I got the okay to go back to work yesterday under the condition that if I started contracting more than 6 in an hour that I would be off until I'm 37 weeks. I worked last night, and of course I contracted, but I never stopped to count to see if it was too much, but I will say that I was pretty miserable. My abdomen is constantly rock hard and gets worse when I walk. It makes it hard to move, hard to breathe. I must say I wasn't this miserable with the other two kids because I would remember this. I made it through an 8 hour shift (barely) but I'm not so sure how well I'm going to do this weekend on a 12 hour shift. I've turned into one of those whimpy, whiny pregnant women. My patients last night were great patients. One was a primip who was afraid she wasnt doing anything, although she had been contracting for 7 hours before she came in, was in and out of the tub 3 times and had bloody show. She even told her husband to stay home until she called him. She was 8 cm when she came in. My other patient's water broke and her due date was the same as mine. She was pretty nervous and shaken up about it happening this early. And unfortunately, she'll probably end up with a long labor that end isn a c-section because no one could get to her cervix. Her MD couldnt get a good feel in the office and I could just barely get to the edge of it. I have pretty long fingers and there isn't a cervix I havent been able to get to. Hopefully everything goes alright for her.

Counting flowers on the wall...

It's day 3 of bedrest and oral terbutaline and I'm going crazy. I've never been able to sit and relax for any amount of time. I get bored and antsy. It drives me crazy to sit around and do nothing when I see all sorts of things I could be doing. Laundry, dishes, dusting, putting up pictures in the baby's room...etc. Especially since I'm on terbutaline, which gets me all jacked up like I'm on speed or something. I have a new respect for all the women who get put on this medication when they're 20 some weeks and have to continue it until they are 36weeks. I just can't function well when my hands are shaking and I'm all jittery. I even split the 5mg tablet and took half and it to see if I could function better, but it still had the same effects. I thought maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't really need to take it, but my uterus hates me and I start contracting like a banshee once it's worn off. Probably not strong enough to do anything, but contracting nonetheless. But, as much as it sucks, I'll do whatever I need to do to keep this baby gestating for awhile longer. I'm hoping that next weekend (I'll be 36 weeks) that my doc will let me go back to work, even if she won't let me do 12 hours shifts. We'll see what she says tomorrow. One good thing about not working is I'm actually going to make it to church today. When I work Sat. nights, I just can't stay up until 10:15 for church.

We're actually making progress on our rewiring. We almost have Clara's room rewired. We just have to figure out if one wire actually goes to a light somewhere in the house, or if it's just kind of there, hanging out. Once we do that, we can insulate over her room and put the floor back down in the attic over her room. We'll start on the baby's room after Clara's is done, and we'll have it insulated before he's actually sleeping in there. We'll do our bedroom and the bathroom last. Jacob's room is essentially done, but with the way the wires run, we can't put the floor completely down because his room ceiling is the access to the other rooms upstairs. I don't really understand all of it. I'm just glad that we are getting closer and that we'll at least have insulation over the kids rooms before the end of the year, if not over the whole upstairs. It would've been a lot easier to pay someone to do it, but we're saving SO MUCH MONEY doing it this way.

And a happy birthday to me

Well, I'm officially on bedrest until at least Monday. I went into work tonight and started contracting every 2-3 minutes. Really all day I'd been uncomfortable, having a lot of pelvic pain and pressure and having stronger contractions. But, once the contractions got more regular, more uncomfortable and I started bleeding a bit, I decided to have things checked out. Cervix still essentially closed and thick, and after 4 shots of terb, a script for the oral form and an order to take in easy until I see the MD Monday, I got to come home. Now it's about 3:00 a.m. and I'm completely wired from all the terb. And to make it even more special, today is my birthday. Happy birthday to me. Thankfully, everything is fine and although I hate to miss out on work, I don't want this little guy here yet. I did have to give my husband a swift kick in the ass for not answering the phone when I called him. We don't hear the house phone when we're upstairs asleep so any emergency calls go to the cell phones. But he didn't take his phone upstairs with him. I think this will probably be the last time he forgets because I let him know that if I would have been calling to tell him I was having the baby, he would have missed it.

