Another friend has baby!

Yet another friend has had her baby. This friend was due a week after me, but her amniotic fluid was running very low and the baby was starting to show mild signs of stressing. As soon as she hit 37 weeks they did a preventative measures C-section and the little guy is doing great- they are already home with him just four days later.

This couple used to live about a block and a half away so we were sad when they moved to Wyoming. It was going to be fun to have newborns only about a week apart. Oh well!

Baby is named Aiden (I forget the middle name) last name starts with D. I didn't catch the weight but he looks petite in the photos. He was 3 weeks early, and possibly stressed, but he went right on home so my guess is he was about a 5lb bundle o' joy.

Congrats to former neighbors!

Note: I am jealous- ONLY that they are home with a baby. Not jealous of baby stressing, not jealous of low fluid, not jealous of early delivery, not jealous of petite baby, not jealous of scheduled C-section, none of that. But SOOOOOO jealous of the end result right now. Oooooof I am huuuge. Huuuuuuuge.

Appointment update

I have nothing exciting to report except that all systems are still "go!" I am the same amount dilated (just about 1cm, maybe 2), same amount effaced (about 60%), still ripe (mmmmm...) and the baby is still not engaged. My nurse said basically that it could be tonight, or it could be a full month from now, so try not to go crazy. She also said that she's guessing the baby weighs about 8 lbs right now. I'm growin' one for the county fair, apparently. If it takes another month before I go into labor, we'll be on track for a 10 pounder. Awesome... ouch!

On the other hand, the opinion of my water aerobics classmates is that I won't make it through the weekend. Less scientific for certain, but at least that sounds encouraging.

Today I thought I'd make a list of things that bring on Braxton Hicks contractions, just for fun.

- Having to pee really bad
- Walking up the stairs
- Going down the stairs if I am carrying something
- Unpacking the clothes dryer
- Water aerobics class
- Mopping
- Sweeping
- Laughing too hard
- Energetic baby karate
- Internal exams
- Often times, nothing at all

As you can see, I have them all the time. Dozens a day, and then certainly all night as far as I can tell. They make me feel like I can't breath very well, and I find myself yawning as sort of an early warning system. They don't hurt, mind you, but they feel really odd and are distracting. All part of the process, I know.

Feelin' good

After a slightly uncomfortable weekend, I am back to feeling very good. My sleeping is functional if not perfect, my back is doing well, and the problems... ahem... "down under" are almost completely recovered.

Baby is still squirmy as ever and has recently perfected this weird thing where it creates an absurd amount of pressure on my groin until I practically have to bolt to the bathroom. I have yet to pee myself, but I feel like this is inevitable. Also, "bolting" is a strong word. I walk as fast as possible- which is not fast.

My stretch marks have not gotten worse for a few weeks, which is something to be thankful about. And if my bust has gotten bigger, well, I can't tell because it sure isn't keeping pace with the belly! So proportionately it is shrinking, right?

Lucky's love affair with his bear continues unchecked. He sleeps with it, carries it around the house, lovingly snuggles with it, and makes sure that it is safe and sound upstairs whenever he is hanging out up there. He has yet to kill the squeaker, and when he gets excited he triggers it repeatedly which is annoying yet endearing.

I've been trying to get a good photo of Lucky with his bear but he always either hides his head, or drops the bear, when I grab the camera. He is camera shy, I suppose. This photo was taken mere seconds after he was holding the bear in his mouth while sitting on the couch with Matt. He dropped the bear and lifted his head exactly as I took the picture... sigh...

Please, let third time be the charm

I'm not going into great detail because I am soooo tired of this problem, but in the blink of an eye my butt troubles returned with a vengeance. On Wednesday during the day I noticed some soreness, Wednesday night I slept poorly, Thursday rapidly turned into profound torture where getting in and out of the car actually made me sob (twice! fun!), Thursday night I slept for no more than 45 minutes in a row (punctuated by spectacularly painful attempts to do things like roll over, or drink water), and Friday morning I was at the doctor's. My favorite midwife took one look at the look on my face (we had talked on the phone Thursday afternoon) and said, "so should I schedule your surgeon first and THEN take a look at it for you?" Yes, thanks. That does sound like a sensible plan.

