Midwife home visit

Yesterday was our home visit with the midwife. We went through what she'll do if something is wrong with the baby, the tools she has, etc. Everything is looking good. My hemoglobin is down still, but I'm clotting fine, and she says if she has to choose between one or the other, she'll take good clotting. So while it's something we wish were different, it's not really something to worry about. I'm supposed to continue taking my probiotic iron supplement, but if it doens't work, that's okay. She wasn't concerned about my bh contractions. She said that as I have more children I'll probably find that they get stronger. Fun for me! Every visit with her just confirms in my mind that she is the right midwife for us. She's just perfect.

And one of the best parts is that the house was all nice and clean for her visit, and by the time she left it was time to get kids in bed, so we have no chores this morning while DH is at work. We were done with school by 10am, so we've got all day to just take it easy. I'll probably make that lasagna I've been wanting to make. I always double the recipe, so we'll have one in the freezer for after baby. And of course we'll have to do a toy pick-up before Daddy gets home.

36 weeks!

I'm 36 weeks! My midwife is officially on call and I'm finishing getting everything set up and ready for baby. I'm really going to be having a baby soon! I'm so excited. I finally feel like we have a real family now. I know this sounds odd, but before I always felt like we were just getting started, and now, while I don't feel like we're complete, we're at least "there" now, we're not getting started anymore. We've arrived in a way. Maybe it's because since Canaan was born I've been a member of a message board where you're not a full member until you have 4 in 8 yrs. I don't know. But DH has said the same thing, about feeling like we were just getting started before. And now we enter into the land of rude comments regarding family size. Bring 'em on!

Had to cancel my midwife appt

I was supposed to have a midwife appt yesterday, but we ended up canceling b/c we still have pink eye floating around the house and the midwife didn't want it in her office. Can't say I blame her! Right now Canaan and Genesis have it in BOTH eyes. They look horrible. The garlic is doing the trick, but as soon as I get one completely over it somebody else starts to get it. We were planning on having the midwife do a home visit next week for our next appt anyways, so we may just go right to that. That way I don't have to cancel again if it's still floating around and I don't think she'll mind coming here to pink eye as much as us taking it there. She doesn't want it getting on all the toys at her office.

I need to call her today about setting that up and also ask her about these contractions I keep getting and how easy I should be taking it. DH is doing the best he can, but he needs to step up a bit, imo. He did great yesterday though. We went grocery shopping and when my cart started getting too heavy and was giving me BH he made the boys get out and walk and let me push the almost empty cart. And he's always great about unloading the carts unto the belts (which is really hard on a pg belly!) and he loads up the car. Then he let me come inside and sit while he unloaded the car and had the kids put the groceries away. I'm sure if I had done all my normal stuff I would have been having horrible contractions by the time I was done, but instead, I only the normal few. It was great.

I think I've decided though that when I take my 2 week "baby vacation" I'm going to stay in the bedroom so I don't have to see the state of the house, lol. Hopefully that will make it easier to stay down!

A little update

Carseats are all in, except the infant carrier base, which we'll probably put in next week. It actually looks more spacious in our car now. Before the kids were all scrunched into one row, but now they're all spread out. Asher ended up getting put on the end of the back row, instead of in the middle b/c his new carseat is too big too fit in the middle. So the boys have about a foot of space between their seats. We're a little worried about when we need to fit 5 carseats, but the front row is slightly wider than the back, so it may fit better there when it gets to be time for that. We also decided to put Genesis rear-facing. I explained the dilemma to DH to get his opinion and at first he was all for putting her forward-facing, but then the next day he said he wanted to leave her rear-facing so she could see the boys. Fine with me!

I'm taking it easy today, I've actually been taking it easy for several days now. At first I just had no motivation, but now I think my body was telling me to stay down. After several days of just getting the bare minimum done, I want to do more, but I'm getting a ton of strong braxton hicks contractions. So I'm just doing hte basics again today. The kids got the house all picked up and are now watching a movie. The only thing I plan on still doing tonight is the dishes and finishing up some laundry. As long as I spread them out, I should be okay. I have a feeling it may be this way the rest of the pregnancy, though I'm hoping not, b/c weeks of doing just the basics, then having DH in charge for two weeks is going to make it really hard to do just the basics for 4 more weeks, which is my plan for optimal recovery after baby. Maybe over DH's two weeks of being in charge I can convince him to do a few of the extra things I try and get done every week. That's about it for now!

eta: I just realized that even if I do need to slow down for these BH, I won't have to until the baby is born. Once I hit 37wks, I can completely ignore them, or hope the work will turn them into real contractions!

