Baby Update

So, we got to see our little daughter again yesterday. Actually, she is not so little anymore...she put on almost 2 lbs in the last 3 weeks according to the ultrasound estimate, and weighs close to 6lbs already...5 weeks before the due date.

While she was busily gaining weight, I actually lost a pound. Weird,huh? But the Dr isn't worried, and the baby is growing, so all is well I suppose. Puts me at a total weight change of only about 15 pounds.

We had another analysis done for this appointment, and the indicator that was there last time for preenclampsia is now reading normal, so that was happy news. And my blood pressure continues to stay nice and low.

The Dr checked things like amount of amniotic fluid and how the placenta looks, as well as location of the umbilical cord, and everything looks good.

The two fun parts of the ultrasound....
The Dr showing us the baby's hair!
Simultaneously seeing and feeling that she had the hiccups!

The Dr said he had planned on doing an internal exam this time, but since everything seemed so good and normal and all, he decided to hold off till the next appointment in just over 2 weeks.

We've arrived at the weird neverland of pregnancy, where labor could begin any time really [and the Dr said if it started as early as a week from now, we would just let it take it's course], or might not happen for a good 6 weeks or so if she comes late.

But since she appears to be healthy and happy, we'll just continue on our merry way until she decides to come. Although, hopefully, she won't wait so long that she has time to grow too much more!

Mountains, a few pregnancy thoughts, and ¨The Void¨

In response to Inkling´s comment about that last picture, that was taken about 30min - 1hour from where we live. We live in a very mountainous area, but our city is generally considered to pretty desert like. It isn´t quite a true desert, because there are trees and flowers and bushes that grow here. But they tend to never get very big, and for example there is never any grass unless someone goes out of their way to plant and nuture it. The area in that picture, although relatively close, gets a lot more rain than we do for reasons I do not understand -and so is always infinitely greener and prettier, making for a good picnic/day-trip detination. Not that our city isn´t pretty in it´s own right. You just have to get used to seeing a lot of bare dirt and shades of brown. One day soon, I´ll see if I can post a couple of pictures to help explain what I mean.

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I keep forgetting to mention how much I am really enjoying doing pregnancy pilates, and in particular how much I like this book. I´ve long been a Pilates fan, since several years back when I was losing a significant chunck of weight. And doing them now helps me feel like I have a little bit of control over a body that I generally feel is out of my control these days, as well as helping to feel like my body is the way it should be, for lack of a better description. Like things are lined up and connected as they should be despite all the weird muscle and joint things that happen when you are pregnant.

Speaking of my body being the way it should be...
My sister reminded me that my body still won´t be my own as long as I am nursing, but I am looking forward to feeling like it is a little more predictable. I am particularly looking foward to being able to do things like get out of the car or roll over in bed without making a production of it. :) I am honestly not overly uncomfortable (I did not say I am not uncomfortable, just not overly so), but am beginnging to look forward to having a non-pregnant body for a while.

On another note, I have been reading through the prophets the last couple of months for my daily devotions (and finding them much more interesting than I ever remember finding them in the past- having a study Bible helps I think.). But I am beginning to wonder if my timing was a little off in choosing to read them - there are way too many times when they refer to a woman in labor to make a point about the terrible things that are coming (the pain will be like a woman in labor, they will scream like a woman in labor, etc). Not very reassuring to someone about to go through labor for the first time!

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And now for ¨The Void¨.

Let me start by saying thank you to those of you who reply to my blog in one way or another.

As for the rest of you...

I am beginning to feel like I am writing into the void of nothingness. Sitemeter tells me that there are people coming to read my blog, and it isn´t just Otrgirl and Inkling checking in over and over. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with Sitemeter, it gives me very general statistics about who comes to my blog. Don´t worry - I get no personal information out of it.) But despite an average of 10 people checking in per day, I get very little feedback from you all.

I wanted the blog to be a communication tool, a jumping off point to staying in touch with a variety of people. It helps me maximize my online time by letting all of you know what is up with me at the same time. But beyond that, I was hoping some of you would have some response to what I write, and maybe clue me in on your life.

I have had a couple different people tell me now that they feel funny leaving comments on the blog, knowing that the ´general public´ could potentially read them. If that is the case, send me an email, using what I posted as your jumping off point.

Ok, I don´t want to drag this out or sound like I am complaining. I just feel a little demotivated sometimes to make the effort to post since I am getting so little feedback. And more than that, there are several of you that I am pretty sure read my blog that I would really love to hear from sometimes - I miss you!

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Tomorrow we have another Dr´s appointment, so there should be a new baby update in the next day or 2. I can hardly believe I am down to the last month or so. My overwhelming emotion is a desire to know my daughter, and to see that she is healthy and well. I am getting a little nervous sometimes - feel free to pray that I will be ready in every way for what is to come, and will have a labor free of any major problems.

Pictures!

Ok, so I am finally posting pictures! :)
Thanks to my sister, I now have a memory card reader, which makes the whole process quite simple. It is just a bit time consuming, at least at this cyber.

This round is of me pregnant, for those who haven´t seen me at all. I´m afraid we started out really well and have of late slacked off a bit, but I promise to get some end of pregnancy ones taken and posted as well.

We started out with the grand idea of taking pictures every month of me in the same outfit, so you could see the differences. It was a good plan, anyways.

Blogger is being a little weird, and no matter what I do, the captions don´t quite fall in the right place, so...for months 3,4, and 5 - there are 2 pictures each, and they are in order. Hope that makes sense.

