Life's been good to me so far

But I have caught up on my friends' page now. Let's see...

-Friday I took the kids for a walk up to the grocery store, and on the way home this random guy pulled a bit ahead of us and parked at a house that's up for sale. He got out and started pacing on the sidewalk, talking on his cellphone. I paid him little attention. Ananda, Aaron and Isaac were on the sidewalk and I was pushing Jake and groceries in the stroller on the edge of the street. Close enough to talk and all, still. Anyway we get close to this guy and he starts plowing through the middle of them repeatedly in his pacing, even doing a figure 8 through them at one point, and as he turns around then I noticed he HAD HIS PENIS OUT AND WAS JACKING OFF. He leered at me, seeing me seeing all, and started walking back towards them, at which point I started screaming at him, telling him I was calling the cops, etc. He pretended he didn't speak english at that point - total bs, I could tell - and so I told him in spanish, still at full forcefull volume, and acted like I was digging in my purse for a cellphone that didn't actually exist there. He got in his truck and drove away. I was not able to get the plate number, but did call the police after arriving home anyway, with his and his truck's description. It was NOT THE FIRST COMPLAINT IN MY AREA. Ugh man. I feel like I can't take the kids for a walk or something now. Luckily he was creepy and getting in their space to an extent that A and A were majorly averting their eyes and seem to have seen nothing - they assumed he was saying "really bad stuff in spanish" on his phone, and that was why I yelled at him O_o

-On that store trip I took a cue from ariellejuliana and bough clementines, which the kids have WENT CRAZY WITH. Seriously, we've went through 6 crates so far and are working on a 7th...since Friday. Each crate has about 30-35. The amazing thing is that at our local store here, the crates are only 1.99 each. So I'm just trying to run intereference and force them to eat meals sometimes, lest they all get horrible diarrhea.
Annie: These are better than candy. They should replace candy with these.
Me: Beaming with pride.
Annie: Well, I would miss chocolate...
Me: Thinking I agree.
Annie: CHOCOLATE COVERED CLEMENTINES!!!!

-Saturday we had a metrorail adventure. The kids love riding that thing.

-Sunday we finally used our Miami Seaquarium free passes. Ananda, my budding marine biologist, was totally in a state of bliss. They sat right on the wall behind railings during a dolphin show, getting splashed all the while, and the orca show was awesome for me just because I got to watch it take her breath away. Honestly though, a 7000 pound whale leaping into the freaking air is enough awesome on it's own.

-And today I have an appt at the center. I'm getting an ultrasound to check out placental placement and reassure myself that this giant draining belly of mine is not twins, but let's not be coy...I'm all aflutter to see the sex. We'll be leaving in about 30 minutes, but it's an hour each way and I'm liable to be there for an hour, so it will be awhile before I'm reporting back. I was irked that it has to conflict with PATH, but it's the only time during the week that their sonographer is available and I've (hopefully) delegated well enough to my co-leader that we won't be missed.

And I'm never exactly freaking out to begin with, I am a fairly calm person - but I develop this building tension in between them that just sort of melts away after the appointments.

First I got adjusted so my hips will stop failing me and my ever expanding pelvis won't be killing me each morning. Then, today I got Joy, Shari's daughter. Joy is certified in herbal medicine and setting up a whole holistic store, as well as hosting a new "Homeopathy Hour" at the birth center, each Sunday. This turned out to be perfect - we reviewed my platelet count from last week, and I was SHOCKED - they're up to 127,000! I don't expect that to mean a lot to any readers here, but dang, I was hoping they would maybe stay at 108,000, or at least not be down below 100 (the big "danger point"). I haven't been at 127 since I was like 5 months pregnant! So yeah, the yellowdock is working :p And my hemoglobin is staying higher than normal, too - I've went from anemic to barely normal to low normal. Anyway, she suggested I pick up white sesame seeds to chew into a paste, daily, because they help with hemoglobin so much, and some liquid chlorophyll to drink 2 tablespoons a day of, as well as increasing my yellowdock to the max dose (I've been taking the median suggested dosage). The chlorophyll has the added benefit of cleaning out your GI tract, which will help with my Group B Strep stuff. I was very "Huh?", just thrilled to see such an improvement - but she totally has this idea that I could get up around 200,000 like a normal person, thusly drastically decreasing any chance of regular or internal hemmorage.

