I want to second Lyle's comment about the great job mom and dad did with throwing the shower weekend before last. It went great. Thanks to everyone who could make it and thanks for all of the great presents!
As Lyle also mentioned the doctor's appt for 28 weeks went well. Blood pressure, blood sugar, baby heart rate were all perfect. I finally found out what the pinching in my upper abdomen was about. Ends up one of the nerves that runs from your abdomen up can run through your ribs. When that happens (and you are pregnant) your abdomen will stretch that nerve against your ribs causing a pinching or burning pain on one side. It's harmless and there's not a darn thing they can do about it. So basically I have to deal with it :-) So far I've been able to figure out that it hurts more in some positions than others; so it's been okay as long as I am careful.
I am constantly amazed at how big my abdomen can get. It just gets bigger and bigger. This incited a shopping trip to the MOA on Friday to Old Navy. They had maternity stuff on sale and I now have several bigger shirts. You know they say to buy maternity clothes in your prematernity size?? Well there is not a medium maternity shirt in existence that covers the bottom of my belly. So on to large it is. At least I got to buy more clothes :-)
I have actually been feeling a lot better lately. I think some of it is because I am not worried about the aches and pains I was having after talking to the doctor. The other thing is that if Keegan were born today he would have a very good change of living a normal life; after some time in intensive care. I told him yesterday it would be nice if he stayed put for a couple more months though.
Keegan has also started kicking/elbowing/headbutting with great gusto. Sometimes he hits me so hard it makes me jump a bit. This has created a great new pastime where I can watch my stomach as it undulates back and forth. It's a bit weird and alien-like, but neat all the same. I've got to imagine that both Lyle and mom and dad are sick of me going..."oh, did you see that" or "oh, he's kicking again". You would think the novelty would wear off with time but it's still exciting! Yesterday morning Keegan was very quiet and it worried me a bit; but late afternoon he started moving a ton again. Then to make up for the morning he was very active all night. I think it's the first night where his movements have kept my up a good portion of the night. At least he is moving!
Anyway, I have a meeting to go to so I am going to end this post. Doctor's appt every two weeks now; so that should be interesting.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Another shower! more gifts!!
I want to thank anyone reading this for your baby shower gifts! We really appreciate the gifts that we have received, and we have gotten quite a few gifts. We had our second baby shower Sunday at the In-laws house, and they did a fabulous job of throwing a party! This one was for family as we decided that it never seems to work out great when mixing family with friends. We did it a couple of times, and found that we didn't have enough time to talk to both sets of people, and since they for the most part stayed separate, it didn't really make sense. Now we can look forward to a nice relaxing week, that will be short because of Thanksgiving. Also I can look forward to catching my Cornchukers play on Friday! They should be the pants off of Colorado, but you never know what might happen.
Other than all the shower stuff that went on, we had the 28 week appointment this week, which I was sadly unable to attend. I had a different doctor's appointment that I needed to go to. Everything tested out fine for the appointment. They checked the glucose level and it was normal, so no diabetes from pregnancy on this one, at least not thus far. Also the belly is now 29 centimeters from pelvic bone to belly button. Supposedly the length (in centimeters) is suppose to be in line with the weeks of pregnancy. Ever wonder how that kind of stuff turns out to be true? I sure do. Sadly I digress. So everything with the pregnancy is turning out good at this point. I have heard some grumbling about the weight, and the joint issues that are going along with the whole thing, but there is nothing that can be done about that. Amazingly you have to gain weight while pregnant... who would have guessed ;).
That is about all that is happening right now. We are looking forward to meeting Keagan when he finally decides to grace us with his presence, but sadly that is not suppose to happen for another couple of months. Thanksgiving and Christmas here we come ;).
