First week home

Our first week as a family of 4 has been a little rocky.  Between me getting sick, Mark getting sick, Abbie going through an “adjustment phase” and Sadie (our Dachshund) losing function of her back legs again, it’s been a trying time.

I felt great on Friday and Saturday and even Sunday morning.  Friday we stopped by the commissary on our way home from the hospital and I ran into the flight doc there.  He was shocked to see me out and about, but I felt pretty good, considering I’d just pushed out an almost 9lb kid 26 hrs before.  Luckily he was there because I had a question for him about what to use on Ben, so I chased him down and he was kind enough to go to the medicine aisle with me and telling me exactly what to get.  Our first night at home, Ben slept from 2:30am to 8:30am.  What a tease…

Saturday we just hung out at the house all day, mainly trying to deal with Abbie.  She seemed to be fine with Ben – she loves to give him kisses and wants to hold him constantly – but she was having melt downs left and right.  Pretty much any time she was told no, it was a HUGE ordeal and she’d cry and throw a huge fit.  I was wondering what the heck I’d gotten myself in to.  She was very abstinent about EVERYTHING and she was more exhausting than Ben was.  Thank GOD Mark actually got paternity leave this time around and he was home to help me deal with her.  He’s been playing with her a lot and I’m a little lot worried about how she’ll deal with him going back to work, because I can’t play with her for 8 hours a day like he has been.

Sunday we got up and went to church and actually got there on time!  We dropped Abbie off in the nursery (which she LOVES) and took Ben to church with us.  We held him and he slept through it all and then the chaplain introduced him to the church, which was fun.  We sang “How Great is Our God” by Chris Tomlin, and I cried through the whole thing.  I just can’t believe how lucky we are to have two beautiful, healthy kids.

After we got home from church, I was pretty tired, and I started getting the chills.  I didn’t really think anything of it, I just piled on the blankets and put a space heater on in front of the chair I was sitting in and pretty soon I was sweating and taking my sweatshirt off.  A while later I started to get chilled again (the kind of chills that make you shaky), so I took my temp and it was 100.2.  So that freaked me out because it said in my discharge paperwork that if I got a temp over 100.4 that I needed to go to the ER and I REALLY didn’t want to go to the Pordenone hospital ER.  I progressively got worse and my fever got up to almost 103 and I decided to call the base to see what they said.  They told me to take Tylenol and call first thing in the morning for an appointment.

So Monday morning I went to the clinic on base and they diagnosed me with mastitis, but all along, I didn’t think I had mastitis.  They put me on a high dose of antibiotics and gave me Percocet and told me things would get much worse before they got better, but that never happened.  And the next day Mark got a fever, so I’m about 110% sure that whatever I had wasn’t mastitis.  We both felt better within 24 hours, just still really sleep deprived since Ben pretty much doesn’t sleep from about 11pm – 3am, and he’s almost inconsolable during that time also.  It’s completely exhausting and frustrating, but I keep telling myself that this phase doesn’t last long and I need to enjoy him being tiny while he is tiny.

Ben sleeps great from like 9am until almost 2pm.  He’ll wake up to eat and then usually goes right back to sleep.  He doesn’t sleep very well in the bassinet we got him, but he sleeps great in the swing and in this travel sling thing that was given to us.  I think because he’s not flat in the swing and the sling, but he is flat in the bed.  I tried to prop up the head end of his bassinet last night though, and he still didn’t sleep very well in it, so I’m not sure what that’s about or how to get him to sleep better in his bassinet.  I’m sure it’ll come with time, I’m just not very patient when I’ve been asleep for 15 mins and he’s up screaming for the next 3 hours.

Overall, though, things are going alright.  I’d forgotten how tough the newborn stage is, although Ben is a relatively easy baby, compared to Abbie.  I’m very nervous about Mark going back to work and me having to deal with both kids by myself after having not slept most of the night, but I guess that’s part of the rite of passage.  Luckily Mark won’t be going TDY until Ben’s over a month old, so hopefully I’ll have the hang of things by then.  He sure is a cute little thing!

