Two Weeks Left To Go!

You know that phrase "Fat and Happy?"  I don't think it applies to women in the last weeks of their pregnancy.  I mean, definitely the fat part but probably not so much the happy part.  It's not that I'm unhappy, cause I'm not really that either.  It's more like I'm uncomfortable.  And tired and sore and kinda itching to get out of my own skin.  Sometimes I wish I could just take my giant belly off for an hour so that I could get a few really good deep breaths in and relax.  

All that's to say I'm a little over being pregnant at this point.  I have been trying to remind myself that this is a terrific blessing and that there are people who would love to be in my shoes, er maternity pants.  I need to remember to be grateful that my body not only is physically able to carry a baby to full term but that it also does pregnancy pretty well.  But sometimes I find myself unable to look past the other things, like how I can't really bend down long enough to tie my tennis shoes or that washing dishes in the sink will inevitably soak the entire front of my shirt from my belly getting in the way.

Ok, no more Debbie Downer for the rest of this post.  Like the title above says, we only have TWO weeks left!  That seems so close and so far away all at the same time.  Physically, I'm ready for this little dude to come on out!  However, I have LOTS of people (my mom, especially) insisting that I hold him in until after Memorial Day weekend.  No pressure, I guess.  Realistically, I know it's best if we make it the whole way so having him stay put a little longer is ok with me too.

• As of my last doctor's appointment, I had not begun to make any progress yet.  My doctor is traveling all this upcoming week, so that's even more incentive for him to stay where he is!  She estimates that he's already between 6 and 7 pounds and his heart rate was 140.
• The best part of my last doctor's visit is that we set a date!  June 1st is the official induction date unless he decides to come on his own before then.
• I have not been taking weekly pictures but I did take one a couple weeks ago for comparison's sake.  Go figure that when I went back to find the corresponding picture from Katie Wynn's pregnancy, it must've been a week that I skipped (probably because we were moving into our current house that week).  So here are two somewhat-close pictures from both pregnancies.  The one on the left is 37 weeks pregnant with KW.  The {really terrible] one on the right is 35.5 weeks with little boy.  I feel much, much bigger with him but the pictures don't really show it that way (at least, not in the belly).

• Katie Wynn is a little bit obsessed with my belly.  When she sees it, she says "Hi Baby!" and loves to pull up my shirt to give it kisses.  Recently, she learned how to blow raspberries on it which I have a hilarious video of, but I just don't think I can bring myself to post my bare belly here for everyone to see.  You'll have to take my word, it's pretty funny.
• My lap keeps getting smaller but that hasn't stopped Katie Wynn and Lolli from always wanting to be in it.  I like to text Matt pictures like these below and say something like, "Hey, can you see if anyone else wants to come sit in my lap too?"  I have a feeling the lap-fullness won't end in two weeks either; I just hope baby brother doesn't get as squished when he's on the outside.

• No need for a plate when your mama has a giant belly.  You can just eat your string cheese right off of it!  It can also hold a sippy cup and is a handy spot to rest your crayons during church.

• We have made big strides in the nursery over the last couple of weeks.  All of baby brother's clothes have been washed and put away in the new built-in wardrobe.  Mom, Anna, and I completed one craft project last night, and we still have one left to wrap up.  It's been painted and is currently in the woodshop drying.  Hopefully it will get hung up this week...except that's gonna be the hardest part of the whole project!  I have something I'm still waiting to get back from the framer too, but hopefully that will come soon and I can take pictures of the completed room.  Fingers crossed that happens before he arrives.
• We have also started pulling down all the baby stuff from the attic so Katie Wynn can get used to seeing it around the house.  We had less furniture in our room when she was born so it was really easy to fit the bassinet in for her.  This time, it barely squeaked in between two pieces with about an inch to spare.  Talk about wall-to-wall furniture!  We could technically do some rearranging but I've decided it's not worth it for just a few months of him sleeping in our room.  I did at least take the pictures off the wall so it'd look a little less cluttered.  :)

• Somehow, even without us prompting her or telling her, she knew this is where the baby would sleep as soon as she saw it.  She immediately stood on her tiptoes to look inside and then asked, "Baby?"

