Our Town opened Friday night, and since it was my first time Stage Managing I was a tad scared. And to top it all off Dean wasn't planning on being there cause he wanted to go to this conference at church, which is understandable but we had been depending on him to run the second spotlight. So Dean decided to help us out and didnt go to church, something for which I will be forever grateful! Show went well Friday and the Saturday matinee went well except for having a few, okay 3 people, missing from our tech crew. But we worked it out. But the worst was Saturday night, the breaker kept tripping and we kept losing the spotlight, which we needed to spot the interpreter who was signing the show. And the sound cues weren't stacking right and to top it all off my stage crew decided to get bitchy with me and gosh darnit I let them have it right back. Even before that show started I told all the kids in the cast that if I got another complaint about one of them they were out for next weekends shows. I was getting taken advantage of since I was so new to the show and I decided to just not put up with it. So with the help of Dean's intimidating and very boisterous voice we managed to calm down the kids and I had enough courage to give the asst director some choice words of my own when she gave me lip. Yet despite that she ended up still disobeying the directors orders so who knows. I hate teenagers! Well, not all of them, just one in particular! So all in all it was a good opening weekend. And despite all the problems with last nights show we ended up having a great audience. They didnt laugh as much as the matinee audience but we had to set up extra chairs! So hopefully after having a few nights off my crew and cast will be where they need to be on Wednesday for brush up....
This is tech week for my show I am working on, and I have never stage managed before and I am loving it. Sure I didnt get to bed til 12:30 am and had to get up before 7 am this morning but all for the love of theater. Actually my job has been somewhat difficult seeing as I only started on the show last week and dont know the script well but it is getting better. I feel bad for Dean because I know he really doesnt like working with mediocre groups but considering I am such an amateur I feel that is where I belong. But I was so thrilled that he spent last night at rehearsal helping out. Ussually it is his show and I get dragged along, this time I had to beg him to come help cause I know they need someone as good as him to help out. It was nice to look over and see him working, plus he can nudge me along and tell me what I need to do. I sure hope we find out if he is going to Scranton soon, I was talking to a co-worker and she said that if he goes now he wont be back until I am 8 mos pregnant, and before , when we put in for him to go, it was no big thing cause I would only be 7 mos but that extra month is there makes it sound scary. I mean by then I may not be able to work or I could even have the baby early. I mean the same could happen at 7 mos but to say 8 mos that is somewhat pushing it. I want him to go because I know he needs a work change soon or he may breakdown and quit or something and who's to say he wont anyway, but I think this is what he needs to give him a break but this waiting to find out is just too stressful. Well I need to take a cat nap before rehearsal or Caleb might get grouchy, or rather , I might get grouchy with Caleb!
Shortly after we discovered I was pregnant I wrote my father a letter telling him he was going to have another grandchild and I made sure to give him our current address and phone #. I did this so he wouldn't come back to me and say I never told him and he heard it from someone else. Well to say that I expected a letter or phone call in return would mean that I am ignorant of who I am dealing with here. This is my father we are talking about, a man who since I was the age of six, and even before that I am sure, was and still is incapable of showing any emotion or concern for his children or much less anyone else in the world. So I wrote the letter with little to none expectations from him. So I thought seeing as he will still be our child's grandfather that it would be best to once again try to contact him about the news that he would have a grandchild. This time I was finally able to reach him by phone, and luckily I did seeing as he is moving tomorrow and I have and still do not have forwarding info on how to reach him. So point is, I talked to dad today. I told him about the baby and he seemed a little excited but mostly wanted to talk about his life and once again spoke of how he should come visit, this time he has goals though, like coming in April and he seemed more real about it this time, so maybe that letter I wrote got through to him somehow emotionally. But alas, I was reminded as I hung up that yes, I was the one who said I love you first and will remember how mumbled his response was, but even so I know he means well and that indeed, he is still my father whom I love and always will love and I only pray that somewhere in that little heart of his he will never stop loving me back even if he never does show or even let me know. I am grateful to have such a great step father and father in law that one would think not having dad as a real dad would be enough, but now I think it means more to me to have him around or at least be in contact with him. I think being pregnant and knowing that my child may never know his grandparents that well hits me really hard. I remmeber how little I got to see my extended family due to my parents divorce and I know how it affected me, so it is so much more important to me that my child knows of and is contact with his near and dear relatives as much as he can even if we are miles away. I no longer blame my parents for what happened when I was growing up and I will never understand their feelings completely, but I must admit for once that I have forgiven them both and was suprised that even my mom thought it important I reach my dad with news about the baby. And even more significant was the fact she said she was proud of how I was dealing with his continual lack of commitment( not in those words, but I know what she meant) and she said she was glad I have learned to deal with him and said that God will bless me for doing right and loving my dad even if I dont get the same back. So maybe after all these years at least one of them has forgiven the other..........