It's official

I now have a 2yo, a 4yo and 6yo. Asher's birthday is today and it's the last of our "birthday season" (though we still need to have their bday party with cake and stuff). I'm actually looking forward to this baby having a slightly later bday so that it's not quite so all at once, yk? Two weeks ago I had a 1yo, a 3yo and a 5yo. That's a lot of growing up in two weeks!

In other news, I cured pink eye!! Two days ago, Asher was asking in the late morning/early afternoon if you could have eye snot instead of just eye boogers, b/c he had a lot of snotty stuff in his eye. A few hours later he was complaining his eye hurt. By bed time, it was red and swollen half shut. I woke up the next morning with lots of "eye snot." I did my research and was happy when I found a home remedy that we could actually do. It doesn't do me any good to know a tincture of eyebright and a bunch of other stuff will do it, I don't have any of htat stuff. So here is what we did. In a rag, put a minced clove of garlic. soaked it in hot water for about 5 seconds, then squeezed out the extra juice. Placed the compress on the eye for 60 seconds or until it started burning, whichever happened first. Rinsed off the eye to be sure juices didn't get in. We did that 3 times yesterday. By the end of hte day, I had no symptoms and all of Asher's redness and itchiness was gone, though he still had some residual swelling. We're doing it again today just to be sure we kill the infection. I am so proud of myself for curing this at home and not having to take him to the Dr (or the ER since it's a weekend). I think garlic is a gift from God. It kills almost every bad, but none of the good, like antibiotics do. You can eat it, or just put it in a compress. It's wonderful stuff. Thank you God for garlic!!

Still feeling "girl"

For most of this pregnancy, DH and I have felt we're having another girl. Every body we see says we're having a girl. The biggest thing for us is the names. Near the beginning of each pregnancy we've had a girl's and boy's name picked out. By the end of the pregnancy, one of those names just doesnt' feel right and the other feels perfect. Since the end of the 1st trimester we've both been unsure about our boy name, but love the girl name we have picked out. I was starting to think maybe we should be looking for a different boy's name, just in case. But now I'm pretty sure we're just having a girl. We got baby clothes from storage today, a tub of girl clothes and a tub of boy clothes. I have almost no desire to go through the boy clothes. The girl clothes are calling to me. The only other time the girl clothes called like that was with Genesis. When I was pg with Canaan, we were only 75% sure we were having a boy, from what I thought I saw during the u/s (we had asked not to find out). I had no girl clothes (though my sister was coming to visit near the due date and could have brought girl clothes with her if need be), but I never found it necassary to buy girl clothes. When I was pg with Genesis and only had instinct to go on, I had a whole box of newborn girl clothes, but I still went out and bought girl clothes. Not a lot, but a few things here and there. It's the only time I've been drawn to girl clothes. Until now. I want to wash all the girl clothes and put them in the drawers, which is silly. This baby could easily be a boy. So I'll still pull out a few boy clothes, and I won't go crazy with the girl clothes, but I can gurantee I'll have more girl clothes washed and ready then boy clothes. And just to confirm things, I've had symptoms I only had with Genesis; insomnia and constant stuffy nose are the main ones.

So what do you think? A little sister for Genesis? Or another boy?

34 weeks!

I'm 34 weeks today. I think I've made it past the small freak-out I had of not being ready (buying some stuff helped with that I believe) and now I'm on to getting excited. In 2-6 weeks I will have a new baby!! I've been getting stuff done around here to prepare. Like I said, the birthing kit is ordered and should be here in a few days. I got more sewing done so I can start my diaper covers soon. I pulled the stuff out I need to make diaper covers and pulled the newborn diapers out (so cute!). Tomorrow we're supposed to be getting stuff out of storage, like baby clothes!! I can't wait to go through all those teeny tiny outfits and pull out a few favorites of each gender. And all the tiny blankets, and the bouncy seat. Yup, definitely getting excited. Next week I'll probably be freaking out about labor and delivery, lol.

