On the road again graduates

[Starry Night]

skye - that sounds like a lovely way to spend the day holidays!

left - enjoy your last few days at work. Let your oh do as much of the lifting as possible. Soon that belly won't be much of a hindrance but you will have a lovely extra weight in your arms.

afm - scan is today! Really getting nervous, to be honest. I'm anxious about them finding some sort of complication. This pregnancy has been going too smoothly. I don't trust it. ha ha And of course I'm anxious about the gender. And I'm anxious about getting there on time. The referral letter says being late will mean I'll be rescheduled. It's tough to make appointments when you're 2 hours away and this will be in the hospital and I'm not exactly sure where we're going. The hospital's website doesn't have a very detailed map. Logistical stuff can stress me out too. bla!

But I slept well last night after a week of insomnia so that's good. And the house is ours again.

Oh no! DH just came in and said the van won't start. No, no, no!!! LOL It's so cold out and our block heater is broken so we can't even plug it in at night.

 

[Topanga053]

Ahh Starry, I hope the car started!!! And good luck with your appointment!!!! Let us know how it goes as soon as you can!!

Left- really??? Only 11 more days of work?? That's crazy! My boss would cry if I was leaving in 11 days. Lol he already joked that he wants me to bring work with me to the hospital when I go into labor. How long are you taking off altogether?? I plan on working up to my due date. If she's late, I'll probably work from home after the due date until she arrives.

 

[Starry Night]

I'm just glad we discovered it now and not 2 hours from now when we need to leave. dh is calling around to hopefully get someone to come give us a boost.

 

[Left wonderin]

Ahh Starry, I hope the car started!!! And good luck with your appointment!!!! Let us know how it goes as soon as you can!!

Left- really??? Only 11 more days of work?? That's crazy! My boss would cry if I was leaving in 11 days. Lol he already joked that he wants me to bring work with me to the hospital when I go into labor. How long are you taking off altogether?? I plan on working up to my due date. If she's late, I'll probably work from home after the due date until she arrives.

Yup ! 11 days . Here legally your forced to take 2 weeks prior to your due date as part of your 6 months maternity leave by law . You have no choice ! I also have weeks of annual leave left to take so I'm taking one of them to do the nursery ( well at least direct proceedings lol)

 

[RedWylder]

Good luck on the Nursery, Left. My hubby and I are trying to clean out the nursery room this week and it's soo stressful. Our house has barely any storage and we have a lot of hobbies so it's been really trying to figure out what to get rid of and where we can make room for things. Ugh.

 

[Topanga053]

[Yup ! 11 days . Here legally your forced to take 2 weeks prior to your due date as part of your 6 months maternity leave by law . You have no choice ! I also have weeks of annual leave left to take so I'm taking one of them to do the nursery ( well at least direct proceedings lol)

I completely forgot that you're in Europe. Much different maternity leave situation over there than here in the US! Here, I'm just grateful that I get any paid maternity leave... definitely a rarity over here! If you work in a larger company (50+ employees) here, they have to give you at least 12 weeks of unpaid time off, but not a lot of places offer paid maternity leave. I get 4 weeks of paid maternity leave, plus I can take short term disability (which is 2/3 pay) for the first 6 weeks after the birth. So, a total of 10 weeks leave, not including whatever personal leave I want to use. That's nothing compared to what you guys get, but a lot of people over here can't believe I get that much! DH asked his employer if he got anything and they were like, "you can use your personal leave or your 12 weeks unpaid."

Although I will say that it would frustrate me to be legally required to take off at least 2 weeks before my due date. I'm a little bit of a workaholic (as in, my boss's joke about me working from the hospital is not totally off base... I would actually consider it) and it would drive me CRAZY to be off for two weeks with nothing to do other than housework. Even now, I definitely plan on bringing some work home while I'm on maternity leave. It doesn't help that my work gets quite a bit of media attention locally and there's a lot of political emphasis on my job, especially in the coming year, so any drop in productivity will DEFINITELY be noticed and discussed ad nauseum publicly.