The surgeon, who I completely worship for how much nicer and better she is than the first surgeon who treated me two years ago, got me in her schedule just two hours later. She looked at it and said, "well, it sort of looks like last time, but not as bad." I told her that I was willing to bet her serious cash that it would be absolutely heinous. The pain, swelling and rapid onset were so much worse than last time. I think I said, "Trust me, this is really bad" several times.

I won that bet. I won't gross you all out but it was apparently horrific. Now I feel like a million bucks, in comparison to just this morning. It is the most rewarding 5 intense minutes of surgical misery that I can imagine. And at this point, I'm getting really good at my labor breathing exercises. Practice makes perfect.

Why did this happen again? Well, pregnant people have crappy immune responses. I happen to have some sort of reoccurring problem. The surgeon told me that now that I've had it three times, I should probably have an in-depth (ha, ha) exam a few months after the baby is born to see if I have something (I won't detail it) that needs a formal surgical fix. Then again, she said using different terms, I could still just be the unluckiest asshole in Missoula.

Funny responses

I've sent the latest photo of myself to quite a few people and some of responses have been comical. A sampling for you...

Friend:

OMG! you'd better take that watermelon back to...Honduras?

Female co-worker:

Holy moly girl - you sure you don't have more than one in there?

Male co-worker:

All I can say is, Nature is remarkable.

Friend:

oh my!!!!!

Enough said!

Multiple updates!

I have many updates!

1) I have finally found, washed, and worn the ultimate pajamas. I know this sounds silly, but I've been on a quest since before christmas for what seemed like an easy pj purchase. Unfortunately, it is the wrong season for the fabric I wanted and they are not terribly "stylish," so it became a big goose chase to find exactly the right set. Now, I am in pj heaven. Yeah! I hereby would like to thank my mom for the gift certificate, and LLBean for their excellent customer service and selection, and the people of Peru for making perfect pj's. On sale, no less.

2) My car seat got inspected today. I installed it right on the first try, although in the wrong spot because of a weird feature in my car. Reading the instructions was helpful, but the nice car seat specialist at the hospital was super. Hurray for free services like car seat inspectors!

3) The baby is sloooowly sinking although not quite engaged. At my weekly checkup I learned that I am continuing to dilate (between 1 and 2 cm now), efface (roughly 60-70%), and that I am "quite ripe and squishy." Like a fruit ready to be plucked. Yum! My alternate certified nurse midwife (who I rate about a 80% on the "I really like her" scale, as opposed to 90% for the other CNM, and 95% for my doula) said that I really could go into labor any time between now and five weeks from now. Well, I suppose that is better than nothing and rather honest of her, but geeeez that seems like a big window. Probably good to keep that in perspective, because you never know. She kindly reminded me of the two best things to get this show on the road... sex and exercise. Gotcha.

4) I've been having these stabbing pains in my very lower groin. These are startling and unpleasant, but rumor has it (and the CNM confirmed) that they are usually associated with dilating. So I'm pleased that I have them even though they are painful. Not bad, but ouchy.

5) Baby is still a very vigorous little buddy. Kicking is limited now because of space constraints, but twisting, stretching and squirming is still strong enough to wake me up at night and distort my belly in alarming ways. Hiccups continue to plague the both of us. My latest amusement is to soak in the bathtub with my two rubber duckies perched tenuously on my belly and see if the baby knocks one off. It took a while, but baby scored the big duck last night. It is relaxing yet funny to watch the rubber duckies surf the baby belly waves. If it wasn't both in the tub, and kinda embarassing, I'd video this process.

