Sometimes they actually hurt, but sometimes they’re just uncomfortable. Sometimes they go away if I change positions, but mostly they don’t care. The first time it happened (like 2 weeks ago) I actually thought maybe something was going on. Obviously I was wrong because here I am, having contractions and I can’t even be bothered to time them right now because in addition to them being fake, they’re actually pretty on schedule too. Is that weird? During the day I don’t really notice the time but in the evening (and OVERNIGHT) I can predict fairly accurately when it’s going to happen.

This did not happen to me last time. I only remember having a couple of actual braxton hicks contractions at all, they were certainly never actually anything I would consider false labor.

My doctor asked if I was having contractions and I said YES ALL THE TIME!  Hoping that it meant something. She said “Oh good!” and it means nothing (except that my body is doing exactly what it should do and blah blah blah) but it’s just SO WEIRD to me.

So on that note I’m heading to bed and hopefully they’ll go away by the time I get myself tucked in because I’m really not good at falling asleep while they’re going on (so it makes me sad if they actually wake me up usually around 2ish in the morning. THANKS, body)!

Sadly, as of my last hematologist appointment my platelets were back down so now I’m on prednisone daily until the baby is born. Fortunately it’s a lower dose and so far it sucks a LOT less than the other steroid.

In the mean time we’ve been trying to get things done around the house. We (mostly Nate but I helped a little) painted the foyer and the play room (former dining room).

Nate hung up some beautiful letters that Meg ordered for us. She and I painted the letters and I just love love LOVE the way it turned out!

We’ve knocked out everything on our to-do list and I feel like I keep trying to find additional things to add to it to keep us busy until the baby comes. I mean I can clean the house like 500 more times, but that’s kind of exhausting and doesn’t feel nearly as productive as something like recaulking the shower would be. Unfortunately I’m not really in the right kind of shape to be hunched over the shower doing the caulking right now and I do feel a little bad trying to add things to Nate’s list (which is currently empty, but he doesn’t seem to mind as much as I do).

So…. any time now, baby, any time!

She’s fine. I would actually go so far to say that after spending a day at the vet she has made a 100% recovery. Their official diagnosis was “soft tissue damage” and they gave her an anti-inflammatory and said no long walks or big activity for 2 weeks, which is what I had expected and hoped for.

They also said if she was not showing any improvement by Monday to bring her back for the fun (expensive) tests like x-rays (which I would not let them do on Friday) but I honestly haven’t heard her yelp once since she got home.

In addition, she has been running up the stairs, lifting her (injured) leg above her head to chew her foot, and other things like that.

So I’m pretty sure the whole thing was just all in her head. Something hurt, it surprised her and she remembered how concerned we were, so she milked it. Sometimes she really is too smart for her own good.

Also last night Jack spent the night at his GiGi and Poppy’s house (my parents) so I bought Layne a 99 cent squeaky toy at Target while I was running errands and was goofing off with her in the living room, watching her run around like a crazy dog. Good exercise, I thought.

So flash forward an hour, Nate and I were going out to dinner and he went to take Layne upstairs to her crate and she took about one giant leap up the stairs and yelped. We assumed she hit her head on the banister (it has happened before) but she squawked and squealed most of the way up. It was weird. When we got home Nate checked her out but couldn’t find anything specific wrong with her except that she yelped pretty much when you touched her.

She spent the evening yipping and yelping randomly when walking, sitting, or laying down (she was not limping, she was not favoring any of her feet, or sides to sit and lay on) so we figured she just stretched a muscle or something dumb while running around. Unfortunately this continued over night (apparently she moves around a lot at night, so there was a lot of yelping) and at one point when I got up to pee (the second time) she was standing in the middle of the floor when I walked back to bed and yelped like I stepped on her when I bumped into her (it’s hard to see a dog laying in the middle of the floor in the dark).

Nate said she refused to walk up the stairs this morning for breakfast so I called the vet and made a plan to drop her off. They had no open appointments but were interested in checking her out. She sulked around all morning, yelping sometimes, head down but still no limping and still didn’t seem to be favoring anything. Then when it was time to go she happily let me put on her leash and happily jumped into the back of my van. Without yelping. She squawked once when she laid down in the back but when we got there she hopped back out with no problem and when we were inside and I started rubbing her down, she was so intent on sniffing whatever she had found on the floor that she barely made a noise when I touched her back leg which had previously caused her to yelp horribly.

I debated all morning about whether or not to take her to the vet. She has a history of high drama when it comes to injuries. She will definitely yelp and cower if you bump into her in the dark overnight (which makes me wonder WHY she moves herself to the middle of the floor between the bed and the wall when I get up to go to the bathroom like she thinks maybe this time I’ll know she’s done it and see her before I step on her. I probably won’t). And I think the memory of the pain or discomfort is causing her to shy away from being examined or yelping when she does something like going up the steps (which is why she didn’t notice me rubbing down her previously sensitive legs while in the lobby of the vet’s office and had no problem stretching them out to jump into and out of the van, because she thought she was going somewhere fun).

