Nov

7

3 Months

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Natalie turned 3 months old the other day. :) I know it’s been a while since I updated, but things have been kind of busy around here. She’s really getting into toys now, and has a fascination with any type of lights, especially flashing ones lol. She loves her playmat and sitting up talking to Mom and Dad. Every morning when I get her up to get dressed for school, she just talks up a storm to Joe. She started it a few weeks ago. When my friend Bronna came up to visit, I got her on video talking to her. It was so adorable! :)

Halloween has come and gone, and Natalie was a ladybug. We had a costume parade at school, in which she participated too. :) During trick-or-treat, she sat outside for a bit with Joe and helped him give out candy. She didn’t last very long before she fell asleep LOL. Here are some pics:

I have to schedule some 3 mth & family pics soon, but I’m debating where to go. We used JCPenney last time and I don’t know about using them again. I’m thinking Sears maybe. We’ll see. But I’d like to have some for Christmas cards, I found a photo card on Snapfish I think I’ll use. I really wanted to get a family O-H-I-O shot, with the dog lol, but so much for that. Pixel still has a place on her forehead where she’s scratched off hair. We’re thinking it was a mosquito bite or spider bite, but it was itching her. She’s fine now, just still has a small bald patch on the top of her head lol.

Natalie’s doing great, she’s sleeping about 4-6 hours a night (which I love LOL). I hate that I’m sick today and can’t be around her. One of the babies at school came in yesterday sick, and now I am. I came home from work, after only being there 20 minutes lol. Natalie didn’t even get out of her car seat. We came home, napped and I’ve been in my room ever since. Joe came home early and took the baby. I cried when he had to, because I knew I couldn’t be around her, and that kills me. :( I guess I’m so used to her being such a big part of my day, all day every day, that it breaks my heart.

I hear her crying downstairs, & I hate that I can’t be there for her. She’s probably tired, it’s about that time that she takes a little nap. I have been online talking to my friend Murf. He used the mp3 file of our ultrasound heartbeat to make a song. It’s awesome, check it out: http://soundclick.com/share?songid=6455135

Anyways, hopefully I feel better tomorrow and I can be with my baby again. :)

Sep

12

Almost 6 Weeks Old

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Natalie will be 6 weeks old tomorrow. Time has flown by. I haven’t had much time to update here, seeing as how the only time I get to do things is when she’s sleeping lol. Usually housework wins out when it comes to free time. She’s getting so big :)

We had her one month pictures and our first family pictures taken at JCPenney on Sept 6th. We just now got the ability to see them online. I’m rather upset, they told us when we were ordering our pictures that the image CD’s were only 10$ because we were ordering a Collection. We spent over 300$ total and now when I go to order that CD (don’t ask, for some reason they don’t allow you to order them at the time of the sitting), it’s showing they’re 100$. The lady SAID, not showed me some paper where they could’ve mistyped and left out a zero. We weren’t impressed with their attitudes during the session either, the pictures were great (don’t get me wrong), but the associates need to find a new job. Obviously working with newborns isn’t their cup of tea.

HERE ARE ALL THE PICTURES

And here is a few of my favorites:

 

  

 

I had to take Natalie to the pediatrician today. We have a case of thrush. I noticed I had some “issues” feeding her lol, pain in my chest area, and it being really warm to the touch. I have an appt on Monday to make sure I don’t have mastitis. :( During the course of her appt, they weighed her. I can’t believe she’s 11 lbs 12 1/2 oz! She’s getting huge!

Not much else to report, she’s growing day by day, and she’s starting to smile now. Mostly, because she’s pooping lol, but it’s still a smile. :)

Aug

23

3 Weeks Old

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I haven’t updated in a while. Haven’t really had the time lol. Natalie is 3 weeks old today. :) She’s sleeping fairly well, waking up at 3, 5, and 7am to eat, then sleeping in til 9-10am. The other night she didn’t go to sleep until 4am, and that wasn’t much fun. :( I ended up on the couch sleeping with the pack-n-play next to me. She was in the swing for 2 hrs so I could finally get a bit of sleep lol.

