Fertility, Pregnancy, Baby stuff

Would You Rather

~ Girlmom ~ 3 Comments

Well, I made it 4 weeks longer this pregnancy. I was really hoping to skip the early hospital stay this time but alas here I am.
Last night I was getting contractions but this time they were coming while I was resting and they were 10 minutes apart. I hoped after a nights sleep they would go away and they did. By early afternoon they were back and coming consistently. The emotions hit me, maybe I knew what was going to happen if I went to triage but I hoped for the best.
When I got there things moved fast, I was strapped up to the monitors and talking to the nurse within minutes. The contractions were coming every 3 to 4 minutes and this is on the nifedipine. She called the doctor and the doctor said…” No more contractions while you’re in that bed!” Okay no he didn’t say that.

Dr. Saffer is the doc that is always on duty when I come in. Even when I was admitted with Kaili, it was him who tended to me. He probably thinks I’m stalking him. He sat down, told me what a predicament I am and then gave me 2 options. Would you rather, go upstairs now ( be admitted) and have an IV drip of magnesium to see if we can knock these out or take the chance of going home. Then he said that if I go home and things get worse, if contractions get stronger or i have any bleeding that I will be admitted and will stay until the delivery. Choosing option A was a no brainer, although I cried like a baby for a few minutes.

Hours later I find myself in a decent hospital room, IV in my left arm, blood pressure cuff on my right. 3 nurses took turns trying to get my IV in, they all failed. Did you know that some hospitals have an IV unit? They are masters of the IV and they go room to room sticking needles in people. Well I got close and personal with them today when the nurse called them to put my IV in. I was impressed, it as quick and painless. The nurses really should just let the IV unit do it the first time instead of poking the patients numerous times before giving up. I’m still fascinated with the whole IV unit thing, what a strange job, and if it’s their job why are nurses doing it at all? Anyways…..

I am on a drip of magnesium that should knock out these contractions within 24 hours. The first couple hours I could already tell a difference, they were shorter and less uncomfortable. But it didn’t last, they are back and I just knocked out 8 in 30 minutes. The nurse gave me a double dose of nifedipine and now we wait. I don’t feel so hot but not nearly as bad as I remember feeling when I went through this with K.
There is so much more going on, monitors, water intake and outtake if you catch my drift. Baby will be monitored every 6 hours which means at 1:00a.m. I will be woken up, if I’m asleep.

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31 Week Bumpdate

~ Girlmom ~ 4 Comments

After my triage stint I had a few people tell me to “keep that bun cooking.” Clearly the only people who say this is are the ones who had an easy pregnancy or no pregnancy at all. Trust me, no one wants preterm labor, preterm meds or a baby in the NICU. So, I am doing my best to keep my bun cooking….sigh.

With that I have been on the Nifedipine for a week now and it doesn’t seem to be working as well anymore, can a medicine stop working? I imagine it can… I am starting to get contractions again when I am up and around. I have  no idea what happens if these meds stop working. Hopefully I can stay out of the triage until my next appointment on Tuesday.

I hate whining about pregnancy woes since there are so many women out there who would DIE to be in my flip flops. But lately  I get so frickin’ uncomfortable and it comes out of nowhere. Sometimes I feel great, forgetting that I am even pregnant to feeling like my ribs are going to spread and split out of my chest. Other times I feel like there is absolutely no more room in my belly for baby, zero. I don’t remember feeling like this with K and if I did it wasn’t this early.

I also didn’t feel  the side effects to Nifedipine like I do this time. Every.Single.Side.Effect hits me 15 minutes after I take a pill. Tiredness, dizziness,  hot feet, headaches. Blah blah blah. Ok i’m done.

Baby A has been moving around a ton so I haven’t had any problem getting my kick counts in, that helps relieve some stress especially when taking a new medicine. If you can believe it, because I can’t…I haven’t bought one single thing for this kid yet. She has most everything she needs, I think. Her nursery isn’t done, ahem, that will come later.

6 weeks to go.

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Well that Escalated Quickly

~ Girlmom ~ 1 Comment

Yesterday was my Dr. appointment. I was looking forward to scheduling our due date and telling her about these BH contractions I have been having. I left the house thinking I would be back in an hour, well that is what I told K and my mom, but I never came back. Ok, ok I came back but not until 6 hours later.

I was having  consistent contractions at the office and when I told my doc, she wanted to take all precautions to make sure these contractions weren’t “doing anything” i.e. changing my cervix. Thing is I can’t have a normal cervical check with placenta previa, so she had a few other options and she wanted to do them all.

First she gave me a FFN test. FFN is a“glue-like” protein that bonds your developing baby to your uterus.” Your body will secrete some of this FFN when your body is getting ready to deliver baby. It’s done almost in the same fashion as a pap-smear and they use a cotton swab to test your lady bits. Let me just say that having a speculum in during pregnancy is NOT fun.

