36 weeks.

I’m not even sure what to write about today. 36 weeks. that’s like, 9 months. that’s “he could really be born any day” territory. holy moly. In my mind, he won’t be here for 4 more weeks. In my mind, …

35 weeks… brought to you by the letter P(ee)

I have peed so many times today that I should take out stock in toilet paper. Mr. McMuffin is running out of rib space and is now taking up real estate on my bladder and pelvic bone, hence the potty dance every 30 minutes or so. And the sciatic nerve pain as well as some fun shoot-down-the-front-of-my-leg nerve singers, too. Couple this with my pathetic ability to sleep and holy hell fire heart burn if I forget the Prilosec for one day, and you’ve got one hot pregnant mess. BUT, I am happy to keep him in there until 40 weeks. It’s not like I’m going to get any sleep once he gets here anyway.

nothing beats the, “oh crap, we need to take a picture, despite how tired I look” bumpdate. sorry!

Seriously, it’s like there’s a watermelon in there. A watermelon with REALLY strong legs. And toes that I cannot wait to count and kiss.  I have no idea how he will make more room. The inn is full, no more space available.  I’m going to explode out of my belly button here soon.  And the hernias keep growing…. he’s pushing things out wherever he can… luckily (maybe??) I can’t see them anymore, just feel them growing. Miraculously enough, still no visible stretch marks…. but I’m not keeping my fingers crossed that will last. I know better.

I’ve been busy nesting, opening boxes and even washing some blankets 🙂 I finished sewing 30 burp cloths and the skirt for the crib in the last 2 days, as well as started on re-painting the dresser. It feels good to check things off my to-do list.

Unfortunately I still don’t have a nanny lined up… my latest good prospect declined 😦 I have a couple more options to go through. Hopefully something will work out.

with the crib skirt to hide stuff under the crib. I think I like it better than without.

Without the skirt. What do you think, better or worse??

Other than that, things remain fairly status-quo.  I hope to get the hospital bag mostly packed this weekend, just in case. And finish painting the dresser. And motivate my hubby to put up the trim and switch the electrical plug-ins  and light switches to white ones. Hopefully we can get all of those things done. Check. Check. Check.

OH, and the best news of the week has nothing to do with me, but it is totally worth a happy dance. Lentil, whom I have never met in real life but definitely feels like someone I would get along with really well, is not only pregnant but is pregnant with TWINS 🙂 AH, SO EXCITING! Congrats girlie!

34 weeks

A year ago at this time we were on our second cycle of clomid. I felt alone and angry, stuck in a town I didn’t like, feeling like an inadequate female. I was a miserable person to be around. Now, …

31 weeks … single digit countdown …

Holy Moses…. 31 weeks. It’s hitting me HARD that we will soon have a new little man in our life, and like so many others around this gestation have recently expressed via blogging, it makes me tearful and nostalgic. excited. scared. anxious. nervous. all rolled into one. oh, and happy. most of all I am happy to be here, in this place in this journey with my husband.

speaking of him, I’m not sure what prompted such a sweet turning of a leaf, but it doesn’t matter, I love it. I love when he reaches for my belly, talking to “little man,” telling both of us good night… it’s awesome.

The belly keeps growing, and it’s beginning to get heavy. 12 hour shifts are getting harder, and my run/walks with Nella are becoming more walk and less run… but still some run 🙂 Muffin is a strong little dude in there. I’m so curious to know what he’ll look like, and how big he will be! Still waiting on stretch marks, keeping my fingers crossed, but I know the biggest 9 weeks are yet to come, and I will probably not escape unscathed.  Oh, and my belly button hurts half of the time… weird, huh? Is that happening to anyone else?? It’s pretty stretched out and looks so weird with its scars… maybe the scar tissue stretching is what makes it ache? Hopefully it all holds out until after next Monday, we’re doing maternity pics that day, and would like a couple bare belly ones if possible, especially since I never thought I’d make it this far without stretch marks!

Last night my dad came to visit us and spend the night… he was out our way for business and couldn’t stay long, but it was SO nice to see him and show off our new home a little. I wish he could have stayed later, and of course, cried a little after he left… he’s going to be the best grandpa 🙂 I just wish all of our family could visit more. Luckily, they are hosting a baby shower for us at the end of July, and I’m already so excited to see everyone! Hopefully my baby brother will be engaged by then… I have a feeling he might pop the question to his cute little girl friend soon!  Plus, Mom is going to take a few more maternity pics for us… despite the fact I will probably be ginormicon by then! It will be a quick trip, but with Jesse to drive for this time, hopefully it won’t be quite so uncomfortable spending 6 hours each way in the vehicle.

