Countdown: 10

That's right!!! The new title to my weekly posts will be countdown, and we start at 10: just 10 weeks left until the expected arrival of our much awaited little man, Jackson Scott Smith. I mentioned this before, but I say we have 10 weeks but really, we have 7-10 weeks because who knows if he'll decided to be early! But hopefully not any earlier than that. But regardless, 10 weeks is amazing. We had a hunch that there was a baby on board at just about 5 weeks, so for 25 weeks we've known and been waiting for our little one. It's been a LONG 25 weeks, counting up to this point. And we are finally ready to start to countdown. With the school semester winding down, and baby shower invites out, I'm expecting everything to start setting in mentally very soon. And then I say... let the cleaning begin. Justin thinks I've been nesting all along, but I assure him I have not been. But I'm anticipated that will come very soon too. So anyway, here's how things have laid out:

I've actually been sick since last Tuesday, but I'm pretty sure it's an allergy thing. I wake up hacking up lots of mucus and phlegm and blowing my nose. I haven't had a voice upon waking up at all in the past week. Things progressively get better throughout the day and then in the late afternoon/early evening it all comes crashing down again with sheer exhaustion and a bad sore throat. I know I've had this before, it just sucks to have it now. But hopefully it will be gone before finals.

With that said, I was sick all day Thursday and Friday (during my exam) and then I spent my Friday night putting a poster together for my group project. UGH!!! But I got it done. (It wasn't due until today so I give myself MAJOR credit for getting it done early AND on my own). On Saturday we relaxed all morning (I laid in the sun for a little bit) and then we both worked on Saturday night. This went okay until my sore throat started kicking in. My feet also felt like lead, but that has since subsided. On Sunday Justin worked at the Federal Hill Festival on Cross Street downtown. For him this meant a day checking ID's in the hot sun, but he's worked it before and it's pretty decent money. I slept in because I was still sick and feeling like crap. When I finally did get up, I took my time getting my day started and when I finally ventured out, I visited my dad and watched some of the O's game with him. It was offered to me to go to the game with some friends, and after watching, I wish I would have. It was a great game to be at Camden Yards. I then visited my mom and then joined Justin at the Fed Hill Festival. I wanted to stop by to pay him a visit and to see what it was all about: my account of it was that it was WAY too crowded and hot for me to be there. I just don't understand the concept of ALL those people crowding on one small street to stand around (practically shoulder to shoulder) just to drink beer. I'd honestly rather go to a friend's house, lounge around and relax and drink then be there all hot and sweaty and bumping into people It just doesn't make sense. But I celebrated being there with a funnel cake and some lemonade :D THAT was worth the visit. Then it was off to work for me!

On Monday I had my evening clinical. I'm still sick at this point and don't have a voice, yet I still managed to get the difficult patient: a 2 yr old with a trach, a pacemaker, acute renal failure and a slew of other problems. It was very sad to see all the tubes and wires he was hooked up to and how tired he would get just from us having to move him around to give him his meds, suction his trach and do some other things. He seems like such a sweet little boy and unfortunately those tubes and wires is all he'll ever know. But this is the stuff I have to get used to. It ended up actually being a very boring night because the morning group gave him his bath and changed his trach, which apparantly takes a LONG time to do both, but I'll be lucky enough to experience that tomorrow morning since I'll have him again. Speaking of tomorrow morning. We decided that tomorrow would be our official last clinical day for the semester, and, instead of going to clinical Monday, we'd go as a group to the Cheesecake Factory! Fine by me :)