Our hospital stay

The worst part of recovering was waiting for my epidural to fully wear off.  The nurse kept threatening to put the catheter in again if I didn’t get up and walk to the bathroom by myself, and I REALLY didn’t want that happening, especially since the epi had worn off everywhere except for my right leg.  My left leg was fine, but basically from just below my right knee to about 5-6 inches above it was still numb for a few hours afterwards.  I did get up to go to the bathroom, with the help of Mark and the nurse, but I don’t think I could have walked by myself that time without my knee giving out.  It was really weird sitting in the bed and having to ask Mark to move my leg when I wanted it moved.  It would start falling off the side of the bed and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

We were moved to another, much smaller, room during the night because they were inducing someone else in the morning and needed the room we were in.  The new room didn’t have a tv though.  Bummer.  The night nurse was kind enough to wait for my epi to fully wear off before she gave him a bath so I could help.  I had wanted to help give Abbie a bath, but they gave her one very shortly after I had her.  They waited almost 10 hours for me to be able to stand on my leg comfortably to help with his bath.  He wasn’t a big fan, but he did like his hair being washed.

I felt really good after having him.  I wasn’t very sore, and I was able to take a shower, which made me feel a ton better.  Mark spent the night in the hospital with us, which I was thankful for.  He slept most of the time, and got really mad when I woke him up to nurse him, so I gave up after a half hour and he just went back to sleep.

The next morning Mark went home and got Abbie to bring her to the hospital.  Brittney was up visiting on her lunch break so she took these pictures for us.  (Thanks Brittney!)  Abbie came in to see me and walked right by Ben without even seeing him in the bassinet.  I asked her if she wanted to see her baby brother and told her he was right behind her and she very slowly turned her head around to look at him.  It was really cute.  And she immediately wanted to hold him.

She was really in awe of him, and it was so cute to watch her just stare at him.  We were both released from the hospital less than 26 hrs after I had him, so we only spent one night in the hospital.  SO different than the 4 we spent there with Abbie.  I still cannot get over how easy this birth was.  I hope any future births go this well!

Our 2nd birth story

Ben’s birth ended up being WAY different than what I was expecting it to be.  I told Mark that whether or not I wanted more kids depended on how his birth went, and if all the rest of my births could be just like this one, I’d have 5 more kids!  (If someone else was paying for all their expenses, that is.)

We got up at 6:09am, and I was really nervous.  VERY nervous.  Like, feeling like I was going to puke nervous.  As the day went on, I got less nervous, but I was ready to call the whole thing off in the morning.  We got ready, I talked to my friend Jennifer about last minute stuff (she came and stayed at our house to watch Abbie and the dogs for us) and we were on our way.  We got to the hospital at 7:32am and I was in the gown, in the hospital bed by 7:45am.

One of the most painful parts of the birth, was getting the stupid IV in.  On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being high), the pain was about a 5, and it took them 2 tries – one on each wrist.  Luckily they got it in in 10 mins, vs the almost hour and a half it took with Abbie’s birth.  I had made sure I drank water though, to help make my veins bigger this time around.  They started an IV drip around 8:15am and I was started on 6ml/hr of Pitocin at 9:13am.  I’d been having contractions for days and this made them be a little more frequent, but my pain level was 1 out of 10. 

At 11:15am, the put the IV drip at max flow and the Pitocin was up to 12ml/hr and my pain level during contractions was 3 out of 10.  They were coming about every 4 minutes and lasting 30 seconds.  Nothing unbearable.  Mark and I were watching TV and I was fairly relaxed at this point.  They took my blood sugar every hour while I was in labor and it got down to 64, so they let me have an orange juice to get it up some.  Otherwise I wasn’t allowed anything to eat – not even ice.