• Still on the agenda for this week is to pull out all the bottles, drying racks, and other kitchen paraphernalia and get them cleaned up.  I have enjoyed having clutter-free counter tops for the last year, but it's time to fill them back up!
• My biggest accomplishment this weekend was getting my rings off!  They really have not bothered me at all until I realized one day last week that my fingers were too swollen to take them off, and then it's all I could think about.  It's like they were choking my finger!  I decided I would wait and try early Friday morning in hopes that my fingers wouldn't be as swollen right after waking up.  Bad idea, they weren't budging at all.  The picture below on the left is after I had soaked my hand in ice and cold water, and lathered it in both soap and lotion.  I had even threaded a piece of floss underneath it to help pull it off.  It hurt BAD!  Thank goodness for the cold snap we got on Saturday.  I wasn't even thinking about it but I washed my hands and felt my ring turn on its own.  I realized the swelling was down, gave it a good yank, and off it came!  It's been off for almost 24 hours now and there's still an indention on my finger from where it was.

• Here are some other random tidbits from this point in my pregnancy: restless legs are still in full force; I eat a lot of baby carrots + ranch and applesauce; I constantly feel out of breath; I'm to the point where I can't eat as much at one time because there's no room for it; I'm still drinking gatorade like it's my job.

Hopefully the next pregnancy-related update will be that I'm NOT pregnant anymore and that our baby boy has arrived!  Let's just all pray that we make it to June 1st!

The Joke's On Me!

Remember last year how I fooled a bunch of you on April first with a fake pregnancy announcement?  Well, Karma came back to bite me.  This year I was the butt of a very, very bad April Fool's Day joke.  Last year I was faking a pregnancy; this year I was in the hospital praying that my real baby was ok and not about to be born 9 weeks early...

Monday evening after work I was feeling great.  So great that I went to the hospital to visit my friend Jenny who had just delivered her precious little boy, Henry!  He really is just the cutest little guy ever and I'm so glad I got to meet him.  He and his mama both seem to be doing very well!

I left the hospital around 7:00 and ran through the Burger King drive-thru to grab some dinner on my way home (the fact that I can actually type that sentence without dry-heaving means I've come a long, long way in the last 24 hours).  I made it home just in time to spend a few minutes with my pajama-clad little lady and help put her to bed.  I ironed my clothes for the next day and went about my normal night-time routine.

I was brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed at ten o'clock - just two hours shy of April Fool's Day - when everything started to go downhill.  I'll try to be vague here to spare you the details, but there was an urgent need to use the restroom.  Just a few minutes later I climbed into bed and hoped that was the end of that.

Spoiler alert: it was not the end of that.  I never turned my light out that night because I never got the opportunity to lay down and go to sleep.  I got hit by the meanest, ugliest, most violent stomach bug (or was it food poisoning?) ever that had me held hostage in the bathroom ALL night long.  There were times when I thought the fun might be over but could only sneak out of the bathroom for about ten minutes before running back in.  It was bad.  Number of clothing changes during the night: five.  Number of pairs of pajamas that just had to be thrown away: one.  Number of very necessary middle-of-the-night showers taken: one.  It was a super special kind of hell that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.  

Around 5:00am, I crawled into the bedroom and told Matt I didn't think I could do it anymore.  Yes, 5:00am...and it started at 10:00pm.  That's seven hours straight for those of you who struggle with math.  :)  I knew I was dehydrated.  I was scared out of my mind that it would never end and what it was doing to my baby.  But my biggest worry was how to get somewhere for help.  I wasn't sure I had a big enough window to actually travel anywhere.

Matt called my mom who rushed over so she could stay with Katie Wynn.  Bless her heart for not only taking care of KW, but also for exposing herself to me.  While Matt loaded the car with towels and garbage bags and outfit changes, she got to pass me some wet rags as I hugged the porcelain throne.   

We have a local hospital about 15 minutes from us and another bigger one in the city about 20 minutes away.  The hospital I wanted to go to, though - the one where I delivered Katie Wynn and will deliver this little boy - is at least a 45 minute drive.  I was terrified I wouldn't make it but told Matt to head that way anyway.  I knew the care would be better there, especially for the baby.