Have a Happy Thanksgiving Y'all
Other than all the shower stuff that went on, we had the 28 week appointment this week, which I was sadly unable to attend. I had a different doctor's appointment that I needed to go to. Everything tested out fine for the appointment. They checked the glucose level and it was normal, so no diabetes from pregnancy on this one, at least not thus far. Also the belly is now 29 centimeters from pelvic bone to belly button. Supposedly the length (in centimeters) is suppose to be in line with the weeks of pregnancy. Ever wonder how that kind of stuff turns out to be true? I sure do. Sadly I digress. So everything with the pregnancy is turning out good at this point. I have heard some grumbling about the weight, and the joint issues that are going along with the whole thing, but there is nothing that can be done about that. Amazingly you have to gain weight while pregnant... who would have guessed ;).
That is about all that is happening right now. We are looking forward to meeting Keagan when he finally decides to grace us with his presence, but sadly that is not suppose to happen for another couple of months. Thanksgiving and Christmas here we come ;).
Have a Happy Thanksgiving Y'all
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
I'm babied out
After this weekend I am just plain babied out! We had birthing preparation class Fri night for 3 hrs and then Sat for 8 hrs. We went from there to Michelle's baby shower. Then on Sunday we had a baby shower with our friends for Lyle and I!
Class went very well. The teacher was great; she had the perfect mix of a good sense of humor, great experience, and provided emotional as well as technical knowledge. She touched on alternative methods of help for labor and birthing as well as traditional methods without pushing her opinion of either on the group. It was a great class. My favorite part was practicing the relaxation methods; I also liked when they had the spouses practice hand/back massage for assistance during labor. My least favorite part was watching the 6-7 birthing videos we watched. Seeing those women in so much pain with their husbands trying to help them was just stressful. I am not sure why; at least I wasn't the only woman upset by it. A few of the women cried through those parts of the video. Luckily we did the relaxation exercises after watching the videos so that helped. The amount of information was staggering and very overwhelming. Lyle and I left the class a bit wide-eyed and very tired.
A couple other good things about the class is that we toured the birth center and it is very nice. Lyle was ecstatic that they have wireless in the delivery room :-) Also I am not absolutely terrified of the possibility of needing a C-section anymore. I was really worried that they cut through your stomach muscles for that, but they don't. Weird the things that bother you.
Michelle's baby shower was fun. Liam was very cute and very quiet the whole time we were there. Cate threw a great baby shower for Lyle and I . We had fun with the games. We played a game where we had 80's TV or movie characters on our backs. This was a great ice breaker game for the people that didn't know each other that well. Also made me wish I had actually watched some TV back in the 80's :-) The food was great and Lyle and I got lots of awesome gifts for Keegan. Thanks to everyone that attended!
Lyle has been really great about tolerating my slowness and just in general laziness (I suppose I should just say tiredness). He has also been watching out for me because I seem to be operating on about half a brain most of the time. I do things like start water boiling and then leave; put my car keys strange places; and struggle to unlock the door getting back into the house. Not to mention the general clumsiness. I drop everything; which is horrible because then I have to reach all the way down to the floor to pick it up. A lot of times I drop things and then stare at Lyle, in what I hope is a helpless and pleading way, until he picks it up for me :-)
As for Keegan. I can feel him a bit better everyday. In one of my meetings yesterday Keegan and I played a game. I would push on my stomach and he would kick back at me. It really made the meeting go quit a bit faster. Last night a bit of weirdness happened where something was stabbing me in the abdomen. I reached down to rub it and hit something very boney that quickly moved when I pushed on it. I swear is had to be Keegan's heel or something. That was just creepy. I mean I know I've been feeling him moving but to feel body parts through my stomach is just darn strange. So things continue to be interesting.
Well, that's it for me. I have to finish up my lunch and then get back to work. Not sure when Lyle is going to do another entry...I think he must be taking a blog vacation for a couple weeks here...
