My house hates me.

Don't look at me like that - it's true.

When Peyton died, our seemingly perfect house had over $40,000 worth of unnecessary repairs come up over the first six months to a year of our grieving - talk about an expensive distraction.

Now, here I am, hugely pregnant and on bedrest, and our house has decided to turn on us again.

Honestly, at this point I no longer know whether to laugh or cry.

Yesterday morning I woke up to an odd sound. In my slumber filled haze I thought it was the dog licking something - herself, some furniture, something she had picked up off the floor. "Be quiet Charlotte," I muttered into my pillow, but the sound persisted. When I opened my eyes, I was astonished to find that the sound I heard was water dripping into the room from above our window casing. We live in the northeast and have had a TON of snow and ice in the last month - apparently yesterday our roof decided it had had enough.

I called hubs at work in a panic because there was water everywhere, and I am on bedrest, and what the heck am I gonna do about something like that? He came home and raked what he could off the roof (which, while it was a valiant effort, was kind of useless against the 8-12 inch thick ice pile-up that we have going on up there) and to both of our surprise, the water stopped.

Phew!

I had had an NST scheduled for the morning, and I asked hubs if he needed me (what I thought I was going to do, I couldn't tell you) and he told me he had it covered, so I headed off for the hospital. We were predicted to get a major storm, but luckily it was supposed to be clear until well after my appointment. I arrived at the hospital and wouldn't you know, they put me in the bed RIGHT NEXT TO that same woman from last week... the one with the junk food and the soda and the healthy babies - what are the odds? They did a BP check, overall pretty good though a little high, I am assuming from the stress of my house revolting against me, and hooked me up to the monitors.

The nurse asked how my morning was going, and I told her about the leak, at which point she told me a horror story about it happening at her mother's house, and how it did super extensive damage, and blah blah blah. She then told me to not go into the attic to check it out (like I was gonna do that anyway) and that if it started again, to let someone else deal with the leaking water. Well that is sort of hard when you are home alone. I mean if there is  a new leak that pops up, I can't just let it pour in without going over to stick a bucket under it or something.

After scaring me about all the crap that could be in our leaking water, and all the damage it could do and dollars it could cost, the nurse asked where the babies were, and I told her. She tried for a while but couldn't get a heartbeat on Baby A. The nurse kept leaving me and saying how strange it was that it wasn't monitoring, and then she would come back, contort me into some strange position where I had to hold this pad with one finger and that pad with another and I couldn't get to my ginger ale and boy did I want that ginger ale...

What may come as a shock was how unconcerned I was through this whole process. The snowflakes had been so incredibly active all morning and I think that is why. Sometimes my little baby boy A likes to hide from the NST pad so knowing this helped too.

Well an hour went by - then two, and still nothing but spotty recordings of his heartrate 99-200-154-96-202 like that it went on and on. I heard the nurse mutter something about "go see if you can find those twins" to another nurse, and a new woman appeared. She wheeled over the ultrasound machine, found the two babies and figured out the big mystery - both of the snowflakes are now lying transverse (horizontal!) Baby A has been head down and low for months, where as B will flip from vertical head down to transverse from time to time. I guess A got sick of having B sitting on his head, so he flipped too!

I have to admit, I was really frustrated and disappointed by this discovery.

I know it sounds silly to be upset over this but I really REALLY want to VBAC these babies. The nurse gave me some bullshit about how whatever the doc chooses I should be happy, and I wanted to scream because not for nothing, I know many women have c-sections without any issues, but my c-section with Peyton caused me MANY issues, not the least of which was robbing me of my fertility, so I am really not walking lightly into having another one like it is no big deal.

I am a realist, I know the possibility, and maybe the probability even, are there that I will have to c-section these babies, but that doesn't mean I am not wishing for VBAC. C-sections limit the number of children you can have, and we have always wanted a large family. I just don't think that unless you have had a c-section to bring a child into this world, and then lost that child, that someone can fully understand. It was also because of my c-section that we had to wait a year to start trying again, and another 6 months after that to discover I even had an infertility issue... so now that I am beating a dead horse here... let's just say I don't want one. I may need one, but I certainly don't want one.

