27 weeks

I think the 3rd trimester is creeping up on me.  It's getting more difficult to move around, get comfortable, and to keep up with fluids (which is probably more weather-related than anything else, it was 90 here the last 3 days!) and it's almost starting to feel like crunch time.  I still need to get the office rearranged to make room for the dresser, which will include cleaning off the jewelry desk to make room for the sewing machine.  It turned into a sort of catch-all when we redid the closet unfortunately, so I need to work on that, which will probably involve cleaning out my plastic office drawers too so they're actually functional.  See why I haven't started yet? I keep backtracking to figure out where to start!

My Park Lane party went well, all told.  I ended up turning it into a Facebook party and got enough in sales to qualify as a Fashion Director and earn my first little commission!  My friends are AWESOME!  The trick now is to get some parties scheduled.  Hint, hint!  If it's within a day's drive we can plan a weekend visit! ;)  I'm hoping I can get enough from this to be able to afford more than 3 weeks of maternity leave.  It might be a long shot but I have to try.

No gestational diabetes!  All is fine there!  I was very good about exercising last week.  I did my yoga three times, did some daily squats and cat/cow stretches, and worked a little harder on meals.  I've kept gaining but I don't think it's been as much as it was last month.  We'll see how that looks on Tuesday and how bad of a reaming I get from Dr. B.  B is almost back up to his weight before the accident so he's happy about that and he was pretty good about helping out when he could, though he still has no stamina. 

B had his surgery on Tuesday.  We had to get up at 4am to get him there, but it's done and even the surgeon seemed relieved.  The abscess cavity was still pretty big, but he got it all cleaned out and they placed another chest drain to keep the blood from building up and an epidural for the pain.  Today he's off the epidural (it fell out in the night...) and on a morphine drip, but he's up and moving around well.  The general plan is to get him home on Tuesday, but he can go home as soon as he can handle the pain without the heavy narcotics, which I suspect means as soon as we get the drain out since that's probably a major factor in his pain.  Dr. G mentioned after the surgery that he might be going home with the drain... personally, I hope they take it out before he goes home because he'll heal up very quickly once the hunk of plastic is gone. 

Un-fun but not entirely unexpected news, they did a culture on the infection and while the yeast is gone it did come up with some staph.  Eew.  We knew it was still infected in there but it didn't smell yeasty anymore, so we weren't very surprised about that.  This just means different antibiotics.  The infection doctor admitted that the heavy use of antibiotics in the first place caused the yeast to grow, but staph is very common in a liver abscess.  B made her promise not to keep him in the hospital just because she was worried about us affording the medication again.  We'll get the meds, there's no point in racking up the hospital bill any more than absolutely necessary. 

Tonight, I need to get groceries and stay home and catch up on the dishes and such that has been neglected since Monday.  I'll do some yoga too.  That will probably do me in for the night lol.

26 Weeks

Nearing the third trimester and starting to feel the need to nest!  Of course, a lot of the cleaning I did yesterday was to get ready for my Park Lane party, but it felt good to get it all done.  The kitchen and living room look fantastic!  The kitchen cupboards do need a good cleanout though, and probably some reorganization.  It's time for that anyway, whether I'm turning into a cleaning freak or not.  I know there were mice in there. 

The dresser/changing table that mom used for me is now at my house filled with clothes!  One of mom's friends from church gave us 2 large tubs of hand-me-down baby girl clothes and after a full day of sorting it looks like we're pretty much set for clothes from preemie to 9mo size!  Of course, some of those are seasonal so it might not work depending on when it fits her, but we can't know that for sure yet.  We can fill in around the edges as we need to.  Unfortunately, the dresser doesn't quite fit in the bedroom where I wanted to put it and there aren't any other corners that I can move it to that would work any better, so it will probably have to go to the office.  I guess that's alright, since her toys will have to live in there too, so it can be a half-nursery.  Changings will be less likely to wake up whoever is napping that way too.  It should probably work fine, it just requires a little rearranging of the office and a plan for toy storage.  I think there's a cube shelving system with cloth drawers at Target that will work about perfectly for what we need to do. :)  I'm thinking it over in the back of my mind until I figure out exactly how to make that work.

