Final countdown... 20

CURRENT GESTATION: 37w 1d
DAYS UNTIL EDD: 20
NESTING READYNESS STATUS: 50% done everything I wanted to be before baby comes.
PHYSICAL READYNESS STATUS: Yeah I'm in alot of pain and queasy and huge and clumsy and awkward and my eyesight is failing a bit and my brain is foggy and my ankles are missing and, well, pretty much my body is at the "GET THIS KID OUTTA ME!" stage.
EMOTIONAL READYNESS STATUS: *insert screeching brakes sound effect here* I want my baby in my arms but I'm scared about the labor pain, the family dynamic changes, and being able to meet the needs of 4 small children and a newborn, so when I think about the upcoming birth, I'm not thinking, "I hope it's today!" I'm thinking, "I'm not ready! Wait! Hang on a few more days... I have to catch my breath here!"

On the to do list: Finish baby's afghan, clean and rearrange kitchen, clean my bedroom, wash my comforter.

4 weeks and 5 days until my EDD...

Yeah I'm totally counting down. Last month of pregnancy is crazy-land for me and seeing the number of days until my due date get smaller and smaller helps me hang onto that last thread of sanity. ;)

5 Weeks To Go!

Today marked 35 weeks of pregnancy. Yesterday I had a prenatal appointment. Vitals were all normal. Fundal height has been right on the whole time but yesterday 2 weeks ahead! LOL! I've been saying she's tall, this little baby. Been saying it for months. And that she's low in my pelvis. Today my midwife was like 'wow her head is really low in there!' and then she commented how high up baby's tush was and asked if my other babies were long. Funny to have her confirm what I'm thinking about baby being tall. She doesn't feel BIG like my son felt just big all over and he totally was a chub, but she feels really really tall. Her head is so low I can't describe it in public without blushing and she kicked me right under the ribs the other day so hard that I felt bruised there for days. But yet my belly is only JUST this week at 34.5 weeks preggo starting to feel like it's getting maxed out for fullness, so it's not feeling like she's heavy big, just tall big. I don't have any new stretch marks at all yet and my belly skin has only begun to look stretched and itch this past week, and I've gotten dozens of new marks every time with the others starting around 5-7 months along and itched with the stretching something crazy too. I dunno, she just doesn't feel BIG, just super duper tall. It's funny, my firstborn was I think 21 inches but only 7 pounds 12 ounces and she could not fit size NB because she was so tall, but #3 was 9 pounds 2 ounces and only 19.25 inches tall and she was in NB for a month at least because she was flopping around lost in 0-3 months! Crazy. Anyway it will be interesting to see if this little one stays on this growth curve or if she stops growing taller and starts getting to be a little chub before her birth.

My feet have been swelling every night this past week. They were barely swollen at my appointment, which was surprising because being in the car usually makes it worse if I'm to the point of cankles. Odd. Anyway the midwife said it's a good sign they're coming and going and not constant. Yay? They still hurt though. The skin on the tops of my feet feels like it's sunburned or got scraped up with sandpaper or something from the stretching from the swelling. Tonight they are hardly fluffy looking at all though. Good because I plan to work them good tomorrow- LOL! I have a giant list of things I want done by 37 weeks. So now I've got 2 weeks to finish that list. Must push myself a bit harder!

Countdown... 37 days

Here it is 37 days to my due date and I'm feeling it for sure! Why is the end of a pregnancy such a hard time? Physically yes, but emotionally and psychologically too. Almost down to the last 5 weeks now and my feet have begun to swell a bit in the evenings. I'm tired all the time. I cannot breathe and bend over at the same time. :-) In fact, bending over at all is pretty much out of the question anymore. This precious baby is strong and fiesty. She feels small in size, but yet tall to me. Her siblings already adore her and are eagerly counting down the days until her due date. I know most babies don't arrive on their due date but I've had 3 out of 4 so far arrive within days of their EDD (including #4 who was born ON her EDD)so it's as good a guess as any, I'd say.
I'm excited and nervous. Would you believe a 5th time mom still has the fears of not being a good enough mom? :-) I wonder how another child will change the family dynamic, and, being a person who likes to plan things out, I wish I knew how to prepare for this unknown dynamic change. I can only let it rest with Jesus and be thankful not only for this precious gift of an already loved baby, but also that my Lord knows the future and will give me what I need when I need it.

Prenatal Appointment Update! And Musings on Toddlers.

With all the preceeding week's goings-on, particularly cooking and baking all day Friday and galavanting all Saturday, my ankles vanished completely. Ah my first real cankle-attack, how thrilling... :-/ Not. My dear husband spoiled me though and had me laying down resting or napping all day Sunday! I have to say that was such a vacation for my poor sore tired body, it was just amazing! Isn't he sweet to have babied me all day like that? I was worried about going to my prenatal appointment (rescheduled from the week before if you'll recall) with my feet looking like they were wearing their own inner tubes ready for a float down the river. But thanks to hubby spoiling me rotten, they were almost normal looking by my appointment. Sure I was still only seeing vague bumps where my ankle bones once dominated, and the tops of my feet looked kind of fake what with how smooth and veignless they were due to light swelling, but my toes actually looked like toes rather than a row of vienna sausages and the "inner tube" effect around my ankles was gone.

My appointment was Monday the 2nd and going anywhere in this heat just sucks the life out of me so that's all I did. :p It's nearly an hour away in good traffic so I like to go somewhere else when I go in to the city so I can feel like I got something accomplished, but I just couldn't summon the energy after my appointment to do anything so I just hit the road for home. Upon getting back into my home town I was getting backseat requests to go to Dollar Tree which I'd just been to (for hubby's birthday balloons the previous Wednesday), so I opted for another local store. I thought I'm tired and sore but I'll run in for a minute and they'll feel like we did something fun and then they will nap and I will nap and life will be good. Well we were in the store about 5 minutes when my Buggie got his arm stuck in the shopping cart! This poor boy just cannot catch a break lately, can he? :( The carts are tiny, nearly minature ones, and he had put his arm in the slot between the cart where he was sitting and the push handle of the cart which I was holding, and then couldn't bring it back up again because his elbow joint was bigger than the slot. He must have had it turned in some strange way to get it to go in there in the first place. I had lotion in my purse, because I'm a mom, and I know that one must have a tool for everything in either the purse, the diaper bag, or the car glove compartment! Lol! Meanwhile the lone cashier heard me tell Chicklet to please step aside so I could park the cart and get her brother unstuck, and Buggie pitifully moaning, "I skuuuck! I skuuuck!" The cashier asked me what was wrong and I said, "His arm's stuck but I'm sure I have some lotion in here somewhere..." as I'm digging around in my purse. She didn't wait to see and ran off down one aisle in a panic, hollering for the manager that a baby was stuck in a cart, and the manager came running and then both of them were hovering and clucking and panicking and the rest of the employees were peeking around trying to see what the commotion was about. I was like, "Okay everyone, it's okay, calm down now, I have lotion!" The manager kept saying over and over how many years she's worked there and this has never happened! Never happened! Never happened! How oh how to get him out! She kept saying she didn't know how to get him out. Even after I said I had lotion. Yeah she was really freaked. Then she was jerking on his arm trying to free him and the jerking hurt him and he started crying and then I was biting my lip to keep from snapping at her to BACK AWAY FROM MY KID NOW! I however have had 2 kids who have had a talent for getting their appendages stuck in things, especially between the rails of the crib. *sigh* I do not know how they do it but they can get a finger or leg or arm stuck where it should not have fit IN in the first place. So I'm very well aquainted with the virtues of lotion, and after holding up the bottle by way of an excuse-me since I didn't trust my tongue at the moment, and stepping between my son and the panicking manager and then slathering some on Buggie's arm, it slipped right out with no trouble as I knew it would. The crowd of panicked onlookers waiting to see if I was going to sue over this or not was frazzling my already overbaked for the day brain cells so I assured them that we're all just fine, he's fine, why yes he does have a red mark but trust me he's fine (thinking to self that he wouldn't HAVE a red mark if *someone* hadn't tried to YANK his poor little baby arm free!), and then we escaped the infamy to the car and went home for a blessed nap.

