Freedom!

Tomorrow is my last day. After that, I'm free! No more bedrest! No more waking up every two hours all night to take medicine! Wahoo! Yesterday marked 13 weeks of bedrest and Thursday I will be 36 weeks (so exactly 1/3 of my pregnancy, ha!) and I am in heaven thinking about it! We're debating if I should wait till after Jonathan's class that afternoon to stop the meds and start moving, but we're pretty anxious to meet this little man so we may just Wednesday night and hope he comes Thursday morning :)  But we'll see. Who knows, maybe he'll stay in another week or so, which is fine, but I'll be surprised. Besides stronger and more frequent contractions, there are other changes that have happened that indicate it's really close. In fact, today I had them about every 7-9 minutes all day and they were hurting more so I was wondering if we would make it 2 more days, but so far he's still in! I was wondering what they would do to stop my labor if I went in and then I realized that they wouldn't! He could come! Such a weird thought after trying to keep him in so long. We're not the only ones excited...
The first thing Easton says each morning when he wakes up is "Mom! Only 4 more days!" or 3 or 2 like it was today :) Then he hugs and kisses my stomach and tells the baby how much he loves him and is excited for him to come out. He's convinced he's going to come on Thursday so we'll see if he's right! The first thing Caden says every morning is "I want Life." :)  He doesn't really get it yet, but he has a serious love for babies so hopefully he'll be just as excited as Easton when we bring the little man home. This is possibly the last post before he comes, I'll update as soon as I can :)  Thanks again so much for all the prayers, they worked!
PS- I know I said I wanted to wait till after Jonathan's game Thursday night, but... I can't wait :)  Maybe I'll still be able to go, we'll just wait and see!

Still hangin on

Well we hit 35 weeks today! Woo hoo! I can hardly believe it! Three weeks ago when the doc said he would come any day and we didn't need to bother scheduling any more appointments, Jonathan asked him what would happen if he didn't come right away. The doctor (who, by the way, was a cardiologist before deciding to switch to maternal fetal medicine, which is basically high-risk pregnancies, and has been dealing with pregnant women for 25 years, so he's pretty smart) laughed at him and told him that would be a miracle. Well....  I guess we're witnessing a miracle! I am so so sooo grateful for that, too! I keep thinking about the fact that we aren't going have a long NICU stay, and if he stays in a little while longer.... who knows, maybe he could actually come home with us! I've never brought a baby home with me or had one in the room with me at the hospital so I'm getting so excited at the thought of it!! But whatever happens, we're just extremely thankful for this blessing.
I think there are a lot of things that have contributed to keeping him in. Obviously, modern medicine. I don't go two hours without taking something and when it's getting close to my next dose I definitely need it. Without it, we'd be in serious trouble! I have yet to dip to having contractions less than every ten minutes ever and some days its around every 5 or 6 minutes, but they haven't pushed the babe out yet so it's okay. Some days I am just ready to be done with the pain, but most of the time it's manageable. 12 weeks of bedrest probably helps, too. I literally get off the couch to go to appointments, the bathroom, take a bath, and that's about it. Also great doctors. They said they were more aggressive with me than they normally would have been since Caden came so early and I'm so glad they were. We wouldn't have made it nearly this far if they hadn't been watching me close and intervened so early. Jonathan's Christmas break was perfect timing so that I could lay on the couch the whole 6 weeks he was off and he took care of everything, but even if he hadn't had that break, our ward is so amazing I know we wouldn't have had anything to worry about. They have brought dinner every other night the whole time and babysat a lot and I always have people offering to help. It's so nice to have a huge list of people offering for you to call at a moment's notice to watch your kids. They've seriously been amazing. I think being able to be happy and not get depressed and too stressed out has helped too. In the hospital, they told me everyone on bedrest gets depressed. Honestly, I never got to that point. Stressed sometimes, yes, but never depressed. I think it is due to all the amazing support I have. I've had so many people just drop by to drop something off or visit. So many sending texts or messages and calling and everyone has been so kind and made me feel so good. Every little kind word makes a difference and I have felt so loved that there was no way I could possibly get down in the dumps. THANK YOU everyone so much!!!
Still, with all these helps, it's still nothing short of a miracle and mostly due to all the prayers and fasting others have done on our behalf. Last night while studying scriptures we were reading about miracles and Jonathan explained to the boys that our baby staying in is a miracle. It was so fun to tell them that and see them understand (as well as they can :) ). Going from knowing he might not survive to knowing he would have serious long-term problems to now knowing he has almost a 100% chance of being totally fine and maybe coming home with us is a humbling experience. We know it doesn't always work out this way, in fact it didn't work out for us last time, so I don't know why we've been so blessed, but we are forever grateful to our Heavenly Father and our Savior and to all those who prayed in our behalf. Thank you thank you thank you forever!