Around 12pm, the nurse told me that the Dr wanted to break my water to pick things up after he was done with a surgery he was doing, so they advised me to get the epidural so they could make sure everything worked before he did that, since that would probably pick up the intensity of my labor a little bit.  I agreed, but I’ll admit, I was nervous.  Everything just seemed so “synthetic”, and I know that when you force labor to happen instead of letting it come on it’s own, your chances of c-sections go up quite a bit.  So the anesthesiologist came in and gave her little schpeel about risks of an epi and all that.  And then at 12:15pm she gave me the epidural.  It took her about 8 minutes (according to Mark’s notes), and it hurt some, but again wasn’t TOO unbearable, and it only hurt for a bit.  It basically felt like someone was pushing really hard on a bad bruise for a few minutes.  I wanted to squeeze Mark’s hand during that part and I did some deep breathing, but looking back, it wasn’t too bad.  Pain was probably 6 out of 10 again.  At 12:33pm, they gave me Ropiphicane (sp?) in the epidural which started to numb me.

Around 12:45pm Mark ran to Subway to get some lunch and at 1pm, they gave me a catheter, and said I was 6cm dilated.  (The nurse had checked me earlier – which hurt a LOT – and she said I was around 4cm dilated.)  Around 1:40pm I rated my contraction pain at 4 out of 10.  I could feel them, and they hurt, but again, nothing unbearable.  Even with the epi, there was one spot under my belly on my left side that I could definitely feel the contraction pain.  I could still feel my belly get hard all over, but that one spot hurt a bunch.  The nurse checked me again at 1:39pm and said I was still 6cm and he was at –1 or –2.  We were still waiting for the Dr to be done with surgery to break my water.  At 1:55pm, the anesthesiologist gave me more meds in the epi to help with the pain I was feeling during the contractions.

After she gave me more drugs, I finally found a decent position and actually fell asleep for 10-15 mins.  The problem was I had pretty much zero use of my legs from the extra medicine she gave me.  I couldn’t get comfortable in bed and my back was starting to hurt and I couldn’t move myself at all, so I had to try to tell Mark and the nurse what position I wanted to be in, and if it didn’t work they had to move me again.  Mark was pretty agreeable to helping me obviously, but the nurse wasn’t, so it was kind of awkward.  At 2:40 the nurse discovered my water had broken on its own.  I had kind of figured it did because I felt a little pop, but I didn’t say anything to her about it since sometimes I felt like I was bothering her anyway.

So around 3pm I told her I had the “I have to poop” feeling during contractions.  I knew he was low.  I don’t think she believed me though, so she waited though about 5 more contractions and me telling her every time that I think he’s coming, to check me.  She finally checked me at 3:15pm and I knew as soon as she did it that he was coming.  She got a funny look on her face and said “I’m going to get the doctor”.  I was fully dilated and he was at a +2.  She left the room and I laid there on my side and cried.  This was the part I’d been worrying about for the past month and a half and if there were going to be problems, it was going to be now.  Mark reassured me and told me it would be okay and I told him that I really had a feeling that this baby was smaller than Abbie was, but I didn’t want to say that publicly and then be wrong about it.

The doctor got in there and I was still on my side (bc I couldn’t move at all) and he said, “Ok, show me what a good pusher you are.”  (I’d told him before that I did well pushing with Abbie.)  So while I was still on my side with them holding my leg up, I gave like half a push and he was like, “Ok! Stop”, and started getting his gear on really quick.  They got me on to my back and switched the bed quickly and when he was positioned he told me to push with the next contraction.  So with the next contraction I pushed for like 10 seconds, took a breath, and pushed for maybe another 5 seconds and out came baby Ben!  It was a weird feeling because I could feeling him come down and out when I pushed.  It didn’t hurt at all, but I could feel him coming out on the inside.  He was born at 3:32pm on December 8th, and he cried when they put him on me, and so did I.  He ended up being 8lb 15.2oz and was 20” long.  All that worrying for nothing!!