Secondly she wanted to do a trans-vaginal ultrasound to check the length of my cervix. It looked good and long, so that was reassuring. Then she moved up to an abdominal ultrasound to take a look at baby and she noticed I was contracting, I actually didn’t feel that one..

Last she wanted me to take my FFN test to Triage and have them run the test while I got put on the monitors to see how these contractions are looking.
But before all that fun could start, first things first. The due date. She surprised me when she said she wanted to deliver baby A at 37 weeks. I knew it would be early, I didn’t think that early. She said with my previa and the uterine scarring, this is when she thinks is best. She did say there is a small chance baby may need some help with breathing in the NICU after delivery but it’s a small enough chance that she is confident in this date.

We will be meeting baby A on July 10th.

After all things were set in motion, I went down the road to the hospital. Once I walked inside ALL THE MEMORIES came flooding back.

To be continued…

29 Week Bumpdate

~ Girlmom ~ 2 Comments

For some reason I thought with getting pregnant in November I would only have to endure a month of summer weather. This past week it has been in the high 90’s even reaching the triple digits. We also have a ridiculous amount of fires burning through San Diego, according to the San Diego fire chief, “mother nature is pissed off.”

Today the heat really got to me and I felt like I had taken a sleeping pill, just drag me along because I can’t move.

29 weeks. I am having a LOT of braxton hicks  (BH) contractions. Pretty much every time I get up, bend over or do some walking I get them. They do go away when I sit down, that is all that matters for now. This was the exact same day I started getting consistent BH with Kaili and ended up at the hospital. I am optimistic that this pregnancy, I will forgo that part.

Kaili has become quite emotional the past few days. I’m not sure if it’s the changes happening in and around our lives or if it’s an age thing…probably both.  When she’s emotional, I’m emotional and lord knows I don’t need to be any more emotional.

Looking forward to staying on my feet the last bit of this pregnancy, bring on 30 weeks.

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28 Week Bumpdate

~ Girlmom ~ 4 Comments

For the past week I have been getting a really bad upper right quadrant pain after being active. I finally gave in and went to see my doc. We ruled out the gallbladder or my liver for the cause of pain so I guess it’s just a muscle.. Hopefully it will go away on it own or maybe it’s with me for the duration of this pregnancy. Either way it’s a big fat nuisance.

28 weeks marks the start of kick counts. I am supposed to set aside a couple hours a day to lay quietly and make sure I get 10 kicks out of baby in that hour, once in the morning and once at night. For the most part she is pretty active so I wont need to do this unless she is being sleepy.

Kaili likes to “see” the baby or talk to her at least once a day. She will scream, “hello baby”. Or when she elbows me in the belly, which is a daily occurrence, she will rub my belly and say ” sorry baby, i didn’t mean to hurt you.” She is going to be the best big sister.
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Speaking of big sister, where can I get one of those cute shirts so she can sport it at the hospital? I guess Google can help me out.
There are some last minute home projects we would like to get done before baby A gets here. Shane has been a rockstar getting his to-do list checked off. Me, I am all about sitting in the sun thinking about how nice it would be for someone to come in and paint my living room for me…hint hint. I guess I should probably get on it huh?

Besides the first trimester, this pregnancy has been easy, too easy. I can see why women keep having babies, being pregnant isn’t that bad if things go well. I really hope I didn’t just jinx myself…pregnancy gods, be nice. However that doesn’t mean I am not done being pregnant because I am. Just because a pregnancy isn’t hard, doesn’t mean it’s fun. All those women who say they loooove being pregnant are crazy or delusional. I know it’s taboo to complain about pregnancy when we struggled to get pregnant. All those women who can’t get pregnant, how dare I! I guess I feel like I get a free pass to complain since all I went through to get here,I can say what I want. Nausea, heartburn, aches and pains, allergies, exhaustion, sleepless nights, a constantly full bladder, bed rest, restrictions = no fun. And feeling a tiny human move inside you is the strangest thing ever, an amazing thing but it’s still strange.

I am eager for my next Dr. appt so we can get the due date on the calendar. I am ready to start the countdown. It would be nice for things end on a high note.

Here is baby A at 27 weeks 6 days.

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27 Week Bumpdate

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I am counting 27 weeks as the beginning of my third trimester since I doubt my pregnancy will go past 39 weeks…so there!

I had my ultrasound to check on the previa and my stupid placenta hasn’t moved. So I carry on as is until my next Dr. appointment until I am told what happens next. Does this change the c-section date? Will I have another ultrasound? I guess we will find out in a couple weeks.

