I'm trying so hard to enjoy these last few (hopefully) days of pregnancy, but it's just so hard.  This last 2 weeks have been insanely stressful, so on top of all of the third trimester discomforts of pregnancy, I am also completely stressed out.


It all started the weekend after Thanksgiving, I could barely stay out of bed on Saturday and Sunday, I chalked this up to being 37 weeks pregnant and exhausted.  I was literally out of bed for 2 hours, in bed for 2 hours all weekend long.  I woke up Sunday night/Monday morning with a bit of a scratchy throat, went to work on Monday and felt like crap the whole day.  I ended up going to After Hours care after work and found out that I had strep throat - so I stayed home Tuesday to take meds, be non-contagious and try to get some rest. 


Wednesday I had my weekly Dr. appointment to check on baby.  At the checkup Macy's heart rate was 175 and going as high as 195 - my doctor had been concerned with her fast heart rate the previous few visits, but it was always within the normal range, so she didn't take any further action, but 175-195 was definitely fast.  My doctor said "I am going to make a few phone calls, you are going to go to the hospital tonight to have the baby monitored.  Bring your bags with, if things aren't looking good you will be induced tonight.  If things are ok you will be going in for a Biophysical profile and Non-Stress Test tomorrow.  Either way you are not going to work tomorrow." So now I had Thursday off work too.  I sent Joe a text while I was waiting for the doctor to make calls - I said pack a bag for Kara, we are going to the hospital tonight.  Once I got home I frantically threw together a bag for me and a bag for Macy, luckily I had started to accumulate piles of things for our hospital bags, so I at least had a general idea of what to pack and where it was. 


We sat at the hospital to be monitored for about 2 - 2.5 hours.  Macy's heart rate was fast the whole time, it got up to about 210 for a period of time.  While I was hooked up to the monitors they also did some labs, I'm not 100% sure what they were checking for with the labs, but they all came back negative.. so that's good...  They also gave me a liter of fluid, I think mostly in preparation of possibly inducing me.  In the end we were sent home and the constant appointments began. 


Thursday, December 1st I had my first Biophysical Profile and Non-Stress Test, which I had to go back to the hospital for, because of course there were no appointments available at the clinic down the road from my house (with free parking).  At the BPP it was discovered that my amniotic fluid level was low (more stress...). My level was at 5.9cm - I later discovered that 5cm to 25cm is considered normal, and if you get to 5cm they will induce you immediately.  Other than the low fluid the BPP went perfectly, they have 30 mins to do the ultrasound and check for certain things, they saw everything they needed within the first 3 mins, so baby seemed fine!  The NST went fine as well.  Baby's heart rate was still high, but they were seeing the accelerations and decelerations that they wanted to see and everything else seemed perfectly fine, and I got sent home once again.


Over the weekend I developed this horrible itch all over my body, no rash or anything, just insanely itchy.  It got worse overnight, to the point that I couldn't sleep - the palms of my hands and the bottoms of my feet itched like crazy, it was not cool, and of course nothing that I tried did anything to help.  Put in a call to the on-call doctor, and they suggested I see my doctor first thing Monday morning.  So I rescheduled my Wednesday evening appt for an early morning appt on Monday.  On Monday I went in, my blood pressure was high, baby's heart rate was still high, I was still itchy, but the doctor explained that they were not concerned with the BPP and NSTs other than the low fluid.. so they would now be monitoring my fluid levels very closely.  My doctor also told me she wanted me to be done working, mostly cause of the stress level I was feeling, but I told her I couldn't be off work until I was closer to my due date.  I couldn't afford to take off two weeks before my due date and have the possibility of going overdue.  At that time she told me that she can't see me making it to my due date, that she thought that I would have to be induced within the next week and a half due to the fluid levels, but of course she couldn't make any guarantees...  Oh yeah, and she also told me that she would be out of state from Thursday thru Tuesday.... She missed Kara's birth because she was on vacation!