To be continued…

A day in the life….

I’ve seen a few people do this on their blogs, and I decided to join in, while I still remember it.  I like to look back on my old blog posts, and I thought a few years down the road it would be fun to look back and see what my daily life is like now.
So here’s a look at my daily routine.  I’ve estimated times since I don’t have the time, or energy, to go through the day writing down a minute by minute summary of what I do.  But this is the jist of it.
Sometime between 4:30am and 7:30am: get up and make Mark’s coffee and breakfast for him and get his lunch ready to go, while he’s taking a shower.  Say goodbye to Mark and go back to bed.
8:30-9am – Wake up.  Get dressed.  Do make-up (sometimes) and hair.  Let dogs out and give them food and water.
9 – 9:15am – Wake Abbie up if she doesn’t wake up on her own.  Change her, get her dressed.  Sometimes we snuggle for a little bit before she gets out of bed, if we have time.
9:15 - 9:45am – Make Abbie and me breakfast.  Try to convince Abbie to eat all of her breakfast.  Check my emails and blogs and Facebook and talk to Abbie.  (On days Abbie goes to the sitters, we leave at 9:45am and I drop her off at 10am and then go run errands and/or eat lunch with friends or come back home and clean or do crafts until 1pm, when I pick her up.)
9:45 -11am (ish) – If we’re at home, Abbie usually plays while I clean or do laundry or write blogs or letters.  Sometimes I’ll turn on the TV for her to watch while she drinks her milk, sometimes she just plays in her room and the living room.
11 – 2pm (ish) – We almost always go to base.  Usually we try to meet Mark or a friend for lunch and we’ll go check the mail and get groceries.  Sometimes I take her to the park, or I’ll take her (and her baby) for a walk in the stroller if I’m feeling up to it.  Lately I’ve been going to my NST’s or other doctors appointments also.  We try to leave base between 1:30 and 1:45 to make it home by 2pm.
2 – 4:30pm – Abbie naps.  I usually try to get her down between 2 and 2:30pm, and she’ll usually lay in there and talk for 10-20 mins before she actually falls asleep.  Usually she’ll sleep until at leave 4pm, but sometimes as long as 4:45pm.  I don’t let her sleep past 4:45 and usually try to wake her up by 4:30pm if she isn’t already awake.  While she naps, lately, I’ve been napping too.  “Lately”, as in, the past 8 months…  I love naps, but especially right now.
4:30 – 6:30pm – Abbie and I hang out.  We read books and do puzzles and usually eat a snack.  Sometimes we snuggle on the couch and watch TV or I’ll turn one of her shows on for her to watch while I work on the computer or clean again.
6:30 – 7:15pm – Mark usually gets home and we talk while he plays with Abbie and I get dinner ready.
7:15 – 7:45pm – Eat dinner and try to carry on a conversation with Mark, which usually doesn’t happen.  Sometimes it does, just with 14 interruptions per sentence from Abbie.
7:45 – 8:45pm – Clean up kitchen from dinner, play with Abbie, try to get more cleaning/chores done, make lists for next day, clean up living room and Abbie’s room.
8:45 – 9:15pm (ish) – Get Abbie ready for bed.  Bath (usually every other day), books, brush teeth and tuck her in to bed.  Mark usually does her night time routine with her, except for brushing her teeth.  I do that and then we both tuck her in to bed together.
9:15 – 10pm – Try to finish stuff up in the kitchen/living room.  Sometimes we’ll try to watch TV or I finish stuff up on the computer and Mark messes around on his computer too.  Abbie usually calls me in once or twice for a few more kisses or to tell me something.  If she can hear us downstairs, she’ll keep calling for us, so we try to either come up to our room or to go to the basement so I can sew and Mark can be on the big computer.
10 – 11:30pm – Mark and I watch shows upstairs, or read or talk and then we go to bed.  Mark usually falls asleep before me since he doesn’t get the 2 hr naps every day like I do.
12:30am – I get up to pee.
2:45am – I get up to pee.
4:30 – 6:30am – Sometime in there I get up to pee again, usually when Mark gets up to get ready for work.
So there you have it.  That’s our typical day.  Sometimes on the weekends we’ll sleep in until 9:30am or so if Abbie lets us.  She goes to bed later than a lot of kids her age I think, but that’s because I don’t want to get up with her at 6am and Mark usually doesn’t get home from work until close to 7pm at night so he wants to spend a few hours with her before she goes to bed anyway.  It works out well for us and I hope I can get the little guy on this sort of schedule sometime also, although I realize that’ll probably take a few months.