When I got home, I noticed that there were a couple messages on the machine that weren't there when I left for work. They were from the town police about our barking dog. They called at about 1:00a.m. Funny thing is is that we don't have a dog. This summer, I had gotten a phone call from a lady saying she had our dog. Whoever had our phone number before left the old number on their dogs tags. I figured surely by now they had changed the tags. Apparently not. So I called and had to leave a message for the officer that called (small town) letting them know that we don't have a dog, explained this has happened before and hopefully that will take care of it. It's kinda funny because my husband slept through the call (as well as my phone call that I was being monitored at the hospital). But had I been sleeping and would have been woken up, I would have been pretty ticked. And it's not the police dept. fault the dogs owner didn't get around to changing the tags. Oh well. Well, maybe I'll try to go to sleep. We'll see how that goes.

The progression

34 week belly pics

Good times

When I was growing up, fall meant raking leaves. My parents have 5 trees in their backyard and we would end up raking leaves up at least 3 times every fall. My dad's rational was that if we waited untila ll of the leaves were off of the trees, it would be really difficult to rake. The last house my husband and I lived in only had 1 small tree in the front yard. We would get some leaves int he backyard from the neighbors trees, but not enough that we would rake. This house we live in now is a completely different story. We have a large yard with several HUGE 100+ year old trees that dropped most of their leaves all at once. My husband spent basically all day outside yesterday raking and blowing the leaves into piles. He didn't actually get all of the piles combined into one big one behind the garage for the city to pick up yet, but man, you should see the pile so far...and there are still leaves on the trees. I got out of helping this year, but I can't justify being pregnant every fall to get me out of raking leaves. When we do get all the piles put into one, I may have to post a picture just because I've never seen a pile of leaves this huge.

We're still struggling with potty training Clara. Everyone says that girls are easier to potty train than boys, but I have to strongly disagree. I'm sure it has nothing to do with her stubborn, bullheaded, I'm going to do it my way personality she gets from her mother. I could also use some patience I suppose, but it's still frustrating. Part of the problem is that Jacob was so easy. We just took him out of diapers, put him in the underwear he picked out and that was that. We had a small handful of accidents, even at night. I think with Clara we've tried every tactic from just putting her in underwear to rewarding her with candy for using the potty and several in between. The week we had her in underwear was a nightmare for my furniture. I had big dreams that she would be out of diapers by the time this baby gets here, but unless we have an epiphany, that's not going to happen. I know she won't go to kindergarten in diapers, but a little progress would be nice. What's frustrating is that she knows what to do, because we'll have days she does really well. She just doesn't consistantly want to do it. Well, I guess when she's ready she'll do it.

Pubic hair inhabitants

I think I can speak for a lot of labor nurses out there when I say that we generally don't pay any attention to your nether regions - really it's just another part of the body and the place where your baby will make it's entrance into the world. But, if there is something funky going on down there, it will get our attention. Like perhaps shaving a design into your pubic hair or dying it a funky color. Piercings down there also will catch my attention. It makes my hurt just thinking about going to a piercing place, asking for a clit or labial piercing and then having some dude put a piece of jewelry there. I've seen one woman whose labia were practically hanging halfway down her thighs and I had a hell of a time getting in between the labia to find her vagina and do my exam, and she probably wondered what the hell I was doing. This weekend I saw something that I've never seen before and hope I never see again. I had a young grand-multip (I'm talking mid twenties, pregnant with her 10th baby) come in complaining of back pain and cramping. She was very dirty to the point that you could smell her "aroma" when you just opened the door to her room and she was obviously high on something. She had listed a permanent address, so as far as we know, she has a home. I knew I was going to have to muster all the willpower I had to keep from making a face at the smell when I had to pull back the sheet to check her cervix. So, I get ready to do an exam and notice something move in her pubic hair. I look and, I kid you not, I saw a couple bugs crawling around. I about came off of the bed it startled me so much! I managed not to scream, regained my composure and then got her into the shower to "help get her labor going a bit". It turns out that it's something the office has been dealing with this and the little critters were actually fleas. This mama took her shower, and then came out to the desk and announced that she was leaving and left before I could talk her into waiting a bit. I felt sorry for her and I guess she was just looking for a place to shower, I don't know. I will say that if I go the rest of my career and never see another bug, I'll be a happy labor nurse!