Baby A looks good. She is head down and weighing about 2 lbs. 2 0z.

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Other than the allergies that are kicking my ass I am feeling pretty good. My back starts to hurt after being on my feet awhile  but gets better with rest.

Kaili had her first experience at Party City and I think she enjoyed herself.

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When I turned my back for even a second, she had tossed every item that she could reach into the cart. I might need to take up stripping to afford her shopping habits. Going to have to find a club where  all the clientele have c-section scar fetishes.

I dug up this old picture of me and thought a side by side comparison would be fun. Here is me and Kaili at 3 years old.

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The Magic Word

~ Girlmom ~ 2 Comments

Years ago, somebody told me “no one wants to hear about what happens in your dreams.” I have never forgotten that. I think I started keeping them to myself more often than not since that moment. But sometimes dreams are just too crazy not to share.  It’s good to know you’re not the only one with deranged thoughts.

I also remember being told that if you die in your dreams you die in real life. Then one night I saw myself perish in a plane crash and well, I am still here, so clearly I am God. Or Jesus, or Jesus’ sister. Wait did Jesus have a sister? I know he had brothers, I bet he did but the bible writers were all “nah, let’s keep it just the guys.” Typical.

The past few months I have had some gnarly dreams. Most of them revolve around something bad happening to Kaili, really bad, scary things. I will spare you the details because…well “no one wants to hear about what happens in your dreams.”  I assume it’s because my hormones are all cray, but they make me want to bind her with bubble wrap and keep her from growing up. Because there is NO way I am letting her  do anything alone and I am going to follow her around until she goes to college.

For now I will relish  in this video. My most favorite word ever.

The Magic Word video

24 Week Bumpdate

~ Girlmom ~ 6 Comments

So this has been floating around Facebook.

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Funny right? I thought so, then after a few minutes I wanted to comment on the picture and ask them if they wanted to give us some money for all our “catching” doctor visits.

I didn’t, just so you know. I am well aware that the general population has limited interest in my reproductive history. But what can I say, I lost my gynecological shame years ago. Infertilty can turn a woman brazen, hell I will pretty much open my legs for anyone in a white coat.

What the hell did she just say?

I thought about posting this.

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I didn’t, just so you know.

24 weeks pregnant = 6 months right? I am pretty sure but I’ve never been good at math. For the most part I am feeling pretty good. I have been getting some more contractions and some side and back pain when I am on my feet for awhile. . But it goes away when I put my feet up so that’s good. I am finding it harder to keep my balance while working out but I haven’t fallen over in front of anyone yet.Other than that not much has changed.

I am eager for my next ultrasound to check on the previa, if the Dr. could lift my pelvic rest restrictions, that would be great. Also if they could confirm that these contractions aren’t doing any harm that would help ease my mind.

Only a kajillion days to go.

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Potty Trial

~ Girlmom ~ 2 Comments

Kaili came tearing into my room around 6 am. She climbed into my bed and gave me a hug, it’s so hard to kick her out when she does that. After breakfast she wanted to go pee in the potty, I decided to leave her diaper off for the duration of the morning and through lunch, just to see how she would do. There were no issues…how can this be?  She went to the bathroom when she needed to and on her own. I reminded her that she didn’t have a diaper on every 20 minutes or so but that is the only role I played . Clearly it’s not a matter of can she do it, it’s will she do it and do it consistently. She asked to put a diaper back on after she ate lunch, I guess a few hours was enough.

Once she wakes from nap we are headed to Target for big girl underwear and stickers. We will try potting training this weekend  when we don’t have to leave the house. What do I do if she asks for a diaper? Advice?

I finally went through Kaili’s baby clothes, well I went through newborn to 6 months. Baby steps. Trying to wrap my head around having a baby in the house again and ALL THE CRAP that goes along with them.

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Maybe if I don’t think about it… but then what will I obsess over?

20 Week Bumpdate

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20 weeks people, half way! This pregnancy is moving along at a nice speed, being able to move around really helps the days go by a tad quicker.

Baby is the size of a banana, who comes up with these fruits? I am feeling baby A move more each day. Yes, we have settled on a name, no I can’t tell you yet.

I have been feeling great these last couple months, somedays I even forget that I am pregnant. But, the past few days have been met with contractions, the more I have the more uncomfortable they get. They do tend to go away with rest but sometimes they come back while resting…soo…. Anyways, lets just hope they don’t act like a bitch and land me on bed rest.

I have my monthly checkup next week. Seems like forever since I have seen a doctor, so different from when I was pregnant with Kaili.

I still haven’t done ANY shopping for the babe, I really can’t believe it.  I haven’t gone through K’s baby things, put much thought into her nursery or done much of anything now that I think about it. Probably should get on that. Maybe today…