My lazy uterus.

What's a girl gotta do to get some contractions going around here?

Just a quick update - had a doctors appt yesterday (80% effaced, dilated b/w a 1-2, he didn't mention station but she was +1 before, and based on pelvic bone pain, she feels a bit lower). So we're making progress, but not enough. He set her eviction date as this Friday. :o(

Assuming she doesn't come before then, we check into the hospital Thursday night at 10pm. It's hard when you totally trust your doctor, and totally don't want to do what he wants you to do. Very conflicting. I need to really quit trying to figure out a way to control this situation, and let God be in charge of planning her birthday... and her birth, as it stands.

But in the meantime - lol - I had eggplant parm for dinner last night, I've eaten more pineapple than you could possibly imagine, I'm drinking Red Raspberry Leaf tea, etc etc. I asked my OB about Castor Oil... he said it wouldn't be pleasant, and he doesn't think it works, but that it wouldn't 'hurt me', per se. We bought a bottle, but I haven't done much more than stare at it, as of yet. I have several girlfriends who have been telling me all along "just take castor oil!" but the idea of being dehydrated at the start of labor doesn't sit well with me. I'm not convinced that it will result in anything better than what the pitocin will do, so we'll see.

Charloooootttttttttte.............. come out, come out, wherever you are!!!!

Will blogging stimulate labor????

At this point, I'll try anything!

Yeah - it's been forever. I know. Maybe now that I'm officially on maternity leave - with no baby - I'll get into the swing of this... maybe.

Charlotte is doing great! Just over 6lbs, according to the perinatologist's calculations - which is small for her gestation, but she's fantastically healthy. Now if she would just come out to play! She has so many friends waiting to meet her.... *sigh* And her mommy is really worn out, truth be told. I considered myself so well-prepared for the aches and pains of pregnancy, but it turned out that my chief problem is one that I'd never even known anyone else to have - carpal tunnel syndrome. It's getting increasingly severe - my right hand is at least 50% numb all of the time, and moves into fiery pain up through my shoulder several times a day, keeps me up at night. LAME! That's what I think about that. Leave it to me to get the one random thing that there's absolutely no cream, no chewable tablet, no therapy for at all. I just hope it goes away quickly after I deliver, or else it's going to be an issue with newborn care. :o(

Her room is done, though! The only thing left to do is to hang her window treatments, and I hope to get that accomplished in the next day or so. Everything is laundered, and folded, and ready - I just need a baby!

Here are some photos...





In non-Charlotte related news:

Quite a bit has happened in the lives of some of my sweet friends. My friend, Niki (whom I requested prayers for back when the hurricane was hitting her family in Jamaica) gave birth to her sweet little girl, Sydney, in October - at barely 26 weeks. You can read about her amazing journey here.

Then, in December, another girlfriend of mine - Ana - gave birth to her sweet little boy, Jayan, at only 24/25 weeks. You can read about him here.

Both of these babies are incredible fighters, and I can't imagine how challenging and scary it must be to be the mommy of someone so tiny. But both are proof of just how big our God is.

My dad is still in Iraq - he gets another vacation in March, then should be home for good in July. Keep him in your prayers, if you think about it... the stations he is training the PO's at are increasingly dangerous, and in rather remote areas. We were accustomed to hearing from him every 2-3 days, but now it's every 15-17.

Alright, I'm off to eat some pineapple.

Hi there! Remember me?

The worlds crappiest blogger. Checking in!

Things are all around pretty good, though... my dad is home from Iraq for 3 weeks, and since he won't be here when Miss Charlotte makes her grand debut - we surprised him with a 3D sonogram today. He was over the moon! It was super cool, but we didn't get quite as good of a look at her as we had hoped. She had her cord all bunched up in front of her face - and the tech was able to adjust the concavity of the sound waves, making the cord more transparent, but that resulted in it giving her nose and forehead a very flat appearance. So when she's born, it will still be a surprise what exactly she looks like because most of our views were slightly distorted.

I'll share some of them, though! Wherever you see dark spots - those are where her cord was... the tech adjusted it to make it more transparent, but there is only so much she could do. The cord looked like mardi gras beads everywhere, and our sweet little one kept swatting them out of her face. She was also grabbing her feet!!!! She's so advanced.



At our last perinatologist visit (which was Monday) she was 'breathing', and meeting all of the developmental milestones that she should. Based on her measurements, she's appx 2lbs 4oz. The doctor went to great lengths to explain where we're at risk-wise these days, and even went over the survival rate for babies born in that hospital, at that gestation (almost 100%!!!!). All of that adds up to one conclusion... it appears as though we're going to have a baby. Cuh-ray-zee!

We're working on getting ready, too. My personal goal is to have everything that requires purchase taken care of by Thanksgiving... I have no desire to go stand in line during the holidays, hugely pregnant.

So far we have the furniture mostly assembled, we're only missing the glider (a friend graciously gave us one, and is going to recover the cushions), and a pretty good diaper stash building up. I can't wait to see her little bottom in some of those super cute fluffy diapers....

Here's her crib. :o)



I actually have some interesting stories to share... but I'm too tired right now. Stay tuned. /famous last words? hope not!

So maybe posting once a month will just be *my thing*...

We've had an exciting few weeks!

We spent a week in Chicago - I attempted to go exploring on my own, I met a girlfriend at Navy Pier for a day, we had dinner with Aron & Suzanne (& Maggie, of course!), we went to the Lincoln Park Zoo, we took the El, I saw my family, I made a few too many stops at the Moonstruck Chocolate Shop.... it was a lovely trip. And exhausting, as well. Aron & Suzanne were the best! Great conversation, delicious dinner, perfect weather - Jason & I are both looking forward to getting to know them better, and watching Maggie grow. Her personality is already infectious.

