Lots of health/housing updates, and not a lot of energy for them, so this will be in bullet form:
- The lawyers for the Mad Hatter house showed up on Wednesday to a new judge, and his lawyer filed a continuance, asking that the case be seen by the same judge as before, which I gather is fairly routine, and they granted it, so the court thing is now delayed until next Wed, Aug 19th. I had a full-on bout of hysterical weeping when I heard the news, because it just seemed so brutally unfair, not to mention outright mean -- DO THESE BASTARDS NOT UNDERSTAND THAT I AM SEVEN MONTHS PREGNANT??!! -- but calmed down after a while. The judge and the lawyers, at least, are probably not actually out to get me. I think.
- While we wait, we're looking at other places, and in fact, have decided to up our budget somewhat. So we're planning to see four houses this weekend, in the hopes that we might fall in love with one of them, and they might come down in price enough for us to afford them. One of the Victorians actually has a conservatory, gods help us.
- Picking one of those houses would mean carrying more of a mortgage than we'd originally intended, but is still well within financial reasonableness for us (because Kevin is prudent that way). Unless Kevin gets laid off by the university or something. But he has tenure, so that's unlikely unless Illinois really does completely fall apart, budget-wise, and if that happens, well, everyone's going to have big problems.
- We're still hoping to get into a house before the baby comes (due date is now apparently October 10th). In part because it would make life easier, in part because all of our baby stuff is in storage out in the middle of nowhere, and would be very expensive to unload and then move somewhere else (would cost about $4K, I think), so we're not doing that. Which means if baby comes before we're in our house, well, we'll need to buy some more baby stuff. Luckily, white cotton onesies are pretty cheap at Target, and teeny tiny babies don't actually need much more than that, no matter what the marketers try to sell you. Onesies, diapers, wipes, and a few receiving blankets to deal with all the spit-up. Fun times ahead.
- The gestational diabetes thing. Well, the carb counting has been interesting this week. Probably deserves a whole entry of its own, if I get up the energy. The short version is that by limiting my carb intake, I've mostly been able to get my glucose levels down (and have lost two pounds in the last week in the process despite eating a notable amount of eggs, bacon, cottage cheese, chicken, etc.), but my fasting level (blood checked first thing in the morning, before eating) is still about ten points higher than they'd like. (Around 100, instead of under 90). Since that's not so controllable with diet, and I'm limited in how much exercise I'm allowed to do, they're putting me on the lowest dose of glyburide, a pill that I take once a day which should make my body process insulin more effectively. We'll check back in a week, see how it's doing. My impression is that the diabetes is all fairly borderline, but my doctors are being super-cautious, which I guess is their job.
- But in the meantime, more problems have developed. My blood pressure is a bit high, and there's some protein in my urine, which are two of the warning signs for developing pre-eclampsia, which can have some pretty serious consequences if it turns severe. Again, it's borderline right now, and while one doctor wanted to put me on bed rest (the first stage treatment), the other talked her out of it. I'm supposed to limit myself to very mild exercise (walking is okay), and rest as much as possible. Try not to stress. Hah.
- An additional problem I hadn't mentioned is that my restless leg issues, which normally aren't a big deal, have become severe enough in this pregnancy that they're seriously interrupting my sleep, waking me and making me get up and walk around a couple times in the middle of each night so that the feeling of ants crawling under my skin will go away. Fairly often I'll have to take a warm shower to really get rid of the sensation, and lately, even that only works for a little while, and if I don't fall back asleep in that short window, I'm out of luck. I asked if there was anything I could take to help me sleep, and the doctor suggested I try Unisom (doxylamine succinate), an over-the-counter safe-for-pregnancy thing. Will give it a go.
- It's all very stressful, but at the same time, I think it's all still at the manageable stage. We have a good amount of money and time right now to help handle these things, so we'll just try to take it easy and see how it goes. I'm only supposed to be working about 20 hours/week this semester, and much of it I think can be done while lying down, so even once school starts August 25th, I think things will be manageable.
I think that's it for status updates at the moment. More as things develop.
I’m sorry it’s so stressful. It sounds awful. I hope various things get better soon.
The conservatory is gorgeous. I bet keeping all that glass clean is a big pain, but still. Really nice.