February 27, 2009

Exhaustion

I wish there was a better description of what I am feeling than just: exhausted. I have never felt this tired before in my life. I do not remember during any other pregnancy being this tired. Even when I was a brand new Mom and doing 2-3 nighttime feedings do I ever remember being THIS tired.

I am currently in my 8th week of pregnancy. This is of course just the beginning. And all the books say and my memory says that it will get better. Sometime in the second trimester I will regain my energy. Boy I hope so. My house can't take this for much longer. We are in "survival mode" here at my house. The toys get picked up once a day, food gets cooked for 3 meals but dished only get done once a day, laundry gets washed and dried but not folded or put away, we are living out of laundry baskets. The bathroom gets a touch up every few days but has not had a "deep clean" in a few weeks. I manage to keep the towels changed, the rug clean, the toilet and sink cleaned, but things like the mirror washed and the tub tiles scrubbed.... I am ashamed to say haven't been touched in a while. The only reason why the sheets have been changed regularly is because the kids keep puking or peeing in their beds! Yes it is a sad state of affairs.

Today for example I got up late. Kaleb thankfully had woken up a bit before me and was dressed already. I fed the kids breakfast and got Jasmyn & Mason dressed. I took Kaleb to school and then Jasmyn Mason and I ran errands until 10:45. I came home and woke Tim up so he could pick Kaleb up from school. That is our regular schedule for Tim to pick Kaleb up on Fridays. I made lunch while Tim was gone and everyone ate lunch when Tim & Kaleb got home. At this point I was exhausted from the mornings events. Much to Tim's annoyance I took a nap from 12:30 to 2:00. I got up and got ready for my Dr. Appt and left the house by 2:45. Dr appt lasted until 4:00. I stopped on my way home to get gas. I got home and Tim left for work. I took the kids to Walmart to buy diapers for Mason and we came home and ate dinner. So now it is almost 9pm and I feel like I have not slept in a week. This is despite the 7 hours of sleep I got last night and the 1.5 hr nap I took this afternoon.

And don't even get my started on how often I have to eat. I swear I eat every 2-3 hours. Not huge meals, just a balanced snack. But I still feel like all I do is sleep, eat, drink, pee, and then repeat.

I am off to bed now. I fear that if I keep typing that my thoughts will become even less coherent than they already are!

February 26, 2009

My obsession

Yes I am a POAS addict. What is a POAS addict? Well POAS stands for Pee On A Stick. This acronym is from message boards. Specifically BabyCenter.com Mesage boards. I am a member and have been for years. I have a whole online community that I stay in contact with on a daily basis. We support each other during the waiting of trying to concieve and during our pregnancies. They have provided resources to find inexpensive HPTs that I buy online or at the Dollar store. Yes you can buy pregnancy tests at the dollar store and they are just as accurate as the expensive brands of tests. Why spend $14 when you can spend $1!!!!!


Since I do have access to a Dollar store that sells the pregnancy tests I stocked up. And since we tried for 12 months, it was good that I wasn't blowing $14 bucks or more per month. But once I got the positive test I just couldn't stop POAS! LOL! I peed on a whole bunch. I had a few Walmart Brand ones that actually detected my pregnancy first. But I also had a few dollar store brand ones as well.


So since this pregnancy is our last one... I figured what the heck.... I might as well pee on them, right?


Here is a few (Ok alot) of pictures of my positive tests. Just to note. DPO stands for Days Past Ovulation. Typically 14DPO would be when a women's period would start or when most pregnancy tests would be accurate. I hope you enjoy the plethora of pictures below!

This is a close up of the first test I took!





This picture is of the first tests I took on 12DPO. The small white test is the Dollar Store test. The second line is VERY faint on that test. You may not be able to see it, but I assure you it is there!




This picture is of the 2 Walmart Brand tests taken at 12 & 13 DPO

This is a special test. I bought this digital test about 6 months ago. I was waiting until I got confimation that I was in fact pregnant before I peed on it! Not only is it just cool to have the actual word "Pregnant" on the stick, it is also an expensive test. $16. I only bought it so I could take pictures of it for my blog and the baby's book. Pretty cool though, huh?!?!?!

And here is a picture of the tests I took from 12DPO to 17DPO.





This next picture is a total Pregnant woman crazy confession! LOL! I have been sick with a sinus infection and was very sick. So my typical pregnancy signs took a back seat to the sinus infection. Around the 6week mark of my pregnancy I got scared.... What if I am not pregnant anymore? Yeah I know. Not rational at all! So I took another test to make sure. LOL! The line showed up within 15 seconds and was so dark it was hilarious! So here is the comparision of the Dollar Store tests I took from 12dpo to 27dpo.

Hope you enjoyed my pictures!