Class went very well. The teacher was great; she had the perfect mix of a good sense of humor, great experience, and provided emotional as well as technical knowledge. She touched on alternative methods of help for labor and birthing as well as traditional methods without pushing her opinion of either on the group. It was a great class. My favorite part was practicing the relaxation methods; I also liked when they had the spouses practice hand/back massage for assistance during labor. My least favorite part was watching the 6-7 birthing videos we watched. Seeing those women in so much pain with their husbands trying to help them was just stressful. I am not sure why; at least I wasn't the only woman upset by it. A few of the women cried through those parts of the video. Luckily we did the relaxation exercises after watching the videos so that helped. The amount of information was staggering and very overwhelming. Lyle and I left the class a bit wide-eyed and very tired.
A couple other good things about the class is that we toured the birth center and it is very nice. Lyle was ecstatic that they have wireless in the delivery room :-) Also I am not absolutely terrified of the possibility of needing a C-section anymore. I was really worried that they cut through your stomach muscles for that, but they don't. Weird the things that bother you.
Michelle's baby shower was fun. Liam was very cute and very quiet the whole time we were there. Cate threw a great baby shower for Lyle and I . We had fun with the games. We played a game where we had 80's TV or movie characters on our backs. This was a great ice breaker game for the people that didn't know each other that well. Also made me wish I had actually watched some TV back in the 80's :-) The food was great and Lyle and I got lots of awesome gifts for Keegan. Thanks to everyone that attended!
Lyle has been really great about tolerating my slowness and just in general laziness (I suppose I should just say tiredness). He has also been watching out for me because I seem to be operating on about half a brain most of the time. I do things like start water boiling and then leave; put my car keys strange places; and struggle to unlock the door getting back into the house. Not to mention the general clumsiness. I drop everything; which is horrible because then I have to reach all the way down to the floor to pick it up. A lot of times I drop things and then stare at Lyle, in what I hope is a helpless and pleading way, until he picks it up for me :-)
As for Keegan. I can feel him a bit better everyday. In one of my meetings yesterday Keegan and I played a game. I would push on my stomach and he would kick back at me. It really made the meeting go quit a bit faster. Last night a bit of weirdness happened where something was stabbing me in the abdomen. I reached down to rub it and hit something very boney that quickly moved when I pushed on it. I swear is had to be Keegan's heel or something. That was just creepy. I mean I know I've been feeling him moving but to feel body parts through my stomach is just darn strange. So things continue to be interesting.
Well, that's it for me. I have to finish up my lunch and then get back to work. Not sure when Lyle is going to do another entry...I think he must be taking a blog vacation for a couple weeks here...
Friday, November 10, 2006
Classes...again
I have a few minutes here before I need to be somewhere else so I thought I would write a quick note.
Tonight and all day tomorrow; Lyle and I have birthing preparation class. This is the grandaddy of all classes and is *the* class that everyone is supposed to go through. I pulled out the registration sheet just to make sure that we knew when we had to get there etc, etc. Ends up there are a few items we need to bring with us. We need to bring two pillows and either an exercise mat or a couple of blankets. Lyle and I looked at each other quizzically and wondered; exactly what would we be doing in this class. Lyle said "what type of blankets?" I said "To me this means I will be on the floor at some point so I suggest thick blankets." And that was that. So I am excited to see how this class goes. Maybe a little bit nervous too; I have these strange visions of us doing pregnant crabwalk races across the classroom as part of the bonding for this class.
As for general stuff; the baby shower that Cate is throwing for us and our friends is on Sun and I am excited about that. Michelle and Nick are having their baby shower tomorrow night; so we will definitely be busy this weekend!