She’s very alert now. She wakes up and just looks around. She also has this facial expression that looks like “Blue Steel” from the movie Zoolander LOL. She does it almost perfectly.

She also makes the funniest noises in her sleep lol. I’m starting to learn all the little quirks she has. Her newborn rash is gone, thank goodness, I was so sick of looking at those little red bumps. She still has a blocked tear duct, with some gross yellow discharge coming out of her left eye. It’s pretty common in newborns. We’re putting Erithromycin ointment in it, four times a day. Her pediatrician called in that prescription actually the week she was born.

I’m getting out and about now.. since I’m able to drive again. Not being able to drive for 2 weeks sucked lol. Natalie has been all sorts of places. We didn’t take her out until she was 10 days old. Even at that, we couldn’t take her anywhere where people would be in her face or wanting to hold her. We can’t go to church or like family reunions with her (because EVERYONE would want to hold her there lol) until she’s 2 mths old (after she’s had her first round of shots).

I’m starting to lose track of what day of the week it is. All of them run together since I don’t have to be at work. I know it’s the weekend when Joe doesn’t have to go to work LOL. Anyways, I need to head to bed..

Aug

8

She’s finally here!

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Wow. That’s all I can say about the past few days. It seems like I lived in the hospital LOL. I was SO ready to get out of there. Well, I went in Fri to have the non stress test and the results were the same as the other day. They started admitting and inducing me. They did the foley catheter to get me to dilate to 4cm, then when it came out I progressed a bit slowly. Then I went from 6-8cm in no time. When I was around 5-6 (I think) my epidural wore off. Natalie was kicking during contractions and man that was bad. But they gave me booster shots in my epidural to get me through. When I hit 8cm I thought I was almost home free lol. Then the epi wore off again, this time it was really bad, the pitocin was on high drip and Natalie was vigorously pushing off my rib cage trying to push herself through 8cm. By that time, the pain was so bad, I couldn’t take it anymore.

They gave me 3 options: redo the epidural with no promise of it being any better, csection with general anesthesia, or csection with spinal. I chose the third option. Joe was with me, and they removed the epi and did the spinal. Then I was FINALLY able to get relief. I mean, I was in tears, sobbing uncontrollably, from being thrown from pretty-much-pain-free to full blown active labor. Those poor anesthesia guys lol. They felt so bad because there wasn’t much they could do, my body just wasn’t having the epidural.

Natalie was born and they let Joe take her upstairs while I finished my remaining time in recovery.. to see the family and have her first bath. I was kinda sad I missed that, but Joe took tons of pictures for me. She has a newborn rash, that the pediatrician said would clear up on it’s own. She also had a touch of jaundice, so we took her to the dr on Monday. He said it didn’t look bad at all, and that she looked ok. :)

We got home from the hospital on Aug 5th and I took a nap.. thinking the first night would be horrid lol. Natalie totally surprised me. I went upstairs at 10pm, took a shower and laid down. Joe brought the baby to me around 12:30 when she was hungry. She ate, then slept til almost 5am! She woke up to eat again, get a diaper change, then went right back to sleep til 8:30am lol. She did SO well. :) I did find myself waking up though to check on her regularly throughout the night lol. I’m only allowed to travel the stairs to go to bed, and come down in the morning, so Joe and his parents are really doing a great job taking care of me. It’s nice to have the help here. :)

Well, the baby is napping so I figured now would be a good time to upload some pics and share!

Getting her handprints done LOL I love this pic

Me and Natalie (pardon the no-makeup lol)

Her first bath at home (I let Joe have the honors while I took pics lol)

My favorite picture of Joe and Natalie. This was after her bath, he was trying to warm her up

 Natalie in her carseat, going to the dr on Monday

Aug

1

Another NST

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Within the hour, I’ll be heading to the hospital for yet another Non Stress Test. The last test the baby scored 8 out of 10, and if it’s the same result today, the dr is inducing me. I have everything packed, the bag is in the car.. just in case. I still think a lot of it has to do with the baby’s sleep schedule being screwed up. She’s not so active during the day anymore. I feel her move and shift every once in a while, but they said it’ll decrease as she runs out of room. I do feel her during the night too, so I’m assuming she’s just more awake while I’m sleeping. So, I guess we’ll see how it goes today.

