with some more support day to day I don't need anything more than social strategies for managing the home and farm.

I know my mom had mentioned in passing that she thought I might have ADD and never really pursued it, but I think it was before inattentive was classified. When I called her to tell her, she just went, "Yeah, your Dad and I thought so, but didn't want to say anything and let you come to that conclusion yourself".  Apparently, the amount they needed to manage me vs. my younger brother was dramatically different enough for them to go, "Huh, maybe Amy has something going on...."

Knowing is half the battle, right? And now I can devise coping strategies to help me keep my life together.

Information Accessibility

The seriousness of my health issues aside, I'm really loving how a lot of the health care systems are now using an online chart system to track patient care and as a patient, I have access to it. I feel empowered, reading my own test results. I loved looking back and reading the notes my midwife took throughout my labor with Kaylee and similarly, I like having the details, the down and dirty data. I think it's the scientist in me. I can accurately educate myself to a level of detail that a doctor might not delve into (even though I desire it, it's honestly my biggest gripe with standard medicine. This is why I loved my midwife in Washington, he would send me research articles and really get into the nitty gritty once he found out I had a science background. It made me feel like a valued and contributing member of my own healthcare, rather than a marginalized idiot)

Henry Ford Health Systems uses MyChart, which seems to be standard. I think I have a crazy number of accounts with them now from all of the different hospital systems I've been seen by (from back in Washington especially).  MyChart is why I chose to go to urgent care further from home when I had the cramp and it's why, when given the choice of ER, I chose to drive 40 minutes away. I had not heard good things about nearer hospitals and since my prenatal care was within Henry Ford, I found it prudent to have my whole health care team reading from the same page.

I checked  MyChart tonight and saw the results from Vascular Imaging (right above my negative Gonorrhea test, thankyouverymuch). My clot was found in the right peroneal vein, it was called a total occluding acute thrombosis. Very shallow google research informs me that this is a common spot to get a clot. Obesity and pregnancy are my only two risk factors. I'm around the same weight as my previous pregnancy (only 10 lb heavier, really) and didn't have an issue then. But I am thankful things were caught in time.

Interestingly, given my symptoms, I had low probability of my symptoms being a DVT (deep vein thrombosis). My only symptom was pain. I had no swelling or edema, recent long distance travel or immobility. Go figure. This low probability was why they chose to do the D-Dimer test first, rather than jump immediately to ultrasound.  (I found a professional grade Merck manual on the subject, it's been fascinating to read!)

Over the past week I had been breaking down over random things. But reading this very clinical report on what I've been diagnosed with and what the prognosis and expected risks and probabilities are, it's actually quite reassuring. Eric and I both agreed we wish we had this last week. It would have eased our minds significantly.

Now I can't wait for the results of my CT scan to be posted to my account so I can get more specifics on my PEs (pulmonary embolisms)

That damn cramp....

I mentioned, in the same paragraph no less, that I'd been having a cramp in my leg combined with out of breathness.

Well. It wasn't a muscle cramp, tear or strain, like I thought.

Eric finally had enough and made me go to urgent care on Sunday. I drove myself in, arriving an hour after they opened (11am) to find I was the only one there. Sweet! I got seen immediately and related my symptoms. The doctor on call asked about shortness of breath and I did say I'd been having trouble walking up stairs. I think her face paled and she told me that I was going to the ER for suspected blood clot. She asked which one I preferred. We're in this healthcare desert so I could travel to several, all about 25 miles away. I chose to stay with Henry Ford.

The clinic called ahead and gave me paperwork to expedite my ER admission. I drove myself and called Eric and my Mom to give them a heads up. I walked into the ER and again, was seen right away. Sunday morning was slow, apparently, or I was near top of the triage priority. I got brought back and the nurse practictioner explained what the plan was going to be.

The first thing was they were going to do the D-Dimer test with my blood. It's the least invasive test for blood clots(and probably cheapest) but you can test false positive if you're pregnant. If I was negative, that was awesome.

I was positive.

Next I was sent up for an ultrasound of my legs. They were looking for a blood clot, or deep vein thrombosis.

The tech found a blood clot. When I was wheeled back down to my space in triage, the nurse practitioner kind of laughed, and said, "You're staying with us tonight."  In other words, they were admitting me.

Blood clots are serious business. Pregnant women are at a higher risk for blood clots due to excess clotting factor in their blood. Several doctors (both General and OB) explained that there was a risk that the clot broke off and moved to my lungs (where it could cause a pulmonary embolism if untreated) but the treatment was the same. The ER was declining to perform a CT scan because they were just going to treat me anyway if a clot was found in my leg. If one hadn't been found in my leg, I was going to CT next.

