The baby countdown has officially begun. Fortunately (I guess) Providence has seen fit to ensure that this child will arrive late, like all my others. What do I mean? Well, first of all, there was all the snow, which postponed midwifery appointments, family departure dates, and caused my husband to spend hours on the tractor plowing for a couple of days. Then there was the awful illness (that I am just now getting over- still have mild cold symptoms.) The excruciating coughing fits didn't start labor, so what will, I ask you?! Plus it got us waylayed on schoolwork and the dreaded task of taking down Christmas decorations. I got behind on corrections, and packing up Christmas stuff got interrupted. One of our work tables in the school room has become semi-permanenetly covered in "piles of Christmas".
Then everything started hitting the proverbial fan. First off, my husband finally got the offer letter for a job he had been negotiating for months. He accepted promptly and then promptly resigned his current job. After all, in order to give his employers due notice before the arrival of our new baby, he had to act soon. This set off a maelstrom at work. Suddenly he had twice as much to do, plus he had all the prep work for his new job (finding a small/cheap office, writing bios, putting out press releases, joining video conferenced meetings, etc.)
In the midst of this, my garage door broke. Then the new mini-van, which consistently has a low tire, turned up nearly flat. Then the downstairs toilet backed up last Friday, the end of this week from hell. I had 3 inches of water in my bathroom and it took nearly every towel we owned before I could sop up the mess. It's always fun to run up and down the stairs to gather towels, to feverishly try to stem off the flood from the hallway, to move said soaking towels, to dry the floor on your hands and knees with 4 kids in tow... and all at 38 weeks gestation! Nope, that didn't start labor either.
In the midst of this, my garage door broke. Then the new mini-van, which consistently has a low tire, turned up nearly flat. Then the downstairs toilet backed up last Friday, the end of this week from hell. I had 3 inches of water in my bathroom and it took nearly every towel we owned before I could sop up the mess. It's always fun to run up and down the stairs to gather towels, to feverishly try to stem off the flood from the hallway, to move said soaking towels, to dry the floor on your hands and knees with 4 kids in tow... and all at 38 weeks gestation! Nope, that didn't start labor either.
After that episode, I forbid anyone to flush the upstairs toilets, for fear that they would make the downstairs one back up again... in case the clog was in the main sewer line and not the toilet itself. I also refrained from washing laundry or dishes. The next day, my husband tried to "snake" the toilet. But although it seemed to be working at first, he got our old plumbing snake stuck in it... firmly... irretrievably. So he had to take out the old toilet and put in a new toilet. There went all of Saturday. No toilet flushing. No chores like taking trash and recycling to the drop-off center. No carrying boxes of Christmas things to the storage room (because my arms aren't long enough to carry those boxes in front of my belly.) No dishes. No laundry... since Friday.
So Sunday rolled around. After Mass and brunch I let the kids go to the basement to scooter, roller-blade, ride tricycles, play in their under-stair play house, etc. They informed me that water was leaking into the basement. Water? In our basement? In a place it has never come in before? And it wasn't raining?
It didn't take long to determine that our sewer line was leaking outside the house and the saturated ground was causing some seepage along a few hairline cracks. That caused mild panic. The sewer line runs under the slate-floored screen porch AND under the cement patio! And it runs right next to the giant sandbox that my husband made for the kids last summer... the only thing we got done just for them.
My husband determined that the screen porch foundation was solid still. Phew! He also determined, by opening a "trap", that one of the pipes had settled at a joint right under the screen porch and the pipes no longer meet up as they should. The clog he had pushed through the toilet had gotten stuck at this juncture. So we decided to call the plumber first thing Monday morning.
Of course it was Martin Luther King Jr. day on Monday. I figured that would double our cost. You know, weekend and holiday double-time pay. But in this county, school isn't even off for MLK day, and people don't seem to realize it is a national holiday. I mean, it wasn't even mentioned in our little, local paper! So no worries there... at least, not about plumbing.
We ended up with a good plumber. He was professional, courteous, gave us an estimate on the spot, and promised to come the next day with his equipment. He didn't even say anything about the old toilet sitting in pieces on the patio :) We decided to just cap off the old sewer line and run a new one instead of destroying the porch and patio to fix the old line. He said that he could hand dig the bit next to the sandbox too. We wouldn't have to move it!
So in the mean time we went out and bought a portable camp toilet. And we had yet another day of no dishes or laundry.... or showers or baths. Ugh! And we looked forward to the next day because the plumber had promised that we'd have working toilets by the end of the Tuesday. Yay!
Of course the next day dawned at 9 degrees with a stiff wind. And the plumber had a hard time getting his machinery going. So he and his cohorts didn't show up until about 11:30. I was worried that perhaps this was becoming a 2 day job. My children were thrilled to see a giant back hoe and such, and schooling was suspended for a time so that my kids could get an eye full. My 3 year old was particularly happy, and had the best seat in the house.
Our sandbox was mildly damaged, but we didn't have to move hundreds of pounds of frozen sand and take it apart. Our electric line to the barn was cut, but they repaired it before they left. And now we have a torn up back yard and a lovely ridge of earth that bisects the back yard.
But we still have a screen porch. We still have a patio. The work came in at $200 less than the estimate. And the plumbers finished putting in the sewer line by the end of the day Tuesday, as promised. We flushed all the toilets with abandon. We bathed our grubby selves. And we began to dig out from the piles of dishes and laundry that we had been accumulating for 5 days. 6 people times 5 days worth of laundry and dishes equals- Yowza! And then of course there's the backed up school work, and the heaps of Christmas, and the accumulated trash and recyclables that were still waiting. Sigh.
