The Funk....

Dr. Funk to be precise. She was a lovely lady, no where near an idiot. Actually more than once during my "visit" with her thought this woman has a BRAIN. a real working BRAIN!! She was great and confirmed at first glance that the tube was junky and infected and didn't need a culture of the green goop because as she said "it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know it's infected". Nope, it sure doesn't. It also doesn't take a doctor. She was nice, precise, thorough and had a beautiful down right gorgeous diamond bracelet. Even sick, feeling like trash that thing caught my eye. The downside I am stuck at NSH until we get this crap under control and that entails clandomycin every eight hours which tastes like crap even through an IV but at least I am not vomiting non-stop like yesterday. it was horrible. today is far less horrible.

the big green booger

Today is Saturday, which all you literate people out there reading are well aware is the day just after Friday. Anyone connected to my bubble knows what happens on Fridays. That would be my lovely tube change for any newbies out there just so happening to stumble upon this divine little blog of mine. Anyway, back to the meat and potatoes of the whole entry here; I have a green booger on my back. yep. a -green-snotty- someone wipe that nasty kids snotty gross nose booger. on my tube. Oozing right out of my back like slime. disgusting. I got sick when I saw it via a picture. I'm not gumby so of course it took a picture for me to see the nasty little thing on my back. So. I am about to trek my tail down to Northside ER where I assume some idiot that's paid 200k+ a year will say "yep, that looks like a booger (aka infection), but to be safe let's culture it to be sure" then your royal highness here will act like a rabid animal and demand they fork over the antibiotics stat so I can get in and out and back home by dark. yea. right. I have a feeling I will NOT be sleeping in my bed tonight.

is it really so?

Is it really so? Is there a light I see at the end of this tunnel. The finish line in the distance? I can hardly believe we've came this far. I can hardly believe what has happened to me. What I have done. How I have felt. How I feel. I can't believe that I have sat here and cried for the past 30 minutes that I ONLY have 35-36 days left of being pregnant. of feeling kicks. of making a little miracle inside my body. of adoring what wonder can come from within. I also feel that thirty-five or thirty six more days is an eternity. far too long and that I can't possibly make it. but then I know its just thirty-five or thirty-six days and those days of feeling these last kicks and rolls and hiccups will go by in a flash. and then just as quickly as it opened a door in my life closes. a chapter finished. the part of making babies for me is done. this is the last time I will ever be pregnant. I will never ever again skip a period because there is a baby inside me. its hard to believe that its only 35-36 days left until I have one more of the most amazing experiences of my life. giving birth. i actually love that part. its the most incredible experience of life and I have been extremely fortunate to have experienced it twice already. I can not wait to see this little boy, to hold him, to kiss him & to start our journey in life together. I can't wait to introduce him to his brothers. I cant wait to get lost staring at him and his fingernails, and study the pattern of the hair swirling on his head and to touch the tiny eyelashes and run my finger along the folds of his ears. I can't wait to feel him breathe against me, to feel his warmth. Thirty five or thirty six days left until the finale. The curtain call. Until I can hold him and kiss him and tell him that I waited so long for him and that my heart can't even hold the love I feel for him. I can't wait, but then again I can.

It just that it's....

it's just too much. too hard. too exhausting. too draining. isn't draining the same as exhausting? it deserves repeating for emphasis anyway. i don't care. Sometimes when you take a step back to see the whole big picture you get a surprise. something you didn't quite expect. Sometimes you become inspired. Sometimes you become strengthened. Sometimes you just fall apart. Sometimes taking that step back shows you what you've been avoiding. Something you didn't want to see. Something you've tried really hard to be blind to. The truth will always be the truth and will always find you in one way or another. you can run but you can't hide. Sometimes the truth hurts so bad you can't even speak it. You can't even hear it. You don't ever want to. Because simply hearing it, saying it, hearing those words come out of your mouth, tasting them on your lips, might just destroy you leaving you in pieces. But in my own life, and thankfully so, there has always been a stick of glue or a good friend holding some at the bottom of all those broken pieces to help me mend myself and stand back up. I need some glue. maybe tomorrow. Today I just want to lay here in pieces. The big picture was far too much.

I'm sick.

I am so incredibly, terribly, over being sick. DONE. OVER IT. TIRED OF IT. ready to be done. I am sick of looking at blood in this bag on my leg. sick of this pain. tired of being consumed by pain all day every day tired of just having chills & aches as a baseline for my "good days". Some body hand me a white flag. I feel like waving it high. I am sick of being sick. so sick of it. seriously. sick. of. it.

