5w through 12w1d - Long time no write

It's been forever and a day, I know.  Part of this is because I'm plum exhausted!  Another part is just that I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue blogging.  After all, while this blog is titled "Hoping for our miracle", we now HAVE our miracle so I questioned whether or not I should continue writing.  I also didn't want to be a blog that tells you about each and every poop our daughter takes.  In the end, I realized that since Maribel will have her whole pre-birth history to read on this blog, why not give her the post-birth stuff here too.  So I'll try to catch everything up as briefly as possible.

Over these last few weeks Maribel sure has experienced a lot!  We had an earthquake (in which daddy was at work and mommy was quite terrified...I seriously did not like the swaying feeling of our apartment building!)  We had Hurricane Irene (which was not bad at all in our town but in other areas, particularly in the county I grew up, was horrible.)  DH went away for 4 weeks for the Army from the end of August to the end of September.  We did fine without him, spending 2.5 weeks visiting family and friends, but we really, really missed him.  Just having him here with us and having that extra set of hands to help with Maribel and our dog - we missed everything about him.  But he's home now so everybody's happy!

As of last Wednesday (11w1d) Maribel weighed 13lbs 1oz so she's a really healthy girl.  She's growing out of clothes, in many cases only wearing them once before we have to retire them.  She's currently in 6 month onesies & outfits and 6-9 month sleepers (6 month sleepers are just about to short for her long legs now.)  She is still breastfeeding and supplementing with formula.  She eats a LOT!  Most feedings she'll feed from both breasts and then follow that up with a bottle (anywhere from 2oz - 3.5 oz of formula.)

Maribel started smiling at just past 5 weeks.  Oh we love her gummy smile!!  While DH was away she also started "talking".  It was amazing to watch her "find" her voice and really vocalize to us.  The day before he came home she giggled for the first time when I tickled her chin (ok, one of her many chins.)  Each day she seems to do more - follow my voice around the room, watch the dog walk past, suck her thumb, drool, actually play with her activity gym, etc.

She still doesn't like to sleep for very long.  At night she usually falls asleep around 8pm or 830pm and sleeps until 1am or 2am.  She eats and is up for about an hour.  Then she wakes again between 430am and 530am and is up for the day at that point.  (Now you can see why I'm pretty tired.)  She does nap throughout the day, but the length of the nap varies daily.

I'm feeling pretty well, not great, but ok I guess.  My joints are a wreck!  I'm not sure why but I have a tremendous amount of joint pain throughout my body which gets worse as the day goes on.  Hopefully it's just the after effects of being pregnant?  My itchy eczema is still present.  Not as bad as when I was pregnant but still making me itchy on a daily basis.  My psoriasis is coming back - UGH!!!  I really don't want to have both skin ailments but it looks like I'm not getting my wish.  And lastly I'm actually gaining weight lately.  I'm heavier now than I was when I first lost the water weight after coming home from the hospital.  Part of it I'm sure is from lack of sleep - I seriously have enough energy to get through the day and play with my daughter but beyond that, I'm zapped.  I also am a snackaholic, perhaps to help me get through the long days & nights.  But hopefully I'll get myself on the right track soon.

Here are some pictures from weeks I missed posting.  Sorry if some are huge - I re-sized them but they don't seem to be cooperating.  Ah well, enjoy!

Our little peanut at 5 weeks:  

Pics from her photoshoot with Breanne Larkin Photography at just past 5 weeks old:  





A little smile from our girl at 7w5d:  

Out for a ride in the stroller at 8 weeks:  

The next 2 shots are from 11 weeks old.  The first is a gorgeous gummy smile wearing a sundress made by Grandma A:


The second is her watching Yo Gabba Gabba while mommy was folding laundry:  

Well, I better go.  Someone small and adorable just woke up from her nap so I'll write again soon.  Bye for now!

Tomorrow is Maribel's 1 month old birthday!

Can you believe tomorrow Maribel will be 1 month old?? Seriously, how could a month already have gone by? She's so adorable and she seems to change a little every day. The picture above was from Tuesday (at 4 weeks old) after her bath. She's always been strong when it came to holding her head up, but now she's ALWAYS holding it up. We're starting to see little smiles when she's awake. They're more like half-smiles, but they're still oh so cute. She seems like she wants to "talk" but so far her noises are primarily squeaks. Her crying is now really loud instead of her little squeaky, fake sounding cries that she originally displayed for us. And we're picking out more of our features now - she has my dimples, the shape of my eyes, and my ears. Everything else is 100% like her daddy.

I won't lie though - it has been a challenging week so I apologize for abandoning my blog but I haven't had the energy (physical or mental) to write. We MAY have found a decent combination to help combat the gassiness. Originally the VentAire bottles seemed to be working, but eh, not so much. So now we're back on the Dr Brown's bottles with the Gerber Good Start Gentle and knock wood, we've had a very good day today with very little gassiness (and no regurgitations the last few days, I might add.)

If you recall from my last post I was hoping to ditch supplementing with formula but nope, that just isn't happening. In fact her formula intake has increased. I love breastfeeding but damn, this girl is just not satisfied. She will breastfeed from one boob for 15 minutes. Then 20 minutes later she wants the other boob for 15 minutes. Then she'll drink a couple ounces of formula and I'll pump. and the cycle continues. I'm beyond worn out, she's tired of crying to eat, it just wasn't a happy environment. So right now we're doing primarily bottle feeds with formula. I'm doing a few feedings a day on the breast and also pumping 2-3 times a day so we can mix a bit in with her formula and freeze the rest for future use. It's just an amazing difference on how full she feels after eating. Even if we give her a bottle of breastmilk, she's back to snacking every 20 minutes whereas the formula does fill her up for longer. So that's where we're at right now (and yes, it seems to change every few days as we try to find a rhythym that works.)

We're still having to walk laps around our apartment with her in the evenings so it seems that colic has arrived. We've tried gripe water to see if it would help and it's hard to say if it really is helping, but with that, bicycling her legs, and walking her around in various positions, we're getting through the tough times in the evening. She does love her bath too so that we know is one part of the evening where she feels good and relaxed. At least if it's colic, there is an end in sight, even though that end could be a couple months away.

As for me, I've been trying to fend off some post-partum depression. It's kicked in some this week, probably because it's been quite challenging with sooooo little sleep (Maribel was up every single hour last night and DH was away for work so it was a long, long night) and that was on top of many days in a row with minimal sleep. I was so tired today that I pumped 2.5 oz of breastmilk and carried that bottle and a dirty formula bottle to the kitchen. I got to the sink and mistakenly dumped the freshly pumped breastmilk down the drain...UGH!! I lost track of how many times I cried today but between my fatigue, my terrible cooking (long story from another day but suffice it to say I really am a lousy cook), my weight that is going up instead of down, my car needing to go to the shop AGAIN today for ANOTHER $400+ repair (last repair for a similar amount was only a month ago), my "failing" at exclusively breastfeeding, my baby who won't stop crying at night (yes, she eventually stops but if you've ever been around a colicky baby, you know exactly how exasperating it can be) and me wondering how I'm going to handle things when DH goes away to an Army course in the future - well, all of that is enough to make me feel pretty darn shitty. I know I'll start feeling better soon and for now I've got DH and my sister who can watch out for me to make sure I don't go off the edge, since I know PPD can really sneak up on someone.

Next week we have her one month doctor's appointment (with a vaccination, ouch) and we make our first trip to upstate NY to see my family. The baby, dog, & I will be spending a week up at the farm where Maribel will get to meet her Grampy, her big brother, and her other niece that she hasn't met yet. It will be interesting to see how she does on the car ride (just under 5 hours) too so I'll at least have a few things to post about late next week. For now though, it's time to start pumping again so we'll talk again soon.

3 weeks, 2 days - Gained 10.5 ounces!

Go Maribel!! She gained a whopping 10.5 ounces over the last 8 days (and grew 1/4 of an inch too!) She now weighs 8 pounds, 13.5 ounces and the doctor has cleared us to go back to exclusively breastfeeding. One, I am soooo happy that she had this great weight gain. The doctor said sometimes they just need that nudge to get things going. Two, I am soooo happy to be able to stop supplementing with formula. Between the regurgitation and gassiness the bottlefeeding has given her, we'll be thrilled to ditch that! Bring on the boob juice 100% of the time again! Her next checkup is 8/11 so that will be her one month visit where she'll get her second Hep B vaccine and we'll again make sure her weight gain is progressing as it should.

In other news, today was DH's first day back to work after his leave. He worked one day a couple of weeks ago (because he had to be available for work for a couple of days between his paternity leave and his regular leave) but now he'll be back into the full swing of work again. Maribel, our dog, and I have all missed him lots and lots today! Oh how I wish we were independently wealthy and could all stay home together. But alas, we are not. So now we'll do our part to see if we can get into somewhat of a routine during the day. This morning we got the stroller out and took a nice long walk before it got too hot. That felt GREAT and I'm pretty sure the dog enjoyed it too (since my late pregnancy walks were very short and as few and far between as possible.)