Once the babies were found on ultrasound, my NST went a lot more smoothly. They checked my fluid, which they told me was wonderful, and sent me on my merry old way. I came home to find hubs working like mad at trying to get ice off the roof to no avail. I usually feel pretty grown up but I have to say, when things like this happen with our house I feel like a kid who is in over her head.

So after a long (and exhausting for hubs) day, we moved back into our bedroom last night- finally! We have been staying in the guest room for about a month - since the infamous mercury incident - and the water dripping in the guest room was just the motivation I needed to get out of there. I had been holding off, since we had put in new wood floors in the bedroom and I wanted to give them time to off gas, but I figured a month was sufficient.

 Well, to say last night was a sleepless night would be an incredible understatement. For whatever reason I was nauseous all night, and kept getting up to deal with morning sickness. At about 4AM, I finally closed my eyes and kept them shut, but wouldn't you know... 7AM I woke up to new drips - IN OUR BEDROOM! UGH!

Ty Pennington where are you!?

Hubs was outside shoveling, and looking mighty exhausted by it - poor thing! The storm we got last night was very wet and heavy, and I could see that each shovel-full was making him wish he had stayed in the midwest, rather than move up here to all this snow and mess to marry a northeastern girl!

I peeked my head into the guest bedroom to see how the dripping was going in there, and what had been a controlled drip into a bucket, had spread overnight into a splattering mess! Hubs came in and I gave him the bad news about the leak getting worse, and he headed back out, head down, to re-roof rake the roof! After that, he put more plastic and buckets and towels down in both bedrooms, and looking defeated, headed for the shower.

"We are gonna laugh about this someday." I called to him from the bottom of the stairs.
"About what?"
"About our house deciding to fall apart over the last month of this pregnancy. About not being able to get anything ready in time because of it. About all of it."
"We are?"
"Yes. We are."
"But not today," he grumbled.
"No," I admitted, "not today. But someday."

My house hates me.

Don't look at me like that - it's true.

When Peyton died, our seemingly perfect house had over $40,000 worth of unnecessary repairs come up over the first six months to a year of our grieving - talk about an expensive distraction.

Now, here I am, hugely pregnant and on bedrest, and our house has decided to turn on us again.

Honestly, at this point I no longer know whether to laugh or cry.

Yesterday morning I woke up to an odd sound. In my slumber filled haze I thought it was the dog licking something - herself, some furniture, something she had picked up off the floor. "Be quiet Charlotte," I muttered into my pillow, but the sound persisted. When I opened my eyes, I was astonished to find that the sound I heard was water dripping into the room from above our window casing. We live in the northeast and have had a TON of snow and ice in the last month - apparently yesterday our roof decided it had had enough.

I called hubs at work in a panic because there was water everywhere, and I am on bedrest, and what the heck am I gonna do about something like that? He came home and raked what he could off the roof (which, while it was a valiant effort, was kind of useless against the 8-12 inch thick ice pile-up that we have going on up there) and to both of our surprise, the water stopped.

Phew!

I had had an NST scheduled for the morning, and I asked hubs if he needed me (what I thought I was going to do, I couldn't tell you) and he told me he had it covered, so I headed off for the hospital. We were predicted to get a major storm, but luckily it was supposed to be clear until well after my appointment. I arrived at the hospital and wouldn't you know, they put me in the bed RIGHT NEXT TO that same woman from last week... the one with the junk food and the soda and the healthy babies - what are the odds? They did a BP check, overall pretty good though a little high, I am assuming from the stress of my house revolting against me, and hooked me up to the monitors.

The nurse asked how my morning was going, and I told her about the leak, at which point she told me a horror story about it happening at her mother's house, and how it did super extensive damage, and blah blah blah. She then told me to not go into the attic to check it out (like I was gonna do that anyway) and that if it started again, to let someone else deal with the leaking water. Well that is sort of hard when you are home alone. I mean if there is  a new leak that pops up, I can't just let it pour in without going over to stick a bucket under it or something.