Yesterday was nice, we sat out with my dog (without a leash, which she never gets to do because she usually misbehaves lol). I filled up her baby pool and she had a blast in that thing. :) She behaved very well and stayed right with me and Joe’s mom. When Joe’s mom would walk over in the field next to our house (where other houses will eventually be built) Pixel chased her and just run around. The problem used to be that she wouldn’t come when we called for her. Now she does lol. I sat on the front porch and just hung out in the shade. I did some walking yesterday trying to speed things along and no luck lol.

Joe’s mom cleaned out our flowerbed, it had a bad case of the weeds lol. She also planted some more flowers, to fill in the blank parts we had on the right side. It’s funny, I was thinking about it while she was planting.. the last time we planted flowers was when we lost a baby. Now, we’re planting flowers when we’re expecting a baby any day lol. We planted 3 burnt orange Asian Lily plants in April 2007, when we miscarried (we got pregnant in March so I thought 3 would be appropriate). When they finally came in this year, there were now 8 stalks instead of 3. Now, we’re due in Aug, the 8th month. Funny how those things work out..

It’s been nice being off work, my ankles have returned to normal lol. I have been able to nap/rest when I need to (usually an hr a day) and I’m able to get stuff done around the house that I wouldn’t have had time to do before. I was worried about getting everything ready for the baby, but we have everything pretty much done. I still need to bring some diapers and wipes down here to the pack-n-play (currently set up in the dining room for the downstairs lol) so I can change her down here. Not knowing what size she’ll be, I just put that off. We have bought everything we need for the short term, we still need to go pick out a high chair later on. We didn’t bother yet because she won’t even need one for months.

I keep sitting here looking at her swing in the front room. It’s been empty, and now it’s so close to time. I can’t wait to come home and see her in it. Same with her crib. We have a co-sleeper in our room, which she’ll sleep in at first.. but I can’t wait to see her in her crib. :) Anyways, I better get ready to hit the road, who knows if we’ll have a baby this weekend or not but either way I can’t wait til she’s here!

Jul

30

39 Weeks!

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Whether you give birth tomorrow or next week, it’s pretty much all the same for your baby, who is now truly R-E-A-D-Y to face the big bright world outside of your womb. Speaking of wombs, your body is priming up for the big moment and hopefully, you’re as prepared mentally as you can be. Your baby is well stocked up on fat, all their organs have put on the finishing touches. Here’s hoping your child is already in the birthing position and basically just “hanging out” waiting for that elusive moment when all sysytems synchronize in your body to trigger the labor process.

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Not much to report today, contractions woke me up lol. The baby was moving around in the middle of the night, so I’m assuming she has her days/nights messed up. Either that or she really likes her sleep. I’ve been hanging around the house with Joe’s mom, and one of my best friends Amy, stopped by for a while to visit. Now it’s about time to take a quick nap lol. I have an appt with the pediatrician at 4:45pm, they had to reschedule from yesterday. The dr had a newborn situation and he wasn’t going to be able to make it last night, so they scheduled one for today. Hopefully I’ll get all I need done there so Natalie will have her doctor. I just wanted to get it situated and taken care of before I go in for that nonstress test.. just in case.

Jul

29

Trip to Labor & Delivery

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Well, I had horrible contractions last night. Got up in the morning and wasn’t feeling the baby move as usual (actually I hadn’t felt her since last night before bed). Took my bp like I always do and it was 139/82. I called my dr’s office to see what they wanted me to do, and the nurse told me to head to Labor & Delivery for a nonstress test. I called Joe and he met me there around 10am. They strapped on contraction & fetal heartrate monitors. The heartrate was fine, but I still wasn’t feeling her move. I was getting contractions, irregular though, but the monitor still picked them up. They took my bp every 2 min (which was annoying lol). The nurse stopped the machine when my hand was beginning to go numb lol. They also did some bloodwork. All of which came back fine.