Well, the princess is starting to stir so I must run. Here is a pic of her from Tuesday when she turned 3 weeks old. What a sweetie she is!

20 days old - Not enough hours in the day

I seriously don't know where the hours go when a newborn arrives. Most days I'm finally getting to eat breakfast around 11 (if I'm lucky) after waking, changing, feeding, changing, snuggling, taking the dog out, feeding, changing, pumping, snuggling, etc. If I try really hard I can also get a load of laundry going or the dishwasher loaded or unloaded but things like a shower or real housecleaning, um, yeah, not happening. Then the afternoon has lots of feeding, changing, pumping, snuggling, feeding, tummy time, oh yeah eat some lunch, changing, and maybe, just maybe, folding some of the laundry I started earlier in the day. Evenings are when the little princess gets a bit grouchy. She gets really gassy (as evident by the plentiful farts she produces) and generally just doesn't feel so great. So in addition to feeding, changing, pumping, we also add in walking, bouncing, bicycling her legs, massaging her tummy, and whatever else we can to get her settled and feeling better. Somehow through all of these daily happenings, the clock seems to fly from 8am - 11pm in the blink of an eye. I must say though, while our days are just filled with baby everything, DH and I wouldn't have it any other way. We are completely on cloud nine with our Maribel .

The new feeding schedule drives me a bit crazy. It seems to take forever to breastfeed, then feed a bottle, then pump what she didn't get to drink. Sometimes I'll mix it up so she just breastfeeds one feeding, then the next feeding is primarily formula (with a little pumped breastmilk) with Daddy while Mommy pumps. This is at least allowing me to still keep the supply up (and start stocking the freezer) while not spending all day in my glider rocker with either baby or pump attached to my boobs. We're really hoping that Thursday's weigh-in shows improvement in her gaining weight like she should.

The past week has also been challenging as we tried to find a good formula & bottle combination for Maribel's tummy. She's not always the best bottle drinker. If she drinks too fast or drinks too much she has an explosive regurgitation of everything she drank - out of her mouth and nose, the poor girl just can't hold in what she drank (and it breaks our heart to see milk/formula flying out of her...that can't feel good for her!) We found that some formulas seemed to increase the number of times she'd regurgitate everything. Similac was not her friend. Neither was Gerber Good Start. Both of those were samples we got from the pediatrician and the little one didn't take well to either of them. DH went out a couple nights ago and got some Gerber Good Start Gentle and so far (knock wood) we've only had one regurgitation with it. We also have tried 5 different kinds of bottles to find one that would slow down her drinking and cut down on gassiness. When DH picked up the GS Gentle formula he also grabbed a Playtex Ventaire bottle (DD loves these for her little one) and it's been really good so far so I think we'll be picking up more of those. After each feeding we also keep her upright for awhile (a long while), burp her a lot, and just pray that we're not going to see that meal come back up.

We also started using our cloth diapers (CDs) on Saturday. Love them! They're so easy (even DH said they're just like using a disposable) and so soft against her skin. And I love thinking of the disposables she's NOT using - especially when she's using 12-14 diapers a day at this point (she sure does poop a lot!) The diaper sprayer we bought works great too to just spray the mess into the toilet - again, so easy! The CDs do make her butt look huge, but I love that look of the fluffy butt. The pic at the top of today's post is Maribel rocking the fluff on her first day of wearing CDs. I don't think she was too happy with Mommy though during the photo shoot - she was just waking up and wanted boob NOW!

Well, I'm happy to have finally had 20 minutes to write today but my little darling is starting to squeak which means waking can't be too far away. Gotta run!

15 days old - Come on princess, let's gain some ounces!

Maribel turned 2 weeks old yesterday and in honor of that milestone, here is a picture from that day.



We've had a few interesting days since my last post. I think Maribel must have read my blog and thought she was being too easy on us and therefore adjusted her schedule. The last few evenings she's had a tough time. Around 6 or 7pm she started getting really irritable. She'd act really hungry but when she'd try to eat she'd suck for a few minutes and get super frustrated with the whole process. This cycle would go on until about 11pm or so.

We also went to the doctor today for her weight check and she still is not gaining like she should be. In the last week she only gained 3 oz so she's currently at 8lb3oz. When I described to the pediatrician how she had recently started acting, he mentioned the possibility of colic (which I remember, and not fondly, from my DD's infanthood 22 years ago) but said this would be a really early start for that. Since she's having enough wet & dirty diapers it seems as though the quantity of milk she's getting is ok. And my pumping amount for DH's evening bottle is back to a more "normal" (for me) amount of 3 - 3.5 oz. But the doctor is thinking it could be that my breastmilk is not high enough in calories for her to gain weight and be satisfied after a feeding.

So we'll continue to breastfeed for 10-15 minutes on our current schedule (every 2-3 hours during the day and every 3-4 hours at night) and offer formula after she breastfeeds. I'm also going to pump after these feedings so my milk supply doesn't decrease with the decrease in the demand. Then it's back to the pediatrician next Thursday for another weight check and hopefully this time we'll see a substantial weight gain.

And I guess we'll see how this evening goes with the addition of formula after breast. If she's still super irritable it may hint that she does have some colic going on, but if we start seeing her more "satisfied" in the evenings I'll be happy knowing she's getting what she needs from both me and the supplementing with formula. So we shall see and I'll report back soon.

12 days old - Sleeping & eating - her favorite pastimes

Here's our little princess at 11 days old - chilling out on Daddy's lap on the patio. The last few days we've all been spoiled rotten by my family. My mom, daughter, granddaughter, sister, and 2 nieces arrived on Friday just after lunch. They drove down together from upstate NY to meet our little one and help out the new mommy & daddy. Between the delicious home cooked meals they brought down, to the many walks they took our dog on, to loading and unloading the dishwasher numerous times, to loving and holding our little Maribel - we were seriously spoiled rotten! It was a full house (or full tiny apartment) with air mattresses and sleeping bags spread around, but it was soooo wonderful to see and spend time with family. I hadn't been up for a visit since Memorial Day weekend since we didn't want me too far away so close to the end of my pregnancy (especially after my pre-term contractions in early June) so seeing them was long overdue! After a nice breakfast at the diner this morning, they headed back home and I'm already looking forward to seeing them when I go up for a visit in August.

Maribel's been doing great! She's still in the "sleeps a lot" stage though we're starting to see a couple periods during the day where she stays awake longer. I know that in the next couple of weeks we'll see a huge increase in wake periods, but for now she loves to loaf for a good portion of the day. She's eating very well and nights are getting a bit easier on DH and me. We're not complete zombies anymore which is delightful (now I know we'll have more zombie nights in the future, but touch wood, the last few nights have been pretty darn good.) In fact, I generally have to wake her for one or two feedings at night so we don't go longer than 4 hours. Now some may say "let a sleeping baby sleep" but I seriously need my milk supply to stay strong at this early stage. Just the past two days she's had a period of cluster feeding where she eats from one boob, eats from the other, then within 20 minutes she's eating again - like she just can't be satisfied. And she seriously drains me at those feedings. Also the amounts I've been able to pump decreased a little as well, so for now I'm trying to drink fluids like they're going out of style and keep daytime feedings 2-3 hours apart and nighttime feedings 2-4 hours apart. Hopefully that will keep the supply going strong. Not to mention, my boobs turn to bricks and leak like a sieve once we start hitting the 3 hour mark.

As for me, I'm feeling pretty good. The pain from the c-section is completely gone. My weight as of Friday morning was 170.2 so I'm about 7 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight (163.6) Mind you, the day after I came home from the hospital I was actually 2 pounds heavier (184.2) than the morning we went to the hospital (182.2). What??? After giving birth to an 8 pound baby, placenta, and amniotic fluid??? How could I weigh more? But really I was so swollen from all of the fluids they pumped into me and the surgery in general that my legs looked like tree trunks, my feet were just puffy masses, and my hands looked like the Hamburger Helper hand so I guess it took a few days for that fluid retention to go down. So just under 7 pounds to go to get to my pre-pregnancy weight and then I'll start working on my big weight loss goal. Ideally, I'd like to lose an additional 28.6 pounds to get me down to 135, but I'd even be happy to get back down to 145, which is where I was at when we got married.

Well, sleeping baby just started to stir. And so I'll close today by saying I'd personally like to thank the individual who invented breast pads. Because of you I'm not ruining every bra & shirt I own. So whoever you are, thank you!

8 days old already!!

How in the world did our little one become 8 days old already? Time is flying by! The days go so fast, what with nursing every 2-3 hours and walking through some parts of the day and/or night like a zombie. DH & I have a new appreciation for coffee, that's for sure!

