28 week labs

So I got another clean bill of pregnancy health today.  The results of my 1 hour glucose challenge were “well within” normal limits.  She didn’t say exactly what it was, but according to PAML anything from 50-129 mg/dL is good, so NO GESTATIONAL DIABETES, YES!!!!  YAY!!!  Just in case you’re not familiar (I know a lot of you are) with the glucose challenge, they make you drink this little sugar drink (which I thought tasted like Orange children’s Triaminic) and then sit around the waiting room for an hour before they draw your blood.  If your results are too high then they do a 2 or 3 hour glucose tolerance test to check for gestational diabetes. 

I am very slightly anemic she said, which is pretty normal, and not bad enough that they want me to take an iron supplement, just continue the prenatal vitamins.  So maybe I’ll have to eat some more burgers and steak.  And spinach.  But that might explain why I’ve been so dang tired.  Anyway, I’m just really really happy about the glucose thing. 

I woke up today feeling so weird!  I feel like the baby has relocated or shifted or something.  The lower part of my uterus feels so empty somehow, at least compared to yesterday.  And it’s way easier to pee!  Before today it felt kind of like my bladder was getting pinched in half or something and I couldn’t quite … well anyway.  Hehe.  It’s funny though because just yesterday I was reading articles on this website (spinningbabies.com) about the best positions for your baby to be in for delivery.  It recommended practicing proper “maternal posture” and inversions and such to keep your baby head down as much as possible as you get close to “the end”.  So I was practicing some of that last night (basically downward dog in yoga), maybe that did something.  Although it seems like I am still feeling the kicks and pokes in the same places.  I *think* I feel hands down low below my belly button, around my hip bones, and feet up higher by my ribs.  But I’m not really sure yet.  Sometimes  it feels like there are hands and feet all over the place (and more than 2 of each), so who knows?!?

Hiccups!

The other day a guy at work was telling me how it would drive his wife crazy when their baby got the hiccups during her pregnancy.  I guess it is fairly common and then what do you know, I am pretty sure my little Napa cabbage had the hiccups last night.  Of course it started immediately after I laid down to go to sleep.  But there it was, a relatively faint, rhythmic bumping.  I think it only lasted about 5 minutes so it wasn’t bad, but I can see how that would be very distracting.  So cute though!

I’ve already had to take the charm off my new belly button ring.  It was way too heavy and annoying.  Much better now though, and I’m not all paranoid about catching it on something and ripping the whole thing out.  Oww!!

What a difference 10 weeks makes!

Oh my! And I almost forgot... we picked up our glider yesterday, yay! This took about 5 minutes:

28 weeks pics

Well 28 weeks officially starts the 3rd trimester I guess, according to babycenter.com. Baby Seth is the size of a Napa cabbage now, but with appendages. He still moves around all over the place, but mainly just when people aren't touching my belly waiting for him to. I guess he is shy like that. Last night I played him some music with the headphones on my stomach. It really didn't seem to make much of a difference I don't think. He moved a lot during DMB Ants Marching but I'm sure it was just a coincidence.

Anyway, not a whole lot to share today. I'm still waking up. Eric got up early to go play in a golf tournament (brrrrrr!) so I'm all alone with my messy basement. I will try to make some progress on that today just so it's not a death trap for small children and animals like it is now. In the meantime, here are some lovely pictures for your viewing pleasure.


And here's a lovely close up of my new baby bling (Dr. H mentioned I might want to get something a little more flexible). Sorry if this is kind of gross, I am not skilled with airbrushing in Photoshop :)


I'm not quite sure how I feel about it yet. It's all long and dangly and I'm afraid it's going to get caught on something. Eric said if we were having a girl he might make me take it out (bully!). But since it's a boy I can keep it for now.

Healthy as a horse

Where did THAT expression come from? What about unhealthy horses?

Anyway… I had my annual health risk assessment at work today. They’ve been doing it every year since I’ve been with INHS, but this year there’s actually a financial incentive for participating and scoring well on the various “risk factors.” I was a *little* worried this year about my results. One of the risk factors is body fat percentage – clearly that one is a little out of whack for me, and I’ve noted that at the Dr.’s office my blood pressure has been a little higher than normal. So I had to have Dr. H fill out this little form and fax it in saying that I’m a perfectly healthy pregnant girl. I went ahead and did the onsite assessment too, just out of curiosity. To my surprise I still passed everything (except BF, which they didn’t bother measuring) with flying colors. My B/P was 118/62, and my blood glucose was 74!!! Sweet!! That makes me a lot less nervous about next week’s glucose tolerance test. My total cholesterol was 234, which for a non-pregnant person is borderline high. However, pregnancy makes your cholesterol go all crazy (who knew??) and since my HDL was 63 they wouldn’t have counted that as a risk factor anyway. The other risk factor is tobacco use, so that was a no brainer. So I am in good shape, yay!