TBIF

to bad it's friday. today sucked. royally so. finally things are calming down and i'm regaining my will to not check myself into the ER but that's with the help of percocet every four hours. its a combination of back labor type pains, my hips coming apart and my kidney quivering inside me with a rage and pain I can't quite describe. :'(

gtt take two...for three.

Glucose Tolerance Test take two...for three hours....but its really four hours so I have no clue why these people kid themselves and call it a THREE hour test. Just another thing to try and confuse us preggos silly. ergh. I drank my little orange glucola with little problems at first. then i started to feel yucky and gross and it just got worse. for three hours straight I thought I was going to spew that junk all over dr. anderson's beautifully decorated waiting room. that nastiness made me feel like crap all day long. I can only hope that's not a bad sign. gosh I hope I passed.

I failed my stupid glucose tolerance test

I failed it miserably and now have to take a three hour test on Thursday. Yay me. I am so insanely excited about it like you have no idea. I hope I pass it because goodness knows if I don't my already hyper-complicated pregnancy is going to get kicked into overdrive. If I do have gestational diabetes its going to KILL my weight gain since the six pounds I have gained I solely attribute to my mayfield ice cream & milk shakes. ugh. one more ugh along the way. i'll even throw in a positive and say its one less negative between me and a baby boy.

Back up plan.

Planning to fail or failing to plan? That is the question. Does having a back up plan mean you are planning to fail? Does having that safety net below the trapeze artist mean they aren't all that good and will surely fall? Does having a crash cart by the table charged and ready mean that they intend to use it on you and that they surely expect you"ll experience cardiac crash somewhere between 0815 and 0835 and possibly die? I don't think it does. I think it's just being prepared. Some might not like living with a plan B, they may say it assumes failure. I am not some. I like a good solid back up plan. I am a planner by nature. I like to be two steps ahead, sometimes even three. So, I don't worry when I go into my Friday morning dates in special ops 1 and find as they connect me to a million and two leads and wheel the "crash" cart over to my head and turn it on just in case I "decide" to get into "trouble". They always explain it's just a precaution because of my low blood pressure, 70/30 isn't comforting to anesthesiologists but clearly I'm not in shock. I'm always adequately uncomfortable, somewhat pained and usually hungry but no shock. This little 'precaution' might freak out some, and it does feel a little unsettling to a degree but mostly makes me feel good. It's a solid back up plan. On this one, I am a HUGE subscriber of not wanting to fail to plan.

just in case your counting...

I am. Of course I am. Ticking, slashing, ripping those pages off the proverbial calendar is what I do these days. I have an app on the home screen on my phone that counts down with me too. I must admit I look at it no less than two hundred times a day. It's as if I have literally forgotten that the sun rising and setting is a clear indicator of the day beginning and ending. But, some days I am going crazy as a bat to speed time up and some days just go by in a blur, so I excuse my moments of insanity and consider it just fine. Forty-six days left until the expected amniocentesis. Which hopefully is forty-eight at most from the day I lay eyes on this boy's beautiful face and cover it with a thousand and one kisses. Forty-nine days from un-tubing this body of mine. All of which are less than fifty. I hope. A girl can hope right? Nothing wrong at all with a little hope. Just in case in these past few sentences you've lost count...forty six.....four-six.

Home.

Home. Home is where you want to be when you feel like crap. Remember when you were a kid? When you'd get sick and stay home from school. You felt the whole world going on about its business outside your bedroom window. But on the other side of that window, the inside life was different for that day. If for no one else but you and your mother the day was different. Your fever, your cough, your ear ache or whatever it was rewrote the script for you two that day. Remember that feeling of the way your momma brushed your hair over your ears, wiped your tears, whispered I am so sorry. Then you'd look up seeing in her eyes she was holding back tears too, seeing in her eyes she truly wished she could take it away. Even the soup momma brought me when I was sick tasted different. These are all feelings of home for me. Home will always be your mommas hug, your momma's looks when you are hurting. Doesn't matter if your two, ten, or almost thirty. Doesn't matter if she's the mother that gave birth to you, or helped raise you. You know it when you hug her. You know it when she puts her fingers through your hair. When she gives you that look before she kisses your forehead, and now that you've had your own babies you know says "where did the time go?" and as she backs away you feel her heart plead with yours to just "slow down". Those are all feelings I crave when I am hurting, in pain, or just plain sad. The house I grew up in has a different phone number, different people and probably a little girl sleeping in my old bedroom. There were different dogs in the yard the last time I rode by. The new people cut down the big tree in the front yard. The one I had my first kiss under. The front porch steps are the same. I used to paint my toenails on those steps. I cried many times on those steps not understanding life and fearing I never would. That house, that home, made me who I am. Every day, every memory, every dream, every lesson I learned under that roof shaped me to be the woman I am today, the mother I am, the sister I am, the friend I am. It taught me so much. So much I wouldn't even be able to comprehend for years. So much I am still unraveling even today. Sometimes when I feel like I do right now I just wish I could walk through it, hear that old squeak in the hall near the furnace, or hear the furnace fire up one last time, slam the door to my old bedroom again. I foolishly feel sometimes like a strong dose of home will just make it all better. I think I will just walk up to the door and the humidity will be there on the storm door telling me that maw-maw's just pulled the cornbread out of the oven and that dinners on the stove and there is a little tea left but a fresh pot on the back eye of the stove to pour up if its too sweet or I need more...Momma will be there waiting to play with my hair until the pain is defeated by her comforting touch and I finally fall asleep. Sometimes you just want your momma and home even if you are almost thirty and have an address all of your own. Even if she's got a new one too.

