and then there were four…

Today I am 37 weeks pregnant. According to my Babycenter.com weekly email, my baby is full term and “weighs 6 1/3 pounds and measures a bit over 19 inches, head to heel.”

Do I even have to tell you that I’m not carrying your average-sized baby?

According to my doctor, (at Tuesday’s appointment), he said he would estimate that my baby “weighs close to 8 3/4 pounds”. Which, coincidentally is pretty much what Olivia weighed at birth (and I think she was born at 36 weeks, 6 days). So, this means that this child is bigger than average, and will likely be bigger than Olivia–even if I had him or her right at this very minute.

I’m 2 centimeters dilated, the baby is posterior (which means he/she is facing up which also means I will have back labor if the baby remains face up). Blood pressure is good, and I am retaining water. As for the retaining water thing: the nurse said that this just means that everything is gearing up for delivery. Building up of amniotic fluid/blood supply is how it was described to me. If I do not have this baby by Monday’s appointment, I am hoping he decides to induce labor, ONLY because this child is gearing up to be really big and I really really don’t want to have a c-section. The idea of surgery scares me. While I will do anything to make sure this baby is born healthy, if I can push him/her out, I would really prefer that option. We’ll see. If my doctor doesn’t feel induction is necessary, I trust him and pray I have the pelvis to push out a huge baby.

I’m exhausted. Our air conditioning is giving us problems, so not only am I exhausted, but I am hot too. I have to pee every 10 minutes, I’m chasing after an (almost) 21 month old, and I’m trying to keep this place from being declared a natural disaster area. No one expects me to clean house, mind you, but I am nesting. For some reason, having a clean kitchen keeps me a bit calmer when everything else is so chaotic.

Overall, I am excited to meet this baby. Scared and nervous, sure, but really happy. We still haven’t decided on a middle name for a little girl, but if we need one, we’ll figure that out, right?

I had a doctor’s appointment today, where he had the results of my 3-hour blood glucose test. I passed! Apparently one of the levels were slightly elevated, but not enough to fail the test. Woohoo! No gestational diabetes for me! I also had a negative Group B Strep test, which is a good thing. I have maintained a pretty decent weight gain, and I am measuring 3 centimeters larger than average. The nurse explained that it isn’t always indicative of a large baby, it could mean lots of amniotic fluid. However, when I explained that I was feeling the baby all the way up where she was measuring, she smiled and said “well you probably have a big baby then” or something to that effect. The doctor also told me the recent finger pain I have been feeling in my pinkie (I didn’t injure it, it just started hurting like crazy) was pregnancy related and would likely go away when I delivered if it didn’t before.

I asked him what the likelihood of delivering early was, considering Olivia was almost 3 1/2 weeks early and close to 9 lbs. He chuckled and said “they usually follow the same pattern as the first”. I like that he doesn’t even attempt to give me a straight yes or no, because that wasn’t really what I wanted, I wanted exactly what he gave me: the likelihood of it happening again, or if the first time was just a fluke. I don’t have another appointment for two weeks, so unless I go into labor naturally between now and then, this baby will stay put. After that, if I am dilating again (as I did around the same time with Olivia) maybe we’ll discuss our options.

I’m not rushing this baby. I want to meet him or her and I can’t wait for all of the things that go along with it, however, I’m still a bit nervous about having two and how to manage and juggle both babies at once. I’m still not quite mentally prepared for that, and perhaps won’t be until the baby is actually here and I am put into the situation. I also need to buy a few more things, and I am wanting to clean and organize a bit more (much to the chagrin of my husband, I’m sure). I will say this: when the baby is ready, I’ll be ready. I have to be, right?

• Olivia can count to ten, and recognizes each of the numbers when she sees them. She often likes to skip 5 numbers and counts “1, 2, 8, 9, 10!” but if we can get her to “3″ she will go all the way through. It often helps if we say the number after her also.
• She knows the entire alphabet, aside from one letter: she constantly calls a “V” a “Y”–which is understandable, they look alike. But she can point them out in her book and knows what each of them are. We are working on the ABC song, which she loves to hear me sing, and she knows where a few of the letters are in relation to the others. Hell, I’m just thrilled that at 20 months old she knows the letters. Seems amazing to me!
• Her vocabulary is extensive. She picks up everything and really is a little sponge. You have to be careful what you say around her because she will (and does) repeat everything.
• She still loves her ‘duglors’ and has learned to draw circles and what looks like a little stick figure.
• Related: she knows all of her colors. She had some trouble with brown and purple, but she seems to have worked those out. Sometimes she says the wrong color and we will say ‘noooo’ and she laughs and then tells us the right color. She actually does that with a lot of things, almost as if she wants to get caught saying the wrong thing.
• She adores being read to, and sitting by herself and ‘reading’. She often completes sentences when we are reading certain books (Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? is just one that is a favorite). She gets super-excited when I pull out a ‘new’ book (one I have put away for awhile or one that I picked up at this FANTASTIC used bookstore where everything is $1) and gasps with delight. We still have problems with her smuggling crayons off of her coloring blanket and scribbling in some of her books, but…it doesn’t stop her from wanting to read them.
• The child has amazing eyesight. She points out things that I have to squint to see across a store, the house, etc. I’m constantly amazed at what she sees and shares with us, because I probably would have passed it by.
• I finally got her to eat broccoli. I called them ‘trees’ and she gobbled them up on two different occasions. We’ll see how long that lasts. She hates for her food to be cut up and prefers to eat her sandwiches like we do, or a slice of pizza whole. We try to cut up everything that poses a choking threat, but mainly we let her do her own ‘big girl’ thing. She’s still a messy spoon-user, she often turns it around right as it is touching her mouth, and dropping a portion of her food down the front of her bib.
• She loves Bert from Sesame Street. She is fascinated by him. It’s always “BERT!” and then (almost as an afterthought) “Ernie”. What can I say? Her daddy is a tall, lanky geeky guy. She got it honest.
• She loves hats. She is constantly putting her hats on her head and parading around out here with them on her head. She loves wearing her daddy’s baseball caps (backwards) and is doing so right now as she lays on the floor coloring. Very cute.
• Every time the phone rings she runs to it and says “MEME” (Which is what she calls my mom). I’ll ask her if she wants to talk to MeMe and she says yes, but as soon as she gets the phone, she will clam up or only say a few words. However, if no one is on the other line she chatters happily.
• She often asks for “music” and wants to listen to her Baby Einstein DVDs/CDs. She gets really excited and dances around saying “MUSIC!”.

