Here’s how I was supposed to spend Thanksgiving:
Wake up at 3 am on Wednesday, whine for the whole 9 hour drive to Ohio about how uncomfortable I was, eat an enormous amount of pie, complain that E was playing WoW while the wominz had to mind the child, do a little Black Friday Shopping, eat some Chick-fil-a, whine about the 9 hour drive home, have a really nice time even after all the complaining.

Here’s how I spent my Thanksgiving instead:
Tuesday night before I went to bed I suddenly got a horrible stabbing pain on the right side of my back. After asking Dr. Google for advice, I chugged water and cranberry juice for a few hours, only to throw it all up because I was in so much pain. Called my OB’s answering service, Man Doctor on call said if it wasn’t contractions (it wasn’t) it was a pulled muscle so I should try putting heat on it and taking more Tylenol. I spent the entire night wandering around the house moaning and being miserable. When E woke up at 3 am I told him we could either go to Ohio the next day or he could go without me, because there was NO FRICKING WAY I was getting in a car until I felt better. At 7 am I gave up on waiting for office hours and called Man Doctor back to warn him I was coming into L&D. When I got there, they hooked me up to the monitors and said “oh look, contractions! and you said you were throwing up? definitely a pulled muscle.” Luckily the treatment for my “pulled muscle” was a lovely dose of morphine so I immediately passed out and when I woke up Man Doctor was gone and Lady Doctor was here. She decided maybe an ultrasound to check my kidneys would be a good idea. Turns out I have about a zillion kidney stones and I am not a crazy person who just cries over a pulled back muscle but instead someone in an enormous amount of agony with a condition that required immediate treatment as well as more procedures post-baby. The urologist decided he could take out the one causing me pain first thing in the morning. So Thanksgiving morning I was strapped down to a table in surgery, given a spinal and *you’re probably enjoying your pie right now so I’ll skip the rest*. By 11am I was back in my room and once again in possession of my iPhone charger (never ever ever go to the hospital for any reason without: phone charger, toothbrush.) By 2 pm I was free of tubes and catheters and leg pressure cuffs and just hanging out waiting for another dose of narcotics. Turns out the only good part of kidney stones at 35 weeks pregnant is that the baby is so close to full term I’m allowed to have drugs. Because NO ONE can just “breath through” a kidney stone. At least when you give birth you get a baby at the end to cuddle. I saw the stone they took out and it wasn’t very cute at all. Now I am just stuck here until they give me a couple more doses of antibiotics and write a prescription for a painkiller for me to take home. Because, oh, did I forget that part? They had to leave a stint in my ureter to keep it from swelling shut, so my pain has decreased about 60% but isn’t going away for at least another week – when they have to take the stint out again.

So to sum up: no road trip, no pie, no time with family, no turkey, extreme pain, slightly terrifying surgery, and one more night in the hospital to go.

I should win some sort of Thanksgiving do-over contest, right? Or at least maybe a pie. Good news is that Baby Sandy is taking it all like a champ, not the slightest hint she cares about mama’s kidney stones. Sadly, Little Evan hates being here so I haven’t gotten to see him much (because really, how much fun is it to have you baby scream for dada and run away when you try to hug him? Not fun. Good way to turn into a sobbing mess.)

I hope your Thanksgiving is going much better and even if you’re trapped at your crazy aunt’s house choking down burnt turkey at least no one has stuck anything up your pee-hole today.

Apologies for my inability to stick with a tense or person for that whole post. Writing from my iPhone is hard.

Last night while I was making dinner the inevitable happened and I cut myself with a big serrated knife. I’m honestly surprised it hadn’t happened sooner, during those first couple of hazy, sleep deprived months when I was so exhausted I couldn’t remember my own name and had no business opening a can of soup let alone using the stove and the oven and sharp objects. But last night, despite being fairly well rested and getting 99% of the meal done without incident, I sliced open my finger while cutting the hamburger rolls. (Seriously, how stupid is that? They sell pre-cut rolls, right next to the non-cut ones and if I hadn’t insisted on buying the fancy onion kind I would have saved myself $2.00 and quite a bit of pain.)

After standing in the kitchen and yelling for a few minutes I ended up lying on the floor taking deep breaths to keep myself from passing out and hitting my head. I don’t react well to blood when it’s my own (something that runs in our family – Hi Dad!) and although the cut certainly didn’t need stitches if I fainted and hit the counter or the floor I could easily end up in the ER.

So I moaned and whimpered and E ran to get me a band-aid and came back with the hydrogen peroxide because I needed to “clean out the wound”.

Me: NO WAY IN HELL AM I POURING PEROXIDE ON ANYTHING,
E: Yes. You have to wash it out.
Me: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO STAY AWAAAAAAAAAY.
E: You know, you’re kind of a wuss about pain.
Me: You can’t call me a wuss, you threw a fit because you stubbed your toe last week. And…and…AND…
E: Oh I knew this was coming.
Me: AND. I GAVE BIRTH. You cannot call someone who has given birth a wuss. EVER.
E: You had to go and pull the birth card didn’t you?
Me: The birth card never expires. It’s good FOREVER. And don’t you forget it.