As for me...I have been having good pregnancy days and bad ones. Like last night I slept great and feel great this morning. Night before last I hardly slept a wink and felt like hell warmed over when I got up. I was sore, had a headache, and was just in general cranky. So far the biggest problems I've been having is sore hip joints (of and on) and this pinching in my upper abdomen. The pinching seems to come on if I eat too much; so I've been working on moderating my meal sizes. I will take to the doctor about it in a week when I go in again. Other than that Keegan has been very active. Sometimes he regularly kicks up a storm; other times it's just little pokes and prods. Funny thing is that rather than feeling just movement in my very lowest abdomen; I am started to feel movement up higher too! Sometimes both at the same time. Anyway, sometimes I just like to go lay down and feel him moving around. Lyle is finally getting used to this :-) The first couple of times he walked into the bedroom and was like "what are you doing?" I don't think he is used to me sitting still for no reason. I have been finding it's very nice to just sit sometimes....
Ah well more about class after we go through it!
Tonight and all day tomorrow; Lyle and I have birthing preparation class. This is the grandaddy of all classes and is *the* class that everyone is supposed to go through. I pulled out the registration sheet just to make sure that we knew when we had to get there etc, etc. Ends up there are a few items we need to bring with us. We need to bring two pillows and either an exercise mat or a couple of blankets. Lyle and I looked at each other quizzically and wondered; exactly what would we be doing in this class. Lyle said "what type of blankets?" I said "To me this means I will be on the floor at some point so I suggest thick blankets." And that was that. So I am excited to see how this class goes. Maybe a little bit nervous too; I have these strange visions of us doing pregnant crabwalk races across the classroom as part of the bonding for this class.
As for general stuff; the baby shower that Cate is throwing for us and our friends is on Sun and I am excited about that. Michelle and Nick are having their baby shower tomorrow night; so we will definitely be busy this weekend!
As for me...I have been having good pregnancy days and bad ones. Like last night I slept great and feel great this morning. Night before last I hardly slept a wink and felt like hell warmed over when I got up. I was sore, had a headache, and was just in general cranky. So far the biggest problems I've been having is sore hip joints (of and on) and this pinching in my upper abdomen. The pinching seems to come on if I eat too much; so I've been working on moderating my meal sizes. I will take to the doctor about it in a week when I go in again. Other than that Keegan has been very active. Sometimes he regularly kicks up a storm; other times it's just little pokes and prods. Funny thing is that rather than feeling just movement in my very lowest abdomen; I am started to feel movement up higher too! Sometimes both at the same time. Anyway, sometimes I just like to go lay down and feel him moving around. Lyle is finally getting used to this :-) The first couple of times he walked into the bedroom and was like "what are you doing?" I don't think he is used to me sitting still for no reason. I have been finding it's very nice to just sit sometimes....
Ah well more about class after we go through it!
Monday, November 06, 2006
Another class and car seats
We had another class this weekend. It was called "All about babies". It was a very long class that went from 9-1:30 on Saturday. Lyle and I were thinking this would cover things like how to put a diaper on a baby, how often to bathe a baby, illnesses a baby might have, feeding...stuff like that. Well ends up the first two on the list were covered in excruiciating detail. In fact I think that we spent around an hour learning to bathe the baby. This covered really helpful things like "clean the baby's face with the washcloth before you clean off their butt" and "don't submerge the baby fully under water". With numerous disclaimers by the RN teaching that if your doctor tells you to do otherwise you should always follow that advice.
The other 3 hrs of the class was spend on discussing household safety and interaction with your child. For safety this included things like "don't leave the baby alone balanced on top of the changing table", "don't leave the child alone in the bathroom with the toilet open" (drowning hazard), and "don't leave live electrical wires within the child's reach". Very helpful let me tell you; as if any individual with slight common sense couldn't figure this out.
The interaction portion of the class talked about positive reinforcement for your child. So further down the road if child tries to help put away the dishes, you should always thank them and not fix what they do; even if they put the tupperware on the bottom of the dishwasher. This was not popular with Lyle who has a thing for dishwasher efficiency. He spoke up about this; saying in a much more polite way that this was just plain silly. He thought you should thank the child and then show them how to do it right. This led to the teacher being a bit cranky with us. Next came discussion of what would you do if the child helped fold the towels and not only folded them wrong but put them away incorrectly. The teacher said Lyle would have a problem with this. To which Lyle replied "Nope, but my wife would". To which the teacher asked me "what would you do Karissa?" I said I would refold the towels and resort them. I like my towels in color order and neatly stacked. Wow, wrong answer there.... After this she began to discuss how your house should look like a kid has taken over; this is healthy. For example she personally is a Gma and has 3 washbaskets full of toys all over her living room. Which led Lyle and I to discuss (quietly amoungst ourselves) how maybe she should invest in some sort of toy storage system like the cute toy bin organizer we built in the baby's room...
