I'll give you something to whine about

I feel fine, and the baby feels fine, but the tests don't agree. My blood pressure has crept back up, and my liver was doing creepy things last week. The sort of things that made my midwife/doctor worry about this. For fuck's sake. Obviously I'm worried but mostly I'm just annoyed. I think in a normal pregnancy there's enough to worry about, and I'm feeling put-upon and victimized that - short of week 27 - I get to worry about extra shit too.

Especially given that I don't really have any associated symptoms - just some funny test results. Baby's kicking, heart ticking merrily away, etc., etc., everything looks to be fine, and I still get to fucking worry every time I wake up with a headache from the heating that I'm having to blast because Australia's so fucking cold at night during the winter, every time I feel a twinge everywhere - staring at my extremeties and waiting for them to swell up - pissing in interminable cups for protein tests, and answering the same fucking questions over and over because I'm too much of a fucking pinko to pay for my health care and hence to avoid the endless round of fucking student doctors and midwives on top of a roster of nurses, midwives and doctors who only seem to talk to each other once a day, getting my fucking veins punctured by said student midwives who haven't quite figured out how to take blood yet . . .

Fuck. And all this happened before the weekend, too. I had a three-hour wait on Friday while they decided whether or not to keep me in hospital for the weekend. They aren't, but I get to go back for fuck knows how long on Monday, doing the same shit again, with another fucking cunt of a glucose test on top of it.

I don't give a fuck. It's fine if I get sick, I'm just pissing myself over the idea of the baby being delivered very prematurely, which is what's done if pre-eclampsia or HELLP rear up. If I can just hold it in until week 36, that's fine. Even week 34. I'll put up with any pain or liver failure or whatever, as long as the baby gets to be healthy. Week 26 and a half, for fuck's sake. I'm reasonably nice to my body, so why is this happening now? Two months from now and I'd be easy. Whatever. Hopefully nothing's actually happening. Every day the baby stays in there is a little victory - every second, every minute.

Buggered and bewildered

Holy fuck, I am tired. I don't think abnormally, but still tireder than I've been in forever. To think seven months ago I could go kayaking for a couple of hours, eat a little breakfast, hit the garden, go for a 10 km run on the beach, and still be social late into the evenings . . . yesterday I had a very gentle kayak for an hour and nearly fell asleep on my feet during the half hour walk home - today I went out for a 90 minute walk to keep my calves stretched (they cramp up at night otherwise) and was absolutely buggered. I must have slept for eleven hours last night and napped yesterday, and napped again today, and each time the only thing that got me out of bed was hunger. It's like being depressed, except I'm not depressed. I'm rather happy. Just absolutely sodomized with tiredness.

I really don't think that's untypical for this stage of the game, though I will ask the midwife about iron supplements next time I see her, but what's boggling my mind is how the fuck pregnant women do this when they're working fulltime and have an older kid to take care of and a husband who's not supportive/no husband. I literally cannot fucking imagine. I know most pregnant women can have a couple of cups of coffee a day, which I suspect would be helping me no end, but coffee can't go too far against a pervasive exhaustion like this.

At least with the older kid thing there's a good chance I'll find out. The F-word, who has a few years on me, is feeling his age and wants to make a baby brother or sister for Ren sooner rather than later. And like all the preconceptions I've ever had about anything baby-related, my prior iron certainty that a four-year age gap is best is sliding out the window, and I'm starting to think half that might be more appropriate. One of those things that we won't be deciding on until well after Ren's born, of course. Just in case, the massive and beautiful Emmaljunga monstrosity Mum bought for us by proxy does have a toddler seat attachment. That means we're ready, right? Hah. Hah hah hah ha.

Shhhh . . . but I'm starting to have a fairly strong hunch the reason I'm sort of psyched by the Taiwan possibility is us being able to afford a housekeeper.  Not sure I can do this with two kids without some sort of staff backing me up. I've already pretty much decided we'll be getting cleaners in here, too, where we can less well afford it.