Anyhow, that brings me to today. I woke up very early (5:30) even though I didn't go to bed until 12, because I was coughing and blowing my nose. Seems to be how I wake up every hour these days. I decided to just stay awake since I had to be up early anyhow. Today was Scholarship Day at school so basically all nursing students go to this and listen to teachers and speakers talk about the NCLEX exam and their nursing experience. Then they give out scholarships. I of course didn't get one because I didn't apply. Unfortunately all the applications were due around exam or paper time and I've been sick a couple times already so I just wasn't able to take extra time to write essays and try to find references. Oh well. Anyhow, a portion of the day was set aside for our Poster presentations. Last year the speakers were the ones who walked around to observe the posters and ask questions, but this year the students did it, and it was pointless. Most didn't care to even look at the posters and nobody except for our research teacher asked us questions. All that hard poster work for nothing. The real presentation that counts for a grade is next Tuesday, but still, the poster isn't part of the grade. Oh well. Anyhow, a lot of the speakers used to talk about the nursing shortage and what a great field nursing was. But this year they talked about the fact that nursing is still a great field and will be in HIGH demand again very soon, but pretty much there's a job freeze for nurses because of the economy. Nurses that were going to retire can no longer afford to, nurses who did retire came back, and so on and so forth. This is not good news for us, but hopefully things will change soon. There's also a lot of issues with our summer practicum which I want to get done as soon as school ends, but the person in charge is having trouble even finding hospitals to accept nursing students this summer. Hopefully that works out sooner than later though because I'd hate to have to wait until August to do this.

After scholarship day was over, I had lunch with Julie, made a quick walmart run for scar cream and cocoa butter (for my ever expanding stretch marks which have indeed become my LEAST favorite thing about pregnancy) and then it was off to my night class. I successfully slept through half of that though because I decided to take a benadryl right before class started. Oh Well. At least I gave the professor a heads up in the beginning of class.

So two interesting things. In the other half of my class (the group who finished Peds and are now taking psyc, which I took the first half) there's another girl who is pregnant. She's maybe a month behind me but she has this perfect round basketball shaped belly. She's much taller than me, but I'm slightly envious. Then, in my night class there's a girl who's only two weeks behind me (if that) and she barely looks 20 weeks pregnant. I'm not quite as envious of her because weight is an issue for her.. she's just naturally very thin and tends to lose weight when stressed and her doctors have identified the need for her to gain more weight. But it's just interesting to see how three people very close in gestation are sooooo different.

Anyway.. without further adieu, here are some pictures:

This is 29 weeks!

And a LOVELY view of my hideous stretch marks!

This was today at 30 weeks. Me and two classmates in front of our poster

Melissa and I today at Scholarship Day.

And one of my BEST friends from middle school who is a semester behind me in the Nursing Program at Towson. (Also at scholarship day)

This was tonight as I was typing the blog!

And Justin and I celebrating the start of our countdown with a quiet night at home!

And, just for fun, here I am at 10 weeks.....

... and again at 20 weeks...

And once again at 30 weeks!!!!

Goodnight!

My son's future!

Sorry.. no pics yet. But I thought it was important to share that I've decided that Jackson WILL be a soccer player someday. I swear to you, it felt like he was kicking a soccer ball against my side today. It didn't feel like feet, more like a miniature ball (of course I don't know what feet feel like yet). And it didn't hurt. It was just really funny to watch AND see. But of course as soon as I reach for my phone and flip it to video, he stops. What a character.

And.... Justin's grandmother decided that he will be a Preacher as well. He LOVES church. Every time Pastor Paul is talking, he's bouncing and moving away. He was even pretty active when we went to Justin's parents church for Easter where Justin's grandma got to feel him going nuts in there. I don't know what it is, but the kid loves it!

So there it is. My son will be a future Soccer playing Preacher! How about that!?!?

Victory. 29

I had every intention of posting this on Tuesday, but after a long day of working on my group project at school, I came home feeling like crap, and it just progressed throughout the night. It started with that phlegmy taste in my mouth, then a sore throat, then itchy ears. UGH! So I thought maybe I was getting the throat infection Justin just got over. Anyhow, needless to say, I didn't feel like doing much of anything, including updating.

So I once again stayed home from clinical today. I woke up around 1 am and my throat was really sore so I reached for the throat lozenges. I was able to sleep until about 5 am. At this point it was acid reflux time along with hacking up mucous and blowing my nose... oh.. and peeing! So I finally got back to sleep and slept until probably 10:30/11am. It was definitely much needed. I still woke up feeling like crap, but at this point my headache had gone away (thanks to my 5 am tylenol). I had plans of calling the doc if I started with a fever or if the sore throat got worse. But no fever, and the sore throat got a little better and then just kind of stayed the same throughout the day. After my shower I felt a lot better and was able to get some laundry and cleaning done. I guess around 8 pm tonight is when I started feeling crappy again, but definitely not as bad as last night. So I'm attributing this much un-welcome illness to weather change and I'm hoping it will be gone as quickly as it came.

