She Who Must Not Be Named, 29-32 weeks

As you may have noticed, I slacked off for a few weeks.  A lot has happened in that time.  On December 14, I celebrated my 30th birthday.  I told Derek all I wanted was cake and decided on a red velvet cake.  We couldn't find a cake mix so decided to try it from scratch.  It wasn't my best baking endeavor.  The edges were too crispy but the center not quite done, so it fell.  It stuck to the pan.  Then the top layer slid off.  It tasted pretty good but I was still disappointed.  On December 17, I reached 29 weeks.  Fortunately, Derek's graduation on December 19 was an excuse to make another cake.  It turned out much better.  Derek's parents, brother, and grandparents visited for the graduation.  It was nice to see everyone and the ceremony was quite nice.  There may have been a little incident in which the rude people sitting behind us were told to shut up, which it totally out of character for me, but aside from that it was nice.  Derek is happy to be finished with school finally and we are enjoying his free time.

December 22, I had my 30 week appointment a few days early because of the holidays.  She Who Must Not Be Named had a nice strong heartbeat but since she tends to be lazy with regards to movement, or laid back as we like to say, the doc wanted me to do kick counts twice a day.  Although the doc wasn't too happy about our 7.5 hour drive for the holidays, we spent December 23 through January 5 visiting with family and friends.  But I am now done traveling for a while.  While out of town, we hit 30 weeks on Christmas Eve and 31 weeks on New Years Eve.  Family and friends gave us a shower on January 2 while we were in town.  Between it and Christmas our living room is now overflowing with baby stuff.  Lot of pink things.  Let's just hope she really is a girl.

That brings us up to this week.  Yesterday morning (Thursday), I had an appointment with the nurse practitioner.  Everything looked good, but she had a hard time finding the heartbeat.  It was a little unnerving, especially since it was so strong and easy to find two weeks before.  After moving the doppler around and pressing pretty hard on my bump, it was again nice and strong in the 140s.  Because of the appointment, I didn't get a kick count in in the morning.  Both before and after the appointment she wasn't moving around much.  We had appointments with the optometrist in the afternoon.  Still not much movement.  When we got home, I had a snack and some caffeine then did a kick count.  I got 3 kicks in the hour, rather than the 10 I needed.  I called the doc.  By the time I talked to the nurse it was after 4.  It was thus to late to get in to see the doctor and she sent me to the ER to be sent to the labor and delivery floor for monitoring.  I feel like I have been emotionally stable this pregnancy, not too many tears or anything.  (Derek agrees with me and I don't think it is just because he is afraid of me.)  But this situation had me in tears.  I think this in turn freaked out Derek.  Good times.  After I calmed down a little, we headed to the hospital.  I spent about 2 hours hooked up to the monitors.  They found her heartbeat right away.  For the first hour, she moved maybe three times but her heartbeat looked perfect.  Then I think she got the hiccups.  After that, she spent an hour kicking the contraction monitor and they couldn't keep her on the heart rate monitor because she was squirming too much.  In the end she was fine, just lazy.  I was, however, having a number of contractions.  So now I get to watch out for those, in addition to doing the kick counts.  I told her that the hospital visit is coming out of her allowance and she had better behave.  Although, I suspect that in addition to being laid back like her parents, she is stubborn like one of us as well.  I wouldn't be surprised if more monitoring is in our future.

Today (Friday) we hit 32 weeks.  Only five weeks until I'm considered full term, only 8 weeks until my due date, and 9 weeks maximum until she's here.  I guess we should pick out a name.

Derek's graduation.

Some of our shower loot.

Lots of food and cake at the shower.