We’re having a baby tomorrow! (Take 2)

 

I’m being induced tomorrow.  I was looking back on my blog at my account of Abbie’s birth and how I was feeling the day before I was induced with her.  (You can read that here.)  It’s kind of amazing how differently I feel this time around.  I really wish I felt the same way I did with her, but I don’t.  Honestly, I’m scared.  I feel guilty because everyone is asking me if I’m excited to meet my little boy, and I am, but I haven’t even thought about meeting him much.  I’m so focused on getting him out and all the problems that I could have with that, that I haven’t really thought much past the actual birth.  I’ll probably be so relieved to actually get him out okay that I’ll pass out after he’s born.  I did that once with a tetanus shot.  I was SO worked up about it that I passed out after I got it because I was so relieved it was over with.

Monday I had another NST and I met with the doctor who will be delivering our baby for the first time.  They have three doctors and a midwife on base, and I’d met the other 2 dr’s and the midwife, but not this dr.  I wish I had met him a long time ago.  I’d typically be nervous about having a male ob/gyn, but I REALLY like this guy.  He has a very calm, soothing demeanor about him, and he almost immediately put me at ease.  He was easy to talk to and smiled a lot and threw in a few jokes where appropriate and he knew when to be funny and when to be serious.  I pretty much drilled him with questions and he answered all of them honestly and without delay.  I didn’t feel like he was trying to beat around the bush at all, or sugar coat things for me, but on the other hand, he was very reassuring at the same time.  I told him all of my concerns, what I was afraid of, my experience with Abbie, what I was hoping for this birth and he was agreeable with everything I said.  He told me that he doesn’t see why there’s any reason I won’t be able to deliver vaginally and if that’s what I want, then he’ll do his best to make that happen.  I told him how people have me all freaked out about a shoulder dystocia with this baby and he said part of that is because on of the doctors here had a shoulder dystocia when they were in their residency and they lost the baby.  So that person is extra sensitive to shoulder dystocia’s and takes a very cautious approach to them.  But this doctors approach was that he thinks everything will be okay.  He said it’s his job to worry about that if the time comes and that he will be prepared for the worst but planning for the best.  There are a whole list of maneuvers they can do if a baby does have a shoulder dystocia and he said he’s never had to go past the fourth maneuver in his 10 years of being an ob/gyn.  So all of my chat with him was pretty reassuring, but I’m still scared.  I just want the birth to be over with, so I can start focusing on my baby boy and not worrying about the birth.

I had an ultrasound on Friday.  I was 38w1d and he was measuring 40w5d and weighed 9lb5oz.  My dr was laughing because the cut off for them offering me a primary c-section was 4250g, and baby boy was like 4232g, so he BARELY missed the cut off for that.  But it’s a moot point anyway since I don’t want a primary c-section at all.  If it comes to that, eventually, then fine.  But I’m just happy they’re going to give me an opportunity to have him vaginally.