I also have mom's old sewing machine now so I can get started on wipes and burp rags!  She offered it to me a few years ago but I was still moving too much to make it worth the trouble so we both thought she had given it away or sold it or something but it was up in the garage attic.  It just needs to be dusted off and it'll work fine for my purposes.  We also took all of my old baby clothes (which I used for dolls for years and years) and toys down from the attic also, cleaned it all up, and moved it up to my house.  I'll be selling a good number of the stuffed animals that are still in excellent shape.  I'm sure she'll accumulate enough toys on her own without having a stash of mine to start with!  We could definitely use the extra cash too.  That will probably sometime in May but we haven't figured out a day yet.  We probably need to take the SmartPots stuff too so Mom and I need to get planning on that.  I think I can get a bunch of baby furniture from a former neighbor for super cheap, so I'm just waiting to hear back from her on what all is included to see whether I'd need it all or not.  Not much point in buying something I won't need, even if it's for ridiculously cheap.  I'd probably just try to turn around and sell it anyway considering how little space we have to work with.

The birth class DVD/CD set came!  Mom has watched more of it than I have, but she's had a lot more free time this last week since I have.  I watched the toning video and it's not so much an exercise video as it is a demonstration of exercises that should be done throughout the day every day.  That's good, although I probably won't get the recommended number of each exercise done.  Ever.  Last night I got my yoga out and did that, it was much easier this time than it was the last few times I tried to do it.  I think Jelly Bean is now vertical instead of diagonal so it's much easier to move around and my ab muscles actually work again!  I just need to step up the exercising and do little things occasionally at work.  Hopefully she's head down, but she has time to turn if not.  I always feel thumps low, middle, and high, so I can never really tell which end is feet and which end is head.  At least it's not such a chore just sitting up like it has been for the last couple of months.  That will make exercising easier.

Update on B:  He continues to feel better and better every day without the tube but his side is still draining a lot of infection.  He went to see Dr. G on Monday, who told us that he could do the procedure.  Words from his mouth: "I used to do these all the time at the university."  Ummmmmm... what??? Why were you trying to pawn us off on someone else then???  Why didn't we do this surgery a month ago when we knew the drain wasn't working?  We were dumbstruck when he said that but at this point we just want it done and we're happy to not deal with another hospital's worth of bills.  It's out of control enough already.  So,  they checked his blood work for elevated white blood cell count, which it obviously was a little high considering he's still actively draining infection out of his side... why did they even bother?  They then waited 2 hours to call us back and tell us he needed a CT scan the next day instead of in 2 weeks.  They should've just done it all on Monday and skipped the blood work, honestly, so we were pretty upset with him after that considering how much of a pain it is to run up there every day.  Nothing new came up on the CT scan we guess, since we didn't hear anything afterward, but Dr. G should be getting ahold of us in the next week or so to schedule the surgery and get all this over with.  Three months of this is really getting old... pretty much my entire second trimester has been spent dealing with it.  We just need him healed!  Hopefully the surgery will take care of it and we can call it done. 

I had my glucose tolerance test yesterday and I'm guessing since I haven't heard anything back that it was fine.  If it was way out of whack, I'm sure Dr. B would've called right away to get me scheduled to take the 3-hour test.  Hopefully all is well, but maybe I'll call just to make sure.  Drinking that stuff made me feel pretty bad... I was almost certain I was reacting to it for a while.  Guess we'll see what they say.

My Park Lane party last night went pretty well, considering only three people came.  It was fun!  Maybe I can get a couple more orders pulled together this week and qualify to sign up as a rep, so I'll try for that.  If you want, look at http://www.jewelsbyparklane.com/ and let me know what pieces you like and we can work it out from there.  The online catalog doesn't show prices but the final pricing also depends on what bonus buys and free items you can get, so don't hesitate to ask and I'll figure it out for you.  I'll close out my party on Sunday or Monday and if I can get a few more orders in by then I'll have a good shot at getting started with this as a business.  Remember, graduations and Mother's Day are coming up, so don't look just for you! /end shameless plug. lol!

