Braxton-Hicks Contractions?

I think I might have just had my first Braxton-Hicks “pre-labor” contraction. They keep asking me at my doctor’s appointments if I’ve had any and I just keep shrugging and saying, “I don’t think so.” Just now though I was sitting here typing at work and suddenly felt the muscles in the low front of my abdomen tighten up. It didn’t really hurt but it took my breath away because I was surprised it was happening. After about 20 seconds or so everything relaxed and felt normal again. I haven’t had anything like that happen again though, so I’m not quite sure. I’m hoping that “real” labor won’t be so ambiguous. :) Then again, it would be great to have “real” labor be so non-painful that you didn’t even know you were in it!

Ever since the contraction or tightening or whatever it was, Elijah has been going crazy squirming and punching me. Maybe he's wondering what happened to his home! He had a "womb-quake"! :)

Another day, another doctor

We had another doctor’s appointment this morning and continued with the process of rotating through the docs in the practice. This time it was the boy doctor (the only one in the practice – he’s the new guy and only been there a month or so). And it was yet another doctor that we liked better than our original doctor! I guess that’s good, right? I mean so far we’ve liked every other doctor better and our chances of having one of them at the birth are higher than our chances of getting our own doctor.

Anyway, the doctor seemed pretty cool. He said he was glad to be in this new practice since he had been trying for the last couple years to get into a practice which was affiliated with the particular hospital where we’ll be having Elijah. He said the hospital we’ll be in has the nicest labor and delivery rooms he’s ever seen and the best nursing staff that he has worked with at any of the area hospitals. That made us feel good.

I’m still on track with everything and doing well too. Weight good, blood pressure good, urine good, Elijah’s heartbeat good, fundus (height of the uterus) good, and no complaints from me! I haven’t had any Braxton-Hicks contractions yet and no cramping or bleeding, so everything is going really well (a “stellar” pregnancy, as the doctor said this morning). :)

This was the first visit where the doctor estimated the baby’s size. He said that Elijah will be a “nice-sized” baby, not too small and not too big. Right about average (7 and a half pounds or so). Also, Eli is in the head down position and that is good as there is now only a small chance that he would turn breech. Our boy is getting ready to be born and cooperating nicely. :)

There’s a “Sea Sprite” in Elijah’s bedroom!?!

Jon and I picked out the paint color for Elijah’s room this weekend – it’s a pale blue color called “Sea Sprite.” Isn’t that just adorable? :)

We’re going to paint possibly next Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon if we’re not to lazy this week and actually get some things moved and some holes spackled. Any volunteer helpers are welcome to join us. :) If we’re too lazy then we won’t be painting until Mother’s day weekend (Only one month before our due date! Ahhh!! I figured I’d have everything done by then!). Hmm, I’m suddenly more motivated to get things done. No time to waste, this baby's not going to stay in forever!

Baby Shower!

Well, this entry is a little late since I’ve been so busy at work and it’s been such nice weather that when I get home I just want to go outside! Anyway, a little over a week ago I had my baby shower!! What fun. Family, friends, gifts -- three of my favorite things!

Jon’s mom and step-mom threw the shower together and it really was one of the best baby showers I’ve ever been to (not that I’m biased or anything). :) It would take too long to summarize everything, so I’ll hit some of the highlights!

• Fun games! We played Baby “Price is Right” where people had to guess the prices of various baby items (which I got to keep!) and the person who was the closest in total price for all the items without going over won. The total was $51.89 – and our friend Katy (with no kids yet!) had $52.00! So close, it was quite impressive, but rules are rules so she didn’t win. We also had a game where there were a list of facts about Jon and I as babies, and people had to guess which fact was about which of us. Interesting factoid – both Jon and I were 21 inches when we were born! Hmm, I wonder if Elijah will be that length. That would be neat. Jon was more of a chunk when he was born though – 8 pounds 7 ounces – while I was a petite 6 pounds 9 ounces. My how times have changed. :)

• A diaper cake! Not the kind you eat, but 103 diapers (guests had to guess how many diapers were in the “cake”) all individually tied into rolls and then stacked into layers to resemble a cake. And the best part? A stuffed frog on top!

