Monthly Archives: February 2007

health

Letters from the sick ward…

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Last week Monkey had stomach flu, this week it was me. I do not advise having the stomach flu while eight months pregnant, I actually thought I had put myself in labor from the force of my vomiting. It was horrible. Happily it was over fairly quickly, only about 10 hours. Of course, it has taken me nearly two days to get back to eating normally, and I still feel very shaky.

Of course, before I could celebrate school starting again for Monkey, she came down with a high fever. She will be home for the rest of the week. It will be two weeks without school, two weeks of illness, two weeks of yuch.

Thankfully I decided not to take the bar exam. Between my doctor recommending I don’t and Monkey and I being home sick for two weeks the decision is well supported. So there is no Bar Exam in my immediate future, just the one in July.

I hope you are all feeling better than we are.

baby updates, health, Monkey, New Jersey, Otter

100 and counting…

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100th post!!

Today is my 100th post on this blog! I wish I had something very interesting and important to say for this momentous occasion, but I don’t!! I do however have pictures of the frozen foliage in my front yard, news about the health of my little girl, and pregnancy jabber.

Monkey has recovered nicely from her role in “The Exorcist: Satan takes New Jersey!” and slept through the night, waking this morning with a voracious appetite and good spirits. My spirits have improved as well, since I was not up all night alternately holding her hair back and washing vomit covered bed-clothes. Yay!! No more vomit! (Thus far, Lee is not feeling very well, so we shall see if the saga continues.)

Today I am studying for the bar, Monkey is playing around the house, and we are enjoying the rising temperatures and melting ice. Things are beginning to move in the wind again, instead of just cracking in half and falling into the back yard.

Here are some pictures of the perfectly iced over tree and bush in the front of our house, these were taken this morning, so there has been some melting, but they still show how eerily the ice covered everything. It looked like a set for some mythical movie, every single thing had a fine coating of ice on it. All the fences, trees, bushes, flower stems, etc. Even the house has a shiny thin coating of ice on it. And the snow on the ground was so hard and frozen no footprints were left in it when you passed by.

The pictures don’t show the detail very well, as my camera is limited to the abilities of a point and shoot, but the tops and sides of each branch and leaf is coated in a thin sheen of ice. It still feels like a winter wonderland, as long as you don’t have to go anywhere.

However, the neighborhood and surrounding town is recovering, the downed power line outside our house was taken care of yesterday evening and the plows have been through so it is easier to get around the town. We may even venture out today! I think we are both a little stir crazy, having been stuck in the house for a few days in a row with no school or guests. Of course, nothing beat the day with no power for sheer stir craziness, but I have to say I am grateful that did not coincide with the 24 hours in which she forcefully expelled everything in her stomach. I am so glad that is over!

Otter has moved into position in this 33rd week of pregnancy and has begun to move around low in my womb. He moves around a lot still, and now has the size and strength to move my stomach with him. Last night he was rythmically kicking me while Lee and I were watching my tummy jump in time to the baby. His nickname is Leviathan Baby, as he rolls my stomach from side to side and causes parts of it to stick out oddly.

I suffer from this odd belief that I am going to give birth early, even though I logically know that chances of it are slim to none, and that he will likely be born closer to the 15th of April than his due date, the 1st. However, I am taking the bar exam at the end of this month, and am positive this is the cause of my concern. The thought of going into labor while taking the bar with complete strangers an hour’s drive from my husband and house is horrible. I remind myself that the worst case scenario has Lee and Ellen driving to a hospital in Somorset, but I still worry. It is par for the course for bar exam takers, we all become obsessive about one thing or another while we prepare for licensure. (Okay, more obsessive.)

I will post more updated baby belly photos sometime this week. I have gotten a lot bigger and now have an outie instead of an innie. (Or as Lee so poetically puts it “Look honey! You’ve popped!)

Well, it is back to studying for the bar exam for me. Thanks for spending your valuable time reading the various things I have said here, I appreciate the connection. It is hard not to feel homesick, but connecting with everyone from time to time in the comments section really helps. Blessed be to all of you!

P.S. This is an awesome shirt! I have to have it!

Monkey, New Jersey

I take it back…

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Okay, so the snow/ice/slush storm was no joke.

Let’s see, we were out of power all day yesterday until 9 pm at night, a power line fell outside our house, and the entire city was shut down for most of the day.

Apparently the few inches of wet slush was more debilitating than it looked. It froze and got cruchy almost immediately, and every branch, leaf and bud on every tree and bush was covered completely with a sheen of ice. It was unbelievable. Monkey and I took a walk and were enchanted by the icy splendor even while we dodged falling tree branches.

Then we spent the whole night with Monkey waking up every half hour to an hour throwing up. So thank god we had power and heat. The poor girl is still having a hard time keeping food and water down, and is lying in bed with Devon’s little dog Fitz curling up beside her.

Ugh. It was a hard night.