Baby update

Well, It's looking good for Solace and Heidi to win...induction is still set for May 13th (15 days)!!!! I am so glad to have an end in sight. I also do not have to be so strict on my bed rest anymore since I am officially over 36 weeks now. But obviously it is better to go as long as possible, so I will still be trying to take it pretty easy until the induction on the 13th! I spent only one (partial) morning dealing with my kids and man, I cannot wait for Kris to come on Saturday! Thank goodness for all my great family!

Still on Bed Rest

Just FYI. At my appointment on Monday, I was told I am on bed rest basically, but that I should be ok doing minimal activity like taking the kids to and from school, and stuff like that. But I am not supposed to lift Armour if I can avoid it, and I am basically supposed to take it easy as much as possible-as Wes says, basically, I am still on bed rest cause we need to put off labor for at least another 4 weeks. (I am 32 weeks along according to the original dates, and it's really a lot better if we get to 36 weeks at least). The doctor I saw yesterday is pretty convinced that my dates must be off, but we KNOW they are not off (based on earliest ultrasound and the fact that I KNOW for sure when my last period was). So, basically, this doctor thinks I am more like 34-35 weeks now and that I might be deliverable in 2 weeks after they check baby's estimated weight and size again via yet another ultrasound...But truly, that would only put me at about 34 weeks, and I think they would have to do an amnio to check lung development before they could safely deliver a baby in 2 weeks anyway. So, for now, we are just trying to really limit my activity by complying to the bed rest orders, and hold off labor for like 4 weeks!

My mom and brother are coming into town tomorrow to help through the weekend and then my aunt Kris is coming out the next week. We are so excited and grateful for the help as it will make it much easier for me to stay in bed and to avoid labor (plus we really like to see our family anyway!) it is Nice to have a mom with 5 sisters-lots of surrogate moms out there!!!

Thank you again for all the great help and support from my ward, my friends in playgroup, my friends at the kids' school & my family through all this! I am very overwhelmed by the kindness and thoughts of everyone!!!

A better day...

I posted this yesterday on my families website, and thought I might as well post it for all to see...

Just as an update all is well. I didn't have to leave home even once today as one of the other mom's in Solace's class picked her up from home, took her to school, picked her up from school, fed her lunch, let her have a play date with her daughter and dropped her off late in the afternoon. I feel better today (and was more able to rest) than I have been in days!! Ender was actually an incredible help, and I think poor little Armour is getting used to his prison in our little town home. He finds ways to keep busy and have fun (and even manages not to be too messy). I read a whole book today while I was home with the boys as Ender helped me with Armour and was a fantastic big brother and helper. It was Twilight that Mel has been hounding me to read-I loved it and cannot wait to read the rest of the series, but Wes says I cannot get anymore books until I finish the one I was already in the middle of in my Wheel of Time series (by Robert Jordan). Speaking of Wes, he finished day one of testing today about an hour and a half early because he took no breaks (even for lunch) mainly because he forgot to bring food with him-whoops-usually I am the one that remembers that kind of stuff. He is now studying his last minute stuff for tomorrow's portions of the test. Overall, all is well and I think I have finally passed all the kidney stones and am now on the up and up (or so we hope)!

Thoughts from an invalid...

Well, I am amazed! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you to everyone that has helped us out this past week, and for all those that have offered to help and are helping us this coming week and just thank you all!! Especially shout outs to Shawn & Annie for taking my kids to school all last week, thanks to Carrie for the great dinner on Saturday, and thanks to Jessica for organizing dinners for us this week and for helping me so much with my kids so often! And of course thanks to mom for the great dinners she had sent over last week as well! Thank you!!!!!!!!


I have had a lot of time to lie around and think and just hang out and of course to watch March Madness. This has been a small blessing of this staying in bed thing-I have totally been able to just veg out and watch NCAA basketball all week. I always love March Madness! Wes told me the other day that is one of the things he loves, that I get so into March Madness. Seriously though, what is with all the upsets this year-seriously!! I will tell you this, after the first round, Armour was winning our family bracket game-how much skill can this actually take for a 20-month -old to be the winner?!


Another thought-I love having my kids at a different church for preschool. Mormons just don't do all this pre-Easter celebratory stuff. I loved that everyday last week my kids came home with another Holy Week activity they had done. Some were strange to me, but all made sense in their own way, and truthfully, they learned a lot about the true meaning of Easter. There was more talk about Jesus and his resurrection at our house last week than there was about the Easter Bunny. Here is everyone ready for Church (except mom/me who did not go to church)...



































That being said, the Easter Bunny did in fact make an appearance at our house, and the kids had a great time looking for eggs and finding these baskets full of goodies for them. It is always great to see your kids get so excited about something. It is also crazy to see Armour with so much readily available candy...he is truly a candy fiend...loves the sweet stuff...I kept hiding the baskets all day so he'd stop stuffing his face with sweets, and he kept finding them and shoving a ton of candy in his mouth before mom or dad even knew he had left the room-he had candy radar like no one I have ever met!!! It is insane...(you can see in the picture that Armour already has a sucker in his mouth...)





