Tuesday, December 6th I got to go back to the hospital for another BPP and NST.  Fluid level was at 7.4 and the NST was fine again, so once again, I was sent home. 


Thursday, December 8th I was back to the hospital again.  During the BPP they couldn't find much fluid at first, like 3.5cm at most.  The lady doing the ultrasound asked if I had brought my bags with me and said that it wasn't looking very promising that I would be leaving the hospital.  Well, guess what, she found another pocket of fluid that measured about 3.5cm, so that put me at 7cm...ugh!  The NST went fine, baby did what they needed her to do right away, and once again I was sent home. 


As you can imagine all of these extra appointments have been very draining on me, psychically, mentally, they have me very stressed out.  It's very hard to try to work full time and manage these appointments in the middle of the day.  I ended up having to use quite a bit of sick time, which also stressed me out cause it was cutting into my paid time that I would get for maternity leave.  But I decided that Friday, December 9th would be my last day of work - I needed to take something off my plate.  I am hoping that Macy decides to arrive in the next week so that I don't have to take more than a week off work before she's here.  


I get to go back to the hospital bright and early tomorrow morning for another BPP and NST - I am SO hoping that they will just keep me this time and let me have my dang baby!  If things are fine, I see my doctor on Wednesday evening... at which point I will beg, cry, do whatever I need to do to make her induce me!!!!  


When I was pregnant with Kara I didn't mind being overdue, I worked past my due date, and I was for the most part pretty happy - at least approachable ;)  This time around things are very, very different.  I cannot wait to be done, and hopefully we don't have to wait too much longer!  

And a few pictures...

I finally got around to adding Macy's name to the quilt that I made for her (and I also recently discovered that my husband doesn't care for Mae as a middle name...so yeah, we are trying to find a new middle name!)

Kara went to see Santa yesterday!  I was pretty shocked when she decided that she wanted to wear her dress and picked out a cute little clip to put in her hair!  When we got to the mall to see Santa we had to wait in line for about 45 mins.  Of course the two kids in front of us threw huge fits and were screaming and crying, so I thought we were doomed... but Kara still sat on Santa's lap and even told him that she wanted a firetruck with glitter on it!  She let us take a few different pictures, sat there and talked to him, it was adorable!

One last thing - my amazing sister in law took some maternity pics for us when I was 36 weeks along.  I wasn't sure that I wanted maternity pics, but I figure this will be my last time being pregnant, and at some point in my life I will miss it and I should probably have some pics.  Here is the link to the full album, and below are a few of my favs!

The Countdown Has Begun!!

29 days and counting until baby Macy is due!!  These last fifteen seven months feel like they have gone by really fast, but it also feels like I have been pregnant FOREVER!  Only 4 more weeks to go though.. I can do it!

This pregnancy has been pretty non-eventful.  My last couple of visits Macy's heart rate has been kind of fast, but it's still within the normal range, so nothing to worry about.  I have started to prepare Kara's room to be a room for two.  Kara wants to play with everything that we get or take out though - she likes to be a mommy to all her little stuffed animals, so all the tiny stuff for Macy has become accessories for Kara's babies.  Which is totally ok with me at this point, I just hope we don't have a struggle when Macy is born and we need to take all these things back from Kara... 

Like we don't have enough on our plates trying to get ready for a new baby in our house right around the busiest time of year.... we now get to do a total remodel of our downstairs bathroom!  Joe had noticed that the toilet was leaking water, he thought it just needed a new seal at the base of the toilet - well guess what, he was wrong... water had leaked under the tiles, so he had to pull up all the tiles and take out the vanity.  Our bathroom looks a little like this:

Pretty, huh?  Joe took the day off work today to deal with this.. lucky him!  He bought new tile last night, so hopefully we will have a nice, new, unleaky bathroom soon!

A few other random thoughts:

Kara was Scooby Doo for Halloween - isn't she adorable??