But allow me to backtrack to the actual prenatal appointment! ;) I FINALLY got to meet the head midwife at my new birthing center. I know, right? somehow I've been going there for the last 6 or so months and managed to never have an appointment with the head midwife! I had never even seen her. So when I walked in and a completely unfamiliar woman greeted me, I had a good idea who I was meeting and I was pretty nervous. I had made up my mind to tell whoever I had my appointment with that considering I had never even seen the head midwife and I have a real problem with strangers being at the birth due to my own personality, personal history, anxiety, and just being a shy person all around, I was wondering about the likelihood that the head midwife would be attending this baby's birth. Wondering as in, 'since I don't know her at all, have never seen her, and don't think I have enough prenatal appointments left in my cue to get used to a total stranger to the point of comfort it takes to not mind them seeing me stark nekkid and giving birth, I certainly hope she will not be the one on call, please, oh please, tell me she will not be the one on call so I can quell this panic attack about having to give birth with a stranger!' So of course I go in ready to plead shy and there it's her doing my appointment. And wouldn't you know it but God knows exactly what He's doing- I totally liked her. Seriously. Strangely enough after my one leisurely and comfortable appointment with her I really like her and am totally okay with it if she's the one delivering babygirl! I had to laugh at my human foolishness and thank God for knowing what He was doing even as I had my human worries over something He'd already taken care of. I should have just given it to Him but you know I forget to do that sometimes... more than I'd care to admit. Life would be so much less stressful if that were not one of the many things I'm prone to forgetting.
We discussed PPD and GBS and how to get babygirl off the nerve she gets on sometimes when I can't even walk for the pain. I asked about the painful grinding and popping in my pelvis with every move I make and she thought I could either see a physical therapist or wait it out since it would likely resolve itself postpartum. I think I'll wait it out. I'd rather not throw money at a therapist for something that I had a gut feeling would resolve after the birth even before the midwife expressed that same sentiment. She asked me about my previous breastfeeding experiences. I told her about the difficulties with my kids (well really mostly just Chicklet's tongue-tie and the sub-problems resulting) but that we'd made it to 13 months for both of them before they self-weaned. I told her I was sad not to be able to continue a little longer with them but she told me how great it was to have nursed them for over a year and that it was wonderful that I was able to stick with it with Chicklet with having so very many problems. She was very encouraging. She didn't belittle any of my concerns, or my decisions. And she didn't seem to mind my affectionate kids either. *smile* My tots are very lovey and think that everyone wants a hugging kissing toddler in their lap. Of course everyone wants toys shared with them, right? ;) And everyone wants a little person standing beside their chair petting their arm of course. I try to remind them not to overdo it with strangers but they are so used to being that way it's against their nature not to be. It's a little more difficult for a toddler to comprehend that some things that may be encouraged at home may not be encouraged in the company of strangers. So because at home they are hugged and kissed and loved on and when they are affectionate it's met with enthusiasm all around, they of course would assume that the whole world works that way and everyone must love to be loved on. And I confess I don't try too hard to reign them in... love isn't something that the world gives freely and oftentimes after they get over the initial surprise, people absolutely melt and nearly come to tears after being loved on by my kids. The world could use a little more of the pure love of toddlers- maybe then more people would be able to understand the pure love of God! And I know that all too soon my little lovey babies will grow into more reserved children all on their own. It's just how things seem to work. I hope they will always feel free to be affectionate at home, even when their natural tendency to hold back with strangers starts to kick in. It sure brightens my day when one of my littles climbs into my lap and lays their head on my heart and just soaks in being held. Or stops playing to run up to me and kiss me on the arm and then runs off to resume playing. Or comes up to me, arms outstretched, and asks, "Hugs?" How could I not just melt! :)

Last Monthly Prenatal Appointment

I see it's been a week since I updated. Still "on break" from blogging but you may have noticed I popped in on Tuesday for Toddler Tales with pics from our cherry adventure! I figured it was time for a real update. I'll try to pop in for Toddler Tales again on Tuesday the 20th and here's a pregnancy/everything else update smashed all into one post for you in the meantime. Oh and thank you for all the lovely comments on my blog! ♥♥♥ I will get around to responding and/or visiting your blogs back eventually... really! :D I'll at least try my best... and I'll try to do that within the next week so they don't get buried or eaten by the internet monster that likes to eat my email notificatons sometimes. 

This week I had my last monthly prenatal appointment! From here on out it's every 2 weeks between appointments for a bit, then every week... and somewhere along the line around mid September-ish a birth story will be forthcoming. ;) Baby sounds good, I'm healthy, no concerns. Oh and she's head-down! YAAAAYYY!!! I knew that from the placement of the squirms and kicks and the way I suddenly can't breathe very well already though. ;) I am happy she's decided to get into position now. Bug was sideways (transverse) for so long that by the time he started trying to get into the head down position he kept slipping back into transverse. I know, I felt it. He would squirm with all his might and get head down and then I'd feel him slowly slip back down down down until he was again laying sideways. I think he got my uterus stretched out too much side to side and then it was hard to get enough leverage to stay head-down thereafter! Lol! He finally was able to stay mostly head down by my last appointment before his birth. Chicklet however was ever the impatient one like her mother, and was head down from 6 months on. This baby's about 2 weeks behind her big sister in going head-down. I'm just relieved because it was kind of nerve wracking to have Bug transverse for so long. I remember thinking, "Come on little fellow, you have to do this! I can push you out breech but I can't do sideways!!!"

In other news...
My tea drinking kind of got forgotten over last weekend and most of this week (but I'm about to have a cup right now! Water's heating!) and I haven't started back up walking again yet. A friend was going to come walking with me Saturday but couldn't come after all so I didn't go either. I should have. It's just been SO HOT out that every time I set foot out the door I feel like I can't breathe and need to puke so I keep putting it off even though my pelvic region is feeling pretty much totally recovered in the injury sort of way and more back to sore from weak muscles and lack of walking now. If only there were a nice air conditioned mall near here. Not so though- the nearest one is an hour away. So I need to just go later at night or something because I NEED to walk and I don't want the heat to stop me.

SO- tea here I come! And walking, watch out! This weekend I'm getting back on the bandwagon! ;)

On the nesting front, I think the nesting is rubbing off on my husband or something. :) He sorted some stuff in the kitchen, did a bunch of dishes, and cleaned the bathroom for me last weekend! I told him he's my hero! ♥♥♥ I haven't had any strange nesty urges this week. Oh wait... I collected and am in the process of washing clothes and toys and bedding that was technically "clean" but just stale from disuse or I decided it must be dirty from being drug around by the kids too much... Does that count? It does? Oh okay then I admit it I have been laundry nesting then. And I've been feeling the urge to sort the baby clothes into the changing table drawers, which I'm months overdue on doing. Maybe I'll go do that right now... WAIT! Must finish this post first! Okay sorry, got a little sidetracked there.

