Losing the Baby Bump: Two Weeks

One more thing I had no idea what to expect: how fast would I lose the baby weight? How long until I didn't look pregnant anymore? So, I may (or may not) post a few more posts like this one to show you how my weight loss is going. I gained a total of 35.8 pounds over the last 9 months, and so we'll see how long until I lose it all! I hear lots of people say it took you nine months to put it on, so you can expect it to take that long to get it off.

However, it's only been two weeks and I feel like I'm looking great! I think a huge contributor to that is the fact that I was SUPER swollen before I gave birth. I never realized how swollen I was until I saw what I looked like after. Whew! So, here I was two days before giving birth:

SWOLLEN!

Now here I am 5 days after birth:

Not bad weight loss, I think.

Here I am two weeks after:

Lookin' good, right? Ha ha I feel so great. I still don't know what I weigh but I'm super excited to see what I've lost. Quite a bit of water weight I bet!

Now I just can't wait to see what I can do once I'm cleared to exercise!

P.S. Like my new hair cut/color?


****Update! At about 2 1/2 weeks after the birth, I went in to have my incision from the c-section checked. There I weighed myself, and I had lost 25 pounds! Only 10 more to go. I guess this happens when you have so much water weight from being so swollen...

Being a Mother: What I've learned so far

I've only been a mom for 15 days, but it is amazing what you learn in 15 days when you are the main caretaker of a newborn!

• Nursing. Oh man! 
• Harder than I thought. It's definitely not what I thought, which was to put the child up to your chest, he latches on, and he goes to town! Even if Chris successfully latches on, often he won't stay there. It's not hard all the time, though! Sometimes, it is exactly what I imagined.
• I used to think nursing was a 15 minute ordeal. Nope! It may be when he's older and can eat faster, but as of right now, it's 30 minutes to an hour. Especially in the night, when he falls asleep so quickly, I have to keep waking him up to get him to have a good feeding. If I don't, he'll just be up in another hour, and I value my 2 hours in a row! 
• The Boppy nursing pillow is a must. No other pillow in my house will do the trick of propping Chris up like I need him to be. It really was a great investment.
• Milk coming in.... so painful! It was a terrible day, the day my milk came in. It was strange, too. Luckily, the pain lasted only one day.
• In the beginning it always made me exhausted and tired, and currently in the night, I struggle to stay awake. Snacks are a must in order to keep me awake. 
• Go to the bathroom FIRST! It's much better for Chris to cry a little longer because he's hungry, rather than he cry much louder and is much more unhappy because I have to pause his meal because I have to go to the bathroom. WORTH the delay.
• After showers, it's a race to get my clothes on. If I wait too long, let down begins and I start dripping milk on the floor. 
• Umbilical cord and circumcision are gross, but at the same time sure cool looking.
• I knew that he would create a lot of diapers.... but seriously, it's usually at least 10 a day. I have such a complex about it sometimes, too, because sometimes, he just has the teeniest bit of poop in the diaper, and I want to just leave the diaper on because I know I'll just be changing his diaper soon and I don't want to waste a diaper, but I don't want to be a bad mom and leave him feeling uncomfortable! One day, I guess I will either decide that an extra diaper is worth it, or I will decide that he can deal with a little poop for a little while. We'll see which way I lean.
• Speaking of diapers, the Huggies newborn diapers are amazing! They have this little yellow line that turns blue when the diaper is wet! I can even tell sometimes that he only pooped and didn't pee. It's amazing. Especially because (did you know this?) newborn's pee in the beginning is clear. Yeah! So it's a little difficult to figure out if the diaper is wet just by looking at it. Now I can just look at the outside and I know!
• Our Pack 'n Play is amazing. They have a newborn bed attachment which is where Chris sleeps for now until he's big enough for the bed. I love it because I don't have to go check on him. He stays in the same spot in his bed and I can put a blanket on him because I can tuck it around the bed attachment, so I know it won't cover his face at all and suffocate him. One of our best buys!
•  Baby blues. What a whirlwind of emotions and hormones I have had in the last two weeks. The nice thing is, I'm not moody like I was with the whole pregnancy, but every once in a while, I get a HUGE mood swing that cannot be helped. The nice thing is, almost always, the best thing to make me feel better is Jed hugging me and cuddling with me, and then sleep. It works well to get rid of the baby blues, and it's easy to get! Let's just hope next time they come, Jed's not in the middle of work or class!
• Along with the baby blues, I've had my moments of frustration. It's all been with nursing, and when combined with my baby blues, nursing seems impossible and something I don't want to do! Thank goodness for Jed to give me a break; thank goodness my baby will eat out of a bottle to give me a break; thank goodness that after a break, I can't wait to cuddle with my adorable baby! He just is so kissable. Just as fast as the baby blues will come, they'll leave just as fast. Plus, I know that nursing will be very worth it.
• We do a lot of laundry... We used to do it once a week or week and a half. Now, we still do our laundry around then, but we do Chris's laundry every 3-5 days. He leaks through his diaper because his little legs are so skinny, he spits up, my milk leaks when he's nursing, etc. and all this makes a lot of laundry! 
• Going out to do things is a hassle. Maybe I'm just lazy? But it just takes so many steps to go do a quick run to the store, and so quick runs are no longer something I do. I am excited for a bigger baby, too, when he will be able to sit in the grocery cart or I'll be able to carry him more easily, so that I won't always have to lug around his car seat when I go inside places. 
• My husband is amazing. Obviously, I get up in the night with our baby. But if Chris gets up in between feedings, I just ask Jed once and he's up and helping the baby. He also still cleans a ton and will do whatever I need him to when I ask him. Then, add in that my husband is super cute with our baby, kisses him so much, laughs at his cute faces, and overall just shows so much love for Chris, I just feel blessed to have a great husband so is making out to be a great dad.