Also, as an update, last week was Easton's 4th birthday!!! He didn't get his birthday wish of the baby coming on his birthday, but he did get "Hun" (my mom, they copy what my dad calls her :) ) to come! She came down to help celebrate and help me out with Jonathan back in school and the boys loved it! He also got so spoiled with presents from everyone and has had a heyday with his new toys ever since. On Monday, Jonathan had taken Easton to Chuck E Cheese for the first time and he had a ball. Jonathan did too, he's so excited to go back :) Then on his birthday, since Dad was at school, my Mom took the boys to one of those blow up, bouncy house places and I think Easton was in heaven. They were the first ones there when it opened and the last ones to leave before it closed in the afternoon. Oh my word those boys had so much fun! Then that night we had a couple of friends over for cake and ice cream. I didn't want to do anything too big since I can't exactly do much, and since we didn't know if we would even be here or not, but luckily my aunt Brenda and uncle Craig and their family had sent Easton a Lightning McQueen pinata for his birthday and Easton couldn't talk about much else in the weeks leading up to it! We even watched videos on youtube of kids breaking pinatas so Easton kept saying, "Everyone will line up and everyone gets three hits and then it's the next person's turn." Well, the few kids that were there were all pretty little, so finally Jonathan took one big whack at it and candy pelted the wall and I was sure he broke something :) No harm done though, and the boys thought it was the coolest thing ever and kept talking about how Dad broke the pinata and the candy flew at the wall. It was a happy, simple birthday party that Easton loved.

The day after the party, we got hit with the stomach flu. Well, some of us did. My poor mom was sick as a dog and so were Easton and Caden. Luckily me and Jonathan escaped it, but my mom was so sick and then right after she got better she and Easton got a cough and cold. Some fun for them huh? But because she was sick, she stayed longer than she was planning and decided to stay another week. It was sooo nice to have her here while Jonathan was in school. Especially since she took the boys to the park one day and she was worried about leaving me home alone so she brought a blanket and I just laid on the blanket and read a book while she played with the boys. My word it was so nice to get out in the sunshine! It was 65 degrees and I was in a t-shirt and flip flops and starting to sweat by the time we left. I actually got a sunburn, I'm pretty sure that's easy when your skin hasn't seen the sun for 3 months. She left today since Jonathan doesn't have school on Fridays so he'll be here with me for the rest of the weekend. So we're hoping the baby either comes this weekend or next, but not while Jonathan is in school. Which leads me to some exciting news..... Only one more week of bedrest!!! Next Thursday I'll be 36 weeks and so I'll stop the medicine and bedrest! Woo hoo! So excited! I really really hope he stays in till then cuz I'm curious to see how long I'll last before he comes after I go back to being normal. Honestly, I can't imagine it would be that long, but I've heard of people who do so I want to know! Jonathan has a basketball game that night so he's making me wait till after to stop my medicine, ya know, just so he doesn't risk missing it :)  So I'm going to go to his game and then stop taking the meds after that. I am sooo excited to go to his game and do normal things! So we'll see what happens next weekend!