After 2 hours, still no movement. She moved twice after the 2 1/2 hr mark. My dr was the one on call and she came in to do an u/s. She was barely moving at all, but her heartrate was fine (145-150) and she appeared to be practicing breathing. They even brought out a buzzing tube-like thing and pushed around on my stomach to get her to move around lol. The dr monitored 5 things, each of which scores 2 points. So the baby got an 8 out of 10, for not having a reaction to stimulation as well as they would’ve hoped. Everything else looked great.

I have another nonstress test either Thur or Fri (my dr is only there Fri so she’s giving me the option of coming in when she’s not there) and if it’s the same result (scoring an 8 out of 10), I’m being induced that day. My dr got her to move a bit, but I guess that isn’t what she wanted to see. She said it could be a variety of things, the nightly contractions could be keeping her awake so she may sleep more during the day, etc. I also learned I’m 1 cm dilated. She said I should have a baby by the end of this week whether I go on my own or I get induced Thur or Fri. Joe’s mom is here, she came up after Joe called her from the hospital. She lives 3 hrs away so she wanted to make sure she was here in case something happened. Also it’ll be handy having her here, since Joe will go back to work tomorrow. That way, if I go into labor on my own, someone’s here to take me to the hospital.

Anyways, sorry so long, but I’ve had a long day lol. I’ve been calm through it all, just trusting God that everything’s ok. My dr didn’t seem horribly concerned about it all, just saying better to be safe than sorry. Guess we’ll hopefully be seeing the baby soon!

Jul

26

Just keeping myself occupied..

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Well, ever since my appt my contractions have been all screwy. Some are 20 minutes apart, some are over an hr. :( I thought I was making progress lol. Here it is, Day Two of maternity leave and I already feel better. I finally got some rest (without medication, yay), and have been just relaxing. It’s been nice, with the exception of daytime TV sucks lol. I went to the library yesterday and got some books to read. I’ve also been walking my dog in the morning and evening (once the heat dies down) to hopefully “speed things along”. Pixel’s been great about walking on her leash, and not pulling me everywhere lol. I’ve worked on laundry and dishes/kitchen.. just keeping things straightened in the event we have company (a.k.a.-I go into labor lol).

It’s been great to have some time to myself, considering most of the time I’m either at work or having to do stuff around the house. Since the past two weekends we haven’t had any company, Joe and I have gotten to spend quality time together, instead of rushing around getting baby stuff done. We really needed that.. it’s something we haven’t had in a while. Once the baby gets here, there’ll be no more “just the two of us” lol.

We went to Easton this morning to get Joe’s new iPhone. He’s been wanting one forever now, but was really wanting a 3G one for the faster internet. They finally launched them, and we lucked into finding one at the Apple Store. :) He looked it up online last night and their website said they’d have some today. We got there like 5 minutes after opening lol. It’s 16GB and white (although he really wanted black) but we got him a black rubber case for it and screen protectors lol. You’d never be able to tell it was white.

This time, iPhones aren’t insanely expensive like they were before. The old ones were like $500 and $600 on launch day. The new ones, now, you have to activate in store. That’s wonderful, I hated working at AT&T before and never getting credit b/c people would buy them & re-sell them.. or unlock them and use them abroad. So now they are only $199 and $299 (with a 2yr contract). Neither of us have a contract right now, considering we came from employee lines, so we just upgraded his phone. He’s been tinkering with it ever since. :)

Anyways, back to reading my book…

Jul

24

Ticking down the time..

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I’ve had Braxton Hicks contractions, those that don’t hurt.. for weeks up until now. Well, Tuesday afternoon I started having somewhat painful contractions rather regularly. They were coming on every hour to hour-and-fifteen-minutes. I had had them before, but usually like 3-4 hours apart lol. Now they’re getting painful. Well Tuesday night was rough, getting woke up every hour will do that to you lol. Yesterday morning I started recording the times of the start of each contraction, just to make sure they were getting regular. At first, they were still an hour apart, but by noon, they were coming every 30 minutes.