MY child picked out a DRESS to wear for pictures.... willingly.. it was actually her idea!!

Now the challenge is to get her to wear it for pictures and have her cooperate

for pictures.  I think she can do it!

And, how cute are these matching I <3 Santa shirts I got for the girls??

I have to hope that Macy doesn't come too late, otherwise she may not be here in time for Christmas, but I'm still planning on having her early, so it's all good.

I really truly cannot wait to be done being pregnant.  I can't wait to stop having crazy cravings, I'm totally over the hip and sciatic nerve pain, I want to see Macy, I want to start running again, I want to do the 30 day Shred again, and I want to have a dang beer already!!

Oh My Growing Belly! continued...

I have all these pictures on my phone that I never do anything with, so how bout a quick blog post! 

First is this collage that I already shared weeks 10 - 20...

 

And now weeks 25 - 31... 

As of Saturday, October 22nd I am 32 weeks pregnant!  How crazy is that?  Can't believe little Macy will be here in approximately 54 days!  Which also means that Christmas is in 62 days - are you ready??

One more pic... here is Macy from an ultrasound that my sister gave me last Friday.  She is getting so big!  Look at her cute lil profile!  <3 her

I have reached the point in my pregnancy where I CANNOT sleep. no. matter. what.  I'm not a fan of this, as I really enjoy sleeping.  The other day I had a new record of non-sleep - I slept a whole 3 hours and then was wide awake.  Really?  3 hours?  What person, pregnant or not, can function off 3 hours of sleep?  I'm also pretty much exhausted all day every day.  I try cleaning or organizing the house and after a few hours I am just too sore to do anything else.  I'm ready to get my non-pregnant body back.  I keep thinking I want to go exercise or go for a run or something, and then I walk a block, or up a flight of stairs and I am reminded why I haven't been exercising.. I am out of breath and tired instantly!  So yeah, I'm over this being pregnant thing!


Kara loves her baby sister and is ready for her to be born any day now.  She keeps saying things like "the baby told me she wants to come out and play now".  It's pretty cute, I hope Kara is this enthusiastic about her sister once she is actually born :)

A Big Week In The Lien Household

 This past week has been pretty serious business in our house, but all good, positive things.

1st - Kara has been sucky (pacifier) free for 3 full days/nights now!  So freakin proud of her - this has been a huge, huge, huge battle in our house!  We have been working at getting rid of it since she was about 18 months old, but we've never been successful. 

Finally on Tuesday she threw a major fit over wanting her sucky right after dinner, and when I say major fit, I mean MAJOR fit.  She got put on time out and after 10 minutes of her still kicking, screaming, etc I set my timer for 2 minutes and told her that she had 2 minutes to calm down or her sucky was going away forever.  During the 2 minutes I reminded her a few times that she was making a choice, and if she didn't calm down her sucky was going away....  The 2 minutes passed and she was still throwing a massive fit, so I brought her to her room to put her to bed, even though it was at least an hour before bedtime.  Once we got to her room the tantrum got even worse.  She started throwing everything she could find, hitting, pushing, screaming, you get the picture.... We left her room for awhile and let her just do her thing, once she started kicking her door incredibly hard I decided it was time to go back in.  I went in and tried talking to her, all she wanted to do was leave her room.  So, I set the timer again and told her she had 2 minutes to calm down and then she could go out in the living room with us.  I finally got her to settle down a bit and give Joe and I hugs and tell us that she was sorry for behaving that way, so I let her come out in the living room with us. 

