Baby Shower

So we arrived in California on Saturday and on Sunday my mom threw me a baby shower.

I knew the theme was Alice in Wonderland but other than that I didn't know anything else.

But knowing my mom (who I inherited any artistic or creative talent I may have from) I knew she would go all out and it would be awesome.

I pulled up to my parents house to see this:

It was all so cute and so Alice :o)

Me and my best friend Anna, she is due a couple weeks before me.

Me and my cousin Katelyn, she was due like that day, though she didn't have her baby til a couple days later.

Alice got so many wonderful gifts, and especially lots of cute clothes.

My mom got me this beautiful frame that has a very sweet poem on it.

My side of the family:

Stephen's side of the family:

My mom and I:

Me and my bestest friends:

I love this candid picture, it's so cute how Stephen touches my belly all the time.

(No, boys weren't allowed, they went golfing and bowling and came back at the end of the shower)

It was a wonderful shower.

Thanks mom!

28 Weeks

And boy does she kick.

And punch.

And all kinds of moves where I just say "Alice! What on earth are you doing in there!"

On the plane ride to California she learned to push her feet into my right rib cage.  Not the most fun for me.

I do love feeling her move.

Stephen and I always laugh when he will put his head on my belly and she punches him in the face.

 (Funny how outside of the belly that act would cause a very different response :o)

I am officially big enough for people not to hesitate on commenting on my pregnancy.

Thankfully I have yet to have a stranger touch my belly, I hope it stays that way.

Other than the heartburn the pregnancy is still going great.

I have met my new midwives (there are 3, one who has her license and 2 who are about to get theirs, they all work together).

They are very nice and I am excited to do my home birth with them.

It's still so hard to believe that in just a couple months we will be holding our little Alice!

Moving (again)

Well, a lot has happened in the last month, but I guess I will start with the move, which was madness.

June 1^st

The movers came and took all our furniture and the kitchen items.

The rest of our stuff we wanted to move ourselves because the Army will pay you to move your own stuff so it's a nice way to earn some extra money.

Also, most of our stuff was still in boxes anyways.

June 2^nd

I drove to Jefferson City and took my Marriage and Family Therapy licensure exam.

It was really hard.

I was so happy to be done with it.

I will find out if I passed sometime in August.

June 3^rd

The lovely ladies I met in Ft Leonard Wood thew a little baby shower for me and a couple other ladies that are pregnant as well.

It was very sweet and a lot of fun.

June 4^th

I drove up to Columbia Hospital for my follow up appointment.

I still had (and have) contractions but they are more irregular now.

The doctor said my cervix still looks good so I am good to move and to fly.

June 5^th

My midwife came for a final prenatal appointment.

I passed my glucose test, but I am anemic. Bring on the iron supplements.

I am going to miss my midwife.

June 6^th

Stephen had his graduation that morning.

I wasn't able to go because I still had too much packing to do.

The housing person came to inspect the house at 3 but we were way behind schedule so she offered to come back at 5.

Stephen had rented a 17 ft u-haul and it's a good thing we didn't have anymore stuff and that Stephen is apparently a real life tetris master because that truck was completely packed.

We passed our home inspection and headed out on our way to Clarksville, TN.

I drove the car with the dogs in the back and Bagheera in a crate on the passenger seat.

Stephen drove the U-haul with Giselle and Tiger Lilly on the passenger seat (they were in a crate but Stephen of course felt bad for them and let them out)

About 20 minutes into the drive Willow threw up all over the backseat, and then an hour later threw up again, that was fun.

We drove about halfway to Clarksville (3.5 hours) and stopped and stayed at a hotel in Mt Vernon, Illinois.

June 7^th

We headed out first thing in the morning for Clarksville.

I was stressed out the whole time that one of the dogs was going to throw up again.

Bagheera decided he had enough of driving and howled the entire 3.5 hour drive.

Also the AC stopped working the last half of the drive so I had to open the windows (not fun when going 70 on the highway).

This of course made Bagheera howl all the louder.

So when we got to Clarksville at noon I was not in the best of moods.

We drove straight to our house that we had been told would be finished and ready for us to move in.

I about had a breakdown.

The fence wasn't built.

There was no front door.

The walls still needed another coat of paint.

The carpet wasn't in yet.

The hardwood floors weren't finished.

There were no door knobs.

Stephen called the realtor and he said the house would be done for sure by 3pm the next day and that the builders would pay for us to stay in a hotel for the night.

I didn't believe the realtor at all. There was no way they could do all the work in such a short period of time.

But we had no choice but to hope they were right.

June 8^th

We hung out at the hotel till we had to check out at 1:00 and then we went and parked at the neighborhood community center and pool that is just down the street from our house and waited till 3pm.

While we were waiting Stephen was walking the dogs and he came back to the car in a hurry and said “There is a baby bunny in the pool!”

So I ran over to the pool with him (there was no one else there) and I realized that the bunny couldn't get out and would drown of exhaustion.

