Matt & Lindsay's Spot

Yesterday morning I took my 3 hour glucose tolerance test. I had failed my 1 hour test (which is very common) so I had to take the 3 hour one. You are on a special diet, high with carbs (to see if your body can handle the sugars), for 3 days. Then the night before the test, you have to fast for 12 hours. When you go in, they take your blood and if your sugar levels are normal (which it takes an hour for the results to come in - which really makes it a 4 hour test) then the test begins. They wont give you the drink with huge amounts of sugar if your levels are already high. You have to drink that sugary drink and get your blood drawn every hour for 3 hours. Yes, that means you get stuck 4 times. I have bruises on my arms; they're just a tad sore. If you fail 2 or more of the 4 tests, you have Gestational Diabetes. I got my results this morning and I failed 3 of mine, so I have GD. (click on that to read more about what GD is) I am going to get a call from a diabetes councelor in order to set up a meeting with them in order for them to teach me what to do. I have to change my diet to add more protein and less carbs and I will have to check my sugar levels a few times daily. It will be a change for me. I live on bread and pasta. If I dont take care of it, I might have a very large baby (because he takes the sugar and gets fat, literally) and there are also health risks with his heart and other things. He might also go into insulin withdrawl after he is born. So, it is very important that I take care of myself. It should go away after birth, but I have a 2 in 3 chance of getting it with other pregnancies and of developing type 2 years later. Come on December!!!!

Guesses? Anyone? Anyone? Thats right, Labor and Delivery. My home away from home. I started contracting again, 5 an hour. I called and they told me to put my feet up and drink tons of water. I guess this is the cure all for them :) If they didnt stop, I was to call back in an hour. As you can guess, they didnt stop. I had 6 the next hour. They told me to come in and get checked. I went in, got hooked up, etc. It was my regular doctor on call, so he knew all my history. He checked me and I was not dilating. He also did an ultrasound. It was great to see the little guy, no pics though :( Baby looked great, moving all around. I think he made the doc frustrated because baby wouldn't stay still for anything. The amniotic fluid level was fine. Pretty much everything looks normal except I am contrating. They did this test on Saturday where they swab the cervix and if it comes back negative then there is a 99.9% chance that you will NOT deliver in the next 3 weeks. Mine was negative, so I think that made the doc feel better about the contractions. If it was positive, then there was a 50% chance (or something like that) that you could deliver in the next 3 weeks. He said it could be a UTI (urinary tract infection) (which I called this morning to get my lab results and they were negative - so no UTI) or it could be my norm. Yeah, my norm. That means I am going to be dealing with these for the next 3 months. He said he could give me meds to stop them, like they did Saturday, but thats temporary. They would just start again some other time, like they did. No thanks, I dont want to take meds if I dont have to and if it doesnt really do any good. So, you might ask (ok you might not, but I did) how am I going to know if something is wrong if I am always contracting? He told me that since this is my norm, pay attention to what I am feeling and if anything feels different or changes that will be my cue. Makes sense I guess. I have an regular check up in 2 weeks, and I guess we will see how I am doing then. So, I guess this will be a long 3 months. Oh well. I am just happy that the baby is doing great. Wish it was December.

Wasn't exactly where I was planning on spending my Saturday evening, but I guess the saying is true, life happens when you make other plans. All day Saturday I wasn't feeling the best. I had been having contractions on and off all day and was just really nauseous. Around 3 in the afternoon I started contracting more, around 4 an hour (plus smaller" cramps" in between). I looked in my pregnancy books and they said that this is when you should put your feet up and drink more water. If this doesnt work, call the doctor. I did what it said and the next hour I still had 4 major ones plus the smaller cramps were getting stronger. So I called the labor and delivery nurse and she told me to put my feet up and drink a half gallon of water. Of course, I told her I was doing this, but she told me to drink the half gallon over the next 2 hours and if I get more than 5 contractions call back. Guess what happened. I got 5 and 6 contractions over the next 2 hours. I called and they told me to come in. This was around 7pm.

So we go to L&D and I get hooked up to all the moniters. My contractions were showing on the moniter, but they were small. The doc came in to check and she was feeling my belly and told me that the contractions felt stronger than they were showing, so she moved the moniter just a tad and boom! Conraction .... contraction......contraction. Perfectly spaced and pretty strong. At this time we had been there for around 2 hours. The doc did a series of exams and test and nothing was coming back wrong, but I was still contracting regularly. They decided to hook me up to a IV and get some fluids in to me. They told me that being dehydrated may be the cause. Did they not just make me drink a half gallon of water on top of the ~8 glasses of water I had already drank that day! So they pump 2 bags of fluid into me and an hour later... still contracting. At this point we had been there for a little over 4 hours. They decided to give me a shot of something (wasnt really paying attention to the name, something medical sounding- all I heard was shot = stop contractions). They give me the shot in the back of the arm, ouch! Within a few minutes, no contractions. Woo-hoo! But the side effects were the shakes. Didn't tell me about that one. I started shaking unconrollably. Teeth rattling, the whole 9 yards. Matt had to hold me up to get me dressed and walk me out of the hospital, because my legs were shaking so bad. It lasted for a few hours.