What was I saying? Oh yes I was going to tell you about Buggie's misadventure at the beginning of the week. My poor little Bugling! He was running through the kitchen and his sister was chasing after him and I opened my mouth to tell them not to chase each other over the slidey throw rug in front of the kitchen sink but mouth open was as far as I got on that because he was already falling, the rug sliding out from under him. Our upright freezer is on a platform so it doesn't block the vent in the kitchen and poor Bug's head hit the corner of the platform I guess. It's the only sharp thing in the vicinity so that's what I assume he hit, but it would take some fancy falling to have connected since it's pretty much flush with the front of the freezer and I had a rubbermaid box in front of it so his head would have had to have fallen into the space between the rubbermaid box and freezer at just the right angle. By the time I got to the other side of the island to see what was going on he was just laying on the floor screaming. I thought I saw some blood spatters on the floor as I scooped him up and his hands were reaching for the back of his little head. My heart skipped a beat in dread and I thought, "No no no..." I had one hand on the back of his neck/head and when I moved it, there was a bloody wound in the back of his head and I saw blood pumping glug glug glug out of it with each of his little heartbeats! I think I almost died when I saw it because I knew what it could mean. I was so afraid for him! I prayed and it literally slowed to a near stop as I was praying! And Bug stopped screaming when the blood stopped pumping out. The bleeding and screaming probably lasted a whole 20 seconds before it slowed to nothing but it was the longest 20 seconds of my life. I put an ice pack on it and Chicklet handed him his sippy cup and he started sucking on it and just laid in my arms for a while drinking his milk as I held the ice pack wrapped in a washcloth on his head. Hubby got home about 15 minutes after it happened and Bug was all happy to see Dada. We checked for concussion and looked at the wound. It looked about 3/4 of an inch long and was right in the middle of a large bump. But he was alert and there was no bleeding. A wee bit of oozing yes, but it was not bleeding outright. He was happy. Calm. No concussion. Extra cuddley but normal other than that. I didn't want him running around with a fresh head wound so I put some salve on it and hubby held him while they watched a DVD of farm animals. The kids rarely watch tv so having a DVD in effectively kept him still for half an hour. After which he was running around, stomping, dancing, spinning, flinging himself at me, and babbling on in his slurry baby version of English. You know, acting like a normal 23 month old. I of course being his worrying mother, hovered over him the rest of the evening and checked on him during the night. He was fine. He ate more than normal for dinner, slept like a log, and woke up feeling bright and chipper and ready to pester his sissy. A check of the wound revealed he still had a big knot on his noggin but... I could have sworn that cut was longer the day before! It looked amazing! Well it looked like a sore head wound, but in comparison to the day before it looked great! And again the next day it looked even smaller and better. And now a week later it's a little bitty bump with a little bitty scab on it. It's healing up so well it really is amazing. An I know just Who to credit with that... When he was laying in my arms with an ice pack on his head, Chicklet asked me, "Mama did his head get broken and the blood is coming out of it? Can you fix him?" I told her yes, but *I* can't fix him, God can! So we prayed together for God to 'fix baby Buggie's head owie' and so He has. It could have been so bad. As the blood was gushing out with his heartbeats he could have bled to death- it wouldn't take long for a tiny child. And I felt terror that my son was hurt and I didn't know what would happen. And in my terror the first thing I thought was to call out to the Great Physician to heal my baby, and He did. Starting with stopping that blood right as I was asking. And then healing up that head wound in record time! I could cry with thankfullness every time I think about it. My life has been full of so many miracles! Another precious miracle to add to my list of how amazing God is! And as I type this, my little Bug is sharing his Duplo blocks with me, bringing a smile to my face. :) He *should* be in bed but hubby worked late and when he got home and Bug was still awake ... well how could I say no to my two men giving me puppydog eyes. So Bug is hanging out with the adults tonight, much past his bedtime. I think this is the first time he's been allowed to stay up but somehow I don't think he realizes the significance. ;) He's just happy to be hopping from Dada to Mama and back again, sharing Duplos and taking an occasional drink from his sippy cup.

So I'm going to go snuggle up on the couch with my man and my mini-man for a bit, drink some of that tea I'm supposed to be drinking, and then put the Bugster to bed and organize some baby clothes. Sounds like a great way to spend an evening to me! ;)

A Condensed Update...

I'm hanging in there. :D Still not going to officially come back to blogging just yet... I'll try to post once in a  while though.
I need to get pics up of what we did 2 Tuesdays ago. Fun fun! I should have done that before I "went on break" but you know how these things go... My brain on hcg is more like a strainer and everything that is not immediately dire drains right through the holes. So that's my next objective if I get a chance to blog again soon.
But speaking of chances to blog- I DESPERATELY need a nap today so I'm not going to be long so lets get this show on the road. ;)

1. Independence Day was great! We watched fireworks from the car because I don't do mosquitoes. Seriously though, who does do mosquitoes? Ick. I didn't escape unscathed though because one followed me home and met his end the following evening after draining the blood from my foot and then attempting to taste test my hubby's bicep. He actually asked for a baby wipe and I turned around with a funny look wondering why on earth he needed a wipe and there was the remains of that mosquito. And yeah, he needed a baby wipe for that one. Very ew.

2. Been trying to get my red raspberry leaf tea down. I have not been able to stomach much beyond mild meat, almonds, some noodles and breads, some veggies, water, and lemonade for most of this pregnancy. It's taken me until the 3rd trimester to be able to keep down any pills (herbs or prenatals or any other vitamins) except for Mommy's Bliss Morning Sickness Magic. Thankfully the Morn. Sickness Magic has Vitamin B-6 and Folic Acid in it in addition to Red Raspberry Leaf and Ginger. So my wee one got at least that for the first 6 months while I couldn't keep anything but meat and nuts down. Now that I'm in the third trimester I can swallow pills again so I'm on a prenatal (although I can only get 2 of the daily 6 pills I'm supposed to take. Seriously these things are like horse pills and do NOT sit well in my tummy. I can't handle 6 in one day!) and a liquid calcium supplement (*GAG* oh *gag*) and sometimes before bed if I'm wound up I take Valerian Root capsules to help me sleep. So now that I've been taking those, I have been thinking it's like 7 months past time for me to be drinking Red Raspberry Leaf tea. My stomach has NOT handled tea well at all so far this pregnancy so I'm starting out with Earth Mama Angel Baby's Morning Wellness Tea! I SO LOVE EMAB products! I couldn't tolerate even this during the first or second trimesters but I'm trying to tolerate it now. My poor tummy cramps up really bad when I drink tea, and this one has been no exception. Go figure I can drink an occasional cup of decaff coffee but give me some herbal tea and my innards are staging a revolt. It's crazy... So anyway, I'm making myself because the Red Rasp. in the tea is good for my uterus. My plan is to work up to being able to drink the EMAB Third Trimester Tea which has a slightly higher Red Raspberry Leaf content. This is day 2. I got 2 cups of Morning Wellness down yesterday and my tummy freaked out and threatened to explode. Oh boy. That was a fun few hours. But it did stay down. Today I drank a cup this morning and then it's noon so I had another cup and as I was almost done the last sip my tummy freaked out again with the pressure and the cramps and other things you don't wanna know about... BUT hey it is still staying down. Uncomfortably so, but it's in there. Stay, tea, stay!

3. I NEVER use Spell Check- could you tell? :p I turned it on just now for the first time ever and then had a laugh. It freaked out over "prenatals" - apparently I can write prenatal but not prenatals. It also had a cow about "Folic Acid" - apparently it thought I was trying to write Felix or Fold or Folk. Um yeah... And of course EMAB for Earth Mama Angel Baby because that's just way too long to type out repeatedly. And now in my previous sentence where I typed "of course" it is highlighting just the se at the end of course. Um... Riiiiight. It's asking if I meant to type Sue or See. Now this is why I never use Spell Check. It bugs the daylights outta me. Did it actually catch any spelling errors? Not so much. Just ridiculousness. Speaking of which, it's now highlighting ONLY diculousness in the word ridiculousness and asking me if by diculousness I actually meant to type Ridiculousness. Which I did. It just has chosen to be BLIND to the first 2 letters of the word. Ugh! I'll just go turn that off now and go back to misspelling things my way, TYVM! :p Sorry, I guess you'll just have to deal with my typos.

