This week has sure been better than the last couple.  For starters, the baby’s room is now done!!!!!!  Can you tell how excited I am?  Clint finished all the trim this past weekend and helped me put the Pooh border up.  It all turned out so cute!  We also got blinds and just have to figure out what we are going to do with the curtains I have.  Then last night we got the carpet installed!  It is so wonderful to have it finished; I know that Clint is happy!  But of course, he is now on to the next project… the living room!  We will get carpet in there in a few weeks, but first he wants to paint the walls and all the trim.  Looks like we have a project for this weekend!  Now all I need to do is order the furniture for the baby’s room.  It just is so nice to know that it is all ready for the baby!

My baby shower this past weekend was wonderful!  My mom and sister did a great job in making all the food and planning some fun games. J  We got a lot of cool things for baby, the Rainforest swing and high chair, the baby monitors, some clothes, blankets, baby lotion/washes and a ton of books!  I am so excited to start reading all these new ones to the baby.  I only had a few before so they were getting kind of old to read over and over!  I am convinced that the baby will love to read so I figure why not start reading to it now?  I think over the next six weeks Daddy and I will alternate each night who reads so the baby can get used to his voice too. 

My doctor’s appointment today went very smoothly.  I only had to wait half an hour and then started the non-stress test.  It went well!  Basically they just put a monitor on my uterus (on the outside) and another on the baby to monitor the heartbeat.  The nurse said that the baby should have periods of “rest” and periods of “active” within the 20 minutes that they were monitoring me.  The doctor came in and checked a few times and determined that all is well with baby!  Very reassuring to find out, although I am still at the stage where the baby moves constantly throughout the day so have reminders that it is strong and kicking every few minutes!  After the NST I sat and talked to the doctor for a few minutes and feel much better about him after this visit.  He took the time to explain to me what was going on and that as long as baby and I are doing well I should have no reason to be induced, which was good news to me.  I really feel like the baby will come as soon as he/she is ready and I am nervous about having to be induced.  Hopefully it will not come to that. 

My ultrasound last Friday showed that the baby is in the 64^th percentile, which is just fine.  He/she weighed 5 pounds and passed the Biophysical Profile with almost no problem!  The BPP is the ultrasound I have to do each week now to monitor the fluid around the baby, baby’s movement and breathing.  Basically the baby has 30 minutes to move and breathe a certain number of times in order to get a passing grade.  I think that we happened to be there at nap time though, because it took some poking and prodding to get baby to start moving.  This week I will have to eat and drink something right before the ultrasound since that seems to get baby going.  Drinking ice cold water really seems to help!   Overall I feel much better about the whole situation and I know that things are going to turn out just fine so I am trying not to stress myself out.  Now if only I could apply the same theory at work… J          

Well today has been a long day and I think that it’s just the start of the long seven weeks I have remaining in my pregnancy.  I went to see Dr. Ashford today and waited an hour and fifteen minutes to see him for about FIVE MINUTES!  If you can’t tell from my tone I was extremely unhappy about it.  Of course he apologized and was perfectly nice about it, but I was still mad!  Then he tells me that I have to continue to see him until the baby is born, EVERY WEEK!  I have to do a non stress test for the baby, where they use a fetal monitor for 20 minutes to make sure that the baby is doing OK and then see him right afterwards, every Tuesday.  Then I have to go in every Friday for an ultrasound to make sure that the baby’s heart rate, movement and breathing are staying normal.  Plus I have to go back the diabetes doctor at some point in the next week according to my OB.   I will talk to her tomorrow to find out what she wants to do. I know, I know I am sick of my complaining too.  I am really trying to stay positive because I know that all of this is just for the baby’s and my well-being.  It’s just very hard to swallow considering the next five weeks are also the busiest that I have out of the entire year at work!  Who planned this pregnancy anyway??   

Last week I went to the diabetes doctor and she decided to put me on insulin because my fasting numbers remain high.  I started that last Wednesday and it hasn’t made a difference yet, so hopefully she will have a solution for me tomorrow when I talk to her.  I figure she will up my insulin and I won’t have to go in to see her, but we will see!  

Other than all these doctors’ appointment and my work life being crazy, things have been going great!!  Clint has made awesome progress on the baby’s room, it is painted (Pooh Bear yellow), the new doors are in and have trim up, he is putting up the floor trim today and we went and bought all the window trim last night.  Plus, carpet is getting installed next Monday!!!  It really is coming together nicely; I am so excited for it to be done!  Clint is very sick of working around the house, so I try not to nag him too much but sometimes it just comes out.  Must be the pregnancy hormones…   He really has done a wonderful job and I don’t know where I would be without him!  He has been a rock for me and has dealt with more than one crying phone call from me when things get too rough.  He always knows just what to say to help me calm down.  I am a lucky lady!  