• A real cake! Also with a froggy on it! And it was so good – with the kind of frosting that is not too sweet so you can eat a big piece of cake and not feel sick! Nummy nummy.

• Gifts! And more gifts! And more gifts! You’d think we’d invited everyone we knew with all the stuff we got. It was quite an impressive haul, if I do say so myself. We received all our “big-ticket” items – stroller, car seat, our crib bedding (froggies!), pack n’ play, high chair, etc. And got so many cute clothes!! I can’t wait to dress Elijah up in all his little outfits. And we got our bouncy seat, our changing pad, baby monitor, diaper bags, our Boppy, and a jumper-roo seat (I’d never heard of it before and didn’t see it in Babies R’ Us when we registered, but my friend Karen swears by her jumper-roo. It’s like a seat that I’ve seen that attaches to a door and allows the baby to jump up and down. The difference is that this one is attached to a stand-alone frame and you don’t have to attach it to a doorframe). Another highlight was getting a hand-painted rug from my Aunt Judy – with a frog on it of course, that matches my bedding! I just have to decide whether I actually want to use it as a rug or make it a wall-hanging. There were so many other things that we received as well, I just can’t remember them all right now! It all boils down to the fact that there isn’t that much we need to buy yet – a crib mattress, a mattress pad, safety gates, other misc. safety equipment, and that’s about all! Wow! So much stuff for someone so little.

I had such a wonderful time – and as a bonus my family was staying with us for the weekend so I was able to spend some more time with them. And several of my aunts and cousins from out-of-town were able to come and spend the day, so I was able to spend time with them as well, which is something I don’t get to do very often! We had dinner back at our house and then played games. It was so much fun! What a perfect weekend! :)

The finished crib!

Here's a shot of the assembled crib:

Is that an alien in your tummy, or are you just happy to see me?

I forgot to post this earlier, I can’t believe it! Jon and I were sitting at home last weekend, following our exhausting day of cleaning and putting the crib up, watching the basketball game on tv. We were sitting there and Elijah was kicking and squirming (he seems to like basketball – he is active whenever it’s on tv). I could see my stomach “jumping” around a little with his movements, so I pulled up my shirt to see my tummy directly. It was completely freaky at first! And Jon was looking at my stomach with this weird little expression, like “there’s an alien in there, and he could pop-out at any moment!” We both sat there and watched my stomach being kicked and moving around. It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. And some of Elijah’s kicks were really strong and my stomach moved a lot!

I don’t know exactly how long we just sat there and watched– it was very engrossing! First in a weird horror-movie kind of way – after all, your stomach is moving in weird directions and you’re not doing anything! – and then in a cool that’s-my-baby-moving-life-is-incredible kind of way.

I love feeling Elijah move so much that it’s kind of sad to me to think that Jon doesn’t get to feel the same thing all the time. Even when Eli’s kicks aren’t strong enough to see or feel on the outside I still get to feel them. It made me really happy that Jon got to see and feel Elijah moving for more than just a few seconds.

I’m feeling Elijah more and more now too. All the books kept saying that you should feel something like ten movements an hour after you’re 28 weeks along. Well, I was about 2 weeks “late” in feeling Elijah move, and I was about 2 weeks late for this too. Now though it seems like I feel him moving constantly. He still has periods when he is more active and is kicking stronger, but I can now feel most of his movements even when he’s sleeping and not being that active. Thankfully he’s cutting down on his somersaults though – those can get uncomfortable when he decides to completely change his orientation! It’d be fun to watch my tummy when he’s doing that and see what it looks like! :)

Trying Week

This week has been a doozie so far . . . I just want to take an all-day nap! Last weekend Jon and I did so much good work, it really was ridiculous! We put together the crib, moved things downstairs, cleaned, cleaned, cleaned, and got a lot of stuff done! We were exhausted!

