I'm back again...clearly.
*ahem*
Okay, so things have been crazy. Let's break this into pieces, and I'll slam it behind a break as it's going to be monstrous. But, before the break, a cute Pablo picture!
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Because, let's be honest: this is the internet. We're powered by cute cat pictures! |
And now, for the madness of a Cherish Recap! Since we already saw him, let's start with:
Pablo Update:
Pablo is, as of the time of this writing, roughly a year and a half. The vet roughly guessimated that his birth date is March 16, 2015, making his birthday fall smack-dab in the middle of my family's Week of Birthdays, or:
Dad & SIL #1: March 14
Sister: March 15
Pablo: March 16
Me: March 19
Because, y'know, we needed another birthday in there. Yup. We only come close to that in my husband's and my combined families for birthdays in late October/early November (more on that later).
Anyways, Mr. Pablo is an absolute joy in Mark's and my lives. He's equally adorable, loving, and stubborn as all get-out. (Blends right in with that last one!) No matter what we're doing, Pablo is rarely far from Mark and/or me, demanding attention or just being absolutely adorable and/or ridiculous. His favorite things in the world are milk jug rings, plastic straws, and those plastic/wire springs stores like Tractor Supply sell as cat toys. When we're not home, he spends a ridiculous amount of time in our upstairs windows, yelling at or watching birds in the trees or on our garage roof. He's also learned to leave Topper the goldfish alone, as well as not eat the purple basil plant.
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| Most of his priorities, summed up |
At his last check-up, he's 10 lbs and very long-legged. Pablo struggled through winter 2015-16 with a mild-but-chronic yeast infection in his left ear. We spent an absurd number of weeks cleaning out his ear and squirting medication into it. Thankfully, July 2016's check up confirmed that it's finally gone! Pablo's veterinarian thinks that he has some kind of seasonal allergy that expresses itself in a left ear yeast infection. Considering the medication is $28 for a bottle that lasts more than a year and that the condition is something I can spot and treat without the vet's help, I consider us blessed that it's the worst of his issues.
House Update:
The house is slowly, slooowly, coming together. The entire downstairs has painted walls, and we finally have (thanks to my mother-in-law) devised a way to get trim paint to stick to the molding, window frames, and door frames downstairs. We had to pause all of that for a multitude of reasons, first and foremost being winter = can't open the windows to let the house defume. However, we got a chunk of stuff done when this super-hot summer we've had allowed for it.
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| We inherited the bedroom set my grandmother was gifted for her wedding! |
The December/January from Hell:
This may be a post all its own soon enough as it's that long. For now, I'll mention that my husband and I suffered an ectopic pregnancy last December that, quite frankly, could have killed me.
I was diagnosed as miscarrying around December 23rd after beginning to bleed December 21st, then ended up in our local emergency room late Christmas Eve in, bar none, the worst pain of my life. (Yes, internet--we trumped shingles pain, a huge gallbladder, and four-cysts-on-one-ovary-bursting. I wasn't keen to break those record-levels of pain in my life.) During that visit, I had a repeat quantitative blood HCG (aka pregnancy test) done, which showed my blood levels, after dropping (bad) from the first draws done on the 21st and 23rd, had more than doubled in less than 24 hours (even worse). I was told to follow up with my gynecologist, given potassium for dehydration and a bag of IV fluids, and sent home. No ultrasound was done. (Remember that.)
Unbeknownst to anyone, my left Fallopian tube had partially ruptured that evening. The bleeding I had been seeing was my partially-ruptured tube hemorrhaging, and the HCG spike was a classic ectopic symptom. I spent the following days at home, laying on a heating pad with a rice bag across my hips, just trying to deal with the whole thing emotionally as well as deal with a lesser-but-still-impressive amount of pain. I was alternating 600 mg ibuprofen and 1,000 mg acetaminophen--max the allowed doses for both--and that was barely controlling the pain enough to let me function. By January 5th, my regular doctor was back in the office, and I spoke to her on the phone. The next day, when my pain levels spiked again, she ordered another quantitative HCG and the ultrasound that should have been ran on me on Christmas Eve.
Blood work was 8 am on January 8th. The ultrasound was 9:30. My appointment with my gyno was 10:30. I was diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy in my left tube by 10:45 and sent to the hospital by 11:30. By 12:45, I was on an operating table, where they discovered my tube had partially ruptured. My gyno came into the waiting room afterwards to tell Mark that I was extraordinarily lucky it was only a partial rupture, that a full one could have killed me from blood loss alone in the time I spent "recovering" at home, that my pain tolerance is through the roof (apparently rupturing one of those tubes is the "classic" 10/10 take-you-to-the-ground-screaming-for-911 pain and I weathered it with Tylenol and Advil), and that we should praise God I chose the surgery as the ultrasound never revealed the extent of the damage to my tube. I spent a week recovering at home physically, and Mark and I spent the next few weeks recovering from the shock and to mourn (what is to us) the loss of our first child.
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| At least we had a beautiful drive to the hospital |
The story had a happy ending, though:
Our Big Announcement:
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| Suprise! |
We're expecting again, and this time the pregnancy is 100% okay! We're due November 24th--Thanksgiving Day here in the USA. Oh, and remember the November/December birthdays hint from earlier in this massive post? Yeah, this is the current line-up for Mark's and my collective families:
Brother #2: October 30
SIL #2: November 1
Niece A: November 5
Momma: November 16
MIL: November 22
Late FIL/Brother #1: December 4
Cousin D: December 5
We're due right in the middle of that mess, two days after my MIL's birthday and 10 before my oldest brother's and late FIL's birthdays. Mark is rooting for our baby to be born on his late dad's birthday. Both grandmas-to-be are rooting for their own birthdays to be shared with our little one.
Cherish is rooting for healthy and not nearly-three-weeks-late like she herself was.
I'm 29 weeks pregnant as of this writing, or a little over 7 months along. We chose not to find out what our baby's sex is until s/he arrives in late November, which has been exciting for us and annoying to a handful of others. ;) We've taken to calling the baby Baby Bear since our respective nicknames in college were Mama Bear and Papa Bear. Little Mr.-or-Ms. Baby Bear seems to greatly enjoy cramming themselves into my pelvis as low as he or she can lay, kicking me anywhere his or her little legs can reach, and doing back flips at hilarious moments.
He or she is also just as camera shy as my husband and I are as we've yet to get a decent profile picture of Baby Bear at an ultrasound despite the technicians trying everything they can do to trick Baby Bear into rolling over. Our best picture so-far of our baby was of a thumbs up he or she insisted on giving us...over and over and over during the same scan. We joke that the baby was telling us, "Yup, good in here! Leave me alone now!"
So, that's the news! Hopefully I stay a bit more on schedule in the future.
...let's be honest--I have a baby on the way. That ain't happening.
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