We arrived at the emergency room right at 6:00am and couldn't have had better timing.  We walked straight to the front desk and - thanks to having already preregistered all of our information for our upcoming delivery - were able to be taken straight back to a room.  I don't know that we could've planned our arrival any more perfectly.  The ER was quiet so we had a room of our own and lots of attention right away.  I was immediately hooked up to a bag of fluids (after having blood drawn) to start getting hydrated.  

Picture taken while receiving first bag of fluids.  This was taken for proof that I was not playing an April Fool's Day joke to get out of work!

If I thought the seven hours in my bathroom at home were hell, well then, I don't know what word to use to describe the first five-ish hours in the ER.  I'm really trying not to go into too much detail here (I'm sure you can use your imagination though) but there are definitely two words you don't really ever want to hear while in the ER: bedside toilet.  And here's another tip: if you ever find yourself heading to the ER with a stomach bug, they won't give you anything to stop it.  Nope, they'll give you fluids to rehydrate but if there's a bug or virus inside you, it's "best for it to work its way out on its own."  So then you'll just be having your twenty-minute-interval exorcisms in the presence of others.  Super, I tell ya.

I received three bags of fluid very quickly - I'd guess about a bag an hour - and was still completely dehydrated.  I also received three doses of zofran that did nothing to stop my nausea and vomiting.  Around 11:00am is when I really broke down.  My mom had texted and said that Katie Wynn had thrown up and all I could think about was how I had given it to her and I wasn't even there to take care of her.  The tears came quickly.

And then, miraculously, the nausea and vomiting stopped.  Matt says the bug just wanted my tears and that's why it finally stopped.  I say it could've had my tears a heck of a lot earlier if it had left me any fluid to produce them. 

Shortly after 12 I was finally given permission to try to drink something.  You have no idea how excited I was to hear this!  Even with all the vomiting, I just kept feeling so dang thirsty.  All I wanted was gatorade and, as luck would have it, the vending machines were all out.  Poor Matt had to hop in the car to run and get some.  (Let's just all take a moment to give him a huge shout-out for actually coming back and not leaving me throughout this whole ordeal.  He's a really good man, I tell ya.)

Things finally started looking up from here.  I was able to finish a 12oz bottle of Gatorade and keep it down.  The ER doctor told us we were ready to be moved to the labor and delivery ward so they could monitor the baby better.  I have completely left that out of the story but the baby's heartbeat was checked when we got there and seemed to be fine and I wasn't feeling any contractions.  We didn't get checked into the L&D room until about 3:00pm.  They had done more urine analysis by then and decided more fluids were still necessary so I was hooked up to bag #4, but this time it was a much slower drip.  My obgyn was out of the office for the day so we were admitted under the care of one of her colleagues.  They hooked my belly up and monitored the baby for an hour and everything checked out fine.  Thank the Lord!  

Around 4:00pm we learned that I would have to stay the night.  My heart rate was still high and they wanted to try to get it lowered.  I have a high heart rate on a good day - which we told them numerous times - but the lowest it had been all day was 123 (which is apparently high...) and they were concerned.  I had had an EKG done before leaving the ER, though, and everything was normal.

At 6:00pm I moved into ante-partum room for the night.  I was starting to feel a lot more stable.  Matt had run home to get clothes and to get Katie Wynn and Lolli settled at my parents' house for the night.  Thankfully, Katie Wynn had not been sick any more throughout the day so I was assuming her morning episode was a fluke.  Matt and I hung out and watched TV before bed - a rare treat for us, actually!  I did spike a slight fever that night so I took tylenol before going to sleep.  It was short-lived though because when I woke up for my first bathroom break of the evening, I was drenched in sweat.  Bag #5 of fluids was started at some point during the night after my IV machine started beeping like crazy at me.

I was pretty much convinced that I'd gotten food poisoning from Burger King until I talked to my mom the next morning and learned that my Dad now had it.  Thankfully, she got Katie Wynn out the door to daycare without coming into contact with him.  By then I was feeling much better, mostly just sore and tired.  I was allowed to eat bland foods which all stayed down and I even got to take a shower - I was thrilled!  