Things have been going great! On Monday, we had our first family outing to see Dr D so he could remove my stitch. I remember when he was stitching me up, he was explaining to the assisting OB, the method he was using to close the incision and all I can say is that I LOVED that method. All he had to do was clip the knot on one end and pulled the stitch right out the other end. Quick and painless, just the way I like things! I go back for my post-partum visit on August 15th and then my time with Dr D will be done. It will be weird not going back there again but I'll forever be thankful for everything he did for us (and knowing me, I'll cry saying goodbye to him.)

Yesterday, Maribel turned 1 week old. And to celebrate we went on her second outing, this time to the grocery store. Ok, we really didn't celebrate in that fashion but we seriously needed groceries in the house so a family outing it became. I pushed my cart of groceries and DH pushed our little princess in another cart (see picture below.) One funny moment from this trip - I was waiting for our deli order to be completed and another worker came up and asked if that was my baby in the cart. I said yes. Then she looked at my belly and said "And you're pregnant again?" Oh my goodness, I couldn't help but laugh out loud. I said "No, she's just a week old so this is from her", patting my belly. She said she didn't realize that you were still left with a belly after having a baby and she thought it instantly went away. I curse TV shows and supermodels for this misunderstanding people have. I definitely still look 4-5 months pregnant at this point but it's a shame that people think the post-partum days and weeks are like the character Rachel on Friends where she's instantly transformed to her pre-pregnancy figure immediately after birth. At least there's now one more educated woman in the world (and she's damn lucky I found her question funny.)



Today was Maribel's third outing, this time to her pediatrician. She's looking great and we'll go back in one week just to check her weight. Her weight at birth was 8 pounds. Her weight on Friday when she was discharged from the hospital was 7lbs 15.4 ounces so she only lost 6 tenths of a pound. Today, she was again at 8lbs. So they really just want to make sure she gains at least a few ounces in the next week. She's eating great, evidenced by her healthy amount (perhaps overly healthy amount) of wet & dirty diapers but I'll feel better knowing she's putting on some additional weight by next Wednesday.

So here are some additional pictures for your viewing pleasure:

This was Maribel & me while she was still in the NICU. DH had gone home for the night and I wanted to text him a pic of the two girls who love him most in the world.


Maribel at 5 days old had just fallen asleep after eating and was making lots of faces. This smile was priceless:


One more of Maribel at 5 days old. Here just chilling out while mom & dad watched the women's world cup soccer.


And here's our little princess at 1 week old:


So I'm slightly caught up with things at this point. The little one should be waking up any moment so forgive me if this is full of errors and/or poor grammar.

Home, exhausted, and loving it!

Maribel is peacefully napping in her swing at the moment so I figured I'd use this time to catch everyone up on the goings-on.

As the post title says - we are home! We were both discharged from the hospital yesterday. I was so surprised and happy that we were both able to go home at the same time. On Friday morning at the 5am feeding the nurse was mentioning how maybe Maribel would get to go home after another day (I'd been dreading being discharged on Friday and her having to stay.) Then at the 8am feeding, the day nurse said they'd dropped her IV level overnight and her blood glucose levels were fine so she was given the ok to stop the IV (this left me feeling hopeful that she'd be getting out soon.) Then on my walk to the NICU for her 10:45am feeding the nurse saw me in the hall and said the doctors had decided to discharge Maribel that day. Oh my god, I was overjoyed!! So Friday was spent waiting for my doctor to discharge me, and watching some mandatory videos for NICU babies on carseat safety, infant CPR and choking, having babies sleep on their back, etc. Around 2pm I got the all-clear from my doctor and called DH to have him come get his girls and bring us home. What a wonderful feeling to leave the hospital as a family and head home. Amazing!

Overall I must say the hospital stay was great. The nurses in the mother-baby unit (taking care of me), the nurses in the NICU (taking care of Maribel), and all of the doctors that checked in on her were great. The nurse we had for our c-section, Jen, was one we had when we were there for our pre-term labor stay in early June. She saw us on the c-section schedule, recognized our names, and swapped with someone else so she could be our nurse for the c-section. We'd really liked her when we had her as our nurse in June so when she walked into our labor room, I was really excited (and even more happy when we learned that she'd swapped with someone else to be with us.)

The c-section itself went fabulously. An emergency had come in so we got bumped. We were originally scheduled for 11am but ended up going into the OR around 12:30pm but that was no big deal for us. When it was our turn, the nurse and anesthesiologist walked me to the OR. During this time, DH had to put on his "spacesuit" (which is super hot and sweaty), his little booties, and his adorable little hat and then had to wait for our nurse to come get him. So while he was getting dressed, I sat on the table and got my spinal. This went fine, especially knowing what to expect after my TAC in January. As my legs got heavy, they hooked me up to all of the different monitors, put my nasal cannula in for oxygen, lightly strapped my arms down, got the curtain hanging up so I couldn't see below my chest, put in my catheter, etc. Once everyone had scrubbed in, they told Jen to go get "Dad".

DH came in and sat next to my head. Afterwards he told me that walking into that room and seeing all of the people, seeing me on the OR table, etc really got him nervous, or as he put it "that's when my heartburn started". As soon as DH sat down, Dr D called out that they were making the incision and called out the time. It was officially underway. Within about 3-4 minutes, he announced "making uterine incision" and called out the time. Oh my god, it was almost time. The pressure and pulling and tugging feeling they warned me of - holy shit that is INTENSE! Two grown men putting tons of weight on your abdomen, pulling in different directions. Wow, it hurt! And it didn't hurt where they were tugging of course, it was like a huge amount of pressure on my upper back and shoulders. Again - wow, it really hurt!

Next thing I know, I hear "head is out". Oh man, I can't believe it. Next I hear, "Dad, stand up and take a look." DH stood, took one look and said "Oh my god, she's beautiful!" And that my friends is when I started crying. And I mean crying! I was sobbing buckets of joyful tears. When I heard her cry, I cried even harder. And when they handed her to Jen who brought her over to the side so I could see her, impossibly, I cried even harder. We'd made it. After all we'd been through over the last few years and all of the waiting these last 9 months, our daughter was here and it was just the most incredible feeling in the world. According to DH, that first look he got of her was of a scrunched up little baby - eyes closed, legs still bent up to chest, having that blue-ish look of having just been pulled out, and seeing all of that gorgeous black hair of hers.
The time it took to get from incision to her arrival was soooo quick it was unbelievable. And from the time I walked into the OR to the time they wheeled me out of recovery, baby in my arms, was less than one hour. It's definitely one hour DH and I will never forget.

So now that we're all home together we're loving our time as a family. DH's parents and sister were here waiting for us in the parking lot of our apartment complex when we arrived home yesterday. They stayed last night but decided to to go home this evening instead of tomorrow. I overdid things a bit this morning as I did housework when I really should have been taking it easy and having others help me with housework. But other than that, we just spent the day with our new favorite routine - feeding, sleeping, changing diapers, repeat. We didn't sleep much last night at all but that's ok. Maribel is an awesome eater and breastfeeding is going great! My milk came in at the hospital early Friday morning and the baby is taking advantage of that. So she was up to eat quite a few times in the night. But waking up and seeing that adorable little face makes it all worthwhile.

One funny story and then I must go. Last night it looked like I had a bug bite below my left eye. It didn't itch but the size and shape looked like a mosquito bite. Really weird! Well, I went to wash my hands before the next feeding (like an hour or so later) and I had a couple more small bumps under that eye and a couple under my right eye too. WTH is going on? Next trip to the bathroom, look in the mirror, and yep, there's more. But now they're merging together and holy shit, these aren't bug bites. We've just witnessed the formation of bags under my eyes. Too freaking funny! With only about 10 hours of sleep since Tuesday and now waking just about once an hour to feed, change, etc took it appears exhaustion took a toll on my face.

Well, the little one is starting to fuss a bit so I think it's time for the boob buffet to open for business. I'll check back in soon and will post more pics in the next couple of days.

Doing much better but still in NICU

Hi there! Things have been busy here at the hospital so I haven't had the time (or brainpower) to write. Today's update will be brief as well, just so I have time to walk a little before my next visit to the NICU. The picture you see on this post is DH & Maribel in the NICU yesterday afternoon - aren't they just sooo darn cute??

So if you recall, late on Tuesday (her birth day) they took Maribel to the NICU because of her breathing. They put her on the nasal cannula, started an IV, started antibiotics, and did blood work to check for infections. Since she was particularly having trouble breathing through her nose, she was unable to eat. DH spent a few hours with her that evening in the NICU while I was restricted to my bed. Our nurse was kind enough though in the wee hours of Wednesday morning to get me hooked up with a wheelchair and rigged up my IV bag and catheter so I could go see Maribel in the NICU.