Another big thing this week was match day. I have a great friend in Omaha whose husband was matching this year, so I was looking forward to seeing their match (as well as other friends as well). I really wanted my friends husband to match in Omaha of course so she would still be there, but I am happy to report that they got their first choice and are going to Texas A&M. So, congrats Dan and Tammy for that! I am sure you will love it! I actually was laying on the couch waiting for the kids to be picked up for school when I realized it was match day, and promptly turned on the computer to watch Creighton's live streaming video to see where people were going live. We turned it on just about 5 people before Dan went up (lucky!) And were able to all watch their whole family up there as they found out where they were going. My kids were so excited to see their kids on the computer! They still just love those friends so much and speak of them often. So, we got to see that right before the doorbell rang for the kids to leave-it was great timing! For me, all the memories and feelings of match day last year came back to me and I just sat at the computer and cried-I think this whole pregnancy emotion thing is highly amplified by the being stuck at home and in bed thing-I am crying again just typing about it! I never know what will set me off these days!


One more note on Easter...we got the movie Enchanted from the Easter Bunny (the one that lives in Utah) and watched it together as a family. It was the first time we had seen it...well, the first 3 times as the children loved it wand literally wanted to do nothing but watch it over and over all day yesterday. Don't think that is all we did though-we read books, played with our new toys, talked about Jesus, everyone but me went to church, and we had a great dinner yesterday. I want to talk about this dinner, but I first have to say that I do not know what to do with myself when everyone is gone. While they were at church I thought I would have this great opportunity to rest up and relax, and found I didn't know what to do with myself-I did relax but could not sleep...weird. Here we are watching Enchanted-Ender took the picture so he is missing...


















So, about this dinner, Wes and I made up a recipe based on an idea Wes got while he was at Wal Mart shopping on Saturday. He saw red peppers on sale and thought it would be awesome to make a twist on a traditional stuffed pepper. Usually for Easter I make a huge Greek Easter dinner with lamb (often I just cook roast as we like it better), green beans, orzo, blood red eggs, and bread. But this year that was not going to happen-plus Greek Easter is in 5 weeks and I can just do it then...hopefully...anyway. Wes was thinking of my traditional Greek Easter, and the idea of stuffed peppers and thought we could stuff them with a Greek chicken and rice style filling and have that with garlic bread and veggies. So that is what we did. We cooked Greek chicken with traditional flavors-lemon, oregano, garlic, onion, tomato paste/sauce. etc-overnight in the crock pot, shredded it in the morning and cooked rice. We added the rice to the shredded chicken still in its yummy juices in the crock pot, sauteed mushrooms, shredded carrots, chopped up spinach, and added it all into the crock pot mix, then we stuffed in into the peppers and baked them the oven for about an hour. It was incredible! I wish you could have all tried it! Doesn't it look good...
















One last thought from Solace...


Last night we decided to forgo our usual family Bible story to talk about Easter as a family and see what they had gotten out of everything. Solace really seemed to understand quite well and told us all about Jesus and his resurrection and how we can all be resurrected now because if him. She said that when we are all resurrected though, we will not be babies again-we can't ever be babies again. Then she said "Dad, how old will we be when we are resurrected?" Wes said, well, we won't be babies, and we won't be old, so I think somewhere in between." Solace said "Like, Maybe like you dad! I bet we'll be about as old as you." Wes said, "Ya know Solace-I think that is a good guess, maybe we will be about as old as me." Then Solace said "Yeah-but definitely NOT old like mom!" She said it with such authority and complete sincerity that Wes And I had a hard time stifling our laughter-evidently the line between young and old falls somewhere between 28 and 29...

Well, as a brief update to those wondering, I have been on bed rest because I have had kidney stones and they have been causing contractions. I seem to be dilated to about a 1 last I was checked, so obviously we do not want that to continue at 31 weeks. The hope is that once all the stones pass It will be better as far as the contractions and the pain. So, hopefully by my next appointment on the 31st (one week from today) all stones will be gone (I have passed 3-I know too much info...) and I will not have to be so limited in my activity. We just need to get though this week. Wesley has his boards on Thursday and Friday, so that is the biggest event coming up, and we are doing our best to let him study while I rest and the kids take care of me. It has been working out well, and I know Wesley will do well on his boards! Thank you again for everything-and hey-if you made it to the end of this-thanks for caring!!

Long Explanation, prepare yourself...

Well, I thought I should explain what has been going on this week-hopefully I will make sense (I have a hard time concentrating on pain pills). Anyway...here's my update/explanation...You may or may not know that I am kinda in charge of the road show for my ward. We are doing a Star Wars theme thing and it's really funny, but I won't go into that much today...the point about that is that every Wednesday night I am going to the church for the Young Men/Young Women's activity to rehearse and get the road show ready. This Wednesday, I had told everyone to be there on time as I would be casting the show right at the start, then we'd go full force into it. As it turned out, we learned the biggest song in the show, and we did get the show cast. None of this really matters though, I'll just say that the reason I went off on that tangent was to make the point that I had to be there to cast the show and stuff...now here is what I was really trying to get to...