While we were out there I reminded her that she had made a choice and her sucky was gone, she did the little thing where her bottom lip sticks out and kind of quivers, but she seemed to understand that the sucky was gone and was not coming back.. It broke my heart a little, but I knew that we needed to stay strong and NOT GIVE IT BACK (and we had also lost 2 suckys that night somehow, so even if we wanted to give her one, we couldn't have... )  Kara asked if the Sucky Fairy had come to take her sucky - The Sucky Fairy is someone we made up awhile ago while talking about the Tooth Fairy.  I told Kara that the Sucky Fairy comes to visit when she has decided that you are a big girl and don't need your sucky any longer, she then takes the suckys and brings them to babies who need them.  Kara seemed to really buy into this idea, so I told her that the Sucky Fairy did come to take her suckys. 

We sat up and read some books and then we were off to bed.  I got Kara ready for bed, read her a couple more books and layed her down.  She didn't once ask for her sucky!  She did so good that first night, I was so, so proud!  To encourage her to continue to do well on the second night, I stopped at Target and bought her a little gift from the Sucky Fairy - this is also something that we had previously talked about, the Sucky Fairy leaves a gift in exchange for your suckys.  I left the gift hanging on her door knob to her room with a little card from the Sucky Fairy congratulating her on being such a big girl.  Night #2 was also a success with no crying or asking for the sucky.  We have now made it 3 full nights without ANY crying or asking for her sucky - THIS IS HUGE!!  Granted bedtime has been extended by about 2.5 hours of stall tactics, but ya know, I will deal with this for a few weeks as long as the sucky is gone!

Now that I wrote a novel about that, lets move on to thing #2...

Thing #2 - At 3 years, 2 months and 12 days old Kara got her first haircut!!  I started talking to her about getting her hair cut about a week before we actually got it done. I told her all about the hair salon and how they would have cool chairs, and she got to wear a cape and they had a tv for her to watch while she got her haircut.  I tried to psych her up for it as much as I could.  I told her that we would only get a few inches cut off, so that it wouldn't be that different, and she told me that she wanted to have short hair like daddy... of course, that's what she wants!  Too bad I'm the mommy and I decide how much hair will be cut off :)  I was really scared that if we got too much cut off that we would lose all of her curls, and I don't think I could handle that.  So it was just a little trim and some long layers to help keep the curls.  Kara did so good, she cried when we first got there, but after a couple of minutes she was smiling and really enjoying herself. 

Here is a before pic:  Look how long her hair was!!

And a during pic - once she finally started to enjoy herself!

 Here is the after pic - not very good since you can't see the length in the back, I'll work on getting a better pic!

Thing #3 - I had my monthly doctor visit on Wednesday night.  Everything looks good and little Macy seems to be growing right on track.  This appointment marks my last monthly appointment.  I will now go in every 2 weeks!  AHHH!!  How did that happen?  Even though I found out I was pregnant at 4 weeks along, time really seems to be moving fast!  Before I know it the weekly appointments will start and then Macy will be here and it will be Christmas - this is your reminder that Christmas is just over 2 months away! 

I really hope time can slow down a bit so that we can have some time to prepare our house for the new baby... we still have a long way to go! 

Getting My Sh*t Together

Pinterest has inspired me to organize my house.  If you don't know what Pinterest is, I highly suggest you check it out, if you like being inspired then Pinterest is for you!  Let me know if you need an invite!

Our house is so cluttered with crap that it is never clean.  Everywhere you look there is a pile of clothes, toys, mail, craft supplies, tools, you name it - we probably have a pile for it, and I'm not proud of this.  We don't have a big house by any means, but we do have lots of closet space.  Closet space that is currently not used very wisely.  But Pinterest has shown me smart ways to organize my closets, like using an over the door shoe holder to store things like gloves, umbrellas, hats, etc... use a clear one so that you can easily see what's in each pouch.

I think that Kara and Macy's room will be the first to get the organization overhaul.  We just moved a twin sized bed into their room, which basically took away all floor space...the dresser is now in the closet. 

I'll be sure to post some before and after pics of what I am doing.  And I AM COMMITTED TO DOING THIS!!! I'm hoping my crazy need for nesting kicks in soon, then I'll be really motivated!

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