I don't WANT to complain, but, you know, I will

Well, gracious. There are so many things that have happened here in the past few months and weeks that I want to write about but we are so busy and I'm so tired that things are falling by the wayside at an alarming rate.

Currently, one of my worst symptoms by far is pregnancy induced carpal tunnel syndrome. Four of my fingers are always numb and sometimes the other four pop right in there and numb up as well. It's extremely irritating all of the time and downright painful other times. It's also becoming a serious problem at work and at home. Typing is uncomfortable and I make a lot of mistakes because I can't feel anything but the space key since that's the only one that my thumbs hit. I'm also now incapable of opening jars or bottles, lifting anything more than a couple of pounds or touching anything that may be an inappropriate temperature since I burned the crap out of my fingers earlier because I couldn't tell that what I was touching was hot until it started to burn my non-numb thumb.

Anyway, I don't want to complain because I'm so thrilled for Baby to get here but these last few weeks sure are hard and this is one of my worst symptoms yet since it really limits my activities severely. I don't want to do too much typing because it's so uncomfortable but I wanted to tell you about our Saturday night/Sunday morning adventure. I got the flu on Friday towards the end of my work day and felt pretty lousy but still made it to the vet's with Paul on Saturday morning to pick Smeagol up after her surgery. Her spaying went really well and she seems to be making an amazing recovery at this point. One of the things that bugs me is, as I recall, the same problem Waffles had after his neutering which is that she seems to be confused about where to go to the bathroom. When we got home I had Paul drop her on the bed with me, my intention was that the two of us would be sick in bed all day together. Within an hour though she decided that the best place to pee was ON THE BED! Fortunately we saw it happen so Paul was able to strip the sheet and mattress cover before the pee soaked through to the mattress. Unfortunately, that meant that I had to lie on the bare pill-y mattress for the next few hours ( we have only the one set of bedding, sadly ).

By the evening I was starting to get really ill. My fever was climbing steadily and I couldn't stop shaking all over. Paul was starting to look at me kind of nervously and he said that he had never seen me so sick so when I started to get intestinal type cramps too we decided that I should call my OB's nurse line. They told me to come in right away so we did and the whole thing was very surreal as they instructed as to go to OB triage which is exactly where we'll be going in a few more weeks. They did some tests and things and hooked me up to the fetal heart monitor and contraction monitor. After a while they came in and mentioned my contractions - I disputed that I was having any but they showed them to me on the little sheet of paper the machine spits out. Apparently I was having contractions that lasted for 40 seconds and were coming every four minutes. I seriously could not feel them, though. They asked me if I could be dehydrated which could cause contractions but I was sure that I was not since I had been drinking tons of water - but they tested me and since I hadn't eaten anything and my temperature was over 101 apparently I dehydrated the crap out of myself. I had to get two IV bags of electrolytes pumped into me and even then I think they wanted to do more but I was shaking with cold and fever and so utterly sick and uncomfortable that I pretty much begged them to let me go home and they did with instructions to rest and drink and rest and drink and repeat.

When we got home I sort of just stood there confused while Paul took care of everything and then I almost had a nervous breakdown when we got into the bedroom and remembered that the sheet and mattress cover were still in a heap on the chair and needed to be put on the bed. But, Paul did that too and we both fell into bed in a nearly catatonic state. 5 hours in the most uncomfortable bed/chair ever, scared, sick, worried about a dog just out of surgery and home alone will do that to you.

Man, I want to tell you about Mother's Day too but my left wrist won't even bend anymore since I've typed WAY too much here so that will have to wait for another day. I'm feeling lousy still but more like a really bad cold now and nothing worse. Can't type another letter...