I'm just glad that I didn't go into labor when plumbers were stomping through the house in their muddy boots and a back hoe was growling outside the window! But I'm still unsettled. My dear one is working his bum off for long hours every day and is really preoccupied. He had a big event Tuesday night and Wednesday, and had to be out of town to boot. He's getting people up to speed, wrapping up loose ends, fighting off power grabs and political battles, etc. (Essentially he's doubled his work load.) He's also getting the ball rolling on the new job, as I mentioned earlier.
So now it's the weekend again. We're still behind on stuff. And my son has a birthday. And my husband has Saturday night deadlines. And I'm feeling, as I said, unsettled. No one is ready for this baby. I'm the only one who has prepared. But I don't feel settled.
I continue to meet with the doctor and midwife. And I feel nervous every time I take my girls to choir or make a grocery run to the co-op (both 45 minutes away) because my past few labors have been intense and brief once my water breaks. "What if labor starts now?" I keep asking myself. And so far the answer has always been scary.
So last night I woke up 3 times in the midst of gagging and on the verge of vomiting. The third time I was in the bathroom for a good long time with coughing and dry heaves having a hard time breathing. Was it pre-labor stuff? Are my hormones kicking into high gear? Or is the tail end of my sinus stuff causing that due to drainage when I lie down? Or am I just waking up at night with anxiety attacks or something? Vomiting has never been a pre-labor sign for me before.
And tonight (TMI warning) I have diarrhea inexplicably. This is also a standard pre-labor sign (although again, one I've never had before.) Yugh. Did I mention my man working until late hours every night and the deadline he has tomorrow? Or the birthday of my older boy? So anyway, I'm hoping that if stress hasn't induced an "early" labor, that it will postpone labor until our lives feel a little more sane again.
My husband determined that the screen porch foundation was solid still. Phew! He also determined, by opening a "trap", that one of the pipes had settled at a joint right under the screen porch and the pipes no longer meet up as they should. The clog he had pushed through the toilet had gotten stuck at this juncture. So we decided to call the plumber first thing Monday morning.
Of course it was Martin Luther King Jr. day on Monday. I figured that would double our cost. You know, weekend and holiday double-time pay. But in this county, school isn't even off for MLK day, and people don't seem to realize it is a national holiday. I mean, it wasn't even mentioned in our little, local paper! So no worries there... at least, not about plumbing.
We ended up with a good plumber. He was professional, courteous, gave us an estimate on the spot, and promised to come the next day with his equipment. He didn't even say anything about the old toilet sitting in pieces on the patio :) We decided to just cap off the old sewer line and run a new one instead of destroying the porch and patio to fix the old line. He said that he could hand dig the bit next to the sandbox too. We wouldn't have to move it!
So in the mean time we went out and bought a portable camp toilet. And we had yet another day of no dishes or laundry.... or showers or baths. Ugh! And we looked forward to the next day because the plumber had promised that we'd have working toilets by the end of the Tuesday. Yay!
Of course the next day dawned at 9 degrees with a stiff wind. And the plumber had a hard time getting his machinery going. So he and his cohorts didn't show up until about 11:30. I was worried that perhaps this was becoming a 2 day job. My children were thrilled to see a giant back hoe and such, and schooling was suspended for a time so that my kids could get an eye full. My 3 year old was particularly happy, and had the best seat in the house.Our sandbox was mildly damaged, but we didn't have to move hundreds of pounds of frozen sand and take it apart. Our electric line to the barn was cut, but they repaired it before they left. And now we have a torn up back yard and a lovely ridge of earth that bisects the back yard.
But we still have a screen porch. We still have a patio. The work came in at $200 less than the estimate. And the plumbers finished putting in the sewer line by the end of the day Tuesday, as promised. We flushed all the toilets with abandon. We bathed our grubby selves. And we began to dig out from the piles of dishes and laundry that we had been accumulating for 5 days. 6 people times 5 days worth of laundry and dishes equals- Yowza! And then of course there's the backed up school work, and the heaps of Christmas, and the accumulated trash and recyclables that were still waiting. Sigh.
I'm just glad that I didn't go into labor when plumbers were stomping through the house in their muddy boots and a back hoe was growling outside the window! But I'm still unsettled. My dear one is working his bum off for long hours every day and is really preoccupied. He had a big event Tuesday night and Wednesday, and had to be out of town to boot. He's getting people up to speed, wrapping up loose ends, fighting off power grabs and political battles, etc. (Essentially he's doubled his work load.) He's also getting the ball rolling on the new job, as I mentioned earlier.
So now it's the weekend again. We're still behind on stuff. And my son has a birthday. And my husband has Saturday night deadlines. And I'm feeling, as I said, unsettled. No one is ready for this baby. I'm the only one who has prepared. But I don't feel settled.
I continue to meet with the doctor and midwife. And I feel nervous every time I take my girls to choir or make a grocery run to the co-op (both 45 minutes away) because my past few labors have been intense and brief once my water breaks. "What if labor starts now?" I keep asking myself. And so far the answer has always been scary.
So last night I woke up 3 times in the midst of gagging and on the verge of vomiting. The third time I was in the bathroom for a good long time with coughing and dry heaves having a hard time breathing. Was it pre-labor stuff? Are my hormones kicking into high gear? Or is the tail end of my sinus stuff causing that due to drainage when I lie down? Or am I just waking up at night with anxiety attacks or something? Vomiting has never been a pre-labor sign for me before.
And tonight (TMI warning) I have diarrhea inexplicably. This is also a standard pre-labor sign (although again, one I've never had before.) Yugh. Did I mention my man working until late hours every night and the deadline he has tomorrow? Or the birthday of my older boy? So anyway, I'm hoping that if stress hasn't induced an "early" labor, that it will postpone labor until our lives feel a little more sane again.
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