Anyhow. I had mentioned in my previous post that we finally met Maeby. Bert and Laura were finally able to bring her home from the NICU on Sunday, so we stopped by after church. She is incredibly adorable! She was wide awake just about the whole time we were there and she even kept up with the baby tradition of letting a load of gas out while I held her. I must bring it on somehow. Anyway. We are extremely happy that they finally have their family complete and we are thrilled to have been able to share that special day with them.

In other news. Monday was just another typical Monday. I had my night clinical at Mt. Washington, but this time I was able to observe the first floor, which has mostly the older peds kids. The design of that unit was pretty awesome, but the chaos of the floor (and 2 and six year olds running around constantly) was not appealing, ha ha. It's so much easier to deal with infants confined to their crib and swing than 2 year olds who have so much energy and nowhere to get it out except for running around the unit. Observing that floor also made me wish some people chose not to have kids. To see some of the injuries and burns that were, as the charts stated, "NON- accidental" meaning their parents inflicted them on the kids on purpose, was just not something that's easy to deal with. It's just kid after kid in foster care or awarded to the state and it's just a really sad thing to see. While I'm enjoying my pediatric rotation, I'm not so sure it's the path that's right for me. I think I would have a really hard time leaving my feelings out of work and not bringing work home with me.

Anyhow, I already talked about my Tuesday.. but I left out the part about Tuesday being my official 29 week day. It's crazy to think that I only have 11 week lefts, and even crazier to think that it really means I only have somewhere between 7-11 weeks to go. 30 weeks is quickly approaching and then I'll begin my 10 week countdown. I can't wait.

Today, while trying to get all my dates lined up, I managed to finally get ahold of St.Joe's to sign up for the infant care class. Justin and I will be taking this class (a two day class) on May 28th and June 4th. A little later than I had hoped but it was all they had available. The lady adamantly tried to get me to sign up for the birthing class as well (where they teach you all the relaxation techniques and what not) but I'm not sure that we will do that one. Mainly because we really don't have much time and because it's so freakin expensive. I also failed to mention to her that I'm a nursing student and learned a lot of this stuff last semester in OB, so I'm not really sure that, even though I'm a first timer, I really need to spend 85 plus dollars on a class that's just going to reiterate what I've learned. I'd rather just get into the baby care class so justin can get some experience in there. I'm also opting out of the breastfeeding class, despite the fact that I have every intentions of using that as my main feeding form. I followed the lactation specialist around last semester and learned a lot from doing so and if i took the class, it would be with her so I'd be hearing much of the same I've already heard. Besides, she comes around to all the moms after they deliver anyway, so what's the point of spending the money yet again.

Anyway. that's my week thus far. I'm off tomorrow to study all day and then I have yet another exam on Friday.. then more group work. And then Justin and I will both be working our weekends away so that we can do it all over on Monday. We then have our 30 week visit with the doc next thursday followed by our meeting with the pediatrician later in the day and hopefully some picture taking too ;)

I did take pictures this week, by the way. In fact, I took them today, BUT I'm ready for bed so I'll try to get them up here tomorrow. Until then...

Mini Update

It's kind of late for a real update, but I just thought I'd mention that we are officially in the 70's! Just 78 days until Jackson's debut.

I also wanted to mention that our friends Bert and Laura and their daughter Mackenzie brought their new little one, Delaney Mae, home today. Justin and I got to share in that excitement with them. I'll update more on it later this week (maybe on time on Tuesday... maybe!) But I just wanted to throw that in and wish them luck and prayers for their first night home! Congratulations Rode Family!!

Victory. 28

So it's again few days late but I figured since I had a doctor's appointment today, I would wait to update.

