No baby yet.

My update is, I'm still pregnant, but happy to report I technically made it to "full term" at 37 weeks this week. I keep thinking it might be any day now, but so far nothing... I am scheduled on our books for induction on 1/6/09 if nothing happens by then, so we'll see!
Nothing else new to report, I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. We had a great Christmas Eve at home with lots of friends and family, and a quiet relaxing Christmas Day with just Patrick, his mom, and me. We hope this baby waits until AFTER our NYE party to arrive, but I guess there are no guarantees! Everyone planning to attend should possibly be prepared for a more exciting NYE than you planned on ;)
I'll hopefully be updating next when we have the arrival of this mystery baby!
Happy New Year to all!

Let it snow...

I thought I would give an update this week, even though nothing earthshattering has happened that's even worth discussing... but I'll discuss it anyways just for entertainment sake. Here's what's happening this week...

1- It's snowing and snowing and snowing. And I'm over it... but apparently it doesn't care, and will continue to snow, because we are supposed to get more tomorrow and this weekend. I posted my old picture here from last year of shoveling the driveway, since that's now again exactly what it looks like (except I'm not doing any shoveling anymore!)
2- My blood sugar is decent this week, which is good. We have gone up again on isulin, which is normal towards the end of pregnancy. :) I still want sugar, but I still can't have it...sad. :(
3- My heinous cold is finally making an exit, after 10 days of total hell. This is above all the most exciting thing happening this week.
4- My twice weekly Non-stress tests still look good... so despite feeling horrible the last week and a half, the baby apparently didn't give it a second thought, and remained totally unaffected.
5- My ultrasound yesterday showed that all is well w/ baby. In addition it showed that the baby is probably already at least 7 1/2 pouunds, which is pretty darn big considering I have another 3 weeks to go. This freaks me out a little, but everyone assures me it will be fine, and that sizing on U/S is not always very accurate anyways. I kind of believe them though, because all of a sudden this week, walking is pretty difficult, and this baby feels really heavy. I am now moving at a considerably slower pace, which seems weird since I have felt so good up until now.
6- My Christmas shopping is done, thanks mainly to a scaled down Christmas this year, and the internet. Lord praise online shopping... hallelujah.
7- the Nursery is finally on it's way to being done... clothes are washed, mattress and bedding have arrived, curtains are up, rug is in place, and diapers and wipes are in the drawers. We really just have to finish painting the rocking chair and that will be about it! Thank goodness. With this kind of snow I want everything ready so I can stay in and hibernate as much as possible for the winter.
8- I may have found a daycare provider today, which could rival the feeling better thing as the most exciting news of the week... this has had me very worried, but I think that I might have finally found someone, and she's only like 3 blocks from my house... which is awesome! It's not a done deal yet, but I am encouraged, so this is a huge huge relief.

OK, lots of updating on fairly uninteresting stuff, but it helped you kill 5 minutes of your day (me too) ... and since it's a Friday I thought people could use a few minutes to avoid work before they leave for the weekend.

Happy Holidays to all!
Jen

Join us for NYE this year !

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The end is near...

An approriate title for my update, as I feel like I might die right now. Seriously. OK, I likely won't die, but this is definitely the worst cold I have had in a long long time, which is fabulous timing since I can't really take any medicine to get myself though this. Unlike my husband, who usually refuses any and all medication until he literally is at a breaking point, I usually am happy to drug myself all the way though an illness such as this. Alas I cannot, so despite being able to make it though the workday yesterday, things got worse overnight and I finally had to call in to work today to say I was not going to make it. So here I am. Bored and sick and maybe dying. And burdening all of you with my complaints ...So I will stop and move on ;)

All else is going well... I am now 34 3/7 weeks today and all still looks good with the pregnancy so far. I continue to have my non-stress tests twice a week, and the baby still looks pretty good during these monitoring sessions. My blood sugars have been fairly well controlled on the insulin so far, and we continue to adjust the dosing as needed over time. Having this virus seems to have created a bit of havoc in terms of my blood sugar for the past day or two, so I have to adjust everything up a bit until this is over, but hopefully this will be a short lived virus and all will return to normal soon! To every cloud there is a silver lining, and mine is that being forced to follow strict dietary guidelines, and beinhg sick on top of it, I have not gained any weight in over a month :) Hey, I'll take what I can get. And I'm not worried, as I'm sure the baby is still gaining, as it feels like it weighs about 20 pounds at this point (which hopefully it does not).