My one word

I'm sure a lot of you are big fans of Shawni Eyre Pothier and her blog 71toes. She is seriously awesome. I love reading her blog for its beautiful pictures and inspirational mothering insights. One thing she does is choose one word to be her goal for the new year, and I really like that. I've been trying to decide what my one word would be for a while. I loved President Monson's article "Living the Abundant Life" in the Ensign this month and I wanted to somehow incorporate that into my word. So, as simple as it is, I've decided my word is going to be "enjoy." If I enjoy my life, it will be abundant (which is part of the principles he encourages in his article). Especially with adding a newborn, it can sometimes be hard to enjoy everyday moments, and my kids will be grown way too fast. They're still pretty little, in fact part of the reason I wanted to focus on this is because I don't want to get overwhelmed with having 3 kids 4 and under (since Easton turns 4 this week!). I feel like when I had one it was super easy to enjoy every moment, then we had little Caden, who is such a ray of sunshine now(most of the time) but for the first 18 months of his life was more on the fussy, crabby side and after 3 straight months of colic and a year and a half of not sleeping through the night, I am sad to say I probably didn't enjoy that time as much as I could have. The past year has been great, I feel like I've enjoyed my boys so much and loved the simple happiness every day brought, even though there are always bad days, but with a new little personality joining our family I want to make sure I continue to enjoy the boys I have as well as soak up the sweet bundle of joy we'll be adding. Because let's face it, the newborn days and here and gone SO fast and they never, ever come back. And if something not really important is getting in the way of me enjoying my boys, it will be eliminated. Life's too short to be wasted on the stuff that interferes with the "best stuff."  So to start off, I'm going to list some things I've enjoyed about bedrest, now that I've had 11 weeks to fully experience it :).

- Politics. There's always something interesting to read about the presidential race and I've never really followed politics before so it's been fun to have the time to learn about the candidates and how things work.
- Brushing teeth and combing hair. These monotonous every day things I cram in when I'm in a hurry to rush out the door are now some of the limited things I can do for my family so I actually like doing it! (I also get to sort and fold the laundry from the couch! And... that's about it :) )
- Knowing what's going on with people. Before Halloween, I had no idea. I rarely checked people's blogs, all I did on facebook was post something one of the boys said and then maybe I'd glance through the feed, but not too often. Now I'm not going "What? She had a baby? I didn't even know she was pregnant?" Not that I think this is super important and I'll probably go back to rarely getting on once I can actually get up and do things, but for the time it was kind of fun. Although I do have a goal to update the blog a little more, at least more than once a year :)
- Not being sick. It's winter, cold and flu season, and I've been sick twice in the past few months and not even that sick. That's a definite perk about not leaving your house. Also, that I don't have morning sickness. One of my friend's husbands brought dinner over the other day and we were talking about his wife who has morning sickness and he was saying that it was obviously not as bad as what I'm going through and I thought, "Are you kidding me? I would take this over that any day!" I had it for the first 18 weeks with this pregnancy and that was awful. Morning sickness is like bedrest except you can't eat anything and what's worse than that? Lying on the couch with an upset stomach..... no thank you. I'll take contractions.
- Being the nest. One thing I didn't realize, if you're home on the couch all day, your kids will be too. I usually have one or both of them on the couch with me, and when I'm on my side so that my knees make a triangle against the couch, a little boy will undoubtedly hop in and cry, "Oh thank you for making my nest!" and I become a nest until I need to change positions. It's also been fun to be able to read, play Trouble, and work on learning stuff with them.
- Time. Speaking of that, I have loved having all this time with them. I really miss not doing things like going to the park, library, walks, playing hide and seek, but it's fun to have time to do lots of other things with them. In fact, since I knew I would probably be on bedrest (but never thought it would be for this long) I had a huge list of things I would accomplish. You know, really productive things, like writing a book, learning how to use photoshop, finishing my 1/2 a class that stands between me and graduating (it's only been like 2 years that I've been trying to get around to finishing it. don't judge.) learning how to use my camera better, reading the entire standard works as well as all conference talks since conference started, yada yada yada.... but I didn't take into account the fact that I'm still a mom, and even though Jonathan has been here most of the time and is doing an amazing job taking care of all of us, my boys still want mom-time.. a lot! I also didn't factor in stress, lack of sleep from waking up every 2 hours to take meds, side effects from said meds that make accomplishing anything impossible, and just the fact that when you're extremely worried about the well-being of one of your children it's difficult to focus on anything at all, especially anything serious that requires focus to understand. So while some goals were still accomplished (don't be looking for a novel by Linsi Peck to appear in your local bookstore anytime soon), the thing I did most was spend time with my family and a big chunk of my reading centered on how to improve as a mother. Both beneficial in my book. And I will still finish that darn class soon.... I hope.

