Amy's Mind Scribble

If anyone asks when I’m due, I can now officially say “next month”!

So, Ben and I spent the last two days steam cleaning the carpet and cleaning the house. I don’t mean just regular cleaning, but deep cleaning. Everything is done except the kitchen, which is still a disaster because we have everything from the baby room piled in there until we get the furniture. It was a long two days — we didn’t get to bed until 4am the first night and 6 am the next — but it’s done finally! We even moved her swing to the living room as we moved things around.

I have more to blab about, but have an early day tomorrow, so I better stop for now. Will post tomorrow night after my appointment and our tour!

It has been such a long week here.

Good news first… exactly 2 months from today (61 more days!) my baby girl is due! Yay! The weeks seem to be flying by lately and it’s probably because we have a to do list a mile long that just keeps seeming to get longer and longer.

So back to my long week.

It all started last weekend when I noticed some blood on the kitchen floor. After making sure that it wasn’t coming from myself or Ben, I thought it must be one of the dogs paws. Then I saw some on the dining room tablecloth. At that point, I checked each of the cats until I realized it was coming from Tiger’s rear, which looked like he had pushed out part of his.. well whatever is in there. So, first thing Monday morning I made an appointment at the vet and took him in to get checked out. To make a long story shorter, they felt something hard, about the size of a marble, in his colon. The vet thought it was possibly a hard stool or something he had eaten and that he would pass it, but he has to go back in 2 weeks to make sure it’s not a tumor or something because of his age. Hopefully all is well with him.

While there, I made appointments for the other two cats for the next day. I figured with the baby coming, I better get them all checked out to make sure that everything was ok, no parasites or bugs, and that they’re fully up-to-date on everything. Felix had a very small heart murmur, but the vet wasn’t too concerned. Over those 2 days I spent 500 on the three cats.

On Wednesday, I had an early appointment to take the car in for an oil change. This shouldn’t have been a big deal, but what takes Jiffy Lube 30 minutes to do, it took the dealership 1 1/2 hours. I was so frustrated and so tired of sitting in their hard waiting room chair. Finally, when they finished and called me out to check out, things got worse. They just really frustrated me and by the time I was walking to the car, I was in tears. It seem silly now, but these days things make me cry pretty easily. I cried most of the way home and when I finally stopped, a car swerved in front of me and I started crying about that the rest of the way home. When I told Ben later on in the day, he just laughed at me… though I guess if I wasn’t me, I’d laugh at me too.

On Thursday, I had a dentist appointment to get my teeth cleaned. I hate going to the dentist. They took my blood pressure (still not sure why they do that at the dentist) and it was a little high (130/90), but I’m assuming that’ because I hate the dentist. At first they weren’t sure that they could do the leaning since I’m in the 3rd trimester, but the dentist cleared it.. which everything I’ve read says it’s totally fine anyway. So, got my teeth cleaned and a clean bill of toothly health. It’s not as bad going to the dentist when they don’t tell you that you have a cavity.

Later that day, Mike and Tracy came up to watch a movie. While they were here, JC Penney’ s called and said that our baby furniture was in! Mike offered to go with us to pick it up so that we could use 2 cars, so off we went. After signing for the furniture and waiting an hour, they come out and tell us that they can’t find the crib, even though everything says it is there. Ugh. Later that night, Ben and I cleaned out the bay room and piled everything into the kitchen so that we’re ready to steam clean on Monday and then pick the furniture up (provided they locate the crib) afterwards.

On Friday, I woke up with a headache. Not fun. I tried to sleep a little longer and it eased up a bit, but was still there. I had some errands to run (Petsmart, Target, etc) and my mom called and asked if I wanted to go to Ryan’s for lunch with her. It’s not my favorite place, but we haven’t done much with her lately, so I went. They had pot roast on their buffet, which actually wasn’t half bad. During lunch, my head started to really hurt. By the time I got home, I felt miserable. I took my one tylenol and drank a diet mountain dew for the caffeine, but neither helped. I laid down with a cold rag on my face and tried to sleep some, hoping a nap would ease it as it usually does. When I woke up an hour later though it hurt even worse. I was supposed to go to the football game with Belynda that night, but at this point, I called and canceled, then got in the tub to soak and see if that would help. Nope. It was a miserable afternoon. I was kind of nervous about it a bit after my blood pressure had been a little high the previous afternoon. Finally, we went out to pick up something to eat and I got a milkshake from Chickfila. That, combined with a second tylenol six hours after the first, and it finally started to ease off. It was truly a miserable day.