I was given a shot of blood thinner and sent up to my room. My phone was getting low in battery so I called Eric and he arranged for his sister to bring me a charger and a book to read. He was busy keeping Kaylee occupied and we both thought that a hospital visit at night would make bedtime a gnarly mess.

I settled into my room and enjoyed a brief visit from family. Then I settled in for the evening. My only hospital experience previous was when I was helping my friend Cheryl with her labor. You get checked very regularly by nurses when in labor at the hospital and I guess that's labor specific because I was not checked or bothered regularly and was basically left to my own devices with instructions that they didn't want me wandering the halls since I was on blood thinners.

It did not take long for me to go stir crazy.  Thankfully the hospital had free wi-fi. I called Eric after Kaylee was asleep and we chatted. Then I was in for a restless night. I slept for 3.5 hours before tylenol wore off and my leg pain was back. I was debating calling the nurse when an alarm started going off in the hospital. I figured she had to be awake anyway, so I called and asked for more tylenol. Apparently there was a fire drill. At 3:30 am. By 4:30a the tylenol was working its magic so I  started trying to get back to sleep. At 5:30 a resident came in to talk to me.  I was ready to kill her. I rolled over but at 6 a patient transporter came to get me. I was heading down for an echocardiogram to make sure my heart looked good.

I zoned out for part of the  morning and people were in and out. The big thing was the doctors changed their minds. They still wanted me to have a CT scan to check for clots in my lungs, even though the treatment wouldn't change.

I went for my CT scan around 1pm. It didn't take long and the contrast dye made me feel like I was peeing my pants for a brief moment and then I had a moment where it felt like I was struggling to breathe but it passed.

My midwife came by to talk to me and that felt really nice that she took time in her day to do that. She splits her time between being at this hospital (why I chose it, so all my care was under the same account) and being at a location closer to me. I really like her and I'm hoping I can still be somewhat under her care for this pregnancy.

I called the home birth midwife and canceled my appointment for today (tuesday). I've effectively risked out of home birth, which REALLY sucks but there's nothing I can do about it.

The obgyn came back with my CT results. I had multiple clots in both of my lungs. It was likely the source of my out of breathness. After she left I had a minor breakdown and just cried. Thinking about how close I came to potentially dying  is nervewracking. My midwife came back to talk about that too, gently and jokingly scolding me for going all out with the risk factor, hah. She also got me in for an appointment with the Maternal Fetal Medicine specialists. All of my appointments now are going to be at the hospital. No choice in the matter, but I may be able to alternate and keep seeing my midwife.

It's weird. The pregnancy is high risk, but me laboring is not, because I'll be pulled off of the blood thinners for that. I just don't know if the OBs are going to be super controlling about timing or if they'll let me go into spontaneous labor (my desire). I absolutely cannot be on blood thinners if I need a C-section, but the plan is that I stay on my current medicine until 35 weeks, then switch to heparin, which can be easily and quickly reversed when the time comes for labor.

Eric came down to the hospital and brought Kaylee. It was so nice to have them with me and Kaylee definitely missed me. She was very cuddly but also fascinated by my IV and the bits of blood that had leaked a little. You could see the little gears turning when the internal medicine doctor came in to talk to me and listened to my lungs with his stethoscope. She plays with her play stethoscope at home and does similar things.

All of the doctors were basically agreeing that I was clear to be discharged at that point. But we also had to talk to the patient advocate at the hospital about my medicine cost. Even though Eric has a great job, and an arguably good insurance policy, my medicine will cost us $3000 for this first month's supply and $2000 for next month (when we meet our deductible) and after that will just be a copay. Until January, when it starts all over again. Of course, some of this might change as we pay for the hospital stay.  The hospital pharmacy only had 10 doses on hand. For me, that's 5 days worth. It was $895.

If I was on medicaid, it would be free.  Thanks insurance companies, screwing over the middle class. Never have I wished more for single payer insurance. We can pay it. We're not going to be broke because of it. But it certainly affects how we had budgeted. I can't imagine how I would be able to get my medicine if Eric made a little bit less.

After getting a flu shot, I was officially discharged at 6 pm. I am forbidden from risky activities where I could fall and experience an internal bleed.

So no more riding for this pregnancy. I am going to go crazy. I did decide that I'm going to ground drive Gwyn, and maybe get her working on the farm and doing the arena dragging and pasture dragging. That would be something we could do together. I have also offered her for lease, so she continues to be ridden, per the suggestion of Jim, my old dressage trainer.