My Cup

I have been thinking about what blogs I want to write as I wanted until I could spill the news about our pregnancy. So this resulted in my blogging all at once. I hope you enjoy reading what has been on my mind as I travel through these first weeks. I will probably continue to do this throughout my pregnancy. My blog has become some what of a journal for me. I plan to print these entries off and put them in a book for our baby.
Check Spelling

During the first week after we found out that I am pregnant we were kinda in shock. While this was a completely planned and much desired pregnancy, it still came as a shock. We had been trying to get pregnant for 12 months. Each cycle seemed the same. After ovulation we would wait for me to feel something...anything...a symptom....a sign. But cycle after cycle it would all end with my period starting. It got to the point that I would try to ignore any symptoms or signs because I was afraid of getting my hopes up. I had so many symptoms that could have been PMS or Pregnancy that I just was tried of the disappointment.


When I was nearing the end of my cycle in January I was trying very hard to NOT get excited. But I did feel different. I felt a fullness or bloating in my lower abdomen. I felt crampy but not in my lower back like I usually do when my period is gonna start. Just cramps in the front. I also had been charting my cycles and keeping track of my cervical position. My cervix felt different than it normally did at that stage in past non-pregnant cycles. I just had a feeling that this time was different. So I decided to take a test. I also decided to video tape the test since I wanted to capture the moment for Tim since he was at work when I took the test. Although I have tested tons of times before in other cycles, I had never video taped me testing before.


If you want to view the video go to the bottom of this blog and click on the youtube link.


Tim & I were simply shocked when the test turned positive! Tim moreso than I. I had a few days of thinking "could it be?" Tim just got hit with a plus sign! The first few days he just needed to let things sink in, or something. LOL! I really don't know what was going through his head. He didn't really talk to me about it. It made me nervous. But the moment I knew it was all gonna be OK was when I asked him for a glass of water and he returned with this:



To an outsider I am sure it looks plain enough, right? Just a thermal cup. What a nice guy for bringing that to me full of ice water. That is until you know the history behind the cup.

I got the cup as a freebie from the hospital I birthed Kaleb at. The nurses fill it up with ice water or juice after your birth to keep you hydrated. It was so convenient that I brought it home and I used it everyday from the Kaleb's birth until he was weaned. Tim would fill it with ice water and put the cup near our little nursing nest so that when I got up in the middle of the night for a feeding I had water to quench my thirst. Anyone that has breastfed knows that nursing is thirsty business! It holds 34 oz of water and if you fill it with ice the water will stay cold all night. It is an awesome cup.

After Jasmyn was born I got another cup from the hospital. It is exactly the same as the one from Kaleb's birth. I again used the cup for nursing Jasmyn everyday. Kaleb also would use my cup to quench his thirst as seen below in this cute picture taken the day Jasmyn & I came home from the hospital.


So what would seem, to an outsider, like a simple act of Tim just getting his pregnant wife a glass of water turned into a tender moment of memories. But more importantly a sign that he was getting comfortable with the idea that I was pregnant and we were about to do it all over again! Thank you Tim! This is the best time of our lives. It is a beautiful life and one that I am so happy to get to share with you!

Show & Tell

Kaleb was the special helper today at school. After being the special helper, the next day, that child gets to bring something in to share with the class. They have done lots of different themes. Things like "The Estimation jar": you put a bunch of the same object (cars, legos, candy, pasta, etc...) in a clear jar and the kids guess how many is in the jar and then they count how many and see who was closest. They have also had a "Guessing jar": You put an object into a covered container and you write 3 clues to help the kids guess what is inside. Kaleb took his green froggy and we wrote things like: It is green. It hops. It lives in a pond. Oh and my favorite was the "Equation jar: you put objects into the jar that make a mathematical equation. Like 2 cars plus 3 trucks equals 5 vehicles. Or 2 Hersey Kisses and 5 Red Hots equal 7 candies.

The whole class has participated in each "jar". To Kaleb and my complete surprise, the next "jar" turns out to not be a jar at all, but Show and Tell! How fun! So Kaleb came home from school today just beaming!!!! He gets to bring something for Show and Tell on Friday. We talked about what he was gonna bring and he thought about "blitzwing" his new Transformer that is a triple changer. For those of you unfamiliar with Transformers, they are usually just a 2 change kind of toy from robot mode to a vehicle mode. So a Triple changer changes from a vehicle to a airplane to a robot. It is a big deal and really cool. He recently got to buy the Blitzwing after his ear surgery as a reward for being brave and cooperating with the nurses.

He asked me what else he could take and wanted some options. So I suggested that he could take the ultrasound pictures and show them to his friends at school. His WHOLE FACE lit up! There was no more discussion. He had decided. He wanted to take the ultrasound pictures to Show & Tell!

