July 30, 2004  
Here's this month's belly picture! Today we went to the library, and I got off the couch to cook banana bread and make dinner! Tomorrow I'll probably even get some dusting and vacuuming done. Bye bye bed rest, hello excitement!

I think either I'm getting a slight cold, or else this house is just very dusty. Probably the latter - there hasn't been much house cleaning going on this last month other than when my sister has come over. Anyway, I've discovered a new pregnancy pain - sneezing. It hurts so bad to sneeze! 

This evening, we got the crib set up, with the level brought back up high and the mattress put in, and sheets and bumper pads put on. We also cleaned out Natalie (and Ethan's!) closet a little, at least the top shelf, to make some room. We've gotten some laundry done for him, but there's just no place to put it yet. At least we're making a little progress.

Check out today's picture of the day - it's a view of how I see things. It's a typical shot of me - reclined, with my feet up, and Natalie trying to snuggle as close to my belly as possible. If you missed it, I had a picture of Natalie yesterday too, of her pointing out to me her shiny nice teeth. (It's still in the picture "POTD" archive page.)

July 29, 2004  
We just got back from the dentist! Natalie has no more cavities, and she did a really great job. She had to have two fillings - there was one cavity on the front of each of her top canine teeth. When we went for the evaluation last time, the dentist said she might need the gas mask, which for some reason made me more nervous than even her fillings. I think just the thought of my two year old with a gas mask over her face just made me nervous. She didn't end up needing either the gas mask or a Novocain shot. I guess since the teeth were so small and the cavities were right in front, they didn't need to drill that much. I could tell that she was a little anxious though, especially when they reclined her chair all the way back. She started looking at me with a panicked look on her face, but I just rubbed her leg and told her it was a ride. She held on tight to her Wendy (from Bob the Builder) doll, which she asked to bring with her. I just kept talking soothingly to her and rubbing her leg (especially lately that's become one of her favorite comfort things for me to do, rubbing her arm or leg or back). She did amazingly well! First the dentist showed her how the drill made a "bumpy" feeling against her finger nails, then he got her mouth open enough to get to her teeth, and he "bumped" out the cavities. She didn't seem to mind that too much. For one thing, it was really quick so they didn't give her much time to react! I think the part she didn't like most was not the drilling, but the thing that squirted air into her mouth after the drilling was done. She kept trying to turn her head away from that. Then, within just a few minutes, the dentist got the new composite smooshed on each tooth, and it was hardened up using some kind of UV light. It all was done really quickly. This dentist is very good with kids! They sat her chair up, and she looked at me with a bit of a dazed, what the heck just happened here, look on her face, but then she was handed the prize bucket, which took her attention right away. She picked out a plastic necklace and a little matchbox car, and she was all done!

I'm just so glad it's all taken care of. The other day we got her some real toothpaste with fluoride (she picked out the Bob the Builder kind), because the dentist said that the amount she might swallow won't hurt her. So hopefully we won't have to be dealing with this again any time soon. She still wants to suck off the toothpaste instead of spitting it out, and the biggest struggle is that she says it "tickles" when we brush her teeth, making getting all the way around her mouth a challenge, but she's definitely doing better because at least she's brushing often. She likes her purple toothbrush and "Bob Builder paste paste" and asks to brush even more often that Phil or I feel like helping her do it.

Tomorrow I'm officially off bed rest! I say "officially", because I've been cheating a little the last couple days. I even did dishes yesterday! I'll be going to the library tomorrow almost without a doubt. I'll also have a new belly picture tomorrow. I can't imagine myself getting any bigger or more stretched than I am right now. My belly feels SO stretched to maximum capacity. I got big with Natalie, but since she was more around my whole body and hips and not way out front, I don't remember feeling this stretched in one direction last time. I've reached that stage of pregnancy where many of my maternity clothes aren't fitting anymore, and not just because in these past weeks I've done not much more than sit around and gain weight. (I still don't seem to be holding hardly any weight anywhere other than my tummy.) The last time, when I got to that stage where paneled pants began to hurt and dig in all the wrong places, I just wore stretch pants. This time it's TOO HOT for anything over my legs, so I'm just wearing extra big cotton shorts, the ones that are better as pajama shorts and not actual clothing, at least around the house. When I've had to go out somewhere I've had to put on something a little more, but as soon as I've gotten home the pajama shorts go right back on again!