I’ve been having some contractions lately.  They’re not consistent, but my whole belly gets as hard as a rock and it gets a little hard to breathe and is just kind of uncomfortable.  They don’t necessarily hurt, but sometimes I have to breathe a little funny through them.  I was timing them a few nights ago and they were coming about every 10 minutes and lasting about 2 minutes.  If I’m out and about, I have them pretty regularly, but if I lay down or put my feet up, they usually go away.  I had one of them wake me up last night, but it was mainly because I had to pee and the contraction made that even more noticeable.  Hopefully that means I’ll be more than 3-4cm dilated tomorrow when they induce me.  A few of my friends have said I look like I’ve dropped quite a bit, but I have no clue.  I can’t tell if I have or not.

So tomorrow is the big day.  I’m hoping and praying that everything turns out okay and that he doesn’t get stuck.  I’ll be very glad once the birth is over with.  Abbie is pretty excited about having a baby brother.  My friend, Jennifer, is going to come over early tomorrow morning to stay with Abbie for a day while Mark is with me at the hospital.  Then he’ll come home to be with her and he might drop her off with other friend later on so he can spend more time with us during the day without having to chase Abbie around.

Time to go get a few more things done and ready around the house!

2011 Christmas card demographics

I love doing Christmas cards.  This year was a little different because I wasn’t sure if I should wait until after the baby is born, or do them before.  I decided to send Christmas cards out before and then I’ll do birth announcements later on.  I thought I had done the demographics on my blog for my 2010 cards, but I can’t find them anywhere.  I did find the demographics for 2009 though.  I sent out 116 cards in 2009, and I think it was a few more than that last year.  This year I’ve sent out 150 and they’re all officially mailed!

Here’s where they went.

43 of them went to APO addresses here in Italy.  (Most of these are people in our squadron.)  I sent 25 to IL, and 24 to IA. 8 went to CO, 7 went to WI, 5 went to FL, 4 went to OK and 3 went to AZ, IN and VA.  Two went to MO, NC, SC, TX and UT.  And I sent 1 card to CA, GA, MI, NE, MN, NM, NV, SD, TN, and WA.

I also sent one to an APO address in Germany and one to an APO address in Japan.  And then one to Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Vatican City and Italy.  The nice thing about sending mail from an APO address to an APO address is that it’s free!  You don’t need to buy stamps, which saved me quite a bit of money.

So I sent cards to 8 different countries and 24 different states!  Part of the fun being involved with the military is that you end up knowing people from ALL over the place.  I’m going to try to keep track of where I receive them from this year.  I’ve only received one so far, unless you count the one I already got back in the mail that I’d sent…  I’ll have to resend that one.

There are probably few people in this world that love sending out Christmas cards (or any mail) as much as I do.  I get so excited when I get the cards I’ve ordered in the mail and I’m pretty happy with the way the Shutterfly ones turned out.  And I love hanging all the cards and pictures I receive all over my window sills for the holiday season.  I actually keep them all and put them in dated plastic bags.  Hopefully someday I’ll get around to actually organizing them all, but I have a bunch of other stuff to organize first.

Happy mailing and happy receiving to those of you that like Christmas cards as much as I do!

November 2011 Abbie-isms

**We picked Abbie up from a friend’s house and she was bouncing off the walls.  She got in the car and said, “I’m wound up!!!”.  On the car ride home, she said to Mark, “Daddy, do you want to wind me up when we get home?”.  (I occasionally tell Mark to not wind her up before bed time.  Apparently that didn’t slip by her.)                                                

**Abbie loves bologna and could probably live on the stuff if we let her.  However, she refuses to eat bologna unless you cut a face in it.  (Thank you very much, mom, for starting this wonderful, time consuming tradition.)

**Last night I got home from a squadron function and Abbie came running down the stairs into the garage to greet me.  I said hi to her and she said, “Hi mommy.  I’m so proud of you.”  Occasionally she’ll ask if I’m proud of her, or she’ll tell me one of her stuffed animals is so proud of her.

**At least a couple times a week Abbie will say, “Mommy!!” and I’ll say, “Yes Abbie?” and she’ll say, “I love you.”  It’s pretty sweet and makes me melt every time.

