False Alarm

If you've been pregnant, you know that there's always at least one "fire drill" at the end of pregnancy where you go to the hospital and end up in L&D. That happened with Corinne when I had some weird sharp pain near my naval around 30 weeks. They thought that the placenta could be separating from the uterine wall, so off I went. Well, last night I had my weird pain with Ben and ended up in L&D.

Around 9 PM I was laying in bed (since it takes me forever to fall asleep, and who am I kidding, I'm not a night owl) and started to experience strong, dull pains way down low around my pubic bone. Changing positions didn't help, and I knew I wasn't dehydrated since I had made a good effort to drink a ton of water yesterday. After 75 minutes, the pain was still there and I couldn't sleep, so I called my OB. She advised me to head to the hospital - it was either early labor or a UTI (huh?!?) And since I didn't want to be that person who waited thinking I was fine, only to deliver my baby on the side of the road.... or worse yet have something happen to the baby from my lack of actions.... we headed in.

It was a little scary since I didn't know what was going on. I didn't think it was labor - it didn't feel like the labor pains I had with Cori. But my water broke with her and since every labor is different, and since I'm no OB..... I was most worried that in the end I'd waste everyone's time. But I'm a good patient so there we went.

Hooked up to the monitor, the baby was obviously fine and my contractions were sporadic. No sign of a UTI, and the internal examination showed that Ben decided to descend quite a bit into the birth canal. (And I'm dilated - hurray!) The descent and pushing was the pressure I was feeling; the doctor knew just where to push to say "does it hurt here?" and that cinched it.

My visit was about 2 hrs (not too bad) though it ended around 1:15 AM and Dave and I were both exhausted when we got home close to 2 AM. The good news is that baby and my body both are getting ready. I have my own guess as to what day he'll be here - leave your guess in the comments! The bad news is that the sleeplessness, bad heartburn, and general pain are getting to be quite taxing.

I used to feel guilty that I wasn't enjoying the pregnancy like some women do, especially since we struggled to have kids. In the back of my head I thought I didn't really have a right to complain since we wanted this so badly. But you know what? I've re-evaluated and have come to the conclusion that I have every right to feel the way I do. This has been a hard pregnancy, compounded by the fact that I have to chase a toddler. And besides, it's not about the journey, but the final product in this case. No one said I have to love the ride; I know I'll love my child. So what if I am honest and say I can't wait to not be pregnant any longer. That doesn't make me a bad person or a bad mother.

Average Sat night

Dressing up as princesses....just an average Saturday night around here.

Living Treasures mini-zoo

Last weekend we took Corinne to Living Treasures up in New Castle, so about 30 mins away from us. It's a combination of a petting zoo but with bigger animals. Some of the animals you can't pet (with good reason) like the tigers and leopards and bears. But you can feed them through tubes, and Cori LOVED that.Her favorite though were the deer (which she calls Rudolphs) and she wasn't shy at all about putting feed or carrots into her hand and offering them to the animals. That was awesome to see, cause I really hope that she continues to enjoy animals as she gets older.
Definitely recommend this place to those with kids! While the Pgh zoo is awesome, the interactions between the animals and kids here are much more and it creates a unique experience. The admission prices aren't bad either, but right now at WPXI, they are offering a half off deal. You get 5 tickets for $19.99 instead of $42.50. I know we'll put those tickets to good use in the future.

Almost 34 weeks

Not a whole lot has been happening, aside from 2-3 visits to the OB each week. Thanks to the gestational diabetes, I now seem to have a home away from home at my OB's office. Every Tuesday and Friday I get hooked up to a fetal heartbeat monitor for a non-stress test.

Basically they are looking for regular accelerations and decelerations in the baby's heart beat. How long I am there depends on how awake the baby is. If he is sleeping, not much happens and we need to poke him and zap him awake with some sound waves. If he is awake, the heartbeat increases and decreases more.

Throw in the occasional ultrasound to check for baby's growth and practice breathing and sometimes I'm at the doctor's three times a week. Right now baby is head down and measuring a little over 5 lbs, about the 62nd percentile, so right on track. I'm also measuring 34 weeks, so there isn't excessive size to worry about.