My doctor came to check me out around 1:00 that afternoon and said I could be discharged!  By then, I was on bag #6 of fluids and my fingers looked like little sausages.  Matt had gone to work for the day so Mom came to pick me up and take me home.  I made quick work of lysol-ing our entire house before collapsing into the chair for another nap.  Having a stomach bug is exhausting!  

Now I'm feeling much, much better.  The biggest complaint I had at discharge was a sore chest and painful cough.  Apparently that's a parting gift you can get from the dry air in the hospital.  Hopefully it'll clear up soon.

So that's my very long-winded excuse for not having blogged at all this week.  I don't have an excuse for the week before it but the good news is that since I'm being forced to rest and take it easy, maybe I'll actually have time to get caught up on some posts!  We'll see...just typing this one made me ready for a nap...

Still Pregnant

At the time of writing this, I am 27 weeks plus 5 days pregnant with our little boy!  The tables have really turned for this pregnancy during the last three weeks.  I've gone from feeling great and almost forgetting that I'm pregnant most of the time, to being really ready birth this baby and have my body back to myself.  On the one hand, I'm shocked that I'm already in my third trimester (probably because we haven't done a single thing to prepare yet!) and on the other, how is it not over yet??

Here are some bullets about what's going on these days:

• At my last appointment, the baby's heart rate was around 145, which is good.  I got the very dreaded glucola drink for my next appointment.  The big day is this coming Wednesday and I have pretty much been dreading it since I left the last appointment.  I really do NOT want to have to drink that stuff again!!  I am trying to prepare myself by reducing the amount of sugar I eat for the next few days.  NOT an easy task for this candy-holic!

• I feel like I am enormous already.  Last Sunday, I finally had Matt take a picture so I could compare to the same week with Katie Wynn.  Of course, that's the week I skipped with Katie Wynn.  Oops.  :)  But, for comparison's sake, here I am last Sunday (at 26 weeks) compared to 27 weeks last time.  I don't think I look much bigger in these pictures, but I feel bigger!  I also feel like I am carrying higher this go-round, which is backwards of the old wives' tale that says you carry boys low and girls high. 

• There is no hiding my belly button.  It's sad.  I swear, it's like a headlight everywhere I go.  I watch everyone's eyes go down and look at it when they're talking to me.  And Katie Wynn is obsessed with it so that's fun.  She's not satisfied with just seeing it through my clothes, though, she'd rather pull up my shirt to get a good look which isn't awkward at all in public.

• Speaking of old wives' tales, there is one that has been ringing true every single night.  One of my friends told me that you crave citrusy juices when you're having a girl and milk-based things when it's a boy.  I ate popsicles like crazy when I was pregnant with Katie Wynn, and this go round?  I have a chocolate milkshake every night before bed.  (Um, hello!  Maybe that's why I feel enormous??)  I also want cereal with milk for breakfast every morning.  
• My tailbone pain has returned.  It made an appearance early in the first trimester (I thought it was sciatica at first) and then went away.  Last weekend it returned with a vengeance, making me cringe every single time I transitioned from sitting to standing.  I had one full day of intense pain but since then, it kinda comes and goes throughout the day.
• The restless legs are back in full force too.  I wish I could just cut them off sometimes.
• I have started trying to pick up tiny boy clothes any time I'm out shopping.  It is so hard because I'd much rather look at the cute girl clothes!  Since we don't have a closet (or name!) for him yet, Katie Wynn's closet is slowly getting filled with blue things too.  We have purchased a couple coming home outfits (one looks big) that I can't wait to see him in!
• When I was pregnant with Katie Wynn, I got choked up every time I heard Jason Mraz's "I Won't Give Up" come on the radio.  I'm not sure why - blame it on the crazy hormones, maybe?  This time it's Avicii's "Hey Brother."  It gets me every time.  I have not yet figured out how my heart will grow enough to love another little person as much as I love Katie Wynn (I know it will just happen), but I do know already that there's nothing in this world I wouldn't do for our little brother.
• About his nursery: it's currently still an old office that's holding a bunch of junk.  We have done a lot of brainstorming but no actual work.  Because it used to be an office, it has zero closet space so we are actually hoping Cesar (who did our mudroom built-ins) will come build us a wall-to-wall wardrobe.  He's agreed to the job but can't get to us for a couple weeks.  Now that we have a plan, I'm ready to get started!!  Here is what we have come up with - a sketch on paper is on the left and then we actually tried to draw it to scale using chalk on the wall (shown on the right).