4. So over Independence Day weekend we dogsat my friend's dog. The kids adored having her here. :) It was alot of fun. Poor dog was probably worn out from all the pestering of well-meaning toddlers while she was here. :) She's such a sweet dog! Very well behaved and good with the kids.

5. My walks were going really good. I was managing to get out about 5 days a week. Then I got hurt on the 3rd and haven't gone for a walk since then. I was walking the dog and she saw a squirrel. I have strong arms (I have toddlers- 'nuff said) so my arms weren't even sore from it, but the jolt somehow pulled both hips, groin, and tailbone all at once. It didn't hurt alot when it happened but later- ZOWIE! I was expecting some pulling but man that squirrel really must have looked juicy! LOL! Anyway, I do plan to resume walking once I'm healed up. I was just thinking last night that if I didn't feel so crummy from the tea I might try one lap around the block as a test run to see if I'm good to go again or not. So maybe tonight I'll get to do my test run and start the walking back up again. I'm scared that after not walking for 5 days in a row that I might feel like I'm starting all over again. IT took 2 weeks of it to stop hurting afterward before. Hope I can get back up to 8 blocks again in less than 2 weeks this time. That home-stretch panic has set in and I keep having this feeling of too much to do and too little time left to do it in.

6. Last night I cooked up 6 pounds of ground beef. I burned one of them and couldn't even blame it on my broken oven! Lol! Anyway, 5 of them, the non-burned ones, went into the freezer in ziplocks for after the baby is born. It's about time I started stashing away some meals. I have no relatives anywhere nearby so nobody to help me prepare. I'm on my own. When Bug was born, my sister and one of my friends sent us some meals to help out a couple times, which was such a blessing! I had not prepared anything in advance at all. So this time I am thinking if all I do is cook the beef and bag it, at least that's a start! LOL! It's better than being in that tired mom of a newborn and toddlers phase and I look at the clock and it's a quarter to 6 and I haven't even thawed the meat yet. Precooked it will thaw fast once I throw it into the hot rest of the meal! Haha...

7. So I'm still taking a break because I only have 2 kinds of days right now. The first kind is like today. I'm so tired and/or sick and/or sore that I just can't even handle the normal day to day things. I need a nap and Chicklet rarely stops talking long enough for me to get a good drift. Lol! I'm sure gonna try though. The second type of day is where I wake up on some sort of psychotic nesting hormone surge and something in my house gets seriuously majorly rearranged. Last Friday I spent all day cleaning my dining room. We haven't used the table in there for ... oh forever. Like a year. Because the leaves are broken and it's not big enough for the 4 of us without the leaves. So I started using it as a sewing room and sewing junk took over the room and it looked like a total disaster in there and I couldn't even find my sewing machine for all the mess. Friday I went to town in there. Threw out 3 garbage sacks, assorted cardboard boxes, and some fabric scraps. Washed the windows, walls, baseboards, windowsills, curtain, floors, chairs, table. Watered the forgotten aloe plant that I hadn't watered in a few months. Good thing it's a cactus... Planted some beans in a pot for kicks (to my amazement they have sprouted... LOL!). Put away the fabric and hangers and sewing machine. Cleared out some random junk that wound up in there. It took me from waking up until about 1:30 or 2pm to do all this and then I took a shower and collapsed into bed for a wanna-be-nap while Chicklet colored and talked at me. Then I can't remember if it was Monday night or Tuesday night my hubby moved the changing table dresser into the bathroom for me. I've been wanting it in there for a a while now but I didn't see how it was possible. Our bathroom is tiny and the only way to get that heavy beast of a changing table in there would be to pick it up and drop it into the barely-big-enough hole behind the sink. And my Superman hubby, after much maneuvering, managed to get it as far in as it would go and then did precisely that- he picked that thing up and lowered it into the hole. Oh my! Be still my heart! :) So the following day I had a nesting burst and spent the morning sweeping, mopping, and rearranging. It's very very very very very crowded in there now but somehow despite that it looks... well it looks cute and functional! LOL! It's going to be nice to have the changing table in the bathroom so I can use it for the new baby. It wouldn't fit in our room no way no how (our room's teeny too) and if it was left in the toddlers' bedroom I wouldn't want to go in there in the middle of the night with a crying baby and turn on the light to change her, KWIM? So now I can use the changing table in the bathroom. Hooray! And THAT little nesting bit has prompted a cloth diapering streak. I haven't really cloth diapered my son much. Barely ever. I lost most of the very few cloth diaps I had in the move the week he was born. So when my mom bought us some clearance Bum Genius for the new baby, and they arrived last Wednesday, I of course washed them up right away. And then when there was our bathroom with the changing table in it's new place, I couldn't resist putting the diaps together and using them on Bug. Now he wets WAAAAAAYYYYY too much to use them at night, but I've been using them during the day. I asked hubby if, if I keep track of how much I save by using cloth on Bug, we can take that amount and buy more cloth diapers with it. And then when the new baby comes I'll keep track of how much we save with her too, and we'll just go on buying cloth until we have enough to diaper our two in cloth fulltime (well except for Bug at night). So that's the plan. Oh and on the side, now that the changing table is in the bathroom, I put Bug on the potty every time I change him! He loves it! He hasn't peed in there yet, but hey, at least it's now become easy to get him sitting on the potty several times a day. Since I'm not motivated enough while pregnant to do the all or nothing, one day and we're done approach. Not that I have any potty training experience anyway. Chicklet was 3 years old and still making potty training my biggest nightmare when I got fed up after one awful afternoon and took away her diapers and told her NO MORE DIAPERS EVER. And she started peeing in the potty that very night and kept right on at it. Not to say there weren't accidents or testing me but for the most part she was done and she has not worn a diaper since that afternoon. So unless I want to wait until he's 3 and cut him off cold turkey, which I'd rather not wait personally, I have to start doing SOMETHING with Bug, preggo or not, and this having the changing table moved has just made that very doable and easy! Hooray!

8. So that's what my life is looking like. I'll update once in a while but for now I feel like if I'm having nesting days I need to take advantage of them and go for it, and if I'm feeling too crummy to do housework, I shouldn't spend my naptime opportunity blogging, I should just take a nap so I can hopefully feel alive enough to cook a nice dinner and finish out the day like a normal non-zombie human being. So here I go off to take a "nap" and de-zombie-fy. I'll catch ya in a few days! Thank you and **HUGS** to everyone who has been thinking of me and praying for me! You're the best! ♥

UPDATED: 29 weeks is not a good time to be in labor

Toddler Tales totally slipped my mind yesterday. Why? I'm only 29 1/2 weeks but I've been having contractions all night and in pain and they're starting to worry me. So if you'd say a prayer for me that would be great. I need to go call my midwife. Oh and if you have any tips for getting the contractions to stop I'm all ears. I've tried sitting, standing, walking sleeping, ice pack, and sipping water the whole time. About ready to try a heating pad. Prayers & Ideas appreciated.


