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Maternity & Parenting Center

Awww Moment

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So Elliot is leaving town tonight to go on a business trip, and I asked him to clean up his stuff in the bedroom before he left since the cleaning people are coming tomorrow. For the first time (perhaps EVER) he isn’t just hiding the mess and shoving everything into his drawers – he actually is sorting/organizing/putting things away! In doing all this, he stumbled across some notes I hid in his suitcases when he went down to Mississippi for a month to help post-Katrina. When I was little and went away to camp, my mom used to hide little notes in my suitcase/dresser drawers so that all summer long I’d find cute little notes that made me smile and remember someone cared about me. Elliot & I hadn’t been together all that long when he left, but I decided to do the same for him. Before I could second guess my decision or whether he would think it was stupid, I dashed off some notes (just little things like “hello” and “kisses from me & Nugget” and “we miss you” or “thinking of you”) and stuffed them in his folded clothes in his suitcase. Anyway, he saved a bunch of them, and he brought them down to show me today when he found them. I think it is so sweet that he saved all those notes. It kind of made me want to say “Awwww.”

On Monday night, we had our final birth class! Now we just have to keep practicing what we’ve learned and hope it helps on baby’s birth day. Yesterday was our midwife appointment – everything is progressing well (I measured 33 cms, so right on target) and the baby’s heartbeat was perfect. We asked a bunch of questions about labor and delivery stuff, and we are feeling good about everything. On Friday we go in for our ultrasound to see how things are looking. From this point on, we will be doing weekly appointments and ultrasounds.

Reunion

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I had an amazing weekend . . . I had an old friend from college, Tammy (whom I haven’t seen since graduation), come down and visit! She was my first guest in our new home, and I was so excited to see her after so much time. She was quite a trooper – she had to endure the mess of newly sanded/refinished floors (so new, they were still in process on Friday and Saturday!), and all my furniture strewn all over the house and draped plastic walls (that looked like a scene from Dexter).

I am glad to say we still get along and had plenty to talk about. We had an amazing time touring around DC. She arrived Friday evening, and we had a relaxing night on our new couch in the Rec Room – we decided to walk a few blocks and pick up Indian takeout for dinner. We just stayed up and talked and enjoyed – and Nugget even behaved herself! The next morning, I was stuck waiting for the floor guy to show up – naturally, he was several hours late, and inconveniently delayed us. Eventually, we went for brunch at the Original Pancake House (I just love crepes!) and we just spent time talking and catching up. We decided to head to the Spy Museum that afternoon, and it was definitely fun (although I wish I’d thought of checking out the Newseum instead). We came back to meet Elliot for dinner, then popped over to a post-Iron Man celebration for my friend Jeff at a local bar. Our next stop was back downtown for a nighttime tour of the monuments! We managed to see the FDR, Lincoln, Korean and Vietnam Memorials, and we drove by the World War II and Jefferson Memorials. It really was a beautiful night – not too cold, and the rain had ceased so it was clear outside.

Sunday morning, we decided to go back downtown again. We went to the Jefferson Memorial, and drove around the Mall, then we walked by the White House. On our way home, we drove through Georgetown, and I showed Tammy a few of the wonderful parks in the area. I decided to give my “hard sell” in the hopes that she considers this area for her next job! We returned home in the early afternoon, and then she packed up her car and headed back to Philadelphia.

So, all-in-all, it was a wonderful weekend! Even better, Frank decided to be cooperative and let me do all the walking I needed to do without acting up too badly. I actually had a really pleasant few days, contractions and all! This is the most physical activity I have been able to do since 28 weeks without ending up in severe pain. I think I am starting to feel human again!

As of today, I’ve officially made it to my first end-of-pregnancy goal – 34 weeks! I could safely have this baby at any time now, so it is quite a relief. I have another midwife appointment and an ultrasound appointment this week, and from here on out, they will be doing weekly scans of the baby (a biophysical profile) to make sure he is still doing well. Regardless, I have only 2 weeks left until I stop the medication. While I realize that there is a good possibility I could stop the medication and the contractions could stop, I am already feeling some changes, so I have a feeling this baby will come fairly quickly after I stop taking the Terbutaline. Even if he doesn’t, the fact that Frank is no longer causing me much pain is a huge relief, so I am certain I can stick it out until the baby decides to arrive.

Pictures

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Many of you have been asking to see pictures of our home renovations . . . so here goes! These pictures were taken the day before we moved – there are a few personal items we began bringing over strewn around in the photos, and there are definitely still unfinished parts of the house, but this gives you a good idea of what we’ve done! Hope you enjoy:

Living room

Kitchen

View of dining room & living room from kitchen


View of dining room and kitchen from living room


First Floor Powder Room

Stairs to upper floor


Baby’s bathroom

View of upper hallway into baby’s bathroom
View into baby’s bedroom

Baby’s bedroom
Upstairs Hallway View towards Master Bedroom

Master Bedroom Closet

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Stairs to Basement

Laundry Room

Door to utility room

Rec Room

View to Office

Office

Office Closet

Office Bathroom

We have couches!

