FRIDAY NIGHT MOVIE

Last night Anthony and I cozied up on the couch with a movie rental. "Fever Pitch."

Can I just say, I wish someone had WARNED me that they had made a movie about my husband! It was uncanny. Anthony kept getting defensive with me and saying "I'm not as bad as him, I'm not as bad as that!" And suddenly, he'd interject with "I had that same Red Sox book when I was a kid."

There was one scene in particular that was SO familiar because I have been living it for the past eight years. I was laughing SO HARD when this scene came on that I actually peed my pants a little (not too surprising anyways, when your bladder is being crushed by a three-pound fetus). I looked over at Anthony and shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at him "now THAT is YOU!" and noticed that he was purple with hysterical giggling.

"You're right, THAT is totally ME."

What a funny movie.

(total side note - I wonder if anyone who is NOT from Boston, or who is NOT a Red Sox fan, can appreciate this movie as much as we did. If you fall into these categories and saw the movie and thought it was a gross exaggeration of Red Sox fans and of Red Sox Nation - let me assure you, this movie was as accurate as they get. I am married to Jimmy Fallon's character, I swear it. Remind me, in a future post, to tell you about the 4 page written exam Anthony made me take when I first started dating him, before he deemed me "worthy" of sitting in his precious season ticket seats - straight out of the movie "Diner.")

GOOD NEWS / BAD NEWS

The good news is, our daughter is still, in fact, a daughter. In fact, I got a lovely picture of her - um - "girl parts" to take home with me. Didn't really need to have a photo of that, but...at least there is no doubt now.

The bad news is, I still have placenta previa. It is funny, I completely wasn't worried about it because everyone (and I mean EVERYONE including the doctors) told me not to worry about it, that marginal placenta previa completely corrects itself 99% of the time by 28 weeks. Well, not mine. The placenta has not moved at all.

So, here is what that means: the doctor has sent the ultrasound pictures of my placenta to New England Medical Center for their opinion. In the meantime, they want to give it six more weeks to try and correct itself. Personally, I don't think anything is going to change in six weeks but they are the experts, not me. So, I will get ONE MORE ultrasound visit. Which is great, I already own about 40 ultrasound pictures - much more than most parents ever get - and now I am going to get more. But...

If at the next ultrasound the placenta STILL has not moved, it will be 100% certain that I will be having a c-section. Not the end of the world, I am perfectly okay with the thought of having a c-section - getting to schedule her birth, not having to deal with contractions and the pain of labor, etc.

But this is the part that concerns me. At my next ultrasound, they could determine that I need to spend the remainder of the pregnancy (which at that point would be 5 weeks) on total bedrest. And she mentioned "hospital bedrest," not home.

Can you say, ick?

I mean, whatever, none of this is earth shattering, and I will do whatever I can for my little one. But...5 weeks in the hospital? That would REALLY suck. Let's cross our fingers that this scenario doesn't happen. It only will if I start experiencing bleeding. I have had some spotting over the course of the pregnancy because of the previa, but according to my doctor "ANY" third trimester bleeding (including the mildest of spotting) will be cause for alarm. And she said that with previa, you are most likely to bleed in the third trimester. So, the bedrest thing could happen.

I hope not.

However, the good news is that SHE is fine. She is still "perfect" and I am willing to take the punches to ensure she continues to be perfect.

We should hear the results of the glucose screen tomorrow. And let me just say, I was so afraid of having that drink because I heard over and over and over again how nasty it was. Well, I liked it! I started drinking it and I was like "mmmm - yummy!"

Maybe I am weird.

IT CAME IN THE MAIL TODAY

I can hardly believe it, but guess what I got today? An invitation to my baby shower. A baby shower, for ME!

Actually, technically I was invited to a shower for "Amanda and her parents", but still!

I swear to God there are still days that I have to pinch myself and say yes, Dawn, this is real. This is really real. It is absolutely crazy.

And things are happening so fast. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror the other day and literally gasped out loud. "Where the hell did that belly come from?" Some days I feel like one day I woke up and there it was! Other days, I literally can notice a difference, as if my belly grew a full inch overnight. It is crazy, I tell you - this whole pregnancy thing is without a doubt the WEIRDEST thing I have ever gone through.

But after months of nausea and puking, things are starting to happen. On Sunday (9/11), we attended our one-and-only child birth class from 8:00AM to 5:00PM. It was a long day but we really enjoyed it - we learned so much.

The thing is, we spent the whole morning discussing labor and delivery. Nope, that option doesn't look appealing to me. Then we spent the first half of the afternoon discussing c-sections. Um, nope, don't like that one either. Does that leave me with any OTHER options? We were given a list of items to pack to bring with us to the hospital. I added "Hammer" to our list, because the minute my contractions start getting bad or I am being wheeled into the OR, I want Anthony to hit me over the head with my hammer so I don't remember any of it. Seriously. I am scared shitless.

Tomorrow, I have my Glucose Screening test AND I have my second ultrasound. The whole morning has to be very carefully choreographed: Anthony is driving me to the hospital, so that when we are five minutes away I can drink my orange-colored drink (which I am NOT looking forward to, I have been told it tastes terrible!) Then, we go straight to the imaging center for our ultrasound. They are checking to see if my placenta previa has corrected itself by this point; chances are good that it has. (While they are at it I am going to see if they can double-check that little Amanda is still, indeed, a girl!) I have been told to expect that Amanda will be going nuts and moving like crazy during the ultrasound because I will have just finished drinking that sugary drink - should be funny. I wish I had a video camera to bring with me, but I haven't bought one yet. Once the ultrasound is over, we have to wind our way through the hospital to the doctor's office for my blood draw for the glucose screen, which needs to happen precisely one hour after I finished the drink (or, 10:00AM).

So much going on! Ultrasounds, child birth class, baby shower invitations, and- oh yeah - we assembled her CRIB on Monday! All of a sudden this baby is feeling more and more real.

To change subjects, sort of, I am strongly considering retiring this blog. I haven't decided exactly when, I may end it in a week, or I may wait until the baby is born and then close it down. This blog was about my journey to parenthood, and how I was going to achieve that, and for the most part that question has been resolved. Far be it from me to take ANYTHING for granted, don't get me wrong - I don't think I will fully relax until I am holding this baby in my arms. But I have been happily reassured through most of my pregnancy that everything is progressing "normally," and I have also been reassured repeatedly that, if something God forbid were to happen and the baby needed to be born NOW, she'd have a good chance at survival. I am not about to tempt the odds, but the truth of the matter is I think we've answered the question posed in the title of my blog.

I am, however, creating a new blog, to chronical my journey with Anthony and Amanda as we learn how to raise this child and as we become a family of three. I don't know, I just feel that she deserves her own space on the web; there is an awful lot of sadness in this blog and I want to keep her segregated from sadness for as long as humanly possible. Once I have made the decision when to close this one and when to "open" the new one, I will provide the new url. I won't delete this blog; it will just sit in cyberspace collecting dust.

But I think it is about time, don't you?