Here I am at 3 months:





At 4 months:




At 5 months (sorry these came out a bit dark...):






Here, I obviously am not in the same outfit, but soemthing is better than nothing. This was just taken about 2 weeks ago (when we actually had a real weekend!), and I´m right about at 7 months.

The day to day stuff, and the extraordinary

So, we made it through the month of July. It was pretty crazy, especially since we were without the car for 2 weeks, but we survived. They gave everyone an entire weekend off (Saturday AND Sunday) at the very beginning of August. That was awesome, and there was a noticable lift in my beloved´s mood the following week. They finally told him at the end of last week the new expectations - they don´t have to keep working every Sunday (although I am guessing they will work the last one of the month like they used to), but they have to work full instead of half days from now on every Saturday. And a full day will continue to be 35 instead of 28 visits. They are still ´considering´ giving a little more gas money (which seems like it should be a given since they are doing the equivalent of almost 2 full extra days, based on the old number, of visits per week); there is no extra pay.

Over the last month or so, my husband has managed to go to a few interviews based on what he found the day we went to the circus. But nothing has come together.

I am almost half way through my 3rd trimester, and am definitely feeling it, although I am doing pretty well overall. I just need to say that 2nd trimester is heavenly and by far the best part of being pregnant. Of course, since I felt so energetic and almost normal, it flew right by me. Third trimester came along, and I started feeling suddenly more awkward, slower, bigger. I tire easier, and retain water more/more often. I am up going to the bathroom a lot again, although some nights are better than others. There are also nights I just can´t get comfortable. I get really excited about the nights I get to sleep 3 hours straight. As my husband said this morning, the good thing is I almost always fall asleep again very quickly. Several weeks back I started noticing Braxton-Hicks contractions. At that point they were completely painless, just sort of odd feeling. The last week or 2 they have a definite crampy feeling to them, a mild kind of pain. It finally occured to me the other day to start praticing now relaxing through a contraction instead of tensing up.

I haven´t done any major nesting kind of things, but I am slightly anxious about the fact that we are getting nowhere on choosing a name. And I would like to see the crib put together soon. I was told on Sunday about 2 different baby showers they are planning for me here - one through church, and one by my in-laws. Culturally here, they think you shouldn´t have the shower until the last 6 weeks of the pregnancy, so one is the first Sunday in September (the 7th), the other the 3rd Saturday(the 20th). I´m due at the very end of September or beginning of October, so here´s hoping the baby doesn´t come too early ;)

Today I finished reading a novel about Esther - completely in Spanish. I am feeling pretty good about that. I read a bit slower in Spanish, but not extremely so. I didn´t understand every single word, but I only used the dictionary maybe a dozen times through the whole book. I wrote a birthday card to my beloved the other day (he turned 30 on Saturday), and he told me he sees a huge improvement in my Spanish (I´ve been writing to him since early on in our relationship, always in Spanish). He said he would think another 2-3 months and I will be quite fluent.

Ok, now for the extraordinary. You may remember that we have been trying to figure out a good option for the birth, and I asked for prayer along those lines. Well, although we tried to pursue things with the midwife we had found, she appears to have dropped off the face of the earth. So we decided to start looking around at private hospitals, knowing we most likely did not have the money, to see what kinds of options there were. I believe it was 2 weeks ago today that we managed to squeeze in our first 2 hospital visits. We were suitably impressed. Clean, bright, private rooms, more modern ideas (one offers water births, the other offers to videotape the birth for you). Both seemed relatively quiet and no where near full, leaving me feeling like I would get much better care than what I have heard is the norm in the overcrowded government run hospitals. Both allow my husband to be in the room with me. And both charge much more than we have.

The VERY NEXT DAY - we received news of the provision of a large sum of money towards helping us pay for a private hospital! From a completely anonymous and unexpected source. And it is EXACTLY the amount we need to make it happen! God is so faithful to provide!

We still haven´t chosen exactly which hospital. We visited a 3rd last week that we liked even more than the other 2. And we have one more that has been recommended to us to check out. But we have good options, and the ability to pay for it.

Even better, any of these hospitals would allow the Dr who has been providing my prenatal care to be the attending physician at the birth, and it doesn´t really change the prices at all as he charges more or less the same as we would pay to have a stranger from the hospital be the attending. So it looks like I will actually have someone I know and who knows me and about my pregnancy attend the birth. That is relatively unheard of here, and something I had long ago given up hoping for.

And I´ll end on that happy note :) I´ll give more info once we make our final decision on the hospital.

Baby Update

I keep having grandplans of writing major posts, or getting some pictures up, but cyber time has been short lately, for a variety of reasons. So I figured I would at least get you a baby update. Please excuse any typos, as I am writing this in under 5minutes :)

We went this past Tuesday for my latest check-up. I am just over 7 months pregnant (can you believe how fast the months go by?!). It was the first time the Dr didn´t tell us taht everything was fine and dandy, which was alittle bit of a downer. You see, I had blood and urine analysises, and they came back showing a few things a bit off. Like being slightly anemic, needing to drink even more water than I already do, and one indicator of the possibility of preenclampsia. But since my blood pressure is still quite low, he isn´t too worried about it yet. So nothing major, butI have to be a little more careful with diet and things.

Speaking of diet, I only gained 2 lbs this time, putting me at a total of 16.5 gained.

The baby is doing just great though. Still affirmed it is a girl, so looks pretty positive on that front. She is already in the head down position and everything looks good. She weighs something like 4 lbs already!

Oops, times up! be back soon!