Gravity

Whether or not the baby has "dropped" is a big topic of conversation when people see me. I offer you this information, as my faithful reader;

- I cannot sit with my knees together comfortably, as my belly gets pushed upwards by my thighs in a most uncomfortable way. Instead, I have to sit with my knees pretty far apart to create a thigh-gap hammock for the belly.

- My indigestion has improved lately

- The variety of pants that fit me has dropped noticeably in the last week or two. I am down to two pairs of yoga pants and one pair of sweatpants. My two nice pairs of maternity pants don't really fit anymore (useless!) and the only other option is old PJ bottoms which make me feel like a slob if I wear them all day long.

Counter evidence of dropping;

- As of Wednesday, baby had not "engaged"

- I don't feel the tell-tale low pressure that supposedly I would feel

- I am not peeing every 10 minutes. More like every hour, which is standard for me lately.

- I still am not really waddling. At least I don't think I am.

I'll have an update on baby position on Wednesday for my weekly appointment and that will be instructive. Until then, debate all you want.

36 weeks and some odd days

I have too much spare time on my hands today, it seems. (I had to edit these photos so sorry they are kinda crappy looking. The point comes across...)


For comparison, I offer you this photo of me at 20 weeks. Oh what a difference four months can make! (see below)

Friend's baby's name

Friend named new baby boy Owen Bruno, last name starts with W.

Owen is a great name. Well done! Baby is a total sweety- I went to visit bearing fresh muffins and fresh eggs and got to see the little nugget. He looks a lot like his mom and has pale blond-red hair! Mom has red hair, dad is practically towhead, so makes sense.

Yay!

The mysterious noise

The first time I heard it, I kinda freaked out. I've read that with a few people, they hear a "snap" or "pop" when their water breaks. Well, one day I was sitting at my desk and the baby was practicing some intense karate moves, when I heard SNAP from my belly and then the baby got calm all of a sudden.

ACK!! What the HELL was that! Are you OK in there!?

So I thought, well, perhaps my water broke. That wouldn't have been good, as it was at like 34 weeks or something. So I laid down (because I've read that if your water breaks, and you lie down, it will usually leak everywhere. And then you know for sure). No leaking at all. So I went back about my business and after a few minutes, the baby resumed its karate practice.

Then, a couple of days later, this happened again. And a few days later, again. I'd say I hear this noise, associated with the baby moving fast and furiously, about every other day. It sounds sooooort of like a standard finger snap, or like a knuckle being popped. But not quite, and certainly a quieter.

At my last appointment, I got up the guts to tell my Certified Nurse Midwife (my favorite caregiver!) that the baby makes a snapping noise. She asked me to describe this, so I told her the pattern; baby is moving fast, noise seems to come from my upper belly, then the baby usually calms down for a few minutes. I have to say that I can talk about a lot of things- abscesses, discharge, poo, heinous rashes, etc without any hint of embarrassment and I was mortified to admit that I thought the baby was making a snapping noise. It sounds so crazy!

Much to my relief, she said I'm not the first person to notice this. She said in the last year, about two or three other pregnant women have 'fessed up to her that they think the baby is making a snapping noise. Her personal theory, as this is nowhere in the medical literature, is that it is the baby's hips cracking, just like a knuckle popping. It makes sense- the baby is moving fast and then it gets into just the wrong position and its little squishy undeveloped joints can't hold their position quite right and so POP you hear a little joint noise. Which probably either startles the baby or actually is uncomfortable, so then the baby chills out for few minutes to recover from the incident.

She said just in case this is it, she'll make a note on my chart to double check the baby's hips at birth (hip problems are common in newborns). It is fairly possible that because of all the time our baby spent in breech it has looser hip ligaments than usual. Our friend's baby that went to term in breech had to spend a month in a squishy-baby hip brace so I know vaguely the worst-case on hip looseness, and it isn't that big of a deal.

I haven't heard the noise in two or three days. I wonder if the baby is so tightly stuffed in there that now it can't even do whatever it does to make the noise. We'll see.

