I swear I'm not trying to avoid taking pictures, but it just seems like so much WORK. ;) And, I always seem to be so buys on the actual "day," like 37 weeks, 38 weeks, etc. Then it seems silly to take a picture on 37 weeks, 3 days, so I end up just letting it go. But I WILL take one this Saturday at the official 38 week mark.
9 days to go.
I had a Dr appt on Wednesday, and everything looks fine, but I am SO not progressing at all. My one hope this time around was that I might possibly progress some BEFORE I go in to be induced, so it's not such a long, drawn-out, hard thing for my body. Eh. Guess that's likely not going to happen, but good enough...I've been down this road before.
The nurse entered my weight wrong on the computer, and then she got all worried and kept asking me if I felt swollen at all. My response was "Um...no? Do I LOOK swollen to you??" :) I guess I had gained 1 lb, but she entered it as 11, and that set off all sorts of warning bells. I should THINK SO! Gaining 11 lbs in one week?? Is that even humanly possible? I mean, I know it's possible to have pre-eclampsia and retain 11 lbs of fluid in a week (I have a friend who had it and retained almost 30 lbs of fluid in a few days time!!!), but holy cow--if that had been actual weight gain I might have died. So, it looks like I have gained about 15 lbs total for this pregnancy.
I am now officially switched to heparin shots, not the generic lovanox shots. This means I do 3 shots a day, every 8 hours, rather than 2 shots every 12 hours. AND I have to load them myself...and assemble the needle myself. Sigh. This is my least favorite stage of the shots during pregnancy--the every 8 hours thing is NOT convenient to having a life, doing stuff, etc. I sometimes even have to set alarms because my shot times fall very early or very late in the evening. :( Blech. I technically should have started this today, but I forgot to pick up my stuff at CVS on my way home from preschool with Layla, so I'll grab it tomorrow morning and start then. One more day of 12 hour shots is my little "gift" to myself. ;)
I've been feeling a lot better this past week and a half than the other 3 previous weeks. My rib and abdomen pain are only occasional now, 4-5 times daily maybe, rather than CONSTANT. What a difference that makes. My only guess on this is that baby girl is sitting lower now, so she's not quite so "up in my business." ;) I've been able to live almost normal for the past week--cooking, cleaning, doing errands, playing with kids, doing my SPF work...very nice to feel like myself for the last few days of my known normal life.
It snowed here yesterday, so THAT was depressing, but the sun was strong enough to melt everything that we had by late this afternoon--at least here in St. Paul. Other areas of northern MN and WI got 19+ inches. Yeah, they'll have THAT around for a while, I think. Jonas said the last few miles of his drive in to work today were sheer ice--ugh. That just should not be the case in mid-April!!
Last Saturday, April 12th, I officially gave up dairy for this pregnancy/nursing go-round. That way, dairy will be fully out of my system by the time my milk comes in. I'll stay dairy free for at lest 2 months, to for sure get past the fussy stages of infancy, and then re-introduce it to my diet to see if it has any impact on the baby later on. I'm guessing it will, but it's not that big of a deal. I've only forgotten that I gave up dairy ONCE: when I was at Moms Coffee Hour at church this Tuesday, and I was 3/4 of my way through a pastry before I remembered! Urgh! So annoying. I mean, if I'm going to forget, I wish it'd be on something I care more about...like pizza.
We had a friend over for dinner to celebrate her birthday last night, and I was planning on making a flour-less chocolate cake for dessert. When I opened the recipe book I remembered that it has--duh!--6T of butter in it! Seeing as I wanted to eat some too, and I knew the kids would as well, I made it dairy free: I used 3T of the regular Earth Balance, and 3T of the Earth Balance coconut spread (which I have only found at Costco). It turned out great! So, that's a nice dairy and gluten free dessert to have in my pocket, not to mention it only has 1/2 a cup of sugar in the whole cake. The texture was a little different from normal, but still really moist and lovely. Served with fresh strawberries on top? Fantastic.
Off to do some church work, then get the kids to bed. TTFN!