All this left me totally amazed. Like...real options that work? My DOCTOR's answer to low platelets was major surgery that necessitates twice as much blood loss as natural birth does! He never had any sort of ideas on how to RAISE them, it was just some kind of kamikaze, drastic immediate measure nonsense. He referred me to a "specialist" once who came in, looked at my chart, shook his head and went away (he also certainly never had a way to make my hips feel better). Joy also took down my number because she wants to do research on what causes low platelets in pregnancy and get back to me, as she believes that things that show up in pregnancy are just amplifications of issues we already had in our bodies - like how I have always had blood sugar issues, but get gestational diabetes if I eat sugar while pregnant. Signals we should pay attention to, for our long term health.

And she pronounced my cervix really, really soft and felt the baby's head - and then pushed on it a little a couple of times, and I could feel him bouncing in there! How amazing is that?! I have never had anyone reach into my vagina and feel a baby's head. Ever. At least not that they shared. Still no more dilation, but I really don't care. It's so awesome that my blood is thickening up and my cervix is soft and the head is right there. It makes it all seem REAL in a way that irregular contractions and vague hunches do not. And that keeps me from feeling impatient, and makes me feel like "Oh, wow. It's really going to happen in the next week or two sometime".

Talked with Grant on the highway about how OBs are paid by the birth, not by the hour, AND they get $10,000 for a half hour c-section, vs $2-3000 for a who knows how long vaginal, and there's no way to say that's not going to sway how things go down. They have to sleep, they're overbooked with patients waiting at the office...Especially when you add in legal liabilities that come in whenever anyone says they SHOULD have done a c/s, in their grief...(when a baby dies during/after c/s, it's more like "They did all they could").

Came home with a borrowed tape of the first two episodes of The Show. Watched half a dozen women give birth with no drugs or fetal monitors or IVs or troubles, in water, and pull their squalling newborn up onto their chests themselves. These are the randomly pre-selected couples the Discovery Channel chose to follow and interview starting weeks in advance, not "the lucky ones".

I am so done with western medicine. Unless bones are broken or cancer is diagnosed or something like that.

Did I mention that tomorrow is my due date, and I weigh what I weigh when Isaac was CONCEIVED?!


I took the kids up to Wild Oats tonight to get my sesame seeds and chlorophyll (which only ended up being $12 total! I was afraid, you never know what it'll come to once you head into the supplements...) and they were awesome. I held Isaac's hand, and he held Aaron's, and he held Annie's, to cross the street and go in, and I kept hold of Isaac's hand the whole time we walked through the store (rather than holding him or sticking him in a cart). They are just all so great. I got the requisite horrified looks from young people, for being SO pregnant and having all these little kids with me, but two older people came up and told me how beautiful my family is with joy on their faces :) And the employee who helped me find things cracked me up when, as she guessed ages, she suddenly stopped aghast, pointing at Isaac, and exclaimed "That one looks nothing like you at all! ...Or the other two! *blink blink*"

He stands at the end of the hallway now, and yells "Two...two...two - TWO!!" and then runs, turbo speed, to knock into whoever is in the living room :D

First cut is about 5 short-ish paragraphs. Second cut is huge pictures and all kinds of scanned stuff to read. Third cut is three normal size pics.

