Let me begin my story with a little honesty. I dislike doctors a lot. There have been very few that I like, much less trust. I haven’t found one that I really like since my primary care physician moved to North Carolina. I miss her! Anyway, my OB is a woman, which is a plus, but I’m not feeling like I’m taken care of. It’s not that she isn’t nice, she is, but there is just something I don’t completely trust about her. I feel like everything I say is trivialized, like I’m over-reacting and all my aches and pains are completely normal–at least that is what she tells me.

That being said, if you recall, I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, that I was enjoying crunching my ice. I’ve talked to my doctor about this, as well as feeling light-headed and being out of breath, with my heart beating fast. Most mornings, I am exhausted and have a hard time completing simple tasks without getting out of breath and having to sit down. I haven’t gained weight for about 6 weeks–I’ve stayed the same or lost a few pounds. Also, it would add up that I haven’t had much of an appetite.

So I get a call on Tuesday, after I had an appointment on Friday and the nurse tells me my iron is low. (They took a blood test) She says the doctor is prescribing “Repliva.”

I ask, “How low is my iron?”

She says, “It is at a nine.”

Which means nothing to me, so I ask, “And what is normal?”

She says, “Between 12 and 16.”

By this time, it sounds like she is irritated that I’m actually asking questions, and instead of asking what the heck medication “Repliva,” is, I give her the pharmacy number, thinking I will call the doctor in the morning.

Then, I go online to look up low iron or iron deficiency in pregnancy and lo and behold, what do I find? All the symptoms I have talked to my doctor about are under iron deficiency as symptoms! I’ve been talking about this for 6 weeks, and we finally get around to taking my blood a few days ago? I don’t get it. So I’m irritated. I go to the pharmacy, which is a whole other story, but find out that “Repliva” is another vitamin, that I will take.

I wonder if I should take this in place of my pre-natal vitamin, or if I should keep taking them or what. It doesn’t say anything on the information sheet, except, “If you are pregnant or breast-feeding, consult your doctor about how this medication can affect your infant.” So of course, I’m like, “What the heck?” I go back to the pharmacy and they tell me that I might get constipated and that the baby might get constipated when I start breast-feeding.

I still decide that before I take this medicine, I will call the doctor to find out about it. So the next morning, I call. Of course, I can’t get the doctor, or a nurse and I have to leave a message. I leave a detailed message explaining why I am calling and leave my number and name. I wait all afternoon. I wait until 4:30 and still nothing. I haven’t taken this medication yet, and I finally decide to call back. I get the answering service. They close at 4:30. So I talk to the message taker and explain my situation and she doesn’t know what to do.

“Is this an emergency?”

“Well, not really…

“What is your name?”

I give her my name and number.

“Are you pregnant?”

“Yes. I just want to know if I take this medication with my vitamins or not.”

“Well, let me see…”

She consults some book and asks me again if I am pregnant.

“Yes, I am.”

“How many weeks?”

“38? I think.”

“I will leave a message for your doctor.”

So I wait another hour and my doctor FINALLY calls! She tells me that I should continue to take my vitamins and that I’m taking it because I have low iron. I can’t help but feel like I am bugging her, because, well, I am calling after hours and she sounds a little irritated, unless it is just me. I explain that I left a message at the office THIS MORNING and nobody got back to me, and I was assuming they wanted me to start taking this stuff right away. She tells me that is fine and we hang up.

I’ve taken two doses of this stuff and what do you know? I’m not exhausted, no feeling like I am going to pass out, no heart pounding. I feel a lot better. I just wish I could have had this figured out a long time ago–like 6 weeks ago. I still have the craving for ice, and hopefully that will go away too, because I have never particularly liked chewing on ice, until now.

Yes, it is taken care of, but why did I have to go through all of that to feel better? I will be glad when this is all over. I need to find a good doctor–one that actually listens to me when I have questions or concerns. I know there are good doctors out there, but I have had very few. Someone needs to tell doctors that the patients actually do sometimes know how they are feeling and what might be going on. We aren’t all a bunch of hypocondriacs wanting a prescription for some narcotic. Some of us are actually in tune with our bodies and know what is normal and what isn’t.

Well, now I just hope I don’t get constipated again! I’m taking measure in hopes that it won’t happen again. So far so good.

I think I will go and have a glass of ice…

I less than 2 weeks Baby will be home.

It has gone by rather quickly and I am ready to see this little girl. She can barely move at this point, but whenever I talk to her or place my hand on her she starts to fidget. She has been getting the hiccups at night which amuses me, but not her mother.

My wife has been a trooper and aside from some leg swelling and low iron has been doing really well. Even though we have a c-section to look forward to, we are excited to bring her home.

This new one seems very calm and I imagine she will be like her big sister in that regard. Actually, both our kids are very calm and there are times when I come home at night end everyone is just sitting around reading. I can walk in the house and stand in the kitchen and hear nothing. I call out and voices emerge from the rooms, but you would never know any one was in them.

I can’t get used to that quite yet.