On Saturday, Ben and I spent several hours helping to move the bookstore. My mom had mentioned that she was planning on moving everything over to the house the day before, but I hadn’t realized that she planned to have tit closed by the end of the month (Tuesday!). We didn’t find that out until we got there on Saturday. I spent the time packing books from the shelves into boxes and then after they brought them to her house, I unpacked them. Ben got to carry the heavy boxes and move shelve. It was so not fun.

Sunday morning I headed over to help move more and spent 3 hour packing and unpacking books. My feet and back are so sore now. No, I didn’t carry any heavy boxes, but just lifting those book on and off of shelve into and out of boxes wears you out. Later that night, we went to Mike & Tracy’s for Mike’s birthday dinner.

And that is the story of my long week with other work trials and tribulation thrown in, including having to move 50+ sites from one server to another over the last few days. Unfortunately, I don’t think this week will be any less busy. On Monday we plan to steam clean the carpet and hopefully get the stains out of the carpet in the baby room. Luckily Ben ha volunteered to do most of this. On Tuesday or Wednesday hopefully they’ll have located the crib and we’ll be able to pick up all of the furniture. On Thursday I have to take Belynda’s daughter to an ortho appointment at MUSC, then I have an OB appt at 1:45 (unles I reschedule), then we have a hospital tour that evening at 6. I’m sure we’ll have some more bookstore moving thrown in there along with some work issues as well. Hope everyone else has a great week.

So just for memories sake as I plan on printing out all of my blog posts and putting them in my scrapbook, I’m going to write about yesterday’s class. Other than Ben falling asleep, it was pretty uneventful. If you want to skip this, feel free.

The day started out not so great. The night before, we didn’t go to bed until around 2am and then around 5am I woke up with a horrible leg cramp, which I’ve gotten a few times this pregnancy. Stretching wasn’t helping, so I got up to walk it out, but was almost in tears it hurt so bad. Why oh why do babies cause leg cramps? They’re not in your legs! Actually, today in the class the instructor mentioned try getting more calcium and potassium, so I’ll try that.

Anyway, of course I couldn’t fall back asleep because I never can when I wake up in the middle of the night. At least not for a few hours. Unfortunately, through my pain I woke Ben up too (not on purpose). Usually it’s him waking me up by accident when he gets into bed at night. Or me waking up to go to the bathroom for the upteenth time that night, or the dogs moving around, or my hip being numb, or … well, the list goes on and on.

So anyway, we were both up and neither of us could fall back asleep. Finally, around 6 or so I fell back asslep, but apparently Ben stayed up. I woke up again at 7:30 and he was still up. At that point I figured it was useless for him to lay down at all because if he fell aslseep for just an hour, he’d be so grumpy when he got up.

So, we got up and got ready and decided to go to iHop for breakfast. After stuffing ourselves with omelets and french toast, we head to the hospital for the class. I felt so silly walking in with two pillows and a blanket, but luckily there were plenty of others there as well.

The beginning of the class was fairly stupid. Everyone there is 7-8 months pregnant having their babies and they spent an hour telling us what not to do while you’re pregnant. I think if you’ve been smoking or drinking for the last 7 or 8 months, you have a problem. It was definitely not info that needed to be covered in a childbirth class.

After our first potty break, she got down to business basically going through the labor process, breathing techniques, etc, etc, etc. She had everyone practicing the breathing from their tables, including the men, which was quite funny.

Around 12, we broke for lunch. I had a small salad and Ben just had nothing as he was full from iHop (where he had eaten all of his breakfast and half of mine!). If we had known we were getting a free lunch, we may have skipped iHop. Then again, maybe not.