Wednesday the kids and I cleaned their rooms so that they could play Wii again. It was a big job, but mostly I just told them what to do as I sat in the middle of the rooms...there was no heavy lifting involved. We cleaned the boys' room first, then on to Solace's. room. Halfway through her room I got a massive sharp pain in my lower right side. Now, if you've been pregnant before you probably already know pains like that come and go sometimes for various reasons (stretched muscles/tendons, gas...). So, I just thought "OK-this is really, really painful, but it's probably just nothing-I just need to relax and sit down for a bit." So I was waiting it out hoping the pain would work itself out-it was not getting any better, and by the time YM/YW came up at 7 pm, I was ready to cancel it but kn0wing I couldn't I just sucked it up and went to the church where I tired to get everything done, and tried to be in charge without standing or moving too much-and without making it obvious to anyone that I was struggling. So , I made it through, came home, complained to Wes some more about the pain, and talked to him trying to assess what was going on, and at what point I needed to go into the ER.

Fast forward to the nighttime. I would have gone to the ER much earlier in the day if I wasn't so worried about the cost it would be. So, I spent much of the night in major pain in bed weighing whether I hurt enough to pay to go to the ER or not. Also, we have good friends here in Spokane(their son goes to school with Solace) and I knew the husband was the resident in the ER, and I seriously would not care having him see me in the ER, except I was sure I was going to need a pelvic check and that just made me feel awkward, and I thought it wouldn't be the most comfortable for him either. Then it occured to me that it was also very likely that if I went to the ER and told them I didn't want to see the resident, they would be ok with that, but very likely the attending I would see instead also has a child in Solace's class. SO it was awkward all around...

SO, I came to the decision that it was not worth the money and awkwardness...until about 2 am. At about 2 AM, I hit a wall, and as I said before, I would have been in the hospital well before that if I hadn't talked myself out of it worrying about money and awkwardness. So, I woke Wes up, asked him to give me a blessing, then talked to him about my concerns for a good half hour or so, and finally decided that I needed to get the the hospital. On a pain scale of 1-10, 10 being the worst, I was at a solid 9...it was like the worst pain ever for me (I don't think I have ever felt a 10 pain in my life). So, since I had just taken a Tylenol with codine and did not feel real secure driving, we had to wake everyone up, get shoes and coat on them and Wes and the kids drove me to the hospital. I went into the ER and got as far as "I'm 30 weeks pregnant and have major pain in my lower right side..." when they immediately had me in a wheelchair and were rushing me over to labor and delivery.

I spent all morning in labor and delivery. I have a chronic history of urinary tract infections and have been on maintenance doses of macrobid this pregnancy to try to avoid a kidney infection. The most similar pain to what I was feeling was when I had kidney stones as a teenager. So, they checked for infection and there was infection. They thought that the pain might be a muscle thing, so they were going to release me at about 11 am with Tylenol for pain and leave it there, but before they released me they decided to do a pelvic exam to make sure I was still nice and closed off (they had recorded quite a few contractions throughout the day and just wanted to check to be sure). SO, literally, they had my discharge papers all drawn up and ready to go and then did the exam. They were surprised to note that in the exam my cervix is soft, appeared to be quite thin, and I was barely starting to dialate (just a fingertip). So obviously, this little turn of events kept me in the hospital at least long enough to get an ultrasound (thus the pictures of the baby-or the silver lining). Anyway...

Basically this is the outcome of all that-I was discharged from the hospital late Thursday afternoon with pretty strict instructions on what to eat and how to limit my activities (no carrying kids, groceries, take it easy, no drinking any caffeine, etc...). The ultrasound revealed the the baby is huge (as we already knew from previous ultrasound), but this one put baby's due date the earliest yet (May 4-3 full weeks early), baby measures well over the 90th percentile they said, and based on the measurements should weigh 4 pounds 7 ounces right now (they would expect about 3 pounds at this point). I also have extra amniotic fluid which was a new discovery. That being said-this will not be the last ultrasound...Baby is too big, and with the extra fluid, and the soft cervix, I am in for more to come. (The cervix measurement came back a bit thin, but not thin enough to cause great concern) As of this point I am not being put on bed rest yet, but I am in early labor stages, not in active labor yet, and they want to keep it that way-thus the rules and instructions. They also think I am probably passing kidney stones. So I am on some pretty intense pain pills to try to control the pain. I am trying not to knock myself into active labor, so I am trying to take it easy. It is kinda crazy. I can feel contractions every once in a while, but nothing huge or consistent. So, I am sure all will be well in the end. And at this point, I am no longer worried about the money because I have most assuredly hit my premium now, so bring on the extra ultrasounds...