Just rambling

So we got our new towels on Friday, spent a whole $15 for ten new towels, yay!! They were running low by the time we got there (I told DH we needed to leave sooner) and we don't really have a color theme or anything in our bathroom, so we just grabbed ten towels of different colors. I made the mistake of throwing them all in the wash at once. We had bought 2 white towels, but now I have two off-white towels, lol. The funny part is that they have a pink tinge, but we didn't buy any red colored towels! The only thing I can figure is that it's from the couple of brown towels we got, with maybe a bit of blue mixed in? I don't know. Luckily, 1. I don't care about the color of the towels, if they dry you off, they're good! and 2. they look like they may have come in that color and not just been dyed in the wash, lol.

We also got in some money we've been waiting for, so we bought everybody new socks and underwear, which we desperately needed. And now my little girl is wearing big girl underwear! She looks so cute in them though. We also ordered Asher a new carseat. He's out-growing his current one, actually all the kids are, so it's time to move everybody up the line. We bought him the Graco Nautilus, which has a 5-pt harness that goes up 65 lbs. He's just now about 40lbs, so it should fit him a while. I'm anal when it comes to carseat safety. Asher asked the other day why his cousin (who just turned 5) has a carseat without seatbelts (ie, a low back booster) so I had to explain that that's just the kind of carseat his parents want for him, but we want Asher in the harness still b/c we feel it's safer. I'm debating about turning Genesis forward facing. Right now she's till rear-facing, and seeing as how she's not even 25lbs and the carseat goes rear up to 35lbs, she should be okay in it for a while. But when I rearrange carseats to fit the baby, that will give me two rear-facing kids in the middle row with the bigger boys in the back row and that's going to be difficult. I won't even be able to hand Genesis anything, let alone the boys. But I guess that's the way it goes with lots of littles, huh? I'm thinking we'll have to make sure the boys have a drink of water in the back with them. They'll both have cup holders on their carseats, that will make it easier, for sure. But now when we stop for fast food (usually on errand day) we'll have to actually park the car just to pass out food. That doesn't sound fun. And it's already hard to hear what they're saying, they'll have to yell just so we can hear them. I have a Suburban, so right now we're planning on keeping one of the middle row seats folded up so it's easier to get into the back row. Asher and Canaan will go in the back, most likely with Asher in the middle, but I need to see if that's okay with his new carseat since it just has a lap-belt. I'm thinking since we'll be using it with the 5-pt, that should be fine. Then Canaan will be on the side with the seat folded up, so we can reach him easier to get him buckled and unbuckled. Asher can buckle and unbuckle himself. Then in the middle row will be Genesis and the baby. I haven't decided who goes where yet. It'll probably be easier to put the baby on the outside, with Genesis in the middle. I'll have to climb in to buckle Canaan in anyways, so I can do her from the same spot. And it'd be hard to reach the middle to put the baby carrier in, I think. And then there's the whole rear-facing/forward facing dilemma with her. The boys were over 2 when I turned them around, probably closer to 2.5 and even then, I wouldn't have minded keeping them rear-facing longer. Now that I think about it, Canaan was rear-facing when we moved here, at almost 3, then we didn't have a car until he was 3.5 and he got put in forward-facing. DH turned Asher around at 2.5 I think. I really want to keep her rear-facing for the safety benefits, but it would be so much easier if she's forward facing. I could hand her things for the baby and stuff like that. And I shouldn't feel guilty if I turn her around now. After all, plenty of people do it a lot sooner and for less reasons. Decisions, decisions.

Oh, I also ordered my birthing kit today. Yay!! I can't wait for it to get here. I think that will make the upcoming birth seem more real to me. Who would have thought I could get so excited about sterile gloves, peri bottles and Chux pads? We also bought a package of newborn diapers on Friday. I got an 80 pack, which I'm thinking will get us through the first couple days until I swtich to cloth, and nighttimes until the baby grows out of the newborn and into size 1. At least that's my hope. I really need to get busy making a few more cloth diaper covers. I think have two in newborn size. I had more with Genesis, but they fell apart about the time she grew out of them. Two will NOT be enough. Really, I could get by if I even made 2 or 3 more. Must get that done!

