What's Going On?

I wanted to post some pictures from my Chicago GWO photoshoot (30 weeks), but I can't figure out how to copy them from D's website and don't really want to link there as I don't want to put "all" the pictures on the website.

Anyway, a lot has been going on in the last three weeks and I want to be sure to update.

Work
First and least exciting is work. Since my last post I've had three meetings with presentations to prepare for. In the last three work weeks, I only had 5 days without an appointment, conference call or meeting scheduled. It's an extremely busy time of year for me, plus with trying to start some projects early and get as much finished up before maternity leave, I literally have no free time during the day. I don't check personal e-mail, I only talk to my "work friends" on my lunch hour (a girl still has to eat), and I've been bringing work home more than I would like. I don't see it getting any better before I leave. I wanted to have my desk in order by April 1st so that if I were to go at any time, I would feel like someone could come in and figure out what I was doing. No such luck yet. I'm hoping in two more weeks I could possible be to that point, but I'm planning on working until at least 7 or 8 at least one night a week, bringing home work at least one night a week, and working at least one evening on the weekend for the next month to make that happen.

School
I took my final on March 17th. I only needed a 73% to get an A in the class. Not sure what my grade was, but I did get an A for the quarter, so that was good. Now I'm done until the Autumn quarter starting in September.

House
Our house is still for sale. Activity on the showings is starting to pick up. In the last three weeks, we've had 5 showings and an open house and I have another showing scheduled for tomorrow. No offers yet, but we have been several couple's 2nd choice. Since re-listing in January we've had 13 showings (14 after tomorrow). I'm not stressing about it. If it happens before Luke comes, we'll move, and if not, we'll re-evalute in June when our contract is up.

Baby Stuff
Here's where things get interesting. As of today I'm 32 weeks, 2 days pregnant. With less than 8 weeks until my due date, I'm feeling a mixture of relief and apprehension. I'd been nervous about work stuff, but just last week realized, I've still got stuff to do at home too. I hadn't even started thinking about packing a bag. I needed to confirm with all grandparents what the plans were for the labor. I still need to make up a call list, fill out and turn in my disability/FMLA paperwork, get bottles from Samara, get Grace's 3 year pictures taken, fill out Luke's baby book, and I realized I hadn't bought him a single pair of socks or shoes. Funny, this weekend I bought 1 pair of shoes and a package of socks when I was getting groceries and I felt lots better. I also worked on the grandparent info and feel better about that too.

My trip to Texas and then to GWO in Chicago was relatively uneventful on the baby front. No major contractions, even considering how much walking around we did in Chicago. Last week was exciting because I got to have my 31-32 week appointment and we did an ultrasound. I didn't get to keep any pictures this time, but honestly we didn't really look at much anyway. She just measured his head, belly, and leg bones and that's all we looked at. No face views or any other good shots of his boy parts. Anyway, according to the ultrasound measurements he's currently 5 pounds, 2 ounces. At 32 weeks the average weight is 3.75 pounds. So we're already a pound heavier than average. That puts us in the 90th percentile. If we stay at this rate and I go to 39 weeks, she estimates that he will weigh between 8 1/2 to 9 pounds, so on the same track as Grace. We're going to do another ultrasound at around 36 weeks to see if we're still measuring big. I'm guessing at that time we'll schedule for an induction at somewhere around 39 weeks. I also gave Dr. B another contraction update and she told me that when they start acting up to try to rest and drink water, but didn't do another check or anything. Next appointment is in 2 weeks on April 11th (1 day shy of 34 weeks).

Last night, things got interesting again. I wasn't active, I was just sitting on the couch doing some work and around 10:00 p.m. I had a couple contractions. I didn't write down the time, but they were strong enough to make me have to stop and breathe until it went away. After two that seemed fairly close together, I gave Eric some paper and asked him to keep track for me. At 11:00, when he had recorded 3more, he asked what I wanted to do, because they seemed to be between somewhere
between 7 & 12 minutes apart.

I didn't really know what to do because I kind of wanted to go to bed, but didn't want to miss something if it was important, and the doctor told me to call if I had 4or more an hour for a couple of hours and it had only been just over an hour. So, I decided to call the doctor's office and get a message to the "on-call" doctor. I left a message with the service and she called me back within about 5 minutes. I told her what was going on and that I'd been sitting and did drink a bottle of water over the last hour, so she told me to go to the hospital and get monitored and checked. I felt a little silly assuming it was nothing, but she reassured me better
safe than sorry, so we went.

We had to wake Grace up and we took her to Kim's (a coworker). It was kind of nice to do a "trial-run" because Kim has agreed to watch Grace when I go into labor for real. We dropped her off with a change of clothes for morning and went to the hospital. I did have a couple more contractions on the way. When I got up to Labor and Delivery, they hooked me up the monitors in the Triage area and monitored me for an hour or so. I didn't feel completely stupid, because on the contraction monitor, I was having contractions. They also seemed closer together at the hospital. More like every 4 or 5 minutes, although they didn't seem to be as painful as when I was at home. After an hour or so, the resident doctor came in and checked me. I'm still not dilated at all, and my cervix still feels firm and high up. He also took a swab so they could do a Fetal Fibronectin (FNN) test if the ultrasound or exam was not reassuring. He did an ultrasound to check the length of my cervix. It was still in the "normal" range, so he declared that while I was having ontractions, I was not "in labor."

Then he called to talk to the "on-call" doctor who recommended to go ahead and run the FNN test for reassurance and to give me a shot of terbutaline that was supposed
to stop the contractions and make me a bit jittery and my heart race. The FNN test basically tells if you are at high risk of going into labor within the next two weeks. So, we did both and we had to wait another hour. The FNN came back negative and while I felt like I'd been injected with Red Bull, the contractions stopped. So finally at 3 a.m. we got to go home.

Hopefully, things will continue to be quiet until my 34 week appointment. Oh, yeah, at 32 weeks, my weight gain is 21 pounds. Starting to pack them on, but still in the normal range and probably less than I gained with Grace.