While I've had to increase my diabetes medication, the meds are keeping my sugar levels in check. If things get out of control with the diabetes, that is the only reason I'd be induced earlier than 39 weeks, but it doesn't look like things are headed in that direction at all. At 36 weeks I'll have my first internal and see if I'm showing any signs of dilation, etc. Together with my doctor, we'll look at a calender and talk about an induction date for 39 weeks.

While there is a good chance I will have spontaneous labor prior to then, they will induce at 39 weeks, just not any earlier. I'll be aiming for the 22nd since Cori isn't in daycare on Fridays. But you know the old saying - people plan and God laughs - so we'll just have to see.

Sneak Peak

This past weekend we had our rescheduled photo shoot; I had won a free session on Facebook from Mary Beth Miller Photography and we decided to use it for Cori's third birthday pictures. MB is really sweet and I'd heard good things about her, as well as liked many of her children's photos. We picked Hartwood Acres for the photo shoot since the grounds are kept so nicely and it is free to walk around the mansion. The only "downside" is that on weekends, there are usually lots of photographers there, so you have to stay out of each other's way.
Cori was fairly cooperative (esp given the hot and humid weather) but things got a little rough towards the end of the session. The photographer told Cori that a princess lived in the castle, and from that point on Cori was obsessed with trying to go inside and look in windows, etc. When it came time to leave, there were tears and tantrums. Oi - three year olds - drama!

Without further ado.... photo sneak peaks below. The rest of the pictures will be ready in 2 weeks and we're looking forward to them!

Product Review

I've never been shy about using paint - be it paint for my home's walls or paint color for my hair. After all, why be scared.. it's just color! If it doesn't look right, try, try again!

For the past few years I've gone back and forth between brown and blonde (and everything in between) as well as long hair to short hair. (I'm now on a longer hair kick and am attempting to grow mine again, which I am sure will result in chopping it all off again in a year or so.

In the past few years I've trusted my salon to color my hair. It's just easier and I know the results will be good. I have a lot of red undertones in my hair, which I don't like, and the wrong color can easily bring them out. But while I love my salon, I don't love the price. And with baby on the way, I'm trying to find ways to trim the budget.

Enter Nice and Easy Color Foam... thanks to a $3 coupon in the Sunday paper recently, I thought I'd give it a try. The product was really easy to use, though I'd like to share some pointers:

1. Like wall paint, apply in a well ventilated area! Man this stuff stinks!
   
2. It's a good idea to actually do as instructed and use a towel as a cape. One set of PJs is now spotted... whoops!
3. If you choose to ignore pointer 2, or if you're really messy, have some wet paper towels on hand to wipe up. A hand mirror to see the back of your neck in a stationary mirror is also very helpful, esp if you don't want spotted skin.

Overall I like the product and the price is right. And the results were good, though pictures are for another day!

Other Misc. Updates

• The Binky Fairy came on Cori's birthday and took all the binkies and left a bubble mower. Cori is doing fine; sleep was fine and so are car rides. She will still ask occasionally where her binkies are; we remind her that the fairy took them and she seems fine with that.
  
  
• 32 weeks pregnant and I'm feeling really ready physically and mentally (aside from no hospital bag packed and forgetting what I even need to take). The diabetes seems to be holding, though I did have my meds increased yesterday. Due to the heat I have had a lot of swelling in my hands and feet. Ben has been really active still; the kid moves non-stop. I know it's a bit early (just a bit huh?) so I'll wait another month, but bring on the baby soon!
  
  
• Cori's 3 year well visit went very well. The doctor declared her very healthy and progressing excellent. Cori weights 33 lbs and is 39 and 1/4 inches tall. What a big girl!
  
  
• We have grass in our yard! After months of waiting, and lots of watering, we're getting there.
  
  

Birthday Party

Last weekend we had a small birthday party for our big girl. The weather was beautiful - sunny and 80 degrees - perfect for this time of year!

Going for a ride with Pap

Birthday cake!

Enjoying her water table:

Playing with 2 of her favorite cousins:
The microphone was a big hit!