 

[Left wonderin]

I'm a little bit of a workaholic myself !!! Being at home is going to be a BIG adjustment for me . I get itchy feet to get back to work after 2 weeks leave !! I keep being told by everyone around me that ill be too busy to notice not working !! And that priorities will change . I keep saying WE WILL SEE lol...

 

[skyesmom]

i was shocked about the US policy on maternity leave! apparently there are only four (4!!!) countries in the world without payed maternity leave and us is one of them, while other are poor countries in development (Lesotho, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea)!

...in europe you can easily get up to a year, and in nordic countries there is also two months of paternity leave and you can actually negotiate and distribute the maternity year off between the two parnters, ie. first 6 months moms, and other 6 months dads get to stay at home!

that said, i'm a workaholic myself but honestly ALL of the workaholic women (even the ones that had a 60 hour working week and worked monday to sunday with me, up to their due date) totally changed after having their babies. they couldn't care less about coming to work, for at least six months.

and even when they'd get itchy feet to go to work, separating from the baby and leaving them at daycare or with babysitters was tough for them all. especially going to work with a sick child at home. this changed a bit when the kids weaned and/or were about 1 year old and started walking and turned into toddlers from newborns, but still.

when a colleague of mine that used to send us emails from the hospital while in labor, didn't even CALL for 10-15 days to let us know it all went just fine, as she was so absorbed with her first baby, i gave up.
and the first months she was back to work, instead of listening to her business strategies during EVERY lunch break if she would ever take one, it was all baby and nappies and night colic and projectile vomiting talk.

...that said, i'm really happy i'm in europe, too. especially because being a workaholic myself, having a baby would balance me out a bit. and i can't believe the usa policy of no payed leave.

it is really really discriminating to women and yet people talk about equal rights.. come on! i wanna see men pop up a 8-9 lb of living human being out of them and then feed them million times 24/7 with their own body and THEN go work on top of that!!

(sorry for the irony, but i'm a bit sensitive on this topic!)

 

[Starry Night]

Canada gives a year paid maternity leave too. Well, half of that is maternity leave and the other half is paternity leave but usually it's the mom who uses both. I think a decent maternity leave is required just so a woman can finish healing after labour, never mind bonding with the baby and breast feeding. I bled for 6 weeks after my son and then my first AF arrived just two weeks after that and it was super, duper silly crazy heavy. Nigh on m/c levels. I couldn't have worked through that!! I was borderline fainting for the first 4 days. I had to lie on the couch with DS lying on the floor or strapped into his bouncie seat all day.

But in Canada you can choose how long to work. Most girls will work right up until their due date so they can have as much time as possible off with their baby afterwards. I have read articles saying that maternity leave doesn't protect your jobs as well as it should. You still will come back to a job at your place of work because that is protected by law, but often women will return to suddenly find themselves in a lesser position with lesser pay and now have to answer to the "temps" who were hired while they were on leave.

I was always planning on becoming a SAHM after my son was born but I had been planning on working right up until the due date so I could still claim maternity. Being on bed rest changed that but at least I got a few months' worth of worker's comp.

Anyways....

I'm pretty sure my scan went well. The technician was following the hospital policy to the letter of the law so he really did not tell me anything. He asked if I wanted to know the gender and I said 'yes" so he said he would write it in my report so my OB could tell me later. Poo. He was kind so I couldn't get mad about it and I knew about the policy ahead of time . I was just hoping he'd bend the rules. Oh well. He DID say that the baby is measuring 5 days ahead so that is a very encouraging signs!

And in the potty shot I did see a serious lack of penis. I'm not an expert so I can't get too excited just yet but I saw two distinct lines with a little dot in between. I've read online that that usually means girl. Fingers crossed we got our princess!