Lucky works on his baby preparedness

Lucky dog has been really good with all the new baby items with the shower- he has carefully inspected each one from top to bottom (sniff, sniff, stare, sniff) and all have passed his in-depth inspection.

Last night I was doing a clothing inventory to determine what, if anything I should purchase (turns out I need nothing for at least 3 months) and generally going through all the baby stuff. Lucky was carefully sniffing and monitoring the piles of clothing and gear, as is his usual technique. Then Matt got home from school and Lucky ran off to welcome him, at which point (by pure coincidence) I unpacked a small brown stuffed bear with an INCREDIBLY obnoxious laughing device embedded in its stuffing. Ugh! I do not want to have to listen to the evil bear laughter coming from my child's hands. Super creepy.

Not to mention, my sister has told me that you shouldn't bother with toys that cannot be machine washed because they'll get nasty. Makes perfect sense to me. So the bear had two strikes, because it was not machine washable.

When Lucky got back upstairs, he assessed the new clothing piles and then spotted the bear. The bear, unlike all the other items, looks vaguely dog toyish. Proud to have figured out the puzzle of what I've been up to for the last hour (clearly, I've been searching for a toy for him!) he gingerly threaded through the maze of baby stuff, tenderly lifted up "his" bear by the arm, and brought it to his bed. From there, he thrilled himself over, and over, and over, and over, by lightly chewing on the bear and making it laugh. Oh joy! A new toy! Matt and I had to laugh at him, which made it that much better (attention!) and he has been carrying his bear around non-stop ever since. I wouldn't let him sleep with it for fear the sound would give me creepy nightmares, but after he ate his breakfast he got his bear back and was thrilled.

I figure it has about one more day before he performs what, in the dog toy industry (seriously!), is known as a squeakerectomy.

It is the perfect solution. Dog gets new toy. Laughing bear will soon be robbed of evil laughing abilities. And baby will never need to know.

OH- and incidentally, the bear came as a free gift with another purchase, so I'm pretty darn sure the gift giver will not be upset that it is now a dog toy!

Preparedness

We met with our doula again the other day (she is just so nice!) and went over a wide variety of labor, baby needs, and feeding things. I really like having her as part of our baby prep team- she is really helpful, relaxing to talk to, and very, very informative.

I did, however, get the closest thing to a disapproving look that I've ever gotten from her when I revealed we did not yet have newborn size diapers. This was no less than the third person in three days to remind me that I need diapers (I know that they wear diapers! I swear!).

So last night I went to Target and bought 40 of the 0 - 10lb diapers and some diaper cream for good measure. And then I went to Costco and bought a huuuuuge box of scentless baby wipes, having been told by a friend that the Costco baby wipes are absolutely the best ones out there.

Does this mean I'm ready? Like, if I had the baby right now, I could keep its butt clean and dry? Hmmm... maybe I should start washing its little bitty clothes too. And pack a bag for me. All of this seems very "real."

In the mean time, the baby is keeping itself entertained by fiercely attacking me at random intervals, burrowing its head into my bladder, and growing at an assuredly near-exponential rate. Sometimes it moves so strongly that it leaves sore spots on my belly for a few hours, like really light bruising. Oooof. I think this baby is going to be a handful!

Oh, and then there is the mystery of the clicking. I'll write about that later.

Friend has baby!

My good friend from water aerobics had her baby on Monday! It is a boy, and it weighed 7lbs and some number of ounces, not quite sure. My doula was the assistant midwife to her main midwife, but her labor was so short (less than 5 hours) that my doula ended up missing the actual birth of the baby and instead did most of the post-partum helping. It was a home birth, which is pretty neat. I'm so happy for her!

As of Monday night they had not yet named the baby, so I can't report on that. I'm sure I'll find out soon enough. So exciting!