July 26, 2004  
I had my doctor's appointment this morning, and it went well. I got to see one of the two doctors over there that I really like, so that made things better. I had my Group B Strep test today. It was negative last time (with Natalie) so I'm assuming it will be fine again. My cervix is just a little more dilated - about 2 to 3, which is just exactly as it happened with Natalie. I wouldn't be surprised if I did all of that dilating just on Saturday, because other than that day I've been doing nothing but sitting. My friend Renee had back trouble and wasn't able to help with the wedding after all, but BOTH of my sisters joined me and did a lot of the things I just couldn't do. Yes I was still on my feet a lot, but I knew I would be; I had to be, especially in the hour right before it started. I still know that I couldn't have done it without their help! Phil joked that for this wedding, on that day, my business should have been called "Cord of Three Sisters". The wedding went REALLY well. (Good planning, of course!) It was an outdoor wedding and reception, and we couldn't have ordered up better weather. It was a high in the low 70's and sunny all day, and clear and cool once the sun went down. And low humidity - unlike it had been the whole time our air was out last week! We got that fixed, thankfully. My stepfather and his boss at the welding shop welded our grate back together, and now it's working just fine. Last week, after I wrote that previous entry, was the low point; at about 12:30 that night I decided I had enough of not even being able to breathe in my house. Natalie was asleep so I didn't want to wake her up, so Phil stayed with her here (all of the fans in the house blowing on them), and I went to my mom's house to sleep. I'm sure it was an interesting sight: big ol' pregnant me, with my overnight bag, pillow, and big Snoogle pillow, heading out the door in tears in the middle of the night. Brett and Phil got the air conditioner running the next day. 

So, anyway back to today's appointment. The doctor confirmed that the baby is low and his head is very low and engaged - yeah, I knew that one - I can breathe again but now I can't walk.  I'm measuring right at about 36 weeks, so if I were to go into labor at this point, they're not going to do anything to stop it. She does want me to continue on bed rest for the rest of the week, until Friday, until I am officially 36 weeks. Oh how I'm looking forward to getting out of the house - doing crazy things like buying groceries and going to the library! Woo hoo!

The contractions have been off and on - sometimes very sporadic and other times very regular. Last night they got to be as close as every 5 minutes for a little while. This evening they've been almost like clockwork, every 10 minutes. At this point I'm not even hardly counting on the contractions, though, since apparently my body just does this for a month in order to wipe me out before I go into hard labor. At this point, I'm mostly watching for my plug to come out or my water breaking. I just hope I get a definite sign like that this time; with all these contractions that are the kind that all the instructions tell you to go to the hospital about, I can't use that as a very good indicator.

Natalie has her dentist appointment this week for her two fillings. I'll be writing about that later this week. I just hope she does well with it.

July 21, 2004  
I just wanted to write a quick -very quick- update because I know people have been wondering where I am and if everything is still okay. I'm still pregnant, still on bedrest, and everything's pretty much the same all around - yes, contractions. There have just been lots of complications and distractions around here lately so I haven't gotten online. The baby most definitely dropped last week. I felt him drop down during dinner with my family at Olive Garden. Ever since then it's been very difficult to walk, though I shouldn't be doing any of that anyway.  Natalie is scheduled to have her two cavities filled next week, July 29. I have a wedding this weekend which it looks like I might actually make it to, though I'm sure not going to be getting around very much. (Thankfully my friend Renee and my sister are going to be there to help out.) And then - joy - our air conditioning broke in three different ways a few days ago. Phil fixed it for the first time on Saturday, just a bad wire, then the fan blades broke, and then once we got new ones installed and it was running wonderfully for about five minutes, the whole thing, fan, motor and all, fell down from the top of the unit which was apparently rusted through. So though I experienced no air conditioning for almost half the summer last year, it's a much different situation being in my ninth month of pregnancy. It's unbearably hot. Today I spent the whole day at my mom's and I'll do the same tomorrow. We just need to figure out a way to either get our unit fixed or get a new one. Soon. 

I'll get a real update written as soon as I can bear to sit up here in our bedroom/office for more than five minutes.