 

[Left wonderin]

Starry that would drive me crazy !!!!! Going all that way having the scan and leaving none the wiser !!!!!! How did you do it !!!!! When will you get feedback ???? Oooooh I so hope you get your princess xxxxxxxx

 

[skyesmom]

Starry you have the nerves of steel!!! what the heck is that hospital policy???? i would DIE out of curiosity if that would have happened (and i'm planning to have a yellow bump haha!!) oh god!! when can u talk with your OB??

fingers crossed it's a baby girl!!!

 

[Starry Night]

I have to wait two weeks to see my OB!! I'm going to be driving myself mental, let me tell you. I think I'm going to be looking up girl vs boy u/s pics the entire time.

The crazy thing is this hospital also has a fetal assessment department and they WILL tell you the gender as well as give you a free printout or two and your dh can sit in with you the entire appointment. I don't know why they don't just send all pregnant ladies there. But that department is for those needing non-routine scans. I got one with my son and the actual doctor who makes the official report came in at the end and explained everything. We got a print out of his face, his heart chambers (very neat) and his feet.

Now I'm kind of wishing we had sprung the $50 for the cd of images so I could obsessively go over them. Oh well.

 

[Topanga053]

Starry, that's awful!! Can you call your OB and ask them to go over everything with you sooner???

One of the most fascinating aspects of this board to me is to learn how different doctor's offices/countries operate. My ultrasound tech told us the sex right away and confirmed that everything was fine, then we had an apt with my OB immediately afterwards to review everything in more detail. And I definitely can't get over the difference in maternity leave... one year in Canada (if the mom takes the dad's time)!?!?! That is INSANE to me!!!!! I'm just so used to living in a culture with little to no paid maternity leave that as awful as it is (I agree with you, Skye!!), it just seems like the norm, so it's always shocking to hear about such extensive leaves!

 

[Starry Night]

Probably not. If there is something wrong, then my OB will call me to go over the results sooner. I don't think the office would appreciate me calling "just" for the gender. When my son's blood work tested as high risk for spina bifida I got the call the next day.

If I don't hear anything over the next few days I have to assume everything with the baby is fine. All tests are that way no matter the issue. If you hear nothing...then you're fine. You have to call if you want to go over specific results.

 

[Left wonderin]

2 weeks !!!! That's torture !!!

 

[Starry Night]

I need something to distract myself! At least I can hold onto the fact the baby is doing OK. I'm feeling it move more everyday.

 

[Topanga053]

Hey ladies,

So DH and I got rear ended while running errands this afternoon. The roads are awful here and the girl behind us couldn't stop in time. She was going pretty slowly, but we still definitely got a huge jolt and DH's bumper is MESSED UP.

Of course, I immediately started crying, worrying about Lauren. Afterwards, I made DH take me to the ER, just so they could make sure everything was ok. She seems to be fine (HB was 136 and she's been kicking and no obvious signs of distress or injury), but talk about scary! I was also really unimpressed by my treatment there (I'll explain in another post when I'm on a keyboard and not my phone). Anyway, glad everything seems to be ok for now; I'll keep monitoring her movement, etc for the next few days and THANK GOD I have the Doppler at home!

 

[skyesmom]

oh my god!!! i had creeps just while reading your post!!! thanks god all three of you are ok! keep us posted please!

 

[Starry Night]

Topanga - I am so glad that you're all right! And baby Lauren too. So scary. One of my friends got in a car accident while pregnant and her baby is fine. Actually, my mom got in a really, really scary car wreck while pregnant with me. Her pregnant friend was with her and both me and her friend's baby are just fine. But definitely keep an eye on it. I'm sorry the staff at the ER were not more helpful.

 

[RedWylder]

Topanga I can totally relate to the fear. We hit a dear a few weeks ago and really had to slam on the brakes. The seatbelt was placed correctly below my belly but I could not shake to awful feeling that it might have gotten tight enough to squish my little girl. I'm sure Lauren is fine but I know how much it can shake you up.