**EDIT:**
Okay so yesterday I felt just not right all day. I brushed it off as lack of sleep because Monday night I felt like I was roasting alive all night and couldn't sleep. 8:55pm I had a really strong contraction and it made me suck in my breath and moan. I looked at hubby in shock and said, "Wow, I think that's the strongest one I've had yet!" Then another at 9pm, one right on top of another for a while, probably an hour, and then they started getting farther apart and some were less intense. I was guzzling cold water hoping that would slow them down but they took their sweet time to slow down. I was still having the occasional less painful one by bedtime but that's not unusual for me. I have been contracting almost daily since 20 weeks. Just not this many extra painful ones at once. Well all night last night I felt crampy and then this morning I woke up serious pain from another one of those doozie contractions. No sooner had it ended, than another began. Just like that hour from 9 to 10 last night. I stood up and paced around the house a bit. Didn't help. Sat down and drank some ice water. Didn't help. Put an ice pack on my belly- the ice pack I'd been CUDDLING in bed because I've been so overheated at night - and the ice helped one contraction but became seriously less and less effective super fast so forget that idea. I called hubby at work and told him we might have a problem. Now, I had to call him at work and prewarn him "just in case" with Bug a few times too, but I never had to have him come home and take me to the hospital to get it stopped. There was this one time that I was laying in bed and the contractions were like they were this morning and last night and I was pretty scared, but I prayed and they finally stopped after about an hour. So that's what this reminded me of only I was scared because I'd had them all yesterday evening and then been crampy all night with an occasional contraction, and then woke up in the middle of a nice painful one this morning and they started in with the one on top of each other thing right off the bat. So it scared me. So I called hubby. And then I tried to call the midwife but the office was closed and I feel so bad calling the emergency number in case the contractions are going to just magically stop as soon as I dial, so I decided to try one more thing in the half hour before the office opens. I put my poor Bug back in his crib and asked Chicklet to get him some toys and I went and had a 10 minute hot bath at 8:30am and you know what? It stopped those contractions in their tracks! :) Hooray!

**UPDATE** almost 10am
Okay another update... It's been an hour since I got out of the tub and I had another contraction. I am going to go find my heating pad. I tried to call the midwife office again and no answer. I don't want to call that emergency number. I don't wanna. Makes me feel like a hypochondriac or something. I'll call the office again in a few minutes and see if they answer. I need some fresh ideas for how to get these contractions under control.

**UPDATE AGAIN** about 12:30pm
Okay I've had about 5 contractions total since I got out of the tub and they are only annoyingly painful- which is about my "normal" rate and degree of contractions. Yay! I'm still drinking water like a camel and going to go lay down for a couple hours while Chicklet colors soon. Buggie went down for a nap late; at noon today which means he may or may not sleep straight through until 3 or 4pm! I heard him squeaking alot during the night so he didn't sleep too soundly. Maybe that means he'll be nice and tired and have a good long nap for me. I hope the contractions stay in "normal" range now. I would hate to go lay down to rest and have them start up again. You wouldn't think that a nap would make them start up again though... would you? :-/

**LAST(?) UPDATE** 8pm
Just got the tots to bed. Why is it that the sweetest kids act HORRIBLE when Mommy's under the weather? :p
Halfway through my nap the contractions picked up a notch. They have been coming and going, a few at a time, all evening. They seem to be slowing down again now, thankfully. I tried to call the midwives' office several times today and they never answered. They don't go in on Wednesdays if there aren't enough preggo mamas to have appointments every day that week. Usually the secretary is there though so I wonder why she didn't answer? Hmmm...
Praying I don't start contracting again tonight! Right now baby is moving around in there like crazy. It tickles and sometimes hurts when she's squirming. :) I love it though!

Thank you for your prayers today! ♥ It meant alot to me that someone dropped by and read what I was going through, said a prayer and left a comment.

I'm alive.

I'm alive. Tired and sick and hot and sore but still riding the high of excitement that I'm carrying another baby! :) The insomnia is really starting to get to me again though which isn't good because it usually leads to depression and you know I don't wanna go there. :p Who would?! So I guess it's time to dig out my Valerian again and keep the Tums handy because it gives me heartburn. Lol!
Wednesday night I choked on a tuna bone. It was a bit scary. I coughed it up and then my throat was bleeding. Not alot, just like a papercut. So then I was coughing that up too. Fun. It slowed down pretty quick. My throat was super swollen and sore the next day. Still a little sore tonight as I write this but I've barely noticed it all day so that's good.
It's earwig season. I hate those things. I have to remember to turn off all the lights when the sun goes down or they come inside by the thousands. Not kidding. The basement is full of them. They are so gross. I guess we get those instead of cockraoches here- they behave pretty much the same for all intents and purposes except they're smaller, without wings, and have big pinchers on their behinds. Ew...
I am taking back my kitchen from the clutter-monster sloooooowwwwly but surely and it's really got me in a good mood! I hope to post more on this at a later date. For now I just wanted to pop in and say hey, how's it going, yeah I'm still alive, still excited about the baby, and got lots of fun family activities coming up in the next few weeks to post about.
I'll be back... muahahaha! ;)

Camera found, Family visited, Memories made!

It's been a very busy past week and a half here! :) First of all, my husband took last week off work because Monday was our anniversary! Mother's Day was, as I'm sure you know, on Sunday. I am not sure if I mentioned this on here or not but it seems the second I hit 20 weeks pregnant, that's when the contractions started, and sometimes they HURT like crazy. Now you should know this is typical for me to spend the last few months contracting. With Buggie I spent pretty much the whole pregnancy scared that he was going to refuse to wait and be a preemie. There were alot of real bad scares . Then I hit the magical "safe zone" of 36 weeks and the contractions just... stopped. He wound up being born 2 days "late." This time it kind of caught me off guard when the contractions got so painful at 20 weeks because they hadn't been very often or painful during the first half. It made me realize that I need to make it a priority to go see my mom ASAP - before I'm too far into my incessant-painful-contraction phase to be driving through miles and miles of uninhabited prarie. So we made our plans to drive up on Mother's Day and stay for a few days so I could spend some quality time with my mom.

The drive on Sunday went better than expected. Buggie does not ride in the car well so we had some ...moments... and he wouldn't take a nap for longer than a few minutes at a time. But I was expecting way worse so I'm thankful it went as well as it did. We arrived at my parents' house at dinnertime and there was a family BBQ in progress for Mother's Day. My inlaws, and my sister's inlaws were there, as well as us and my sister's family. My baby brother lives out of state now so he was not there. The BBQ was great and it was nice to see everyone at once. The only bad thing was how bad it seemed to wear my mom out. The last "guests" left at nearly 11pm and by that time my kids were already in bed and hubby and I were eager to join them. My poor mom sleeps in a chair in the living room so she looked absolutely exhausted by the time she was able to go to sleep.

I had found my camera to take on the trip but, other than snapping a few scenery pics out the car window on the way, I was so used to not having it that I sadly forgot to take pics of most of our time up there. :(

Monday, our anniversary, we visited my husband's parents in the morning and then drove an hour to another city so hubby could visit his brother and I could meet up with a friend. Actually I've known this friend for years but only on the internet and telephone so it was a real treat to finally get to meet her in person. :) Her kids and mine had so much fun together and I really enjoyed our visit! Here's my car all packed full of kids, aren't they cute? My 2 are on the left and my friend's girls are on the right. I was walking around the front of the parked car to buckle Chicklet in as my friend snapped this pic. :) (So in case you're wondering why she's the only one not buckled in, that's why- I hadn't waddled my preggo self all the way around the car yet!)

After that we took a drive across the state line to see the house my sister is trying to buy. Then all the way back to my inlaws, and left the kids with them for an hour or so while hubby and I went out to a quick Chinese dinner for our anniversary. Happy 8 blessed years to us! :) Then we zoomed back to the inlaws to pick up the kids and drove back up in the mountains to my parents' house and went to bed. It was a reeeeeeeally long day but a a good day! :)

The next day my hubby was in and out. He went out varmint hunting and took a drive and went to town for milk. Me and the kids spent all day just hanging out with my mommy (and my dad when he wasn't working!). It was so wonderful to be able to spend a whole day with her! Again, I wish I'd been better about remembering my camera and taking more pictures! I did get some of Chicklet doing a puzzle with Grammie and Grampy:

And hubby got a few of Buggie and I -Buggie was "flying" in case you were unsure. ;)

Bug got a tremendous kick out of the hummingbirds at my parents' feeder. He was running round their front yard giggling and shouting "Zoom! Zoom! Catch 'em! Catch 'em!" while clapping his hands in the air in the general direction of the zooming hummingbirds. Of course I forgot I had my camera until we were all back inside and Bug was busy with the toys and had forgotten the birds. I did take a couple pics of the hummingbirds once I finally remembered the existence of my camera.

