Induction date...

I just heard back from my doctor. They have me scheduled to go in Friday morning. I get to call at the bright and early time of 5:30 and hope they have a bed available then. I know the people at Primary's are hoping I can go in earlier in the day. The later it gets before the baby is born, the harder it is for them. So unless the baby decides to come before then, Friday is the day.

Another update

Well, nothing has changed since Sunday, which is pretty much what I figured. My doctor is going to check his schedule, call the hospital and things like that and will call me later this afternoon (he said around 3 or 4) and give me a day to be induced. He said likely Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. Hospitals only allow so many inductions in a day, so it's pretty much up to them. But at least I will have an end in sight. Always a chance that he will decide to come before the day that will be set up, but I don't really plan on that happening. Actually kind of better to have it scheduled so everyone can be ready than for me to go on my own anyway. I will post when I know more.

Quick update

I did sleep much better last night. Still woke up quite a bit, but at least got some sleep. Contractions have been averaging at about 8 minutes apart and still not regular, so about the same it's been since Saturday evening. I did call my doctor just a few minutes ago to see what he would say. He told me that if it doesn't get closer and regular, to come in tomorrow morning at 9 and he'd check me. Said if I'm dilated to a 3 or 4, he'll send me up to the hospital then. I guess I just thought that it would be fun to copy Stacey by doing this. Even though hers lasted 6 weeks. Ah, well.

Still here....

For those of you wondering, nope, nothing yet. Contractions have actually slowed down a lot. They pick up a little for a time, then slow back down. I guess it's still going to be a while. At least I got a nice nap today.

We did go to the hospital at one point, just to be on the safe side. Fully expected them to send us home, which they did. The nurse there said that she thinks I'm in early labor and if I don't go back in before my next doctor appointment, to follow up with my doctor. I did good and refrained from saying, "Duh." At least we know where to go when we need to go next time. Took us a little bit of wandering to find it today.

Here's hoping I sleep better tonight.....

Labor?

Yes, it is the middle of the night as I'm typing this. It's just that for about the past oh, 9 hours, I have been having somewhat regular contractions. Makes it kind of hard to sleep, actually. Well, hard for me. Not overly hard for Russ (as is evident by his snoring).

The contractions started out about 10 minutes apart and stayed that way for a very long time. After a couple of hours, we took the kids to their grandparents because we figured with my track record, we would need to head to the hospital in the middle of the night. I half expected them to stop as soon as we dropped them off. Got home and I decided to call the doctor to ask if he wanted me to do the usual waiting until contractions were consistently closer and stronger or go in sooner with the problem the baby has. Only there is some other doctor taking the calls tonight and he never did call me back. Makes me wonder if the answering service guy didn't write my number down right.

Anyway, the contractions started to get closer, but not very consistent. Varied from 4-8 minutes apart, but for the most part were 4-5 minutes apart for a while. Not real strong though. (And yes, Russ shakes his head at me because he's afraid I only think they aren't strong enough.) Only now they seem to be slowing down again. I'd go walk around the block if it weren't the middle of the night. They do seem to come more often when I'm moving around. Almost tempted to just head to the hospital and hope they don't send me home. Which I'm pretty sure they would do at this point. Makes me kind of wish my water would just break. But I guess for now, at least, I will go back to pacing the halls and see if that helps at all.

Today's stress test and more

Today's stress test went just like all of the others. I did have about a 15 minute wait before going back this time. At least it wasn't the half hour wait like the first time. They did have to wake the baby up again. He was awake right at first and moving around then went to sleep shortly after they made sure he was active.

We have been working on getting rooms rearranged and painted and such for the kids. First painted the nursery. The below picture sort of shows how it looks, but the color didn't quite show through right. And it's a narrow view picture, but at least you have somewhat of an idea on how it looks.

This is a picture of Jimmy sitting on his new bed. Yes, he pulled a face on purpose. We moved the computer out to the family room (which I think is a good idea anyway)and cleaned out the room and then painted and such. Jimmy is very excited about having his own room, but also worried that he'll get scared being by himself. As I'm writing, Russ is moving his dresser down the stairs. I hear the clunks and it makes me a little nervous, but he's doing okay. I think eventually we will end up painting the dresser, but that's not high on my list right now.

Just a couple of things...

I just wanted to comment about how nice some of the people I've been seeing with going to the doctor lately. Most specifically, Kelly, the cardiology nurse at Primary's. She called me today asking how it went with my regular doctor appointment yesterday. Of course, she did want to know if I had an induction date set up, but I still thought it was very nice of her to call. I did offer to call her next week after I go again.