One more concert to go, which is a one-weekend thing in Gillette, but the crunch time to the Mahler is over.  Sigh of relief!  That concert was hard!  This means I can relax, focus on prepping for July, bump up the exercising, all these things I need to be doing better.  Tonight I fully intend to be lazy.  Maybe yoga again.  Sounds good to me!

25 weeks

This week is going much better than last week was.  The visit with Sue the nurse/midwife went amazingly well!  Mom and I talked to her for over an hour and we both left deeply relieved.  She confirmed that Dr. B wasn't going to train me in childbirth techniques because that hospital has a very high epidural and c-section rate so the doctors don't bother to avoid surgical interventions with training.  Good news is that Dr. B doesn't often cut episiotomies, so that's a relief.  Sue said she'd help coach me in whatever technique I chose, so yesterday Mom and I went to amazon.com to compare books and DVDs and find something that sounded like it was what I wanted.  We found a boxed DVD/CD set of relaxation/pain relief techniques, prenatal toning, prenatal yoga, what to expect, alternatives, pretty much everything I want to learn.  It didn't cost much either, so it should be here soon and I can start on it!  I'll let you know how I like it once I give it a good try.  I'll meet with Sue again starting in June (she's having surgery and needs time off) and she can use my heart murmur as an excuse to Medicaid to have weekly visits and work on this.  She also said I can do my labs in her clinic and they'll send results up to Dr. B, which would be great!  That way I can do them whenever is convenient and Dr. B will have a chance to look at them before my appointment so if there's something to discuss we can do it in person instead of over the phone or waiting another month for the next visit.  This should work out well for everyone and those two have worked together before.  It also seems like the general practice doctor may be a good fit for us to use as our family doctor, so when it gets to be time to pick a pediatrician I'll definitely be talking to him.

Sue also suggested that when I start going into labor to get a hotel room with nice big pool and labor comfortably as long as I possibly can there before going to the hospital to reduce the likelihood of surgical interventions.  Sounds like a great plan to me!  That way all of us can be comfortable and get plenty of rest but not be on the road for an hour rushing to the hospital halfway thru labor.

So, all that discussed, Mom and I left with a huge weight lifted.  Mom had no idea that obstetrics hadn't really progressed at all in the last 30 years and was appalled that those of us attempting intervention-free birth are the radical ones, but now that we know that for sure we can arm ourselves appropriately.  With an exercise DVD I can practice a lot at home and I'm sure there will be things in there that B can practice with me so he's ready to help with my labor positions.  He needs the exercise too!

News on B: still no news on surgery or anything, appointment on Monday.  Yesterday in the shower he noticed that the stitch holding the tube in place had come loose and was slipping down out of the bandage, and when we took the bandage off to change it the tube came out entirely.  He's been threatening to do that himself for a while now, but it just kinda happened that way.  I'm still a little nervous about it because it was still draining some nasty stuff, but not through the tube since they quit the radiology treatments.  I made him promise that if he starts getting a fever that he needs to go into radiology.  So far so good though, he's feeling much better with the tube out and hasn't had even a hint of fever and we're nearing 24 hours without the tube.  If his body can just take over and heal this thing, we'll all be happy campers.  His only pain now is the rib that hasn't had a chance to heal up yet.  He's feeling so good that he's trying to do more around the house and eat more so he can get some meat back on his bones.  I really hope he just heals up!

This Saturday is the benefit cinnamon roll sale by mom's friends at church, so with some luck that will help us catch up on bills that are creeping behind and maybe make some payments towards some of these bills.  Slow but steady progress on indiegogo and giveforward, so THANKS SO MUCH to everyone who has helped with those!

Jelly Bean has turned from diagonal to vertical now thanks to Sue's advice on where she was laying and which way to rub my belly to help her turn.  Hopefully she's head-down now, but I guess we'll see about that.  My fundal height is measuring 2-2.5cm too big, so Sue's debating recommending another ultrasound to make sure everything is alright.  Not sure what the issue would be, except for her growing too big too fast or making sure I don't have too much fluid or something.  Neither Sue nor Dr. B seemed worried about it, just mentioned that I'm measuring a little big.  Guess we'll see.  I'll take my gestational diabetes test next week so hopefully that goes well, really don't need to worry about that too but I wouldn't be very surprised if it came up positive.  Guess we'll see on that.