I, of course, did not want him to take the original ultrasound pictures to school so off to Kinkos we went. We made copies of the pictures and the trimmed them down. We pasted them to a large piece of colored paper and Kaleb & I labeled the pictures. Here is how it turned out:


And here is our BEAMING Kaleb holding his story board!


Kaleb is just so excited about his new sibling! He talks about when the baby will be born, and asks if he will be there. I promise if that if at all possible, he will be there. He wants to know where the birth pool will be set up, who else will be here, if the baby will have a tail (umbilical cord) like Mason. Full of questions and excitement! It is an awesome time for our family!

February 24, 2009

Baby Ultrasound pictures!

The baby's first pictures!!!! We had our ultrasound last week. Friday afternoon actually. It was the standard 1st ultrasound stuff. They want you to drink a huge amount of water and not pee for like 2 hours. So you are very uncomfortable and then the tech pushes directly on your bladder to use it as a "window" to see your uterus and what is inside. Ha! Fun is had by all! Then after the do the external u/s they like to do the transvaginal one. It is just as horrible as it sounds!!! LOL! I am sure with a name like "transvaginal" you have a pretty good idea where they stick the U/S wand! But the quality of images is much better and enable us to get the cool photos below!

The first image is of the baby's head and the yolk sac. The baby lives off the yolk sac until the placenta develops and takes over providing nourishment to the baby. I think the placenta takes over completely by about 10-11 weeks.


This image is of the heart rate. They use their fancy machine to record the heart tone and counts the beats! Our little peanut's heart was beating at 154.67 beats per minute.

And these last 2 images are of the whole baby. They call this the CRL or the Crown to Rump Length! Our peanut is measuring at 1.43 cm CRL. That measurement puts me at 7weeks 5 days at the time of ultrasound. Which was pretty cool because that was exactly the date I had figured out for myself! I like the medical community to agree with me!




I hope you enjoy seeing the baby # 4 first baby pictures. I will be working on what to call our little one so I can stop calling him/her #4. It is way to impersonal! Any suggestions for nick-names?



February 15, 2009

Neti Pots

As you know from reading my previous blog that our house has been under siege of the sickies! We have been battling ear infections, sinus infections, throat infections, common colds, and stomach bugs. Oy vey! The stomach bug is gone for now. Hopefully to NEVER return. LOL! (I doubt I will be THAT lucky). Mason is still fighting off an ear infection that may require another round of antibiotics. We will probably take him back in on Tuesday for an ear recheck. And Kaleb & Jasmyn just have the run of the mill colds. Hopefully we can avoid any secondary infections with those two.

I have been on antibiotics for my sinus and throat infection for 7 days now. When I first went to the meds I immediately felt a TON better. My sinus cleared and my throat healed. Then on Thursday I started feeling a little congested and yucky again. I have still been on the medications so I thought it was unlikely I had a relapse of sinus infection, but maybe a virus of some kind. Friday was worse and I started to run a fever. Saturday same thing, but now it is settling in my chest. But my head is still full too. So this morning out of complete desperation.... I decided to take my dear friend Megan's advice and try a neti pot.

For those of you that have never had the pleasure of a neti pot, it is a pot shaped much like a teapot, but definitely NOT for tea. Us use distilled water and salt in the pot. I heated my water to body temperature added the salt and allowed it to dissolve inside the neti pot. Then I leaned over the sink and poured the salt water into my top nostril until the water come out the bottom nostril. The salt water basically flushes your sinuses to loosen and thin mucous so you can get rid of it, as well as kills and flushes out germs hiding in your nasal passages. I had a bit of trouble to start with, as I was tipped back too far and the the salt water was coming out my mouth! YUCK. But leaning forward slightly solved that problem immediately. I thought I would have a sense of drowning, and was pleasantly surprised when that did not occur. Then you turn your head and do the other nostril. When you are finished you blow your nose. Easy Peasy and so refreshing!

Now I can breath through my nose again! I am still getting some drainage since the thinning mucous is still coming out. But overall it really helped! It immediately relieved the pressure I was feeling in my face. I can think of lots of times I could potentially use the Neti Pot.

* migraines causing from sinus pressure
* Exposure to lots of dust, dirt or grass after doing yard work. The neti will clear the debris from my nose.
* First sign of a cold coming on to get rid of the germies hiding in my nose
* When I have an allergic reaction to pollen or other allergens
* Also when I am already sick to thin and help get rid of mucous like I am doing now.

They recommend using the Neti pot at least 3 times a week and up to twice daily. I think while I am sick I will do it twice daily and then scale back to once daily through the flu/cold season and then perhaps to 3 x per week to maintain.

A big thank you to Megan for pointing me in this direction. I am hoping it will help end this siege of sickies on me. I just want to be healthy!