The other thing I wanted to mention was about a 1 mile walk/run fundraiser for the Intermountain Healing Hearts support group. I joined the group after Lisa sent me an email about it. They also mentioned the group when I went to Primary's for the first fetal echo. (For those interested, the address for the message board/support part of the group is http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/IntermountainHealingHearts/) This is the message that was posted about the fundraiser:

Mark your calendars for Saturday September 6th!! We are having our
first fun run/walk fundraiser for Intermountain Helaing Hearts.
Check in will begin at 8:30 am and the race begins at 9:30 am. It
will be at Riverview Park (4620 N 300 W Provo, UT). For more details
please see the website :www.intermountainhealinghearts.org.

We will have a slideshow/presentation after the race to honor our
Angel members.
Pre-registration is $10 individual or $50 family
Day of Race - $18 individual $80 family

Registration includes a tee shirt. Everyone who participates needs
to fill out a registration form. This can be downloaded from the IHH
site, or in the file section for the Yahoo group. You can also
obtain hard copies to be distributed. Please invite everyone that
you know to participate. This is not only for IHH members.

Today's non-stress test and doctor appointment

I really feel like I could just copy and paste previous posts about my doctor appointments. Makes me wonder if I even really should post about them, but hey, it gives me something to post about. Really not much to say about the stress test. That went fairly quickly and well.

Last Tuesday, they wrote me down for 12:30 for my regular doctor appointment, but said that I could just come over when my stress test was over and they would work me in. I was done with the stress test by 11:30. Felt kind of silly going an hour early to the regular doctor appointment, but did anyway. Waited about a half hour before being called back, which is longer than usual to wait, but not as bad as it could have been.

I am barely dilated to a 1, so he said no guarantee, but pretty much "See you next week." He said we will talk about inducing labor then. At least it gives us time to finish organizing rooms. Actually have the baby's room and Jimmy's new room mostly painted. I need to finish painting in the closet of the baby's room and the trim in both rooms. Now if I can get Russ to get the girl's room ready.....

Friday's stuff....

The non-stress test yesterday went just like the other ones. A little slower than usual, but I did get back to my mom's right about noon like I told her I should be. Got to the hospital for it a few minutes early. And then waited 10 minutes for an elevator. Then waited a couple of minutes to be buzzed in to the maternity area, along with 3 other groups of people...all wanting to go to the same place I was going. At least I didn't have any wait to get back for the test. But then they had a girl training how to do the ultrasound part of it and so that took a little longer than usual. She did apologize for being slow, but it was understandable.

After I got back to Mom's, we picked up some lunch for everyone. Then I ran to the store for a couple of things. As I was loading the kids into the car to leave the store, Russ called me and said his car was done getting fixed and wanted to know if I could get it for him. So I drove back to Mom's and asked if she would be willing to help me get it for him. So we picked it up and left it at the Woods Cross Frontrunner station so he could get it on his way home from work. By this time traffic was getting bad and my a/c in my car isn't cooling as well as it should. But I thought at least it has a/c, unlike Russ' car. Which I found out I was wrong about. Apparently when they replaced his alternator it fixed the problem with his a/c. Cools quite nicely and no longer makes his engine hesitate. Yes, I'm jealous with how nicely his cools now.

I then stopped at home so the kids could get the stuff they wanted to take to their sleepover with their grandma, something they were excited about. First thing they grabbed were their swimming suits. At least traffic wasn't that bad going up there. After dropping them off, I headed back home to wait for Russ so we could go to a bbq/pool party for our friend Jo.

At this point, I will just say that I didn't quite fit into the swimming suit as well as I thought I would. Still fit in it though.

Seeing as the kids slept over at their grandma's to help us so that we could get bedrooms organized and cleaned and painted before the baby actually comes, I should head to Home Depot to buy the paint. I at least have the baby's room ready to be painted. Russ is currently working on clearing out Jimmy's room. Then we'll tackle the girls' room. That could take a while.

2nd Fetal Echo

Today's fetal echo didn't quite take as long as the last one, but I was probably at Primary's just as long because after we were finished, the nurse took us to tour the PICU so that we will kind of know what to expect and where to go. Russ almost wishes she hadn't done that because it has made this whole thing more real for him.

Anyway, it turns out that Dylan may not have Truncus. With the previous echo, Dr. Su did say that looking one way it looked like Truncus and looking another it looked like something else. And the same thing happened this time. So he either has Truncus or Aortic Valve Artesia (I've tried to do a search on that and haven't found anything...but then, Dr. Su did also use a different term but didn't write that one down for us). With Aortic Valve Artesia, they do have the second vein they are supposed to have, but it didn't develop right and basically doesn't have an opening to allow blood through. All fetuses have an extra vein that takes the blood to the body. This vein closes shortly after birth. By knowing he may have Aortic Valve Artesia, they will give him medicine right away that will prevent that vein from closing. If it's Truncus, this medicine won't do any harm. If it's Aortic Valve Artesia, likely it will save his life because if the vein were to close, he wouldn't get any blood to his body. So I am personally glad that Dr. Su decided to go ahead and have us come back for this second fetal echo. Otherwise they probably wouldn't have planned to give him the medicine. Either way, he will still need surgery while little.