In other news, I am Group B strep negative (yeah!), 1cm dilated (yeah!) and 50% effaced (yeah!). But our baby's head is not engaged, which is fine and allows me to continue walking comfortably rather than waddling. I told them about all my Braxton-Hicks contractions and my caregivers are very happy with my progress. According to them, I am right on track. That makes me feel good.

I am going to water aerobics tonight and am SO excited to tell everyone about our classmate's baby! Fun!

Hiccups in motion

Here is a not-well-focused video of my belly, from my perspective. What you will faintly see is the rear end of an in-utero baby doing this;

Hiccup.
Small squirm.
Biiiig squirm!
Readjust.
Hiccup.
Hiccup... and lots more hiccups. The hiccups get more clear after about halfway through the video, and most of the action is in the upper left of the screen.

More info on O

So my sister writes;

O +

Hmmm... the plot thickens. We now know...

My Dad MUST be BO +/+ or BO +/-, which regardless is the same immunologically as I am so it doesn't matter which.
My Mom is OO -/-, which is the "universal donor" type and the most dangerous for having kids (to the baby). She must have had a rhogam shot with my sister otherwise I probably would not have been born.

I am BO +/- and sister has to be OO +/-.

Ta da! Now I don't even need to ask my Dad.

Ah ha!

My mother writes;

I am O negative... So was my mother, and that was before they had rhogam

Interesting. So, this brings up a fascinating thought. If not for the fact that my grandmother had the very, very good fortune of having her first child (my mom) also be O-, I would probably have no uncles. Unless, of course, my grandfather was O-, in which case it would not have been an issue.

Now I know I must be B/O -/+ as my complete type. So I can have a child of any existing known blood type, from a functional standpoint (which of course depends on Matt's type, which we do not know). Very cool.

I have bad indigestion today, probably stemming from the extremely delicious brownies that I ate at THE BEST BABY SHOWER EVER last night. The shower was totally awesome. Yay!

I have sent the leftovers to brownie heaven (i.e. I tucked them into Matt's backpack) so I cannot possibly make that mistake again today.

35 and 1/2 weeks

To anyone that doubts I am getting biiiiiig, I have donned the official outfit.

Whoa baby! That is some serious, serious belly. That vertical purply-pink mark is the stretch mark that popped up on my mole removal scar a month or two ago.



(scroll down for another photo)

Remember this? This was almost exactly 30 weeks ago. HA!

Be positive!

Be positive. Not just a slogan- it is my blood type (B+). Apparently, this is "a great blood type for having babies." Being Rh + is good because it means that my immune system won't decide to attack the baby's blood (if I was negative, and baby positive, this would be an issue and I'd need a RhoGAM shot- not a big deal).

Only 9% of USA residents are B+. I am so special!

But what about the B?

According to the blood type diet theory (thank you wikipedia) "Blood group B is, according to D'Adamo, the nomad, associated with a strong immune system and a flexible digestive system. The blood type diet claims that people of blood type B are the only ones who can thrive on dairy products."

Hmmm... I do love cheese!

According to the Japanese theory of blood type and personality (thanks again, wikipedia) "B's Best Traits: Wild, active, cheerful. Worst Traits: Selfish, irresponsible." Interesting.

Here is what I do know... my mom is an O type; whether she is O- or O+ I forget. But she has to be OO. This means that my dad could be a variety of types... AB, BB, or BO. Any of these can make a type BO kid (me) if combined with an OO mom. He can't be AO or AA because then he couldn't have a kid with a B type. For now, I'll disregard the +/- because I don't have enough info to even think about it.

If I knew my sister's type we could maybe narrow down the possibilities. And of course, I could ask my dad (Hi Dad!) and my mom (Hi Mom!) for more details.

What is neat is that with the limited knowledge here, I can say for sure that my kid has a nearly complete palette of possibilities for blood type. Without knowing Matt's type off the top of my head, I can generate offspring (depending on Matt)... AB, BB, BO, AO, OO. Essentially, anything but AA (which is the same immunologically at AO, so who cares).

