36 Weeks

This week I continued to be stressed out about work, but hopefully the worst of it will be over after next week. We figured out who would be taking what of my agreements, so I started transitioning work over to one of the ladies last week, and should be able to start working with the other person next week. I will feel much, much better if I can do most of the transition next week so that hopefully I can still do some cleanup and help with questions for my remaining time there to best prepare them for when I'm on leave.

Due to the weather this week, I didn't end up picking up the birth tub as planned, so that should happen next week instead. Consequently, we didn't finish preparing the sun room/birthin' room, since the birth tub was a large part of what we needed to set up and test. So I did finish gathering all of the supplies except for a couple of things, which kind of needed to happen anyway since our home visit with the midwife is on Monday, which will be in part to check that we have everything ready. I was going to pack a hospital bag too, just in case, which I think I'll be able to finish tomorrow.

We did finish Josie's room though (yay!), and also have the nursery pretty much done. We just have a little bit more cleaning to do (mainly the stuff that Josie used/spit up on/gnawed on and that then sat in boxes for a couple years), and moving the crib out of the nursery and into our bedroom.

Believe it or not, I am still sick. It actually got worse this week, since my rib popped while I was coughing once towards the beginning of the week, which instantly caused some pretty awful pain. I wasn't even able to clear my throat for a while after that since it hurt too much, but at least after a few days it got a little better so that now it's mainly just a dull ache. And luckily the coughing has slowed down a lot, although I am still congested and wake up with a sore throat each morning.

It looks like I'm going to need to get more serious about repositioning this baby pretty soon. I really wasn't that concerned when it was facing to the side, since Josie was in the exact same position and I didn't have any sort of painful back labor with her. But I ended up sleeping on my back a few times this week, and after the first time, I could definitely tell (by the big hollow spot at the top of my belly) that the baby was fully facing my front now - not good. So I'm starting to do cat/cow more, and trying even harder to make sure I don't lean back when I sit. In fact, I'm attempting to write this while bouncing on our over-inflated physio ball so that my knees are below my hips and I'm leaning forward (well, and also because the baby was moving so much when I was sitting on the couch - in a less roomy position for it - that I was becoming pretty uncomfortable).

So yes, new baby seems to be most active around 8pm and 4am. I've been up a few times this week in the early hours of the morning since Josie is working on her 2-year molars right now (and therefore hasn't been sleeping so well), and I was able to knock out kick counts in 5-10 minutes a few times (rather than the usual hour or so when I start at 8am). And then, just as I had finally gotten back to sleep one of those times, new baby woke me up for the first time ever with a sharp kick to the belly :)

     

35 Weeks

This week was a little stressful as it is really hitting me how soon this baby is going to be here. It could technically be up to 7 weeks from now, but I just keep thinking that this little one isn't going to be as late as Josie was. Work caused most of the stress, though, since after having a couple of slow weeks over the holidays where I was able to do some catchup, I got slammed on Monday and never recovered from it. We're also trying to figure out who will be filling in for me while I'm out so that I can start transitioning my work over, so hopefully that will be figured out next week (after yet another meeting to hash it out).

We're actually in pretty good shape on the baby to-do list (which has now grown to 77 items from the original 45...sigh), especially since we were able to knock a lot of things out this week, like confirming daycare will hold a spot for new baby, finalizing my birth plans, taking care of some insurance stuff, and cleaning/organizing the baby stuff that we took down from the attic a few weeks back. Although I still feel like we're behind since there are a couple of (sort of) big things left, like finishing up the nursery (as much as we're going to, at least, since the crib will be in our room again at first) and getting the sun room turned into the birthin' room (as I've termed it). I have big plans to for these activities while we're off on Monday, though, so we'll see how we did in next week's update ;)

I had an appointment with the midwives this week too, and I went in with an agenda. We hadn't gotten through all of my questions the last few visits, and since that was standing in the way of me being able to cross things off on the to-do list, I was all business this time :) So we talked through the birth plans, the questions I had related to some of the late pregnancy paperwork they had given me, as well as random other questions that I had been jotting down the last few weeks. After all of that, they checked on the baby, who, as usual, kicked at them as they were trying to get the heartbeat :) Said heartbeat was good, my belly is still measuring right on track, blood pressure is good. I'm starting to get a little bit of edema in my legs, but not too bad yet.