On Monday I wasn’t feeling well and stayed home though. I would alternate between really cold and clammy feeling and then being really hot and sweating buckets. My stomach wasn’t feeling that great, though I wasn’t actually throwing up. I slept and laid around and did nothing while feeling general ickiness all over. I must have worked too hard and made myself sick (is that a good excuse to get out of housework for the next two months?). :)

Tuesday I felt much better, though still very tired, but I went to work. All was going well until Tuesday night. One of my contacts started bothering me on my drive home, so I figured it was time to throw them out when I went to bed that night. No biggie, sometimes the contacts get grungy faster then usual and since I use disposables I just throw them away a little early. Well, when I was getting ready for bed and took them out I immediately felt like there was something in my eye. I would get a stabbing pain under my eyelid whenever I blinked or when I moved my eye up and down. I tried flushing my eye with saline, Jon looked in my eye, I rested to try and “forget” the pain, but nothing helped! And the pain was getting worse and more persistent. Finally Jon and I decided that I wouldn’t be able to sleep and should go to the urgent care/emergency care center near our house. So, we headed out at 11:30 at night!

Once there, they doctor numbed my eye, put in this dye stuff, and looked at my eye underneath this black light thing. There were no cornea abrasions -- which was very good -- but they could see inflammation and infection in the white of my eye and under my lid (I guess it lights up somehow with this dye). They gave me prescriptions for antibiotic eye drops and eye ointment and Jon and I were on our way to the 24-hour pharmacy. By this time my eye was killing me (it hurt much worse than earlier even), running like a faucet, I could not keep it open or blink without a lot of pain. To show you how bad I was feeling, I didn’t even let Jon buy me a treat at Walgreens! I turned down ice cream, Pringle’s, and chocolate! What was I thinking?!

We ended up getting home around 2:30 am and I headed to bed after Jon helped me put the ointment junk in my eye (after we verified with the pharmacy and doctor that the drops were actually okay to use even though the warning on the side said not to use when pregnant!). The ointment helped a lot with the discomfort, though it made my vision blurry for a while, even after I woke up in the morning. My eye is looking a lot better now (I’m writing this almost two days after the episode) and feels better. My eye drops make my eye sting for a little bit after I put them in, but I guess that’s to be expected. The real bummer is that I have to wear my glasses for a while. And my baby shower is on Saturday, so in all my pictures I’m going to look dorky in my glasses. Oh well! At least nothing is more seriously wrong with my eyes!

This week really is tiring me out though. My family is all coming to stay with us for the shower this weekend and there is still a bunch of stuff to do to get ready, including going grocery shopping! But Thursday night is our childbirth class, so I’ll be running around Friday after work to get ready. When all I really want to do is go home and go to sleep! It’ll be nice to have my family with us again though. They might just not get to eat anything while they’re here, that’s all! :)

Crib Constructed!

Missy and I got our new crib put together on Saturday!

It was a long process, and putting the crib together actually took only a small portion of the time. We spent more time moving a lot of stuff out of the baby's room first (which we were previously using as a guest room and for storage), and cleaning the room up, before we sat down to put the crib together.

Once we finally started assembling the crib, we did run into a couple of minor challenges. The instructions were a little bit difficult to read, and not exactly clear on a few things. For example, the instructions for attaching the matress spring frame appeared in two different places in the instructions (steps 2 and 4), so it was left to us to figure out whether it would be a good idea to do step 3 before or after attaching the spring frame!

The instructions and parts we got also apparently were for a slightly different crib than the one we bought. In fact, the instructions didn't match the parts, either. When we initially compared the parts we got to the set of parts that we were supposed to get according to the instructions, there were a few things missing, and we had some extra things. It turned out that the only things we were actually missing were 4 10-32 1 1/4" machine screws and 4 10-32 wing nuts, so rather than send away to the crib manufacturer for the missing parts, I just ran over to Home Depot to pick them up.

It also turned out that the step of attaching the two sides of the crib to the back portion was not covered by the instructions. Fortunately, though, Missy was able to figure that out and we got that done as well.

So now we have an assembled crib, complete with sliding drawer underneath, mattress spring frame all ready for a matress, and a front rail that slides up and down. Pretty cool! Overall, I think Missy and I worked together pretty well, and we had a fun time together getting the crib assembled, even though there were a couple of unforseen challenges to overcome. I hope that the actual parenting of the baby will go as smoothly!