That was exactly what I needed to lift my spirits! While of course it was hard to see her with the nasal cannula taped to her face, see little monitors all over her body, and see her IV in her arm (with her arm taped to a straight little board to keep it from bending) I had just missed her so much, it felt amazing to see her. DH & I spent two hours with her, from 12:30am-2:30am, holding her and watching her every breath, wishing she'd stop struggling to breathe, and then went back to my room and tried to get some sleep (and by that I think we each got 2-3 hours.)

At 10am Wednesday morning my catheter was out and the nurse had made sure I could walk around on my own. Then as soon as she gave me the ok, I walked to the NICU to see our little girl. I was thrilled to see the nasal cannula gone and the nurse asked if I wanted to breastfeed. YIPPEE!!! I'd been pumping every 3 hours but this was awesome news! So since yesterday morning, Maribel has kept her pulse ox levels normal without needing additional oxygen and she's been nursing every 3 hours. As of today though, she's still in the NICU. I'm hoping she'll be able to go home tomorrow if I'm also discharged tomorrow. The items that are still pending are: she needs her cultures to be normal and she needs to be drinking enough breastmilk to be able to be weaned off of the IV fluids. Please, please let her come home with me tomorrow!

So my schedule right now has been - go to the NICU, feed Maribel, and snuggle with her. I usually spend an hour or hour and fifteen minutes doing that. After that I spend a little time walking the halls as I know walking is really important in helping with the c-section recovery. So I count my walk to and from the NICU, then I also do a walk to fill up my ice pitcher, or just do a lap around the nurses station. Then it's back to my room to eat/drink/pee/take pain meds and text any updates. Then I try to take a nap if I can (generally about 1 hour.) So this whole cycle takes 3 hours and I just keep repeating it all day and all night. I feel really good even though the only sleep I'm getting are these 1 hour catnaps. And I'm crampy of course from the c-section but so far percocet is helping me get through the bulk of the pain.

Lastly, I'm finally on solid foods - yippee!! After Tuesday being restricted to just ice and water, then Wednesday being restricted to full liquid diet (tea, juice, sherbet, soup, jell-o), I'm happy to report that I'm back on solid food and loving it!

So I'm going to leave you now to do a little walking and get ready for my 10:45 date with the NICU. Will report back in soon!

She's here!! And she's amazing!!

Maribel is here and I tell you, it's love at first sight! I'll come back, tomorrow perhaps, to give more of the details on the prep, surgery, etc because I'm a little too tired to write all of that tonight. For the details, she was born at 12:52pm, weighed 8 pounds and .02 ounces, and is 20 inches long. The c-section itself went fabulous, Maribel did a great job nursing in the recovery room, and we enjoyed a few hours with her in our room.

Then she had to go to the NICU. She was making "snorting" noises at times and the nurse noticed she was retracting when breathing. So they brought in the pediatrician and checked her pulse ox. Her saturation levels were just under what they'd like to see. So in the NICU they did a chest x-ray (looked good), took some blood to check for infections (started her on antibiotics just in case) and put her on an IV (that's about all she's going to have to "eat" until tomorrow). Since she's really not breathing through her nose they don't want her to struggle trying to eat. In the meantime, they set me up with a pump so my supply keeps up and I'm pumping every 2-3 hours. They can use the little colostrum I'm producing to give to her via swab in and around her mouth. DH is in the NICU with her so I feel good that he's with her even if I can't be. I'll have my catheter until tomorrow morning so I can't walk to the NICU to see her, but the nurse mentioned perhaps wheeling me over to see her later tonight. That would be so awesome because I tell you I miss my little girl like crazy!! I cried buckets when they wheeled her out of our room and I just can't wait to have her back with us.

38w5d - Meeting our daughter today!!

I've got about 15 minutes until we have to leave to take the dog to Camp Bow Wow for his stay and then head to the hospital, so typing in my blog is a wonderful distraction from watching the clock. And since I couldn't eat or drink anything after midnight, this is also keeping me from dreaming of a nice cup of decaf.

OMG, DH and I barely slept a wink last night! Between excitement and nerves and our lack of sleep, I think we're both going to be exhausted later. At 5am, I finally gave up on trying to get back to sleep. I rolled over, snuggled up to DH, and what did I do? I started crying. Then I got out of bed, got in the shower, and cried even more. They were all happy tears mind you, but the tears were flowing nonetheless.

I just can't believe we made it to this day. Three years ago, I was anxiously anticipating my tubal reversal surgery that was coming up in August. I had no idea that we'd go through the chemical pregnancy, the 2 ectopics, losing my tubes and an ovary, moving onto IVF, and having the TAC surgery. And yet here we are, almost 3 years after we started this TTC journey - only hours away from meeting our little girl.

I'm sure there will be more happy tears today, lots of smiles, and lots of hugs and kisses for my DH and my little girl. For now though, I better do one last check of the hospital bag and off we'll go. Talk to you all later!

38w4d - Tomorrow is Maribel's eviction day!

Hopefully Maribel is enjoying her last evening in my comfy, cozy uterus because tomorrow morning she's going to have quite the experience...being born. What an experience that must be. Seeing a slice of light come in through as the abdomen and uterus are opened, being pulled out into the cold air and bright lights of the operating room, taking those first breaths, making those first crying sounds, having your nose and throat suctioned, getting all cleaned up, and trying to adjust to all of the sights and sounds and smells before snuggling up to the two people who will love you forever. Amazing stuff!

I couldn't sleep past 3am this morning. Technically my itchy eczema woke me up but then my excitement prevented me from getting back to sleep. Around 6:30am I was able to nap for about another hour but I have a feeling I won't get too much sleep tonight either. Approximately 16 hours until our time in the OR is here...we're so close now!

So below is my final belly shot from this morning. My final weight gain is 19 pounds and the tape measure showed my waistline is 47.25 inches! I can't wait to see how much of that weight and waistline is really Maribel.



I'm hoping to post tomorrow evening or Wednesday while Daddy is at the hospital snuggling with the little one. It's hard to believe our time has finally come but it has and I'm so glad you all stayed along for the ride, bumps and all.

38w3d - Resting after nesting (and an anxiety fest too)

Approximately 39 hours until we're due to report to the hospital - AWESOME!!

The weekend has been largely uneventful for the most part. My Saturday started off with a scare as my power steering went out while I was driving home from completing errands. I pulled into the library parking lot to pop the hood of my car and saw my power steering fluid was empty. And when I looked under the car, I saw the last bits of power steering fluid dripping onto my front tire and the pavement so it was obvious that something blew out. Thank goodness for Tires Plus right around the corner from our house. I strong-arm steered my car there and thankfully they could get my car in yesterday and fix it. Giant phew!! Then DH & I spent the rest of the day cleaning so I guess we had another round of nesting happening. Laundry, dusting, scrubbing the kitchen, bathtub, toilet, sinks, etc. all got done. Then we had an early dinner at Friday's and settled in for the night.

DH also helped me through a yucky meltdown late last night. I won't go into my usual level of great detail here into why the topic came up because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or make certain people uncomfortable or upset. That's definitely NOT what I want to do. But to loosely broach the subject, ever since I was a kid I've had a great deal of anxiety in certain social situations. I'm actually a pretty shy person. I always have been (though most people who know me would never believe this) and I get myself so worked up before certain social situations, I may worry about a gathering or visit for days beforehand, perhaps even weeks. I may spend hours in my mind playing the "what if" game over and over. It's not a pleasant experience whatsoever. I hate it!

It's not even that I only experience this anxiety with strangers. In fact, I actually have a much easier time with strangers than I do with people I know. In my younger years I would experience this uneasieness and anxiety before going to friends' birthday parties or school functions and even more so before holiday gatherings with extended family. Now mind you, it doesn't always happen and over the years I've gotten better at keeping the anxiety at bay, but it still can sneak up on me and make me get my panties in a bunch over nothing. One of the personal benefits of my job over the last 3.5 years was that it forced me to find ways to deal with my anxiety. Walking into a room of attendees at a client's training, taking control of the room to teach, and making small talk with attendees during breaks and lunch all helped me become more comfortable with myself and helped change how I reacted when anxiety arose in a social situation. I can sometimes use what I've learned over the years to help me through a situation and sometimes I just can't.

So back to last night - rather than focusing on the joy that Tuesday will bring as we meet our daughter, I spent a good amount of the evening worrying about certain social interactions that will occur after Maribel arrives. To try to combat this, I meditated to try to clear my mind of the ridiculous worry and negative feelings this anxiety was bringing me. When that didn't help I prayed. I'm not a super religious person but I do feel like it helped somewhat at calming my feelings and gave me an outlet to admit that I need some guidance in getting through the negative feelings. Then breaking down in tears and talking it through with DH really got me through the rest of my muck. I felt TONS better after our conversation as DH was not only a great comfort but he had logical responses to my worries and concerns. And when dealing with anxiety, where I know my thoughts or worries aren't logical whatsoever, to have a logical, reasonable voice counter each of my ridiculous worries really helped. So once again, my thanks go out to DH. Oh, how I love you.