I'm (of course) still sick, but besides a newly-sore throat again, I don't seem any worse than last week. Well, except for the rib I seem to have bruised from all the coughing. The fatigue is still pretty bad. I've fallen asleep on the couch in the evenings a couple of times this week (which Josie apparently thinks is great, since she keeps yelling at me to lay on the couch and go to sleep), and even fell asleep sitting up last night, which led me to skip walking for the evening and just go to bed.  I also think I had some Braxton-Hicks contractions this week, and the baby continues to be quite active in the afternoons and evenings, and even was distracting me during yoga, since it was hard to focus between the baby's hiccups and the kicks to my ribs.

     

34 Weeks

Well, I'm still sick, but it's at least tolerable now and mainly just some congestion and coughing. After about a month of being sick, my ribs are just now starting to hurt from all the coughing, so that could have been worse. I've actually been sleeping fairly well at night, waking up just for one bathroom break and briefly a few other times to adjust positions or check the monitor to make sure Josie hasn't fallen out of bed. I've still been exhausted at night, though, so I only managed to walk a couple of times this week (also not too appealing right now since walking seems to trigger coughing fits) and went to bed early nearly every night.

I just noticed this week that I can no longer see my toes without bending over or around my belly now, although I suspect that happened a while ago. I have the faintest linea nigra starting to show up again too. My belly button never popped out with Josie, but it seemed to pick up with this pregnancy right where it left off, so yeah.... it's definitely out at this point, and really started sticking out way back at the end of first trimester/early second trimester.

I finally started doing kick counts this week. I was supposed to start around 28 weeks, but the baby is active enough throughout the day that I didn't try hard enough (apparently) to remember to actually make sure it was kicking 10 times in two hours. So I've been trying to get that taken care of in the mornings now, and while new baby has been moving around 10 times usually in about an hour, it seems fairly obvious that new baby is not much of a morning person since it's far more active basically any time other than the mornings :)

     

December

December was a fun month :) And as soon as I wrote that, I realized not all of it was fun, but it at least kept us on our toes!

What we thought would be the biggest change in Josie-land last month is that she moved to her full size bed. It was very anti-climactic, though, since she still hasn't tried to climb out of it (even when encouraged to), and she hasn't fallen out. Not that we want her to, but I was very worried about that, so there are barriers or bumpers on every side. I fully thought she would fall off the foot of the bed anyway, but instead most nights she either sleeps with her head in the corner by the wall and headboard, or turns 90 degrees and just sleeps alongside the headboard.

In other sleep-related news, Josie has started dreaming now. She has woken up crying a couple of times, once apparently because of turtles, the other time because of cookies (or possibly the lack thereof?). Her sleep has also been all over the place because of being sick and possibly from preschool. She usually has at least one day a week where she doesn't take a nap at preschool, and while the rare occurrence of a no-nap day didn't normally phase her before, I think either the cumulative effect or just that she's so much more active during the day at preschool is getting to her. So she has been very erratic during the evenings if she hasn't napped (read: lots of crying at the drop of a hat) and we've been able to successfully put her to bed 1-1.5 hours early on those nights. She has also been sleeping in past her normal 6:45am on the weekends, to the point that we have had to wake her at 8am a couple of times so her schedule didn't get too off. And she also has been taking monster naps on the weekend - it used to be a pretty solid 2 hours, but now we've had to wake her after 3.5 hours a few times.

As I mentioned, Josie came down with something last month (as did we all). She seemed to be handling it ok at first, but after a week of not napping much at school and being increasingly emotional in the evenings, it all culminated in a night where she fell asleep (crying) at 6:15pm (about 3 hours earlier than normal)... and then woke up the next day with drainage coming out of her ear. She seemed much better at first but then started getting fussy again later that night, so we brought her to urgent care the next day. We got to see our favorite doctor there (yes, we have been there enough now that we have a favorite), and while he didn't see a rupture in her ear drum, he definitely said her right ear was infected and left ear was "so-so", so she ended up on amoxicillan.

We've been starting to talk about the baby more to help prepare Josie, and it seems she gets it to some degree. She knows there is a baby in mommy's belly, and she knows it kicks me. In fact, this poor baby has been blamed for all sorts of things already. Every time I hurt myself, Josie will get a very concerned expression on her face and ask me if I'm ok and if the baby kicked me.... even when it's, say, my knee that I hurt. She also rubbed my belly as a greeting when I met up with Ryan and Josie for lunch. I don't know where she got that from, but it was still quite cute :)

As far as holiday stuff goes, this year Josie definitely had more fun with it than last year. She helped me decorate the tree, leading to a heavy concentration of candy canes and ornaments along the lower branches. 