After scaring me about all the crap that could be in our leaking water, and all the damage it could do and dollars it could cost, the nurse asked where the babies were, and I told her. She tried for a while but couldn't get a heartbeat on Baby A. The nurse kept leaving me and saying how strange it was that it wasn't monitoring, and then she would come back, contort me into some strange position where I had to hold this pad with one finger and that pad with another and I couldn't get to my ginger ale and boy did I want that ginger ale...

What may come as a shock was how unconcerned I was through this whole process. The snowflakes had been so incredibly active all morning and I think that is why. Sometimes my little baby boy A likes to hide from the NST pad so knowing this helped too.

Well an hour went by - then two, and still nothing but spotty recordings of his heartrate 99-200-154-96-202 like that it went on and on. I heard the nurse mutter something about "go see if you can find those twins" to another nurse, and a new woman appeared. She wheeled over the ultrasound machine, found the two babies and figured out the big mystery - both of the snowflakes are now lying transverse (horizontal!) Baby A has been head down and low for months, where as B will flip from vertical head down to transverse from time to time. I guess A got sick of having B sitting on his head, so he flipped too!

I have to admit, I was really frustrated and disappointed by this discovery.

I know it sounds silly to be upset over this but I really REALLY want to VBAC these babies. The nurse gave me some bullshit about how whatever the doc chooses I should be happy, and I wanted to scream because not for nothing, I know many women have c-sections without any issues, but my c-section with Peyton caused me MANY issues, not the least of which was robbing me of my fertility, so I am really not walking lightly into having another one like it is no big deal.

I am a realist, I know the possibility, and maybe the probability even, are there that I will have to c-section these babies, but that doesn't mean I am not wishing for VBAC. C-sections limit the number of children you can have, and we have always wanted a large family. I just don't think that unless you have had a c-section to bring a child into this world, and then lost that child, that someone can fully understand. It was also because of my c-section that we had to wait a year to start trying again, and another 6 months after that to discover I even had an infertility issue... so now that I am beating a dead horse here... let's just say I don't want one. I may need one, but I certainly don't want one.

Once the babies were found on ultrasound, my NST went a lot more smoothly. They checked my fluid, which they told me was wonderful, and sent me on my merry old way. I came home to find hubs working like mad at trying to get ice off the roof to no avail. I usually feel pretty grown up but I have to say, when things like this happen with our house I feel like a kid who is in over her head.

So after a long (and exhausting for hubs) day, we moved back into our bedroom last night- finally! We have been staying in the guest room for about a month - since the infamous mercury incident - and the water dripping in the guest room was just the motivation I needed to get out of there. I had been holding off, since we had put in new wood floors in the bedroom and I wanted to give them time to off gas, but I figured a month was sufficient.

 Well, to say last night was a sleepless night would be an incredible understatement. For whatever reason I was nauseous all night, and kept getting up to deal with morning sickness. At about 4AM, I finally closed my eyes and kept them shut, but wouldn't you know... 7AM I woke up to new drips - IN OUR BEDROOM! UGH!

Ty Pennington where are you!?

Hubs was outside shoveling, and looking mighty exhausted by it - poor thing! The storm we got last night was very wet and heavy, and I could see that each shovel-full was making him wish he had stayed in the midwest, rather than move up here to all this snow and mess to marry a northeastern girl!

I peeked my head into the guest bedroom to see how the dripping was going in there, and what had been a controlled drip into a bucket, had spread overnight into a splattering mess! Hubs came in and I gave him the bad news about the leak getting worse, and he headed back out, head down, to re-roof rake the roof! After that, he put more plastic and buckets and towels down in both bedrooms, and looking defeated, headed for the shower.

"We are gonna laugh about this someday." I called to him from the bottom of the stairs.
"About what?"
"About our house deciding to fall apart over the last month of this pregnancy. About not being able to get anything ready in time because of it. About all of it."
"We are?"
"Yes. We are."
"But not today," he grumbled.
"No," I admitted, "not today. But someday."

