35 weeks

This week was busy busy busy. On Friday, Ryan took off work so we could drive down to this big consignment sale in Castle Rock. It was kind of a bust as far as variety of things to choose from but we did score a great swing and bouncer thingy for Lil Monty. There is another one in Denver on Wednesday night so we are going to go check that one out too and hopefully come home with more!

Saturday was Rachael's baby shower. I think it went really well! We played some fun games and people laughed a lot so that's always a good sign. While I was busy doing that, Ryan was busy fishing with his dad and then helped his grandpa put up a fence. Ryan's day was much more tiring than mine :) but I'm pregnant so I win.

Picture update:

34 weeks: Showers and Car Seat Fun

At our last doctor's appointment (Monday), we were told that Lil Monty is growing in the 40th percentile range which is, quote, "perfect". He measured at almost 5 pounds (4 pounds, 13 ounces to be exact) and about 17 inches long. His head, of course, is measuring about 3 weeks bigger than the rest of his body. Oh hooray for that. But at least he's growing and seems to be thriving! :) He's starting to invade my rib space.

I'll be having another shower this weekend! A group of ladies who know Ryan from his childhood decided they wanted to throw me a shower even though they don't know me. Very sweet :)

I'm also hosting a baby shower for my friend Rachael next Saturday. I'm having a lot of fun with it. I've never done anything like this before so I'm kind of clueless about how to host a baby shower and I've only ever been to my own showers....but I think it will be great! Rachael is having a girl so it should be a nice and dainty and pretty shower.

I went today to get the car seat inspected by the fire station so that we know we installed it correctly. Way too many rules about car seats these days but the fireman said we probably know more about installing car seats than the people who inspect them at the hospital. So I'm not quite as worried about them telling us we did it wrong and then not letting us bring Lil Monty home.

Picture update:

33 weeks: 7 more weeks to go!

This week we had our consultation at the hospital where we tell them what we do and do not want for labor and delivery. We also filled out a lot of preliminary paperwork so that when we are admitted to the hospital, we don't have to worry about all that logistical stuff while we are trying to have a baby! They even gave us the form for Lil Monty's birth certificate so we can have everything pre-filled there as well.

I've been very happy with the hospital so far. 

Picture Update:

Colorado Wildfire

Some of you may have heard about this wildfire. On Monday evening we were on our way to Ryan's softball game and the whole sky was filled with a pink cloud of smoke. As we got closer to the foothills, we could see where it was coming from and it was CRAZY! As of this morning, it's still 0% contained which is also nuts. Supposedly it started from a controlled burn from a week ago. We had extremely high winds Monday which caused the fire to get out of control. Here are some pictures from the softball field:

And here is a fun picture. We were told at our class from Saturday to make sure Ryan knew how to operate the car seat before the baby is born. Mr. Crab was our stand-in baby and Ryan mastered it - even with the added challenge of having 6 limbs to work with instead of 4.

Week 32: 4 weeks to full term!

Friday I went to the doctor and got my first B-minus report. Apparently I'm still dehydrated from that stomach bug so my amniotic fluid is on the "low end of normal". I've been ordered to up my water intake by about 30% which is NOT exciting because I'm already drinking more than any human should have to drink. BUT, for Lil Monty, I shall persevere. I'm up to like 130 ounces a day now which is a gallon!

The other news from that appointment is that Lil Monty is now upside down (which is normal). He's preparing for landing I suppose. The midwife couldn't tell how he was positioned just based on palpation alone so she suggested we do an ultrasound. There were two areas she thought COULD be the head - one turned out to be his butt. Rock hard already, way to go! Of course, HOORAY, we love ultrasounds (and it was excellent timing because this is how she discovered I was low on the amniotic fluid). Sure enough he's on his head. We were also told that Lil Monty has an attitude based on how he responded to the midwife palpating him and moving him all around - she said she likes babies with attitudes because that means they are healthy enough to get mad when disturbed. We'll see how cute that attitude is in a few months...

Friday night we watched NC State lose to Kansas. Dumb. But then Kansas beat Carolina Sunday! 

We also went to our childbirth prep class on Saturday. It was from 9am-3:30pm so it was LONG but informative. We learned a lot and I'm glad we went but I could have done without the videos - both animated and real life. I was much better off not knowing exactly what happens to your body when a baby comes out. Just let me experience it without having that visual in my head...please and thank you.

We also toured the hospital and it's so nice! We learned that for women who want to go natural, they give priority for the rooms with jacuzzis. Even the rooms without jacuzzis are nice though and all the rooms are private from labor and delivery to recovery. The hospital seems very clean and updated and they have a snazzy system in place so they don't mix up babies. Mom gets a bracelet, Dad gets a bracelet, and baby gets two bracelets. If mom and baby are separated, the bracelets sing when they are reunited. If it's a mismatch, an alarm goes off. Also, if you get too close to someone else's baby the alarm will sound. I asked if it's possible for the baby never to even leave the room if he doesn't need special treatment and the teacher said most definitely. They are big on keeping mom and baby together as much as possible which is nice.

Today I went to jury duty. I got out of my last summons because I live in a different county than the summons was for. Within 2 weeks, I had a new summons for the county I do live in and that day was today. I was only there from 7:30-10:00 just waiting in the room. Two groups of jurors were called out over the course of several hours. Then, they came to inform the rest of us that our services were not needed and we could go home. Hooray! And I get $0.50/mile driven today from the government because I'm a homemaker :) which is good because I had to drive about 40 miles round trip.

Afterward, I stopped into this cloth diaper store that was near the courthouse. I LOVE this brand of cloth diapers...of course, I love them in theory because I haven't used it yet, but they are pretty sweet as far as cloth diapers go.