Her Uncle Brian and Aunt Emily also came over to make Christmas cookies, and Josie had a great time cutting out the different shapes and then decorating them... although perhaps we need to work on our apron situation, since Emily had to borrow my (personalized) apron, and Josie wore a Lowe's one ;) 

We decided to open presents at our house Christmas morning before heading over to Ryan's parents' house for a second round of Christmas. We woke Josie up in the morning, and although she liked the lights on the Christmas tree, she seemed a little underwhelmed by the presents. At least until she started to open them. 

She loved all of her presents and wanted to play with each one as she opened it, so while she was happy about her new toys, she also seemed a little frustrated with us for rushing her so we could get over to Ryan's parents' house. We just opened presents over there, had lunch, came back home for nap time, and then went back over in the afternoon, and I think she was much happier the second trip over there since she could just focus on playing with her cousins and her presents without being rushed :)

In addition to the "miscellaneous cuteness" picture section for the month, I have a few little stories this month too:

• She told us she had a "broken heart" since she broke the foam heart toy she apparently was chewing on - as we were trying to get over our giggles for that, I asked her if she bit it, and she said yes. I then asked her if she was biting it now, and she also said yes, so I asked her if she needed to give it to me, and she sadly said yes and then handed it (and the broken piece) over.
• She tried to tell Ryan what books she wanted but he wasn't able to decipher her request, so she finally sighed and said she would get it.
• One of her favorite books has different Beatrix Potter characters on each page, which asks, "Peter Rabbit, Peter Rabbit, is that you?" (No, it's [whoever]). She has started saying "Peter Rabbit, Peter Rabbit, is that you? No, I Josie [last name]," so apparently she does realize she has a last name :)

Miscellaneous (picture) cuteness:

  

[Begging for Ryan's pie]

   

[This is where Josie settled down to read her book in comfort]

    

[One of Josie's favorite places to color: in the corner of the kitchen]

 

[Josie can apparently now fit in the Bumbo that her legs were too chubby for when she was a baby. Also, she has started to pick out her own outfits/accessories]

[Old MacDonald had a piggy - and a suggestion for Ryan to sing] 

[Josie had so much singing to do after Christmas dinner]

33 Weeks

It looks like I spoke too soon last week when I thought I might have been getting better. Instead I came down with the third wave of this illness, which made the previous couple of weeks look like a piece of cake. This wave involved copious amounts of coughing, an instantly raw throat, low-grade fever, and general feeling of awfulness. I'm still trying not to take any over-the-counter medications unless absolutely necessary, so I was relying pretty heavily on elderberry syrup (not like that's any hardship, given how delicious it is) and vitamin C for my immune system, warm honey with lemon and lots and lots of tea/hot water (when tea started turning my stomach) for my throat, and nearly double the amount of water I normally drink (to help with coughing overnight and apparently to ensure I wake up to use the bathroom every two hours). I also have been going to bed early every night - include New Year's Eve. I think I even beat Josie by falling asleep at 9pm.

And since I never seem to learn my lesson, let me just say that I'm feeling slightly better now again ;)

I also had an appointment with the midwives this week, and new baby is still posterior, but is at least facing more to my right side now rather than straight ahead. I'm pretty sure this is the exact same position Josie was in too, which led to me having to lay on my right side almost my entire labor to try to get her in the right position. This was just a short one-on-one visit again, and then a longer group visit when we went over labor and delivery and post-partum care instructions. It's starting to sink in now that we're getting pretty close, especially now that we're on the other side of the holidays :)

Although I haven't tested positive for group beta strep again (as I did with Josie), I also started on the alternative GBS treatment just to be on the safe side, pending my retest in the next few weeks. The first phase of the alternative treatment is essentially just building up my immune system, which I could certainly use anyway. So I started on echinacea and astragalus tinctures twice a day, as well as an echinacea and burdock root infusion once a day. The herbal remedy stuff is actually the area that I feel like I'm furthest from the midwives on, but I also figure there's little chance of it doing harm and a probable chance of it doing some good, so I might as well give it a try. It may just be coincidence, but I'm already feeling better after taking the tinctures the last couple of days. And if I'm completely healthy by next weekend, that might push me into becoming a believer in this stuff ;)