Stephen, the animal hero, of course had to do something.

He grabbed the pool skimmer but it was missing the net part and couldn't get the bunny with it.

While he was trying, the bunny swam near one of the vents on the side of the pool and got sucked in!

I started freaking out.

Stephen quickly opened the lid over the vent and we saw the bunny getting tossed around in the water drowning.

I was horrified but yelled at Stephen not to touch it because I was afraid it would bite him and give him rabies or something.

So Stephen quickly took off his shirt and grabbed the bunny and put it down on the cement.

It was very dramatic.

The bunny was breathing but seemed to be in shock so Stephen picked it up and put it far from the pool in the grass.

I really wanted to keep it but since we were leaving the next day for California, that really wouldn't work.

So 3pm came and we walked down the street to our house and got a walk through from the builder and amazingly enough, it was all done and looked great!

Stephen and some guys that the realtor knows unloaded the U-haul into the garage in about an hour.

The pet sitter we hired came over so I could give her instructions on the pets (the dogs were going to stay in the backyard and cats were staying in the house).

Right as we were about to leave to take the U-haul in, our neighbors let their dogs into their backyard.

This was when we discovered that unfortunately the neighbors have 2 little dogs which is bad because Willow has lately developed an aggression for little dogs (why, I don't know) and went nuts barking at the fence. So we knew we would have to do something to keep her from barking all week while we were away (we have a spray collar but she will still bark with it on).

On our way back from dropping of the U-haul we picked up a shock collar.

I felt really bad putting it on her but it worked.

Then we packed for our trip to Napa.

June 9^th

Flew to Napa at 7:45am

More to come on our Napa trip soon!

Pregnancy From My Perspective: 25 Weeks

The Big Scare

Beware: This is a long story with no fun pictures to help it along.

On Monday afternoon I was sitting on the couch with Stephen and I felt my uterus get really hard.

I thought it was strange but no big deal.

Then it happened again, and again.

I thought, “These can't be contractions; contractions hurt.”

But after an hour I started to get concerned.

So I texted my midwife (one of the many great benefits of having a midwife) and told her what was happening.

She instantly called me and said I need to go to the hospital and that she would meet me there.

Stephen and I obviously became really worried at this point.

We went straight over to the hospital and checked into labor and delivery.

They hooked me up to a contraction monitor and listened to Alice's heartbeat (which was great).

They also gave me an IV, which was a first for me.

I am not a fan.

My midwife came and she checked my cervix and said I wasn't dilated at all so that was a relief.

They continued to monitor me and after about an hour of regular contractions they gave me an injection of terbutaline to stop the contractions.

The midwife then talked with us about what might be going on.

She said that we could rule out dehydration since the IV didn't help and we could rule out any urinary infection because the test results were negative.

She said one of the possibilities might be a yeast infection and we should test for that.

She then talked us though worse case scenario.

Which is that I was in preterm labor in which case my cervix would start to dilate and they would send me in an ambulance to a large hospital called Columbia that is 2 hours away.

This hospital has a NICU and doctors who specialize in preterm births.

(The on-base hospital we were at is small and has no NICU and didn't even have a doctor there at night)

She also said that if I am going into preterm labor there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

But she reassured us that at this point I was just having preterm contractions and not labor.

The worse case scenario obviously freaked us out.

The prognosis for babies born at 24 weeks is not very good.

The injection they gave me worked for a couple hours but then the contractions started again.

They gave me another injection and said I would need to stay all night and see the doctor when he comes in in the morning.

So we had a long night at the hospital.

Stephen trying to sleep in the little pull out bed and me with an IV, a pulse monitor on my finger, a pressure monitor on my arm that went off every hour and the contraction monitor on my belly.

Needless to say we didn't sleep well.

The contractions came back again in the morning.

The doctor came in and did an ultrasound to check the cervix length and he said it looked good.

He also did a yeast infection test and some other swab tests which all came back negative.

He said he didn't know why I was contracting and he didn't know how to stop them but since I wasn't dilating that I could go home on semi-bed rest and come back Friday (this was Tuesday) and they would check again.

We did not feel comfortable with this answer.

We felt like he just didn't know what to do with me so sent me home.

Tuesday evening my midwife came over.

I had been contracting pretty regularly all day.

She said that though the yeast infection test was negative, she saw signs of yeast when she did the cervix check.

Since it wouldn't hurt to take it, she gave me the medication for the yeast infection hoping that it may just be that.

She said that if the contractions get really close together or are stronger that I should go back to the hospital.

Wednesday I was still having contractions so my midwife came over and checked my cervix which was still not dilated.

She was concerned because if it was the yeast infection that the medication should have started to make a difference by now.

She gave me a prescription for nifedipine which is a blood pressure medication that also helps with contractions since it relaxes the smooth muscles.

After that I went to an ultrasound appointment that I had scheduled before to recheck my low lying placenta.

I got my prescription for the nifedipine and took it right away.