Interestingly, this decreases the chances that my kid will develop jaundice. One cause of jaundice is a kid with a A or B or AB blood type, and a mom with OO. Not a problem here. Even if our kid ends up AO or AB or OO, because the A's and B's are big fat molecules, the chances that they cross the placenta is pretty much nil. Excellent, thanks Dad!

New insights into itching

My itching and rash is waaaaay better. Like practically gone. This is odd, as PUPPPs rashes are not supposed to go away before the baby is born. In fact, they usually get worse for 1 to 2 weeks and then stabilize. Mine grew from Thursday to Monday, improved dramatically on Tuesday and Wednesday, and is nearly gone today.

I went to meet another pediatrician yesterday- she was great. She used to have a mixed OB and pediatrics practice before she moved to Missoula (now she just does pediatrics only), so I took the opportunity to ask her, "What gives with my outstandingly odd PUPPPs good luck?" She said that once or twice in her practice she had seen women that had PUPPPs that waxed and waned with their mental (i.e. stress) state. More stressed equaled breakouts, and then when that stressor was relieved their breakouts would diminish or even disappear.

This is incredibly intuitive (and I feel very, very lucky that I am one of these people, apparently). All immune system reactions are tempered in part by stress. Duh! And PUPPPs is an immune system freakout of your poor stretched pregnant skin. So while some people might get PUPPPs regardless, it would seem that very few, like me, get it just when they are stressed out. And of course severe itching might be a stressor until itself, so it could evilly self perpetuate as well. That is awful to think about.

Now you might ask- was I really that stressed on my business trip? I would say no, but yes, at the same time. It was a great trip- enjoyable, not overly hectic, fun people, lots of learning and listening. But I didn't sleep on my normal schedule, eat at normal times, or otherwise have anything going on that was typical for me. I was away from Matt, dog, home, and all my creature comforts. And I'm hugely pregnant. So yeah, I'm sure part of me was stressed.

So here I am, counting my lucky stars. Please, please let me have the rare case of stress-mediated PUPPPs. Let this be something that if I get lots of sleep, gentle exercise, and good food until I have the baby, remains in itch-remission as much as possible.

35 days?

35 days? Are you kidding me? That is like, kinda, one month! Whoa.

I met with a pediatrician on Monday and we talked about all the important details;

- car seat (check)
- safe sleeping place (check)
- circumcision decision (check)
- you understand that vaccinations are really important, right? (check)
- first months worth of appointments explained (check)

So she concludes our meet and greet with, "Well, you are ready then! Good luck!"

Yeeeeeeep! I'm gonna be a mommy? Seriously? Gah!

Matt and I are as ready as we'll ever be. And when you get down to it, I think (and I could be wrong here) no one is ever truly ready for a big life change like getting married or having a kid. There are just far too many unknowns.

I refer here to Donald Rumsfeld, and this strange piece of wisdom;

"...as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

How true that is. I fear the unknown unknowns, I embrace the known knowns, and I am curious about the known unknowns. Discuss.

There is good news, and bad news

Good news first!

Turns out I am not developing pregnancy-induced quasi-hypoglycemia. Instead, I have a rare but harmless side effect of pregnancy that is affecting my kidneys without affecting my blood sugar. I won't get into details, but it means that I can ease up on my anti-sugar and anti-carb diet without fearing that I'll over-sugar myself or the baby. Orange juice and pasta here I come! Of course, I need to drink extra water, but who cares? Water is fiiiiine if it lets me eat delicious mac and cheese.

Bad news second!