**Abbie and Mark LOVE to play together.  I think little girls need to be “roughed up” as much as little boys do by their daddies, and Abbie is all giggles and shrieks when Mark is wrestling with her.  Now, as soon as Mark walks in the door, Abbie will run up to him and say, “Daddy, do you want to tease me?!”  “Tease” is her code-word for rough house, but it’s amusing to hear her ask him like that.  We’ll also be in the car and she’ll ask him if he wants to tease her when we get home.

**Often times Mark and I will be trying to talk while we think Abbie is entertaining herself.  We’ll be in the kitchen and she’ll be talking with her stuffed animals in the living room.  Yesterday, this was the case, and I asked Mark if he looked in the bucket in the driveway.  (There is a HUGE beetle in there – seriously, the thing is over 2 inches long.)  Abbie and I had seen the beetle earlier and she had said she wanted to show it to daddy.  So I had no sooner asked him if he looked in the bucket and Abbie comes RUNNING over to us yelling that she wants to show daddy the bug.  It truly amazes me how that kid can monitor the airwaves.  She was literally talking with her toys and in a different room, but as soon as I mention the bucket, it triggers something in her brain and all of a sudden she’s part of the conversation.  We’re going to have to be careful about what we talk about when she’s around because she doesn’t miss a thing.

**We’re still working on Abbie not interrupting us when we’re trying to talk, and her waiting her turn.  Sometimes we won’t be talking at all and Abbie will ask out of no where, “Is it my turn now?”  We’ll tell her yes, she can have a turn and then she’ll say, “Uuuhhhhhmmmm” and try to think of something to talk about.  She’s not one for enjoying the silence at all.  Bummer for us…

**Abbie recently learned the word “frustrated”.  She was having some difficulty changing her baby doll’s diaper and she said, “Baby, you are really frustrating me!  I am getting very frustrated with this!”

**In one of Abbie’s favorite “Olivia” episodes, one of the characters says, “I cannot work under these conditions!!” and we have heard Abbie saying that a few times around the house now.

**Jets were taking off as we were walking in to the commissary on base to meet Mark for lunch.  Abbie did her normal excited yells about them and then added, “Goodbye jets!  Have a nice day!” as they were flying off.  I asked her if she thought her daddy was in one of those jets and she said, “No, there are other daddy’s flying those ones.”  Guess she understands that now, after all!

**Abbie and I had lunch with 2 of my friends and I was talking about how they had to break my water with Abbie’s birth.  Abbie picked up on that right away and asked me about it.  I told her they had to break my water to get her to come out.  She contemplated it for a second and then went back to eating.   That night at dinner, out of nowhere Abbie said, “Daddy, they had to break mommy’s waters to get me to come out.”  I think she kinda caught Mark off guard.

**Every time I try to get up from the couch or from sitting on the floor Abbie always asks me if I need help getting up and will RUN over to me to grab my hands to pull me up.  Or she tries to get behind me and push me up.  Such a big help!

**Tonight Abbie came up to me and told me it was time to take her blood sugar.  Ha.  I wish she didn’t even know what that was.

MFF and 5QF

 

1. If I could be on any reality TV show, I’d want to be on the Amazing Race with my husband because I think we’d kick butt at it, or Survivor, but I’m not sure I could handle it.  I wish they’d do a couple’s survivor so Mark and I could go on it together.  I think we’d do well then too.
2. This past Thanksgiving was  kind of a drag.  I couldn’t eat anything because of having just been diagnose with gestational diabetes and I was freaking out about my blood sugar the whole time and not exactly enjoying myself.  Plus we weren’t around family at all, so it didn’t feel the same.  But we did have a few nice dinners with friends, which was fun.
3. I’m looking forward to December because I am having a baby this month!  Well this week actually…  And I’m looking forward to the birth being over with, more than giving birth, if I’m completely honest...
4. One thing I’d like to accomplish this month is  successfully give birth to a healthy baby boy, preferably with no shoulder dystocia or emergency c-sections.
5. To me, winter is a time to cuddle up by the fire or go play in the snow.  Unfortunately, we don’t have a fireplace and it rarely snows in this part of Italy.  Oh well!

