stress and re-vamping february goals

So...

As I previously mentioned, my father-in-law spent some time in the hospital earlier this month and had to have a heart catheterization procedure done and a stent put in. Now I'm not using that as an excuse to abandon my goals, but, I think, due to not being on my normal depression/anxiety meds due to being pregnant, I wasn't handling the stress particularly well. In fact, I was lapsing into some old self-destructive thought patterns, although I fought like hell to keep those thought patterns from translating into self-destructive behaviors.

I did have a little labor and delivery adventure last Monday. The hospital where I will be delivering baby Marc does not allow vaginal birth after Cesarean (VBAC). Since my daughter Melanie was born via Cesarean in May 2008, baby Marc will also be born via Cesarean due to their policy (I checked out some of the VBAC-friendly providers, so called, in our area, but it seems if you're a Medicaid patient and as overweight as I am your likelihood of going VBAC is slim to none regardless, so if I was going to end up with a c-section anyway, I wanted to stick with a doctor I trusted). Therefore, the OB docs at my practice do not want their repeat c-section mommas going into labor. At all. Ever. So they give the advice beginning at 20 weeks if you have more than six Braxton-Hicks (rehearsal) contractions in an hour, to call the office, and they'll likely send you down to labor and delivery to be monitored. Well, I had what I thought were thirteen Braxton-Hicks contractions in an hour (I called the office after the eighth one, and left my accounting class) so I ended up going to L/D by ambulance. I couldn't keep the doctor's office on my cell phone because service is notoriously spotty up here on campus, so I finally ducked into one of the offices and asked a secretary to notify public safety that I could potentially be having preterm labor. I get to the hospital and the nurse asks me to tell her when I'm feeling the contractions and I do, and she kept telling me, "Oh, honey, these aren't contractions, that's just the baby moving." So I'm assuming that he's just an aggressive mover and unless I see signs of real labor beginning (mucous plug, water breaking, things of that ilk), I'm just going to assume false alarm.

So I'm keeping my household-related goals, and the goal of drinking 64 oz of water a day. Staying hydrated helps to minimize the amount of Braxton-Hicks contractions I have. But for now, I'm dropping the food journaling until next month. We'll see how the goals go for this month.

Love~
Elizabeth