I worked through yesterday, til 6pm, despite the contractions. They continued overnight last night. I stopped recording times when I went to bed and just focused on getting some rest. I’m still really tired, but I feel I was able to sleep through some of the contractions easier because I was so dead tired lol. I have a dr appt at 3:30 today, so hopefully I’ll have made some progress. Thirty minutes apart isn’t active labor, but the fact that I’ve lost my mucus plug and the contractions are more regular now, does mean it’ll happen sometime soon.

So far this morning, I’ve started some laundry, loaded the dishwasher, wiped the kitchen counters off, etc. Trying to stay active inbetween contractions to help things along. I’m thinking I’ll take a nap here in a bit though if I can. We got a lot accomplished last night, so I feel better. Joe installed the car seat in my car. I bought a baby book at Hallmark the other day and I finished what I could of it last night. The rest I have to do after she’s born. For example, it needed pics of me, Joe, my stomach, ultrasounds, her room etc. I went on Snapfish last night, and had the prints developed at Walgreens. I picked them up before they closed and put them in the book. It looks really nice. :) It has a place for pretty much everything I wanted to keep track of. It has the place for all her hospital memorabilia, her birth certificate, her birth announcement, dental record, 1st haircut, etc. It’s pink (yuck lol) but it’s adorable. :)

Anyways, I’ll update more after my appt..

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Well I’m a bit disappointed. I went to my appt earlier and there wasn’t much to say for progress. I’m not dialated at all, although I am 70% effaced. The baby is at -2 station, so there is some change from last week. At my last appt, I wasn’t effaced, and she was at -4 station. Joe went with me, and the dr did discuss a lot of options we had. Since I haven’t had much sleep since before Tuesday night, she prescribed me Ambien that she’s leaving up to me whether I need to fill it. I did tell her I was concerned with taking anything like that, and that I would wait it out and see how I do.

She also brought up induction. She’s leaving it up to my comfort level as to whether or not we want to take that route. She said if it gets to where I can’t take the contractions without much progress, that she would leave it up to me. She did say she would like to see a better scenario though (at least SOME dialation) before doing so. But Joe and I agreed we’d rather wait it out. The dr agreed, that going on your own is definitely the optimal way, what she would suggest. Sure, it would be convenient to tell our families, “Hey, be here at such-and-such time, I’m being induced”… especially since we have people coming from 3 hrs away.. but if it’s not best for me or the baby, I’m not down with it. Now, if I get to being OVERdue, then I’ll consider it further.

I was hoping to hear at least some dialation, to gain some hope.. but I guess that isn’t in the cards. I’m just hoping I get some rest tonight..

Jul

23

38 Weeks!

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Fetal development in pregnancy week 38:As you know, you’ve arrived at the final leg of your pregnancy journey, and if you’re still carrying your little love around, they’ve just about reached their birth weight (somewhere between 6 to 8 pounds is average depending on whether they’re a boy or girl). There really isn’t a lot to report on baby this week, so lets do a quick recount of where we’re at: all internal organ systems are pretty much ready for the outside world, they’ve got their meconium stockpile building up (their first black baby poo), lots of healthy baby fat, a rapidly developing brain (that’ll keep growing with them for years to come), and they’ve more or less reached official baby status– all they need to do is “head out” and say hello to the rest of the world and especially their ready-to-pop momma.

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Well it may be sooner than later lol. Yesterday, I lost the “plug” (for those who have had kids you’ll know what I’m talking about), and usually it means that it’s only a matter of time. I’m still having the dull ache in my pelvic bone, which my dr said was my pelvic bone widening and opening. That’s a good sign that things are progressing normally. :) I had contractions yesterday afternoon and evening, ranging anywhere from 45 min to an hr and a half apart. All last night I had them about the same. So needless to say, I’m exhausted this morning lol.

We still have to get the car seat installed, that was our plan for this past weekend but never happened. Now that we’re on our way to having this baby, we’re going to have to get that done. Everything else is pretty much ready. :) Anyways, time to get ready for work…