The next day, Wednesday, we made the long trip home.

I took this pic at a rest area because the cloud shadows looked really awesome on the prarie below. Don't let the snow fool you; it was a nice warm day with a cool wind.

The kids did AMAZING on the drive! I think Bug only had one meltdown the whole way home! And Chicklet didn't have a single potty accident the whole time we were away from home! We were so proud of them!

I hope you enjoyed my little recap with a boatload of pics! Or perhaps you did not; so sorry to have bored you half to death! ;)



P.S. Don't forget tomorrow is Toddler Tales Tuesday! I'd be tickled pink if you would join me in posting the cute things our toddlers say and do!

Our Monday! (21 week prenatal appt.)

(Pictures!! I have pics in this one!!) Finally it is Friday and my Monday update is here! Lol! I know my fellow mommies understand... Pregnant, have 2 toddlers, need I say more? ;) Besides, as I'm sure you've noticed, I had other things on my mind that were demanding to be posted this week which pushed my update back a wee bit. 

Monday at 11am I had an appointment at my new birthing center. I'm not sure if I went into it at all before but I was going to a different birthing center before. I went there when pregnant with Chicklet and it was a wonderful experience for pregnancy and birth. It was much much busier and pushier when I was pregnant with my Buggie. Alot of things happened that I did not like at all. Things were so different from when I went there with Chicklet. For one thing, appointments with Chicklet were half an hour long and I could ask questions galore, but with Buggie it was a rushed 10 minute appointment where I was treated like my questions were an annoyance and most of the time it was not even a midwife in training who did my appointments, it was a doula! I have nothing against doulas but when I needed to ask questions of a midwife I couldn't because it was the doula and all the midwives were absent or busy. Not to mention this doula was very rough with me and left bruises when measuring my uterus. Also the head midwife whom I had liked so much during my Chicklet pregnancy, was like a different person when I was pregnant with my son. I had a miscarriage between Chicklet and Bug and when I went in to my first appointment with Bug, she strongly insinuated that my last baby had died because I'm fat. She forbade me to gain a single ounce and praised me for losing weight while pregnant and then insulted me by telling me I need to stop stuffing my face with sweets (I was on a very strict diet when she said this and rarely ate sweets ANYWAY. Why do people so rudely assume that everyone who is overweight is overweight because they sit around all day eating candy?!). I really don't know what I was thinking when I scheduled my first appointment for this pregnancy there. Within minutes of beginning my appointment with them, I was swamped with all the memories of reasons why I should have gone someplace else. I waited, first outside their locked door in the cold with my kids because they lock you out when they're having lunch, and then when they unlocked the door at exactly the time my appointment was supposed to begin, we had to wait in the waiting room for another half hour while others who got there after I had were shown back to their appointments, and then I was finally rushed back to my appointment where the midwife began by trying to force me to have unnecessary tests done. She tried to insist, then to demand, then to emotionally blackmail me into having the tests done like an OB would (Precisely why I chose NOT to go to an OB). Then she brought in the head midwife who told me that I was being unreasonable and needed to have some respect for her, and that I also needed to lose 10 pounds in the next month or "no midwife" would be allowed to take me- I was not "allowed" to have a natural out of hospital birth unless I lose 10 pounds while pregnant and EXTREMELY sick with hyperemisis (on medication for it). I was done. I am stubborn when I need to be and though I'm also very shy and left in tears and shaking like a leaf, I REFUSED to finish my appointment by submitting to unnecessary tests and putting another baby in danger by having my prenatal care done by a midwife who would rather I starve and diet during pregnancy than just tell me to eat healthy so that the baby and I are healthy. So I transferred to a new birthing center with new midwives to whom I've made it perfectly clear from the get-go that I will not be pushed into things I do not want or believe in, and that is why I chose a midwife rather than an OB in the first place. I've had 3 appointments at the new place so far and had no problems. They listen, respect my decisions about what tests I do and do not want, and I have an hour for each appointment to ask any questions or discuss any concerns. Nobody had manipulated me, manhandled or bruised me, or told me to do anything that was dangerous to my or my baby's health. Ladies, this is why it's important to know what you want and do your research. So many times prenatal care providors will try to beg, push, or blackmail you into what THEY want out of your prenatal and birth experience. It's not about them, it's about you and that baby and the rest of your family. While we should not have to fight for the pregnancy and birth we want, the fact is that we do have to fight for it, so know what's what beforehand and go after it, even if that means you have to switch care providors. And trust me I know how terrifying it is to have to switch! I was scared stiff! But I am SO GLAD that I did and I can tell already that I will have a healthier (physically and emotionally) pregnancy and birth because I did. If I'd known how much better it would be, and what a relief it would be, I would not have been so scared to death to switch.

Aaaannnywaaay, you're all wondering where is my actual update if you've made it this far! Lol! Well my appointment was good. The midwife let Chicklet help and Chicklet was tickled pink! She got to squeeze the gel onto my belly, turn on the doppler, and then help wipe the gell off with a kleenex. :) She smeared gel all over the place (got on my skirt and shirt) but she was just so proud of herself it was adorable! I thought it was totally sweet of the midwife to let her help. Babygirl's heartrate was the same as last month- somewhere in the 150's but specifically undefineable because she once again kept kicking the doppler and squirming away! Lol! My BP is usually on the high end of normal, and it was uncommonly low for me this time which I thought was odd. Must have been from the wonderful friendly relaxed environment here. :) My uterus measured right on for the due date I calculated.

Afterwards we went to lunch as a family and tried a new place. To my surprise the kids meals came with ice cream cones, which I was none too pleased about at first, but decided to chill out and not worry about it, so my almost 21-month-old Buggie got his first ice cream cone ever and LOVED it. ;)

He got ice cream for his 1st birthday party last August but I am pretty sure he hasn't had any since then or before then, so this was an extra special treat for him and he was very intent on eating every last lick. All by himself. Yikes! ;) Chicklet has had ice cream cones before and was so excited about her cone that she wouldn't look at the camera. Hehe...

I'm so glad that my husband thought to take pics with his phone! I lost my camera back in January or February and have STILL not taken the Christmas pics off it. I need to find that but I keep forgetting to go on a camera hunt.

Ultrasound results are in!

Yesterday morning I had my ultrasound and I am pleased to announce that our newest addition looks to be a GIRL! :) Chicklet and Bug are so excited to be getting a new baby sister! Okay Bug really couldn't care less, but Chicklet was absolutely adamant that the baby NOT be a boy so I'm sure she's relieved that it's a girl ;)

A few months before I became pregnant I had a dream that I gave birth to another baby - a girl with a beautiful name. When I woke up I told my husband that we would have another baby and her name would be this name from the dream. He kind of scoffed at both the name (he wasn't fond of the name) and the idea that we would be having another child. Well when I became pregnant I reminded him of the dream. :) I think the name must have grown on him because he proudly announced it to his friends and family when he called them following the ultrasound to share the good news of the baby being a girl! Either that or he decided that when the wife has a dream that comes true, ya don't argue with the details. ;)

When I was 5 years old and my little sister was 2, my mom and dad told us that Mom was pregnant. They kept it a secret for a long time so Mom was pretty far along by this time. I immediately insisted the baby would be a boy. My parents tried to impress on me the importance of enjoying the blessing of a new baby no matter it's gender. I staunchly replied that God knew I already HAD a sister and needed a brother so I was SURE it was the missing brother. Lol! Well no matter what my parents said I was not to be swayed. And sure enough it was my longed for baby brother! I think I'd have been quite dissappointed if I hadn't gotten a brother.