July 8, 2004  
Just a quick (haha) update from yesterday. Last night I thought I had to work in the nursery for church, so though I didn't feel like going anywhere, we went. When I got there I found out that two other people had volunteered to take the nursery that evening, so I just went in to sit with Phil in the sanctuary. About 10 minutes into the service, I started having another contraction; I had just had one as we were getting ready to leave the house for church. I whispered to Phil that I was feeling another one, and he said we should just go into St. Ann's to get checked out. So, we went. They hooked me up to the fetal monitors, and I found out that I am actually having contractions much more regularly than I had thought -- about every 10 to 15 minutes. Every other one (or so) that I was having wasn't so bad, but alternating ones were strong enough that it was taking my breath away and they were measuring high enough to be able to create some changes in my cervix. When they checked me, fortunately nothing had changed since my last appointment. They tested to see if I had a bladder infection, since that might cause contractions, and it came back just fine. They also had me drink a couple cups of water and then monitored me again, to see if I was dehydrated. Nope; they were still coming at the same rate. (I had doubted it was dehydration, as I am drinking almost nonstop lately, but you never know.) So, we aren't sure why I'm having contractions about 10 minutes apart, but as long as my cervix isn't changing, things are okay. It's just very tiring to have them go on like this. I don't know if it's information that has changed in the last two years or if it's just a difference in opinions of doctors, but they didn't want to put me on Terbutaline, because she said it's been found that it really doesn't do all that much to control contractions, and the negatives of it (higher heart rate in both the baby and me, causing shakiness) don't outweigh the potential benefits. With the last time, I do remember that I seemed to have just as many contractions, but I think it did reduce the strength of them (they were more of the type that I could just notice, and not taking my breath away like these ones are). Anyway, so I'm just on a more restricted bed rest now (sitting down didn't seem to be doing much, but laying down seems to help a little more). I'm trying even harder to not get up hardly at all. When I do have to get up for things during the day, I try to get a bunch of needed things all at one trip instead of getting up and down. Most of my up and downs are to the bathroom since I'm drinking nonstop. Phil is doing a lot around here (all the cleaning, taking Natalie out for some much needed outside time, cooking dinner) which I'm really thankful about, but it makes me feel bad all the same, that I can't help. Last night when we got home from the hospital, he still had to take out the trash, put Natalie to bed, change the cat litter, and then go out to the store to get more new cat litter since PB decided to protest about temporarily only having one filled box by once again peeing on the downstairs landing (something she hadn't done in a long time). Meanwhile I am laying on the couch watching him scurry around. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, but it's just very hard all the same.

I'm hopefully going to be going in to see my doctor tomorrow for another check. My next appointment is scheduled for Monday, but the labor and delivery doctor said I should be checked again before that. I was supposed to call and make an appointment today, but I forgot until 4pm (so many distractions, you know, when I'm so busy laying on the couch), when the office was already closed. I've been monitoring my contractions more closely today, and they've still been coming at about the same rate as last night. But as long as it's not causing cervix changes, that's okay with me. It's just very tiring.

July 7, 2004  
Not much news on the contraction front. I'm still having them, sometimes pretty bad ones but usually just ones that are "there". Most of the time it's just one here and there, sometimes a few or more an hour, sometimes just one; nothing consistent. I'm trying to sit all the time now and drink a lot, but it doesn't seem to be helping all that much. Laying down seems to help a little more than just sitting, but I can't do that too often without Natalie deciding she wants to snuggle up with me - usually right on top of my stomach. I should probably call my doctor and just see what they say. I don't want to overreact and go into L&D just to tell me nothing is happening, but on the other hand I don't want to sit here and have contractions day in and day out when if I just go get on the shaky meds they can be alleviated.