OH, and I had today off from work (my only day off this week… yuck!). It was a million (104) degrees outside, so I stayed in and completed the mobile for the nursery. I am so proud of my handi-work! I’ll try to do a little post about it tonight too!

Hope everyone is surviving the summer without too much swelling!

nella snuggling with grandpa roger watching a movie… so cute!

summer time

Oh summer, how I love thee (most of the time).  We got home last from a very nice “4th” week/weekend. Some of our great friends from the east side came to visit, they were our first “new house” guests. Then we all went to another mutual friends’ home 2 hours away so the guys could go 4-wheeling in the black hills.  We do things a little bit redneck around here, and it’s the classic summertime stuff that I love.  I earned a nice sunburn and tired feet.  We attended the parade, a demolition derby, a nice dip in the lake to cool off, and hosted a grill-out followed by fireworks.  Friday I worked and then we packed up and headed out of town. Saturday the guys and non-pregnant girls went and got super dirty riding in the hills, the pregnant girls went shopping. Saturday night we all went out for supper and a little gambling in Deadwood… I’m truly not much of a gambler, but believe it or not, got lucky and came home $125 richer, only betting $25. Sunday we came home and I watched Jesse’s softball team play. BUSY weekend, but very fun. Of course, I never take enough pictures, and a lot of our activities weren’t super camera friendly.

On a less super-duper, but equally important note, the friends that came and visited are the same friends that have been trying to make a baby for quite a while.  They are the failed-post-vasectomy-reversal friends that I’ve mentioned before. We love these friends so much… and I pray everyday they can eventually have a biological child.  They’ve recently taken the leap to see a fertility specialist, and it looks like IVF is in their future, after semen aspiration. I’m not exactly sure why they are skipping over IUI, and she didn’t know either, but my guess is going for the best shot in the least amount of time possible. I’m sure seeing me uber-preggo was not very fun, and it didn’t help when the wife of the other couple we stayed with is also pregnant. We had lots of heart-to-hearts, shared tears, and I helped calm as many fears as I could… I only went so far into the infertility-challenged process, but have learned enough along the way to know the lingo.  I just want this so badly for them… and I’m not sure I would have been able to keep my chin up through the whole weekend like she did if our roles were reversed. She’s SO strong. So, calling all prayers and good vibes her way!!

Anyway, hit 30 weeks last Wednesday (I know, I’m SO far behind!) – I’m getting pretty darn big, or at least feel like it. Baby Muffin is SO busy in there, and I’m getting so anxious (and nervous) to meet him! He’s definitely head down right now, and I can actually grab his little legs/feet until he pulls them away from me… it’s pretty fun.  OH, and guess what!!?? Jesse decided my belly isn’t so scary anymore (I think a “man chat” one night during the weekend helped).  It’s so sweet to wake up and find his hand on my belly. Almost makes me cry. What actually makes me cry? the song “sinners like me,” by Eric Church. It’s not a real tear-jerker kind of song, but my husband loves it, and it really does fit him and his McMillan men, and when I think of him being a daddy to this little boy… oh, the tears! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9tGHyNpOQL0

28 weeks… a much less dramatic post.

because no-one likes a whiner, especially over hypothetical labor and delivery problems, here is a much sun-shinier post.

how far along: 28.0 weeks.

baby is the size of: a head of cauliflower. an oblong head of cauliflower at 16 inches and 2 1/2 pounds.

total weight gain: about 11 pounds.

stretch marks: not yet. but i’m convinced they are coming. eventually. so i’m not getting too pumped about averting them thus far.

maternity clothes: most of the time. still like my t-shirts and my normal pj’s. I can still wear a good chunk of my scrubs if they have a little stretch. but wearing mostly maternity bottoms. at first I liked my maternity shorts, but have more recently disliked them… the belly pushes down on them and then they kinda wing-out at the bottom, making my butt look pretty un-desirable. my husband even said so 😦  and I HATE pulling the elastic on the pants over the belly. I roll it, no matter what.

movement: wiggle worm. most quiet in the morning, which always gets me worrying until I get a least one good whack. by bedtime, he’s constantly going. and I love it. but, there are times he stretches out and I wonder how he’ll ever fit in there for 12 more weeks. and the lightning strikes to the cervix aren’t very lovable, but oh well.

best moment of the week: jesse’s theoretical first father’s day. and passing my GTT.

worst moment: eh, they’ve all been pretty good. I love having people ask me about the baby. I actually love being pregnant 99% of the time.

miss anything: running easily. i’m down to about 1 1/2 miles of running in my loop, walking the rest. belly’s getting heavy and it’s harder to breathe. but still love to go. my goal is to keep running until at least 30 weeks.

belly button: flat, sometimes out. I was an outie as a kid, so not surprised it pops out easily.

