Ramblings from 24 weeks.
I hit 24 weeks this past weekend. The major milestone here is viability, and that's a big one--this week, if I go into labor, they'll try to stop it...but there's an ever-increasing chance the kiddo will survive (though with probable issues); last week, they might not have even tried to stop the labor and would have done nothing to maintain life in a child born breathing (*different hospitals have different guidelines for this). It's a huge difference in a week, and does play quite a bit into my sense of the kid's individuality. It's mind-boggling that it's even possible to have a living baby so early...but I'm QUITE sure that I'd like not to test this out, thank-you-very-much!
I'm in an odd place, mentally...most of the time I am not able to wrap my head around the reality of a child. I can do it occasionally, for a little while, but everything still seems so very hypothetical. Hypothetically, I can have all the conversations one has at this point, working out exactly how we'll set up the nursery, manage to be parents and all those things...but it's not exactly sinking in the way it should. I've gotten so used to taking things one baby step at a time in case something goes wrong...anyway, nothing's gone wrong lately, and now the big picture is kinda hazy.
It's hard to write about non-pregnancy things, though they are happening; all my thought and energy is seriously concentrated on this one thing. I try and wrench it away now and again, but there's just no *focus*. I wish I could summon something less one-dimensional to write about, because it's probably boring as hell to anyone who is not me. I'm hoping this is temporary.
Monday's OB visit was very cursory; I've started rotating through all the other docs at my office, and this was a new guy. Friendly, but eh--just no connection. (No big deal, I figure if I really like 3 of 5 it's good odds, and I know I like 2 of them already. And he was nice enough, really.) Nothing much interesting there; my BP was 'up' a bit--really just back to my pre-pregnant numbers--and he was totally unconcerned as the urine test was clear of protein (I'll be monitoring that, I'm not that trusting!). I guess I'm struggling a bit with 'normal' vs. 'high-risk'...right now the regular OB is treating me as if I were normal, but everyone seems to agree that eventually I am very likely to be risked up, and I've already got a high-risk OB (who is awesome and I kinda hope I end up with her despite having to qualify by having complications, so that's kinda weird.) Generally there's a bit of a dichotomy in how I'm being treated now vs. how they tell me they plan to treat me later, and it's just confusing.
My belly is, well, umm... gigantic. People assure me I look so much bigger than 24 weeks, etc (thanks, people!); I'm so short, I just ran out of torso room ages ago, so now I just stick out an extra inch or so every week, which is a lot of inches by now! I never know how much room to give myself through doorways, and I'm afraid it's a bit of a bumpy ride in there. I can still put on socks and shoes--if necessary--but then I have to rest for a while, so I am very glad it is warming up here! Otherwise I honestly feel great. The second trimester has been much easier on me than the first. And the third starts...alarmingly soon.
I never write this much unless I am procrastinating. Predictably, such is the case now: my parents are coming next week and I've been slacking on the housework since, err, September, keeping things basically at my absolute minimum cleanliness tolerance. And since I don't even care about clutter, there may be, well, some. Unfortunately, my mom has a *rather* higher bar for such things, and I absolutely cannot stand watching anyone else clean my house (even D half the time, honestly...and yes, I fully expect this will change in a few months, but it hasn't yet....) So yes, it may be time to pull some energy out of thin air and clean all the things. Or maybe half the things. Mainly the half that shows.