Okay enough about this; as you can see the class was *very* educational (insert sarcasm here) and we were definitely disappointed. Next weekend we have birthing class and we hope that class will actually involve some sort of solid factual basis.
The only other thing that this class brought up was car seat safety. We found out the last car seat safety session of the year in Nov. 8th. So on Sunday we worked on assembling the travel system that Gma and Gpa R kindly bought us. It really wasn't that tough. Although we came to a solid understanding of why you don't uninstall the carseat base once it's installed. The base is not an easy thing to install. So now I am driving around with a car seat base in my car. I guess it's something to get used to. The travel system itself went together very easy and should be great to use. The thing is very sturdy and looks like it could "offroad" pretty darn well. The infant carrier is awesome but pretty darn heavy. I know my girlfriends had mentioned a great increase in upper body strength while carrying around an infant carrier; I now understand why. So Lyle and I wanted to put a shout out saying "thank you" to Gma and Gpa R for the wonderful travel system. It's awesome!
The other 3 hrs of the class was spend on discussing household safety and interaction with your child. For safety this included things like "don't leave the baby alone balanced on top of the changing table", "don't leave the child alone in the bathroom with the toilet open" (drowning hazard), and "don't leave live electrical wires within the child's reach". Very helpful let me tell you; as if any individual with slight common sense couldn't figure this out.
The interaction portion of the class talked about positive reinforcement for your child. So further down the road if child tries to help put away the dishes, you should always thank them and not fix what they do; even if they put the tupperware on the bottom of the dishwasher. This was not popular with Lyle who has a thing for dishwasher efficiency. He spoke up about this; saying in a much more polite way that this was just plain silly. He thought you should thank the child and then show them how to do it right. This led to the teacher being a bit cranky with us. Next came discussion of what would you do if the child helped fold the towels and not only folded them wrong but put them away incorrectly. The teacher said Lyle would have a problem with this. To which Lyle replied "Nope, but my wife would". To which the teacher asked me "what would you do Karissa?" I said I would refold the towels and resort them. I like my towels in color order and neatly stacked. Wow, wrong answer there.... After this she began to discuss how your house should look like a kid has taken over; this is healthy. For example she personally is a Gma and has 3 washbaskets full of toys all over her living room. Which led Lyle and I to discuss (quietly amoungst ourselves) how maybe she should invest in some sort of toy storage system like the cute toy bin organizer we built in the baby's room...
Okay enough about this; as you can see the class was *very* educational (insert sarcasm here) and we were definitely disappointed. Next weekend we have birthing class and we hope that class will actually involve some sort of solid factual basis.
The only other thing that this class brought up was car seat safety. We found out the last car seat safety session of the year in Nov. 8th. So on Sunday we worked on assembling the travel system that Gma and Gpa R kindly bought us. It really wasn't that tough. Although we came to a solid understanding of why you don't uninstall the carseat base once it's installed. The base is not an easy thing to install. So now I am driving around with a car seat base in my car. I guess it's something to get used to. The travel system itself went together very easy and should be great to use. The thing is very sturdy and looks like it could "offroad" pretty darn well. The infant carrier is awesome but pretty darn heavy. I know my girlfriends had mentioned a great increase in upper body strength while carrying around an infant carrier; I now understand why. So Lyle and I wanted to put a shout out saying "thank you" to Gma and Gpa R for the wonderful travel system. It's awesome!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