I don't think Eric has fully process this. We were going to have a heart to heart after Kaylee went to bed last night, but I laid down and just passed out, I was so tired. He doesn't have anyone to talk to about this stuff except me, so when something happens to me, he's stuck. I have my online group of moms and this place to get my verbal vomit down and deal with shit. He doesn't have that outlet.

All in all, it was a crazy Sunday/Monday. I'm home and that feels so good. My health issues were found before something more serious than a leg cramp cropped up, and I'm keeping myself healthy for Babydos.

Incubation update

The pregnancy is going well. Exhaustion isn't as bad as it was, or I'm just taking it easier early in the day so I don't crash later. However morning sickness is full upon me. It's worse this time with Babydos than it was with Kaylee. With Kaylee the only time I really threw up was when I was car sick on the way to Eric's grandfather's funeral.

This time I've out vomited myself. I'm also not really into eating red meat this time around, which is similar to last time. When I think about what I'm in the mood for, the thought of a meat dish roils my stomach.

Kaylee has been absolutely sweet about the whole thing. I don't like to sugar coat or dumb down the facts about things in her life so she's aware I'm pregnant and she also knows that the baby is in my uterus. She asks every day if the baby is coming out and if she's a big sister. She confirms that she also has a uterus but will kiss my belly and say she kissed my uterus. It's utterly adorable how excited she is.

I went for a dating ultrasound on Friday because I was slightly doubtful of my last menstrual period. I wasn't sure if the 2-3 days of spotting immediately beforehand were my period starting or if I should count from when the flow started in earnest. There's a 3-4 day window so I guess my CNM (Certified nurse midwife, associated with OBs) wanted to be sure. It was comforting to see the heartbeat and hear it thump away. Up until now the only indication that I was still pregnant is the fact that I'm not bleeding, so anything could have been going on in there. I wasn't overly concerned, but it was still a worry that I can banish now. This child is very much desired and wanted!

I've been getting out of breath really easily. Just walking up the stairs has my heart pounding. And lately my right calf is in an eternal charlie horse. It goes away with two advil but it's annoying and keeps me awake.

Speaking of awake, I realize it's the middle of the night but lately Kaylee has been wanting to sleep in our bed to start so we all climb in and pass out. I went to bed at 8:30 and woke up at 1am. I actually feel pretty decently rested at this point, and my leg was starting to cramp again so I did the dishes and now I'm writing this until I'm tired enough to go back to sleep. Eric already moved Kaylee back to her own bed, so it'll be nice to spread out and snuggle directly with him.

Only an inch long! Like a grape!

My own jump standards

I finally have my jump standards done! Eric helped me only a little bit, otherwise it was all me!

Materials

4 4x4 6ft treated wood posts

2 2x6 8ft treated wood planks

deck screws made for treated wood

drill

saw

sawhorses

sander

1 gallon flat white exterior paint

1 toddler 'helper'

I started by measuring and then cutting down the 2x6 boards into 1 foot increments. These would become the feet. Because my saw was lame, I had to make each cut twice in order to go fully through the board. 

Always use proper PPE!

Mock up of how the feet will become the base of the standard

My 1 ft pieces

I wanted to make sure the hand-me-down jump cups were going to work. This particular one does not require holes in the post. I planned to drill them anyway because I do have some jump cups that need a hole

Next I measured out where I wanted my holes for jump height. I decided to drill every 3 inches starting at 18 inches high and ending 18 inches before the top. I doubt I'll ever use the top holes, but maybe I'll need a massive x-rail, lol

Everything drilled through. I discovered after the first post that I needed to offset the holes to one side so that the pinned jump cups I had would be at the correct angle to support the poles. Dead center was too tight a fit.

I sanded down the rough edges from drilling.

My first finished standard with helper in the background.  I used 2 screws per base piece to attach it to the standard and put them on a diagonal so there would never be interference with another screw from a different side. 

All four finished!

I decided to paint them white, but since they're treated wood I could have left them alone. I like the look of the white though. Kaylee helped me paint them, which was hilarious. It took two coats to get the coverage I wanted and two sessions to get paint on the bottom. 

The truck was handy for moving the standards to the arena from the garage. 

I set up the jumps in the arena and had a handy model to photograph. 

This is how I left the arena and when I came back, one pole had been knocked over already.

Because I have a naughty pony who likes to push things over.

April!

Last spring my Mom volunteered to go on the 8th grade trip to Washington DC. While there they went to the Air and Space Museum. She asked me if I wanted anything in particular since it was basically a clone of the KSC visitor center souvenir shop. She also asked if I wanted an astronaut suit for Kaylee.

I, of course, said YES!!!!.

She also bought one for an infant. She knew we were trying to conceive at the time and jumped the gun but I honestly don't mind. It meant we got to make this awesome announcement!