My rash? Remember? Apparently it is the dreaded, evil, and "totally harmless" PUPPP rash. This is the evil rash that also plagued my sister. My care providers all got bug eyed when I showed up in their office this morning- "WHOA that is a serious rash you got there!" Yes, thanks. I know. Now tell me what caused it and how to get rid of it. The chance of getting PUPPP rash if you are a pregnant white woman? 1 in 160. The literature says exactly nothing about it having a genetic component, so either;

a) my sister and I had exactly a 1 in 256,000 chance in both getting this rash and somehow hit the jackpot
b) there is a genetic component to developing it that is poorly understood because noone studies a rash that causes no lasting harm

Keep in mind, there are risk factors. Like having twins (nope) or other extreme skin stretching (not really, although my sister's extra fluid probably counts for her). And interestingly, 70% of PUPPP rash suffers give birth to boys. So that is something to think about. Maybe we are having a boy! Time will tell.

Lastly, my PUPPP rash is funny. It did not start where this kind of rash normally starts, which is why I thought it was more like a heat rash. One of the only parts of my body that does NOT have the rash is in my stretch marks.

One thing that I am glad of is that it doesn't seem as bad on me as it does for many people. Most people describe it as "insane," "extreme," "intolerable" and that it keeps them up all night for weeks on end, itching. This is not the case for me. Is it itchy? Yes. Does that annoy me? Yes. Is keeping me up at night, or making me crazy? No. Is it very, very scary looking? Yes!

I got nothing but sympathy from everyone at my doctors. They are all pretty much unified in their horror and pity at what my skin has done. But I'm counting my blessings here- at least it will go away, and just like hives, poison ivy, poison sumac, poison oak and the Puerto Rican vine whose name sounds like Chlamydia... if you don't scratch yourself to the point of scarring, it will not leave a single permanent mark. And I managed all of the above throughout my life so far, so I think I can handle this one too.

Home!

Ahh... it is good to be home. I was in Washington DC all week for my first and final important business trip as a pregnant person. I have to say, given the fact that I'm really quite darn big, it went very smoothly. I was able to mostly stick to my low-carb diet, my ankles puffed up a touch but nothing outrageous, I never got exhausted or miserable, and I feel like I drank enough water for six people. The plane rides there were great- lots of empty seats and personal space. The rides home sucked (full planes, bad seats = backache), but I made it and managed to walk around on each flight anyway. By the time that Lucky recovered from his excitement that I had walked through the front door I had already gotten over the backache so really, not too bad.

I didn't get out of this unscathed, however. Some unknown thing has happened to my skin and it is very annoying. On Thursday night, after a delicious dinner, I got back to my hotel room and noticed that I was getting itchy. After stripping down I did an inspection and discovered that I am covered (in some places) in a bizarre rash. It is somewhere between a heat rash and hives, if I had to characterize it. I called my doctors late at night (from DC, calling MT!) and they gave me this sage (and kinda funny) advice; Don't itch it. Take benadryl. If it gets significantly worse or if you start to feel weird, go to an emergency room to have someone look at it.

Now, I totally knew that was what they were going to say. That is what I would have said. But I needed to hear it anyway.

So stayed up until about midnight watching bad TV and keeping an eye on my rash. It didn't get worse. It didn't make me feel weird, fevery, or really different at all. So I went to bed.

In the morning I tried not to think about it and just proceeded on with my travel. I ignored the itching on the various taxis, planes, and waited until I got home to take a look at it again. And you know what- it got a tiny bit worse. More benadryl. Sigh...

My guess is that this is a hormonally induced heat rash thing. I've looked up all the pregnancy rashes on the internet (including the dreaded PUPPS that my sister got) and this is not any of them- wrong look, wrong symptoms. It doesn't really even look like hives anymore. It is concentrated in places that get clammy or sweaty- like where my belly now rubs on my hip-joints, or where my arms touch my bust. Matt thinks it sort of looks like a heat rash.

It definitely doesn't warrant the emergency room. Rate of spread is glacial, itch is bearable, and I feel 100% normal otherwise. My ankles look better today than they did last night, so I know that my circulation is good. The baby is as active and squirmy as ever. Unless this suddenly blooms out into something scary, I'm just going to wait it out until Monday.

My only request of this rash is that it does not last until I give birth. That would be a long time to not be able to comfortably wear underpants.