All that leaves me waiting for the vet to call. I’m a little worried that sitting at the vet all day will just make her even more dramatic, but really that was our only option unless we wanted to wait til tomorrow and they sounded really judgey when I said maybe that would be a better idea so I went ahead and brought her in. I’m hoping they won’t find anything and maybe she’ll get an anti-inflammatory or sedative to encourage her to take it easy and not move it til whatever it is calms down.

What they forgot to mention was how much the steroids might actually suck for me. With side effects like insomnia, decreased (or increased) appetite, constipation (or diarrhea), light headedness (like medicine head), increased fluid retention, having to pee 5 times a night instead of 2 because of the increased water thing, and just for fun let’s throw in the flushed cheeks. The first morning I thought I must be sick and then realized the flushed cheeks was just one of the many fun side effects possible with this medication.

Thank god I only took it for 4 days and it’s been 2 days since I’ve had to take it. I go back tomorrow to get retested so I’m going to keep my fingers crossed. Hopefully it has boosted my platelets enough that I can take a week off from it instead of having to start another round.

Especially since I finally slept last night, going back to sleep easily after each restroom trip (knocked back to every 3-4 hours, as opposed to the every 2 hours with the steroids) so I actually kind of feel normal today. I’m not ready to give that back up!

(I would totally rather suffer through a few uncomfortable days than do labor with low platelets again. Fortunately that memory is pretty good motivation!)

We’re not doing anything too fancy, just signing him up at a local church preschool to get him some socialization basically. Just a part time, 2 day a week 3 hours a day thing. He can learn people skills like playing with other kids and following directions in a group. Important stuff like that, that I just don’t feel like we can do for him 100% at home. At least not without adopting an army of 2 year olds for him to play with.  And I’m just not too keen on the idea of starting him at a preschool where they actually intentionally teach them things. Not that they wouldn’t teach him things here, just that I want this to be about play and not about his future college plans already, you know?

The part that blows my mind about this whole thing (aside from the fact that he’s going to be going to PRESCHOOL! Wasn’t he just a baby?? Is it too soon??) is that this preschool that I’m really hoping he gets into is like the last one to register. Church preschool around here is apparently so highly in demand that not only are we signing him up now for something he won’t attend until SEPTEMBER but they have a lottery system to do it. You show up at the community center, you put your name in a bucket, and then they call names. There is no first come first serve because people started coming crazy early and to be honest, if it had required it, I would gladly have been one of them.

So tomorrow morning my mom is picking Jack up and I’m going to go hopefully get him into a 2 year old class for September. If not I’m going to get him on the wait list and then cross my fingers that some other kid drops out, or gets accepted somewhere else that was actually their first choice or something like that because I only toured two preschools and then I really only liked this one, so hold a good thought for me!

So since it’s been on my mind I figured I’d go ahead and share the longer version in case anyone actually cares. (The shorter version, since I’m going to skip to the part where I was actually in labor at the hospital).

For reference, I left my house around 1pm, and Jack was born at 8:36pm. My labor came on quickly and progressed quickly and I salute all the women who go into labor and think “I can do this without drugs” because let me tell you now, I was so not one of them.

Before actually going into labor my delivery plan consisted of “Go to the hospital to have a baby. Hopefully without drugs, but not a big deal if I change my mind.” I was so proud of myself for not over thinking and over planning things, I was just going to show up and DO IT! (hahaha). (I can also tell you that I was probably not a very pleasant person during labor. It hurt, I was cranky, and Nate was a champ. I wanted silence. DO NOT ENCOURAGE ME, just stand there and let me scream, and I did scream and it felt gooood. But moving on…)

Probably 1.5-2 hours after I got to the hospital since everything had been running pretty slowly (the nurse dropped me off in triage and disappeared for like an hour) I asked them to go ahead and put in the request for an epidural. I had heard it could take an hour between the request and the actual act so I figured it hurt now, in an hour I would probably really like for it to stop hurting.

Here came the bad news. I could not have an epidural. Due to low platelets they couldn’t give me a spinal, but not to worry they could test me again later. And if I was interested I could have the narcotic, whatever that was. It would “take the edge off” so by then I was like YES PLEASE. What I remember about that drug is that “taking the edge off” does not mean that it doesn’t hurt, but it made me care less about the pain. If that makes any sense at all? So it hurt, but it also made me sort of groggy and I didn’t really mind it as much.

Let’s go ahead and fast forward to the next blood test for my epidural. Of course this time my platelets were even lower so it was definitely not going to happen. I may not have had much of a plan going into this thing, but not being able to have an epidural if I wanted one never factored into my planning!

Labor continued, I dilated to 10 cm and started pushing (you know what also felt good? Pushing. Pushing was awesome and felt so much better than the actual labor part of the ordeal, I was so relieved). 2 hours (and some pitocin later) I had still not made very much progress in the pushing department so we tried suction. I was told we got three tries and then it was an automatic c-section. (I totally had the c-section). With the suction it was discovered that Jack’s head was turned at a bad angle and he was basically stuck. So off to have a c-section I went.