So maybe this is a little long of a post, but just as I hoped that my pregnancy posts would help some of you know a little more of what you could expect, I hope this helps you know what to expect afterwards! I had no idea what being a mom would be like, but so far, I love it. I love our little guy so much and I'm so glad we have him!

Dear Chris: One Week

Dear Chris,

We have had you for one week today. What a week! Your dad and I are so grateful to have you in our life. It is amazing how much love we feel for you, and how instantly we felt that love.

It's crazy that after only a few days, we could already see some of your personality traits. For example, you love to have your back patted and rubbed. You love to be swaddled in your blankets. You probably wish you could sleep on your side all the time, so when we put you down to bed, we set you at the slightest angle, and that little teeny turn to be on one side of your back makes the biggest difference in how well you go down to sleep.

One of our favorite things about you is that you love to cuddle and be held. When you are unhappy, all we have to do is pick you up and you will calm down (most of the time). Your mom loves to cuddle with you and loves that you will nap on her chest while she naps, too.

You make us laugh when we change your diaper. You definitely don't like it, so you kick your legs in and out and back and forth. It's super cute, but we try to change your diaper as fast as possible because we don't want you to be uncomfortable for too long!

Already you are learning to get used to new things. You have learned that you don't need to cry when you're getting your clothes on because you'll be warm afterwards, which you love to be. You cry for a little bit when being put into your car seat, but you are starting to love the feeling of being in the car.

We're working hard on learning to be good parents and to get you into a sleeping schedule! We know that you are so little and so sleeping can be hard, but you are doing so great! You can soothe yourself to sleep sometimes and if you are still unhappy, you calm down really fast and go back to sleep really well when your mom or dad come in to comfort you. Last night you even let mom get three hours of sleep in a row!

You definitely take after your dad. You are thin and tall like him. You look like him, except for your mouth which you got from your mom. You like to cuddle and have your back rubbed like your dad (and mom!). We're excited to see as you grow up if you continue to be so much like your dad.

Another of our favorite things are the cute faces you make, especially when you sleep. We love to watch you sleep, but we love the few times in the day when you are alert and look around. You have such a cute face!

We love you Chris and we are excited to see what happens as you grow bigger and stronger.

Love,

Mom and Dad

A Baby Story

Whew! What a whirlwind this last week has been!