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Well, we now have furniture and a tv in the living room! We still have to mount the tv on the wall, and we have to dump some of the boxes. On Tuesday, the final piece of furniture will arrive. I’m ready to clear out the boxes and start putting up artwork. It is really starting to feel like a house! The blinds come on Thursday, and hopefully the dining room table and couch for downstairs will arrive sometime next week. Elliot needs to get his bedroom clothing in order, and we have more things to buy to finish putting everything away, but I’m finally feeling like we’ve made significant progress.

We moved

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It’s official . . . we actually moved. There are a ton of issues with the house, the move was a mess, and I’m so completely exhausted I can barely see straight, and I can’t get Elliot to stop bringing crap in and mucking around with stuff. We have SOOO much unpacking to do, not to mention all the stuff we left behind at my place – I have no idea where all this stuff is going to fit! I can’t even think about all the crap still at my house . . . and in the storage unit. I wish we could just throw it all away and not miss any of it.

I’m exhausted and going to go to sleep.

Moving Hell

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It’s official – we are in the midst of moving hell. I’m so tired I can’t see straight, my feet hurt, I’m contracting like crazy, and I swear it feels like the baby is shoving a sharp pointy object into my cervix just for fun. I’ve spent most of the week trying to pack up – I took care of the linen closets, kitchen, pantry and vanities (thanks to help from my organizer, Leslie, and good old Mom & Dad)! We moved all that stuff over to the house today and unpacked it. Elliot moved the new rugs in, and we had a cleaning service come through today. There are still issues with the floors, and a missing vanity, and a hole in the shower wall, and a bunch of other things that are still unfinished, but for now, it is livable. We still have SOOOO much left to do before tomorrow morning – we are just trying to shovel out from so much crap it is unbelievable! We have to clear out all the garbage before we can even pack up, and I have no idea how the mover is even going to get to all of our stuff. Tomorrow is going to be a LONG day. After a long week of running around hunting for rugs and all kinds of other odds and ends that we needed. I’m so far behind on my work right now. Ugh! What a week!

32 week ultrasound!

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Today was our 32 week ultrasound, and so far, everything is looking great! The baby is about 4 lbs right now (3 lbs 15 ozs) and he was measuring in the 34th percentile (which is a little smaller than he was measuring last month). We got an adorable 3D shot of him, too – I think he might look like Elliot! He is still head down, we were able to see him breathing and we got a great view of his heart. My cervix is holding steady, although it has started to shrink some – it was down to about 2.7 cm today, but it is still in the “safe” zone for now. The best news, however, is that Frank shrunk! At my 28 and 30 week ultrasounds, he was about 5.4 cm x 4.9 cm x 3.5 cm . . . almost the size of a fist! As of today, he was only 4 cm x 4 cm x 2 cm, so he shrunk about 1 cm all around. I had thought that I was feeling much better (and experiencing much less pain), so I was relieved to hear it isn’t just a cruel trick of the medicines, but that I should be feeling better! Hopefully, that will make the next 4 weeks much easier for me. We go back again in 2 more weeks, and then we start weekly appointments to measure the baby.

So, here are the pictures:


Well, off to continue packing! We spent the past 2 days trying to acquire rugs for the house and get all the little details done. We are hoping that things are still on track for moving on Sunday!

Packing

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We have officially started packing. We are starting with a huge mess, so trying to pack up a disaster zone is . . . complicated. We have been working with an organizer, Leslie, over the past 2 years, first to help empty out Elliot’s house and combine our houses into my place, and now to pull all of our stuff together here and get it to the new house and put away. The biggest bone of contention in our marriage is cleanliness. Elliot is a collector of junk (although he gets upset when I call his “stuff” junk), and tends not to put things away. I, on the other hand, believe everything should have a place, and most things should be either completely put away every day or two, or at least never exceed a small neatly stacked pile in 1 location of the house. The problem is, since Elliot emptied his house and moved all his stuff into my place, things don’t have a place anymore. We never did manage to put everything away. So, it makes it difficult to ask him to clean up when there is nowhere for it to go. We also had to cancel our cleaning lady, because with stuff all over the place, it was not possible for her to come and clean. Back in May, I sort of gave up the fight – I figured we were moving in a month, so why bother any more, right? Well, 1 month has turned into 6+ months, and let’s just say that my house looks like a tornado swept through here.

Since I am really supposed to be taking it easy (and packing and heavy lifting are things I’m supposed to be avoiding), we enlisted Leslie’s help to get things packed and sorted. Last week, we packed up the linen closets, my knitting/crocheting, my baking stuff, and the bathroom vanities, and we moved all the boxes over to the house and stored them there. Today, we tackled the kitchen and now she is upstairs trying to pack up Elliot’s office.