For whatever reason - whether it was all that cleaning yesterday or the emotional exhaustion from last night's anxiety fest, today I was beat. My dog & I napped almost the whole afternoon away. And even after napping, I'm still just soooo tired! I'm glad I took advantage of this lazy Sunday since it will probably be my last lazy Sunday for a long, long time. And I may as well rest up today because I have a feeling that I'll get very little sleep tomorrow night.

So I'll leave you for now and I'll report back in tomorrow - my last full day of pregnancy. I'll do a final belly shot, a final weigh-in, and we'll grab the tape measure to see how big around my waistline is. I haven't done that yet this pregnancy and I'm anxious to see how big around I am currently (my belly is now actually hitting the bottom of my steering wheel when I drive so it's no small belly, that's for sure!)

38w1d - Final preparations underway (4 days to go!)

We've now passed the 38 week mark! And I'm still amazed by this. Who would have thought we'd make it this far after all we've been through the last couple of years?

Last night was a fun night for DH & me. I asked DH if he wanted to practice swaddling. His reaction - what's swaddling? Too cute! Why practice the fine art of swaddling a newborn when I've had 2 babies, many nieces and a nephew, and 2 grandchildren? Well, it's always wonderful to see a baby calm down their fussing with a nice swaddle and to be honest I've always been a TERRIBLE swaddler. I mean horrible!! I don't know why but my swaddles are always too loose and come undone so easily. And what's funny is guys I know seem to have a real knack for swaddling babies. Both my brother and BIL are excellent swaddlers and as I found out last night, DH is right up there with them.

So after dinner, I grabbed us each a stuffed animal of Maribel's (DH had a teddy bear and I got Winnie-the-Pooh) and we each took a receiving blanket from the stack. Then we went on youtube and watched a few videos, each showing different methods of swaddling. Then it was practice time! DH & I both laid out the receiving blankets (while our dog hungrily eyed the stuffed animals) and of course, DH's swaddle was awesome on the very first try. I naturally struggled with my swaddle, watched the video again, and again struggled with my swaddle. Meanwhile DH's was perfectly holding that teddy bear in like a little sausage. What is my malfunction with this art? In the end, DH came over to help me with my swaddle and after his fine tutorial mine was almost as good as his...almost.

Next came diaper practice for DH since he hadn't diapered a baby in years. Again, perfection - though I don't think Maribel will lay as still as teddy the bear did. And I must say as DH held his swaddled little teddy bear and pretended to burp it and pretended to diaper it, it made me even more anxious for Tuesday to get here. He is seriously going to be one amazing daddy!!

Today it's off to the grocery store. My first mission is to make sure I've got enough easy fixings for DH to feed himself while I'm at the hospital. In other words, I need to stock the freezer with frozen pizzas, chicken skewers, corn dogs, and fries and make sure I've got his other favorite things to fix for himself when I'm not here - bacon & eggs, croissants, and Honey Nut Cheerios.

My second mission is to make sure I have healthy food for me when I come home from the hospital. I think my in-laws will be visiting and while I'm sure they'll bring yummy Colombian food, I better skip all of that fried yumminess and stick with my own high fiber, low fat options. As you recall from previous posts with my last 2 surgeries - me + painkillers + surgery = major constipation. So all of those fried foods and cheesy pastries would NOT be a good idea for me. I'll have DH go out and grab fresh produce for me when I get home from the hospital so I can partake in salads & lots of fruits and veggies and today I'll just grab some easy, high fiber meal options that I can cook myself or have DH cook for me those first few days home from the hospital.

So with that I'm off to Shop-Rite to complete my mission. Only 4 more days to go and I think they're going to fly by now!

38 weeks - Now only 5 days to go!!!

38 weeks today and our c-section date has been moved up to Tuesday, July 5th!! Woo-hoo!!! And it's not because anything is bad. It's just because the hospital had a scheduling conflict for the 7th and therefore, Dr D decided to go ahead with the section on the 5th. Can anyone say EXCITED????

So before I got this exciting news I had an ok morning. I was super tired because I literally got just under 4 hours of sleep last night thanks to some wicked heartburn and insomnia. I've been really lucky only having had heartburn the last couple of days (versus my SIL who had it relentlessly during her pregnancy) so I can't complain too much. I got to the doctor's and started with my NST. Maribel was not cooperating much this morning with activity. They had me lay on my side, had me chug water, and even used a little thing to "buzz" my belly to try to get her to move more - yeah, she just wasn't having it. She'd move a little and then go back to being lazy. So I probably spent a good 35 minutes on the monitor today until they were satisfied with her activity level.

Then I moved onto the u/s room to have them check my amniotic fluid level. That was looking good today and to double check on her, since she was somewhat sluggish on the monitor, they used the u/s machine to watch her breathe. It still fascinates me that she's in there, with fluid all around her and yet she's in there making breathing movements. Amazing! After watching her breathe from different angles they were happy with the results and I was free to go wait for Dr D.

Now remember, Dr D was actually out of the office this week but was going to come in for my appointment. They were going to call him so I waited in the waiting room, thankful for having remembered to bring my library book. After an hour I checked at the desk to make sure someone really had called him and the receptionist (who I've never seen before and who I think just liked to yap on the phone rather than work) said "Oh are you Amanda? Dr Davis called twice to see if you were still here but I told him you'd come and gone." I was like "Um I'm still here. I've been here since 8am (it was now 10:30) and have been in the waiting room since they finished my u/s at 9:30." Not once did that woman call my name and she knew it. She said "Dr Davis wanted me to give you his cell phone number" to which I replied "Already have it" and gave her a partially evil glare. Then in front of her I called him and before walking away to talk to him, I said "I've been here all along" so she'd hear it.

So anyways, Dr D couldn't make it in but no worries since everything ended up looking good in the end - NST, u/s, urine, BP, etc. And as we talked, that was when he told me the good news about moving the c-section date. His first words, after apologizing for the receptionist not calling my name to see if I was still out there waiting, were "We can't do your c-section on the 7th." I will admit tears filled my eyes as I thought I was getting pushed out beyond the 7th. But then he said, "How would you like to have that baby 2 days earlier instead?" Hell yeah!!! I'm all for it!! So we're scheduled for the 5th at 11am. We discussed what time we should arrive, the no eating/drinking after midnight, etc, and then we'll just finish up the hospital paperwork on the 5th.

I am beyond excited I tell you!!! Only 5 days until our little girl is here!!!! Sorry I'm so exclamation point happy but damn, I cannot wipe the smile off of my face right now.

37w6d - Meet the pediatrician day

Hello all! Let me start by saying today was a MUCH better day than yesterday. Ten fold, a hundred fold, a million times better - I felt like myself today, thank goodness! And this afternoon I spent a leisurely hour-plus sitting on my patio with a nice breeze, a cold glass of decaf iced tea, and a book of crossword puzzles...ahhhh relaxation at its finest!

So this evening I went to meet one of the pedatricians at a practice just down the road - literally one quarter mile away. I liked the office a lot. The doctor I met with spoke about the practice and gave me an opportunity to ask my questions and I just felt really comfortable there. The practice has 4 male docs and 4 female docs. They have a call-in hour from 8am-9am each morning in case you just have general questions you want to ask a nurse and/or doc (nutritional, behavioral, etc) which is really nice. Two nights a week they're open until 7pm at our nearby office and another two nights a week they're open until 7pm at their other office in the next town over. They're also open for sick visits on Saturday and Sunday mornings (HUGE plus!) And you can talk to their lactation counselor M-F between 8am-5pm (again, nice!) So we'll see the hospital's pediatrician where we'll deliver and then when we're discharged we'll start going to this practice I visited for Maribel's care.

Now, onto two other bits of good news that I must share. First, I told you about my former IVF cycle buddy N - her u/s today went great! She and her DH were able to see their little bean on the screen with a beautiful heartbeat of 142. I kept refreshing my screen all afternoon waiting for her message to come in and I was overjoyed at the news. So big congratulations to N & her DH!

My other congratulations goes out to K. K is the message board friend who originally saw my post about my non-existent cervix and sent me a message telling me about the TAC and recommending I reach out to Dr D to discuss it with him. She had her TAC placed in September after previously losing twins to incompetent cervix in the 2nd trimester. If it weren't for her noticing my post that day and giving me Dr D's contact information, well, I don't know if we'd be here today just 1 day shy of 38 weeks pregnant. Anyways, K just had her baby this past week. She delivered a little early, at 34w3d, and her little girl needed a little help breathing from the NICU but the fact of the matter is, she has a baby girl that she'll be bringing home. Another TAC success story.