I'll start with the weekend. This past weekend Justin was sick again, as I mentioned on the last update, so he didn't work Friday or Saturday. But I worked Saturday and didn't get to bed until 4 Am. Yuck. But needless to say, we woke up early Sunday morning, as it was Easter, and headed to my parents house for breakfast. There my mom gave me some more stuff that she made for the baby, like Thomas the Train shorts, Mickey Mouse shorts, and another stuffed book (Humpty Dumpty this time). After breakfast, we headed off to Churchville to go to church with Justin's parents. They were becomming members of their church that day hence the reason why we skipped the Easter service at Abbott. After church we went back to their house, where some more of the family later joined us for Easter dinner that Justin's dad cooked. While the family played games, I slept on the couch (being 28 weeks pregnant and ONLY sleeping 3 hours does not go together well). We got some more goodies for Jackson there, like some bowls, Jackson's first Saw (It's actually a book but it's shaped like a saw... Justin's dad has been doing a lot of woodshopping lately which is the significance of the book), some disposable bags for diapers, Justin's old book of Peter Rabbit, and of course Justin's Christening outfit that jackson will wear if it fits. Jackson also got a bunny that dances when you press his ear. His collection of toys is definitely growing. We ended the night by taking Justin's grandmother home and coming home to our boys to get some much needed sleep! I was hoping that Jackson would be very active on Easter so both sides of the family could feel him, but I guess because of my lack of sleep, he was also pretty sleepy, so he didn't move once while we were at my parents. But, once we got to church he was on a roll, so Justin's grandmother got to feel one kick.. and just one before he got shy again! Maybe everyone will just have to come to church to feel him for now on. h a ha.

On Monday I had clinical again. My patient was a very big 3 1/2 month old with big eyes. He is definitely very cute and eats A LOT. He was pretty easy to take care of, as not too much was going on, but I did get to see something new. Some babies develop with the intestines and sometimes other organs not forming inside of their abdominal cavity. So when they're born, their intestines are outside of their body. This requires surgery to put the organs back in place and to cover the area over. Well, my patient was born with this condition and I assume he had the surgery pretty early on. But on his stomach he had a huge lump that was pretty much healed, but where his intestines were still too large to fit. I read that when the intestines are exposed to amniotic fluid for so long, they swell and don't always fit perfectly back in the abdomen. Eventually with growth his intestines will probably go back in and you won't be able to notice it much, but it was definitely pretty neat to see.

Also on Monday we heard the news that our friends Laura and Bert had their little girl, Delaney Mae Rode. They were expecting to be induced later in the week (I think today) but Delaney decided to come on her own. Unfortunately Delaney has had a little trouble adjusting to the outside world, so she's been in the NICU since shortly after she was born. Bert and Laura expect her to stay there a few more days, but they update their blog frequently and it seems as though little Maeby is coming along very well. I plan to stop by tomorrow to drop some food off to Bert, Laura, and big sister Mackenzie, but we all are anxiously waiting until we can meet the new little addition to their family. We are definitely keeping her and the rest of our family in our prayers.

Tuesday was just another Tuesday... which for me is a long day of school, but it marked me officially at 28 weeks. On Wednesday I had clinical and took care of the same patient. This time he was a little more irritable than before and he managed to christen me with my first large poop from one of my patients. It was definitely very gross, but I managed. I was also given my first opportunity to give a patient a vaccine injection. It was in her thigh, and it was pretty easy to give, but she definitely was not a happy baby afterwards. Later that night Justin and i worked the Black label society/Sevendust show at Ramshead. We got off work around 2 Am and decided to go out for food with some of the other bartenders at Sip N' Bite in Canton. It was pretty crowded for being a small place and we had to wait a while. But we finally got to eat and had a good time. Jackson even decided to be social and one of the bartenders, Krysta, got to feel him. It's so cute how excited she is for us. She said she goes into baby sections all the time now! ha ha. And if anyone remembers, she bought us a very cute, soft baby blanket pretty early on so I'm glad Jackson finally said thank you! Anyhow, the food was very tasty, but man was it late. It was probably 4:30 before I actually went to bed. Yikes!!! We won't be doing that too much!