3rd Birthday

Happy 3rd birthday to our sweet little girl! She sure has gotten so big!

We love you!

Amelia Island, FL

Dave and I had a really enjoyable time together this past weekend. The Elizabeth Point Lodge was a wonderful recommendation from a friend. It's right up against the ocean; the area is just a 30 minute drive from Jacksonville airport.

The island is as busy as you want it to be; if you want to golf or do spa outtings or shopping, all of that is available. There is a great 50 block historic district that has some really excellent (and inexpensive) restaurants and neat shops. The whole area pretty much looked like below. I love the spanish moss hanging from the big trees!
We chose to spend most of our time at the beach relaxing. (Having towels and chairs and umbrellas there made packing light and easy too.) The weather was wonderful - sunshine and upper 80s on Friday and 94 on Saturday. Thank goodness for the steady breeze to help cool things off! We even saw dolphins a couple of times each day; they were fairly close to shore. In the picture below, you can see one of them in the water if you look right above the umbrella on the far left.

I even woke up early Saturday morning to watch the sun come up. There's just something about having your morning coffee watching the sun rise over the ocean.... wish I could do that every day!

Pictures

Here's Cori receiving her gymnastic trophy at daycare. Apparently she is very good on the balance beam! (of all things!)Here's Benjamin from this week's ultrasound. He is measuring 3 lbs, 11 oz which is 81st percentile. He is also breech.My blood pressure has been good and I lost 2 lbs, so overall gain is 5 pounds at 30 weeks pregnant. Interesting. The insulin I've been taking has been helping my sugar levels.

Tomorrow we head to the beach at Amelia Island Florida for a brief weekend away - very much looking forward to it!

Clothes sale

Over the weekend I hit up Gymboree in Cranberry for their "box sale". As the employee explained to me, their store gets a lot of product; anything they don't sell, they box up and place into storage. (They don't send it to the outlet as the outlets get their own merchandise.) So this weekend, they pulled out their fall & winter boxes and held a big sale!

Nothing was over $9.99 and you got an extra 30% off, so pretty much everything was less than $7. And everything was sorted - boys on one side of the store, girls on another. AND they had everything sorted by size too - so you could go right to what you wanted to look for. Since it was fall and winter merchandise, I went for the sizes 4 & 5. But I soon found myself also grabbing some larger sizes because the items were priced so well, and the fashion would definitely still be "in" when she fit them... like $2.99 (less 30%) for plain pink leggings in a size 7 - she'll fit them in 2 years no problem!

Anyway, for $80, I was able to get 11 tops / sweaters, 4 pairs of pants, 1 skirt, 2 pairs of leggings, and a pair of pony-tail holders. The check out lines were really long, and the store said they'd be able to hold items until the next day and still honor the prices and discount. (plus you'd still earn Gymbucks!) So I decided to have the stuff held and came back today. When I went back I was also able to sign up for advanced notice of their next box sale. So if you're interested, leave me a comment and I'll be sure to let you know too!

Gestational Diabetes update

It's been a week since I met with the dietitian and started my modified diet for the gestational diabetes. While I do miss some of the sugar I used to freely have, what is more annoying is the glucose monitoring. It isn't very convenient to have to schedule when I eat and then be available an hour afterwards to test. Sometimes I have work meetings or am out grocery shopping, etc. The numbers haven't been that bad - my fasting levels are a little high and so was breakfast, but they'd be fine for lunch & dinner. Oddly enough, the more sugar / carbs I have, the lower my numbers. What can I say - I'm an anomaly!

Today I met with a fetal specialist to go over the numbers and talk about what will happen next. Basically they want me to start on insulin at night to help with the morning numbers. Right now I'll just continue with my modified diet and watching my numbers. In the next few weeks, I'll need some more ultrasounds to monitor the baby's growth. Then around 35 weeks, I'll begin non-stress tests 2x a week just to check on his activity. They will not let me go past 39 weeks, and if things start to get "worse" (high blood pressure, large baby weight, bad sugar numbers) they will do an amnio to check on lung maturity and then induce labor (which may be a c-section depending on baby's weight). But it's all a waiting game at this point because we can't predict how things will turn out. I'm fine now, and so is baby, so that is good.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go prick my finger again and test my levels....