Last you read, I was at 36 weeks, things were going fine, and that was that.

On Monday, I had my 36 week appointment with my doctor. They always start the appointment by taking your blood pressure. Mine was 173/95. Eeek! So the doctor did the Group B strep test and check to see if I was dilated, which I wasn't at all. He told me that they would take my blood pressure again, and if it didn't go down, I would be sent to the hospital right then and there! If it did, he thought he would schedule the induction for Thursday when I was 37 weeks along. Well, we took it again, and it was 177/110. So we were off!

The plan was to give me citatec, which would hopefully dilate me more and prepare my cervix for delivery. Once I was dilated enough (probably to about a 3), they would give me pitocin to really get the induction going. So, 6:45 I got my first dose of citatec. Every 3 hours I got another. Long was the night. As the hours wore on, I was hungrier and my cramps were getting worse. My hunger was eased slightly with flavored ice chips, and once the cramps got bad enough, some medicine was put into my IV which gave me relief in literally less than 10 seconds. It was amazing! So 12 hours later, they check me for probably the 4th time. I was dilated to a 1. Not much progress! But the doctor decided that in an hour, they would start the pitocin.

My lime ice chips.

The red line is Chris's heart rate and the blue line is my contractions

So come 7:30, they started the pitocin and I requested to start my epidural. The nurse went to get the anesthesiologist, and lo and behold, his shift just ended and the next anesthesiologist would be here in a half hour. Rude! I wasn't too happy, but what could you do? Some of you may know, I was nervous for the epidural. For one thing, I have seen the size of the needle they stick in you. Huge! Secondly, they are sticking something in your back! Hello! In between your spine! That alone is bad enough, but I tend to have a pretty extreme reaction of arching my back when someone surprises me or pokes me hard enough. So I was nervous. Then, add to the nervousness the worst cramps I've ever had. And add to THAT the fetal position they put you in so that your stomach feels even more squished than it already is and you can't move to relieve your contractions. Add all this together, and you have me squeezing the blood out of Jed's hand. But, it went totally fine! The blessed anesthesiologist, I think his name was Dr. Lund so we'll just call him that, gave me lots of local anesthesia so that I felt nothing. And 10 minutes later, I was all numb and it felt great!

Then started the problems. Once in the night, my baby's heart rate went down. They gave me oxygen and had me lay on a different side, and all was well. But after they gave me the pitocin, his heart rate went down again. The oxygen didn't help as well as the last time, so the nurse stopped the pitocin. They started it up a little later, and again his heart rate went down. This time, it wasn't coming up. Dr. Thorpe had been at the hospital in Orem and was on his way, so the nurses did what they could to keep trying to get his heart rate up. Dr. Thorpe arrive just as my mom did, and they assessed the situation. My poor baby's heart rate was down to 60, which while quite low (it should be 140), they said it wasn't dire. I was still worried, though. They warned me that I may have to have a c-section, and minutes later, Dr. Thorpe decided a c-section was the best way to help my baby, and I was fine with that. I hadn't wanted a c-section, but my dear baby needed to get out!

The c-section was strange, but kind of amazing. They had me in there and done in 10 minutes. Dr. Lund even said as they were prepping me that they were only on their moderate speed and if they needed to, my baby would have already been out. So the c-section. It was such a strange feeling, because I could feel things, and yet I couldn't feel things. It felt like they were pulling and tugging at my skin and tummy, and yet I knew they were doing a lot more than that. So after a minute, they said, "The head is born.... the shoulders are born.... your baby's born!" And I heard these two teeny little grunt cries and that was that! I teared up but didn't cry like I thought I would, which probably was because I didn't get to see him. Because he was preemie, the NICU nurses whisked him away the moment he was out, and for good reason. Instead of breathing normally, he had to grunt to barely breathe. So he was given surfactant and put on a little C-PAP machine.

And with that, Christopher Daniel Stephenson was born at 9:45 AM on March 13, 2012. He was 20 inches and 5 pounds, 14 ounces.