Today was my day off from school, but I had a doctor's appointment this morning. Once again they didn't say anything about my glucose test, so I'm still assuming I passed. One big thing that happened though had to do with the scale. :( I stepped on and didn't like what I saw too much... and the sad part is, neither did the doctor. Apparantly I gained more than I should have this month and he didn't seem too happy about it. So he told me to watch what I eat and limit my salt. The funny thing is I don't really eat THAT much. I'm really thinking that maybe jackson's gonna be a big baby. I sure hope that's the reason for the weight gain, ha ha. But anyhow, I'll be watching what I eat for now on. Despite that, everything else was fine. The heartbeat was fine, my blood pressure was great! and I assume I'm measuring right on. For now on, thought, I'll be seeing the doctor every two weeks until 36 weeks I think, and then I see him every week. That's crazy for me because it means everything is getting so close. Two weeks tends to fly by A LOT faster than 4 weeks so I know the last 2 1/2 months are going to seem pretty quick. The Doctor also gave me a paper about when to call and when to go to Labor and Delivery. Most of the paper talks about signs of pre-term labor but there's a small part that talks about when to call in the last month and about counting kicks and contractions and what not. This is difficult for me actually because I don't always feel him. In fact I don't feel him more than I do feel him. I think it has to do with my placenta still, but he's just not a regularly active baby. Or he is and I can't tell. So they say if I'm not feeling him, I should try eating and that after eating or right before bed I should feel him ten times in one hour. I don't know that I ever feel him that much, except when we're in church (apparantly he LOVES church) so I really don't know what to do here. I think, just because of all this, I'm going to go ahead and hang onto our doppler heart monitor just to be on the safe side. I go back to the doctor on the 30th I believe, and later that day Justin and I go to meet with the Pediatrician, which I'm kind of excited about because I've heard lots of good things about the practice. Apparantly Rob and Sharon take Lucas there and if I remember correctly, it was recommended to them by our other friends Stacie and Dustin (they take their son Ian there). Jackson won't have the same primary pediatrician that they use, but it will be in the same practice and location. Tomorrow I'm going to try to set up for Justin and I to take an infant care class at St. Joe's and I'd also like to try to hop on a tour of GBMC just in case we have to go there. Anyway.. we ended our night with a huge making of lasagna which was wonderfully delicious and now I have a paper to write :(

It's been a pretty busy week so far and it will continue on that way. Justin has to work tomorrow and I'll be doing school stuff and stuff with my mom. On Saturday we're heading to Cecil County to celebrate my niece's 13th birthday ( which is actually pretty frightening that she's 13 already) and we'll end the weekend with church on Sunday and maybe work for me.

Monday will kick off a busy couple of weeks with the first of my last three projects/papers due. Then I have two weeks of back to back presentations and exams. UGH. School ends in mid may for me (which will be here before I know it) and my sister graduates on May 16th from her grad program at Frostburg (which Justin and I will be making the trip for). She graduated from Frostburg last year with her undergrad degree in Biology and she immediately started her master's program for a degree in education. So pretty soon she'll be teaching. The next day is her graduation party. Then I get about a week or so off before I start my practicum: I have to follow a nurse around for 80 hours (so roughly 2-3 weeks). I'm really hoping I'll get a pediatric or labor and delivery rotation and I'm hoping even more than that that I will be at St. Joe's just in case Jackson tries to come early. Then we get to celebrate our little one the first week in June with our baby shower at my brother's house. And maybe a week or so later I will start my summer class online (which should be a breeze). And then FINALLY, before we know it, it will be Jackson's turn to make his debut and our family will be complete (for a good 2 to 3 years). I really can't wait, and while I want things to slow down a little, I'm also ready to fast forward everything.

Anyhow. here are my 28 week pictures with my new wonderful camera. Just 12 more weeks to go!!!

The two scars on the next picture are the enter and exit holes of my belly button piercing that I got a few years ago. I haven't worn it in forever because the hole didn't heal well, but it definitely didn't mind stretching.

Oh, and this finaly picture is my ever disappearing belly button. I used to have a very deep belly button but NOT anymore. I have a feeling that very soon I may have an outtie!

The writing's on the wall:

That's right. I finally put the letters on the wall above the crib. It definitely took many tries to get them almost right... and in the end, I settled with almost right. A few are a little too close together but overall, it's not too bad for a 1 woman job. (Oh.. and here's that better picture of the cube shelf I was talking about.