I have been up and down all night, I think I have either been having cramps again or Caleb is moving. Everyone keeps asking me if I've felt him move yet and well since I dont know what it should feel like I just say no. But I keep getting twinges of pain here and there and sometimes sharp sudden pains and I just blame it on his growing but I dont doubt some of it is him moving, especially after seeing him be so active on the ultrasound. I have tried to be so careful since the ultrasound about what I do. If I get a cramp, or whatever it is, I try to lay down or just practice my breathing. I feel like I have to be so much more careful with my body now that I know he is really in there, complete with all of his organs just a little small right now. But all night long I have been cramping and it is really scaring me. I dont know what it is from and I dont even know if it is just my stomach, like constipation or gas or something, or real cramps. I mean I have always had stomach problems and I am probably just confusing the pain now with something else. And I know the dr said to call if I have cramps but I dont want to call and then find out it is just gas or something. I wish I knew what was going on with my body, it is scary and I dont know what else to do but stay in bed and relax. All this stuff is exhausting anyway. Dean said he didnt realize how exhausting being pregnant makes you until he read someone elses journal about how from the time she got pregnant she started to realize she couldnt do as much and would start going to bed earlier and earlier. It's nice to know that now he wont think I am lazy, just pregnant. I was always so tired in the first few months. Now I can get through the day and be ok to do some things at night, but if I give myself a chance to lay down well then I am in for the night. So I have more energy now, but not tons. I am glad he read that though so now he wont get frustrated when I am soo tired all of the time. Speaking of which, I am getting sleepy again, all this being up and down all night doesnt help either!
So after going to the dr, the hospital and to get Chinese for lunch I finally made my way home to follow drs orders for bedrest. And as Dean says that means no cleaning or doing laundry. I hated it! There was tons to be done, but oh well, any excuse is a good one to not do work. By the time I crawled under our nice warm comfortable I finally realized how exhausted I was. A combination of stress and excitement had worn me out. I slept all of Thursday afternoon and only got up in the evening to go eat dinner and go to rehearsal for Our Town. Then on Friday I slept all day, well I lied, I did fold one basket of laundry but I needed something to wear since we were going out to dinner with Melanie and Aaron. So I slept all day except for when I was folding clothes and watching ER and Law and Order reruns. Then we went out to dinner and to watch Unbreakable. It was a great movie, very well done if I must say so myself.
Oh yeah, the ultrasound showed that I didnt have placenta preview and so everything was fine! We just need to watch to make sure it doesnt happen again and if it does we deal with it then.
The ultrasound. I was really nervous, yet so excited that we might find out if the baby was going to be a Caleb Richard or Brynn Marie. I tried to think about that so I wouldnt worry about anything else. I hated it at first because she kept saying , do you see the hand, the feet and I couldnt see a darn thing, or at least I couldnt make it out on the screen. Dean was so excited and kept telling me where it was on the screen. But eventually I got used to it and it was unbelievably. The best part, for me, I dont think Dean would get this, well cause the baby's not in him. Well the baby flipped over completely and I almost cried, cause here I am watching on a screen and didnt feel a darn thing in my uterus move. But there the baby was kicking and moving his hands like crazy. It was unreal, like I was watching a baby in someone elses stomach. The tech said she had an idea if it was a boy or girl and I told her not to say if she wasnt sure. So she did this thing to test how much blood was going that part of the body and said you could see the blood flow to the umbilical cord, well I am sure Dean saw the cord but I couldnt distinguish it, I just wanted to know if it was a boy or girl. Then she showed us how there was no blood flow from the cord to a part sticking out between the baby's legs and sure enough that meant to her it was going to be Caleb Richard McKenzie, just like I'd thought all along. Dean didnt seem to thrilled, I think it is a lot to deal with in one day and I know I was amazed at all we had seen that morning. He had all his fingers and toes and kidneys, and heart, and he was swallowing the fluid the way he should. And his spine was miraculous! Just the way we could see him was miraculous. I thank God for giving someone the skills and wisdom to create such a machine that can help us know that our babies are ok in there. I mean I pray every day for God to protect our little one and to help him grow and develop and for him to be strong, but I do that because I know I cant do anything about it, sure I eat well and rest like I should but in reality it is God creating this life, just with a little help from me every now and then. And well Dean helped in the beginning but now he just gets to wait to see what we get when we mix me with him and a lot of miracles in between.