So, it was over! It felt weird. It was almost like nothing changed. I couldn't feel anything, my stomach still looked huge, and I didn't see my baby. Jed was great and kept going to the NICU to check on Chris and he would tell me what was going on. After a few hours, they moved me down to the Mother/Baby floor where I would stay the rest of the time in the hospital. On the way down I got to see my dear baby. It was sad to see him on the machine, but they said he was doing really well.

In his NICU bed

Chris on the C-PAP

All afternoon we kept checking to see how he was doing, and with each update things got better and better! By 5:00 he was out of the NICU and down in the nursery on my floor and a little while later, I got to hold my baby!

I will finish the story off with how recovering from the c-section went. I was expecting terrible pain and an inability to stand up straight or at least without terrible pain. Perhaps I was lucky, but it wasn't bad at all! The first time standing up I had a flash back to the first time I stood up after I broke my femur. Oh that hurt like nothing I had ever felt, but after the c-section, my first time standing up was relatively pain free! Mostly just uncomfortable. Over the course of the week, things were going really well. Walking was great and although a trip downstairs to the cafe wore me out completely, it felt so good to walk around. So I'm extremely happy with that!

It's been a week and this last week has passed by so quickly, yet last Monday seems weeks ago! I can't believe all that's happened in only a week, how much has changed, and how amazing life is. I am extremely grateful to the doctors and nurses for taking care of me and my baby and delivering Chris to us safe and sound.

And that's my baby story.

Tracking the Baby Bump: Week 36

Less than a month left!

If he were a fruit, he would be a crenshaw melon.

So this week, I really don't have enough room inside me for this child! Here's a little cross cut of a pregnant woman's body:

Now you see? Sometimes when I go from laying down to sitting up, I don't feel like I can sit up straight because it would squish my insides more than they can be squished! Seriously, look at how smashed the stomach and small intestines are... I'll just say that it's no wonder that nearer to the end pregnant women have.... bowel problems? Can I just say that and you know what I mean? The point of this is, my baby is huge and I ain't got no more room!

This week I have focused on two TV shows: Downton Abbey and The Biggest Loser. I watched Downton Abbey in record time! But the sad thing? Season two was on pbs.org, but by the time I got to the LAST episode of the season, the videos had expired. So sad! So I read what happened, but it's not the same as watching.... I was really sad. But, life goes on. It was a very interesting TV show to watch! It's like my favorite BBC, 1800s movies and shows, but being set in the 1914-1920s, it's slightly more modern. So there are old style values that are being challenged in a changing world. I loved that. I did not love that so many people were unfaithful to their spouses/fiances/loves of their lives! Too many people were kissing people they shouldn't have been kissing. Dislike!

And the Biggest Loser. Love it. I love that Jed watches it with me, too. The only problem is, I so want to change my life, too! I want to go work out and feel that awesome feeling after you worked your butt off and you're so sweaty and your muscles are so tired, and you just feel so good! But, it's going to be a few months before I can do that.... I hope that my motivation can last until then. So, I can't work out right now, but adding onto that, I just feel so dang lazy! I know I shouldn't feel lazy. I mean, it's not like I am choosing not to do dishes or lay down all day. But it's still so hard not to feel lazy! I keep asking Jed if he feels like I'm lazy because I'm so nervous he'll resent me for making him to everything around the house in addition to school and work. But he assures me he does not think that and I'm being very silly for thinking he would. Jed has been awesome throughout this. He's gotten to the point where I don't have to ask him to do the dishes or to take my plate from the couch where I ate to the sink. He knows I would want him to, so he just does it. I've trained him so well. Ha ha no, he's just awesome! He's stepped up and done great. Hopefully this bedrest thing won't last too much longer, and then it will be only a little while before I can get back into cooking light cleaning so I can help him!

So this week, insomnia has hit. I had several nights where I couldn't sleep for hours, and then when I finally fell asleep, I would wake up every hour and often wake up in the early hours in the morning wide awake! I'm so grateful I've been able to sleep in or take a nap.