 

1. What is your favorite Christmas decoration in your house?  The Christmas lights that Mark hung up everywhere.  They really set the mood.

2. Do you finish your Christmas shopping early or are you a last minute type?  Usually I’m a mix of both, but living overseas, you kind of have to get things ordered way in advance so you have time to receive them and then ship them back to the States to all the appropriate people.  So you can’t really do anything last minute.  Although I did order stuff in advance, and it’s still not here, and most likely I won’t get it mailed out before baby boy arrives so it’s all going to be late anyway…  Oops!

3. When do you turn on your heat?  When it gets cold, whenever that might be.  But here in Italy, I don’t think it’s legal to turn it on before October 15 or something like that.

4. Do you ever wish your blog was private?  Sometimes I do, because I do use it as a journal of sorts, but then again, I’m a very open person and I welcome people’s suggestions and advice, so I’m okay with it being public.  I guess sometimes I just wish it was private from certain people.

5. Do you put your deodorant on before of after you put on your shirt?  Usually after, otherwise it gets all over my shirt!!

38 week appt

Today I had my 38 week appointment.  Mark was able to go with me, so that was really nice.  My blood pressure was a little high (140/85ish), but that’s not surprising since I was a little nervous about the appointment.  She checked me and I’m 3-4cm dilated, either 25 or 50% effaced (can’t remember what she said) and he’s still at a –3, so his head isn’t engaged at all.  Normally those exams don’t hurt, but wow…  This one hurt a lot.  I don’t know what she was doing, but it wasn’t pleasant, that’s for sure.

They have agreed to induce me in a week, so on December 8th, if they have room.  Since there are only 3 beds available at this hospital, they fill up rather quickly, especially since so many people are due around this time.  So HOPEFULLY I’ll be induced next Thursday, or even more hopefully, if I go in to labor on my own before then, they’ll have room for me.  I really don’t want to have to go to the Italian hospital, but I guess I’ll survive either way.

I also had an NST today – my quickest one yet.  I’m still fairly certain these things are pointless and they’re just covering their own butts by following protocol, but I was only hooked up to the machine for 10-15 mins and he was so active they got all the info they needed.  That’s usually the case, but I think today they needed the bed for someone else, so they wanted to get me out of there.  Whichever works, I guess, I just wish they wouldn’t waste my time on days when they’re not in a hurry.

My GD glucose numbers are a little bit all over the place, so I asked her if she could put me on a low dose of the meds to help control it and she’s putting me on 1/2 a pill, once a day.  Some of my numbers are in the 150-160’s, and they should be under 140, so she agreed to let me take the pills.  I just want to make sure he doesn’t have blood sugar issues when he comes out and I’m still trying to figure out serving sizes and what triggers my blood sugar to spike and what doesn’t.  I would rather take the pills to help me out in the meantime, even though I’m still going to be watching what I eat and trying to stick with the GD diet.

My next appointment is tomorrow for an ultrasound and then they’ll discuss those results with me and talk more about the induction on Monday, if I haven’t had him by then.  Part of me is excited we’re so close to the end, and part of me is pretty nervous.  They have me really freaked out about this birth and I’m worried about something going wrong and either him or me not being around for Christmas.  Morbid, I know, but it has crossed my mind more than once.

So we could use your prayers if you have any to spare – that they have room on base for us when the time comes, and that everything goes fairly smoothly.  T-7…..

PS:  And maybe one of these days Mark will have time to take pictures of me when I don’t look like crap.  We only seem to think about it when I’m around the house in sweats and a t-shirt, which I suppose is about 90% of the time now anyway.  Hopefully we’ll get a final picture of my belly before I give birth!