That little sweet stinker :)

Today we took another trip to the Nestled Newborn. Today we once again witnessed the littlest monkey hide his face. The above picture is the best we could get. I'll be headed back one more time Tuesday morning to try and catch one last peek of this little sweethearts face. I enjoyed as usual just seeing him and watching his antics. Learning more about his personality. The boy is consistent if nothing else. Here is what I have learned about Madden;

He is sweet as molasses.

He is beautiful, and whenever I see a glimpse of his precious face I don't notice anything else in the world. I feel like my heart starts to speak to him and suddenly I just feel this feeling, and feel provoked to say something profound but can't even mutter a word. Maybe this is what it's like to truly be in awe. I think so.

He has a cute nose.

I swear he has my lips. His bottom is full and the sides of the tops are too which is a distinction between mine and his daddy's.

He loves to snuggle like Prestlee

I bet he loves blankie like his big brother Henley. He hangs onto his cord like the corner of a satin blankie.

He LOVES to suck, hands, arms, cord and tries furiously to get anything and everything in his mouth. I am fairly sure he'll love to nurse and be good at it right off the bat.

He is active like Henley but calms to snuggle and settle like Prestlee.

Madden throws his head and arches when he gets frustrated with things not going in his mouth. I hope he isn't a screamer like Prestlee was.

I love him more than I thought was imaginable.

I never thought you could love three little boys as much as I love these.

I never thought a heart could hold this much without exploding.

Love for your children is more powerful than any other force, feeling, emotion I have ever experienced.

Love is amazing.

Love is incredible.

Loving your babies, your children as they grow in you and out, is all consuming and stretches far and wide beyond the edges and seams of our hearts.

Love IS really all you need...

xoxo

Today is Friday.

What more can I say. I had Dr. P, aka Dr. Spidey. Ahh. I'm in bed. Been in bed. Will be in bed until today is over and tomorrow comes. I feel horrible. The pain is really bad and agitated further by the sweet little baby kicking and punching my kidney like he's in a furious Billy Blanks Tae-Bo workout. Going to close my eyes chanting my bad day mantra...."today I don't ever have to do again"....except I know in six more I will....just not May 7th 2010...it's just really number swapping next week will be the 14th. I am in a foul, whiny, self pity, cry my self to sleep kind of mood. Goodnight. At least tomorrow ain't Friday again right?

mark your calendars....

Mark your calendars....with a pencil that is. At thirty-five weeks pregnant I will have an amniocentesis to check Maddens lungs for maturity. If his lungs are mature then guess who's gonna have a labor day?? Uh, ME!!! Thirty-five weeks pregnant happens to fall on Thursday, June 24th 2010. I happen to hope they pull the plug the next day. If he isn't ready then likely they take him the following week. This of course is all hoping and assuming I cross my legs really tight, my uterus quits rebelling and he doesn't make his debut before. I love to have a plan. I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Fifty days. Seven weeks. Or there about. I can handle that. Right?? Let the countdown begin. 50 days to go until said plan has a "date" or is it now 49 & 3/4ths? :-)

OMG!!

