How The Days Go By

Welcome to Day 16 of bed rest. I am 18 weeks and 6 days pregnant. I am very close to the 20th week (halfway mark).

After a full day of moping, I'm feeling better. It's Friday, which really means nothing anymore, but Danny is taking Jack to some ski races in Homer this weekend and I have a fun weekend with lots of friend visits planned, so that gives me something to look forward to.

I usually try to stay in bed as long as possible in the mornings. This is because my memory foam bed is much more comfortable for side-lying than my couch, because the light in the mid-morning has been divine in my bedroom windows, and because I know I'm going to spend a large part of the day on the couch regardless. I like to split my time up between my two "offices".

I will put my laptop in my room when I go to bed, so that when I wake up, I can lie on my side in bed and check work email, write on the blog, chat with friends. Most mornings, Danny brings me breakfast in bed, as well as my daily glass of Metamucil to chug (a necessary evil).

Usually around mid day, I wander downstairs. Fern is always happy to see me. She find this whole situation as perplexing as I do. I'm home from work, which she likes, but we never go for walks at all. Added to this, it's been below zero for over a week, so she hasn't been very interested in being in the back yard on her own. It makes me feel bad, but Danny and friends have been helping me by giving her lots of exercises, so it's not the worst thing.

My only real strict bed rest rule is that the TV can't come on during the daylight hours. Or at least the traditional work hours. I know there's a lot that Netflix Instant has to offer but I think my brain might go a bit too mushy if I watch TV all day. Who knows, I might cave later, as this bedrest stint is looking to be longer than I thought.

I do work as much as I can- emails and writing and phone calls. It's unclear to me how much I'll be able to work, but I do find it so helpful to my sense of normalcy and control. I hope to be able to keep up with work.

I do a fair bit of reading- books and magazines. I play Words with Friends (my name is sangstak and I want to play with you). I play Angry Birds and Contre Jour. I text and chat with friends, which keeps me sane. I've been doing a little knitting but need some new patterns.

Around 5 I might turn the tv on to watch some of the shows I'm recording. It's hard to not be able to participate in the cooking or cleaning up or laundry or the million other chores that are still needing to be done around me. Danny's been a champ- cooking, cleaning, driving me and Jack around, waiting on me hand and foot, managing homework, exercising the dog, and everything in between. I think we're doing fine, but if this really does go on until mid April, we'll have to ask for more help. People have been contributing food, which helps tons. All the calls and emails and text and visits helps me tons.

 I went from normal pregnancy to high-risk in the blink of an eye and I'm having trouble catching up to that. After talking to my brother-in-law Larry, who is a neonatologist, for a while last night, Danny and I felt a lot better. It's crucial to make it to 24 weeks without incident, so we'll focus on that for now. As he reminded us, three months on bed rest is better than any length of time of your baby being in the NICU.  So we're doing what it takes for now.

Thanks for all the kind words, good energy, and love. We couldn't do even a fraction of this without friends and family like you.