Catching Up

Ok, I'm now so far behind in blogging that I don't even remember everything I wanted to/should blog about. But I'll do the best I can...

It wasn't a fluke. My "morning" sickness did finally end about three weeks ago. I still have some issues with indigestion/gas bubbles sometimes, but the endless nausea and just feeling like total shit is gone. Thank you g-d.

So of course now I have a horrible cold. I'm pretty miserable right now, but I'll take this any day over morning sickness, no question. After giving in and having the on-call midwife paged on Saturday, I found out that I can indeed take cold medicine and an antihistamine. It's helping somewhat, but I still feel like crap - congested sinuses and lungs, headache, sore throat, sinus pain and pressure, productive cough, and the mucus production is un-freaking-believable. I wonder if the whole pregnancy making you produce excess mucus thing is playing a role here.

My parents came into town 2-3 weeks ago for a week. This visit wasn't planned far ahead; they decided to come after I finally broke down and called my mom in tears (before the morning sickness ended) and asked her to come help me. And then, of course, I turned the corner a couple of days before they arrived. But it was a good visit, very nice to have them here and to have the help and support. Even just having my dad walk the dog was HUGE. We went shopping and got me some maternity clothes, and some maternity-like clothes (that will work for now while my belly's not too huge, but probably won't work towards the end). And we met up with the realtor to look at some houses, since I think I've mentioned before, they're planning to move up here to be local, involved grandparents.

And a miracle occurred - THEY FOUND A HOUSE! They actually managed to find a house that they both really loved. And it's a miracle because they both wanted very different things... My mom wanted to downsize and maybe buy a 2-3 bedroom condo, like people their age in their situation (retired, empty nest, in their 60s) generally tend to do. My dad, on the other hand, wanted to buy another large, spacious home with 3-4 or even 5 bedrooms! Oh, and my mom wanted a first-floor master bedroom (or better yet, a ranch with everything on one floor) since she has bad knees. And my dad likes "unique" houses. So I thought they'd NEVER find a house they agreed on... but they DID!

My mom is back in town this week. This week's trip was planned a while back, when I asked my mom if she wanted to come with me to my level 2 anatomy scan ultrasound. My dad was supposed to come to town, too, but he wasn't able to at the last minute due to a family emergency type thing, which I'll get to in a minute. Meanwhile, the inspection on the house was on Saturday, and while that's totally my dad's type of thing, my mom had to do it without him. And then today they had a contractor go to the house to give an estimate on some repair work, and again my mom had to deal with it when it's really my dad who usually does that kind of stuff. My mom's now afraid this house is going to be a money pit, but I'm not so sure, and my dad hasn't been here for any of this stuff, so he can't really figure it all out. It's all very confusing, and now I'm not sure what they'll end up doing as far as going ahead with buying the house or not.

The reason my dad couldn't come this week? He had to stay home to babysit my 30-year-old brother. Yes, that's right. Babysit. A 30-year-0ld. My brother has bipolar disorder, and is currently manic. Not manic enough to be hospitalized, but manic enough to need someone with him pretty much 24/7. And it's completely stressing out my parents, not just because they're worried about him now, but because they're worried about him in the future. Here they're supposed to be moving to Boston, but he'll still be in Tennessee and need a support system. So now what? What do they do with/about him? The general consensus is that the best thing would be for him to also move to Boston (although not in with my parents), because his whole family will be here, and also because health care (including mental health care) is much, much better here than it is in Tennessee. But he doesn't want to move. And he's 30 years old, so they can't make him (without getting legal guardianship of him, which I doubt would happen, and which they don't really want to do anyway). Complicating things even more is he's currently separated from his wife, but she's still involved with helping deal with him in this manic state. And she supposedly does want to reconcile with him, but will only do so if he's "medically compliant". Which he's not. And as long as he thinks there's a chance she may take him back, he'll never agree to move away from her. Yet she doesn't seem to understand the whole "for better or for worse" thing. I mean, I think she needs to either be all in or all out. Not just leave him when he's manic and say she'll only come back if he takes his meds (although I'm fairly sure she actually left him long before this manic thing started, so there's obviously more going on there). But yet still deal with/take his shit and help try to get him to take his meds, and spend hours with him, etc. WTF?! I found a local support group for family and friends of people with bipolar, and my sister and I went last week. I think we're going to go back this week, and my mom wants to go, too. There's a lot more to this whole story of my brother and what's going on with him, and how it's completely stressing us all out right now, but I'll leave it at that. Suffice it to say that a severe mental illness like bipolar disorder very much affects entire families, not just the person who actually has the diagnosis!

My big anatomy scan is on Wednesday, and I'm excited to hopefully find out the baby's sex. I still have a pretty strong "girl" feeling, but I also wonder if that's true intuition, or just because I want it to be a girl! And then I have an appointment with my midwife on Thursday, which I moved from last week because my mom wants to go with me (I don't know why, since nothing much really happens!).

Yesterday my mom and I went to a baby furniture store to just look around and get ideas. It was the first time I've done that, and it was kinda fun, despite me not feeling good. I think I want a white crib, although I'm not completely against some shade of brown. I really haven't thought too much about the nursery, other than it's kind of a small room and I'm worried about fitting everything in that needs to fit! I still have plenty of time, but it's fun to just start looking at options.

Ok, that's all I can think of as far as updates for now. I'm really going to try to be better about blogging more often so I can have a better record of things, and so you guys don't have to wait so long to know what's going on! :)