Concert weekend, last BHSO concert before she arrives!  It'll be a long weekend as usual, but it should be fun.  I have one more concert in Gillette on May 20th but that will definitely be the last one for a while.  Just trying to sneak in a couple more paychecks. ;)  I'll update on my jewelry party next week and Mom and I are working on a plan to be local distributors for SmartPots and how we'd go about doing that.  Probably just going to sell at farmer's markets or something, but it's worth figuring out a plan for.  Have a good weekend!

24 weeks

This pic is better!  Must be the angle.  Or something.  So, this was a rough week.  My visit with Dr. B was less than fun... the weigh-in showed that I gained 11lbs since my last visit.  Yeah, that much in a month.  *jaw hits floor*  So, she was pretty upset with me about it and considering how insanely busy I've been and will be until next weekend (concert weekend), putting more energy into planning meals better and exercising more are not on my list of priorities just yet.  I know they should be... but darnit, this concert is really hard for me so I want to make it a good one.  That and I don't want to make a fool of myself when the imports get here, we have 4 more horns coming in but they won't be at rehearsals until next week since they live out of the area.  I had a couple of questions for her about a couple issues I've been having, and as usual she quickly dismissed it all as "completely normal."  Not very convincing when it's my pulse pounding in my ears several times a day, especially if I've bent down.  She never really explains anything to me and my questions get quickly dismissed, so between that and how upset she got about my weight (and I kinda consider it a miracle it took so long for me to start gaining at all, honestly), I'm less than impressed with her at this point.  I did find a nurse/midwife at a clinic in town here so I have an appointment with her Monday in an attempt to maybe prepare for this birth or something.  I won't get any of that from my doctor, that's for sure.

The class options here are few and far between.  There's a one-day class at the hospital, which I'll go to since it includes a tour of the maternity wards, but that won't be near enough to prep for birth and I can't get to it until June because the other days keep falling on concert days between now and then.  There is a hypnobirthing instructor in town, but she's not sure if she'll get a class together in time.  She did say she could get me the book and relaxation CD, which would help.  There's a Bradley class in Rapid, but the next one starts in the middle of May, so adding 12 weeks of classes puts me way past my due date.  I need a new plan and I don't know where else to look, so I'm hoping the midwife can help point me in the right direction, or even teach me a few things herself.  We'll see.

I've found a home marketing job that I'm willing to try, but I can't get started on it until I host a party, which will be a few days after the concert.  If the party flops, I might not go for it, but if it goes well I might as well give it a shot.  Details to come after I know how the party goes!

At this point, we're probably not having a shower before she's born.  Apparently Mom's friends want to throw one afterward, but that doesn't solve the problem of needing several registry items before she gets here.  Oh well, at least I have tons of clothes already and my diaper stash is steadily growing.

B can't have surgery yet.  We haven't found a surgeon that will do it at a clinic/hospital that will work with us and Dr. G is on vacation this week so we have no choice but to just wait around until the appointment on the 16th, with the tube in his side.  Leaking onto the bandage, not draining much to the bag.  This makes me irate frequently.  B feels horrible for still being laid up and I can't blame him at all.  I'm sick of him being stuck in the same phase and unable to heal while we try to get the surgeons to talk to each other.  It's all just ridiculous.  The bills are starting to come in now so I need to take stock of what is owed where, which is interesting considering the huge pile of bills that have come in so far.  It's not over yet.  My indiegogo fundraiser has made a little progress, and luckily when people pay with PayPal it goes directly to my PayPal, which we can use to order new bandages and things for him online, which is fantastic!  The ever-lovely Michelle Tyler, who I went to school with in Chicago, has set up another online fundraiser too, so hopefully between the two we can make a dent in some of this.  Here's hoping anyway!