“symptoms:”  fending off heartburn with omeprazole. fending off those nasty leg cramps with magnesium. fending off constipation with Colace. fending off insomnia with Benadryl. get the picture? i’m a health care provider, meds are okay with me.

upcoming stuff: work. school. work.  maternity pictures taken by my awesome friend. she did the prof ones on the blog 🙂

mood: i’d say happy, but worried. always worried.

 

 

see, much better post 🙂

random ramblings

i’m a little behind this week, but it’s been pretty busy. i spent 2 solid days recovering from the flu. then drove back for class on thursday and friday, returning friday night… and worked all weekend.

tonight i walked in the house and my hubby happily states, “i’m grilling us some father’s day steaks.” i feel kinda bad he had to make his own very first father’s day supper. but, luckily the baby and i got him a gift ahead of time 🙂

I’m really excited for jesse to be a dad. he’s really excited to get the baby OUT and actually get to know the little guy. he calls the baby by his name all the time at home (it’s a secret… no mom, i’m not spilling the beans on the blog early either!)… sometimes I  think jesse is more excited for the actually person this little man will be, and I’m more excited for a baby in the house. jesse is not into the whole pregnancy belly. one night i was trying to get him to be patient and feel the baby moving around – he looked me straight in the eye, kinda frowned and said, “honestly honey, the belly freaks me out. i’m excited for the baby when he’s acutally here, but this is weird.” ok, fair point. from what i can tell, jesse wants a healthy baby here and his wife’s waistline back 🙂 me too, sweetie!

oh, and i asked him if he wanted to attend the child birth class. i am 100% willing to go, even though i’m as well versed in labor and delivery as i possibly could be for my first baby. his comment: “you’ve done everything but actually shoot the bun out of the oven. as long as you’re conscious, we’ll be fine.” gotta love a staight-forward answer. (i TOTALLY support childbirth classes by the way, just don’t think i will personally benefit much from them).

and while we’re on the subject of fathers and their day, i CAN NOT wait until my dad is an official grandpa. i just want this little boy to be grandpa’s helper on the farm. he asks every time we talk how “little muffin” is doing, which is so cute. and when i was at home 2 weeks ago the look on my dad’s face when he saw how big my belly had grown was priceless. one of those moments when you know he was faced with the fact i’m a big girl now!

as for me, i keep growing. i have my glucose tolerance test tomrrow… i’m nervous, especially after tiny, little kearney got her GD diagnosis. i’m a mtn dew drinker, i drink at least one a day. selfishly, if have to give that up, i’ll cry. i will literally cry.

friday during class muffin was definately breech… i got a solid lightening strike to the cervix when he kicked – it made me jump in my chair. and i could rock his little head back and forth from under my right ribs.  i started to have a pregnant lady panic attack driving home. i don’t have the mental capacity for a cesarean and grad school. and the hospital where i am supposed to deliver just got a “D” rating… mostly based in their not-so-awesome surgical care. so then i started mentally planning going back to the hopsital i worked L&D at, the one with my family, friends, and beloved Dr.K to have an scheduled cesarean. by the time i got home, i had come to terms with my new birth plan. one with a family-centered cesarean. i’m not even 28 weeks yet people. at 27 and a 1/2 weeks, i’m having a mental freak-out over a real or not-real cesarean. someone needs to slap me.

luckily tonight i’m quite sure there are feet under my ribs. in fact, i’m pretty sure i can identify the moment he flipped when i was at work today. it was a whole lotta insane flipation going on. so, God answers prayers. cesarean averted for today. 12 weeks and 2 days before our due date. i am a nerd. and, he’ll probably flip back, ’cause i’m lucky like that 🙂

and here’s the bumpdate from last week… i look so darn tired. stupid flu! but look at that BELLY. yeesh!

 

baby belly… public domain

this week was pretty standard, school and work.

but something, well, fun started happening at work this week. The old people starting asking me about being pregnant.