In other news, yesterday Justin got his new phone finally. He settled with the Motorolla Krave. It's a flip phone but the top part is hard see through plastic and the phone part is all touch screen... no buttons. When you close the phone the see through part also acts as a touch screen unless you lock it. I thought this would be convenient for him: when he's at work, he the hard plastic will protect the screen. AND.. because the earpiece is in the hard plastic, when he's talking it will fit his head better than the smaller dare or voyager, which is what I have. I must say it's a pretty spiffy phone.

In still other news, Justin wasn't feeling well at work today. So my dad and sister took me to SSA so I could drive him home. We stopped by Doc Express (which we both really liked by the way) and the doc said Justin has a throat infection basically. He gave us information on pharyngitis (which says it can spread through the family.. hopefully not) and he gave Justin a prescription for the Z-pack.... which I call the miracle antibiotic because it works so well, so quickly. We're both thankful it's not another round of the flu, but we're both holding our breaths until he's better to make sure I don't get it.

Other than that, there's not much of an update since yesterday. Enjoy the pics!

Victory. 27

Okay, so it's two days late, but hey.. can you blame me much! I'll have to keep it short though so I can get back to studying.

Since last thursday we've had a few things worth mentioning. For one, I still haven't heard from the doctor about the glucose test, so I'm going with the "No news is good news" thing. We'll see. This weekend was kind of another busy weekend. I can't remember completely everything we did, ha ha, BUT I can remember that Laura's baby shower was on Sunday. It was a very nice tea party theme and she got a lot of good things. It was a gorgeous day for a shower and I can only hope that mine turns out just as nice. I also found out that Laura will be induced a roughly a week to two weeks early, so we'll be getting to meet Maeby around the 16th. Yay!! I also got to meet baby Anna, who was the first baby that I mentioned that was born to someone at church. She is incredibly cute and sooo tiny. But her mom, Kristen, gave birth naturally, no pain meds, and she's a pretty tiny girl, so I'm holding her as my inspiration for now.

On Monday I woke up extremely early with the taste of vomit in my mouth and the smell of it in my nose. I hadn't gotten sick, but man my reflux was so crazy I couldn't stand it. I eventually got up and got ready for my two o'clock clinical, but decided there was no way I could function so I stayed home. I really felt like crap allll day! And jackson didn't really care because he continously did flips the whole day. ha ha. Anyway. Justin took off work that day to go to the bars by Camden Yards with some friends for Opening Day. He said he had a blast, despite not actually going to the game, which I might add probably would have been an AWESOME Opening Day to see (the O's beating the Yanks!! GO O'S). I eventually started feeling better around 6pm (a good 12 hours after I first woke up) so I headed out to get a new camera!!! I'm super excited about it and can't wait to use it with Jackson. Anyhow, here's my team spirit for Opening Day sporting my new Roberts jersey shirt that Justin bought me :)

Tuesday was officially 27 weeks. Yet another week closer (and only 13 more to go.. but I'll let him come in 11 if he wants!!). Anyhow, on Tuesday I had a LONG day of school (2 hours early just to get parking) which didn't end until 6pm for me. Then Justin and I headed out to dinner with his family to celebrate his cousin Maggie's 18th birthday. It was a very nice dinner and very weird for Justin to realize that his little cousin is 18 now. Unfortunately for me, that was my first day of serious discomfort. I could only fit half of my meal in my squished stomach, and even after only half a meal I was physically miserable. I didn't feel better until I came home and laid down for bed.. at 10:45 mind you. I'm hoping that I don't have too many days like that, but I'm pretty sure that the discomfort only gets worse from here.

On Wednesday I had my morning clinical (at 6:45 am, ugh) but it was pretty okay. I had a very sleepy baby who didn't need too much care, especially since her mom was there for a good part of the day. She was very cute though and, like the other baby I had, she had tons of hair. I did get to suction for the first time though, even though it was only her stuffy nose (but i'm sure she was thankful for that once she could breathe better again). Another one of the girls had a premie baby that was only about a month old and she was born at just 28 weeks. She was sooo tiny and so cute. But for me it was interesting to see what Jackson will look like in about a month (since she was born just one week past where I am with Jackson). It was also interesting to see the size she is now and to try to imagine fitting her in my belly. Even though it's getting much bigger now, it's still crazy to think that an entire full term baby will be in there in 11-13 weeks. Yikes. Bring on the discomfort.

