Very Very Pregnant Girl

Tomorrow I'll be 35 weeks pregnant, which in my opinion puts me at the VVPG status. I'm feeling well, a little swollen today, but I saw the doctor on Tuesday and will see the doctor again tomorrow. Everything is looking fine. My doctor is on vacation this week, so I'm seeing another doctor in the office. I'm glad that my doctor is on vacation this week because I'm hoping that she comes back well rested and rejuvinated in perfect timing to deliver my baby. I had a sonogram on Tuesday because I was having some contractions show up on the fetal monitoring. No big deal. I didn't even know I was having them. The sono showed that the baby is over 5 pounds. Good deal. 2 to 5 more weeks. Hopefully next week when my doctor is back from vacation we can get a better idea how long it will be. We shall see.

Meanwhile, Allyssa is still suffering from asthma. She has had a bad cough for over 2 weeks. She doesn't sleep well. She coughs so hard sometimes that I think she's going to throw up. When she's done with one of these coughing fits I try to comfort her and she is ready to play. It is so bizarre to me. You'd think that she'd feel bad after coughing so hard, but she must feel okay because she insists that she is ready to go again. We're hoping that the coughing will go away soon. Poor little girl. She is talking up a storm. She talks to her toys and instructs them to eat things and do things and when they "do" she says "Good job!" She also says "Good job!" to herself and to me and David. It is so cute. She repeats every single thing that we say. If she sneezes and I say "God bless you." She says it back. If we startle someone when we come around the corner of church going on our walk and I say "Sorry!" she repeats it, too. Put in a room full of people, she won't say much at all, but with few people or at home, she'll talk a lot more. Well, she's up from her nap. Off to get a snack ready, supper made, a nebulizer treatment, and play time before David comes home for supper.

My other blog

For those of you wanting to look at my other blog, it no longer exists.

Good Job

Today I put peas and corn on Allyssa's fork for her because she needed help doing it and asked for "Mommy help." When I gave her back her fork, she said "Good job." How sweet. I'm so glad she likes my fork skills!

Allyssa can count

Yesterday, I walked into the living room to see what Allyssa was chattering about. She was playing with a toy and this is what I heard (the "blah"s are her made up words that I can't understand):

"Blah, Blah, Blah, one, two, Blah, Blah..." Each time she said a word she put a toy nail in the nail hole on the toy workbench.

Later, she counted her snack. She said "One, two, three, five, six." I would have skipped four, too. It is such an overrated number.

Today David and Allyssa were counting raisens and Allyssa counted "one, two" into David's hands, but gave him three. Bonus!

She's such a cutie!

Allyssa's cough

We went to the doctor today because her cough wasn't getting any better, and, in fact, she woke up 10 or 12 times last night. She had no fever or anything like that, so I figured it was allergies. I had been giving her Zyrtec for days, but it didn't seem like it did much. Her sneezing wasn't happening, but the cough wouldn't go away. 1 nebulizer treatment, a finger prick and bandaid (I mention the bandaid because Allyssa hates them on her finger and seems to throw a bigger fit over the bandaid than the prick), lung x-rays, and a strep test later, we are told that she has asthma. She was diagnosed with it because of the number of times that she's come in for allergies and the reaction her lungs have to it. They've taken x-rays on a few occasions and could compare. Poor little girl is allergic to the Valley. Who isn't? Her asthma isn't the kind that moms and dads freak out about whether their kid will suffocate or anything like that. It just means that it is really hard for her to breathe when her allergen is about. She has a prescription for singulair and is supposed to take neb treatments for 3 days everytime that she flairs up. With these treatments, she'll be okay. Poor girly!

These are a few of my favorite things: Allyssa

1. My favorite color: purple, maybe yellow
2. My favorite shape: oval
3. My favorite copy cat activity: cooking
4. My favorite animal: dog, especially Aiti
5. My favorite animal in pictures or books: dolphins (however I think that word is pronounced "dopin")
6. My favorite shoe: sandals
7. My favorite song: Jonah and the Big Fish from the God Is Great CD
8. My favorite place to go: outside
9. My favorite activity outside: swinging
10. My favorite food: cheese, maybe noodles

CONGRATULATIONS

My sister had her baby today!! Welcome Kyle William! We are so glad you're here!