Chicklet reminds me of myself so much sometimes. She is 3 1/2 years old now. When I first told her there was a baby growing in Mommy's tummy, she didn't care about the gender of it, just rejoiced in the wonder of it with me. She likes to help me rub my stretch mark oil on my belly- "to make it SOFT for the baby" she says! She kisses my belly and talks to the baby inside. Pretty soon she became aware that the baby would have to be a boy or a girl and became curious. I asked her which one SHE thought it was and she immediately declared the baby to be a girl. I didn't try too hard to dissuade her, remembering myself insisting even harder to my parents that my unborn brother was indeed a boy. Besides, I had reasons to think she was probably right. I was severely sick with Chicklet herself when pregnant, but not with Buggie. This time I have been severely sick again. I had mother's intuition telling me Chicklet was a girl before I knew she was, and telling me Buggie was a boy before the ultrasound proved he was, and this time around I felt I was carrying another girl, but I didn't want to get too set on that idea in case it was just wishful thinking from that dream I'd had before I got pregnant. Or perhaps I was fooling myself due to the similarity of this pregnancy to my first. But I still felt so strongly that it was a girl that I told people my hunch, and didn't try to convince Chicklet otherwise.

Every time the conversation of gender came up, Chicklet would declare louder and louder that the baby is a GIRL. At first calm and serene, if asked too many times in a row she would get downright frustrated that you weren't paying attention by the 3rd or 4th time she repeated that it's a GIRL baby. I began to wonder what we would do with Chicklet if the baby was not a girl! She would obviously be upset. Friday, I was telling Chicklet that "tomorrow we get to go see if the baby is a girl, or a boy!" She glared at me as I said the word boy and went, "Uh!"
I said, "If it's a girl her name will be ___ but what if it's a boy? What should we name him?"
Chicklet looked happy until I got to the word BOY and then looked terribly upset. Her reply was, "A boy?! A BOY?! Ma-mAAA!!! It's a baby GIRL!" She was very upset at the thought that it might be a boy.

We were thrilled to find out yesterday that the baby is indeed a girl! For Chicklet's sake of course, but especially because we love to know ahead of time and get very excited about getting to know our new blessing by name! :)

Pregnancy update

It's been 2 1/2 weeks since my last update. Where to start?
We have scheduled the ultrasound! My new birthing center does not have an ultrasound machine so we have to go to an independant ultrasound place to have it done so it is scheduled seprately from my prenatal appointment.
My next prenatal appointment is Monday. I get to have my blood drawn. Oh how exciting. Hold me back.... not. Had some trouble getting my records transferred over from my previous births to the place I'm going this time. I hope it's finally all straightened out. If not it means they have to retest me for everything as if it were my first baby (since it will be my first baby with them) and that means more blood. Oh joy. I really hope it is all straightened out. As sick as I've been I just don't know how much blood loss my body can handle. :p So if anyone remembers to say a prayer that the old place stopped stallijng and sent all the requested records to the new place I would be forever grateful!!!! I will admit that I'm a stresser- I worry about everything to the point of making myself sick over it and this is one of many things I'm getting grey hair over right now. It would be such a huge relief to have it go off without a hitch and all the records be there and no problems.
Oh did you want to know when my ultrasound is? Or maybe you just want to know if we're finding out the gender? Well yes, we do hope the baby lets us in on whether to get out the pink stuff or the blue stuff... ;) I know some people think the fun is in waiting but not for me! I'm a planner and I hate unisex. So for me the fun is in finding out and then spending the rest of the pregnancy talking to the baby by name insteaed of calling him/her "it", and going through all the appropriate gender baby things in anticipation, picking out a coming home outfit, and in general looking forward to meeting my baby like a kid looks forward to Christmas. And this time my oldest is old enough to understand that there is a baby coming so it will be nice to teach her the baby's name and help her get excited about a baby sister or a baby brother.
I had absolutely no hopes of the morning sickness vanishing with the first trimester like some lucky women experience! But that tricksy ick fooled me twice! First I started getting better! Much to my surprise. Then I started to get all tired and queasy again. *sigh* Ahhh well I never really thought I'd be home-free now anyway... I did find something to help me combat the worst of it but it took 2 weeks to start working. It's an herbal supplement called Mommy's Bliss Morning Sickness Magic. I haven't been taking it as faithfully since about Friday and I'm regretting it now because I've felt just horrible, worse every day, since Sunday. Guess that'll teach me!
I suddenly feel really lightheaded and think I'd better get off the blog. So I'll leave you to share with me the anticipation of hopefully finding out the gender! :) Oh yeah you wanted to know when didn't you? Okay okay, my ultrasound is scheduled for about a week after Easter. :) That's as much as you're gettin'! ;)

A quick update

Hi guys I'm really not feeling well so this is going to be short. Well, short for me.
I haven't taken the nausea meds in a while because they started making me hallucinate (!!) and the other side effects are really rotten anyway. I'm hoping I can just muddle through without meds but if I need something I will be asking for a new kind since this kind is NOT good.
Then day before yesterday there was a scary 8 hours where I was bleeding. It stopped and I'm still super nauseous so that's "good" I guess.
It's hard for me to keep enough water down without the meds so I'm struggling with that. I'm cramping alot today. OW!
I have this long list of things I was supposed to do forever ago and I keep feeling too rotten to care or just plain totally forgetting them. So then I see my list or little reminders and think how depressing it is that I still haven't done that... :p
Annnnd then there's the car thing. Gonna copy and paste this from where I told someone else because I'm too tired to type it all out again:
I currently own a Honda Civic, and obviously 3 carseats aren't going to fit in the back of a Honda Civic, and we can't afford 2 car payments, so I have to get rid of my car so we can get a bigger one. I LOVE my Civic and do NOT want to get rid of it. It has never done me wrong, never broke down, never left me stranded, scared me with funny noises, or mysteriously suffered Car-PMS and refused to start on the first try. It has been the best most reliable car ever- and it was my dream car. When I first got my license I thought, "Someday, I'm going to own a Honda Civic!" Saw The Fast and The Furious and said to myself, "Hey that's the kind of car I want!" When I was preggo with Chicklet and we bought it, it was a dream come true. I was SO HAPPY! We went to a dealership and checked out a crossover last weekend. I actually liked it... and feel like a traitor that I did because my little Civic will have to go so I could have a crossover.
Yesterday my husband took my car to that dealership to let them appraise it for trade in on the crossover. I'm really sad. It didn't stay with them yesterday, we both have to be there to sign the paperwork, which means we will have to go back with it this weekend if we decide to go for it with the crossover. But hubby took the car to be appraised without me because I'd have just sat in the dealership bawling the whole time. I love my Civic. I wish we could keep it. It got high marks for it's appraisal because it's well taken care of and low mileage with a clean CarFax. So that's good... at least they didn't insult my car by trying to say it's not worth as much.
So this weekend, if I can manage to have a less-sick enough day to leave the house, we're likely going to be buying a new car and saying goodbye to my Civic. Very sad for me! I hope I can make it through without crying.
---
Chicklet is eating an apple. She just held out the seed to show me, then said it was a yummy apple seed and ate it. Then she made a funny yuck-face and coughed. It was kinda funny and made me laugh so I had to share. ;) She eats them every time though, silly. My dad's mom used to eat the seeds too, and I did when I was a kid. Must run in our weird family. :D
---
Anyway as I was about to say before the appleseed thing... if you remember me in your prayers for the baby to stay healthy despite how sick I am, I'd really appreciate it. And for wisdom to choose the right new-to-us car to buy. Overall things are going prettty well. I'm hoping that I actually get a break when the second trimester comes along. ;) Haven't with my other kids but hoping this is my lucky pregnancy.
Sorry for my absence on here lately. I know you understand what with being so sick all the time there's really just nothing new to blog about even when I have the energy to do so. It'll get better and I'll be back more... soon... I hope. ;)

Good morning...

