Baffling Blood, Beautiful Boys, and a Birthday

I'm 35. As in, Years Old. Life is great, it's been a good year and 2010 is going to be another even better year, but it is a little weird to be on the upper end of the thirties. I know it's technically "mid" but you definitely don't round-down from this number. Only those with grandchildren might still consider me "young." Ah well, who really wants to be young again? With age is wisdom!

Besides a year wiser, I'm now about 37 weeks pregnant. I haven't written about it til now, but there has been a "complication" of sorts with this pregnancy: severe anemia. It's been completely confusing because I have no symptoms whatsoever. I tested fairly low the very first time weeks before the big road trip, so I added an iron supplement (something I haven't needed with the previous pregnancies) and tried to be very mindful of my diet, especially trying to avoid those things that inhibit iron absorption. Well my next blood test was a week or so after the trip - you know how much energy I had to have to do that! - but this next result showed even LOWER iron in my blood, that's when the "severe" category kicked in.

By all medical rationale I should have been (and should still be) barely able to get out of bed each day, sickly pale, dizzy or faint, etc... But nope, I even rearranged all the furniture in my living & TV rooms to get the Christmas tree set up just the way I wanted. I have to admit I suspected the lab results could be wrong, but dutifully altered my supplements again, and watched my diet even more carefully, now adding quinoa grain and beef liver in the regular meal plans. My midwife wasn't scheduling another test for 6 weeks, but I wanted to see for myself if the lab she was using had somehow mixed up their reports so after about half that time I got my chiro (who's also my friend) to write up a request for a local (different) lab to draw & test my blood. Hmmph! It showed the SAME results as the test 3 weeks earlier. So now I not only had to believe it, I was starting to panic a bit that all my efforts were in vain. Nothing was helping!! And then I worried that worrying about it would make it worse (call it law of attraction or just stress-induced illness, whatever). Increase the liver frequency! Work on a positive attitude! Get a priesthood blessing from my sweatheart! And visit my friend Lorrie, the essential oils/energy healing worker.

In the meantime, Mark & I celebrated our 8th anniversary. Thanks to his brother Spencer and his friend watching our kids half the day and late into the night, we got a really relaxing and fabulous date! We went to the temple and stayed in the celestial room as long as we wanted. We hung out in Barnes & Noble looking in practically every section. (I'm a dedicated Amazon shopper, but there is something irreplaceable about picking up and flipping through actual books.) And then we had a liesurely dinner (and desert!) at the Cheesecake Factory. We truly almost never go to a restaurant so this was a major treat! My meal was delicious and I was completely and utterly happy. Total joy as I reflected on my life, my marriage, our boys, and our expectations for what is to come.

Another fun thing lately: we experienced our first murder mystery game. The McCammon's hosted us and two other super fun couples and fed us a fabulous meal. We were all supposed to have Italian accents (except one French character) and half the fun was hearing what people tried to pass off as Italian! I thought I was the guilty one for quite a while, but everyone had complicated motives and in the end it was a twist. Total blast. Getting good quality adult mingling time is so nice.

Isaac & Sam still have their Musikgarten class, and now we have Isaac signed up for Upwards Basketball starting in January. Sam will be taking swimming lessons next month as well. Hope I have as quick a recovery after the birth as I always have in the past! Homeschool, such as we do, is going great. I know I'm hormonally supercharged right now, but I seriously get teared up on a regular basis while observing the boys at work or at play. They are just so beautiful and brilliant and funny and creative! This new boy coming is sooo lucky to get them for big brothers!

So, back to that. My most recent blood test came back showing some improvement. Hooray for that! Boo that it isn't enough yet... The risk with low blood-iron is hemorrhaging during/after delivery (i.e. uncontrollable blood loss). My midwife has methods to work with slow clotting/excess bleeding but the bigger problem comes if her methods don't work, then I would need immediate transfusions and surgery - not available at the birthing center. I really don't want to switch to an OB/hospital plan, for many reasons, and thankfully because of the uptick in iron my midwife is willing to keep with me a couple weeks longer and work on a plan B first (leaving the hospital as plan C). Plan B will quite likely include me getting a blood transfusion a week or so before my due date to jump up my iron... but if I get (well, let's be honest here and say if GOD gets) my iron up high enough before then (I'll be doing weekly tests), then that (the transfusion) won't be necessary. So more prayers & positive thinking!! FYI, everything else with my health and the baby himself seem to be just peachy. I am really so ridiculously blessed, it is rather petty of me to get down at all about this little glich.

Anyway, besides trying to find creative ways to choke down more liver, I'm of course busy with Christmas (decorating, shopping, parties, etc) and the Young Women (along with all the regular Wednesday night activities, we got a new Beehive finally, and we sang for a special sacrament meeting program this week), AND I'm on the hunt for a new-to-us family vehicle. Yes, the time has come as in just a few short weeks (3ish?) we will officially have more kids than the backseat of the Avalon can hold. Thanks to internet research, and lots of advice from friends on Facebook, I'm narrowing things down and hope to be able to get exactly what I want for a great deal. I'll keep you posted.

Mark decided to bake a cake while I napped Sunday afternoon, so we had a just a bit of an early birthday celebration for me last night. Here's my men singing to me...