The other soon-to-be TAC success story on my IVF board is A who had almost all of her cervix removed when she had cervical cancer. She's due a few weeks behind me and while her cervix has shortened and she's on Procardia & strict bedrest, she's at the 32 week mark so it looks like all 3 of us TAC sisters are going to be success stories. And I think back to that stupid OB/GYN that I first saw who said their practice "doesn't believe in cerclages." God I'm so glad I ditched that practice in a hurry and took the aggressive approach!

Ahhh, it felt good to write about good stuff today, especially after yesterday's toxicity. First thing tomorrow I have my appointment with Dr D so I should have some details on next week's c-section. Just think, a week from tonight I'll be double checking my hospital bag, eating my last food before the cutoff of no food/drink, and wondering if I'll sleep a wink that night. It's really only a week away...WOW!!

37w5d - A peek into the mind of a hormonal pregnant woman

Oh boy, today was not a pleasant day and I'm blaming pregnancy hormones. Some people may not realize just how crazy these hormones can make a woman feel and act so to get an insider's perspective, simply read on.

The day started just fine. I woke up, walked the dog, drank my 2 cups of decaf, ate my peanut butter toast and string cheese, watched the Today show. All normal things. Then I completed my project of the day, changing out pictures in my collage frames around the house. All the pictures I had in those frames previously were soooo old. They needed some more recent pictures and I was so happy to now see current pictures of the kids, grandkids, and the rest of the family now filling those frames. Ahhh, wonderful!

Then the day went to hell in a handbasket...

There is no explicable reason, nothing that set off the downward spiral - it just happened. As I got up to go to the bathroom after lunch, I was in so much pain I felt frustrated and angry and damn I'm just tired of feeling so sore. This led to me looking at DH with daggers as I thought "dammit, if it were up to me, I'd be having an amnio tomorrow and having Maribel on Thursday. You bastard you!" This led to me feeling guilty and ashamed for even thinking this as I know he made a logical decision when deciding our c-section date where my decision would have been driven by my physical desire to be out of pain. Well, that guilt and shame led me straight to the kitchen where I grabbed a giant piece of carrot cake. Now, we all know with my GD, I should not be eating an enormous slab of carrot cake as my afternoon snack. But did this stop me? No, in fact after eating that I proceeded to have some frozen grapes AND a bowl of Rice Krispies!! WTF is wrong with me?!?!

Well, my pigout brought more guilt so I tried to take a nap in hopes that I would wake up with a fresh, new take on the day. Nope! I coudn't sleep a wink. My dog could sleep (as he cuddled up next to me) and DH could sleep, as I eventually found him napping on the couch and now I'm angry and envious that they can both just conk out in seconds and I've spent the last two hours trying to fall asleep. In addition to the envy, I started feeling teary because it suddenly hit me that in 9 days Maribel will be here and I'm afraid I'm going to be an awful mother. What if she's better off in my uterus? It's not like I can stuff her back in there when I fail miserably. Now in addition to my sadness over knowing I'm going to be a terrible mother, I felt even more guilt than earlier over my pigout and not only that but I was now convinced I'm just a fat fuck who's going to have a really hard time working this weight off if these pigouts continue. So as I lay down to let a contraction pass I did 10 leg lifts (like 10 leg lifts is going to do anything at all to combat the ginormous slice of carrot cake I ate, ha!)

Dinnertime came and I was in no way motivated to think of something clever and delicious to cook so it ended up being a fried eggs, toast, and sausage links dinner. The sausage links tasted incredibly salty tonight and before I knew it, I was crying. I don't know exactly why. Part of it was just sheer mental exhaustion from the afternoon. Part of it was because I don't have any friends down here where we live and that in itself is pretty sad. But regardless of the reason, I cried for the rest of the meal, feeding the dog my sausage (he was a big fan of it) and continued my crying while DH cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher.

Eventually I stopped crying and decided to walk the dog. He nearly pulled me down the last few steps to go after a dog he saw out back and at that very moment I think I would have been happy to give my dog away. Which of course led to more anger and guilt as I stormed down the sidewalk, dog and husband following behind me. I also decided at this time that I'd better do a walk around the block to combat the evil carrot cake. Of course by the time we got back to our apartment I'm in loads of pain but you know what? Who cares? I'd be in pain if we didn't go for the walk. I'd be contracting even if we didn't go for the walk. So I told myself to suck it up and shut up. And I guess telling myself that made me feel better because I've refrained from crying since then.

Ok, so after reading about my afternoon and evening you may have many thoughts going through your head. If you've ever been pregnant you may be thinking back to that late pregnancy stage and be able to relate perfectly to my story. Or you may be thinking "Wow this lady is off her rocker!" or "Who is this crazy person and what has she done with Amanda?" or maybe even "Oh my, I feel so bad for her DH and dog. How do they tolerate her?" Whatever you may think, you know I don't bother sugarcoating anything on this blog so it's only fair for me to give you honest insight into how pregnancy hormones can make me, a pretty average woman, feel like a lunatic. And I tell you - I seriously felt like shipping myself off to the funny farm today.

So here's to hoping that today is long forgotten and that tomorrow is a much better day. Tomorrow night I go meet the pediatrician (since I was in the hospital the last time I had that scheduled) and Thursday morning is my next (and last) NST/prenatal visit. Both of those are some good positive things to look forward to so I'm optimistic that tomorrow will be a great day, or as the Brady Bunch would say a Sunshine Day! And as a Brady Bunch fanatic, there is no way in hell I could say that and not include a link to the Brady Bunch singing Sunshine Day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaCCG7QkM_c

Enjoy!!

37w4d - 10 more sleeps to go!

I can't wait to wake up tomorrow morning because then we'll be in a single digit countdown - woo-hoo!!! Yeah baby!! What's really crazy is I remember my pregnancy ticker when the pregnancy first started and it was saying I had 243 days or so to go. Now knowing that we're going to deliver in only 10 more sleeps, well, that's just plain mind boggling - in a good way!

This weekend was pretty uneventful. DH & I went out for a nice lunch on Saturday and talked about how this may be one of our last lunches with just the two of us. Next time we go we'll have our little princess with us and be timing our lunch date around breastfeeding.

Sunday was pretty tough as I had painful contractions for a good 10 hours. And DH was gone from 6am until almost 10pm so I had dog walking honors all day. Let me just say, it's definitely a challenge to walk a dog with contractions that stop you in your tracks. There were a few times where I just had to tell pup to stop and bend over for a couple minutes to let the contraction pass. At some points during the day, I contemplated calling Dr D but then the contractions would go all irregular again. In the end I'm glad I didn't bother the good doc because by the time I went to bed, they'd let up considerably. Today, DH has another long day so I'm the dog walking queen again but it's been much, much easier with more of the "normal" contractions that I'm used to. So now I just wait for my appointment on Thursday morning.

On another note, I'm really excited for one of my message board friends "N". Now, back when we did our IVF cycle, N was my cycle buddy. We both joined the summer cycle group thread in June/July but by the time we both went through our testing and prep ended up moving on to the fall cycle group thread. We were both self-pay so we could relate to the fear of spending soooo much money and not having anything to show for it. We started our stims one day apart and had our egg retrieval on the same day, October 21st. I had a 3-day transfer, while she had enough embies to try a 5-day transfer. Throughout our cycle we messaged each other numerous times a day - cheering each other on and keeping each other positive through the worry. As we all know, I got my BFP but N got a BFN. I was so, so sad for her as I'd really hoped we'd be able to go through our pregnancies together. And yet while she was going through such a painful time, she always stayed supportive of my pregnancy. (That couldn't have been easy for her.)

N & her DH took some time away to contemplate whether to try another fresh cycle or do a frozen embryo transfer (FET) with the one embryo that made it to the freezing stage. An FET is considerably cheaper since there is no retrieval and no stims necessary, but N was so afraid that the embie wouldn't survive the thaw (around 70% survive thawing) or that just transferring 1 would not take. They decided to do their FET, the embie survived the thaw and was transferred, and then N's wait began. I had 23 internet cheapie pregnancy tests leftover so after her FET, I mailed her the sticks so she'd have plenty of HPTs to test with. And she got a BFP! Beautiful 2nd lines over and over until she went for her b/w and then her betas have been fabulous. This Wednesday she goes for her first u/s. I've been praying for her daily that when she goes on Wednesday she & her DH will see a beautiful sac with a beautiful heartbeat in there. That wait for the first u/s is worse than the wait for the betas. We've seen so many women post that there was no heartbeat, that it was just a blighted ovum, or that it's an ectopic so seeing the heartbeat is what a fertility clinic (and us pregnant women) take as "really pregnant!" So the wait for the first u/s is an emotionally draining time, I know!

So to my former cycle buddy and friend N in Tennessee, good luck on Wednesday. The prayers and positive thoughts will keep coming and I can't wait to follow your pregnancy!

