tyler: NOT AT ALL.
me: good, cause it totally does.
Oh me and body issues. I truly feel like a hippo right now, I can barely move around. I feel like right now Michael and I are having a territorial battle over my body and he's definitely winning. Last week when my midwife measured me she just said, "wow, you're really running out of room, aren't you?". My torso might be long, but it does have a limit. Also, Michael is still facing out instead of back, though I can understand wanting to be born looking out at the world, so I can't be too upset with him about that. Today Aaron's dad said that babies in that position are called "sunny side up". I have no idea whether this is true or just something he made up, but I like it either way.
I know this isn't sunny side up, but it was the best picture of a happy egg I could find. Hopefully Michael's head does not actually look like this.
A bit of bad news from the midwife this week: I tested positive for group b strep. GBS is something that almost 25% of all healthy women have, and it's cause isn't known. Most women never know that they have it because it doesn't cause any symptoms or issues in adults. However, for pregnant women who test positive for GBS, the bacteria can be passed on to the baby during labor and delivery. If a baby gets GBS, it can lead to sepsis, pneumonia, meningitis or even death.
This means that during my labor I'll have to be given penicillin through an IV every four hours to help prevent the bacteria being passed on to Michael. It also means that I won't be able to really labor at home for a while like I was hoping to because they need to start giving me the medicine as soon as possible.
When I found out about this on Wednesday I was so upset that I just went home and cried. I couldn't (and still can't) imagine carrying Michael for this long and loving him this much only to have something terrible happen to him as he's born. It was all I could think about to the point that I was still up at three in the morning crying about it.
However, I talked to my mom who reminded me that it's really not the worst thing that could happen, and with antibiotics the chances of GBS being passed on to Michael goes down to 1 in 4000. She also told me that her teaching partner had GBS with her last pregnancy and had to have the penicillin every four hours and that she said it wasn't a big deal at all and she had no problems with it. I also know that I should feel lucky that I've had a pretty easy pregnancy, and at least I haven't developed toxemia, which is something I was concerned about as my mom had it with both her pregnancies causing both my sister and I to be born early. As my midwife said, if this is the only thing that goes wrong I should be quite happy.
I'm still worried of course, after all it is in my nature to constantly worry about everything.
But lets move on to good things, shall we?
The nursery is all done!
View from the doorway
Changing Table and Alphabet Poster
All of Michael's little animal friends waiting for him to arrive! (plus all his storybooks)
Crib with Baloo, Gentle Giraffe and Happy Lion Mirror!
Little closet filled with little clothes and shoes.
This is the plaque that Aaron and I painted for Michael at Paint Yourself Silly, it's hanging inside his doorway.
Today Aaron also put together the pack-and-play in our bedroom, so Peanut can sleep in the same room as us for the first few weeks. Eventually we'll probably move it downstairs so he can have a place to sleep on the main floor as well.
In the corner there you can also see my bags packed for the hospital, haha.
We're really ready to go any day now, so I'm just playing the waiting game. Every morning when I get up I ask Michael if he'd like today to be his birthday, though so far he's decided to stay in. However, I must admit I'm very glad we waited until the first quarter of school was finished as it was very nice to get the first quarter wrapped up and to have been there the whole time with my kids.
Speaking of school & work, Friday was my last day teaching until I go back on December 13, and it feels weird to not have to be going in to work or seeing my students for that long. I quite honestly can't imagine what I'm going to do with myself all day. Well, that's not entirely true, I'll be planning for next semester, in particular for Children's Literature which I am so excited to teach.
I think my first quarter of my first *real* teaching job went well. I've grown a lot this year and I know I've definitely improved. When I think back to student teaching I honestly can't believe how horrible I was, if I could go back and watch myself I'm sure my jaw would be on the ground and my face red with embarrassment. I still need to work on discipline as I know I'm still probably way too nice to my students and now that I'm a little more comfortable with the curriculum and my students' abilities I'm excited to try some different things, because I admit I played this first quarter very much by the book. However the changes I did make to the curriculum (such as changing the articles we read out of the book and bringing in current events) were, in my opinion, successful.
My real strength is still in building relationships with the students, though I'm still not sure why, as this is something I remember going into student teaching thinking would be extremely difficult for me to do, as it normally takes me a really long time to ever get to know someone or make any sort of relationship/connection with them. I don't know why it's different for me in a classroom environment than it is in a social one, but I'll take it. On the last day of the quarter I had students fill out self-evaluations of the course and their performance so far, and one question I asked was what they liked about the class so far. One student wrote "well, I know I'm failing all my classes including this one, but I feel like you're the only one of my teachers who hasn't given up on me and listens to me."
I don't think I could have gotten any better comment, and it's things like that that I know will help me when I have to go back to work, even though I'll probably be crying all the way to school every day after I drop Peanut off at daycare.
No comments:
Post a Comment