But, I think all the insomnia caused some problems. Thursday night I went to bed with a migraine. Medicine didn't help, so I took a little more. Still nothing. So after a few hours of no sleep and pure pain, I had to call the on call doctor. I felt horrible doing so at 2:30 in the morning, but they had told me that one of the warning signs to look for was a migraine that wouldn't go away with medication. So, the doctor told me to go to the hospital.... Poor, poor Jed, to have to lose sleep for me. But he did, and he took me there. It was just like the last time; I did a urine sample and they drew some blood. I was hooked up to the fetal heart monitor and the blood pressure machine. All tests came back fine! My blood pressure was slightly higher than normal, but as I sat there, it went down to my "normal." So, just like last time, they told me it was good I came in, but I still needed to just keep an eye on things and come in again if something like this happens again. Lovely. So after two hours, I still had my migraine (although somehow it had lessened slightly), so they gave me some morphine and some other drug. It was a shot to the hip... owie. But they monitored me for another 45 minutes to make sure all was still well with me and the baby after the shot and to make sure my headache went away. And it did! Oh it felt blessedly good. So, we were back at home just after 6:00, and we went straight to bed. Both of us slept in, but I slept in until 3:30 that afternoon! I woke up several times, sometimes to texts, and because of the medicine I couldn't even stay awake long enough to reply to a text. The rest of the evening I was groggy and had a small headache, but with medicine and caffeine (prescribed by my lovely nurse), and food from my wonderful husband, I felt 10 times better that evening!

So, again we visited the hospital. Tomorrow is our 36 week appointment, which I'm excited for. I will have the Group B Strep test, hopefully the doctor can tell us if I'm dilated and how big the baby is, and above all, I hope we can figure out what's going on with me! I don't want to hinder the baby's growth by having the baby come early, but he is just so active so I know he's healthy and he seems pretty big to me, so maybe he's ready to come out! I'm just afraid that we'll have to visit the hospital every week for tests telling me that I'm fine and need to rest (which I'm doing plenty of), and I'm also afraid that one of these times, it may actually be worse than we thought and then I could have to stay in the hospital for several days or weeks! I don't want to sound selfish, because the baby's health is the most important thing, but it's hard not to think of my own health and our finances, because those are factors. Plus, what if one of these times it suddenly not only affects my health but also the baby's? It's a strong possibility. So for the health of all, maybe it's best to get this baby out!

I think by this time a lot of women hope that they'll deliver soon. It's nice to know we're in the home stretch, though! Only 25 days until my due date! Whenever he comes, I'm excited for him to be here! 

Organizing! It actually happened.

Well hey there.

So, long ago it was Christmas break, and I wanted to do some organizing around this dang house! (You can go back and read this blog post if you want a refresher on my many plans for the break, but I'm going to say most of it anyways.) Some of the things I wanted to do and did do was organize all of our closets and make a trip to DI. That, I did! It took a long time to get those closets clean... And it made our second bedroom a mess! I believe I have some pictures, too....

Here's our office when we first moved in:

So here is the office after Christmas.... after buying our crib for super cheap....

By the by, with the crib there, we couldn't even fit our chair at the desk. Problem? I think yes.

Sad to say, this isn't even the office at its worst. Another big problem with the office was that I would put our mail on the desk and forget about it. Somehow we still paid our cell phone bill on time? It was something that needed to change.

So, over Christmas break, not only did I have to clean out the closets, but I had to somehow fit our baby's stuff into that room. See our second bedroom is also our office, or nursery, our music room, our linen closet, our second closet for our clothes that overflow, and a place to house some random things. The most important functions for that room, though, are the office and the nursery. So, somehow we had to fit the furniture we needed in there, and the decorator/organizer in me wanted to have a semi cute room! A huge downfall of the adorable organizing blogs that I read and of Pinterest is that it makes me want to have beautiful rooms that are super cute, and between the room in our home and our bank account, that's out of the question. So, I had to make do!

Oh! But on the plus side, Jed got me for Christmas $30 toward decorations from IKEA for the desk! What a great Christmas present, right? I wanted to make a cute desk just like my favorite blog: http://iheartorganizing.blogspot.com/ . Click here to see my inspiration for my office! You have to scroll down a lot.... but what I wanted for my desk was a mail station and the cute pencil cup storage.

