As of tomorrow, I am 35 weeks pregnant. 35 weeks...good lord, that is a long time! And I'm not even done yet! So far, it has been uneventful and generally fine and enjoyable. Ok, the first three months can pretty much bite me, but I wasn't even a pukey mess, just icky feeling and very tired. Since then it's been smooth sailing: moderate weight gain, nothing weird or concerning, and nice, really low blood pressure. Until last week. On Thursday, at my midwife appointment, my diastolic was over 70. Huh. Usually I'm around the mid-50's, so that seemed odd. Then my feet started to swell. They went from totally normal looking - I have pretty boney feet - to big and poofy in a matter of a few hours. And my legs were tingling. The next day, Friday, I had a headache by the afternoon, and the skin all over my body - head, face, arms, back, legs - was prickly. And I felt pretty much like cr@p. I called the midwives (how awesome is it to have midwives! They're so attentive!) and it was concluded that we should get my bp checked, just to be safe, so that evening, the on-call midwife came to our house and checked me out. My blood pressure was now 120/84. Not the end of the world, she assured me, but since it was higher than usual for me, it was worth keeping an eye on.
This morning, I had another appointment (sometimes it's hard to schedule them actually seven days apart) and my blood pressure was now 136/86. First thing in the morning, before even going into work, my bp was worse than at the end of the long, stressful week last week. My midwife told me she wants me taking rest breaks during the day and to stop working as soon as possible so that I can take it easy: really easy. Ugh.
Stressing about my blood pressure, and stressing about stressing are certainly not going to help matters, so now I have to find some way to cool. the hell. down. Even though work is a mess. Even though my replacement doesn't know everything he needs to know. Even though I really don't know what sort of job I'll be coming back to. Even though I may actually be getting screwed on vacation days because the whole administration is such a mess. Even though I don't even want to go back after my year is up because I don't really care for my job as it stands now, and I really don't want to put a toddler in 40 hour/week daycare, but there's no other way for us to make ends meet.
I have a bunch of lectures given by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist master on my ipod. He has this great voice, and speaks about being zen in a, well, very zen way. I'm going to listen to those, I'm going to relax in a bath, I'm going to start swimming, I'm going to spend more time with my feet up, knitting, and I am not going to worry about how work is going to turn out. And the opera; yeah, let's not even think about that one. It's a mad-house. But I can't worry about it. I need to prioritize, like a parent should.
