Babies and Books

First off, I am so much closer to calm than I was yesterday.  Thank you.

Hearing a normal heartrate was reassuring, so I'm glad my OB's office was willing to accommodate my neuroses.  I've been reading around a little, and it seems high risk pregnancy as well as pregnancy after miscarriage is associated with anxiety and other psych issues, which is, I suppose, self-evident.  I have the name of another psychologist who accepts my insurance, but I'm not planning on using it.  I think what I really need is the well-baby check, alongside doing things that lower my stress level; interestingly, prenatal massage is highly recommended for high-risk patients for this reason.  What's tricky is walking--which is my go-to exercise for calming down--kicks up the contractions, and as I'm already having several per hour, I really don't want to push it.

Among her many questions, the OB asked me yesterday what I do for work, so we talked a little about how it's good I'm not teaching.  To paraphrase her assessment:  if you had to be in the classroom right now, on top of all this, it would be a train wreck.  Something like that, yeah.  (Although, to be fair, I suspect that dealing with IVF during the school year was more challenging, both physically and emotionally, and if I had to be teaching right now, the teaching part wouldn't suffer.  My stress level would.)  The past three years have really taken their toll on me, and I think the best thing I can do is rest before the new mom sleep deprivation becomes an issue, because while LG can be very helpful, the bottom line is that she will need me to be awake in the morning attending to her needs, whereas when she was a baby our morning could begin whenever I felt like it (which basically meant we spent 12 hrs or so in bed co-sleeping and nursing).

So, despite the fact that I would really like to have this book manuscript completed before this boy makes his arrival, I'm grateful that I don't have to.  I'm not under contract, though my hope was to send out a book proposal in Nov (ha!).  I think I need to suck it up and accept the fact that there are going to be some days, probably more as I start hanging out at the OB's office for NSTs, when I just need to relax, read, pet the kitties, bake brownies, and generally putz around the house.

Right now I'm feeling pretty good, so I'm going to get some work done on this chapter before I need to head to school for a department meeting.  Thanks for listening.