My house growing up was not exactly calm and you could pick a fight without much effort if the conversation lingered. I think we enjoyed the drama and chaos as we seemed to grow and tend to it and could sustain it for weeks. We were asked to go outside more times than I can remember to which the neighbors would ask us to go inside.

It was better for us inside, there was less property damage.

The most excitement we have around my house now is the cats and they live in the garage now. There is music being played or practiced all the time, but even that is soothing and non invasive, unless my son and I are trying to dial in tone on our guitars. I have noticed my wife leaving the room on those occasions, so some of the kid in me still reigns supreme.

I know our quiet house is going to change very soon with a newborn. They seem to have a way of getting  your attention. I will probably come home down the road to the older kids sitting on the front porch reading.

2 weeks and everything changes.

As of today, I have 2 more weeks of being pregnant, and then we will have another baby around the house.  As I said, we are having a c-section on August 12th, Tuesday.

My sister is getting married on August 9th, and we won’t be able to make it, for obvious reasons, but we are thinking of you Sue–and praying for you!

These are things that have been on my mind:

1.  Being able to breastfeed.  With Elizabeth, she had a really hard time latching on correctly, and eventually, we switched to formula.  I’m praying that this one will be able to do it no problem, because I really want to be able to do this.  They say some babies have a natural ability to be able to latch on, while others don’t.

2.  Being depressed.  After Elizabeth was born, I went through about a month or so of “adjustment” and was rather weepy and sad.  It might have been because Alex was 2 and I had a new infant, but I don’t want to go through that again.  So again, I’m praying that I will have an easy time of adjusting.

3.  Dealing with colic.  Alex cried all the time–and that was hard.  I remember we had a wind up swing that ran for 9 minutes each wind, and I would put him in there and sleep for nine minutes at a time.  When the swing ran out, he would start screaming and I would groggily wind the swing up again.  Elizabeth, on the other hand, slept all the time.  The first night we brought her home, she slept from 7 p.m. until 11 a.m. the next day.  (I finally woke her up, because I was worried about her.)  She was fine.  We didn’t have many crying issues with her.  But as you can see, they were two different sides of the spectrum!  I’m praying that this baby doesn’t have colic and that she is comfortable.  I’m not expecting her to sleep all the time, but I wouldn’t mind, that’s for sure.

4.  Getting a schedule for home school.  We are going to have to “go with the flow” for the first couple months.  I don’t have a set schedule yet, but all I know is that when I am teaching one-on-one with one child, the other will have to hold/feed/rock/change/care for Emily, unless she is asleep.  I’m a little freaked out about being able to get everything in, but judging from their end-of-the-year test, (which they did great on,) They should do all right.  I got back the results last week, and they did fantastic, even though we weren’t as thorough as we could have been.

5.  Starting piano lessons in October.  I have a much smaller studio, so it should be easier.  Right now, I am planning on doing Mondays and Thursdays, and not all day, just for a couple hours.  We will have to see how things shape up.  If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out and I’ll have to wait until next year, when Emily is older.  Since David will be working from home on Mondays, he said he could help, but I don’t want to expect him to do it, since he is “working from home,” and earning money for it.

6.  Finances.  With an extra mouth to feed, and more supplies like diapers, and related baby items, we will have to spend more.  We’re praying for provision.  This doesn’t come as a surprise to God, so I know he has it under control, but sometimes you worry.

These are some of the things I have been lifting up to the Father.  If you feel led, by all means, pray for us!  We’ll keep  you posted on the birth!

Besides having the baby in a few weeks, we do have two other children, so here they are:

This is David, me and Alex at his Bronze medal presentation during church.  Getting the bronze medal of achievement is sort of like trying to earn your Eagle Scout.  They do a lot of the same things.  This is just a step toward getting his Silver Medal and finally, the Gold Medal of Achievement.  But a lot of boys don’t even get this far, so we are very proud of Alex!

Here we are pinning the medal on Alex.  In case you were wondering, we are both wearing white because that’s what we wear to do worship, we didn’t feel like we had to match or anything geeky like that….

Beth’s new room.  We had to scrape all the paint off the walls, because whoever built the house failed to prime the plaster, so when we were moving Alex out of here, we took pictures off the wall, but the tape took about 5 layers of paint of the wall, down to the plaster.  It was NOT fun to scrape all that paint off, but necessary.  Now her room is a lovely orange color with a new bedspread from her birthday and new curtains.  We also put in a ceiling fan and she loves it.  This is a view from the hallway.

Beth looking at her new room from the doorway.  This picture was taken inside the room looking at the hallway.

Another view of the room.  I don’t think you can see, but we also put laminate flooring in, since Alex’s carpet was trashed.  (It was the original carpet that came with the house.)

Little Chinese lanterns Beth picked out to string across her room.  This is the other window in her room, with new curtains.

So that is what we have been busy with.  Moving children to different rooms, pinning medals on our son and getting baby’s room ready.  Soon, I will have pictures of Emily’s room for you to enjoy.