37 weeks - only 2 weeks to go!!!

37 weeks today!! Two weeks from now I should be holding Maribel, or nursing her, or watching DH snuggle up with her...oh, I cannot wait!! DH told me that it really hit him yesterday - that his thoughts are always "When Maribel arrives..." and now that "when" is really just two weeks away he got extra excited and nervous at the same time.

My days now fluctuate. Yesterday I was pretty miserable, just because I was sore, uncomfortable, and itchy. It probably didn't help that I felt the need to vacuum the entire house yesterday - dining/living room, our room, baby's room, hallway and moving light furnishings out of the way to do so. Yeah, probably not the wisest decision I've made but nesting was in full force so once I started I just couldn't stop. Today, I've been feeling a lot better. I limited my activities today to dog walking and grocery shopping (though carrying those grocery bags up the stairs temporarily kicked my ass.)

So as I waiver between cherishing every remaining moment of my pregnancy and crying to the heavens to please just let me have her now so I can stop feeling so uncomfortable, I think about things I love about being pregnant and things I won't miss.

I will miss feeling her kick and squirm inside of me, especially when I'm talking to her. It's like a communication only she & I have and I'll miss that.

I will NOT miss peeing numerous times each hour, nor will I miss having a contraction the moment I get up to pee. It's hard enough to walk with a contraction and a belly out to here, but add in squeezing the legs together to avoid an accident on the way to the bathroom and my patience thins.

I will miss people being so friendly. Yes, people are REALLY nice to pregnant women. They smile at pregnant women, they strike up a quick conversation (usually just asking when I'm due or whether it's a boy or girl), and you actually feel like you're no longer completely invisible to the rest of society.

I will NOT miss pricking my finger 4 times a day or having to schedule meals and activities around when I need to test my blood. I will also NOT miss having to take my Procardia every 6 hours (I really hate that 2am alarm with a passion.)

I will miss my hubby talking to my belly, rubbing it, and telling me almost daily how beautiful my bump is.

I will NOT miss both of us being too nervous to have sex, or having to wear a condom during sex, or being told we have to refrain from sex (which happened at the beginning, middle, and end of pregnancy.) You always hear "pregnant sex is great". In our pregnancy it was pretty much non-existent so we are both anxious to get the all clear at my post-partum visit and get that party started. [Insert cheesy porn music here]

I will miss the wonder and anticipation - what will she look like? Will she have DH's cute lips and big brown eyes? Will she have my high arches or his flat feet? What will she weigh? What will she sound like when she cries? What will her personality be like?

I will NOT miss the worry. We've made it through the pregnancy in baby steps. The entire IVF process was a series of baby steps - stim enough to get eggs, retrieve them, wait to hear how many fertilized, get the call each day to see if they're still growing, transfer them, wait to see if we get a BFP, wait for the u/s, wait for the 2nd u/s to see if we had heartbeats. Then it was wait for the TAC surgery to make sure the baby made it through that. Then it was get to 20 weeks, then 24 (where viability is greater), then 25 where it's even greater, then 28 where we take our first breath that a baby would have a really, really good chance if born then. Then 30, then getting past our pre-term contraction scare at 33+ weeks (knowing the baby would be fine but still knowing there could be a NICU stay), and now at 37 weeks we've made it to full-term. I've always said I'll really breathe a sigh of relief when they do that c-section, I hear her cry, and they tell me she's great. Of course, as parents you never stop worrying but I just want to be past the point of worrying that we'll be able to bring our baby home.

I'm sure there are lots more things I'll miss and not miss but those are my main ones. Anyways, 2 more weeks...I still can't believe it! Well, here is my picture from this evening at 37 weeks. Only 2 more belly shots to go - one next week and one the morning of delivery. WOW!!!!

36w5d - 16 more sleeps!

Hello all! As the title of today's post, we have 16 more sleeps until c-section day. It's funny when you're counting down to a big day. You try to find the one that sounds like the shortest amount of time. 2 weeks & 2 days? 16 days? 16 sleeps? 2 weeks from Thursday? While my answer changes depending on my mood, today I think 16 sleeps sounds best. 16 days makes me think of 16 long days. Anything with "weeks" in it just seems like forever. Sleeps are generally 6 hours or less these days so 16 of those seems like a short amount of time. (Mind you, yesterday I preferred to think of it as 2 weeks & 3 days instead of 17 days or 17 sleeps. That's why I said it seems to vary depending on my mood.) So which do you think is the shortest sounding?

Today's doctor's visit went well for the most part. The worst part was my weight. Somehow I gained 3.4 pounds in one week!! WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!? Yes, that deserved to be spelled out instead off my usual abbreviation of WTF!! I have no idea why but my guess is that my activity level being greatly cut since starting this modified bedrest probably contributed. That and I'm feeling a little puffy lately so I have a feeling some of it is water weight. Whatever it is, I have to work extra hard over the next week to make sure I stay put on that freaking scale. Total weight gain thanks to packing on the pounds this week = 18.8 pounds. Still acceptable overall of course, it's just hard to see a gain like that when I can't even eat all of the foods I'd like to be eating. Ah well, let it go Amanda, let it go.

My NST was good. Some contractions but nothing major. Maribel racing her heart away at first and then calming down into a nice pattern. My AFI was good at 16.93 - so even higher than the original reading 2 weeks ago. BP was awesome at 120/86. Pulse, temp, & urine all fine too. Doc pushed on a few parts of my lower legs to make sure I wasn't having pitting edema with that weight gain but everything looked good there too.

So then we discussed our final decision for our c-section date. He again ran through our options - deliver next week, but just do an amnio beforehand to make sure her lungs are mature or deliver at 39 weeks on 7/7. OMG, how I wanted to say let's deliver next week. I really, really wanted to say that. But instead I told him how DH & I discussed it and we'd (well, mostly DH) like to shoot for 39 weeks. He chuckled as I said I'd like DH to carry a bowling ball in his shirt for this last week so he feels my pain (mind you, I was semi-serious.) He called over to the hospital to tell them to put me on the schedule for 7/7 for my c-section. Wow, hearing him make that call made it all feel very real.

Next week, instead of going for my NST/prenatal visit on Tuesday, I'll go on Thursday. That will be exactly 38 weeks and will be 1 week before my c-section. Doc will do the hospital paperwork with me that day and it can only be done one week prior to my surgery (pre-op vitals and such) so this will allow me to just have one appointment next week instead of having one appointment on Tuesday and then going in Thursday for the paperwork portion. That works for me! And that means I only have ONE more doctor visit before we deliver. One! Wow! During next week's appointment he'll go through all of the details for the surgery - what to expect, what time to be there, pre-op instructions, etc. I can't believe we're this close now! I've used a lot of exclamation points in the last few sentences so I think you can sense my excitement.

So that's it for today. Thursday will be 37 weeks so I'll be sure to post a new belly shot. Until then, I hope you're all having a great week and happy first day of summer!

36w3d - Happy Father's Day!

Hi everyone! Happy Father's Day to all of the dads, stepdads, and soon-to-be dads! To my Dad, you're an amazing father and you taught me so much. I love you! To my DS, you're an awesome daddy to Lily and I love you! And to my wonderful DH, I can't wait to see you in action as Daddy when Maribel arrives! Babe, I love you more every day. xoxo

Here we're chugging away towards 37 weeks and it's been a mixed couple of days. Thanks for the comments and emails on the bikini shot! When I had my first two children, I was so young and self-conscious I would have never stepped foot in a bikini much less take a picture in a bikini at 36 weeks. It's nice this time around to "honor the bump" with all of the pictures we've taken during this pregnancy.

So Friday morning I went swimming with a fellow prego Army wife and oh my god did that feel WONDERFUL!! That feeling of weightlessness was terrific and I can't wait to go again. I'll either head over to the base Monday or Tuesday for another swim. I'd like to go 2-3 times a week these next couple of weeks since I know when I'm post-partum I'll have a good 6 weeks or so out of the water while I heal.

Yesterday, I was just a miserable old crumb. Grumpy, itchy (I'd tried to taper down my prednisone and had gone a couple days without it - not great results, UGH), sore, and tired. Those familiar gripes you've had to hear me complain about the last few weeks. I seriously hate to complain - after all, we worked so hard to get to this point I feel like I should be thankful for every pregnancy symptom 100% of the time. I know that's completely unrealistic when you're 9 months pregnant, but I also know women who are TTC'ing would probably tell me to shut up, quit complaining, and that they'd do anything to have the aches and pains I'm having right now. So it's hard to balance the complaining and being thankful for the pain, contractions, etc in my mind. Why oh why do I always feel the need to make myself feel guilty about something?

