24 Weeks, 5 days

Another Frenchy doc appointment and Hellish Frenchie labwork down, two more to go.  Mrs. French OBGYN freaked when she took my blood pressure… “It’s not even 10!” she anxiously proclaimed.  “No wonder you’ve been so tired!”  First of all, WTF does 10 mean?  Did she mean 110?  I asked her what I should do about it and she said, “Eat more salt.”  What?  Eat more salt?  Are you crazy woman?!?! I’m pregnant and last time towards the end I blew up like the bitchy gum chewing chick in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory who turned into a blue berry!  I’d like to try to avoid having swollen feet, face and eyes again not to mention kankles and sausage fingers.  Plus, I do eat salt anyway, just not piles of it.  Concerned by her reaction, I walked the few miles back to the villa and called my doc back in Florida to ask her opinion on the matter.  A nurse from home called back and explained to me that my blood pressure is normally 100 / 64 and that I just have low blood pressure.  Nothing to be concerned about and as a matter of fact, something I should be happy about.  This is not the first time a strange doctor has freaked out about my blood pressure being low, but this IS the first time I was pregnant when a doctor freaked out about my low blood pressure.  So, I had to get a little reassurance from my comfort zone back home.  To add to the drama, on every Frenchie OBGYN visit I am forced to go down to this sketchy lab to get blood taken since I apparently have no immunity to toxoplasmosis and this time they wanted to check my iron levels too.  After struggling to communicate with the staff who don’t know even one word of English, I was stuck with a rather large needle in my right arm by a glove-less woman who reeked of alcohol.  She must have had a few glasses of vin on her lunch break.  As it turns out, my low blood pressure is NOT the reason I’ve been exhausted so much in this pregnancy.  Nor is it because I am chasing a toddler around 24/7 with little to no help and working my butt off for two clients.  Apparently, I am also anemic!  Yes, fucking anemic.  Can you believe it?  I actually suspected low iron could be the culprit this time due to my strange cravings of grapefruit juice, seaweed salad and spinach.  Unfortunately seaweed salad is impossible to come by in So France and so I am devouring spinach lately like Popeye on steroids.  Spinach salads, spinach in my pasta, spinach sandwiches, spinach ravioli, spinach in my eggplant parm… why so much spinach you ask?  Because I am NOT going to consume dead animal flesh from an innocent cow or lamb just to get iron and risk heart disease and other health concerns for me and my unborn child.  *Hummmm… maybe that is one reason I have low blood pressure.  Just a little food for thought*.  Ok, so there is a more simple way to combat iron deficiency, I know, take iron pills.  Well, I tried that too.  The doc prescribed to me an iron pill a day to go with my prenatal vitamins.  I took it the first night and the next day I felt weaker and dizzier than before plus had a raging headache.  And I NEVER get headaches!  And sorry to mention this but I was constipated for 24 hours and when I finally pooped, not only did it cause my poor little butthole to bleed some, but the poo was tar black!  Disgusting.  Me, personally, I’d rather eat loads of spinach, drink extra grapefruit juice and throw in some seaweed into my diet than suffer from more weakness, headaches, constipation and bleeding black tar poos.  But, hey, that’s just me.  I hope you enjoy these pics of my ever growing belly.  George laughs when he sees me naked.

21 Weeks, 3 Days

Today is my appointment for the fetal anatomy scan 9:45am.  I’m so nervous and excited I am almost in tears.  I could barely sleep last night and almost feel depressed.  Normally, I wouldn’t be very nervous and especially not in tears or depressed about this exciting moment, but the added challenge of going to a strange doc mid-pregnancy for a very important test, a doctor I’ve never met or spoken to before in a country I can’t speak the language and don’t understand the protocol is terrifying.  What if something is wrong with the baby and I can’t understand the doctor?!?!  We somehow found the office amidst the crowded streets of Cannes.  9:25am and the streets are already littered with model-type people shopping among the walls of designer stores.  With no parking available as far as the eye can see, I quickly hopped out of the car to run up to my appointment.  G and Alexa parked and met me up in the office about 15 minutes later.  The entrance to the doc’s office is empty, sterile, no A/C, an old building.  There’s no receptionist, so you help yourself into another small, sterile room where many other beautiful pregnant people wait quietly with their significant others.  Every twenty-five minutes or so, someone would leave the patient room next door and the doc would stick his head out just enough so we could hear him call out the next person “Madame Dubois”.  After waiting an hour after my allotted appointment time and watching many women come and go, I decided to hover in front of his patient room to catch him when he cracked the door to call out the next “Madame …”  When I saw him, I asked in the best French I could, “Whitehouse?”  He said, “Madame Whitehouse?  You were supposed to be here yesterday!”  What?  How did this happen?  Panicked I asked, “Can I reschedule?”  He looked through his appointments and he was booked solid for what seemed like quite a while.  He then said, “Can you be back here at 6pm?  Relieved he was a nice guy and spoke some English, we left to run a few more errands and prepare to return at 5:45pm.

We weren’t going to find out the sex.  I mean, keeping it a secret from ourselves only to find out the moment the baby is born seemed so exhilarating and like such an adventure.  But on the way back to the French Doctor in Cannes, George suddenly turns to me and says, “We might as well find out.”  I’M SOLD!  All my anxiety about going to this VERY IMPORTANT fetal anatomy scan (aka echographic) in French was replaced with sheer excitement.  I do know the French words for boy and girl (garcon and fille) and also the French words for he and she (il and elle), so even if I can’t understand anything else the doc says, I WILL GET TO FIND OUT THE SEX OF THE BABY!

Again, there was no parking… and again… We waited almost an hour until we heard, “Madame Whitehouse”.  We jumped up and went into the very nice, clean, dim-lighted, high-tec patient room.  I lay down on the bed facing a large flat-screen TV.  G and Alexa sat next to me anxiously watching the screen.  The doc typed in a couple pieces of information about me, my full name, birth day and due date and then began scanning my belly.  THERE’S THE BABY!  Bouncing around like crazy.  A little utero karate master like Alexa was.  No more hammock position.  This kid is a rock-star jamming and jumping as much as possible inside that crowded little space.  Most of the scan was conducted in silence besides some spoken mixture of French and English body parts periodically.  I just kept asking, “Is that normal?”  He would shake his head yes, smile and say, “normal.” G was quiet as a mouse and tending to Alexa, so when we were about half way through I said, “Can you tell if the baby is le garcon or la fille?”  He moved the scanner just slightly to show in between the baby’s legs and said…

“A Girl… I’m sure!”  Alexa’s going to have a little sister!  Although 51% of me wanted one of each, I really wasn’t sure what I would do with a little boy anyway, so after a few minutes of sinking in, I couldn’t be happier to have another little girl.  Two of a kind.  I never had a sister and I hear the bond between sisters is something that is irreplaceable.  Something so special.  He then started showing us pictures on the TV screen of her face in 4-D.  She looks soooo much like Alexa did at the same stage with her cute little round face and button nose.  My heart is melting.  My girls!

On the way back to the villa, we talked about our soon to be adventures with two girls and reinforced each other that there will be no more kids for us after this.  I’m not the kind of person wanting to try again and again for a boy.  I’m happy with two girls.  My little angels.  After knowing she is a girl, within hours a name begun to stick.  One I wasn’t sure about before, but now… it seems to fit her like a glove almost like she is naming herself.  Are you curious?

20 Weeks, 5 & 6 Days

Hiking in Zermatt, Switzerland