7 Days....

7 Days....makes me think of "The Ring" but really, its 7 days until my due date. I was hoping that I wasn't going to be sitting around wasting my maternity leave on bedrest. But, alas.....no baby yet.
Here's me at 38 weeks and 4 days (gotta love my 87 chins and the maternity shirt that Jalee gave me that doesn't really fit, but I don't have much else!):

I've been havng quite a few contractions, sometimes they get regular, and they're getting stronger, but not productive yet.
Tuesday I had my dr appointment. My blood pressure was way high. Something like 162 over 90. They checked me and I'm almost 2 cm dilated and 80% thinned. She stripped my membranes, but if labor doesn't start in 24 hours, it didn't work...so yeah, didn't work. They reiterated the fact that I need to NOT do anything, no cleaning, no shopping, no sex (there goes that labor-inducing idea), etc. I go back this wednesday. On Thursday I went to the stress-test fetal monitoring, and my blood pressure was a lot better, I only had 3 contractions during the half hour, but they were stronger than last time. My amniotic fluid was a tad lower than they like, so they want to see me twice a week now, so I have another appointment for that tomorrow.
Friday night Rob's parents brought us Cafe Rio! YUM! That was so awesome of them! :D Yesterday and Today Rob has been doing a lot of cleaning, since I can't. But he's been amazing about it. He makes me food, cleans the kitchen, and anything else I need. It's nice that he's being so helpful because I really wanted the house clean before the baby comes.
Last monday a little birdie brought me some crib bedding!! Thank you!!!! So we're FINALLY completely ready in the baby's room. I had wanted to do a tropical/underwater theme, but everything was so expensive, so this works just as well, and I really do love it. The whole room isn't very fancy, so here's just a picture of the crib:

And now that Rob cleaned off the desk, Gizmo has a new place she likes to call her domain. And now if there's ANYTHING on the desk, she likes to knock it off on to the floor! (she's such a turd)

Gizmo has some really bad matted fur right now, we try to brush her a lot, but she just likes to attack the brush. The matts have been pretty easy to brush out or cut out before, but now I think we might have to break down and pay $100 for a groomer to shave her. It's so bad. (and I can't believe it costs that much!!)
My friend, Cami, brought her 5 month old over the other day to visit me and Gizmo did NOT know what to think of that! She hasn't been around any babies or anything, so she just watched from across the room very intently, then gradually came over to take a look, but just for a second. It will be interesting to see how the cats react with a baby here all the time!
Well, I am hoping that Kai decides to come soon or I'm going to go crazy on bedrest! And I am so sore all the time, that needs to end.

31 days and counting..

One month until the baby is here!! So crazy to think. I had a Dr. appointment on tuesday, everything's still going good. I'm measuring perfect and all seems well. My feet are still swelling like mad, and I'm still getting migraines. :(
I just keep checking my blood pressure to make sure I'm ok. Lately if I don't eat in a couple hours I get SOO shakey, lightheaded, sweaty, and hot. So I just gotta keep up on that. I am definately to the point of being DONE! I feel so huge and swollen and nothing fits me right now and my hips and pubic bone hurt all the time. In the evening I am so stiff. But one good thing is Rob's gotten to feel the baby move a ton lately. He sticks his foot or butt out a ton and it amazes Rob. Rob also will pull me to him and kiss my stomach, its so cute. I'm so excited and so freaked out at the same time. We have the car seat in the car and my bag is pretty much packed. I just wonder how my cats are going to handle this! :P I still don't know what I'm going to do after my maternity leave, I have to work, but don't want my baby in day care. I'm just praying that something works out. Or maybe I'll have to change jobs. Thats the LAST thing I want to do! My job pays well and I enjoy it, no other job will pay as good right now. Too bad Rob doesn't make double his pay!
My next Dr. appointment is next wednesday, I guess we'll see how that goes. I'll be 36 weeks, maybe they'll start checking me?

This is week 26!

185 days down…95 to go…
My next Dr. appointment is in 2 weeks, after I do my glucose test and then after that, I go see him every two weeks. Its getting closer! I went to the Dr last week and found out that I am gaining weight like a cow! Someone asked me the other day what I was having and I said, “Hopefully a calf, from the size of me!” I know, I need to be better when I talk about my weight, it’s just a difficult subject. I had worked so hard on Weight Watchers to get to my goal weight, and I had started to gain a little bit before I got pregnant, so this is really hard on me to watch my weight climb. I have gained more than the “recommended” amount for the pregnancy already, and I still have 3 months left… I just need to start making Rob go walking with me in the evenings, so I can get myself a little healthier. But this weight thing is killing me! This is me last week at 25 weeks:

Mothers Day is past and gone, and I'm a slacker, so HAPPY MOTHERS DAY MOM!! Rob and I went to his mom’s house just after noon and spent some time with them before heading to my mom’s for dinner with the fam. It was a nice evening. We all got to sit around and chat for a while and hold baby Lelah. She’s such a cute baby. And we watched all the kids run around and play.

