I hadn’t realized it had been so long since I updated. Our ‘bit of a week’ continued with Saturday (3/25) night having a trip to the emergency room afraid I was in labor, but it turned out to be another round of Braxton Hicks contractions, just a longer more intense version.
I was told to stay off my feet as much as possible and try and stay hydrated.
We’ve limited ourself to one day a week of ‘running around’ and when Danny’s not home I mostly spend my time catching up on email correspondance, web design or playing games, and doing minimal house chores, like washing dishes and cooking. I’m not allowed to do any heavy lifting, of course, or extended amounts of bending/stretching so no floors, no straightening up the baby’s room any more and so on.
The upside of the trip was we got to meet the very nice nurses in labor and delivery, who were wonderful to us, very reassuring and very nice. They kept telling us that we shouldn’t feel bad it was a false alarm. One told us her sister had been in every day for two weeks before she delivered convinced she was in labor and she wan’t. They also showed us around the rest of the ward than just the prep room so we could see the actual delivery rooms and told us what everything did, and said they’d be more than happy to see us back in at least two weeks, because while I could deliver at 36 weeks, every day that I hold on to the baby he gains a bit more weight and his lungs get stronger, which means he gets a better start on life.
So Kudos to Megan and Keri at Waterman

I wish I could say for the most part this week has been fairly quiet, but we have had a few more bouts of ‘not good’. We found out that my mother-in-law might have lung cancer. We’re still waiting to hear back on test results to find out exactly what the next course of action will be and how they’re going to proceed. Although they are moving quickly with scans and biopsies, we don’t have any concrete results back yet. Then the next day we found out that her brother in New York (Danny’s uncle) had a heart attack upon hearing the news she might have cancer, and are still waiting for word on his condition.

This past weekend my Mum and mother-in-law threw a suprise shower for me, some friends came in from out of town, and some from closer in. We got a lot of nice things, a good chunk of diapers (which will be very, very handy) and baby wipes, a lot of baby bath aids, shampoos, bodywash, and some more outfits. So, that was a bright spot in things, it was a fun day, although exhausting. I came home afterwards and slept on and off for twelve hours. I’m gathering pictures together, and will probably put those up and finally get the work shower ones up as well (now that I’m done cropping and shrinking them) on the family album. I know I still have to find the pictures we got from the ultrasound on 3/5 and scan those as well. I’ve been lax.

Yesterday we got what was hopefully the last of the bad news. A friend in England I’ve known since about 2000 (I actually met her after I came to the States, and through another friend while I was in college. She was living in Switzerland at the time, but in one of those strange coincidences it turned out her mother knew someone who used to run the Pizza Margherita restuarant in our home town…anyway). Her name was Mandy, and I found out a year or so after I got to know her that she had Multiple Sclerosis. She was on a small close-knit mailing list with myself and some other friends, so we chatted back and forth quite a bit…she passed the Sunday before last. Her husband was finally able to let us know yesterday. So, with her while it is sad news it’s also somewhat good because with the MS she was probably suffering greatly.

So, this brings us back to today.
Today we had the first of the ‘weekly’ appointments, which will continue until baby is born. This visit was somewhat uncomfortable because of some of the checks they had to do, which I won’t describe, but will tell the results of.
I’m not dilated at all so far. This is a bit frustrating because I’m at a point where I’m very uncomfortable most of the time, and was having more contractions again just the night before last. All this ‘wolf-crying’ he’s been doing I’m probably not going to believe it when I really do go into labor. I would like for baby to arrive early, healthy and safe, of course, but still…I’m uncomfortable and he has to be getting all kinds of cramped up in there…
He hasn’t actually dropped yet either, which suprises me because most nights he keeps me up ’slamming around’ even if I’m not having random contractions so I thought for sure he would have done so as active as he’s been, but apparently not. He is at least still head down, so that’s good.

I weight at 236 this visit, down from 242 two weeks ago, but the doctor didn’t seem concerned by this because the baby is still growing and putting on weight so that’s fine. We think the weight loss is probably just due to the fact that because he’s taking up so much space now my stomach/appetite have shrunk. I can only eat about half a meal before getting full. Plus being up and down to the bathroom about three times as much as normal does mean I’m getting a lot of exercise ^_~

So, it still looks like we’re ‘on’ for around the 23rd. The only thing I need to do is call the hospital and verify that I would like an epidural.