Slight Panic

Four things for me to (irrationally) panic about this week:

1. I had my 32 week appointment today. (Small aside: the appointment was supposed to be Tuesday afternoon, but I missed it because I was stuck in traffic. I got on the freeway only to come to an immediate dead stop. Turns out there were two separate accidents on the freeways between my office and my doctor's office: one involving eight cars, the other "only" four, but the result was that both major freeways that I needed to take were down to one lane, instead of their usual four. It took me 30 minutes to crawl the one mile to an exit, I took side streets the rest of the way, yet despite leaving myself a nice generous cushion of time to get to the appointment, I still arrived an hour late and had to reschedule. And the entire time I was sitting in traffic, I had to pee. But I digress.) Dr. M is still out of town (back next week, thank goodness -- the "sub," Dr. I., just isn't my type). I'm still doing great -- blood pressure continues to be low, urine continues to be normal, weight gain was a respectable 1.5 pounds over 2 weeks, baby's heart rate is good. Then Dr. I. asked me where I've been feeling the baby kicking. I've been feeling him in basically the same spots for the past month or more, and when I showed the doctor, he frowned and felt around my abdomen a bit. Turns out little Barack is transverse breech (sideways). Odds are good that he'll shift over the next few weeks, so it's probably too early to be concerned about it, but still. Damn.

2. We had our first birthing class last weekend. I thought it would put my mind more at ease. Turns out: not so much. I've spent several days looking at S and asking if he's sure we have to get the baby out. I know it's perfectly normal to panic a bit about labor at some point during the third trimester, but still. Know what's not helping? They showed a video of a doctor administering an epidural, and it made S dizzy. The doctor in the video asks the pregnant woman in the video to let him know if she feels any tingling in her extremities as he inserts the needle, and S leans over to me and says, "*I* feel some tingling...." He's going to be such a help to me during labor when he passes out cold.

3. The store where we ordered our crib two months ago is going out of business. We carefully picked this particular store because they've been in business for more than 30 years, so we thought that we could avoid this sort of thing. The crib still hasn't arrived, and the store can't tell us when it will. They're trying to stay open to follow through on all existing back orders, but if they can't do it, we're facing the possibility of having to place a new order at a different store and starting the 3 month wait all over again. We don't have that kind of time.

4. Speaking of not having time: S pointed out to me on Monday that he was born 6 weeks early. That would be like me going into labor in less than 2 weeks. Yikes. That is really soon. And did I mention that Barack is transverse, and we don't have a crib?

So, um, yeah. I'm panicking a bit this week. I'm hoping things turn around soon. And in the case of baby Barack, I mean literally turn around.