Bad Blogger update

Yes, I've been bad again so I'll catch you up week by week

38 weeks - 10/19

I made it! Dan went to his brother's wedding and I did not go into labor. What a relief! I was so stressed out all week about it but it all turned out great. I had a nice relaxing weekend at work and Dan had a good time at the wedding. I've seen the pictures and it looked like a beautiful event and of course I wish I could have been there to see it and visit with all the family. At my OB appt I had dialated to 3cm, 90% effaced. My OB said to me "If you're still pregnant I'll see you next Monday, but I doubt you'll make it that far (then adding no promises)". I was pretty excited to hear this and told a lot of people that I would probably have the baby this week!

39 weeks - 10/26

So much for the prediction! I did not have the baby last week, not even close! At todays appt I was 3.5 cm dialated same amount effaced and the baby was at about zero station, plenty low and head down. Once again my OB said I was likely to go into labor very soon but if not we would schedule an induction for either Monday or Tuesday next week. After the appointment I went to work and while there I was having contractions about every 5 minutes. They were pretty uncomfortable and regular so I thought that this might be it! I called Dan and told him to get stuff together and call the friend of ours who could come over and check on our animals in case I was in labor a long time. I had about 3-4 contractions on the way to the hospital and I was pretty sure this was it! We got checked in to LDR triage and they hooked me up to the fetal heart rate and contraction monitors. I was still contracting pretty regularly and they brought a resident in to check how dialated I was. He reaches in and checks and says "I'm having a hard time finding the cervix....baby's head is really low.....I'm going to say about 8cm?" What?!! I thought I might be 4-5 cm, but 8?! He had the nurse in the room with us check and she said pretty much the same thing. I thought for sure I'd be in more pain than that so I was a bit perplexed. Then the nurse who usually works in triage came in and checked me and after a fair amount of a very painful "human puppet show" routine she said "she's about 3.5 maybe 4cm". Well that made more sense! I guess the baby's head was so low it pushed my cervix into some hard to reach place (oh goody) and she had to pull it out a bit to check (yes, this was painful!). They called my OB and told him what was up. Since I hadn't made too much progress since my appt that morning he told them to keep an eye on me and see if I progressed any. While I was there they brought a lady in who was SCREAMING. This got me thinking.....I don't think I'm in enough pain yet, uncomfortable, yes, in pain? not quite. Anyway so they let me sit and contract for about an hour and brought in a new doctor to play "find Kathy's cervix". He did a better job than the last guy and I was still the same. They didn't want to send me home just to have me come back so they wanted to monitor me one more hour. My contractions started to get a bit weaker during this wait and less consistant. At this point I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I was not in labor :-( They checked me one more time (no progress) and sent me home around 3:30 am. I drove us home because Dan was pretty much asleep and my contractions weren't too bad anymore. I was just so disappointed and felt stupid for not knowing that I wasn't actually in labor. What do I know? It's not like I've ever done this before!

Anyway, after the stress at work of worrying that I could go into labor at any time, I decided to take my maternity leave early. I was originally scheduled for the rest of the week which was kinda dumb looking back on it but what did I know? I felt kind of bad for leaving work in a bit of a lurch but I couldn't do it anymore.

So I've spent the rest of the week being uncomfortable, tying up loose ends around the house, contracting every so often and basically not going into labor. My due date was yesterday so now I'm officially overdue. Seems silly how stressed out I was a couple weeks ago that I would have the baby early. Now it looks like I'll be induced!

My induction is scheduled for Nov 2nd. I have to check in to the hospital at 5:30am - which is kind of rediculous to me...I sometimes go to bed at that time! I'm sure I won't get any sleep the night before between my inabiltity to go to bed before midnight and my excitment/anxiety. At least this time in the words of my OB nurse, I "won't leave the hospital without a baby". I'm excited....it's not going to be too much longer!

As a bonus and since I can't have a post without pictures, here's my Halloween Costume/ 40 week belly picture:

Oh yeah, and I put the valences up in the nursery! JC Penny said I won't get my shades until Nov 20th (bastards) so I got some cheap $8 rollar shades from Walmart and put them up. At least it's something!

37 weeks and Nursery is 95% done!

THE FURNITURE IS HERE!!!!!

I'm so happy! It came in on Wednesday and we got it all set up this weekend. The room is so cute! I can't wait to put the baby in there. Of course, we aren't totally done :( Stupid JC Penneys is being slow with my roman shades so I haven't been able to put up the window treatments yet. As soon as those are in I can finally be done with this nursery. Here are the pics of what we got so far with some cute letters from my shower on the windowsills for good measure.

And here's me at 37 weeks:

36 weeks

I'm doing this update late but I thought I would post as if I did this last week ;)

We had our hospital tour on Oct 3rd. It looks like it will be a good place to have a baby. The lady who gave the tour was like 100 years old and a former childbirth education instructor so there was some odd "here's something in the room you can focus on" suggestions. When I asked if they had WiFi the conversation went like this:

Me: Do you guys have WiFi

Old lady: What?