Picture Update - In theory, Lil Monty is almost 4 pounds and about 17 inches long. I can tell he's running out of room in there because his movements are more fluid (less room to pack a punch or a kick) and I can palpate him anytime now. I know right where his butt is for sure! :)

And last but not least, Ryan found this website called the Baby Morpher which is supposed to spit out what your baby will look like. You upload a picture of each parent and it works it's magic. Brace yourself and choose to love Lil Monty anyway if he looks like this.

This was attempt #1. I always thought we'd have to adopt in order to have a multi-ethnic family. The Baby Morpher must know otherwise.

So I tried again. This one is not quite as scary...

We'll see! Only about 7 more weeks!

Week 31: Shopped till we dropped

Well after last week's excitement, what is there to say?

Aftershocks

Ryan and I suffered from the residual effects of our illness all week. Friday was probably the first day we both felt somewhat normal. I've pretty much gained my weight back and Ryan is catching up slowly. Lil Monty is still doing great - I don't think he had a clue anything was even wrong. In fact, he's really getting comfortable in there I think - his new thing is to prop his feet up on my hip bone or stick them into my side. I usually find his little feet and shove him (lovingly of course....) back over and then he defiantly comes back. We engage in this little battle for a few minutes at a time until he finally finds a spot that isn't completely uncomfortable for me.

MK No More
In other news, I shipped my Mary Kay inventory back! Oh the glory and the relief! Now we wait to see how much (or little...) the company pays me for what I sent back. Hooray for being done!

Shopping Frenzy
In more other news, on Saturday Ryan and I went to our favorite second hand store (Once Upon a Child) because they were having a crazy St. Patrick's Day Sale. The sale was from 9:30-12:00, all clothing 0-9months was $1.00. So we bought like 30 some items including some serious steals like a Polo brand pullover, a great windbreaker type coat, and all sorts of items that even at the second hand store were marked at $6, $7, even $10 and we got them for $1!! We saved over $140 had we bought them not on sale and who knows how much we saved from buying them new.

The store was nuts. It's what I imagine Black Friday sales being like. We got there around 9:00 just in case there was a line. And there was. Fortunately, we were like 3rd in line, but by the time the store opened the line was very long and then the madness inside was just that: madness. We devised a system to just grab any clothes we thought MIGHT be cute and then we'd go find a corner somewhere and sift through them to determine what was actually cute or not. We probably had 100 outfits to sift through and narrowed it down to 33. Then, it was time to pay. The line for the cash register was looped around the store and out the door. Took us more than an hour just waiting in line to pay. I must say though, it was worth it.

Then we went to downtown Littleton because a little shop that sells cloth diapers was having a sale. So I bought a few more diapers (we're up to 7 now which should get us through the first 8 hours :) ) and then we finally went home!

Picture Update:

Week 30: Hollywood Diet

Week 30 was full of excitement - both good, bad, and very ugly.

The good:

My friend Rachael hosted a baby shower for me on Saturday and that was so fun! I only know like 6 people in Colorado and there were 5 people there so that's pretty good turnout! :) It was so cutely decorated and the food was delicious - not to mention we got more presents for Lil Monty including three more cloth diapers! It's amazing how excited I get about cloth diapers...until they have poop in them I will remain excited about them.

Softball started for the spring last Monday. Ryan and Brock are back at it with their team, "Young Guns", which consists of all boys fresh out of high school except for Ryan and Brock. It was cold in the cheering section that night but they won their game. They had another game last night but we had to miss it (more on that later).

The bad:

Well, this isn't BAD, but we took Grover to get the vaccinations he's due for last Sunday. We took him down to the cheap mobile clinic that comes to PETCO. He got two shots for less than $30 - not too shabby. Grover, of course, was a champion getting his shots. However:

1. The lady ahead of us had a cat. Said cat did not want her shots. Said cat was screaming bloody murder, getting everyone riled up and tense and also left at least one of the technicians bleeding pretty good. I'm pretty sure that cat never got it's shots. Pure evil.

2. Grover developed a case of happy tail right before his shots. Happy tail is the ridiculous condition of a profusely bleeding tail because it has been wagged too much and hit against something to break the skin. It took us a few minutes to figure out who was bleeding and from where. By the time we discovered it, the floor looked like it had been mopped with blood and Ryan's jeans were massacred.

Oh well. Don't have to do that again for a year! :)

The ugly:

Oh boy. So. Saturday evening Ryan and I were both complaining of mild GI discomfort. We were watching a movie when I really started to feel ill and decided to quit watching the movie and go lay down. Within minutes, I was in the bathroom and stayed there. Within hours, Ryan was too. We were both seriously sick with an unbelievably violent stomach bug that left us sleeping on the bathroom floor all night (good thing we have two bathrooms!). We both said it was the sickest we can ever remember being. Twice I was close to going to the ER (because of Lil Monty) but the doctor on call that night was very good about calling back and gave me specific things to look for before deeming it necessary to go to the ER. I guess the biggest danger with this virus (which the doctor said a ton of people are calling in about, so it must be going around) is dehydration. Dehydration often leads to preterm labor and since I couldn't keep anything down, even water, for any length of time I was certainly dehydrated.

We made it through the night. We were still miserable Sunday, semi-miserable Monday, and still pretty fatigued today. There's really no way to describe it that gives it justice. The misery was unbelievable. If you want details, I'll give them to you but I'll spare the blog. From what we can tell, it was the Norovirus. This graphic drawing sums it up pretty well.

Ryan lost 6 pounds, I lost 5. We're calling it the Hollywood Diet.

Ok picture update.

I know in two days I'll be 31 weeks but here's week 30 for now.