After lunch, we had to watch a couple of childbirth videos. Of course I has crying by the end of each of them. Out of happiness for the mom and knowing that I get to meet my little baby soon or fear of the pain in the next couple of months I don’t know. I’m not sure what Ben thought of the videos, but he’s watched A Baby Story with me a few times, so he wasn’t totally unprepared. Well, except for the fact that these were extremely graphic videos, unlike A Baby Story. In one of them, the dad actually pulled the baby out, which Ben made clear that he would not be doing.

After the videos, she lectured a bit more. I can’t remember what about .. maybe the stages of labor, etc? I know she went through your pain medication options and covered c-sections a little bit as well. We had a couple more potty breaks though and got some oreos from the free snack basket. I had forgotten how good oreos can be!

At the end, we all had to get on the floor and actually practice her breathing techniques. She had the men squeezing our arms to mimic a contraction (um, really?!?!?!?) and then we had to “breathe” through them. I’m sure if that were really how it is, the epidural would not have been invented. Oh, which brings me to the fact that I had no idea that you had to get to 5cm before you’re allowed to get an epidural.

The next exercise she had us do was some massage/relaxation thing. We had to concentrate on a body part and relax it and then dads had to massage it or something like that. At one point she asked us to tense up areas and the dads had to find them using massage. I don’t see this one working for us very well either. LOL I can just see Ben when the time comes telling me that his hands are tired.

The last thing she had us do was some imagery technique. She had us all lay down, including the men, and she told this relaxing story about a day at the beach. It was so relaxing to Ben that the next thing I heard (he was behind me) was him snoring. No joke. He and another guy in the class fell asleep.. though Ben was the only one that snored.

I’m not sure how much we really got out of this class. Ideally you always think you’d like to be able to get through this with just relaxing and breathing, but I’m a tense person by nature. I have a very hard time relaxing on a normal basis and just don’t think that breathing and imagery are going to take my mind off of what’s happening. I guess we’ll see when the time comes, but despite the fact that several people have tried to convince me to go drug-free, I have a very good feeling that won’t be happening.

Next up (9/2) is our hospital tour and yet another appointment. Actually, starting September 2nd, think we have a class every single Thursday night for 4 weeks.

The appoitment went great today!

First we had the ultrasound — our last one! It was kind of sad that it was our last one, but so exciting that she’ll be here soon in person!

The first thing the tech said was that we had a “good” baby who was head down. I was happy to hear this because even though she was head down at my last appointment 2 weeks ago, she always feels like she’s sideways to me. Apparently I don’t know what I’m feeling though! I was also happy to hear this because it means a less chance for a c-section, which I really don’t want. Of course I’d do it for a healthy, safe baby but I’d prefer to avoid it if possible. I know there’s still time and she could move more, but she’s been a good baby so far, so hopefully she’ll stay that way!

They then measured her head circumference, thigh bone, and belly. She checked her gender again and told us that she was still a girl if we wondering and that she hadn’t sprouted anything between the legs since our last ultrasound. That’s always good to hear.

Next she estimated her weight to be 2lbs 15oz, so 1oz shy of 3lbs. She’s measuring on the small side, about 4 days behind, which they said isn’t a big deal. I know Katie said Allie was always a week behind, so I’m not concerned.

My regular appointment was with my doctor’s physicians assistant actually since the doctor was gone. It went fine. Blood pressure was great at 118/72. I had NO weight gain over the last two weeks and found out that I’m actually up only 11lbs total, so I was thrilled with that. Heartbeat was great at 147. Pretty much everything was normal and on schedule.

Hard to believe that I’m almost to the single digits as far as weeks left go! I hadn’t even realized it until Katie mentioned it to me on the phone last night! As of today it’s 10 weeks left, but as of tomorrow it’s 9 weeks & 6 days! In case you were wondering, it’s 70 days left total as of today.

Without further ado, here are the few pictures they gave us from today’s ultrasound.