Wednesday this week I had the repeat appointment to see little Madden again and try to get the ever elusive boy to show his sweet face sans arms, ankles and hands. That's a whole other post which I will promptly write about in a second. This one is dedicated to a certain lady who will remain nameless and unidentified ONLY because I don't have her name and photo. You can bet your sweet baby's bottom I'd post her picture faster than you can slap a tick. Had I had my sarcastic wits about me and my momma's smart you know what genes on in full force as I am known for, she'd been in a heap of junk. But, I had just stared endlessly at my sweet baby and was in a maternal lovey dovey state of mind. Lucky her. Anyhoo- onto the point of the post; I went to Panera for a quick bite with Katie after the scan which is three doors down. Just before we walk in I ask her if I look like I am 1.) dying or 2.) did my picc line look like I am super sickly and offensive/gross. For your information you should know, that she replied def not dying and it did NOT look offensive. As you might imagine I am fairly self-conscious about my tubes, and esp if any parts of either show. News flash: We are in Georgia, it's humid, it's hot. I had on short sleeves so the picc line ports, both of them dangling from my arm in plain sight. Well we order our food and walking with our drinks to the fountains then to a table which Katie was already walking toward as I went to grab hot sleeves for our cups (I hate touching cold cups, its a weird thing I have so I put hot sleeves on my cold drinks too). As I am walking back towards a table two woman are walking towards me pushing babies, and just as I am close enough to TOUCH one on the face if I wanted- one of them says to her I assume bff: " OMG!! Is that a feeding tube in her arm" in what I predict was her most disgusting tone. My reaction, for those who know me well and are grabbing their chins in oh my goodness what on earth did you do/say Breann?? I didn't say anything, my jaw dropped, my head tilted and I looked her dead in the eye and then I walked off shaking. About to cry. About to lose it. About to turn around and tell her exactly what that was in my arm, and then slap her with the hand attached to my "feeding tube". Or grab her and tell her to be thankful she was healthy enough to push a baby stroller, or had a healthy looking baby in that stroller (who btw needed a haircut and had a face only his mother could love, I thought about telling her that too, but thats just mean!!) and thank goodness it was me and not her with this tube in my back, and in my arm carrying this precious baby boy in my belly. Whoever you are "Mean Panera Woman" I don't like you and I am sad for your children that they have you as a mother. I bet your raising bullies and brats with a mouth like that. There. I have words too and I always try to make mine matter and make them fair. And FYI- mean lady- THIS my dear is what a feeding tube looks like....doesn't go anywhere near your arm.

**Editing to include an important side note that Katie, being the awesome friend she is, offered

and had an extremely difficult time restraining herself from inflicting bodily harm against the

"mean panera woman". Thanks girlie for sticking up for me, and being willing to go to jail for me

and my "tubes" :) love ya!!

Take Three-

Today I attempted to see our littlest son again, for the third time. For the third time this little stinker hid his face behind his cord, arms, hands, and at one point a foot. I brought home a cute little picture of the side of his head above his right ear of some hair. He has hair. I was so overjoyed with the fact my boy has hair above his right ear!! I also got a 17 minute dvd of him hiding his face and playing with his hands and feet. He was sticking his tongue in and out and doing super cute things with his mouth. He is precious and I think its so sweet he has such a personality in the belly. I can't wait to see you little Madden. If you don't mind, Saturday around 2, mommy is gonna try again to see your face again. All of it. Without the arms, hands, and feet. If you don't cooperate don't worry that I'll be disappointed. I won't be. I'm excited to have seen you as much as I have and will be excited for every chance I get. I can wait to see you on birth day if that's what your holding out for. I'm happy with the partial face picture and the cute hair picture. I still wonder if its gonna be brownish?

Can I get a woo-hooo!!

Or perhaps maybe just a follower or two or three? Not that it matters or will make a difference in when I write or what I write. Just wondering if anyone out there reads my words?

I think he has brownish hair....

I keep dreaming about Madden. The dream goes the same pretty much every time. I have him up on my shoulder feeling his sweet baby breath on the crook of my neck. I am patting and rocking him waiting for a burp but instead get what I call a "ten-mile-sigh". You mama's out there know exactly what I'm talking about. Its the moment your new little one takes a series of deep breaths followed by a sigh and you know they-are-totally-asleep. I'm talking milk coma. Change a diaper and they don't even notice asleep. When my babies do the ten-mile-sigh and slip into their milk comas I have an instant reaction to kiss them behind their heads towards the back of their necks and just hold my kiss a second to smell them. I hang on to these moments like my last breath because I know they go far to fast and are far too few. Madden in my dreams has dark blonde hair, its almost brown. The dream feels so real I can almost feel his hair tickle my nose. I wake up feeling overwhelmed with a happiness and love that newborns bring and eyes full of tears and a heart full of hope and dreams of memories to be made.