So after they stopped, they let me go home. It was after midnight, almost 1am. We had been at the hospital for around 5 hours. This morning, I am not contracting, but I feel like I have been hit by a mack truck. I guess a total of 8 (or more counting the ones during the earlier day) hours of contracting, emotional junk, and the shakes really take a toll on the body. I am just laying low, keeping the feet up today. They have no idea what caused this, they think it was just a freak thing. I just have to watch myself and take it easy. I hope that is the last contraction I feel until December :) Sorry this post was so long, it was a very busy (and scary) night, as you can see. I am glad that its over.

I was picking up around the house earlier and was putting some books back in our bedroom. I walked in and noticed this:

Ok. What happened to Daphne's head? I just had to get a picture! I was laughing so hard! I got closer in order to figure out how she was in there and this is what I found. Comfy looking huh?!?

Matt and I were talking to his parents this weekend and Virginia told me she wanted to see how big I was getting, so here I am! This was taken last night around 10pm, so please excuse how tired I look. I feel HUGE, but when I compare myself to others in the same week, I am on the average/small size. Scary thing is how much bigger I am going to get! I have heard you grow the most in the last trimester. I am in my 27th week, which is the first week in the third trimester. 13 weeks to go! 3 months! Crazy!

After a bit of cleaning (a.k.a. - throwing crap away) on Saturday morning we took an exciting trip to Home Depot and snatched up some painting supplies for the nursery. Lindsay used some cop-out about being pregnant so here I am painting the room.

It isn't exactly mind stimulating.... well scratch that. The fumes are definitely doing good things for me. I expect to finish it up next weekend. If you all behave then maybe we will get some pictures.

So, yesterday afternoon I was watching a little tube. Nothing special, I think it was the food network (normally if the tv is on, there is a 80% chance it is on the food network - why? who knows - I just love it) Then, out of nowhere the screen goes blank and it starts making this high pitch screeching sound. So I turn off the reciever (we have dish network - one of those DVR things) and when I turn it back on there is a message that it is doing a hard disk analysis, which could take 45 minutes it tells me. Well, I am not the most technically savvy person, so I leave it alone. Then a new message pops up that says my hard drive is corrupt and all data will be deleted and restarted - just press ok. I am mad at this point, we have like 30 movies that we have recorded and have only watched a few of them. So I wait until Matt gets home and ask him what to do. He tells me that there is nothing we can do and just press ok. I do just that and the stupid thing keeps putting up the message saying that your hard drive is corrupt and nothing else. So, Matt calls dish network and after conversing for a few minutes, the guy tells Matt that the reciever is broken and that they will send us a new one. Ok. No problem. Then he tells us it will be around 5 working days to get it. Thats going to be next week! Oh well, no prime time tv for us for a while.

So you are probably wondering what a cricket has to do with this. After the tv broke, Matt was playing online and I was reading a book. It was very quiet in our house. Then the noise came. CHIRP, CHIRP, CHIRP!!! A stupid cricket decided to make its home in the siding in the wall outside our living room and next to the bedroom. It sounded like the cricket was sitting in between us - it was that loud. This is not the first night we have heard him, but with no tv to drown out the noise it was way more than annoying. And the stupid thing wouldnt stop and take a break! It was constant! So after the 5th time starting a sentance in my book because all my brain was doing was listening to the chirping, I sent Matt out there with the Ortho Home defense spray (love this stuff! I would have done this myself, but being prego, I cant) He sprayed the base boards and a few minutes later - quiet. Nothing, nada. Blissful quiet. I felt bad for killing the cricket, but my sanity depended on it. Little did I know, the sucker survived. He made himself known at 3 am this morning. At least he wasnt in the wall anymore, I think he was somewhere in the yard, but that little guy is LOUD! He is still chirping right now at 10:30 am.

So while I was preparing to give a funeral for my tv and the cricket, I guess only the tv will need one. So while you watch prime time tv tonight, think of us. I am probably going to go to the library and get a few books for my entertainment in the evenings. Which we all know reading is better for your brain than tv anyway.

We survived the storm with nothing more than some lost sleep and a little house damage. The wind ripped off a little drip edge flashing but nothing too major. On a tropical storm scale of one to ten, I would give Ernesto a really strong eight. He had some nice huff 'n puff but was still too big of a wuss to be a full fledged hurricane. I'll post a pic of the minor damage later if the wife doesn't get around to it.

We had a CRAZY weekend. I mowed the lawn on Saturday. Lindsay cleaned the house. I'm still kinda on the adrenaline rush after that madness.....

In all reality it was a nice relaxing weekend. Coming back to work feeling rested is a nice change of pace.

P.S. - When I get older, I want to be this guy: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-872124450700446493