Mensch

You know how sometimes a word pops into your head?  Well, this happened to me the other day with the word mensch and I've decided to run with it.  I looked it up to check that my meaning was right and it was "a decent, upright, mature, and responsible person."  It's Yiddish, so I have no idea where I came across it, but I think it's a great summation of my goal in terms of my attitude and actions.

Rather than whining at restrictions, I think it's best that I be a responsible adult who can balance the needs of multiple people and timeframes and gets the significance of avoiding as much NICU time as humanly possible at essentially any cost.

I was discharged Friday and all is going really quite well with home bedrest.  Paul and my parents got me set up with a minifridge and a microwave upstairs and stocked with food, cutlery, drinks and more.  I've also got a serious number and variety of pillows to arrange different positions.  Add that I was planner and last pregnancy had purchased a hospital bedside table and a lap table in preparation (before everything changed), and I'm in great shape.  I've got a printer set up here and a friend who works at my office brought me out some things I need, so I'm in shape working as well.

Having Poppins definitely helps as she and Chiron are here throughout the day.  They go for walks and to the park and to the grocery store, but it really results in about two hours being the longest duration I go without Paul or Poppins being here.  Add friends who have helped with all kinds of things and life is pretty good!  It's also nice because Chiron stops by a couple times a day and plays which really brightens the day and being home allows me to read to Trajan before bed like normal which I couldn't do from the hospital.  And I've got pretty cute coworkers here:

Besides helping with boys, being home allows me to be useful as I can go through the mail and sort things that have been pulled out for goodwill including getting them entered into itsdeductible and lots of little things like that.  Feel much less useless.

On the girls front, all is looking well.  I should confess that I was secretly hoping/expecting that when I went to the preterm nurse Monday she would say that she thought the covering OB was in error and I hadn't had any cervical change, but she if anything actually identified more cervical change dubbing me one-plus, 30-50% effaced and soft where I had been completely closed when I had seen her before going into the hospital.  Since the covering OB had done a cervical exam at 8 am and then 5:30 pm of the same day, it was probably a silly hope, but oh well.

The good news is that I still have 4.4 cm of cervix which is enough cervix for two pregnancies and close enough to the 4.9 value in the hospital last Wednesday.  That and both girls aced their modified BPP, so we are really in good shape.  The perinatologist did think that I needed to stay on as complete a bedrest as possible as I was contracting some while I was there and if just medical trips are enough to make irritable, running around free could equal instability.  He also didn't like that preterm labor nurse noticed some pink blood after the cervical exam, but since I haven't seen any after, I'm going to go with that was just due to the exam.

We got a profile of Righty who is back to being the presenting baby.  She is vertex in the center/left (name is based on her placenta) and then Lefty is sprawled transverse up in my ribcage.  Note: I am not 8 weeks currently as the ultrasound is labelled.  8, 27, what's the real difference, huh?

 I thought I'd fixed the orientation in iPhoto, but apparently not... oh well!

The one thing I really miss from the hospital (well, besides some nice and amusing nurses) is the monitoring.  Seeing those lines a couple times a day just is nice:

BUT, these faces are nicer:

I'm blaming the Chiron bias here on the fact that he's much more cooperative than the others.

But in tying back to my mensch theme, yesterday one of the techs at the perinatologist said something that startled me, but also made me glad: "you're always in such a good mood and kind.  You're our best patient."  And this is a woman who has seen me at one of the worst moments in my life.  This made me glad.  Because really the best we can do is live our lives :-).  What will be will be, I'm here to celebrate it and optimize it!