And on the way home - American Airlines oversold our flight, so we volunteered to take the next one and each received a $300 voucher for it. That's our flight to New York next spring! Woot!

This weekend I started having contractions... since I'm only 22 weeks, it was obviously somewhat concerning, but I just kind of blew them off as braxton hicks. Then I read somewhere that you should call your doctor if you have more than 4 an hour. Oops. So I called this morning, him and my perinatologist had me rush in for an exam and a sonogram. Good news is that my cervix is still perfectly long and closed - the bad news is that I shouldn't be having so many, so strong. They're running some tests and hopefully it's just an unsymptomatic-infection of some sort, but I'm going to be on weekly progesterone injections from now on. One of the tests they ran is the fetal fibronectin test, which normally happens at 24 weeks - fFN is the "glue" that holds the fetal sack to the uterus, and if they can detect it's presence then that means that the "glue" is beginning to disintegrate - predicting preterm labor. I really, REALLY doubt they'll find that. My instinct says that nothing major is going on... just a little something is out of whack, and we'll get it fixed. My OB said that the progesterone injections will help "soothe my crabby uterus." I really feel like I'm blessed, the care I'm getting from both of my doctors is very cautious, very compassionate and super nice to me. They rock.

Here's the latest pictures of baby Charlotte. She's a doll, isn't she? I'm so in love.

OK, off my back! :o)

I've been BEYOND swamped lately. Seriously - work is extra heavy, on top of all of the other stuff. But... the nursery is painted! Jason & Brad (my little brother, who just got out of the Air Force) did a fantastic job.


It looks better in person... the taupe is a shade I pulled out of the bedding and it matches perfectly. At least we can cross one thing off of the checklist!

I also caught wind of a co-op purchase on diapers this week, and took advantage of it. Jason & I are planning on cloth diapering, and we bought several of these (Swaddlebees) - in assorted sizes and colors... we got a FANTASTIC deal. I can't wait to get them! (Of course, I got lots of pinks/purples/yellows... not any blues).


Researching different types of CD's is kind of overwhelming (isn't everything baby-related overwhelming??) - but we're hopefully going to have a pretty good stash built up by the time Charlotte is born, and then won't have to mess with it until she's much older!

Prayer request... My sweet friend, Niki, and her husband Brian are from Jamaica - and all of their family is still there. Jamaica looks like it's going to be steamrolled by Hurricane Dean within the next 24 hours.... the forecasts are horribly frightening, and a large number of the population can not afford wood for their windows, extra food/batteries/etc. Pray for the island, as a whole. A category 5 hurricane (which Dean is predicted to be by the time it hits the island) has never hit there before... it's the same category as Katrina. The residents can't just "evacuate north" like our citizens do in a storm. :o(

We made our first purchase!

*gulp*

Bedding has been ordered. In pink. So she BETTER be a she! lol. It's still surreal... we've moved 95% of the crap that was sitting in 'her room' out, some friends are giving us a crib and that will be here in appx 3 weeks, we have a glider being given to us, and need to go to Ikea to pick up her dresser. Unfortunately, for now - the only baby stuff she has are a few small items of clothing, that were purchased for a boy-baby. :o)

Here is the bedding we ordered...


The coordinating pillows are large polka dots, in various shades of pinks and browns. I think we're going to paint the walls a relatively neutral khaki tone (pulled out of the pillows and stripes) and then add some accent paint details to the walls.

We're 90% sure we have a name picked out, also. I totally see why people keep their baby names a secret, because people ask - then are very lukewarm or opinionated in their response - and it hurts your feelings! My opinion - you shouldn't ask unless you are 100% prepared to fake enthusiasm about whatever they have picked. That being said, however, I'm really horrible at keeping a secret - so the name we're leaning towards right now is Charlotte. It makes my heart flutter a little when I say it, and the baby in my mind's eye looks VERY much like a Charlotte - so it will probably stick. But don't go ordering anything embroidered yet. It means "strong, little woman" which I adore. I come from a long line of little women that will not hesitate to use their ninja skills to defend the universe....

Prayer request: We're fighting a real battle with Jason's pain meds again - the recent prescription turned out to make it extremely difficult for him to breathe, so they changed it - and the new one seems to be even worse. Jason is quite fed up and has decided (on his own) to quit them cold turkey... I'm certain there will be some withdrawal type fallback from this, so we have an appt with his pain management dr this afternoon. I'm hoping they will at least agree to put him back on the lower level stuff he was on before. They took him off of it because they were concerned that it would damage his liver (he'd been on them for a year), but Jason seems to think that if he could go back to those - he could be in a place where he wasn't taking them daily within a month or two. I know he is really struggling with all of this - he doesn't want to be medicated, but he also still has a great deal of pain... prayers would be appreciated.

Oh, and welcome to the world Pierce Thomas!!!!

I know, I know.... a month between posts? Me = Loser.

But man - today was the best day EVER!

Apparently, whatever the sonogram tech (and us) thought we saw at 12 weeks is there no more.

We had our appt with the perinatology group this morning, and had two sonograms with two different doctors, both of whom were 100% certain that this baby is a girl! And she's perfect, too! She has 10 little fingers, 10 little toes.... her cerebrum, cerebellum, aorta, heart, kidneys, bladder, stomach, femur, etc. all looked perfect and measured perfect.

I'm so in love! Isn't she adorable???

As for me - I'm feeling great! The headaches are much better, I only get sick every now and then, and I think that maybe, possibly, potentially.... I felt her this morning. *giddy*