• In other nursery news, we finally have fabric!  Which means there's a color scheme!  I waffled back and forth between about three different ideas but finally settled on this collection of khaki and denim stripes that I had to custom-order.  We were nervous it could take months for it to come in so we quickly pulled the trigger and then bam, it was here the very next week!  Guess that means someone (ahem, Mom....) has to get busy sewing! :)

• We have a stationery chair that we plan to use for the nursery, but have ordered a swivel glider attachment to convert it to a rocker.  As soon as that comes in and we see if it works, we can send the chair off to get recovered.  I still need to shop for a crib and something to use as a changing table.
• I have one old piece to use as storage that I plan on refinishing.  The first step is stripping off some old paint and since I can't do that, I need to sweet talk my husband (or Mom?) into doing it for me so the transformation can get underway.  

That's all I can think of to update on.  Plus, I have a little lady who wants to play, so I better go play!  Cross your fingers for me that I pass the gross glucose test this week...

Gender Reveal!

Lemme just start by saying this: "mother's intuition" is a load of crap.

With that said, lemme tell you about our day last Wednesday!

Matt met me at the doctor's office for my 10:45 appointment.  They had already called me back for my ultrasound but when I said he wasn't here yet, they were nice enough to wait for a few minutes.  This was the second time he was late for the big ultrasound!

Our ultrasound tech was AWESOME.  She was so incredibly nice and chatted with us and pointed out every little thing on the screen.  It's a good thing she was there and could tell what she was looking at because I had no idea.  At one point, I thought we were looking at ribs and then she told me it was the nose and lips.  Oh.  Right.  Nose and lips.  Got it.  The best news of the day is that our little baby is as healthy as can be.  There were four chambers in the heart, two kidneys and lungs, no cleft pallet, ten fingers and ten toes, and everything else they look for.  

We also found out that this baby is playing footsie with my bladder, which totally explains why I had to use the bathroom three times during my hour visit.

Like last time, I had made a card for the tech to fill out indicating what the baby's gender is.  I wanted to be surprised.  Matt really wanted to look at the screen.  So when the time came for her to look at the revealing area, I turned my head while he watched.  He was under strict orders to make no facial expressions or ask confirmation or say anything.  Luckily, when the tech said she already knew, he still hadn't really seen anything.  Amateur.  

We left the appointment and went straight to a restaurant where my parents and brother were waiting for us.  I think they were slightly disappointed to find out that we didn't even know yet!  We made it through our lunch and then the time finally came.

I handed our telling envelope over to our waiter, Jeffrey, and chose one dessert for each gender.  If the envelope said boy, he was to bring us chocolate cheesecake, and if it said girl, it was vanilla creme brulee. 

Jeffrey was such a good sport for playing along with us.  I made sure no one at the table was peeking and watching for him to walk through the restaurant.  Luckily, he snuck up from around the corner and asked if we were ready.  By that time, we had skyped in Matt's parents so we held up our phones and told him we were ready.

Chocolate cheesecake it is!

I am officially oh for two on guessing what's in my belly.  How could I possibly be so incredibly wrong?!  I won't lie, I was initially disappointed because I had convinced myself I was gonna be a girl mom and had already started thinking about how two sisters would be very best friends.  It didn't help that I also really wanted to eat some creme brulee.

It's funny because I was also initially disappointed when I found out KW was a girl, and now I can't imagine her not being a little girl.  After having a few days to digest the news, I am beginning to get really excited about having a little boy!

Speaking of our little boy, here he is!  Isn't that a sweet little profile?

Looks like we have a little thumb sucker on our hands.

And I just love this one.  How precious is that foot print?!  And that's his little hand trying to grab it.  Silly boy.

The rest of the day went a little downhill from there.  Mom and I left lunch to go run errands (and didn't even buy a single boy item - shocker!) and ended up stranded with a flat tire.  Super shout-out to my dad who showed up in his suit to rescue us and put on the spare in the FREEZING cold.