What made me feel better last night was something so simple and silly - a jigsaw puzzle. Yep, a jigsaw puzzle, weird huh? My mom's been getting jigsaw puzzles and at Thanksgiving we were doing some at her house. Since then I've borrowed some when I go to visit or she sends me some in the mail to do to keep me occupied and on my tush so I don't have too much "on my feet" time. Why doing this activity made me feel better, I'm not sure. Maybe it's because finding a home for 300 pieces takes my mind off of my gripes? Maybe it's because it reminds me of doing puzzles as a kid? I don't know, but I highly recommend them if you just need to take your mind off things for a few hours. DH joined me too in the puzzling for awhile before his x-box started calling his name. It just ended up being a really nice family evening after my grump-fest of a day. Thank god!!

So Tuesday brings another NST and prenatal visit. These weekly visits seem to make time go a little faster. As of today, we have roughly 2w4d to go until we hit 39 weeks so we're nearing the end. I'll be sure to report in on how that appointment goes. Until then, enjoy your Father's Day!

36 weeks - 3 weeks to go!

36 weeks today and I would like to know who came by my house yesterday and sledgehammered my pelvis. Holy crap, that's how it feels. Yesterday when it hurt to walk, stand, sit, lay, anything - I thought well, maybe I'm constipated and it's making things hurt. No, that is not the issue. I've just hit the really uncomfortable part of pregnancy. Ouch!

For those that haven't been through the last month of pregnancy, I'll try to describe it to the best of my abilities. Picture your pelvic bones (that pelvic girdle if you will.) Now pretend that I just stuck a heavy bowling ball right on top of it. Gravity is pulling the bowling ball down but it just won't fit. So your bones start spreading out ever so slowly, which leads the ball to drop a little more, which makes your bones spread out a little more, etc, etc. When I move, I swear that bowling ball is going to come crashing out and when I don't move it's just a perpetual, strong, ache as the bowling ball keeps on spreading those bones out.

So yep, that's pretty much how it feels. So picture my expression last night when I painfully hobbled to the bathroom, painfully sat down on the toilet to pee, painfully peed (holding onto the counter to angle myself in the least painful position possible), painfully hobbled back to the living room, painfully sat down on the loveseat - only to have DH ask "Hun, will you make me some popcorn?" The man is lucky I love him because my initial thought was "Are you fucking kidding me?" followed by "You couldn't have asked me this BEFORE I painfully sat down?" followed by "Pop your own damn popcorn!" Instead I just said "You're lucky I love you" and proceeded to painfully get up, painfully walk to the cupboard and painfully stand in the kitchen for 3 minutes while his popcorn popped. I did however take the opportunity to shoot him evil looks at every possible opportunity during this process. It's unfortunate that I can't make him experience this pain, just for 5 minutes so he knows I'm not just some wuss crying over a papercut. Oh DH, I do love you despite your untimely request for popcorn. :-)

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. I'm going to meet up with another preggo Army wife in the morning to go lap swimming on base. That should help my painful pelvis for a little while and loosen up these joints. Mind you, my idea of lap swimming these days will be a gentle breaststroke or hell, just backfloat down the lane but I can't wait! This swimming plan brought momentary panic as I wondered if I would even fit in any of my bathing suits. Good news is I fit into both suits and I decided I may as well take my 36 week bump shot in them. So here goes, two 36 week shots in my bathing suits. Don't laugh too hard, ok?

35w5d - ~23 days to go

Hi friends! 23 days (or less) to go, woo-hoo!!! I had a good prenatal visit today. It started out again with the NST and this one was MUCH calmer than last week's. Maribel started out all super active with that super high heartbeat for the first few minutes as I clicked and clicked and clicked to log her activity. Then everything settled down nicely. In fact, she fell asleep for a good portion of the test. The best part was that I only had 1 contraction the whole time I was hooked up! Awesome!!

We checked the amniotic fluid index (AFI) again via u/s and this created the one nervous moment of the day. The u/s tech (who I've never seen there before) measured all of the pockets of fluid and came up with an AFI of 7.3. This was a lot lower than last weeks AFI of 16.5, enough to make me nervous. Apparently I wasn't the only one nervous about that drop. As soon as Dr D saw that he took me back to the u/s room and had a different u/s tech, one of the two I usually see, do the u/s over (not telling him what the first u/s tech got for results.) The second u/s tech came up with 13.92 so all was good again with the world. It's one thing to have it decrease a little the closer I get to delivery, but that first AFI of the day would have been a significant drop and that wasn't looking good.

So then on to the basics - b/p a lovely 100/70, weight was up 6 tenths of a pound so still doing great in that area (I also think the 2 bottles of water I drank during my NST contributes to that little gain.) No protein in the urine, temp my usual 97.1, and pulse was looking fine. Dr D decided to keep me on the Procardia since we have now seen some improvement with my contractions decreasing, so he gave me a new script for that. And that was really it - a nice, easy, mostly uneventful appointment. I'll go back again next Tuesday for the same - NST, AFI, and prenatal visit.

Only a few more weeks to go, can you believe it??? If she decides to stay put that means I only have 3 more of these weekly appointments - 3!! And then we'll have our baby girl in our arms. Oh, and so far for the poll it looks like 6 folks think Maribel's going to arrive early while 1 thinks she'll hold out until 7/7. I can't wait to see who's right!

35w4d - The Nursery is Done!

We're 35w4d today which means 24 days or less to go until we meet Maribel. This weekend, DH had an extremely rare weekend off so we enjoyed our time together and got lots of little things done.

Hubby hung curtains in the baby's room and in our room and can I just say - while I'm normally not a fan of curtains, I LOVE ours right now. I've been waking up sooooo early lately, usually in the 5 o'clock hour when the sun starts peeking through our blinds (though Saturday I was up at 3:18...way before the sun came up) and I'm exhausted enough without waking up so early. But yesterday we hung the insulated curtains in our room and yours truly slept until almost 8am. Holy shit, that felt great! Now mind you, I was still up at least every hour for pee breaks or meds or adjusting my big ole belly but still - this is a vast improvement over not being able to go back to sleep after 5am. Woo-hoo!! We also organized closets and dressers in our room to make sure we're utilizing space as best we can.

Hubby also hung the letters I painted that spell Maribel's name (pics to follow later in this post.) We put together a small pantry that we'll use under the bar in our dining room to store food since our kitchen is THE tiniest kitchen known to man. This eliminates food falling on my head everytime I open the cupboards and also gave us a lot more cupboard space for baby bottles, milk storage supplies, etc. I washed the cloth wipes and then trimmed the frayed edges down to the stitches we made on all 85 of them. Damn, my scissor fingers were hurting after that fun task. We put away the last few items in the baby's room and now we are DONE in the nursery. That's right - DONE!!! AWESOME!!

So the pics at the top of the post are a couple of pictures of the nursery. I wish we were allowed to paint but we live in an apartment complex so that's a no-go. So we had to find ways to add color to the walls without getting out brushes and rollers. The first pic is looking into the nursery from the hallway and the second pic is taken from a corner of the room. (Sorry I had to post them in that fashion. For some reason when I tried to post them within my post, they spread out and covered the entire screen. Weird stuff today I guess.)

In other news, I'm feeling good today. Yesterday wasn't too fun - just had lots and lots of contractions and they were REALLY uncomfortable. A nap in the afternoon did help ease those up so I must have just been sitting up (trimming those wipes) for too long before getting horizontal. Lesson learned - sitting is not as kind to my contractions as laying down. Tomorrow morning I have another NST and prenatal visit so I'll be sure to report how that goes. Hopefully little miss Maribel won't give me a scare again. (Did you hear that Maribel? It's quite alright for your heartbeat to increase during a contraction, but bring it back down afterwards, ok???)

35 weeks - My belly is a watermelon

Hi folks! Today I got my office equipment cleared out of what was formerly our guestroom/office so it is now strictly the nursery, YAY!!! DH still has to hang curtains and the wooden letters I painted that spell Maribel's name but that's really it. Everything else is good to go.

Yesterday I prepped my cloth diapers. Since they're pocket diapers with microfiber inserts, prepping just consisted of one washing. Then the inserts got tumble dried and the diapers themselves hung on my new drying rack. Once everything was dried, I stuffed the diapers with the inserts, snapped them up, and now we just need the baby to diaper. I also ordered some hemp inserts for overnights so once those come in, those will require some additional prepping since they're natural fibers. Some sites say washing them 5 or 6 times should be good. Others say to boil them for 3o minutes, let the water cool, boil them again and they should be good.

Every day I do a few things on my to-do list along with one or two "regular" chores. But still everything is done in small doses with rest breaks in between since the contractions continue, particularly when I'm standing or walking. It does feel good though to get things done though because all this resting in between makes me feel incredibly lazy and I don't do well with feeling lazy.

So here are some pics that DH took of me tonight. Please excuse the messy, frizzy hair. It was over 100 degrees here today and humid and while my time outside today was very brief it was enough to make my hair go haywire and rebel against the ponytail I tried to contain it in.