Okay, that’s all for now. I just thought it would be fun to drop you into the world of Olivia. She’s a fascinating little girl. I’m one proud/lucky/happy mama.

I finally replaced my missing photo album. I’m just awaiting the moment when I uncover the original.

Boy is that gonna be a pisser. Luckily Snapfish had free shipping and I had pre-ordered prints left, so it didn’t feel like it was that expensive to replace, but: it was the PRINCIPLE!

I went on Friday morning for my 3-hour blood glucose test to rule out gestational diabetes. They really should have explained that it was more like a 5-hour test, but it’s over with and I’ll have the results by my doctor’s appointment on Tuesday.

My appointment was scheduled for 8 a.m. I was not supposed to eat or drink that morning, and bring a big bottle of water with me. I had to go to the hospital’s outpatient blood lab to have the test administered, so I was told to check in with Admitting/Registration at the front of the hospital. I arrived at 7:45 a.m., to make sure I had plenty of time to check-in and go to the lab for my 8 a.m. test.

Luckily, Bill decided to take the day off and dropped me off at the hospital so we didn’t have to keep Olivia there for the duration. I went to admitting, gave them my paperwork and one lady wrote my name down on a list and handed my paperwork back to me. She told me to have a seat in the waiting room because there were people ahead of me. Okay, no problem, right? It’s a HUGE hospital, with lots of admitting clerks, and I had seen at least four or five milling around, it couldn’t take that long, right?

Cut to 45 minutes later. There were 4 or 5 people ahead of me when I first sat down and it has taken this long for them to call me in. It took 15 or so minutes for me to get registered. There was lots of signing and paperwork, plus the woman was actually nice enough to pre-register me for the labor/delivery portion of this pregnancy. One less thing I will have to worry about when Labor Day arrives.

By the time I got to the lab it was 8:45. I signed in and the really nice gentleman came out to take me to the lab. I apologized and explained that I actually HAD been there on time, but they didn’t admit me until just then. He rolled his eyes, chuckled and said “what else is new?” He was super nice though, and I remembered him from when we had to have Olivia’s blood drawn when she had jaundice, and we just talked while he drew the first vile of blood. He actually stated to me that he didn’t understand why my Doctor had sent me to have the test done, because my results weren’t REALLY all that elevated, but in all actuality I’m sure it is better to be safe than sorry, and of course, the doctor has to cover himself in case there was a problem and he hadn’t checked it out. The test was a cakewalk in comparison to the bed rest and hospital stay I experienced while pregnant with Olivia.

Apparently the first vile they draw is to get a ‘fasting’ blood sugar level. It took 35-45 minutes for him to process this blood, during which time I was waiting in the lab’s waiting room reading (I had come very prepared: 2 novels, my Nintendo DS, the Ipod, paper, pens, etc…). He came out and told me that my fasting blood sugar level was 84, which was WONDERFUL (his words) and that meant my child wouldn’t suffer from juvenile diabetes. By this time it was about 9:45. He handed me a 100 gram bottle of this really sickly sweet drink (the same one I was given when I had the screening test) and I drank it down. It seemed to be much more intense this time, and I mentioned that, and he said “look at the bottle” so I look and realize that the last time they had given me a 50 gram bottle. I had to drink double the amount. As soon as I was done he said, “Okay, now you can have your water”. Smart man.

After I drank the glucose drink, I had to wait an hour until the next vile of blood would be drawn. He handed me a schedule: 10:50, 11:50, 12:50 were the times he had written on it. “Just come on back to the lab at these times, this is your test schedule.

Seriously? Why do they say it is a 3-hour test? It’s really a 4-hour test, and if admitting takes forever, (as they did in my case) you end up being stuck in a waiting room for close to 5 hours. I waited, got a lot of my book read, listened to a lot of music, played a few games and people-watched. Oh yeah, and went to the bathroom more times than I can count. It wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t my ideal way of spending a Friday.

When the test was close to being over, I called Bill to let him know when he could pick me up. He asked me “Do you want me to bring you some food?” Oh, how I love that man. I told him he could probably bring me some twigs and moss and I would eat it, I was so hungry. I had no preference, whatever he wanted would be spectacular. I hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before, and it was going on 1 p.m.

Close to 18 hours of fasting later I had tacos from Taco Bell. It was doubly delightful because I had been craving Taco Bell for about a week, and he remembered. Only one of the reasons why he is the best husband in the world.