We had to take Natalie to the dentist this morning. (Yes I sat the whole time except for the about five steps from parking lot to office.) They usually don't have kids come in until age 3 for a checkup, but a couple days ago I was helping Natalie brush her teeth and I saw something that bothered me. It's just been recently that I've actually gotten her to brush correctly AND regularly, because last week I finally taught her how to spit out into the sink, so now she wants to do it all the time. Up until then, we'd try to brush her teeth every day at least once, but most of the time she just wanted to suck the toothpaste off of the brush and not let us get in there and really brush her teeth. She doesn't like mint toothpaste, but we found her a toddler toothpaste that claims to do more than the baby/infant tooth and gum cleanser that we had up until now been using, and she has liked using her new toothpaste so it's all helped to get her to brush at least a couple times every day. We were really happy that she'd started to pick up the habit. And she has fun spitting into the sink. Anyway, so a couple days ago, after I finished brushing her teeth and then after letting her "brush", and then spit out, I told her I wanted to "check to see how pretty her teeth looked". Usually when I do this she either doesn't open her mouth at all, so I can only see her front teeth, or she opens really wide and I get a good look at her molars. This time, I just happened to stick my finger in her mouth and check along the upper sides of her teeth, and I saw what looked like a divot that was chipped out of the front side of her canine tooth! I checked the other side, and her other canine tooth was the same way! It looked like the enamel had just been knocked out, like she'd hit something with her teeth, but why would that be with just those teeth and not any surrounding teeth? I was also just trying to think if her teeth had always looked that way. I was 99% sure that her teeth were fine when they came in; probably the last time I really took a long hard look at those particular teeth... I never even really considered that it could be a cavity - after all, she's not even two and a half, and we do get her teeth brushed pretty well, she doesn't go to sleep with a bottle of juice or anything like that, and besides, EVERY cavity I ever had was always in the bumpy molars, not on a smooth front tooth! Well, as it turns out, she does have a cavity on the front of each of those upper canines. She refused to open her mouth at all for the dentist, not surprisingly, so Phil had to pull her lips out of the way for him to check her teeth. The dentist referred us to a children's dentist, so MAYBE he will do better at getting her to open up for him, but knowing Natalie I don't see it happening. She just doesn't perform on demand for anyone other than her daddy and me, and even with us it's not always gonna happen, especially in situations where she's around anyone else but us - particularly strangers.  I just can't imagine how they are going to get a two year old to agree to open her mouth for him to check her teeth, let ALONE to do two fillings!!!! Ah, just more fun to look forward to. She has an appointment for next Friday (July 19).

There's one other thing I did want to mention about Natalie today; I feel like I haven't gotten much written about things she is doing recently with all the developments on the pregnancy front. She seems to be following along our family's artistic heritage. She's always loved coloring, and can do it for a long sitting, but up until this last week most of the time it's either been lots of scribbles or drawing shapes like circles. The other day she drew a big circle, then put in two eyes, a nose, a mouth, ears, hair, and lips - all in the right places and not at all Picasso-looking. As she drew each face part, she said out loud what she was drawing and it was pretty detailed!  Even the lips were drawn wavy. I think it's funny, too, that she draws the lips on top of a line that she draws for the mouth. They're two distinct things, you see. The other really cute thing she's been doing recently is that she now sings along with so many songs, she knows more than I could count. We have a set of kid songs  tapes (Sunday school songs, traditional songs, stuff like that) that she listens to all the time when we're upstairs. We have one of my old boom boxes in her room, and whenever she plays upstairs the first thing she does is turn on a tape. She likes to turn on a tape and then go sit by her bookshelf and go through all her upstairs books. Lately we noticed that she sings along with all the songs. My baby is becoming a true little kid.

July 2, 2004  
Well there was mixed news at the doctor today. I haven't dilated any more, but now I'm 50% effaced, or thinned out. The first thing she asked me was, "so, how's the bed rest going?" I told her, "well, I'm trying, but it's much harder with a two year old than it was when I had a desk job!" She told me that if I have any more incidents of contractions as bad as I did last Sunday, that I should come into labor and delivery right away instead of waiting a full hour, since it's just too early. Since Sunday I've had several contractions but nothing as consistent as it was that day. Hopefully I won't; I'm hoping that was just the result of too much activity last weekend. I'm really trying hard to stay off my feet as much as possible. Yesterday my sister spent most of the afternoon and evening with us, which helped a lot. It's especially important that I don't deliver this baby before the next four weeks; since this baby is a boy, it's even more important for him to stay put as long as possible. Boy preemies typically have more problems than girls. 

Everything else looked really good this appointment. I'm gaining around a pound a week lately, which is what I should be doing. A few times the last week I've been having really puffy feet and hands, but that happens to me in the summer anyway, so it's nothing to be worried about. I'm just glad I haven't completely puffed up yet all over, like I did with Natalie. My next appointment is Monday July 12 - the weeks got thrown off a bit since the office is closed this Monday for the 4th. The place was packed today because of the long weekend. Natalie was with me and once again I was so thankful that she's the kind of kid she is. We waited for almost an hour and a half to see the doctor, and she just played quietly next to me the entire time. The last couple times I've been there, I've been in an out in under a half hour, so I didn't even think to bring books or toys in with me, but she did just fine. She played with a wet wipe and even used it to wash the office walls for awhile. 

There's a new belly picture up today, for 32 weeks.