I do not have PE

I woke up this morning swollen. I figured since...I went to the hospital on Sun., had 3 vials of blood drawn and given them a cup of pee all to find out that they looked good, got sent home to pee in a big orange bucket all day, took it to the doctor's office on Mon., where they took at least 5 vials of blood, but I really think they took 6 or 7, and would have those results back tomorrow...I really wouldn't have to go to the doctor, they'd just tell me not to worry and I would see them at my scheduled appointment on Thursday. I called the office, the receptionist said that I could see the nurse practitioner, but I didn't want to see anyone, so I asked if I could just talk to the nurse. Blanca called me back an hour or so later and I told her about what had happened in the last couple of days and that I was swollen again. She said she'd tell Dr. Hunter and give me a call back. Dr. Hunter, like normal, did not take my symptom lightly because she really wants to keep this baby in me until it reaches term and she knew that I must be worried since I keep bugging everyone. She said to come in right away. So I gathered up Allyssa and went. I gave them my normal cup of pee to do their magic on and figured I'd just see the doctor and be told that I am fine and not to worry. Nope. "Fetal Monitoring" was what the sign on the door said. Great! I'll get to hear that baby's heart beat. How long do I have to monitor? 20 minutes. In case you aren't aware of how fetal monitoring in a doctor's office works, they close you up in a room by youself with two disks strapped to your belly and tell you to punch a button everytime the baby moves. The two disks monitor the baby's heartrate and checks for contractions. The thing is, I wasn't alone in the room. Allyssa came with me, remember? So for 20 minutes I had to lay down in a recliner while Allyssa initially played, but only for about half the time. Then she wanted to be up in Mommy's lap. Then she wanted to be down. Then she wanted me to help her, with what I don't know. Then she wanted to give me things, but my hands were busy holding the button I was supposed to push and holding the fetal heartrate monitor in place. So up she climbed into the chair again. The baby in my tummy either felt much sympathy for Allyssa and kicked to show his support of her tears and to empathize or kicked a lot to tell her "Sis, get off me!" Either way, when the nurse came in, I told her how sorry I was that I brought Allyssa because I was sure that the results were skewed due to the fact that Allyssa joined in the fun. The nurse laughed and said that it was okay, she could see where Allyssa climbed in my lap on the paper report and would let the doctor know. They were very nice about it. I was concerned they wouldn't be. I mean, who brings their kid with them? Aparently, me, but I really shouldn't have today. So then I took the monitors off without being told that I could and cleaned up the room (Allyssa had played in there for 10 minutes before she climbed up to join me, remember?). I fed Allyssa a banana and helped her play until we were told to go to the examination room. We looked at a picture of fruits and veggies on the wall for a while until Dr. Hunter came in. She was very kind about Allyssa joining us, as she always is. Then she said the sweetest words ever said to me by a doctor (at least in the last few weeks, I mean, I'm sure it was very sweet when they told me that my babies have been healthy every time they've told me, but just keep reading), "You don't have preeclampsia." Hooray! Then came the bad news: I have to go to the doctor's office twice a week from here on out and each time fetal monitoring will be done. That means that twice a week from here on out, I have to find someone to watch Allyssa. That means that two days a week from here on out, I don't get to spend those precious hours with Allyssa, her last precious hours of being an only child. The good news overshadows the bad news. And now I know what I'm supposed to do when I wake up and am swollen. That is great because I wake up swollen most days these days. So that's it. I'm okay and they are watching me very closely.

News of the day

Today is the Jalapeno 100. David is doing the metric century, which is 62.5 miles. He'll be done soon, so Allyssa and I won't be able to see him finish because of her nap time. If it wasn't too windy, he would have done the full century, so we would have gone to Harlingen to see him finish. Sadly, the wind did not cooperate.

I woke up this morning with swollen hands and feet. I called a friend and asked if Allyssa could come over, especially since she has a cough which I think is from allergies. She said that it was fine. I then called the doctor (because of course finding a place for Allyssa to be is more important). It is a weekend, so the doctor on call is not my doctor, but a different one in town. She quoted statistics about the chances of my having preeclampsia again. Then she told me to stay home until I get another symptom (pains in my abdomen, headache that won't go away with Tylonol, swelling in my face, seeing spots, etc...). So I called my friend back (who by the way is part of the sweetest family in the whole world! Her husband volunteered to adjust his work schedule so that my friend could accompany me to the hospital since David would have to meet me there later. He was going to watch their two kids plus Allyssa!!) and said that I didn't have to go to the hospital afterall. So now it is just a wait until those symptoms appear or wait until Monday, whichever comes first. Monday, I'm supposed to call my doctor and get an early appointment so that tests can be run. So the hope is that I'm swollen for no good reason at all and that everything is fine. We'll find out next week, I guess.

Oh my!

I forgot to tell you! Allyssa is copying a phrase of ours now: "Oh my!" She got the world messy with flour on accident while cooking with us and she said, "Oh my!" It was so cute!

Oh well

So with Allyssa telling me every day right after or right before she needs a new diaper, I thought she might be ready to potty train. I cleaned her big girl panties and got out the potty. I started after her nap. No luck. She's totally not ready. She made it to the potty a few times (or at least to the bathroom), but she went to the bathroom way too many times in a 5 hour period. You see a child shouldn't go 15 times in an afternoon/evening. It wasn't that I was pumping her full of fluids. It was that she doesn't empty her bladder when she pees. She pees and is done; then two minutes later she wets her pants. Sometimes it happend three times per peeing session. Anyways, I figure that in a few months she'll be more patient and sit a little longer, and we'll try again then. For now the panties and potty are going to hide until that time comes around. At least now I know that it wouldn't have been easy to train her before the new baby arrives. So next time when I try, I won't question that.

New things Allyssa can do

She said a 4 word "sentence." It was "Daddy cereal all gone." She prayed with her stuffed animals and then said "Amen!" She is super silly and laughs a lot. She does a lot of other stuff, but my pregnancy brain can't remember long enough to get it on the blog. Sorry!

If you'd like to read about us not having water for 14 hours or my doctor appointment today, check out my other blog here.