Now, back to the part where I could not have an epidural… this also meant that I could not have a spinal block for my c-section and I had to be fully put under which was by far the worst part of the whole thing (in my opinion, I think Nate would make an argument towards the suction part too, but I’ve blocked that part pretty thoroughly. I know it happened, I have vague memories of it but I was drugged and exhausted and I just don’t remember it that clearly). That full anesthesia thing meant that Nate could not come into the operating room and he was stuck outside in a waiting area not able to know what was going on. He just had to wait and see. (Which is why keeping my platelets up this time is so important to me. If for any reason I have to have another c-section that’s not a big deal to me, but I definitely want for Nate to be able to be in the room with me for it.)

Next thing I knew I was in a room in a hospital bed waking up. They asked if I wanted to hold the baby and I think I said something like “sure”  because I was still kind of confused. They also asked if I was cold, which I was, so they wrapped my head in a blanket. Looking back at pictures it was definitely not my best look.

Then they wheeled us from the recovery room to the maternity room and so began the longest three days of my life. Not in a bad way, just that when you only sleep for 3-6 hours a day and none of them are in a row, the nights seem like extra days so when we left it was hard to believe it had only been like 3 days because it seemed like a week. So weird.

So in order to attempt a VBAC  I need to keep my platelets up. I’m seeing a hematologist (weekly now for blood tests) to help with that and have started my first round of steroids (for 4 days) to boost them. Due to my c-section last time I had another ultrasound at my last appointment and they estimated her weight was 6lb 3oz currently and everything else checked out well for us.

I hope this story didn’t scare anyone out of future child birth. Obviously we lived it and as cliche as it may be I can tell you I would prefer not to, but I would gladly live it again if I had to for this baby. Totally worth it.

Fast forward almost 2 weeks and I bought a 2008 Honda Odyssey and as of today I sold my Pilot.

I kind of can’t believe it happened so fast. I mean the van was practically too good to be true, and there was another couple interested in it so I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to end up with it anyways. And then I did. So Wednesday I officially “won” the Odyssey, Friday I had the Pilot detailed (it’s really hard to stop referring to it as “my car” but that’s what I’ve almost typed like every time) and listed it for sale and Sunday morning I got a call from a dealership in Hendersonville offering to the buy it. Today I registered the Odyssey and sold the Pilot which is both very exciting, and very sad. (It also means I’ll have to make another trip to the DMV which is very very sad.)

So we’ll see how long it takes before I start thinking of the minivan as “my car” and stop thinking about the Pilot. I still can’t believe it’s gone.

And now I drive a minivan. Sometimes I’m almost embarrassed to say that out loud, but then I use my remote clicker to open the sliding back doors and then I’m totally OK with it.

The part where I start wondering… how long is too long? Is there a “too long” or should I shut up and thank my lucky stars that he’s sleeping? I mean he’s had a cough for the last few days that have made sleep less than ideal at night and during nap time, but last night he barely coughed at all and this morning he slept til 7 so I sort of thought that covered it.

And now I start thinking about things like…. is he going to sleep tonight? Is he going to get in bed and play til 9pm? (Not that I mind so much because he’s usually content singing and talking to himself from bed time til whenever he falls asleep, I just feel kind of bad for him that he’s not sleeping). And so should I wake him up? I know, I know.. don’t wake a sleeping baby! But I hate for his schedule to go completely wonky.

On the other hand, I don’t want to wake him up.. does this mean he’ll fall asleep late and therefore sleep later in the morning so I can also sleep later in the morning? (Let’s be real, I’m going to wake up by 7 no matter what happens, my body is programmed it cannot be altered).

So that leaves me here, trying to distract myself on the computer while hoping that he sleeps as long as he needs to sleep, but also hoping that he wakes up soon because long naps like this are SO WEIRD and they freak me out that here I was given this gift that I did not take proper advantage of so what kind of crappy sleep am I going to get tonight in return?

And he’s still sleeping…. stilllll sleeping…. and I’m still staring at the video monitor looking for signs of life and there are none. I’m almost tempted to go start reorganizing the cabinets with the glasses in them to make room for baby bottles and other such stuff, but I know that’s pretty much begging for him to wake up right in the middle and then I’ll just be sad I can’t finish.

So in the mean time if you need me I’ll be on the sofa staring at the video monitor and trying to pretend I’m busy or something.

3:45, still sleeping.

“The Wheels on the Bus” (Super creepy edition, but really he’ll watch them all)

“Shape Train” (And all of the other learning trains)

“2009 St. Louis Great Fire Engine Rally Parade” (I love whoever put this one up there)

“Heavy Metal Mater” (aka “Green Mater” to Jack, and the rest of Mater’s Tall Tales)

“All He Does is Win” (the Tim Tebow song, I dare you not to get this stuck in your head)

I wanted to embed them as well, but I was having trouble getting that plugin to work and frankly I’m too lazy to mess with it right now.