Since starting this blog in May of 2009, I don't think I have ever gone this long without a post. I cannot appropriately put into words the whirlwind that has been these last two weeks, but here is the Reader's Digest version. The important things to note are that the Snowflakes are fine (I am 30 weeks along now) and things are hopefully going to improve.

(Pardon any typos or incoherence, I am exhausted...)

WED. 12/22 - I woke up to the smell of gasoline in my house and thought it was from some generators being used outside to cut a neighbor's trees down. I left the house to rest at a local friend's, just to be on the safe side until hubs got home, and returned later to find that our house had completely filled with even stronger fumes. This, of course, completely freaked me out because there are links between gas fumes and cancer and you know where my mind was going there...

It turns out our snowblower had cracked overnight in the garage, spilling gasoline. I was not able to return home for several more hours as we had to air the house out, windows open (it was about 15 degrees out at the time.)

This day was also a day hubs was supposed to meet with my mother and bring some Doing Good In Her Name donations to one of our local hospitals. We called my mom to let her know that hubs was on his way, and she informed us that she had a stomach flu and was too sick. We also decided at this point that Christmas would have to be postponed until she felt better. Not able to go back in the house, and unable to go down to my parent's to escape the fumes, hubs and I went for a drive to kill some time which was hard because I was very uncomfortable. When we were finally able to get back into our house, I received word that my cousin Erica's daughter Faith had lost her battle at 2 years and 2 months old to congenital heart disease. The news was devastating.

FRI. 12/24/10
Hubs was getting out of bed and accidentally knocked over a lamp in our bedroom breaking a light bulb. Big deal, you might say, but unfortunately it turned out to be one. We had used one of those new CFL energy efficient squiggly light bulbs in that lamp, and what neither of us knew, is that when you break one there is an 11 step cleanup process required by the EPA to rid your house of dangerous mercury vapor. Of course I was sitting right there when the light bulb broke, and neither of us knew until I googled it, that we should have immediately evacuated and ventilated the room before starting cleanup (Hubs had gone about gathering the broken glass the old fashioned way.)

Per instructions by poison control he cleaned up the mess, but we were told then that because it had been broken on carpet, there would be no way to fully clean the mercury without removing our wall to wall carpeting and replacing it... GREAT. I am all for saving the environment - I donate to land groups. I recycle. That being said, there are no words for how pissed off I feel at the expense that we have had to undergo this last week over a broken 50 cent light bulb.

I called my OB and informed him of my exposure to the mercury vapor, and he told me to come in a few days later to have my blood mercury levels checked to be sure the babies hadn't been harmed.

SAT. 12/24 -Christmas postponed due to mom's illness. Our family celebrates Christmas Eve, so this was a real bummer. Hubs and I spent two sleepless nights in our guest bedroom. I always thought this bed was fairly comfortable, and maybe it is normally, but when pregnant with twins, it is just not getting the job done.

SUN. 12/25 - Merry Christmas. Headed down to see my parents and some family friends, and to get away from my mercury biohazard house since I wasn't allowed to go into my bedroom still. The state's EPA had recommended pregnant women staying away for "several days." We had a nice Christmas Day and finally a good night's sleep.

MON. 12/26 - Hubs left me at my parent's house and headed back to ours with my brother in law to move all the furniture out of our bedroom and rip up the affected carpeting. They came back to my parents house that evening and our family ate spaghetti and meatballs (the kind of meatballs you get in a bag from your grocery store). Not me, I ate spaghetti - no meatballs. Same goes for my sister. This is relevant. Hubs started to not feel too well overnight.

TUES. 12/27 - Hubs wakes up non stop vomiting. Can't hold anything down. I go downstairs to find my brother in law, niece, and nephew, all of whom ate the same thing, are also non stop sick. My sister has a broken leg, so she sort of had her hands tied being stuck on the couch, and my parent's weren't home (my mother had a funeral to attend for a former co-worker.) I did my best to help out, and most especially to get help to hubs, but as you all know I have been on bedrest for four months, and so every trip up and down the stairs is agony.