Finally, there's today. Not too much exciting going on today though. I have an exam in pediatric nursing tomorrow so I've been studying all day and will continue to do so until well into the night (until I pass out on the couch I'm sure). BUT I would like to add that we are now in the 80's count down range. As my baby widget shows, we have just 89 days until the expected arrival of our little Jackson. I think when we hit fifty, I'm going to make a paper countdown pad so Justin and i can rip a page off everyday... just to make things even more exciting.

Anyhow, that's my update. And here's my 27 week pictures, my new hair cut, and the cube shelf in the nursery. I took better pictures of the cube on the new camera so maybe eventually I'll switch them out. Have a good weekend.

New Hair:

The Cube Shelf

27 weeks!

Hair, Cubes, Glucose, oh my!

First I'll go for the glucose! That's right. this past thursday I had my 1 hour glucose test. I had to take it at lab corp and because I was so tired I didn't wake up until about an hour before I wanted to be there. So that took care of the food thing. I was told to eat light by my doctor, so i had a few handfuls of peanuts and some water before I want. When I got there it took a good 20 minutes to even have my name called... who would have thought Lab Corp would be so busy on a Thursday morning. Well then I told the receptionist that I was there for the glucose test and she pulled out this tropicana sized bottle of red stuff. I was kind of horrified because it was more than I was expecting to have to drink. She told me I had five minutes to drink it. So I sat down, read that it was the "fruit punch" flavored one, and started drinking. And suprisingly, it was not that bad. It tasted like normal ole' regular fruit punch, just a little bit sweeter. I ended up drinking it in about 1 minute. Then the waiting began. You have to wait for an hour, no food or drink (including water) before your blood can be drawn. This wasn't too bad because I had my text book, but for some reason I was really tired (despite the sugar) and I have trouble reading when I'm tired. So I ended up just sitting there staring at the clock. :/ And I had to pee, but what's new, right! So finally an hour was up and I went back to have my blood drawn, which is always fun. All in all though, things weren't too bad. I'm not sure when I'll get my results back, but I'll probably call my doctor on Tuesday or Wednesday to see if he's heard anything yet.

Anyhow, I was busy all day after that. I had to hurry off to seeds of wellness in hamden immediately after for a school project and then, I had to hurry home to get to my hair appointment on time. That's THIS part of the blog. I don't normally get high lights, but I did the last time I had my hair cut. Well, the bleach stuff made my hair kind of dry and recently that's been bothering me and has been really making me want to get my soft hair back. My layers were also growing further apart and so I wanted to get my hair cut. So, I made the appointment and off I went. I decided to get my hair dyed back to the dark brown that I had it dyed over the summer. She used a low-potency dye so I wasn't worried about it. Then I had the dye washed out ... and they used this new shampoo that was like heaven. I mean having your hair scrubbed by someone else is heaven anyhow, but when it smells good... ten times better :)
So anyway, I decided to have my lower layers cut off, which made my hair a lot shorter than it was. But I'm completely okay with that because it's back to it's dark brown softness that I missed oh so much!

So on to the last of my post title updates. A week or two ago Justin and i bought a set of cube shelves from target to kind of match the color of the furniture in the baby's room. Well, they've been sitting in the box waiting to be put together, but I haven't had time or energy to do it. Well I finally decided to put them together this week. It's nine cubes that when put together is kind of like a book shelf. We were planning on hanging it above the changing table, but unfortunately it doesn't hang... in fact it specifically says to not hang it in the instructions. So we set it up next to the crib and are going to use the cubes for toys and books. And I might mention that it looks FANTASTIC. It fits perfectly with the room and I'm so excited about it. Of course I don't have a picture yet though. I should have taken one today while it was sunny but I spent my sunshine breaking down the HUGE furniture boxes sitting on our porch, sweeping the porch, and picking up dog poo! What a great day, ha ha.

To finish the night, I just finished making my shower invitations, and they really turned out great. I'm definitely going to have to keep one to put in a scrap book.