We got to spend a little time in Michigan over Thanksgiving week with my family which was very nice. We got to see lots of people, though there is never enough time it seems to see everyone I want to over that brief visit home. We saw lots of family and got to relax a bit which was great. Patrick still had tons of homework to do, which he brought along for the trip, but we did get to go have a little bit of fun. We went to lunch at a well known local dive/diner that has been around Ann Arbor for quite awhile called the Fleetwood, then took a trip to the Automotive heritage museum in Ypsilanti to see the old Kaiser, Frazer, and Hudson cars. Patrick refused to appear in any of the photos so all you see is me, but this particular outing was definintely his idea, and he had lots of fun checking out all these amazing old cars.

Well if all goes as planned I will be pregnant for another 4 weeks-ish, as my OB would like to induce my labor sometime between 38 and 39 weeks. I will continue to update here before that happens, unless the baby shows up ahead of timon it's own! I hope that everyone has a wonderful holiday season over the next several weeks!! Stay warm!

November Update

Well I guess I have been scolded, and rightly so, for not updating recently... sorry! In fact, very little has been going on except for a very busy workplace and business as usual. I put myself back on the call schedule for November, which so far has been pretty chaotic, so I'm hoping the rest of the month settles down just a wee bit. I'm definitely finding my own bed and million soft pillows much more comfortable than the hard bed with plastic pillows in my call room at this point.

On the pregnancy front, my insulin resistance has continued to be a problem. Despite following strict dietary guidelines, my blood sugars are not remaining in good enough control. I started a small amount of insulin this week and am in the process of trying to get it adjusted so that my sugars stay where they should be. I have to say, the neverending eating-accuchecking-insulin injecting schedule seems overwhelmingly time consuming. I'm so glad it's only 7-8 more weeks of my life! Yes... believe it or not 7-8 more weeks. My OB let me know that if I do not go into labor by 38ish weeks gestation, she will induce me. Fairly normal procedure for gestational diabetics once they have started on insulin. I feel like I am at appointments almost constantly... between my OB appointments, the endocrinologist, the diabetic nurse and educator, and now non-stress tests that will be conducted twice weekly... phew, like I said, only 8 more weeks. I can do anything for 8 weeks... right? ;)

Last night we had our co-ed party/baby shower at Mary Beth's house, which was lots of fun! We had a great time and everyone was so kind and generous. Debbie, Mary Beth, Nicole, Laurie and Amy did a great job with planning and it seemed like everyone had fun. People cut pictures out of magazines and used their own artistic talents to "Create (their) own Waldenbaby" ... all of which turned out to be hilarious (...though hopefully not what this baby will really look like). We even had a pinata, which was a little scary in the middle of MB's living room... luckily nobody smashed holes in anything except the pinata itself (and a few of it's contents). Thanks to all who came to help us celebrate!

That's all for now, I suppose we are back to raking leaves again today. I could think of many things I would rather do with my Sunday, especially in light of the fact that it's snowing at this very moment. Alas it must be done. Hope you all had a nice weekend. We look forward to Thanksgiving in Ann Arbor in a couple of weeks with my family and I shall post some pics once we return! Happy TG everyone! :)

Halloween Pics!

I thought I would post some pics from my outing with the gang tonight... tons of great costumes out there today. I think the fact that it was 60 degrees outside, and Halloween is falling on a weekend definitely had an impact. Everyplace was packed. We of course stayed at the Bodega where it is smoke-free, but it was lots of fun people watching tonight.
On a brief but depressing side note, I'm officially a Gestational Diabetic now. It's OK though, I'm taking it in stride... it's only 10 more weeks of my life.

Happy (?) Halloween !!

Well not much is new this week, but I feel like I have not been updating enough so I shall write anyways. I had an appointment with Dr. Young on monday which went partially well and partially not well. I looked fine, belly is measuring on time for my gestational age, and baby sounded great as usual. Good strong regular heartbeat. Definitely still pretty active in there. I did have my 28 week labs done which looked pretty good... except my one hour glucose tolerance test. It was high :( Soooo, now I have to spend Friday morning sitting in the lab for 3 hours to do the "real" test. My personal suspicions are that I will be classified as a gestational diabetic, because that's just how things are going for me with this pregnancy, but I guess we'll find out Friday afternoon. Not great news but I won't jump the gun just yet. In the event I'm right, it should make for a challenging holiday season. Anyone have a recipe for sugar-free pumpkin pie?? ;)
I may update again this weekend if I have the chance, I plan to go out on Friday for a bit for Halloween, so I'm costume searching for now... I hope to get a few good pictures. I'm not one of those people that is brave enough to wear some kind of half shirt with a painted belly... no thanks! I'll come up with something different! Patrick will be in Hilton Head SC for Matt and Patty's wedding this weekend, as he is a groomsman, so I'll be home (and jealous) that I'm not getting to go to the wedding on the beach. Sadness. My sister says to get over it, because as a mom this is just the first of about a million things that I will have to miss because of the baby. I suppose she's right on that one, so I'm over it. I guess.