I called the doctor who tells me I have to get hubs to the ER. I have no way to do this on bedrest, and try to reach my parents. No luck. Hubs continues to be violently ill. I start leaking what I believe to be fluid. My niece starts projectile vomiting. My brother, who is trying to get his strength to drive hubs to the ER can't move, and is laid out on the ground like a wounded soldier.

You get the picture.
This was NOT a pretty scene.

I checked on hubs who was sheet white, and decided to call an ambulance to get him. Luckily, just as I was doing this, my mother walked in the door and was able to take him to an urgent care center closer to their home. For the next two hours, hubs was given over 2 liters of fluids to replenish him. Luckily no one else needed to be brought in for fluids.

We will never know for sure what caused the illness, but I think I am staying off frozen meatballs permanently just in case.

WED. 12/28 My mom takes me to the OB to have an appointment. Both snowflakes are head down - yay! and I have my blood drawn for the mercury test. I don't know how he finds the energy for it, but hubs and my dad head back up to our house and start to install hardwood floors in our bedroom. They stay overnight.

THUR. 12/29 We attend Faith's wake. It was absolutely beautiful. The strength my cousin displayed throughout the day leaves me in awe. I am two years into my grief, and remember how those early days felt, and honestly, I don't know how she does what she does. She amazes me. The wake was beautiful but I started to have some really terrible contractions. At around 6:30 I asked my mother to take me home. By the time we got home, I started getting sick from the contractions. I took a warm shower, hoping that would ease my muscles (I figured I overdid it being at the funeral) and know the water was warm but I was freezing. I step out of the shower to find that my hands are turning blue. I am totally freezing. I crawl into bed and everything hurts - my hair, my eyes, my teeth. I spike a fever of 101 and stay there for the next two days, too sick to even attend Faith's funeral on Friday, which is devastating for me. The fever made me really sick, I couldn't keep anything down. I asked the OB if he thought it was a stomach bug and he said no, that vomiting etc is my pregnant body's reaction to the fever. He tells me he thinks that I have picked up the flu.

Again, where is that bubble for me to live in when I need it?

FRI. 12/31 & SAT. 1/1 A bit of a blur. I do know hubs woke me up to have me see the ball drop. Finally, sometime between Saturday and Sunday, my fever breaks.

SUN. 1/2 I was feeling pretty good but still unable to eat anything. Hubs headed back home to our house to try to get the hardwood floors in the bedroom and upstairs hallway done so I could come home. Sunday night I started having contractions every five minutes. I tell the babies this is not time for them to come - our house is a catastrophe - there is furniture in every room that has been moved around to make room for the hardwood floors, and we had a new washer and dryer which hubs was supposed to be able to have installed on his week off (obviously didn't happen because of the other things going on) that are taking up the center of our living room. I tell them that I am going to sleep, and if they need me to wake me up, but it would really be better for everyone involved if they could hang out a little longer.

MON. 1/3 I wake up completely surprised to find that I have not gone into labor over night. Hubs calls to say that he is finishing up the floor, and should get me by 2PM. 2 comes, 3 comes, 4 comes. At 7PM I get a call that goes like this:

Hubs: Remember that time when I sawed through my toe?
Me: You mean when we were camping?
Hubs: Yeah.
Me: Yeah I remember... why?
Hubs: Well, I did that again. Just this time with my hand. I think I need to go to the ER.

Yeah, four stitches and a tetanus shot later, hubs came to get me from my parents house. We finally got home at around 10:30PM. We went to bed in the guest room (still no furniture in the bedroom) and I didn't sleep at all. Apparently 30 weeks is when you completely cease being able to breathe or get comfortable with twins.

TUES. 1/4 Exhausted all day but hopeful that things are turning up.

TODAY - Woke up with a painful sinus infection.

I give up!


PS -  A LITTLE HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: If you have been following my dear friend Birni's story at the blog All The Little Ponies, and have noticed taht you can no longer access it, please send her a note at birni@cybergal.com and she will add you as a follower. Because of some IRL drama, Birni has had to go private, but she would still love those in this community to be able to follow along.