Guess all we have to do now is wait and see what the echo will show that they will give Dylan after he is born. That should show more than a fetal echo. It's hard to see real well with a fetal echo because the babies move and there is a lot of shadowing from ribs and things. Today his shoulder got in the way for them to be able to see right where they wanted to. That won't be a problem when they do the echo on him later.

And today's doctor appointments...

Today's doctor appointments went much like last week's, so not much to update you about. The non-stress test went well. They didn't have to wake him up this time. The previous times I've been there, another lady has been getting a non-stress test, too. This time I was all alone in there so the nurse and I sat and chatted for a bit, which was nice since I forgot to bring along something to read.

The appointment with Dr. Steele was a typical appointment. I told him how I will have a fetal echo tomorrow. He asked me if I would ask them if they would want the baby delivered sooner rather than later or if they would like to go as long as possible before delivery, and then call him on Thursday and let him know what they say. Of course, their answer might not matter if I just go into labor. He also told me that if I happen to go into the hospital during the night or evening, to tell them to call him even if he isn't the doctor who is on-call.

So, yes, I have a fetal echo tomorrow. I will post about how that goes.

News Story...

A few nights ago I saw a story on ksl about a premature baby who had recently gone through surgery at Primary's to receive a shunt as one step in correcting his heart defect (Tetralogy of Fallot). I believe he is the smallest baby they have ever had on the heart-lung machine. Anyway, if you missed the story, here's a link that will take you to both text of the story and a video: http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=200&sid=3717779 Of course, as I watched the story as it aired, I saw how tiny the baby is and pictured the surgery Dylan is going to have not long after he's born. But it really is amazing all that they can do for these kids now; especially for ones as little as the baby in this story.

More about yesterday....

I remembered a couple of things with yesterday's non-stress test that also made me laugh, and thought that I would share them. Both involved the ultrasound at the start of the non-stress test that they do to measure the amount of fluid around the baby.

The lady had asked me initially if the baby is still active. I said, "Yeah, he moves around all the time." Apparently she heard "she" instead of "he" because she commented that "she" is taking up all of the space on the right side (to which I commented that all of my kids have liked that side). I laughed when she was looking for a good space to measure the fluid and seemed quite startled and exclaimed, "Oh, wait, that's a boy!"

Shortly after that, she stopped to point out the baby's face. Commented that he has chubby cheeks. That made me laugh because all of my kids have chubby cheeks. Even told her that. Told her that Jimmy will complain a little because his friends will tease him that he has chubby cheeks. Okay, maybe you had to be there. But I thought it was funny.

Today's doctor appointments

Today's doctor appointments went about the same as the last ones. The non-stress test was pretty simple and fast. Except that the baby was sleeping so they had to wake him up with their buzzer thing they use to wake up the babies. They had to do the same with the other lady who was there, which cracked me up.

I got to my doctor appointment after the non-stress test about right on time, which I was a little afraid I would be late for. There were a bunch of people in the waiting room so I thought it might be a bit of a wait, but I didn't wait very long at all. Gained 1 pound.

My doctor seemed to have changed his mind about not being willing to induce me. Today he said that as it gets closer, if I end up dilated to a 2 or 3, he won't have a problem with sending me up to the hospital to get induced, just so that we will be prepared. So that's about the only thing to report with that appointment. I do go every week from here on out. So I will basically have 3 doctor appointments every week, except for next week when I have four because of the next fetal echo. At least I can have two close together so it doesn't feel like so many.

4th of July parade and such

Every year my kids love going to the local parade. Mostly because of the candy and toys that get thrown. And every year a couple in my ward invites a bunch of people over to their house to watch the parade (since they live along the parade route) and eat lunch after. I spent the time during the parade sitting in the shade of a tree while Russ watched the kids and played with water guns. The last part of the parade is a water parade where the people going by are spraying everyone. The fire engine ones tend to win that one. They can get a whole lot of people really wet. I personally move out of range. Probably would have felt nice to get wet on that hot day, but I really didn't want to get wet. After lunch we went to see the local production of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Anyway, here are a few pictures from the parade and lunch after. If you notice, each of the kids has a sack. They got those to collect candy.
Can't quite tell in the picture, but Jimmy was quite wet.


Russ and his co-conspirators with water guns and such. They got each other nicely, too.

All of the kids there loved looking at a small pond. Makes me really know why I don't want a pond.
These two pictures are of Jimmy riding the small zip line that was in the backyard at the lunch. There was quite a lineup of kids waiting to do it. He was the only one of or kids who braved it this year though.

