Back from a wonderful long weekend at the boy’s parents’ country house in Connecticut. They were interested and supportive of pregnancy, I got a couple of sincere compliments from his mother, who told me that I’m looking ‘radiant’ these days. Since she’s not the type to mince words, I took it as a compliment indeed. Especially since I can really tell a difference around my belly.

Especially after the weekend, though most of the weekend’s change was food, not sprog.

We ate lobster. We ate a lot of lobster. Like 2 pounds, each. (20 hours later, I’m still nearly comatose with gastronomic bliss/protein overload) And butterflied leg o’ lamb (one of my faves.) And lots of cheese and crackers, and lots of yummy yummy things like BLTs and eggsalad. And now I’m eating lots and lots of dried apricots in an attempt to convince my poor progesterone-inflicted bowels that digestion is actually in their best interests.

(bloat!)

And yes, I’ve pretty much decided that given my food preferences, my risk factor for listeria/salmonella/e.coli is pretty high, but then, so is the standard working level of my immune system, so I’m going to trust it’ll all work out in the end. I’m one of those people who never gets food poisoning at the company picnic, or has to worry if those leftovers in the fridge are slightly off, because my stomach of iron won’t react. So I’m having a hard time getting worked up about what I can & can’t eat. Actually, I’m being really good about avoiding mercury-fish like tuna or swordfish or other top of the foodchain critters. But the way I figure it is that if I’m going to get paranoid about everything I eat on the off chance I might get sick, I’m not going to be able to eat a thing. I mean, they just put cilantro on the don’t eat list, and a girl’s got to draw the line somewhere. So I’m officially not worrying too much.

Oh, and I went to the grocery store specifically so I could buy a pickle from the barrel they keep at the deli. Stereotypical, and probably not the most hygenic, but oh so satisfying!

I’m going to start photographically recording my expanding belly this week. Because I am a glutton for punishment. I also just bought a prenatal workout dvd on Amazon. Will report back on results of both the recording torture and the workout torture, even if the only results apparent are that the boy has a great opportunity to laugh at me every morning.

Let’s see, other things to report? The massive bruise/welt/blood blister from the PIO vein-nick of the other night is still pretty horrific – both in looks and in feels. Not sure if I’ll be brave enough to direct boy to use that injection site again tonight or not. I’m already nervous about Thursday & Friday, since boy will be out of the country and I will have to inject myself. I am a wimp, and not particularly limber, and I just have a feeling that it’s going to be awful. I’m dreading another bleeder. Can’t wait to be done with these.

And despite (or maybe because of) sleeping for almost 10 hours a night both Friday and Saturday night, I managed to have a couple of hellacious pg related dreams. Well, last night’s was more of a PIO related dream. Just a pure anxiety dream about getting to the pharmacy in time to refill my prescription, before they closed but after work, and whether I’d be able to, and what the supposed equivalent of pessaries would be if I couldn’t get there in time on Tuesday, would I be stuffing, like 35 of those damned little blue pills up inside me, is that even possible? and maybe I could get to the pharmacy tomorrow morning instead, and what if I shatter the vial I’m finishing up right now – I don’t even have a pharmacy that’s open on Sunday to get an emergency dose for tonight, and maybe…

Ack.

Hoping for no dreams tonight. And a clear shot to the pharmacy in the morning, so I can put that fear to rest.

The main reason I’m looking forward to my last RE appointment is that I’ll be able to bring in my gigantic shopping bag full of needles, empty ampules, and other drug paraphrenalia and hand it over to the safe-disposal gals in the lab. Looking forward to having my bathroom back!