Three Generations

Happy Mother's day!

Never judge a book by it's cover

I was a bit worried when the person I hired to finish the swing set installation came to our front door today. He was 90 minutes late (said he forgot that he had to take his son to work and didn't bring my number with him). And he had a lite cigarette with him and looked like he was a long time member of Hell's Angels or something....

BUT not even 5 hours later we had the finished product.... plus he corrected the multiple breaks in the beams without complaint or extra charge!

As a side note, I think I've discovered that I'm allergic to goldenrod. Our back acre is covered with it; while it looks beautiful, I'm a bit tired of sneezing blood and coughing up a lung daily for the past week.

Feeling low

It would be an understatement to say that it's been a rough week. I'm feeling really over-whelmed and a bit down. I'm sure that part of it is "hormones" but I have to say that most of it is situational and all the bad news that happened this week. It's definitely starting out to be a not-so-happy third trimester....

Right now I'm most down about being diagnosed with gestational diabetes. This is a condition of high blood sugar that occurs only in pregnant women and usually goes away once the baby is born. It's due to the large amount of hormones I'm making now that help the baby grow. The hormones make it hard for insulin to work the way it normally should. Right now my pancreas(which is the organ that makes the insulin) is working 3x as hard as a non-pregnant person's. And it's struggling to keep up. (My fasting glucose level was actually really good.)

So what happens now is that I have to meet with a maternal fetal specialist at Magee who will place me on a very strict diet. Apparently on the menu are a whopping choice of meat, some veggies (gag - pregnancy aversion), peanut butter and string cheese. Kiss everything else good bye. Basically I'm going to starve the last 3 months I'm pregnant. Oh, and I get to prick my finger 4x a day and take my glucose readings and fax them to the Magee specialist who gets to see if I'm"normal" or if I have to go on insulin. Which at this point I'd rather do... I'm used to the shots thanks to IVF and I'd rather give myself a shot than prick my finger 4x a day.

High up second on the list is news we got about my father-in-law. We found out that he can't be around the kids for 6 weeks after they receive a vaccine. Since the vaccine is a live virus, when his white blood count is so low, there is a high chance that he can contract that virus. Thus the 6 week isolation from the kids. Which I understand, and of course I want him to be well and safe. But considering that Ben will get a shot in the hospital, and then at 2 months, and then every month there after (I spread out the shots), this means that grandfather and grandson may not meet for a very long time. Which just makes me sad.

The day I found out about the gestational diabetes, I came home to find that the play set that we spent so much money and time trying to assemble... well, thanks to the high winds we had, it blew over and cracked. Time and money aside (which is still hard to swallow) we have so much going on during the upcoming weekends that repairing it and finishing it on our own is out of the question. Thinking about it literally makes me want to cry.

Work has sucked this week, and Cori has been extra whiny. Finances are extra tight. We were hoping drop down to 2 days a week for daycare and now it looks like we may have to jump up to 4 days a week. I'm tired. Scratch that - exhausted. This kid is beating the punching the hell out of me. And I'm experiencing a bunch of other not-so-pleasant pregnancy symptoms that would be TMI for here but they all suck. I can't drink and now chocolate is off the menu. I just feel really low.

Easter princess

While Corinne does look beautiful, I'm not sure if I'd recommend a silk dress to any other toddler moms! (If it wasn't a hand-me-down I most likely wouldn't have purchased it myself)

what a week....

It's been an exhausting week. I was in my second favorite city - Denver - for a few days this week on business. I really do love it there! Amazingly, when I was inside the airport, I bumped into a very good friend of mine who lives in Los Angeles! What good luck to see my friend Jen since I've not seen her in a year & a half.

Something that I did learn along the trip is that I'm suddenly feeling very pregnant physically. I dropped my book mark on the plane and spent a good portion of the 3 hr flight trying to retrieve it. I just can't bend and reach like I used to be able to! 12 more weeks to go, and I guess this is normal, but it's somewhat disheartening. I guess I just forgot about this part from last time?