So, assuming the contractor completes the work he is supposed to complete by Friday, we are all set to move in on Sunday. We have too much stuff (and I’m too afraid of creating another messy situation like we did when Elliot moved his stuff here) to move everything at once. Instead, we decided to move in shifts. We are only moving what is necessary for us to start living in the house. We are going to move our kitchen stuff, clothing, linen closets, and vanities. We will be taking the bedroom set and any other big furniture that we are certain will fit in the house. For now, we are leaving behind a few decorative tables (we aren’t sure where/if they will fit) and some file cabinets, and a tv armoire, and my office stuff. We are leaving all of the artwork/personal items behind for now, too. We will slowly move those over when we know where they are going. We also need to deal with our storage unit, but that is definitely a challenge for another day.

I can’t believe it looks like we are finally moving! I’m so ready to be moved into Elliot’s house already! I have an appointment with a place that does blinds tomorrow (hopefully we can have blinds put in soon) and we have a green cleaning service coming on Friday. Elliot is trying to arrange our phone/internet, and I guess we’ll figure out the rest as we go. We are definitely going to need to buy more furniture items, but I just am not sure exactly what yet. Our living room couch will arrive on Tuesday, and we are still waiting for the basement couch and the dining room table top, both of which should arrive by mid-November. We still need to buy some area rugs for the living room, dining room and master bedroom, but we think we might have found what we need. That puts us in great shape for the baby’s arrival!

I suck at hypnobirthing

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We started our first hypnobirthing class on Thursday. I have been quite excited about this, and looking forward to learning these techniques. As I mentioned, we learned 2 breathing techniques (simple enough) and we were given homework: practice each breathing technique for 2 minutes when we wake up and before we go to sleep, and listen to the relaxation CD for 10 minutes a day. Seems easy, right? I’ve been doing my breathing, and I’m getting more comfortable with it. I have even put on the relaxation CD every day so far (3 days in a row). There enlies my problem. I thought I was great at relaxing . . . I mean, I can be one of the laziest people around! I am quite content to sit and veg out for hours at a time without moving around or doing anything else. I love getting massages and spa treatments and relaxing that way. Self-hypnosis/relaxation CDs should be the same thing, right?

The first night I put it on, I could not seem to sit there and participate. So I listened to it . . . and got up and did some cleaning while it was playing, and ripped the tracks to iTunes so I could transfer it to my ipod. Not the right idea, huh? I told myself I was just feeling the CD out and preparing for better usage.

Last night, I thought I would set myself up for success. I brought the ipod upstairs, hooked it up to my stereo, got in bed with Elliot & Nugget around 1:30 or 2:00 am with all the lights off, tv off, and figured deep relaxation just prior to bed was ideal! I put on the CD, and in about 5 minutes . . . Elliot was out cold, and I think the dog was totally unconscious as well. Me, on the otherhand . . . . I was WOUND. My leg was itching, my heart was racing (perhaps from the Terbutaline), I felt like I was having trouble taking deep breaths, and all I could think about was how thirsty I was. So, I drank some water. Then I needed to go to the bathroom. Then I came back to the CD, and my eye was itching, so I had to get up to put eye drops in. I restarted the CD, and tried again. Still fidgety, and kept changing positions, and was really distracted by my racing heart. I could hear a heart beating in my ear (probably my own, but I decided to think it was the baby) but it was so loud it was hurting my ear drum. I spent all 30 minutes listening to the CD, and thinking about the things it said, and doing my best to relax. I do think I may have finally gotten relaxed the last 5-10 minutes, and when the CD ended I heard it, and I drifted slowly off to sleep shortly thereafter.

Today I made another attempt with the CD. I thought perhaps the problem was that I did the CD before bed, and I get fidgety late at night and at bedtime. So, this afternoon, I was bored. I’m really not supposed to go running all over doing errands, and I don’t feel like packing . . . or doing my work . . . or finishing my other projects. I thought maybe it would help me relax and pass the afternoon if I tried the relaxation CD again. I did a few stretches, did the deep breathing to relax, stretched out on the couch, and started to play the CD from my computer (don’t you love iTunes?). Immediately, I couldn’t sit still. My leg started to itch again, and suddenly I had to sneeze, and once again, I was desperately thirsty. My heart was still racing (I’m going to blame the Terbutaline again for that) and I could hear the heartbeat sound in my ear again. Nevertheless, I persisted. The CD started talking about different colors, and next thing you know, I’m thinking about running to the store to buy yarn. I open my eyes to look around, and I see that Nugget is curled up by the computer, unconscious and drooling. Apparently, the CD really works great . . . . I’ve never seen her more relaxed and totally unconscious!! I try to bring my focus back to the CD, and my hip is hurting. Thankfully, the phone rang and I threw in the towel on the CD. Nugget is still out cold . . . . I wonder if I need to gently rouse her so she doesn’t stay in this state all day.

So . . . now what? Please tell me that each time I practice I will get better at relaxing? I really want to learn how to do this, but apparently, I suck at relaxing. Elliot and Nugget, on the other hand, have already mastered the technique. Clearly, I should have let Nugget have puppies – she is quite skilled at this hypnobirthing thing. If only she was a good teacher.