Don't drink the water...!

Hello all, just checking in today. Not much is new over here, which I guess is a good thing! I still feel fine, no issues this week to report. My co-worker Heather and I took some pics at work the other day, so here we are, belly to belly. Yes, I know, I look huge. I'm 27 weeks now, and Heather is due a couple of weeks before me. In addition to the 2 of us, I believe there are a minimum of maybe 4 or 5 other girls from our 5th floor who are concurrently pregnant as well! It seems to go in cycles, and over this past several months we had another whole group of girls deliver. I think we empolyees on the Family Birthplace could probably keep ourselves in buisiness if it came right down to it.
This weekend we took a quick trip up to Eau Claire so Patrick could take his final exam for his current grad schoool class... I think there are only 3 more classes to go, so he's almost there! Incidentally he got a 95% on the final which is awesome, the class was so hard. Anyways we stopped to go to an Auction in some random town on the way home, and picked up some old tin toys to sell on eBay, as well as a nice antique glass door bookshelf that I will paint or refinish to use for the baby's room. We got it for 45$, a pretty good deal! We tried hard to get one antique toy (that we secretly looked up on eBay from Patrick's Blackberry...going for 1,200.00$ on there !!!) but we were in a bidding war with an antique deealer who clearly knew it was valuable and was willing to bid much higher than we were. Oh well.
Have a good week everyone. :)
By the way... don't forget to vote (on the left) for Boy or Girl. So far it's been a close race!

Baby's first chicken dance...

A quick post about our weekend! We travelled to Patrick's home town of Sleepy Eye, Minnesota to attend Barbie (Patrick's niece) and Dan's wedding. It was a perfect fall day... sunny, all of the trees in full color, you get the picture. Barbie looked gorgeous as you can see, and eveything seemed to be a complete success. The reception was great, even better for Patrick who had his own designated driver for the night :) While I did miss out on the free Schell's beer, I got to eat peanuts and candy corn, which seemed a sufficient replacement for the evening. Barbie and Dan had a surprise "guest" run onto the dance floor to lead them in the chicken dance, and since I think she still may not know who it was, I won't give the secret away. Needless to say it was good entertainment. I think Dan was feeling no pain by that point.

Anyways, I think the baby really liked the chicken dance, as last night shortly afterward was really the first time I felt a good kick.. I mean from the outside. The kid kicked my arm right off my abdomen... so either it liked the chicken dance, or it just wanted more candy corn... I'm not too sure. One or the other I think.

Oh, and I discovered that high heeled boots are pretty much off limits for any more all-day events that might occur between now and my due date...

Better late than never...

I have decided that creating a simple blog would be the easiest way to keep people updated on a regular basis... I love blogs, what a great concept! Of course, truth be told, I'll probably still talk to everyone all the time anyways, but this could be fun... I waited until the age of 36 to have a baby so I should probably try to have as much fun with the remainder of this process as I can!

I am now about 25 6/7 weeks, experiencing the joys of the 3rd trimester, like heartburn, sleeplessness, and fatigue. Serously though, I am overall feeling darn good both physically and mentally... better by the day as I have a fetus that becomes more and more in the category I consider "viable". Considering my profession, it is no surprise that over these few critical weeks, transitioning from a baby that would not survive if delivered, to one that would have a much better chance, I start to breathe a little easier every day. For those who were out of the loop for awhile, I did have the unfortunate experience of having a good bout of preterm labor at 21 weeks, which eventually went away, but was extrordinarily unsettling nonetheless. A scarier 2 weeks I have never experienced. I remain cautious in all my actions at this point, but have gradually been doing more and more over the past couple of weeks. I have been working in my office for the most part at this time, but hope to start seeing patients again sometime soon, maybe even next week... which is GREAT - I do miss being with the babies. Desk work is not my forte... though it is indeed work that needs to be done, and I have found some fun projects.

I had a great meeting with some of the girls this week over dinner at the Bodega about a baby shower, which should be lots of fun. Less like a shower, more like an all-gender inclusive party, which suits me just fine. This week Patrick and I will work on creating some sort of registry or multiple registries if need be... having friends and family in various parts of the country seems to make the process somewhat more complicated (as does agreeing on things we both like!), but I am confident we will come up with something. I will post that info on here once it has been established, so people can easily find the info if desired. A warning that we are not finding out what we are having...despite my begging, Patrick remains stubborn about not knowing, and so I seem to have given up, and so we will enjoy the surprise.

That's all for now, I'm going to try to add some pics and more info later on.