Well, that's good for now. Basically bedrest isn't all that bad. I think Jonathan has really enjoyed taking on the role of full-time parent, and boy he does a good job at it. He's done the whole she-bang, including deep cleaning, organizing, putting up and putting away Christmas, library, park days, grocery shopping, haircuts, well-checks at the doctor, taking Caden for shots, and doing it all after waking up at night with kids who had bad dreams or are still having one and crying in their sleep and then wake up early because their tummy says, "rumble grumble." He's loved spending so much time with our boys, but now understands much better the "trenches" of everyday parenthood and how much your attitude affects your children's behavior (and he is good. I have so much to learn from him).  He said he's decided he will be getting up at night with the new baby because he can see now how hard it is to do all the normal "mom" stuff and get no sleep. He said it will be much easier for him to be tired and go to law school than for me to be tired and have to do it all, all day. I'll let him be the undisputed winner on this point :)
PS- One thing he hasn't had to worry about is dinner, thanks to our amazing ward and friends down here! They've been bringing us dinners this whole time and Jonathan has only had to cook twice because someone always seems to have made an extra lasagna or drop a pizza by or something like that. It has been sooooo nice for him to not have to worry about it, especially as he was trying to finish a paper for the law journal. You never realize how much time meal planning, shopping, preparing, and cleaning up take until you don't have to do it, and it has been such a blessing to not have any more added stress on his plate! Thank you all soooo much!

I may start whining more....

...because apparently it works! I went to bed Monday night so sick of everything and ready to be done and woke up Tuesday feeling much better. Like, I've only been having contractions about every 10 minutes and they don't even hurt that bad! Yahoo! I feel so much better. Maybe the Lord decided I'd had all I could for now :)  Whatever the reason, I am sooo grateful. And even more grateful that today marks 33 weeks! I think what may have calmed things down is that before I was taking procardia every 4 hours and terbutaline as needed when I had painful contractions in between doses. Well, the more often you take terbutaline, the faster your body gets used to it and it loses effectiveness, so I was taking it as little as possible, only a few times a day, to try to make the effects last longer. On Sunday night after being in so much pain all the time I decided to just start taking it every 4 hours like I did at the hospital, and I think that around Monday night I finally got enough in my system that it calmed things down. So the downfall is it isn't going to work as long, but I'm afraid to stop taking it every 4 hours in case things get crazy again. I'm going to talk to my doctor tomorrow though, so we'll see what he thinks. But for now, things are feeling much better! I still don't have much holding him in so it could still happen any time, but at least my uterus isn't trying so hard to push him out anymore. I'm so relieved! Thank you everyone for your sweet words! And thank you to those who've shared your stories with me. I love hearing about other people's babies and how they did. In fact I look up stories online and see how babies fared at whatever weeks I'm at, and I've found a few 33 weekers who were only in the NICU for less than 2 weeks! We've decided anything less than a month is going to be awesome, but it's so cool to think we could be 2 weeks or less. Well, it is 4:30 am and I think I can finally go back to sleep, so just so everyone knows, things are pretty nice over here :)

Wit's End...

