35, 36, and 37 Weeks

Whew! The last few weeks have been crazy around here! During week 35, we had a bunch of stressors hit all at once, and things have finally started calming down. Heck, I’m 38 weeks today and I’m barely sitting down tonight to write about the last 3 weeks! So, here we have week 35:

·         I started having a lot of painful, intense contractions halfway through this week, due to the stressors that seemed to all pile on at once. The first stressor that hit was from Tilly. She started urinating blood Monday of this week (the 28^th, I think). It was A LOT of blood! I took her into the vet, where I paid over $50 to have him tell me that he had no idea what was wrong, and wouldn’t know unless I paid over $600 for some testing. After 2 big car repairs and an emergency road trip to AZ in the last month, this was NOT the news that I wanted to hear. I told him we would wait to see if the problem fixed itself, and thankfully it cleared up about a week later.

·         Tuesday the 29^th, I got a call from a friend who was petsitting another friend’s Pomeranian. Unfortunately her dog attacked the pom-pom and he was at the animal hospital having emergency surgery. She couldn’t bring the pom-pom back to her house and asked if I could watch him after he was discharged. I said yes, of course, but I had no idea how physically taxing taking care of a recovering dog would be!

The first couple of days he was in so much pain that he would bite me if I got near him and he didn’t have any control over his bladder and bowels. He also had drains put in around the stitches that leaked out bloody discharge wherever he sat/laid down. This meant that I was following him around all day with carpet cleaner making sure we didn’t get any stains. I imagine it would be like having a crawling baby in a non-babyproof house! He also stayed up during the night in his kennel crying from the pain, and would only stop if I was with him. This meant a few sleepless nights for me. Not good when you’re 8 months pregnant! By Friday I started having some stabbing contractions, and Saturday they kept coming and coming. I got to the point where I thought I should probably go into the hospital, but decided to take a nap first to see if it would help. By the time I woke up the contractions had calmed down. I’ve had to stop walking and have put myself on a sort of “bed rest” and they’ve stayed away for the most part.

·         Where was Levi while I was taking care of this dog, you ask? Well, he was sort of O.O.C.

Also on Tuesday the 29^th, I got a call from Levi at roughly 9:00pm saying that he hurt his foot playing indoor soccer and that he couldn’t drive his (stick shift) car home. When we got him home, he showed me the damage.

We iced it and I gave him some nighttime NSAIDs, but the next morning it looked just as bad, if not worse. So we went to an urgent care clinic before we had to go pick up the pom-pom to get it looked at. The doctor said there wasn’t a break and gave him a compression brace and crutches, which he used for a week and a half. So amidst having one sick dog that needed to be put on a leash to go potty every few hours (including during the night) and another sick dog messing up my carpets and keeping me awake for several hours every night, I had a hurt husband who needed me to get his food, ice, medicine, etc. and couldn’t help out with the dogs or run errands or help with the household chore stuff. I’m completely amazed at how moms of 3 kids can do it!

·         Stressor #4 was actually a good stressor. I had a cyber Monday sale for my Etsy shop that I extended through the end of November (Wednesday the 30^th). I got a ton of orders, and I’m so grateful that complete strangers paid money for the things that I make! The downside, though, is that every sale was a custom order. It ended up being about 75 hours worth of work, starting Monday the 28^th, spread out over a week and a half. That alone would have kept me plenty busy, but added on top of the other things I had to do it was pretty overwhelming.

·         To pour salt on the wound of week 35, I had tested positive for Group B Strep and was on antibiotics all week. These made my stomach hurt and left me pretty nauseous all week.

Week 36 got much better.

              Tilly stopped urinating blood.

   The pom-pom had the drains removed and regained control of his bladder. He also stopped having diarrhea (not mentioned above, but noteworthy). He started having more energy and was in less pain, which was nice to see. With him feeling better, though, came A LOT of barking. This guy’s bark is like nothing I’ve ever heard before. It literally made my ears hurt! It’s kind of like a shrill, blood-curdling scream in both volume and pitch. It was so bad that I could feel the baby get startled then tense up like he was trying to get away from the sound. That did NOT make me very happy!

 Levi was feeling so bad about all that I was doing that he started hopping around the house sans crutches and put a lot of effort into helping me take care of things. He also arranged with his co-worker to take care of the pom-pom until his owner gets back mid-January. So at the end of week 36 we said good-bye to little T and went back to a more peaceful lifestyle.

·         We went on a harbor dinner cruise on the 10^th for Levi’s work party and I got to meet so many of the people that he works with. They are wonderful! I had such a good time getting to know all these people that he talks about! He really works in such a great office.

Week 37 was wonderful!

           Another co-worker of Levi’s gave us her beautiful glider and ottoman that she used when she was nursing. Her husband let us have it on one condition: we had to take a box of baby dvds and a barely used jogging stroller off of their hands, too. Um…..YES! I’ve been amazed at how wonderful his co-workers have been. I’ve sincerely liked every single one of them that I’ve met, and Levi has too. We couldn’t be happier that we are here in San Diego with such great people around us.

    

           We decided that this was the week that we would get all of our Christmas festivities done. To start off the week we went to our stake’s Christmas concert. For just being local church singers/musicians, the concert was very impressive! We were glad we went and will probably go back next year.

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      We went to the Mormon Battalion Center for a concert and tour. The tour was really cool! We both learned a lot of new things about the men and women who were in the Mormon Battalion. I highly recommend it for anyone who plans on coming to the area.

      We also went out to SeaWorld for their Christmas celebration. They had a snow world where we made snowballs and watched some kids go sledding.

  

      They also had a couple of reindeer in a corral to look at and pet. There was a slight creepy factor about it, though. The reindeer had their left antlers chopped off and the workers in the corral were each holding an antler for people to pet. You just had to not think about it.

·         After SeaWorld we headed out to the temple to see the pretty lights. We loved the palm tree lights!

Can you tell I was exhausted by this point?

We've been really busy lately getting the apartment ready for baby C. We still have a lot to do but are well on our way to having everything set for his arrival. We couldn't be more excited about this little guy coming into the world!