But first I need to finish sewing panels onto my curtians so they insulate better. We get a lot of cold air through the windows. We covered them in plastic, which helped a lot, but insulating hte curtains helped a lot too. I've got about half of them done. It only takes a few minutes to do each one, I just need to get on it.

What else is there? Oh yeah! My husband makes the best coleslaw in the whole world. It tastes just like KFC coleslaw, which is the only kind I'll eat. I admit, I was skeptical when he told me he could, but his Grandma asked him to make some for Thursday, and sure enough, it tastes just like KFC's. I was so glad there was enough left over for our Tday yesterday and even some for today! We had a good Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. And other than getting the massive turkey in and out of the oven, I cooked the whole thing myself. I even made gravy from the drippings. Yay for me. I hope to find more things to add to our menu to make it a bit more diverse, but I don't know what. We don't eat a lot of the more classic tday things, like sweet potatoes and green bean cassarole . I'm wondering I can't find a mashed sweet potato recipe that is a bit more savory and not sweet, like regular mashed potatoes. That might be good. And it would add more color and nutrients to our plates. That reminds me, I made a pumpkin pie from scratch, just for DH and he hasn't even tried it. He probably forgot it. I don't like pumpkin pie, so I hope he eats it all!

I think that's about it for now. I'm done rambling.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

I love Thanksgiving. It's always been one of my favorite holidays. And now that we don't celebrate Easter, Christmas or Halloween, Thanksgiving and 4th of July are about all we have holiday wise. This morning I went over to Dh's Grandma's house and helped her get things ready for the big family dinner. We finished up early, so I came home to spend some time with the family before heading over there to eat. This is actually my first Thanksgiving with DH's family. Last year there was a family conflict just prior to Tday, so we had our own dinner. All the other years we were in Missouri for Tday.

Then tomorrow we're going to cook our own Tday dinner with all the things we like and none of the things we don't. Mainly so have a bunch of leftovers, lol. We bought a 23lbs turkey so there should be LOTS of leftovers. We're also headed to Walmart early in the morning. We are in desperate need of towels, we only have 6 full sized towels and that's just not enough. Plus we'll need lots for the homebirth. Walmart is having a Black Friday sale and towels are $1.50 a peice!! Eventually I'd like to buy a whole set of bamboo towels, but this will get us through for now. And you can't beat $1.50.

So that's how we're spending our holiday. How about you?

An update

Things are going well here. I just feel like I've been really busy, though I don't know with what. I had a midwife appt and the baby is head down now. I think s/he turned shortly after my last appt, but I can't be sure. The baby is also really low, which isn't unusual for me. I've always heard 2nd and subsequent babies tend to drop later, but not mine. Both Canaan and Genesis dropped by about 37 wks, if not sooner. The midwife was quite surprised at how low the baby was. Everythign is going just great.

This pregnancy has snuck up on me though. As of today, I am 33 weeks and I have no idea how I got that far along. I am not at all ready for this baby and I'm supposed to be completely ready by 36wks. That's only 3 wks away!! How is that possibly. I feel like I have tons of time left, and I just don't. This is the least real pregnancy I've had. It's like I'm so busy, I haven't had time to just be pregnant, if that makes any sense. In less than two months I will have a new baby. And I am not ready, phyisically or emotionally. Somebody give me a swift kick in the pants to get a move on it!

Can you pray for me?

I'm having a hard time emotionally right now and could really use some prayers for peace and resolution of some issues. Thanks!

I'm getting old!

Yesterday I turned the ripe old age of 27. Where have the years gone? I know 27 really isn't that old, especially with #4 on the way, but it sure feels old. I'm officially in my late 20s. Before I know it, I'll be 30. Not that 30 is old either, but yk. Luckily, I get to make myself feel better by making fun of DH, who will be 31 tomorrow.

Anyways, Happy Birthday to me!