is totally where I'm at right now. Today marks 10 weeks on bedrest, but that's not what's killing me. I could take 10 more weeks if I needed to, but it also marks 1 week of 10+ contractions every hour and I've about had it already. They've slowly been increasing each day and yesterday and today were 15+ every hour. I am literally about to rip my hair out. This morning I also was having lots more cramping, back pain, and pressure than normal and it kept up all morning so we were planning on going in to the hospital when the boys woke up from their naps, but by the time they did I was actually feeling a little better. They still hurt, but not as bad so now I'm still just here waiting in limbo for something to make me feel like I need to go in NOW. I really am glad it hasn't happened yet, he's gotten a few more days in than we thought he would, but I'm not sure how much more I can handle without losing my mind. I'm back up to taking medicine every other hour to try to control the intensity but I can tell it's not really working much anymore. The good part of that is the side effects have decreased since the pills aren't as effective, but that also means more and stronger contractions. I can't believe I thought I was having a lot of contractions back when I was having 8 an hour. Sheesh, it's amazing what a little perspective does for ya. Which is why I'm trying really really hard to think about the positive fact that he's staying in longer so it's better for him and will be easier to not have him in the nicu for as long, but boy it's tough. My poor boys, I've been such a grump lately.
Whew, now that I've got that off my chest, maybe I can write something positive. :)  A nurse came over to do an assessment on me today and she said what every other nurse and doctor has told me: "I really can't believe you're still pregnant."  Every time someone says that it just reminds me how grateful I should be, how blessed we really are. Good night I'm going to be 33 weeks on Thursday! That's amazing! And babies born at this age are even so much better off than babies born two weeks earlier, so that will make the weeks after he's born that much easier. Truly we are grateful, even if my complaining makes it seem otherwise. Apparently you guys are just too good at praying for him to stay in. :)
The boys are beyond excited. I think Easton asks me at least 5 times a day when the baby will come out. Last night he seemed to have a blonde moment and asked when our baby HAD come out. For some reason he thought he'd already come and was in the hospital :) Silly boy.
Also, if you ever get a chance, have a conversation with Caden. He's suddenly decided that, despite what he's been insisting on for the last few months, he is NOT a baby. He's now a big boy and gets upset when I tell him he's my baby. With his new attitude he's suddenly become more talkative and started into telling stories. I LOVE just sitting and chatting with him now to see what he'll say. Yesterday he told me a big long story about Kung Fu Panda falling and even included how he said, "No, no, noooooooo....." as he was falling. His stories can go on forever, I just keep asking him questions to see what else he'll say. :)
That's all for now. Maybe we'll be rushing over to the hospital tonight, maybe he'll hang on for a little longer. I'd like to know the record for how long this type of thing can go on before the body gives up, but I can't imagine it will be too much longer. I'll be sure to update if he does come!

Still cookin'

I'm updating again, mostly because I'm bored. I've been up for a few hours and I'm tired of reading news and looking at people's blogs. Mostly I'm tired of being tired. It's awfully hard to sleep when you're having contractions every few minutes. Usually I'll get a few hours a night when the medicine will calm the intensity down enough and I'm so tired I can sleep through them, but after I get a little rest and am not too dead-tired enough to notice them, I can't ignore them anymore. Luckily you don't need a lot of sleep when you do nothing all day :)  And I keep telling myself it's better than him being at the NICU.
So I've started getting really worried lately. With Caden, I went from "I'm kind of uncomfortable from this stomach pain" to having bearing down pains in 1 1/2 hours. Yikes. So I'm a little stressed this time about knowing when to go in. I have cramping and pressure pretty much all day so that won't give it away. I had back pain with Easton but never with Caden so I don't know if that's going to come or not. I asked my doctor and he said the only thing he can think of is waiting for them to get regular, so I spend a lot of time counting them when I'm not actually on the monitor. So far we're not exactly regular so I guess that's good. They'll come every 6 minutes, then every 3, then 2, then 4, then 2, then 5, then 7, and just keep changing so I guess as long as it stays like that I'm staying put here. Which I'm totally fine with. I'm happy I made it this far and don't have the worries I had before, but still, the longer he cooks the better. I remember when I hit 24 wks and my cousin Megan texted me "Happy 50% day!" because that was his chance of survival at that age and I was SO excited to have made it there since my cervix was already shortening and I was on anti-contraction medicine and bedrest. I didn't care what issues he had, I was just happy he had at least that much chance of surviving. Now it's like 98% chance, I think almost the same as a full-term baby with no greater risk of long-term complications than a full-termer. Hooray! So anyway, things are good here and I know this is stuff I've already said but.... I'm bored. And a main intention of me updating this was so you all know that he has not come yet :) I know when I'm waiting for a friend to have their baby I'm constantly checking online and texting them to see if it's baby time so I figured maybe some of you are crazy like me. Not yet though, although after my monitoring yesterday my doctor looked at the strip and then called to tell me that it looks like he'll be coming really soon, the medicine isn't doing much anymore. Even though this is exactly what he told me at my appointment the day before, it made me a little more nervous because usually a nurse just calls and let me know how many I had and asks me how I'm feeling and everything and decided with him if I need to go into the hospital, so the fact that he called me himself just to tell me that and remind me of what to watch for to head over to labor and delivery made me a little more nervous that he'll be here really soon. We'll see! Hopefully Easton gets his birthday wish that the baby will come at 6am on his birthday in a few weeks. That would be stupendous.
Well, I'm done. Easton just woke up and came out and said, "Mom, how did you wake up before me?" I told him my stomach hurt so I came out on the couch so I didn't wake up Dad and then I asked him how he woke up so early. He said he heard me out here and wanted to come out and snuggle with me. Off to snuggle time I go! :)

Big News! and a belly shot!