Me: Wireless internet?

OL: hmm....I think there might be somewhere to plug that in around here....I don't really know...

Me: great

A few minutes later Dan found a WiFi box in the hallway so hopefully I can get online and chat with people and update the board as I'm going through the labor process. Obviously, I have no idea how it's all going to go down so who knows what kind of time I'll have.

On Monday (Oct 5th) I had my 36 week appt. I was already 2 cm dialated! It's hard to believe I'm already making progress towards having this baby. I think I started to lose my mucous plug later in the week too - yet another step closer. This kind of made me freak out and I set up my nursery with temporary furniture (PNP where crib goes and plastic three drawer thing where dresser goes). We did get our glider and ottomen and I picked up a side table at Target so they are there and Catalina-tested.

The walls are done!

Just thought I would do a quick update to show the walls of the nursery. We finally have the room all cleared out of equipment and vacuumed so it's all ready for the furniture (tick tock tick tock - that reminds me, I should find a cute clock!). We ordered it on the Fourth of July weekend and it's still not here...my patience is wearing thin.... I also ordered some shades from JC Penney that should be here in the next week or so. Anyway, here is the nursery so far!

And because you all enjoy it, here's me at 34 weeks:

Let's not forget the star of the show!

Now that we're all caught up nursery-wise....lets get caught up baby-wise! I had an ultrasound a couple weeks ago to check on my low-lying placenta. Not only did I get another good view of my baby, but my placenta has moved up and out of the danger zone! I'm so glad (at least for now) I don't have to worry about placenta previa or anything. They said he looked to be just over 4 lbs so he's growing great! Here are the pictures from the ultrasound:

here he has his foot right next to his head...I don't know where he gets this flexiblity!

pretty soon after this picture was printed, I got one of those belly-shaking kicks and I said "I bet that foot isn't by his head anymore" and sure enough it wasn't. I guess that's how he can get the momentum needed to kick me like that. It was so funny to be able to see that!
Here he is flexing his muscles for the ladies:

The next three are face pictures. The profile one has his umbilical cord right in front of his mouth so it looks like he's blowing a bubble.

I know a lot of people can't really tell what they're looking at but I think if you use some imagination you can see just how cute this baby will be - not that I'm biased or anything ;)

And here's the view from the outside - 32 weeks along!

Other Nursery projects

I decided to just make another post because it's so beyond annoying putting pictures in these blog entries. In our baby care research, one of the way to help prevent SIDS is to install a ceiling fan. One of our friends who recently had a baby also said that her baby really likes to stare at ceiling fans and when we found one for like 60% off we figured it was meant to be! I'm glad Dan is willing to take on these projects, I know I wouldn't have the patience. Anything electrical involves a fair degree of slowing down and being really careful so you don't like electrocute yourself or something...I'm no good at slowing down, so I decided I will not do electrical things and just stick to painting (which I do the best). Dan worked on the ceiling fan while I was working last weekend and even though he had a few set backs (one involving a rather large hole in the wall that I'll have to repair) it is now mounted and we are just trying to get it balanced:

Today, I completed the Tree project. I bet you were thinking that was done but I was holding out on you! It's actually a FAMILY Tree project. I got baby pictures of myself, Dan and our parents and framed and mounted them on the tree. I think it turned out really cute!

I'm working on getting some shades for the windows so that will be the next big thing to be done in there. I sure hope our furniture comes in soon...I'm really getting sick of waiting for it!

Nursery Progess - Closets!

Yes, it's been a while since I updated again. We've been hard at work getting the closets done - ClosetS - plural! Since Dan's clothes and some random other stuff was in the nursery closet, we had to get that stuff out before we could redo it for the baby. We decided to convert the den closet into Dan's closet since it was basically only being used for random office things and other random things that could easily be either thown away or moved elsewhere. So we bought another shelving unit for the basement and a small closed cabinet for the den. We moved all the random things down to the basement and the office things into the cabinet so they would still be where they are needed. Then we tore out the existing rail and shelves and installed 2 rails and an upper shelf to take care of Dan's stuff. I think it turned out pretty good!

Before (this was taken a while ago just to laugh at the cat, but it looked pretty much like this):

After:

Now we could tackle the nursery closet! First we tore out the existing stuff then we installed a high rail and three shelves on either side to best utilize the space. For further storage we put a small drawered closet organizer in the middle. I painted everything white including the closet doors and trim and as an added touch, put cute little animal drawer pulls on for handles.

Original set up:

The shelves:

Open door view:

Closed door:

This is what the drawer pulls look like (of course ours are on a white background) I'm looking forward to moving the baby stuff into the closet - probably won't be too much longer before I'll be able to do that!