Nursery Pictures as of 12/31/08

36 Week Pictures

Prenatal Appointment #7 (12/26/08)

We braved the weather and went to Minot for our latest appointment. The baby's heart is beating at a rate from 135 - 145 bpm and the fundal height is right on track for almost 36 weeks. The Dr also checked my cervix, but no news there...not dialated yet. As much as I have been hoping to get things underway, it appears that the baby is quite content where he/she is at! :) At least for now.

Christmas:

My parents arrived at our home last Tuesday and my Aunt Phyllis arrived on Wednesday. We celebrated by going to church in Plaza Wednesday evening for a candlelight service. We came back home and had cheese soup and numerous appetizers. We opened gifts that night and even though the baby isn't here yet, he/she made out like a bandit! :) I can see the spoiling coming on already. Christmas morning even brought stocking gifts for the baby. Everything we got is so cute and will come in very handy once the little one arrives.

Household News:

Well - Our well has been hooked up and providing our household with H20 now for about a week and a half. I've been doing laundry like crazy in order to get everything washed for the baby and doing our own personal laundry as well. It's SO NICE to be able to do laundry in the comfort of our own home and for us to be able to take normal length showers, do dishes, etc...all without having to haul water (except for drinking water).

Painting - The painting is completed in the nursery and almost done in our bedroom as well. Yah! We had a little cleanup to do on the floor since some mud spatters ended up on the carpet in the nursery, but it cleaned up in one afternoon.

Nursery - Things are really coming together here. As soon as the painting was done, we dusted off the furniture in the room and then Jeff put together the crib. It is starting to look so nice in there and I've started organizing "baby things" in baskets and have put away all the clothes that have been washed (gender neutral ones of course). :)

All for now.

Prenatal Appointment #6 (12/16/08)

Doctor says that everything is still going good and is progressing normally. The fundal height is right on track for 34 weeks and the baby's heartrate is around 130. The baby has also gotten in a head down position, which is also normal and good at this point in pregnancy.

New for the next appointment: It will be in 2 weeks instead of a month! My next appointment is December 26th. So, I guess our Christmas guests will get to go to Minot with us. I will be checked for StrepB and to see if my cervix has dialated. It's absolutely crazy how the time has been flying by...in less than 3 weeks I will be considered full term and it would be safe to deliver!

Home Updates:

Jeff is going to start painting our room and the nursery tomorrow! I'm so excited to get in the nursery and start decorating, putting things away, assembling the crib, etc! :) It will also be great to get the "extra" furniture out of our living room.

The pipe from the well to the house has been replaced after it froze the other week. It has now been pumping water into our backyard for nearly 3 days and we plan on doing that until temps out here are above zero at least. It's been pretty cold with actual temperatures around -25 degrees. Don't want that pipe to freeze up again!

Guess that's all I know for now.

All Sorts of Things Going On

Here's our latest updates:

Rooms: As of a few days ago our rooms are now ready to prime and paint. Can't wait to pick up the supplies at Menards and get started. It will be so nice to get the nursery and our room done and everything in the house back where it is suppose to be instead of the fun game of everything in the living room. LOL :)

Well: The well is finished and we hooked it up last night, however everything seemed to go wrong all at the same time. By the time we were able to start covering up the pipe going to the house it was practically dark outside, but Jeff got right after it. I felt very bad for him being out there by himself, it was only 4 degrees outside. Brrrrr... I helped by turning on lights in the house in order to cast light on the yard, pointing a flashlight down the trench for a brief time, and offering kleenex to my hard worker. He was able to put the initial layer of loose dirt on the pipe, then turned on the bucket tractor to push the rest of the dirt in. While the tractor was warming up, Jeff came inside and while we were sitting in the living room, the power went out. After a while, Jeff decided he may as well go outside and push the dirt in. Not long after he got in the tractor it "jelled" up and quit running...not good. Now the water was already pumping through the line and we had no way of insulating the pipe to keep it from freezing. We tried to keep water running in the sink in the entryway through the night, but at some point, it stopped. When we got up in the morning there wasn't anything coming out. I tried to take a shower before going to work and we barely had any water coming out of our shower faucet either. :( So as of right now we have no idea what is wrong, could be frozen pipe, broken pump in the well or that our brand new well is dry. Obviously the last would be the most devastating, let's hope that is not the case.

Baby: We had a little scare yesterday with the baby. I noticed some spotting and hadn't felt the baby move the entire time from when I woke up until 10AM when I called Labor & Delivery at Trinity. They told me I should come in to make sure everything was okay. So I left work and kept my hands on my belly the entire way to Minot to check for movement while Jeff drove. About half way there, I finally felt the baby do a few rolls which made me feel better about the situation, but was still concerned about the spotting. After at least three hours hooked up to monitors, six tubes of blood drawn, and discussing the situation with Trinity nurses and my UND doctor, it was decided that there wasn't anything wrong with the baby or myself. The doctor said that the spotting was more than likely due to the baby wiggling around and normal pregnancy bodily changes. So, the baby taking an abnormally long "nap" and the spotting occurring at the same time was in the end just a strange coincidence. Everyone is doing well, even soon2be Dad. :)

Our next appointment is December 19th, so I will post again later. :)