The one with the update that’s actually eventful

It has been a crazy few weeks, baby wise.

I failed my glucose test.  My dr office set me up for another one hour, as they do that instead of the 3 hour.  I failed that as well.  So then I moved on to the finger pricks, 4 times a day.  I passed just about all of those, although some of the things I added to my daily diet didn’t help the whole heartburn and throwing up situation, so I was quite uncomfortable a few times.  We had an appointment yesterday and I told the Dr that the tests were too expensive for me to continue doing at the rate I was until she comes.  He said that he was happy with my numbers so as long as I continued to eat healthy most of the time and do a test if there was a new food I wanted to add into the rotation on a regular basis, he was fine with me just using common sense.  So I was pretty happy with that.

Last weekend DH and I (well, mostly him) pulled up the carpet in the baby’s room and put down new laminate.  Hubby doesn’t trust his measuring skills, so I’m in charge of that, and planning out the “pattern” of the boards as we go, and he’s in charge of the hard labor.  I kept getting down on the floor to measure and help and stuff and after a couple hours I was so sore.  I didn’t feel like I was doing a whole lot (if I wasn’t pregnant, the amount of helping I was doing would be seen as incredibly lazy), but apparently, pregnant, it was too much.  So we changed our methods and I did what I was doing, but stayed up instead of getting down on the floor.

This past weekend, we moved our bed and stuff into the baby’s room and put down the same flooring in our room.  I knew my limits this time and measured from a standing position the whole day.  I also had a prenatal massage at 1, so I left DH to do part of the job himself and then we continued when I got back.  I ended up still having a sore back after.  Even though I stayed standing, I had to lean over to see past my belly to read the measuring tape and I think that’s what did it.  So apparently there’s no getting around being sore.

After we finished that, we moved all of the smaller, easier to move furniture from the living room into our room so that we can put down that flooring this weekend coming up.  Our house is a disaster, and since it’s a disaster, DH feels it’s ok to just toss his coats and sweatshirts on top of other piles, so it’s just getting worse and driving me absolutely crazy.  So I really can’t wait to finish and get it put back together so we can go back to cleaning up after ourselves.  I’ll post some pictures of the baby’s room after it’s all finished and we can get it set back up.

In other crazy, more baby-related news… 2 weeks ago, I came home from the meeting with the gestational diabetes people all upset and stressed out.  DH has been working a lot of overtime (at my request because we have a small amount of Christmas debt that I want taken care of) but I called him in tears and asked him to just come home at regular time.  He, of course, was all worried.  I told him everything was fine but I was just having a crap day because of that meeting (and based on their ‘sample food list’ I just envisioned throwing up for the remaining 3 months).  He called when he left to let me know he was on his way, so I got up to start dinner.  I accidentally got my kitchen floor all wet without realizing it and slipped and fell flat on my back.  So of course, between the pain, the crap day, and being scared I just hurt the baby, I just burst into sobs.  I stayed there, sobbing, until he walked in to help me up.  I knew I had to turn over to get myself up and I didn’t want to slip again and end up on my belly.  We got out our Doppler that my cousin lent me, but that didn’t really reassure us too much.  We called the Dr’s answering service and got to speak with a OBGYN about 30 minutes later.  After explaining what happened, he said I could go in for monitoring if it would make me feel better, but from the sounds of it, it wasn’t too bad.  And since I wasn’t experiencing contractions, bleeding, fluid leakage, or decreased fetal movement, he didn’t feel it was actually necessary.  So I relaxed a bit after that.  DH did not.  He was awake almost all night, hand on my belly as I slept, feeling her movements (of which there were plenty).

Then this past Thursday I was sure I broke her.  I leaned over in bed when I woke up, to reach my night stand.  Something hurt, but I could almost reach what I was trying to get.  So I just leaned harder for a split second to grab it.  Then that spot hurt for the rest of the day and she barely moved all day.  On my way home, I told hubby over the phone about my concern.  He agreed that we should just talk to our childbirth class teacher that night when we went (she’s a labor and delivery nurse).  Then I got a call from her saying she was cancelling class because she was sick.  So I asked her about it.  She advised drinking a big glass of OJ and doing our second level of breathing to get her going, and if that didn’t work, to go down to the hospital to be put on the fetal monitor.  Luckily it worked, so we were relieved.  But then she was pretty quiet on Friday.  I did feel her at night a little more.  But then that pattern repeated itself on Saturday and Sunday.

I told them this as well at yesterday’s appointment and they put us right in for an ultrasound, even though I wasn’t scheduled to have one.  The tech could see her heartbeat, and her breathing, and said the amount of amniotic fluid looked good, but couldn’t get her to move.  Even after giving me candy and a lot of poking my belly.  She had the Dr come in to see as well and he poked a lot too.  I’m surprised I’m not bruised.  We then had the normal part of the appointment with him, he measured me and then told us he wanted us to go to the hospital and have them set me up with the fetal monitor.  He said to have something to eat or a sugary drink on the way to wake her up, and he told us it may take an hour or two for them to see what they needed to see with the monitor.

By the time we got there, they were expecting us.  They brought me right into a room and set up the monitor over her heartbeat and told me once they could see that her heart rate was normal for 20 minutes, we’d be able to go.  So of course our difficult child shifted slightly 15 minutes in.  The nurse came back, found the heartbeat again and told us the 20 minutes started over now.  So that’s why it might take an hour or two!  She was moving like crazy (of course making mumma look silly because the whole reason we were doing this was because of my concern that she hadn’t been moving) and even nearly kicked the monitor out of place, but apparently it wasn’t enough to mess things up again, as we got our 20 minutes and were allowed to go.  So we left feeling pretty reassured that all was fine with her.  I think she just shifted her sleeping patterns and is asleep more during the day now.  Plus the dr said I might feel the kicks less forcefully as she gets more cramped in there.

So it’s been a pretty eventful few weeks, but after everything yesterday, I’m feeling much better about her.  Now I’m just doing what I can to combat the constant sore back… Actually the ultrasound tech noticed the way I sat up from the table and showed me a different way to lean because she said the way I was doing it was probably stressing my lower back.  So maybe now that I know that, that’ll help a bit in the coming days and weeks!