I'm really tired as of late, and sleep is starting to get not so good. I can't seem to get comfortable. Plus I learned I failed my 1 hr glucose tolerance test; tomorrow I'm supposed to take the 3 hr one, and am not looking forward to chugging extra sugary disgusting syrup on an empty stomach and then getting blood taken repeatedly. I'm a really hard stick when it comes to giving blood and without any fluid in me to plump up my veins, this is going to be extra painful.

Not sure if we've announced officially too, but baby's name will be Benjamin Robert.

Happy news to wrap up this post - my father in law came home from the hospital today after his first round of chemo. He tolerated it very well during the entire week. His WBC numbers aren't coming down as fast as they'd like, but we are still very hopeful. We did learn that his diagnosis changed yet again (thankfully his prognosis is still very positive). Apparently Bob has mantel cell lymphoma. He had cancer in his lymph nodes for a while unknowingly; it broke through all the layers and released into his blood stream, which is how he got the leukemia (cancer of the blood). It is going to require massive lifestyle changes over the next 6-12 months while he recovers, but most importantly is that he is being treated for it. Thank you to everyone who has been asking about him and praying for him!! Please keep it up!

overall update

It's been a busy weekend here as Dave assembled the swing set in pretty much awful rain & windy weather. Special thanks to our friends Mike on Saturday and Matt on Sunday for helping out. We made it through step 39 of 57 (no exaggeration) and are hopeful that some work this week and finishing up on Saturday will allow us to be totally done. Otherwise we'll never get it moved from the driveway and inside of the garage!

My father-in-law starts his chemo tomorrow. I'm so nervous for him; he feels perfectly fine right now but I know he is going to feel like sh*t shortly. The doctors initially diagnosed him with CLL but it turns out that he has CML - chronic Myelogenous Leukemia. Basically a different white blood cell is the culprit.

But CML has a much higher risk of returning so they are much more aggressive in it's treatment. Thus the 7-10 day stint in the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, and the probable harvesting of bone marrow stem cells once his treatment is done. Basically he will undergo a week of chemo in the hospital then have 2 weeks off to recover, then go back into the hospital for another week of chemo, 2 weeks off, rinse & repeat for about 5 sessions total. He has to stay in the hospital because the chemo cocktail he is on is so severe that they need to watch that his organs don't shut down, and the risk of infection is so great.

We're looking into the possibility of switching from publicly donating our baby's cord blood & stem cells to privately banking them for future use for our father in law. If his oncologist says it would help, we'll shell out the few thousand dollars without a blink of the eye. I've been putting my genetics hat back on since all this has happened, and it's super interesting to me as 95%+ of patients with CML have a genetic mutation between chromosomes 9 & 22. (It's called the Philadelphia gene if you want to google it for your own geeky enjoyment.)

Fortunately it's an acquired mutation meaning it happened somewhere along his lifetime; he wasn't born with it, and thus can't pass it down to his children in the germ cells. All the juicy science details have made me miss science so much again and made me realize how much knowledge I've lost from not using it. I used to do cancer research at Pitt; some days lately I feel like my knowledge levels are all about toddler behavior & the Wonder Pets.

The nursery is pretty much done with the exception that I need to get an end table to next to the rocker. Poor second child, already suffering at my lack of effort this time around. Funny how you can pour your heart and soul into the whole nursery thing the first time around (as well as other things) and then when it comes back around again, you realize that you don't need to go all crazy. Pictures as requested:

Happy birthday weekend to my dear husband who is in his 40's, from your trophy wife who is still in her 30's! :)

I'm late in mentioning (as April is mid way through already) that April is national infertility awareness month. And it's been 4 years (as of April 9th) since we lost our twins. A friend of mine also experienced a late 1st trimester loss around the same date this year, which made sad news slightly more so. So please keep in mind & prayer all the women and men who struggle with wanting a child so much and not being able to have that child so easily.

I'm off to Denver again this week. And I'm entering my 3rd trimester with 5 lbs gained total, good pressure and only mild swelling. Thank you God!