xiii:

Pregnancy: Had an OB appointment on Friday and was told I need to get an ultrasound done because the baby has been measuring too small. She's seems to be growing just fine to me. I can feel her regularly and I know for a fact she's big enough to shove her feet into my lungs as she does it frequently. However, my OBGYN wants to make sure she is developing just fine so Monday I have to make an appointment with the u/s tech to get measurements and proper sonogram pictures. I know our last "official" ultrasound was in February and that then Rose was measuring just fine. I'm not really worried about it. I'm not exactly "big" by any standard except maybe to someone with Dwarfism. Lily was incredibly tall, and still is. Iris was pretty average and still seems to be. Rose seems to have gotten the short gene from me. Poor kid. LOL

Anyway, my due date is in 2 days. I'm still going to be trying for a vaginal birth after a cesarean. My OB (who had a successful experience with this on her second pregnancy and who is not much larger than I am) is very confident. Either way, they won't let me go any further than 42 weeks so I scheduled a cesarean for July 31 at 7 am. So if I haven't contacted anybody before then with "please welcome to the family..." you'll know when she'll be here.

Iris: My family has a lot of skin problems, from Eczema, sensitivity, and just very dry skin. I am thankful that I only have a mild form of this, but still have to use certain lotions and treatments in certain areas. Unfortunately, Iris seems to have inherited this unpleasant condition. She currently now has a staph infection on her scalp. Apparently her scalp had become irritated at one point and she kept scratching at it. It then escalated when she scratched so much she broke skin. Then when it started to scab over she continued to scratch until it got infected. I had thought that maybe she had hit her head on the coffee table (which she has done numerous times) and those were just a result of a mishap. So I had cleaned them and left them alone checking up on them daily. On the third day, Friday, J and I realized that they had doubled in size so I took her to the doctor that afternoon and was prescribed some penecillin to get rid of the infection. *sigh* This poor kid. No matter how well we take care of her skin something always seems to pop up and get infected.

She's also been having nightmares. She'll wake up in the middle of the night calling for me. At first I thought it was just her teeth since she's getting all her molars at the same time, but last night I had given her pain medication for her teeth and she still clung to me (she's a mama's girl). She wouldn't let go of me for well over an hour or she'd start screaming. I had to literally lay my 150lb pregnant self in this toddler bed with her until she fell asleep. Every like 5-10 minutes she would suddenly wake and slap me in the chest just to make sure I was still there. I couldn't leave until she was knocked out and rolled away from me.

Lily: We were doing great with night-time potty training. She had been waking up and telling me when she had to pee. She had only had a few accidents here and there. Then the accidents became more frequent, almost every other day. And now it's gotten to the point where it's every day again. I've reminded her to call me if she has to go, which she does just fine when she's awake. But when she's knocked out she doesn't even notice. I even wake her up after an accident and ask her if she wet herself and even though she's completely soaked in urine, she still says no and is surprised when I wake her up enough to realize she's wet. I don't know what else to do. I've tried waking her up and taking her to the bathroom in the middle of the night, but that obviously hasn't worked. I'm just so tired now to even begin to think of something else to try other than putting her back in trainers at night time and I don't want to. :(

xii: One Week+ To Go

I had an OB appointment yesterday. All is well. Rose is still vertex but I'm not doing any dilating or effacing yet. My doctor give me an herbal remedy (evening primrose oil) to help my body going to into labor naturally without getting chemically induced or using anything synthetic. I still scheduled a cesarean for July 31 just in case, though. We'll see what happens.

Today is the one week point on time left. I've been keeping busy with cleaning all the things for the girls so by the time Rose gets here, I think the only thing we will have to do is a sink full of dishes, though I've tried to keep those well under control. All the things for the baby are ready and now it's just a waiting game.

There isn't much to report. Everything with the girls is pretty much the same. Iris is her weird self, and Lily had a physical on Friday. She needed one for her pre-school application; all went well. She is in excellent condition, and has 20/20 vision. J and I were cracking up trying to keep up with Lily on the vision exam; yeah, we are so blind. ;)

I just want this baby to hurry up and get here already.

xi:

You see this baby? She is so cute! If you notice, she's cutting teeth, all at her own time since she's almost 2, but it seems like all at the same time. Her top right central incisor came in June 23 while her top left took an extra week and cut through Tuesday. However, she woke up screaming not too long ago telling me her teeth hurt because her top 1st molars just started cutting through now, AT THE SAME TIME. Poor kid. Thank goodness she can tell me these things, though.

So since I'm up, for more reasons than just Iris screaming, I decided to update. Now I've been having BH contractions for a while. Sunday the got so bad that everyone at church panicked, mostly Liz. So just to be on the safe side I went to the clinic where they confirmed what I already knew--I was indeed contracting, but I wasn't in labor. So after being monitored for a while they gave me some hardcore vicodin and sent me on my merry way. This little one is beating the crap out of me from the inside out. I seriously have bruises from her. *sigh*

I went to the OB today (or yesterday, actually) and all seems to be in order. I'm having normal pain, which is good. No pain whatsoever near my cesarean scar. :) My cervix hasn't dropped, but it has softened, and I'm only 1 cm dilated. Not closed, but not really open, either. Right now it's just a waiting game. Rose has been in vertex (head down) position for a while now and has begun to snuggle into my pelvis, so everyone is getting ready. :)

Other than being in a lot of pain everything and everyone is/are good. Lily is excited about having a new baby sister and Iris couldn't care less. LOL. I know I'm anxious and want her to hurry up, I can't wait to see her, and Justin is so calm about the whole thing I really don't know how he's feeling.