I’m finally feeling some more distinct kicks in my tummy, and Rob’s even felt it. On Tuesday last week I felt some movement, so I stopped working to just stare and my belly, and I saw my stomach move, so I called Rob’s office and made him come down to see if he could see it too…which he did get to witness! He said it looked like a muscle spasm. I've seen more movement, and Rob got kicked in the head this last week. I think he's excited to finally be able to feel something. In the mornings I wake up on my side, and he’s usually jumping on the bed…..such a naughty little boy!! :P
And for a major headspin last week: We finally got an appointment with the Big Fix to get Gizmo neutered, and Rob took him in Thursday morning. Well they called him a few minutes later to tell Rob, “Uh, Gizmo is a female…so you need to bring $10 more dollars for the spay when you pick HER up” WHA WHA WHA????!!! FEMALE?!?! Rob and my brains hurt all day long trying to wrap our heads around the idea that this kitty that we’ve had for like 5 months is a FEMALE! The lady we got him from told us it was a male. And Gizmo TOTALLY acts like a male cat, I’ve NEVER seen a female cat act the way Gizmo does. We were floored! You see, Gizmo is long haired, and has lots of hair, so I never really thought I needed to double check what the lady told us. BUT I had joked a couple times with Rob, saying, “What if Gizmo is really a girl and we don’t know it!?” And Rob would say, “No, he acts too much like a boy, there’s no way”. Its funny that I had said that and BAM its really a girl. I felt so bad for her when we got her home from her surgery, she was so out of it and bobbly-headed. She just laid and slept in the pet carrier all night, and wouldn’t even get up at all. I was starting to get worried, because she hadn’t really drank anything and didn't eat, and was so lethargic. When I finally made myself to go bed, I made sure to listen for any meowing at night, but at 2:30 am, she came and jumped (shes not supposed to be jumping!) on the bed, and laid and slept on me. So I felt better knowing that she felt better. Poor kitty….what a hard day…..find out you’re female, not male, get your belly shaved, get anesthesia, get cut open and pieces taken out, and wake up confused! But Rob refuses to call Gizmo a “her” he says, “Nope, it’s a boy!” Too funny. Her incision is a little swollen, but I'm thinking she might be ok still. I call her my baby cow because her skin is spotted like a cow. She still loves her tummy petted!

To the doctor...

Like I said in my previous post, I’ve felt pretty queasy, but that’s about it. I should have knocked on wood. On Tuesday in the early hours of the morning I woke to my head just pounding! I tried to go back to sleep, but it wasn’t happening. So I just laid there very still until my alarm went off. I got up to go take a shower and get ready for work. My head just got worse…Lovely…a migraine. I was out of my migraine meds, but I wouldn’t be able to take those anyway! My migraines are usually visually triggered (lights, glare, bright colors, etc), there is only one time I can remember getting one in the middle of the night, it was in middle school. Since it was further into the migraine, the blind spots were gone already, so I tried to just get ready for work anyway. I had too much to do to miss work. As I started showering, the pain got SO much worse that it made me nauseous and I started violently dry heaving in the shower. Rob heard me and came in right when I collapsed to the tub. I plugged the tub and took a bath instead and Rob got me water and crackers. So I ate those and tried to just keep getting ready. When I was out of the bath and trying to brush my hair and all that, I got so weak, so I laid down for a minute and a few minutes later had to get to the toilet. I was violently throwing up the crackers. This was NOT going to happen. I had been trying to get ready for over an hour now, and I was going to be NO GOOD at work. So I finally called my manager and she told me to stay in bed, and call the doctor. So I laid back down, and laying still seemed to help a little. Rob called my OB doc and they said they had nothing I could take that he should take me to the ER or Instacare. So Rob called my family doctor instead and got me an appointment in a couple hours. When we went in, the Dr. talked about what kinds of drugs are graded certain ways because they can’t be given to pregnant women, but they had a shot they could give me that wouldn’t hurt the baby. It had something for the pain and something for nausea in it. And since we all know how much I LOVE shots you can imagine my excitement. But I was willing to do anything to stop the migraine. So they gave me a hugely painful injection and said they wanted to do an ultrasound so we’d better know how far along I was and hopefully see the heartbeat. He told me I’d start to be out of it from the shot, but they did the ultrasound in time for me to see it. We saw the heartbeat and he measured the baby at almost 7 weeks. After that, I was in a daze, the shot totally knocked me out. I went home and laid on the couch, and was barely able to lift my head to eat some soup. Good thing Rob was home to take care of me, the headache eased quite a bit, which was good. And the Dr. suggested me to take Vitamin B6 3 times a day to ease the nausea, and that seems to help a bit, along with a prescription for anti-nausea. So hopefully things will start to look up. I can tell I’ve been gaining weight already, but that’s because at night my appetite comes back more, so I eat when I feel I can. Rob has been amazingly good with me, he’s been doing his best to clean the house, he’s had to take over cleaning the cat pan, of course, and he’s been doing most of the cooking. I’m grateful that I have such a wonderful husband. It was cute, last night he said that he’d been thinking about seeing the heartbeat, and how much more real it seems. He thinks about the baby a lot, he says. So adorable!! I am NOW knocking on wood when I say I hope things stay going well!