Well... Easton constantly tells the baby he wants him to come out now and he's so excited to play with him and I guess the little guy has decided to grant him his wish! My contractions have been getting more constant and more painful and this week I've had 10+ every hour. We went to the doctor today and I told Jonathan I was going to be really surprised if my cervix hadn't changed at all in the past two weeks with all this action. So I wasn't too surprised when the tech did the ultrasound and there was very little cervix left and what was left was wide open all the way through. Basically there's about a centimeter of cervix left but it's dilated and open through so there's essentially nothing holding him in there. The doctor didn't want to check to see if I was dilated any more on the outside (I've been dilated 2-3 since 26 wks) because he didn't want to irritate it at all and said it didn't really matter because he'll be coming anytime now anyway. He told me not even to worry about scheduling another appointment because I won't make it and he had me get another steroid shot since he said there probably won't be time to do them once I get to the hospital. So for now I am moving as little as possible and hoping it will help him stay in at least a little longer. Obviously we want him to stay in as long as he can, but he does have a lot of good things going for him. Tomorrow I'll be 32 weeks, at which point his risk of long-term brain damage isn't any greater than it would be for a full-term baby. He's also almost 4 lbs so he's bigger already than Caden was and over a week older. I've gotten the steroid shots which help a lot so hopefully he won't have to be on oxygen for too long. My biggest worries with preemie babies are brain bleeds, picc lines, and feeding tubes since all can cause serious problems. He's past the brain bleed worry, hopefully past the picc lines, and will probably have feeding tubes but hopefully not for too long. They make me nervous that they'll be put in wrong and he'll end up aspirating fluid, so the less time he has them the better! We couldn't hold Caden for the first week until his PICC line came out because of the risk of it snapping and traveling up his artery to his heart, so hopefully this little man is big enough to get his nutrition by mouth instead of needing that IV. But going from wondering if he'll survive at 23 weeks to having just these few worries at 32 weeks is amazing and we're so grateful for this blessing!
Anyway, this is very long, but it could be my last post before we meet our little boy! The NICU stay is never fun and hopefully it will be as short as possible, but I will definitely welcome the relief from these darn contractions and a chance to get some sleep. It's pretty tough to sleep when your uterus is having a party all night and lately I'm looking like a zombie all the time now so the sleep I get before he comes home from the NICU is going to be heaven! I'm still on all my meds and while they are no longer lowering the number of contractions, they do lessen the intensity for a little while so that's been giving me a bit of relief.  We'll see how long we have till we meet the little man! We're still crossing our fingers he stays in a bit longer and keeps surprising everyone, but at this point we are very happy with what we get! In fact, Jonathan and I both have a really good feeling that everything is going to be fine and we're just really happy and excited to meet him so we'll see how much longer we have to wait!

Here are my only belly pics. I'm never very good at taking these and I actually took two this time but had never posted them, so here they are!
This first one is a great picture huh? I was 25 1/2 weeks and I took this in the morning before my dr appointment (since that's the only time I'm dressed :) ). I realized what a terrible pic it was so I was going to have my mom take one after I got home from the appt but I ended up having to go straight to the hospital from the dr office, so this is what we've got :)

 This pic was also before an appt, the day after I hit 31 wks. And holy cow my face is looking nice and chubby :) This pregnancy was weird. Instead of a nice, cute, round baby bump I just got chubby all around my middle and looked pretty spongebob squarepantsish, so I was pretty happy when my belly started poking out to lessen the "I just ate too many cheeseburgers and I'm really bloated" look.

Neither are great pics, but I don't know that I'll be taking another one so this is what we've got! I had all these visions of cute maternity pics I would take but this will have to do. I've already gained 25 lbs which is what you're supposed to gain the entire pregnancy and 9 weeks of bedrest leaves you with absolutely NO muscle tone at all so this is going to be a lot of fun getting back in shape :)  Oh well, I'm just happy to be able to go on walks and actually know what's in my fridge! And grocery shopping! And cleaning! Yay! :)