I think I’ve looked obviously pregnant for at least the last 7 weeks. but scrubs are forgiving and hide things (both good and bad) pretty well. so, at work the only ones who would make comments about my growth were co-workers who knew what I “normally” look like. However, in the last week I’ve have a 90-year-old women who had no idea about many things going on around her look me straight in the eye and ask, “Are you PG?” haha. yes, mama. and then an old man waited until I had both hands busy opening his pills, reached up and rubbed my belly! at first I was a little shocked, but seriously, it was so dang cute. these little things haven’t stopped since.  my elderly patients LOVE talking about me being pregnant. they want to know gender and due date and names. They have no filter. They’ve let me know how to be a parent and how to love a child.

In the everyday normal world this would probably get annoying. But with my patients, it makes them happy, so it makes me happy. they want to remember being young, they want to connect with that, and I guess this baby-belly reminds them. in fact, a woman I cared for this week will be almost 100 years old this September… she really, really wants me to deliver on her due date and let her know all about it. Just another thing I love about nursing.

so, this week, in honor of the sweet elderly population, I didn’t change out of my scrubs to take the picture.

OH, guess what else????? if you’d followed my previous blog about trying to get pregnant, you might remember a story of how much I struggled to tell one of my friends when I got pregnant because she was struggling with sub-fertility, too??? She’s due in December!! YAY! It’ll make going to class a lot easier again, since we will be back on some common ground, but gossiping about breastfeeding instead of semen analyses. It sucked when it felt like I had something she didn’t, and every time I saw her, I felt like I was hurting her feelings by just being there. It is such a stinky thing to be pregnant when someone else wants to be, but isn’t.

I have one more close friend who is still striving to get there. Breaks my heart, because part of me knows. I know we didn’t have to try as long as some. I know I get to feel the rolling around of our little boy everyday, and it heals some of the pain of those months when I thought I’d never be here… BUT, anytime you have to use science to get pregnant (I was on multiple medications) it loses its intimacy and spontaneity. It becomes everyone else’s business. And it sucks. SO, I’ll keep praying, and I ask you to do the same as she and her hubby continue to pursue parenthood.

-a.

weight-ing game

officially 24 weeks pregnant today. when my BabyCenter email arrived in my inbox, i was reading email in our nurses’ work room. a couple of the girls behind me started reading too. it said something to the effect of and you’ve probably gained about 15 pounds by now. so someone asked me. and i told the truth. at my appointment Monday i was up just about 6 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight. i swear to you, women were freaking out. apparently 6 pounds doesn’t cut their mustard. what ensued was a re-hashing of my diet, my exercise level, everything.

and yes, I’ve been having my own little internal worry session over my lack/insufficiency  of gain. between 16 and 20 weeks i gained nothing. in the last 4 weeks I’ve gained about 2.5 pounds. BUT baby is measuring just fine, and so is my fundal height. my doc hasn’t mentioned it… although she doesn’t mention much to me… i think she thinks i have a sufficient knowledge base of a “normal” pregnancy. to a point, she is right. {and yes, i accurately diagnosed my inguinal hernia(s) (there’s one on the other side now, too).} maybe i should have asked if i needed to be packing more pounds on… but she’d tell me the same things i reassure myself with… baby and fundal height are within normal limits, what more proof do i need that things are ok??

basically, it bugged me that i was so criticized about my weight gain. i must not look smaller than i should, no one makes inappropriate comments about that. from here on out i’ll just keep the number on the scale to myself. and for proof of growth, check out the bumpdates page. he’s growing and SO AM I.

19 weeks.

And suddenly, I look pregnant.

almost half way there! but, oh course, the baby will get still get about 14 times bigger! sure hope I don’t!

Highlights of this week:

• Feeling LOTS of movement. He’s a busy guy growing in there.
• I’ve grown noticeable, too. Jesse called me “Bumpy” this week.
• Round ligament pain. I can feel everything stretching.
• MY LAST DAY OF CLINICALS for the semester. It was a great 12 weeks of learning, but SO READY for a little break. I’d drink a beer to celebrate if I could, BUT I won’t, I promise!
• Getting closer to moving. Probably be actually moving the last weekend of April. I am absolutely not packed, but it’ll all work out.
• My dad’s getting better. What a blessing and relief.
• It snowed again this week. Not quite as much, but STILL. If I didn’t have to scrape, scoop, or track it in the house I wouldn’t care so much, and I know the moisture is much needed, but man, oh man, I’m ready for spring showers instead.
• Our Tahoe is being dumb again and a wheel-bearing went out. Driving the sweet red ’87 pickup truck this week 🙂

That’s about all. Not the most exciting post, I know. Hope everyone else is having a good week, without snow!