October 2: 16 weeks 1 day

I have come down with a killer of a cold. I had a mild little head cold last week, sore throat, runny nose, not a big deal. Something clicked with this cold though yesterday and I woke up a mess. Combination head and chest cold. AB kept telling me that he knew if I got up and around, I would be fine. Umm no. When I was actually coughing hard enough that it would cause me to lose whatever meal I had just eaten, really no, just getting up and around is not helping.

I feel bad even complaining about this because my friend Prissy Jane is also pregnant, 3 weeks further along then me and has been sick with this crud for forever at least and has had multiple courses of antibiotics in an effort to clear it up. My cold? So not even worth complaining about.

I am feeling better today and even managed to sit through a 1.5 hour long seminar without having to excuse myself to deal with mucus in some form or other. Let’s just hope the recovery rate continues at this pace. Traveling to the coast while sick on Thursday is NOT going to be fun.

I think my tummy is back a little. At least I feel like I am sticking out. I am quite sure those few people who don’t know I am pregnant, still won’t know and it won’t dawn on them for another few weeks.

A recent discovery has sent me on a small panic with regards to insurance coverage for next year. My ob has apparently dropped my insurance company as of January 1. This leaves me with essentially three choices. Choice number one is to leave him and transfer to the nearby ob/gyn group in town that has delivered nearly every baby I know. I had a really bad experience there before I got pregnant with Leif whereby some of my “issues” were brushed aside and I was told just to “relax”. I left and never looked back when I found my doctor, who is the most wonderful ob a woman could ask for. And even better, my husband loves him as much as me. So when I told AB that one option was to switch obs, his response was an immediate “no way”.

Choice number two is to stay with my insurance company and still see my doctor on “out of network” costs, which are allowed with this company. A coworker reminded me this morning that our hospital is “in network” so any hospital charges will be at the regular rate, but my doctor’s charges would not be. The other option is to drop to what is seemingly being billed as “the lesser” of the two insurance companies during open enrollment, of which my ob is a preferred provider. We don’t have all the details yet, but what really frightens me about this plan is that you have to stick with an in network provider in all cases. Out of network is not covered and everything appears to be referral based. I hate that.

I will have to do a serious cost vs. benefit analysis once our open enrollment information becomes available in a few weeks. Also needing to keep in mind that I can change our benefits again once the new baby is here. So if I have concerns at that point, once I have birthed I can change.

On the physical side… this pregnancy seems to be progressing fine. Still little movement. I might have felt a little, but no real flutters, it is more shifting that I am feeling. No weight gain either. Being that I am 16 weeks, that means I have 24 left. At 1 lb of weight gain a week I should gain about what I did with Leif, 20-some. Very tolerable.