Oh... and I have to mention that Jackson was going a little crazy last night. He has recently starting kicking up high (or punching if he's still breech). It's not in the ribs so it doesn't hurt but it's definitely new. Anyway, he was moving away last night as we were going to bed, and he finally let Justin feel him again. Justin was pretty happy about this but I think I was more happy about it. Justin commented that his movements were pretty strong, so we're hoping that means he's growing well and is nice and healthy.

Anyway. That has been my week. I have a Friday night off and I plan to possibly go to bed early. How strange!
Oh.. and my sister-in-laws birthday is tomorrow so... Happy Birthday Wenke!!!

Happy April Fools Day

Although I didn't have to deal with any April fools jokes today, except for one I pulled on myself, I did have an interesting day.

I had clinical starting at 7 this morning at Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital. I had the same patient as Monday, who is this feisty almost two month old with a FULL head of crazy hair. She's as cute as can be and sooo spoiled (she LOVES to be held ALL the time). And she's a SCREAMER!!! When my partner and I attempted to get vitals on her she screamed the entire time (mainly because she was hungry and had a wet diaper). Then we had another screaming episode during her bath ... which halfway through she decided to pee on the pads we had under her. ha ha. But all in all, she was a pretty easy patient.

Near the end of clinical, however, my unstructor asked us if any of us wanted to put an NG tube in. I immediately said that I did, so my partner Jess and I both got to put NG tubes in babies. What I wasn't expecting was for the baby to be a premie who was born about a week and half ago at 31 weeks gestation. She was soooo tiny, but so so so cute. It made me really nervous... and for those who don't know what an NG tube is, it's a feeding tube that is placed into the stomach through the nose.. and for babies, especially premies, it's a REALLY small tube. I couldn't get it in quite right, as I'd never even done this on an adult, so my instructor started me off a bit, and I placed it the rest of the way. The gorgeous little baby did such a good job, which made it a lot easier and made me a lot less nervous. Then, after lunch, I got to watch Jess put hers in on an equally as small baby who was also extremely cute. She also got to take vitals on her and change her diaper to help out the nurse, which was interesting to see on a premie because she was just so tiny. So it was a pretty good clinical day. Monday night will be the first time I have a pediatric patient on my own without a partner, and all the patients on our floor are mostly under a year old, so it will be interesting.

As for the April Fools Joke I pulled on myself: I walked to my car and grabbed my keys, and for some reason my car key and alarm button were missing from my key ring. My car was still there, thank God, but i couldn't find these keys anywere. So I went back inside to the room where we keep our stuff and they weren't there either. So I asked the nurses at the nurses' station and it wasn't there either. So FINALLY on my way out (which at this point I was going to call Justin to tell him I needed to be picked up and taken to my dad's to get a spare key) I stopped by security to turn in my card and asked if anyone turned in keys. They did, thankfully, and he said that the other security gaurd found them in the parking lot. Not what I was expecting, but I'm glad they were at least found.

As I said yesterday, we finally got the chance to go see Sharon, Rob and baby Lucas last night. We went in to be greeted by Oscar, their very hyper boxer puppy who reminds me a LOT of Carlin. He was really excited to get some attention from Justin and I. Then we got to hold baby Lucas. He is sooo darn cute and makes the greatest faces. Rob and Sharon seem to be doing great with him, but you can tell they're definitely tired these days (mainly from the 9pm yawns already). But that's to be expected. Sharon seems to be recovering very well from the c-section and they both seem to be enjoying parenting very much. I definitely took advantage of the time to ask Sharon lots of questions about things like her feet swelling, the contractions, the nurses and rooms at GBMC (just in case we end up there instead of St. Joe's) and some others. Lucas was awake for almost our entire visit and was very entertaining. I can't wait until he and Jackson can become buddies :) While I was holding Lucas though, Jackson felt it necessary to kick Lucas, which I thought was funny as that would definitely be a little boy's way of saying hello. haha. It definitely made me anxious to meet our little guy.

Finally. Since I wasn't able to do this yesterday, here are my 26 week pictures (not too much different from the last pictures I posted, but here they are anyhow).