( My 37 week appointment, today )












( Birth Art, as inspired by 'Birthing From Within' )








( And last, new belly pics - *exactly* 37 weeks )

Today is my day to go to the chiropractor, he's at the birth center from 10-12. Grant forgot that and scheduled a meeting that couldn't be rescheduled. So, I ended up taking all of the kids, by myself, to my chiro appt...and you can imagine the cloud of forboding that settled over the van on the way there...

It was incredible! I couldn't freakin believe it. We got to the center and Taj, this one midwife's son who's kind of always running around outside, came running over to play with A and A. He had a Nerf style foam baseball bat and ball. I told them that as long as they stayed inside the fenced in playground area NO MATTER WHAT AND I WOULD BE CHECKING ON THEM, they could stay outside and play with Taj. The b.c. is kind of isolated, surrounded by bushes on one side, fence on the other, parking lot over here, trees over there, and that playground only has one opening that's on the side with the parking lot, not the street. It still made me nervous, though.

So, I go into the chiro's office with Isaac in tow, and I set him down expecting him to immediately start crying, because we were in a weird place with a weird guy and I've left him with sitters at the center before, which he is ambivalent about. Instead he stands right there looking around. I suggest to him, rather optimistically, that there are chairs nearby that he could sit in if he wants to. HE WENT AND CLIMBED UP AND SAT IN A CHAIR. And then he stayed in it, sitting quietly and watching, while I got all my adjustments.

I carry him out, crooning to him about how wonderful he is, and Ananda and Aaron are still playing in the fenced in area. Aaron was near the gate, which was open, in a potential energy sort of stance, so I talked to them about staying in the fence again, and went in the main bulding with Isaac to pay my payment (chiro is covered, but I'm paying on the OB consult and ultrasound from weeks back) and get my blood test results from last week. I set Isaac down, again, waiting for him to tear into the his-level printer of paper or start grabbing the phone off the desk or run to the water machine and make a mess, and he just goes up to the pics of newborns, saying "baby" over and over as he points, to the "Aww"s of all around us. The secretary is ready to talk to me, so I point out the toys in the adjacent play room to him, and he GOES OVER AND STARTS PLAYING, and keeps it up all the while I'm talking to this lady, getting my receipt, waiting for her to finish a phone call, asking for my results.

I had to pee and she had to find my file, so I said, "Come with me to the bathroom Isaac, I have to use the toilet" and he followed o_O He came in when I opened the door. When I opened it again to come out, he didn't bolt in the opposite direction or refuse to come out...he just CAME. And walked beside me to get my results from Angela, and stopped when we got to her, staying within 10 feet of us in his little looking around. We peeked out the window and saw A and A having fun in the playgroud. She gave me my results (I'll get to that*), and then he walked right out with me to "go get Annie and Aaron and have a snack".

Outside the kids told me Taj wanted them to come look at other things in different places, but they told him they weren't allowed outside of the fence. We got to the van and they hopped right up into their seats and put their seat belts on stat (they can do that with their new boosters), Isaac didn't complain about getting restrapped after the hour ride up there (he had slept through it, granted) and I passed out granola bars.

Totally amazing.

*My hemoglobin is good, no anemia, which is cool because Shari compared my fingerprick droplet to a color chart that suggested I might be having trouble there, as I have in the past, so I was wondering. Platelets are "eh"...I was dissapointed. Normal range is 150,000-300,000. Under 100,000 is considered dangerous. When I was hospitalized while pregnant with Isaac, I was at 94,000. When I got them tested earlier in this pregnancy, I was at 165,000 - which Shari wasn't crazy about, but didn't think was horrible. This time I was 132,000. BUT, Angela told me that between 28 and 30 weeks preg is when they drop the lowest, and then start to go back up some, in people like me - I'm 29w5d. So hopefully when they test again at 36 weeks the number will be higher. In the meantime I am going to be a banana eating, iron taking fool, and might end up looking into some kind of herbal supplement Shari was saying raises platelets levels significantly. I want to use that as a last resort, though, because she was telling me that if you take too much it can be dangerous.