So we go to the drs appt with my ob, the best ob in the world I might add. He is so thoughtful and caring. The first thing he did was ask how I was then immediately he checked for the baby's heartbeat. More relief, there was Dean's favorite whoosh, whoosh sound! I almost cried, but I tried my best to keep my compusure since I still didnt know why I had been bleeding. So the doc tells us it might be placenta previa, something about the placenta being in the wrong place and tells us all the possibilities of what happens if it is that, worst of all is that we cant have sex if it is that! I was mad about that one, but if I helps the baby then I will survive for 4 mos!! Anyway... So he tells us all about that and then says if it isnt that then it is probably nothing and we will just watch to see if it happens again. We were like ok, thinking nothing was majorly wrong because the way he describes it all it is just like the common cold and you'll live. So as we go to leave he says I need to be on bedrest for 48 hours! Doh! I was kind of glad because I really hadnt felt like going to work that day anyway but to have to miss Friday and Saturday too was a little much. Then he says we need to get an ultrasound today or tomorrow, which suprised us because until then we didnt think it was such a big deal, but he was stressing how important it was for the u/s. So, luckily Dean had the day off til 1 and it was only 10 so we went to the hospital to get the ultrasound, after stopping at Burger King for a quick bite to eat. The baby was hungry!
Wednesday night while at work, I had a little scare, ok a big one. I started spotting when I when to the bathroom, it was around 5:00 and I was just waiting for Dean to pick me up from work. Luckily there was a nurse left at the office and she told me to call my ob so I did, although I thought it was silly since I already had an appt scheduled for Thursday morning. The nurse at the ob office said she would tell the dr and call me back. So I waited... and she called back and told me to go home and rest and to go to the ER if the spotting and/or cramps got worse. But what did I do? I went to rehearsal for Our Town anyway, I mean, all I had to do was sit in a chair with my feet up reading lines. But I was really worried about it and going to rehearsal helped get it off of my mind. Until I got home and laid in bed trying to fall asleep and then I worried tons more. But I made it through the night and there was no more bleeding or cramps so I was somewhat relieved.
Work has been so slow lately. I work in a drs office and we used to have 6 doctors but since I started we have had 3 leave, so we have 3 drs none of which work a full time schedule so it is so boring. We were scared we would get fired since there isn't much work to do somedays, but next door to our office is another drs office owned by our same company and they are starting to send me over there to work part time. It's nice cause right now I work in an internal medicine office (same as family practice basically except we don't see kids) and the other office is a family medicine office so I will be getting a lot more experience. I had a dream last night that I was a nurse, right now I just work the front office, but in my dream they were training me the back office nurse stuff and I really liked it. But it's been soo slow at work lately that it almost seems like I'd rather not being working there or just working half days so the things I need to do get done and then when I am done with my job I can go but it doesnt work that way, and plus I need money. But I must say it's been a lot less stressful and I am sure that helps the baby.
Well, sorry it's been a few weeks, but I must say it's been a nice few weeks. I am finally over the morning sickness! WOHOO! I even gained a pound, at last count I lost 15 lbs since I found out I was pregnant but since I have gained back 3 lbs. I even have my appetite back. It is great! If it weren't for constantly having to pee and staying up most of the night, I wouldn't even know I was pregnant. It's now 17 weeks, and my stomach is noticeable, but not too much - I can tell but I doubt anyone else can. Dean's birthday was this weekend, the third. On Friday we went to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it was great, even with the subtitles. I read a article on it and thought no way, how can all those things be in that movie, it said it was a mix of a fairy tale, a western, and a martial arts film, but it was all of thoset things and even had romance. It was great, we'd recommend it to anyone. Then on Saturday night we went to see Lebanon Theater Company's Mornings at Seven. It was okay, the set was great but the acting left a little to be desired. And on Sunday we went to church, then met with some couples from our small group at TGIFridays. They told the waitress it was Dean's birthday and they kept bringing him balloons, the waitresses tied them in his ponytail but the waiters just put them on his wrist. It was hilarious. Speaking of Dean, he may be going to Scranton PA for 3 months, without me! But the company will fly him home every other weekend and he gets paid overtime for his travel time and they pay for all expenses. We should know for sure by the end of the week if he goes and when. I will miss him so and it will make scheduling dr appointments hard as he has gone and wants to go to all my ob visits, but we will work around it. As long as his doesnt miss the next sonogram I will be fine with it. Well we are heading out to rehearsal for Our Town with Mason Community Players.