Love/Hate

I officially have a love/hate relationship with our healthcare system and my OB.

I love that we can now access our patient information via an online health portal. I can see the doctor's notes from recent visits, I can view my vital information that was collected, I can review upcoming appointments, and I can even send messages to my healthcare team (and get pretty prompt responses!). And I'm pretty sure I said this during my pregnancy with William, but I love that my OB is super laid back and doesn't get his (or my!) panties in a bunch over little things. For example, even though he did all the routine cervical checks during the end of my first pregnancy, he never made a point to tell me if (or how much) I was dilated, because he knows from his 30+ years of experience that very rarely is that information indicative on when or how soon labor will begin. My appointments are typically less than ten minutes--get in, get weighed, pee in a cup, check blood pressure, check baby's heart rate, measure the belly, get out. (And yes--I am fully aware that I've been lucky to have two pretty textbook pregnancies which have allowed for quick routine visits.)

However. I am learning that this combination of laid-back OB and online patient information creates a little problem that I hate. Because you see--all of the stuff that my doctor doesn't bring up in our appointments still gets recorded in my chart. So even though he may not tell me the unremarkable and/or unimportant information, he'll still record it, which means it will show up online for my viewing pleasure. Which is how I will discover that at my 33 week appointment baby was presenting in a breech position. Ummm.... What?!? That's a little too close to my due date for me to be comfortable with baby being in a breech position. As Darrell has assured me, though, if my OB were concerned about it and thought that it would present an issue for labor and delivery, he would have said something. Because he didn't, it means that he has confidence that the problem has plenty of time to work itself out and there is no reason to get worked up about it at this point. But still. Breech?!? Not a fan. Good thing I have my next appointment later this week. You'd better believe that if my doctor doesn't say anything about the baby's position during the appointment that I'm going to be (very) impatiently waiting for him to upload his record of my visit so I can see what he put in his notes--good bad or otherwise. You'd better also believe that if I start to freak out about this just a little bit more that Darrell will probably try to lock me out of my online patient portal for the remainder of this pregnancy. Because I'm sure the amount of speculation and concern will only increase as my doctor begins his cervical checks.


For the record, I have nothing but respect for my OB and I trust his judgment 100%. If he chooses not to tell me that my blood pressure is slightly low (which it has been throughout both pregnancies), that baby is presenting breech, that I'm already dilated, etc, I can (rationally) trust that they are not concerns at the given time. I also feel perfectly comfortable around my OB and would have no issue asking him for the information directly, even though I (rationally) know that if it were medically relevant he would tell me up front--and the fact that he isn't telling me means that it isn't an issue. However, I am pregnant, I am hormonal, and I am prone to bouts of irrationality. So I am going to be just a little bit freaked out that baby was breech ten days ago--and that if that trend continues it may mean that we'd be meeting baby a little sooner than we'd anticipated. Gulp.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from our family to yours!

1 Down, 11 to Go!!

While this post title could easily be referring to the number of posts that I need to catch up on (hello pregnancy that I haven't posted about in, oh, twelve weeks!), it's actually referring to the number of rooms in our house that are (finally!) completed. Not just functional, but actually organized, decorated, and something that I can be proud of!

And of course, what better room to start with than a bathroom? Small space, minimal effort, and the ability to reuse pretty much all décor items that we had in our previous house. Win win.

So, for fun, here's a picture of the bathroom when we moved in (or, more accurately, the picture from the real estate listing. Because let's be honest--no way did I remember to take "before" pictures of pretty much any of the rooms):

Super boring (pretty par for the course when we moved in. Everything was either super boring or super obnoxious. Have I shared any pictures of the neon pick and green room yet? No? Just you wait). And, if you look closely in the mirror, you can see that the tub had doors. No way was that happening in my house, especially since this bathroom is the one we primarily use to wash babies. While I'm sure William would have loved sliding the doors back and forth, I certainly appreciate all the space I have to wash a squirmy toddler with the shower curtain pushed all the way back.

So, to fix it up, we added a fresh (and colorful!) coat of paint, then decorated it with the same subtle beach theme we had in our previous house. And I totally talked Darrell into letting me get a (pretty large) quote for one of the walls--I pretty much love it.



Darrell has pretty well taken over bath time responsibilities with William because it's getting a little difficult for me to lean into the tub, but sometimes I still go hang out with them just because the room makes me happy. Which makes me super excited to get the rest of this house all fixed up--and believe it or not, we're actually making pretty good progress (we've only been living here for eight months, after all). Considering pretty much every room needed fresh paint (as I mentioned, the previous owners had really weird taste in colors, plus they did not care for the walls well, so there are all sorts of screw and nail holes that need major patching) and the fact that pretty much the entire basement had to be gutted five short weeks after we moved in thanks to a broken sump pump (but--Christmas miracle--our contractor was here last week getting started and he may actually be done with stuff by the new year!), I consider any progress to be good progress. And besides, we kind of have a deadline on getting the nursery done--baby could be here in just six short weeks!