This weekend is my first baby shower, hosted by my mom and sister.  I am excited to see all my friends and celebrate this little one with them.  I am really looking forward to it!  Now where I will put all the baby gear is a different story… maybe my mom would be nice enough to let me leave it at her house until the carpet is done in the baby’s room?  I am sure if I ask nicely.   Now I just have to get through the rest of the week, it helps to have something to look forward to on the weekend (besides sleeping in for the short few weekends we have left before the baby is here!).

Last week was very busy at work so I was very near the breaking point!  I am glad the week is over, but here we are again on Monday starting the work week over.  I am going to be extremely busy up until I start my maternity leave so hopefully I can keep my stress level down.  I may be starting a countdown soon… I am really looking forward to having time off to spend with the baby! 

The GD is going OK.  I continue to have problems with my fasting blood sugar numbers, so I put a call into the specialist this morning and am waiting for a call back to find out if there is something else that I should be doing.  It has been running in between 100-110 and they want it to be below 95.   Otherwise most of my numbers have been normal, a couple of high readings from the food I ate (spaghetti and bananas) which was interesting because the one thing I have ate a whole lot of throughout my pregnancy has been bananas!  Maybe that is why I have developed GD?  My body doesn’t seem to process them well!  Other than the mental pain from trying to not eat sweets and carbs I have been feeling pretty good.  The baby has been extremely active the past couple of days.  At my regular doctors appointment on Thursday the doctor said that the baby was breech, but still has plenty of time to turn around.  It’s definitely something you can completely feel when the baby is turning, it’s very interesting!!  She also told me that I am measuring at 37 when I should only be 31… still large but the ultrasound I had told them the baby is growing just fine, not too big only in the 73^rd percentile.   I also got good news in that my blood pressure is down, it was 130/68 and I actually lost a pound!  I guess the low-carb diet is good for more than one thing!

We had a good weekend; Clint made a lot of progress on the baby’s room!  He got the painting all done, we bought trim for the whole room along with new doors and he got all of that stained yesterday.  Once he gets that in then we just need carpet!  I am hoping the room will be done by the time I have my first shower on the 23^rd because I have a feeling I will have a lot of stuff and no where else to put it!  I am very excited for my baby showers!  My mom and sister are having one for my family on Feb. 23^rd, my friends at work are throwing one for me on Feb 28^th and Clint’s aunts are throwing one for me on March 8^th!   I can’t tell you how hard it has been not going to the store and buying stuff!!!!  It was so much fun to do the registries; hopefully I thought of everything that we may need.  I have a feeling that I will not want to do much shopping right after the baby is born!  

I’ll admit I was definitely a little worried when the nurse called and told me I have gestational diabetes, but in doing some research on it and having my doctor’s appointment yesterday I feel much better about the whole situation.  I really think I am a lot better off than I could be because my blood sugar is only moderately high and I should be able to control it with watching my carb intake.  However, it does mean no more cinnamon bears or ice cream for the rest of my pregnancy!  I will just have to find something new to satisfy my cravings J  I have to check my glucose four times a day and my ketones every morning.  I will go back to the specialist in two weeks provided I continue to have mostly normal readings.  Otherwise I see my OB on Thursday so we will see what she says about the size of the baby!  I did have another ultrasound last week because the doctor thinks I am measuring large.  The baby weighed about 3.5 lbs at that point, but that is all that they told me.  I am anxious for her to go over the results with me this week.  Hopefully all is good with the weight, head size and fluid levels.  I would be bummed if the baby’s size will force me into having a c-section.  But whatever it takes to keep both of us healthy! 

This past weekend was a very productive one for Clint and I.  We spent lots of time cleaning!  I cleaned the entire basement, which was a disaster from all the construction going on in my house and Clint cleaned his garage.  As soon as he is done with the baby’s room it is back out to the garage to finish the truck so we can drive it this summer! He was very frustrated because of some issues with the walls in the baby’s room preventing him from finishing the painting like he wanted to.  If all goes well it should be done this weekend.  Next project is the trim boards and then carpet!  We picked some out at Home Depot and one of our friends is going to install it for us.  It is getting closer every day!

Clint and I had an amazing time on our “Babymoon” to Two Harbors.  He picked a beautiful place for us to stay in.  The view was amazing, right on Lake Superior , so we sat by the fireplace and admired that for a long time!   We also took a drive up the North Shore to Gooseberry Falls (which was completely frozen!) and Split Rock Lighthouse.  It was quite chilly out, but nice to get some outside time in too.  We spent a lot of time talking, playing games and watching movies.  All in all, it was the perfect trip for us, quiet and relaxing!  We also accomplished our goal of talking about baby names and we came up with a good list of possibilities.  Only a few short months left to decide!  We are pretty set on the girl’s name we picked, now its time to work on the boy’s name.  Can you believe we didn’t have one single name that matched on our boy name lists??  That made for some interesting conversation.  We are just excited to meet our little one and get to know who they are!