Aside from that… my energy level has plummetted. By the end of a 9 hour day just sitting around at my desk I am thoroughly exhausted. And forget about doing anything at the end of the day, like shopping. Yesterday I had to go on an emergency hunt for pants after work and by the time I finally made a purchase at the 4^th store I visited I wanted to put my head down on the credit card machine and take a nap. So no more of that. Straight home to do yoga or straight to the gym from now on! The good news is that I seem to be sleeping better at night. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Last night when I was getting ready for bed I stood in front of the mirror for a long time putting lotion on my ginormous belly and staring at myself in shock and awe from all different angles. Thankfully I still do not have any stretch marks (knock on wood), but I still have 3 MONTHS TO GO! How is that even possible?!? Another thing that is so shocking is the force with which this child can press on the inside of my uterus. Not a lot of sudden kicks, but a lot of slow pushing and stretching. He’ll like push his foot (or something, I still can’t really tell for sure) out as hard as he can and then drag it from one side to the other. Pregnancy is so weird!! And cool. I feel so lucky and blessed to be able to experience all of this, I really do. Sometimes I feel bad that Eric doesn’t get to feel what I feel, but you know, he says he’s not jealous at all :) Men are funny like that.

Great start to the 3rd trimester

We have had a fabulous weekend, I must say. The carpets were clean and dry when I woke up (early) on Saturday morning. I picked up Eric from his sleepover and we went to breakfast at Frank's diner. Then we came home, ran the vacuum one last time and got to work putting the upstairs back together. Actually, Eric and Ruff put the upstairs together while I put the CRIB together:


Yay! I love it so much! So now we have a stroller/carseat AND a crib. We can officially take the baby home from the hospital and put him to bed. I guess we better get a mattress first, but anyway we're getting closer! Here I am at 27 weeks:



In the afternoon we went on a Costco run, and stopped by the mall to pick me up one more bra. 36DD. That's right, I am officially the same size as Pamela Anderson. Yikes. Saturday night we watched Gran Torino, which was surprisingly entertaining. I was very amused by Clint Eastwood snarling throughout the movie pretty much every racial slur in the book. Which was ironic given the relationships he ultimately develops with his neighbors. Anyway, good movie.

Today I got up and made blueberry muffins and put a chuck roast in the crock pot to stew all day. Eric just brought me a taste and it turned out very good! Yukon gold potatoes, leeks, celery, baby carrots, and Lipton onion soup mix. Yum (and so easy)! Then I got my computer set up in the new office, finally. I had time to upload a few pictures before I had to hop in the shower to get ready for our trip to Green Bluff! Grandma and Grandpa Haynes picked us up and we headed to get Auntie Jen before stopping off at Babies R Us so I could check the price on the dresser I've been eying. Still not on sale :( However, while we were there, we managed to score.... our GLIDER!!!! G&G decided to buy it for us for Christmas!!!! SOOOOOOOOOOOOO excited!!!!! I can't even freaking explain how happy that makes me. Thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU Ted and Marci! Eric and I went ahead and ordered the matching ottoman too since it was on sale. Yay! YAY! YAY! So that will be here in 1-3 weeks.

Then we went to Green Bluff, got some salted caramels, mmmm, some pumpkin doughnuts, mmmm, and a caramel apple. Delicious! On the way home we went to "not" Qdoba and had a very mediocre burrito. We tried to go to Qdoba but their power was out so they were CLOSED! It was devastating.

Tonight I did some major work cleaning and organizing our little storage space under the stairs. I think we might actually have room to put all of our junk, er, I mean STUFF away. I consolidated several boxes of Eric's random stuff into just a couple (one of which contains a big stack of letters from his old girlfriend Traci -- hee hee, more on that later). I still have a LOT of work to do down there but I feel really good about the progress we're making. Serious nesting going on around here and it feels awesome! My house will have never been so clean and organized. The prospect of which I find so comforting. Something tells me that once Seth arrives it is going to be pretty sweet to know exactly where everything is.

Well, time for bed. I'm sad to see this weekend come to an end. Next weekend I have to work, so Saturday won't be nearly as productive since I'll be very short on sleep I imagine. Then to Seattle the weekend after that, and THEN *hopefully* Mandy will be coming to visit the weekend after THAT! Can't wait!!

27 weeks - can't sleep

This whole waking up at the drop of a hat thing is reeeeally a drag. Wouldn’t really be a problem except that Eric gets home from work at like 2am EVERY NIGHT. I know he tries to be quiet but just the act of climbing into bed wakes me up just enough that I realize I have to pee, so I have to get up. Which wakes me up enough to feel Seth squirming around a bunch, as he has decided that 2am-4am is a good time to do his baby yoga. By then I am so wide awake that just Eric’s breathing is enough to keep me from falling back asleep. This morning I finally went up and slept on the couch for awhile from about 3:30-6:30am, at which time my alarm going off DOWNSTAIRS woke me up. Good grief. Those were the good old days when I could sleep through a category 5 hurricane if I needed to.

Incidentally, I looked into birth centers in Spokane, mainly out of curiosity. I really have no intention of switching providers at this point and I am pretty comfortable going to the hospital and practicing what I learned in 5^th grade D.A.R.E – “Just say no” to drugs. Anyway, there is just one birth center in Spokane and the next closest is 40 minutes from our house in Hayden, ID. The one in Spokane, well, it seems fine. But I’m going to be honest, this isn't the Seattle area by any means. I mean, seriously, some of those places have birthing suites that are FAR nicer than the hotel room I stayed in on my wedding night. And that is saying something. So bottom line, my options are pretty limited as far as that goes. I haven’t actually seen the birth suites at Sacred Heart yet but I have heard they are divine. I can do this. WE can do this. Damn the torpedoes!