February 10, 2009

Update on us!

It has been a rough few weeks. We have had 2 bouts of the stomach virus/flu bug. Ear, Sinus, and throat infections have effected most of us. So I will just start with youngest and go to oldest!

Mason: Well 2 weeks ago he had a cold. He was way sick. So I took him to the Dr. And we found he had double ear infections and a sinus infection. So he was put on antibiotics. About 4 days later Mason came down with the stomach bug. He was throwing up and just miserable. So the Nurse at his Peds office told me as long as he is vomiting to not give him his antibiotics. So 4 days later he is finally well in terms of his tummy, but his cold is still present. I called the Dr. and they wanted to recheck his ears. So we went in today and his ear infection is better but not gone, and his sinus were better but not all better. So he is back on antibiotics. Whew. Poor kid. One of these days he will NOT have diarrhea, right?

Jasmyn: She got the stomach flu both times it came into the house. She is such a trooper, she only threw up in her bed once! The rest of the times she made it to the bathroom or the puke bucket! This is a major accomplishment for a 4 year old! And one that makes my job so much easier! She did miss a few days of school, but seems to have caught up and is excited to be well and back at school with her classmates! She is looking forward to this Thursday at school. They are having a PJ party that involves a Teddy Bear Picnic! They get to wear their PJs and bring a Teddy Bear to have a picnic with! This is their version of a Valentine's Day celebration. We are both really looking forward to it!

Kaleb: Oh poor Kaleb. He got the stomach bug the first time through the house. And then he got the cold. So when I took Mason in the first time I also had them check out Kaleb. Well Kaleb's ears are so full of wax the Dr was unable to see the eardrums. He also has a tube that has come out of his eardrum, but has not been expelled from his ear canal. The little tube is stuck in a ball of wax stuck to the side of his ear canal. His ped Dr. was concerned that he had an ear infection behind the wax. So Tim, a Nurse, Dr. K and myself held Kaleb down while Dr. K scrapped the wax away from his eardrum. It took a long time. It was very traumatic, lots of screaming and crying, and tension. Finally they got enough of the wax away from the drum that they could say he did not have an ear infection. But Dr.K did refer us to the Ear Nose and Throat Dr to have them evaluate his ears. So today Tim took Kaleb to the ENT for his appointment. Poor Kaleb was so scared that they were going to hold him down again that he puked as soon as they got into the exam room. When Dr B. came in and checked his ears, heard the story about the last traumatic appointment and the puke at this appointment he decided that yes the ears needed to be cleaned. But that we would do it with Kaleb sedated. So Kaleb goes in on February 23rd to have his ears irrigated, and micro cleaned to removed the huge wax plugs and the ear tube. He will be asleep the whole time. He is still nervous, but is glad no one is gonna hold him down. I will have to chalk that experience up to a mistake I will not make again. It was definitely a moment that will be added to the list of "bad Mommy mistakes". LOL!

Tim: He is such a trooper. During these past two weeks he has worked a total of 113 hrs. In addition to his working all those hours, he has pitched in extra in the housework, cleaning, cooking, and helping with the kids. He has let me get extra rest as I was sick and needed it. Thankfully he has stayed healthy through all these sicknesses. I am so proud of him and he makes me fall in love with him all over again on a daily basis! Oh and he let me cut his hair! He was starting to resemble Grizzle Adams on a bad hair day!

Jen: Well in addition to have 3 sick kids, whom were not sleeping through the night, I am sick as well. I had a cold that just was hanging on. Last week I started running a fever. Something was up. So on Friday I went to the Dr. Yup, I was sick. I have a sinus infection and a throat infection. Yikes. So I am on Antibiotics. I feel about 10 times better than I did last week at this time, but still not 100% quite yet. Also this week I have been trying to volunteer at Jasmyn School to help with the decorations for the Book Fair. Also last September I volunteered to be "Party Mom" for Kaleb's Class Valentine's Party! Plus my regular duties of being Chairperson of Jasmyn's ECEAP Parents Group, that include overseeing 2 fundraisers, setting meeting agendas, and following up last months meeting minutes. I feel a little over committed, but I know after Friday that things will get easier. If I can just make it through Friday! LOL!

In other news... My nephew Future and his sister Clarity are being moved to a new foster home. Thankfully, the new foster home is my Mom's house!!!!! Yes we are very excited that Future and Clarity will be living with Mom. This will make the reunification process go so much smoother as the kids get back to living with their parents. Our whole family is just thrilled to have the kids so close to us and our kids are over the moon excited to be able to see Future and Clarity every week!

So I am so sorry to my readers that I have been neglecting my blog! We have been busy and it has been crazy! But I promise I will try to keep things hoppin on the blog as the year progresses!!!!!