Snowy day cookies and trips to doctors

Just an update sort of post on what's going, and since it's not super exciting, I thought I'd throw in some cookies and maybe a book at the end (at the request of Smile from Infertility Absurdity).

So, one of the more severe pregnancy symptoms I've been having lately is acid reflux.  I've never really had that before.  I mean, I guess a few times in my life if I ate a huge meal or something, I'd have it a little?  But the last few weeks, I've been popping Tums pretty regularly.  I also started having heart palpitations and I ultimately noticed that I seemed to get the palpitations when I was getting the reflux.  I talked about it in this post here (as well as my previous history with palpitations).  Anyway, on Monday I went out to NJ to take Dad to the doctor and proceeded to have the worst palpitations I have had since 2006.  They were practically all day.  And my acid reflux was horrible.  I mean, I got acid reflux from a glass of water.  A glass of water!  The palpitations don't make me dizzy or short of breath, but they are uncomfortable and they kind of scare me.  And when they make me scared or anxious?  I have more of them.  So I decided to e-mail Dr. C about them and let her know they had gotten worse.  The OB gave me a list awhile ago of acceptable over-the-counter medications to take for various ailments.  This includes indigestion/reflux.  Jeeves read the list off to me and suggested I go get some Zantac or Pepcid to see if that did the trick since the Tums were doing nothing.

Dr. C called on Tuesday morning, and sure enough, she wanted me to go to a cardiologist.  As she pointed out, it was probably not serious, but still worth checking out.  I also started taking Zantac.  Still had acid reflux that day, and plenty of palps.  Meanwhile, the cardiologist agreed to see me yesterday.  He was very nice, and basically agreed with me that based on my description, I was having PVCs (premature ventricular contractions), possibly triggered by the GERD.  But of course, on the day I went to the cardiologist, I was having barely any palpitations.  It's like my heart was screwing with me.  "Me?  Beating irregularly?  Well, I never!  She's a liar!"  Luckily because I've been through this before and I've been diagnosed with the PVCs, I didn't at all feel like the doctor thought I was a headcase, but it was still annoying.  Anyway, the takeaway is that the cardiologist wants me to have an echocardiogram and wear a 24-hour holter monitor (blerg) in a couple of weeks to make sure everything is structurally okay with my heart still (my last one was 8 years ago, so it makes sense to check it again), and the holter monitor is to see if they can catch a PVC happening.  I'm glad we're getting it checked out and being safe.

As for the palps, I had all of 10 yesterday.  And today?  None.  So there's a decent chance that on the day I wear the monitor, I won't have anything.  And the Zantac (with some supplemental Tums) seems to be working like gangbusters on my acid reflux - no problems the last day and a half.

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Today we had a big snow storm in NYC and basically all along the east coast.  I had an OB appointment bright and early, so Jeeves and I suited up and slid our way to the office.  Here's a shot of Soho, close to my doctor's office at 8:30 this morning.

It was pretty, except when the wind was blowing, and having a belly and worrying about falling on all the snowy sidewalks was a little nerve-wracking.  But we made it there.  The appointment went well.  Highlights:

- Manuji kicked the transducer when Dr. C was listening to his heartbeat with the doppler.  I think he's sick of all the scans and what not.

- No more scans for me (barring some sort of catastrophe) till 36 weeks when I will have a growth scan and they will check to make sure baby boy is head down.

- My blood pressure has been perfect, my urine samples have been normal, and my weight gain has been great (I should now start gaining a pound a week).  So, I don't have to go back to the OB for 5 weeks, at which point I will have the glucose tolerance test.

- After that next appointment in March, I'll start going to the doctor every two weeks.

My reward for getting up early and schlepping through the snow was some pastries from Grandaisy Bakery.  I especially loved the apple turnover.  I also got a very good vegetarian sandwich from there for lunch (I really only eat vegetarian sandwiches these days due to my possibly irrational fear of listeria).  

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I wound up staying home from work today because of the snow, which means I watched, like 5 hours of live Olympics figure skating and was otherwise unproductive.  Then I took a nap, which was awesome.  And THEN I made cookies!  I wanted to make Nutella-stuffed brown butter chocolate chip cookies, which sound amazing.  But I only had a stick and a half of butter, not the requisite two sticks the recipe calls for [I'm still going to make these sometime soon].  So instead, I made Smitten Kitchen's Our Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies.  My own tweak - I did not put in nuts, I used semi-sweet and dark chocolate chips, and I threw in some butterscotch chips.  They are yummy.  Mine spread a bit more than Deb Perelman's did, probably because my baking soda is a little old.  They are still delicious.  They will be especially good with some milk.  I drink at least two glasses of milk a day now, which is so weird for me because I've never liked milk much (except on cereal or in coffee).  But apparently Manuji is really into it, because I want it all the time now.

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I have slowed down in my reading these days because I'm not doing the 52 books in a year challenge.  But I'm still reading.  In fact, Kate got me a Kindle Paperwhite to thank me for throwing her baby shower and it is awesome.  But I honestly haven't read a lot that has wowed me lately.  One exception - These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner.  Loved it.  Would have been on the top of my end of year list if it had come out last year.  If you want a really thorough review that I totally agree with, I suggest reading the Book Smugglers' review here.  I'll give you a short summary and why I loved it.  Genre-wise, I'd classify this as sci-fi, but not bee-boop-bop robot sci-fi.  The story starts on a massive luxury spaceliner.  Our hero and heroine (Tarver, a good egg war hero and Lilac, super smart heiress to the richest man in the galaxy) meet cute on the ship, but pretty quickly realize they do not like each other at all.  The ship winds up crashing, Tarver and Lilac end up in the same escape pod and appear to be the sole survivors of the crash on a possibly deserted terraformed planet.  Except that there's something really off about the planet and Lilac keeps hearing these whispers.  You know what it reminds me (and a lot of people of)?  Lost.  Except without the terrible, disappointing ending.  And really, I don't mean to make it sound like they rip off Lost or anything, it's really quite different, but survivors on a deserted planet and weird shit starts happening?  Kind of Lost-y.  I'm super intrigued by the world-building, the story is well-paced, the characterization is fantastic, and it's well-written.  It is the start of a trilogy, but only in the sense that the next book will take place in the same galaxy - Tarver and Lilac won't be the focus of that story (which I'm happy about because I felt their story was sufficiently wrapped up).  

So that's it for me.  If you're on the east coast, I hope you made it through the storm okay.  And if you are not on the east coast, I am jealous.  I'm really over winter.