Back at home that evening (after putting the still-hates-daycare kid to bed), I attempted to make cake pops as a gender reveal for my coworkers the next day.  The plan was to have both pink and blue pops on the outside, but the cake on the inside would reveal the gender with its color.  The reality is that it was a complete disaster.  I really don't know what went wrong, except that I bought an off-brand for the outer pink and blue coats so maybe that was the problem?  Whatever it was, I only ended up with four decent cake pops!  The others were a wreck!

Needless to say, I went to bed very frustrated knowing that I wouldn't have enough cake pops to share with everyone.  

Saturday night we had some friends over for dinner and we were excited to share the news with them too.  They all either already have a boy or expecting one, so we are glad to be adding another one to the play group! To reveal the news, we filled a balloon with balloon confetti and popped it after everyone had arrived.  I didn't get a picture of it, but I did get a cute picture of the four matching kids!

Katie Wynn loved having so many playmates at her house!  Hopefully that means she's ready to have a full-time boy playmate living with her.  Something tells me she's gonna get very bossy...

Pregnancy, Round Two

Everything they say about the second pregnancy is true.  How is that I'm already halfway through with this pregnancy and just now writing a real post about it?  And let's not even talk about the weekly pictures I took while pregnant with Katie Wynn.  I haven't taken a single one this go-round!  (Even though I had really good intentions to...I just haven't gotten started yet.)  I guess the into-everything toddler and super sick (but now recovering!) dog have kept me a little busy.

I looked back through my old pregnancy posts and it looks like I wrote a Preggo update at 14 weeks and another one at 23 weeks.  I'm right at 20 weeks now so I don't have anything to use for a good apples-to-apples comparison.

• At my last dr's appointment, the baby's heartbeat was 145.  That was 4 weeks ago, though.  I go back for another checkup tomorrow morning.
• Speaking of tomorrow's appointment, we'll have our big ultrasound and find out the gender!!  How could it possibly be time for that already?  The string test we did said boy.  The drano test we did was somewhat inconclusive, but I think it was closer to boy? However, the Chinese calendar and most old wives tales point to girl, so who the heck knows?!
• Anna has dubbed this new baby "Frederick."  She says she doesn't care what the gender is, she is going to continue calling him/her by that name.  And she plans to teach Katie Wynn to do the same.
• Katie Wynn is completely clueless about what's going on, but she does seem interested in lifting my shirt to see my belly so maybe she notices that it's growing?
• As far as how I feel this time compared to last time, I think it's been pretty much the same.  Not a lot of nausea which is good.  My face has broken out again just like last time, and I've had some bad bouts of restless legs again.  I have experienced a little bit of bloating and heartburn this time which I did not before, so who knows what that mean.  And, just like Katie Wynn, this baby is riding low.
• Within the last week, I have started feeling kicks.  I guess I totally missed the flutters this time around because I never felt any of those!
• I have craved nothing and everything.  There is not just one thing that I have craved repeatedly, but if I hear about or see a picture of anything, then I'll crave it til I can eat it and then move on to the next thing.  Unfortunately, I have probably had more caffeine during the past 20 weeks than I had in the last 2 years.  I've gotta get that under control.
• I am thrilled that we are not house hunting or car shopping this go-round.  Matt thinks it's time to upgrade to a minivan, but I'm holding out.  My current car will work just fine.
• We plan on doing a separate nursery for this baby, even if it's another girl.  We happen to have an extra room in our house, though it's more of an office than a bedroom.  It's off the front entryway and has double French doors and no closet, but I think with a little imagination we'll be able to turn it into something suitable for a new baby.  Thankfully, we haven't really even been using the room except to throw junk in and for me to sew in, so it will work out well.
• Eventually, we might let KW and this new baby share her room, assuming it's another girl, since the bathroom is off her room.  When Anna and Wyatt are both in college, the two younger kids will be in first grade and kindergarten, so that's probably when we'll let them move upstairs into the big kids' rooms.

Am I leaving anything out that you might want to know?  I can't think of anything else.  Stay tuned for a gender announcement soon...I'll try not to wait too long to post it!