Tagged....

Okay, I got tagged. Figure I might as well do it. So here goes....

1. My kitchen sink. Yes, I'm glad I cleaned it before I got tagged. :)
2. Inside my fridge. Not very interesting.
3. My favorite shoes.
4. My closet. Again, not very interesting. Man that scout shirt is standing out, isn't it.
5. My laundry pile. Complete with some clothes poking out, showing that it was time to do laundry.

6. What my kids are doing right now. Which isn't totally up to date since I took this a while ago. Although for the girls, it's probably pretty close to what they are doing now. Currently Jimmy is playing a game and the girls are watching him. Here they were watching tv in between playing in the hassock, as seen in the picture with Jimmy.

7. My favorite room. If you notice, I have no picture. I totally spaced this one and just don't feel like taking a picture. My favorite room is probably...hm...currently my bedroom because that's the room I relax the most in.

8. My recent purchase. Really should put some in the fridge, huh.

9. My Fantasy Vacation. Um...very good question. I have no pictures of my fantasy vacation because I really haven't ever come up with a fantasy vacation. I would like to go back and tour my mission and Russ', but don't know that I would call that a fantasy vacation.

10. Self-portrait. Seeing as I recently put up a self-portrait, I'm not going to put it up again. Just because.

So now that you've read it, you have been tagged! (Unless, of course, you have already done this one...)

July Birthdays

I realized late last night that I hadn't done the monthly birthday post. Guess I've had other things on my mind. Either that or else this month has snuck up on me. Or both.

Anyway, happy birthday this month to John (belated), Amy (today!), Brian, Ben, Linda, Vic, Jo, and Myrna. Hope all of you have (or had) a great birthday.

Also, congrats to Brian and Stephanie on the birth of their daughter, Savannah this morning!

Haircut! Yay!...no, not Russ...

I have been wanting to get my hair cut for a long time now. I have a ton of hair, and in this heat, it starts to bug me. Of course, I have always liked my hair shorter rather than longer. I finally got it cut today. I like it. But then, it's not much different than how I usually get it cut. It's just nice getting it cut. I tend not to get it cut often because I really do like going to Oscar to get it cut and he's kind of expensive. That is actually the reason I grew it out so it wasn't super short. I didn't really trust anyone else to cut my hair as well as he does and so I would go too long in between getting it cut. Decided I couldn't keep it that short anymore.

I actually probably wouldn't have gone to him this time but my mom was in a nice mood and offered to pay for De and me to get our hair cut from him (click on the link to De's blog to read her take on it...really quite a funny post). I finally made the appointments for De and for me. We had wanted to go at the same time, but the only way we could have done that is to wait a while to go. So I scheduled us on different days. Which I found out that he appreciated. We have really, really thick hair. He jokingly said we should have scheduled it for different weeks, rather than just different days. I told him it could have been worse and we could have come the same day. He said he would have had to take a day off after that. Anyway, the following picture is a "lovely" self-portrait of my new do. I stopped at a neighbor's house on my way home afterward and she commented on how straight it is after getting it cut with all the waves I have in my hair. I told her it's a result of styling. Which it is. Takes time, but I can get it straight like that.

I just wonder what the person who wrote the anonymous letter commenting on Russ' hair is going to think when they see that he now has longer hair than me. Hehehehehehehehe....

I thought I'd throw on a few pictures of the kids playing in a small pool we got for the summer with a couple of neighbor friends, Mia and Jacob. Had to make them take turns in it because the boys wanted to splash a bit more than the girls wanted to be splashed. But I think they had fun. They seemed to, anyway.

Non-Stress Test

I'm thinking I probably don't need to bore you by posting about today's non-stress test, but that's okay. There isn't a whole lot to tell about it so it should be short anyway.

Basically I got there actually a couple of minutes before the appointment time (which lately seems to be a record for me). Which I apparently didn't need to do since I sat and waited for about a half hour. Guess they were a little busier today so the wait was longer than it normally is. I went back to the room they have the stuff for the tests and answered a few quick questions and then the lady did an ultrasound to measure the amount of fluid. She then had me turn onto my side a little bit and started to hook up the monitors. At this point I chuckled because when I turned, apparently Dylan did too. She couldn't find where to put the monitor to hear his heartbeat. She ended up grabbing the ultrasound thing and looking again so she could know where to put it.

They gave me a paper there that said the test will run from 20-90 minutes, depending on the baby. He was active enough that I don't know that they had the monitors on for 20 minutes. I even had one braxton-hicks contraction during the test time. Anyway, after all that, he's doing just fine. I might actually think to bring a book next time.

So that's it for now. Don't forget to vote on my poll if you haven't already. That is, if it will let you. I know of two that weren't able to vote for some strange reason. Ah, well.