Well, on passed Christmas break (and like I said, I DID actually clean out the closets), on passed February, and I still did nothing. The things we got from Ikea sat on the floor. Life was busy! The one thing we did was switch the desk and the crib, which worked a lot better! Also, for Christmas I was given a lovely glider rocker from my in-laws, so we were fortunate enough to sell our old recliner on KSL and we got to replace it with a beautiful recliner. So, my desire for a cute coordinated office was slightly closer. All the wood in my office has a slightly cherry color.

Then came my lovely bed rest..... And I was SO lucky that the Saturday before I had done a ton of organizing of my office supplies and the Monday before was President's day and we had taken the opportunity to get some things from Target and organize a bit. Thank goodness I didn't procrastinate any longer than that! So the day after I was put on bed rest, Jed was amazing enough to make me feel better by hanging all my IKEA stuff! So by the time I was on bed rest, I was lucky enough to have almost everything organized! Whew!

So here is the thing that is my pride and joy from my Monday purchases/organizing: my itso modular storage. You buy one cube at a time and they connect. Then, you can buy shelves to snap in, wheels if you want it to be mobile, even doors to cover the cubes. LOVE it! You can buy these things at Target. So, here's what we put together:

Our 5 cubes we put together

 Here are the trays/shelves we bought to organize all our baby things:

Don't you just love this storage? Modular storage that is deep enough to store things like a bin of toys and our diaper bags, but nice and neat and put away. I love it to death. Plus, when we move, we can set it up differently if need be. I love that.

So the next and biggest step that I had been dreading was this: organize my files. I had so many papers to go through... so many.... I knew a lot of the paper I had needed to be tossed. I also had a lot of papers I knew was important, but I didn't know why or what to do with it! In comes: my mom. I asked her to come help me for several reasons: I was on bed rest, so I was bored and didn't want to overdo anything; she is extremely knowledgeable when it comes to running a home and finances; and last, if I scheduled a time to do it, it would have to be done!

In the days before, and I mean days, I did a little at a time. I didn't want to overdo, because physically I didn't want to cheat on my bed rest, and mentally, it made me feel better to not have hours of paper work to have to tackle!

I threw out tons of paper, tons. Once I knew that the rest of the papers I had were worthy of saving, I made these:

You can't see it, but what I did was took my husband's sketch pad because the papers were extra big, and I put categories on each, things like finances, insurance/medical things, job stuff, and even a "not sure what to do with but I know I need it" category. Then I put all my papers into their respective category. This made it so much easier for my mom to look at the papers for me, and if I had done it one my own, I could have easily put my papers in my filing box from there.

Speaking of my filing box... I prepped that for my mom, too!

Yes, terribly exciting, I know.

So, my mom came, and brought her LABEL MAKER with her! I love label makers. I hope to get one for Christmas or a birthday someday. It is a blessed thing. So, with my mom's help, we went through the categories, created a label for the hanging file folders, and then labeled some manila folders to further organize the papers. Oh it felt so good! AND because I had pre-categorized my papers, I was able to go lay down part way through when my good friends Sam and Evan came to visit me, but she was able to keep organizing! Awesome. So here is my beautiful filing box:

Nice and full and organized! I will never again have to search for important papers. Also, as I get important things (like work done on our car, insurance, taxes), I have a place for them! It feels wonderful.

I also made my mail station!

You can't really see what we labeled them, but we labeled the folders "To Do ASAP," "To Do," "To File," and "Coupons." So now, when I get mail, I will go through it THAT SAME DAY and then I can throw away things, put them in the folder of things I need to do now, sometime soon, or to file away. Now the paper won't clutter our desk!

I also now have a place to put receipts! We keep this in the mail station:

So do you want to see the whole product??!!

Here it is!

This cute caddy my mother made. Everything you need to change a diaper, right there!

Here's the desk! My pride and joy.

And here's a closer look...

These just stick to the desk, so you can keep your cords up on the desk and not have to worry about them falling behind!

This you may recognize from the iHeart Organizing blog. I love this way of organizing all my pens and pencils!