I'm a natural Night-Owl. I do't know about you, but I do my best thinking after dark! I'm getting to be less of a night-owl out of necessity (or merely pure survival) from having kids. Moms know if you don't sleep when they sleep... you don't sleep period. Well, I just so happened tonight to get *ahem* distracted on the internet. When the house is quiet and I'm browsing all sorts of new fun crafty sites or reading blogs... well, the time sometimes (read: frequently) just gets away from me.
So long about 1:30am I glance at the clock and do that, "Oh crud!" thing where you ponder the laws of the universe and mentally curse the one that disallows rewinding time so you can go back to, oh, say 8:30pm again, and get a good nights sleep to deal with all the Mom-ing you'll be doing when the sun comes up. Since I could of course not rewind time as I so desperately wished, I took my thimble-sized pregnant bladder to do it's business and crawled into bed to stick my cold feet on hubby's legs. (Something I'm sure he appreciates ever so much. But he's such a good egg, he never complains about it.)
After laying there for a grand total of 3 minuites I begin to feel the congestion coming on. You know what I mean. When you're preggo it seems like every allergy you ever thought about comes out to play for 9 months solid. You can go all day only blowing your stuffy nose 12 times and then the second you lay down you're suddenly magically so full of ick you can't breathe and feel like you are choking. Which is precisely what happened to me. And now, even blowing my nose 12 times a minute cannot seem to tame the clogged-up ick in myh lungs. After nearly choking three times, gagging, and deciding I'd rather get back up than choke to death or throw up, I decided to make a cup of tea! Or rather a whole pot of tea! But instead of digging out the teapot or filling the coffee maker, I decided to use an open pot so I could breathe the steam while my water boiled and the tea steeped. So I made my tea, enjoying the minty delicious smelling steam and hoping it would help my ick problem.
While the tea steeped, I sat back down at the computer with the pot steaming in front of me, to keep busy until it was drinkable. Suddenly I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and a really BIG spider was inches from my elbow, rapelling down the wall. I was scrambling to switch hands with my tea, grab a tissue, and smoosh the little big bugger before it escaped. I managed to spill some hot tea on my chest but the arachnid vanished behind the computer tower. *sigh* I am reminded of the time I had one run up the mousepad onto the mouse, on my hand, and run out to the end of my thumb faster than you could blink. It was a big as the end of my thumb and to see it sitting there just chilling out was rather disconcerting. I'm not an arachniphobe but I draw the line at having them use my thumb as an easy chair. Particularly when I can't tell if it's a harmless wolf spider or a highly poisonous hobo.
But anyway, back to my pot of tea. Now, usually Sleepytime Tea is one of my absolute favorites! It's relaxing, it's delicious, it smells heavenly... Except that the dishwasher must not have cleaned that pot out so well. My delicious tea tasted just like... boiled dirty sock water. Not that I've ever tasted boiled socks but it tasted like what I would imagine dirty sock water would taste like. Oh well, I wasn't really in the mood for tea anyway.
So now I'm off to bed, hoping the sock tea steam unclogged my breathing tubes enough to get to sleep. Now that it's 3:00am... The kids will be waking up in precisely 4.3 hours so I'd better get in there and take all the sleep I can get. I think a Mama-nap will definately be in the schedule tomorrow today.

Pregnancy By PerCent!

Hey pregnant friends, have you ever wondered how far along you are in the grand scheme of things? I mean, you know you're _ weeks and _ days and if it's a particularly exciting or stressful pregnancy you might even have the hours, minutes, seconds figured out too. But how far along IS that really? I'm currently 7 weeks and 3 days, which means I'm currently 18.6% through my pregnancy. And when I get to 8 weeks, I will be 1/5 of the way through! Very cool! :) In case you are curious and don't want to spend half the day playing with numbers, I already did that for you. (Don't ask me why either, I hate math.) Please enjoy my chart below and feel free to link to it but PLEASE do not steal it and post it elsewhere on the internet! Thank you!

1/3 of 40 weeks = 13 weeks & 2 1/3 days long
Pregnancy is 6,720 hours long or 280 days
1% is 67.2 hours = 2.8 days = 2 days, 19.2 hours

4 wks is 10% or 1/10
5 wks is 12.5%
6 wks is 15% or 3/20
7 wks is 17.5%
8 wks is 20% or 1/5
9 wks is 22.5%
10 wks is 25% or 1/4
11 wks is 27.5%
12 wks is 30% or 3/10
13 wks is 32.5%
14 wks is 35% or 7/20
15 wks is 37.5%
16 wks is 40% or 4/10
17 wks is 42.5%
18 wks is 45% or 9/20
19 wks is 47.5%
20 wks is 50% or 1/2
21 wks is 52.5%
22 wks is 55% or 11/20
23 wks is 57.5%
24 wks is 60% or 6/10
25 wks is 62.5%
26 wks is 65% or 13/20
27 wks is 67.5%
28 wks is 70% or 7/10
29 wks is 72.5%
30 wks is 75% or 3/4
31 wks is 77.5%
32 wks is 80% or 8/10
33 wks is 82.5%
34 wks is 85% or 17/20
35 wks is 87.5%
36 wks is 90% or 9/10
37 wks is 92.5%
38 wks is 95% or 19/20
39 wks is 97.5%
40 wks is 100% or 3/3 or 10/10 or 100/100

If anyone's awake I could use some prayers right now!

((**UPDATED at bottom**))
Okay tonight I feel just awful. It's 11pm. I am so close to throwing up but I am scared if I start I won't be able to stop. It's turning into hyperemisis again... just like with my first. Not yet, but I'm scared it's coming. Only with her it came on suddenly. This time it's just gotten worse and worse every day until last night I felt so close to vomiting but didn't. Then this morning again so close to losing it. The other day I did lose it and vomited for an hour and had burst blood vessels all around my eyes the next morning from heaving so hard. Once I start I have trouble stopping. Now tonight I am not going to be able to fight it. My 3 year old is in the bathroom so I am trying to hold off until she goes back to bed. We only have one bathroom. I don't want to scare her either.
"Oh Dear God! Please help me not to puke until my daughter goes back to bed! And please help me to stop puking shortly and not just keep on vomiting all night long like with my daughter!" (I'm so afraid of that happening again. I have kids to take care of this time. I can't be in the bathroom puking 24-7.)
Hurry Chicklet hurry! Hurry! Hurry!
I have that weird tingling feeling the back of your mouth gets just before you hurl...


((**UPDATE 2:30pm 1/27:**))
Well it's official. I couldn't stop throwing up for several hours last night and most of the day so far today. My husband has left work early to pick up my prescription. I hate meds. I really do. I would rather go a natural route if at all possible. But this morning I started throwing up water too. And it's kinda getting dangerous for me and baby once I can't keep down liquids either. Thankfully I am not heaving at the moment. Usually it's bad in the late mornings around 10am, and then very worst in the evenings around 6 or 7pm. The fact that it was worse this morning than last night, and in fact worse every day this week than the preceeding day, is a very bad sign. So I broke down and called the midwives this morning between heaving into a bucket and they, knowing how my first pregnancy was, just called me in a prescription. Which my dear husband is on his way to get for me now.
Right now I'm trying to get the kids to nap so I can nap too. Wish me luck. I'm going to post some fun pregnancy related stuff later tonight if the meds help enough. ;)