It unfortunately made me very light headed and gave me a bad headache but those were common side effects.

I sat on the couch while Stephen made us dinner and I had noticed while running errands that my contractions were pretty close together and strong.

Now that I was sitting down I could really feel them and they were only a minute or two apart and stronger than before.

I tried to eat and relax to see if that would help but it didn't so we decided to go back to the hospital.

They hooked me back up to the monitor and checked my cervix which was still not dilated.

Last time we were at the hospital Stephen watched the contraction monitor a lot and it really stressed him out so this time he said, “I can't watch that thing.  It's like watching the stock market.”

Even in crisis, Stephen is still uniquely Stephen :o)

They monitored me for two hours and checked my cervix again and it was the same so they said I could go home and needed to be on strict bed rest.

We were getting frustrated with this because it didn't seem like they were taking it very seriously and they didn't even have a doctor see me.

We felt like I was just a time bomb that they were doing nothing to try and stop.

On Thursday I spent all day on the couch only getting up to go to the bathroom and the contractions still kept coming.

My midwife didn't feel comfortable either with the way the on base hospital was handling my case and thought we needed to see a specialist.

She also got the results of the ultrasound I had on Wednesday and said that my cervix was significantly shorter than it was in the ultrasound on Tuesday.

She called the doctors at Columbia (the big hospital) and they said that they wanted to see me right away.

So Stephen packed up an overnight bag, put the dogs outside with the hope they wouldn't escape and we headed to Columbia.

This was the worst drive ever.

Not only because of the stress but also because I already felt sick from the blood pressure medication and the first hour of the drive is a super curvy back road that made me car sick and while we were driving the contractions got stronger.

But we finally made it to the hospital, you could tell right away that it was a really nice, fancy hospital.

They put me on all the monitors and we got to see a doctor right away and he did an ultrasound and said my cervix length looked good.

They said they would keep me overnight to monitor the contractions and then I could meet with the specialist the next day.

They also changed my prescription to be a larger, time release dose and thankfully this had much less side effects.

We had a much better night at this hospital.  They didn't keep me on the heart or blood pressure monitor and they put the IV in my forearm instead of inner elbow which was much more comfortable.

Stephen also had a much nicer bed to sleep on.

In the morning they took me over to get an ultrasound on their fancy ultrasound machine then we waited until the afternoon to meet with the specialist.

The specialist was really nice and took the time to explain to us really clearly what is going on and what the plan is from here and answered all our questions.

He said that with the way my cervix looks there is almost no chance of me going into labor in the next 2-4 weeks at least.  (Praise God!)

He also said that there are just some women who have contractions during pregnancy for some unknown reason but as long as the cervix isn't changing it is fine and that I still had a good chance of going full term.

He said I don't need to be on bed rest but that I should take it easy and not do anything strenuous.

He wants me to come back in 2 weeks, right before we move, to check the cervix again.

If it is the same we have a green light to move and to fly Napa on the 9^th as we had planned.

I can't tell you how happy we were to hear all this, not only because of the good news but also because it was a straight, reliable answer rather than the shoulder shrug we were getting from the other hospital.

So that was our big scare, and hopefully the last.

I also have to say that Stephen was especially wonderful through the whole ordeal.

He was with me through the whole thing and took care of me when I was on bed rest and in the hospital.

He is a great husband.

Here are the only 2 pictures taken of this adventure.

My bracelet collection:

Stephen on his pull out bed:

I'll leave you with something funny to make up for this serious post.

When I was on bed rest Stephen was heating up a bowl of soup for himself (something I usually do for him) and it blew up in the microwave and spilled when he tried to take it out and I heard him say in frustration,

“I'm not cut out for this job!'

24 Weeks

I'm finally starting to have a real bump!

Stephen makes fun of me because now when I get dressed to go out somewhere I stand sideways to look in the mirror to see how pregnant I look.

I have gained almost 15 pounds now.

I still have a little ways to go to beat my heaviest weight (even I wasn't immune to the freshman 15).

I am feeling really good except for a little heartburn here and there.

I love feeling Alice move.

When she is really active I can watch my belly move around.

Which is really cool and only slightly reminds me of the movie Alien :o)

What if...

I have always enjoyed "what if" questions.

I think they are fun.

You know, questions like, "If you could have any super power, what would it be?"

Stephen hates these questions.

I learned this early on and tried my best to refrain from asking them.

But every once in a while I'll ask one.

The other day I asked Stephen "If you could have a wild animal as a pet, and it be completely tame, what would you have?"

He thought for a second and said "a bobcat"

Me: A bobcat!  That is the lamest thing ever!  Why a bobcat?

Me:  I would have like a tiger or cheetah, something cool like that.

Stephen:  I wouldn't want something that big, where would we keep it?

Me:  Ug, you totally don't get the point of these questions.  You are not supposed to be all logical about it.

Stephen:  I don't understand.

Me:  You're hopeless.