Notice how neat the labels look? LABEL MAKER!

So now everything has a place in our desk! It feels sooo good! It's great, too, because now when Jed or I need to find something, either we can look for just a minute and find it because I labeled most everything, or I can direct him to it because I know where everything is now! Also, I feel just a little better because I have a cute desk. I can't have my dream office with perfectly coordinated stuff and I can't have my dream nursery with adorable decorations, but I can get a little piece of it!

Hope you enjoy seeing my life become organized as much as I enjoy it. I have a feeling I will be referring to this blog post a lot, just to see the wonderful progress!

Have a great week!

Tracking the Baby Bump: Week 35

Can you believe I started doing this at week 15? What a difference 20 weeks makes!

Here I am at 15 weeks

26 Weeks

Today at 35 Weeks!

So there we have it. I'm looking pretty big, right?

Baby Stats:

Height: 20 ish inches
Weight: 5 1/2 ish pounds
If he were a fruit, he would be a: honeydew melon

So you would think I wouldn't have had an exciting week, right? Well you're right, being on bed rest has been rather boring. But not terrible!

I visited the doctor's office 5 times this week! Monday and Thursday for my non-stress test, Wednesday to pick up the 24-hour urine test kit, Thursday to drop off the 24 hour test, and then again on Thursday because I didn't realized I had to get my blood drawn when I dropped off the test. Whew! So many times.... This week I hope to only go twice, and then the next week I'll be going a ton of times. The nice thing is, with all these visits, I get the reassurance that the baby is doing great! The tests have all gone well, though my blood pressure went a little up, but my resting heart rate was still in a safe range, so it should be okay for now.

What else? Well I did lots of organizing on my work computer so that it would be nice and cleaned up for my long term sub to use, as well as a lot on my own computer. My email is very organized! Ha ha it was probably a strange thing for me to do, but you really can only look on Pinterest and Facebook for so long.... I seriously look at both those and my Google Reader at least 5 times a day, probably more. I should start tracking it. I'm discovering a few more blogs every few days, generally through Pinterest, so those help give me a little something new.

I also did lots of organizing with my office papers! I did it in several sessions, all of them sitting down, and watched some great tv shows and movies so that I was nice and relaxed the whole time! Plus, my mom came over and was a great help. Jed also was great, because he did all the moving of the papers and throwing away of the huge piles of paper I threw out. But that is going to be saved for another post! But that was something I looked forward to every day, even though it took up an insignificant part of my day, it was great to have something different and something where I wasn't laying down but was sitting up.

I don't know if it's because of all the laying down or if it's growing pains/round ligament pain, but I've had some annoying pain down in my pelvic area. Keeping a pillow between my legs helps, but I definitely have to shift from side to side or being really propped up by pillows so I can "lay down" on my back so that my hips don't hurt too much.

One of the funnest things of this week is that the baby started hiccuping! I always wondered if the baby was hiccuping and I never noticed, because around 28 or 29 weeks is when I heard I should be able to feel hiccups, and I never did! But this week, I have felt him hiccup almost every day. It's been fun to feel, and it feels nice to know he is doing what he's supposed to!

So, last, I think my baby may have dropped! Or he's on his way down. My friend Natalie as well as Jed both say that it looks like my belly is a little lower and not as round, but looks like it's hanging a little. I feel like he's a bit lower, because I definitely feel a lot of pressure on my bladder.... Ha ha today I had some troubles walking because he was definitely settled on my bladder. So, I read that your baby can drop soon before you deliver to weeks before, and considering I'm at 35 weeks, it is probably weeks, but it's still exciting that there are some small indications that things are getting closer!

I have to say, this week I got really excited for the baby to come. I just can't wait! I'm excited to be able to hold him, feed him, and all that jazz. I know it won't be easy, but I'm getting excited to just start figuring this parenting thing out! I'm such a planner, so I just plan and think things over and over until I can finally act on all of my plans. So, I'm excited for the point when I can finally act on all this planning, even though I know it will be hard! It's going to be great though.

So, another week down, and about 5 more to go!