For the Hospital

I know there’s a lot of currently pregnant, previously pregnant or at the very least future pregnant mommas that read my blog that can help me out with this.  My third trimester is flying by and I just realized that I could be anywhere from 5-8 weeks from having Carter.  A few people have asked me if I’ve gotten my hospital packing list together, which I have to admit, I haven’t even thought about it.  So I’m attempting to think about it now and trying to put together a list of things I’ll need to have packed and ready to go for labor and delivery day.  I used a couple of websites to make the below list but I really wanted to get some mommas out there to look at it and tell me if I’m including something I really don’t need or if I’m missing something absolutely crucial.  ADVICE TOTALLY NEEDED HERE!!!

For Me:

• Picture ID, insurance card, and short term disability forms for doc to sign to give back to my work for my maternity leave
• Bathrobe, nightgowns, socks, slippers (I’ll probably bring my comfy crocks since I don’t own “slippers”)
• Leave the hospital outfit for me, probably a pair of my maternity jeans since I will still have a bit of a belly when I leave, and a sweater or something since it’ll be cold outside
• A few changes of clothes for the hospital stay
• Makeup, shampoo/conditioner, body wash/loofa, hairdryer, straightener, ponytail holders
• Toothbrush/toothpaste, deodorant, brush, face wash, eye makeup remover, lotion
• Baby book and pen and notepad
• Nursing bras (haven’t even bought these yet…advice in this area is also helpful) and several pairs of underpants (I’ve heard I should buy some specifically for the hospital because I may throw them away)
• My own pillow, Ipod, Computer, camera, batteries, video camera (if we have one by then), memory cards, phone, phone charger
• Snacks
• Baby Wise and Happiest Baby on the Block books…if I haven’t finished reading them by then, which at my current pace, is humanly impossible
• Bathing suit (I’ve read to bring this to take a shower in just in case I need help from someone in the case of a c-section)
• Cash for vending/parking
• Phone tree list and phone numbers
• Breast pump accessories (I’ve read to not worry about bringing your own pump)
• Flip flops for shower

For Carter:

• His going home outfit/booties/socks/hat
• Installed car seat
• Swaddle blankets
• Family Receiving blanket (I plan to bring Carter  home wrapped in a receiving blanket that has been in my family for over 65 years.  He will be the 11th Rogers baby to come home in it)
• I’ve read to not even bring diapers because the hospital gives you so many so that’s not on the list for him

I’m not adding anything for Justin because he can always drive back home and get whatever he needs for himself or anything I may have forgotten for me or Carter.  Sooooo…what am I missing?!?!  Any advice would be incredibly helpful!!    A side note because I know different hospitals provide different things, but I’ll be delivering at St. Vincent’s, so if any of you have delivered there and can tell me what they will provide, that would also be helpful!

4D Ultrasound

Last Friday was my 30 week appointment, but more importantly, my 4D ultrasound.  I’ve been waiting for this since week 18 so that I could see Carter again and the tech herself didn’t disappoint.  She gave me a whopping 34 pictures!  I’ve never gotten that many!!  At our first ultrasound we got 4 pictures, at the second (when we found out it was a boy) we got closer to 12, but 34 is INSANE!!  Carter was not working with us to begin with.  He is a very shy little boy and his hands were covering his face for most of the ultrasound.  This isn’t the first time he has done this either.  During the 2nd ultrasound his hands were crossed directly in front of his face as if to say “I don’t want you to look at me, I’m not ready yet!!”.  Well he pretty much did it again this time.

See.  I won’t put up all 34 pictures, I’m just going to put up some of my favorites.

His arm in front of his face again

The reason my right rib and lung have been killing me.  He’s kicking the wall of my uterus on the right side and this explains why I am constantly out of breath and uncomfortable on the right side of my body.

His arm is propping up his head.  I love this picture!

I don’t know much about ultrasound pictures, but I gotten several comments and messages that this picture is the best 4d picture some people have ever seen.  I’m guessing it’s because you can so clearly see his sweet little face but I’m not really sure, because like I said, I don’t know much about these kinds of pictures.  He has my nose and he has my sisters lips.  Maybe at some point he’ll start looking like his daddy!! 

This is how cramped he is.  Where it says “face” you  can see the nose and lips (not really sure what the thing right under his face is…looks like a bubble of some sort or just part of the uterus.  His arm is right under his face and you can clearly see his foot.  It amazes me how cramped babies get and they find it completely natural, soothing even!

After the ultrasound we went to my normal 30 week appointment.  My iron is low again so I was told to keep taking my iron supplement.  I was told to take this before, around week 12-ish, but then my iron levels picked back up so I stopped taking the pills.  Apparently that wasn’t smart.  So I’m taking my pills daily now in hopes to bring my levels up.  Everything checked out great at the appointment.  My next appointment is in 3 weeks on November 11th.  Two weeks later I’ll have my 35 week appointment and that’s when they’ll start checking for dilation and thinning out.  I had the conversation with my doc about having Carter before Christmas.

I told him that I really really wanted him here by Christmas and that I didn’t want to be in the hospital.  He was actually on board for this plan (inducing early) as long as I’m progressing.  He said he won’t induce if I’m not dilated, Carter hasn’t dropped, or if I’m not thinned out enough because if we did induce, we’d be skipping the vaginal delivery and hopping straight on the c-section train.  I’m ok with this plan because I REALLY don’t want to do a c-section unless I absolutely have to.  Not that I’m against a c-section.  I’m definitely not one of those women that are so against something that I become a difficult patient.  If Dr. H tells me I need a c-section, your momma’s gonna say “let’s do this, numb me up”.  I trust my doctors and will absolutely do what I’m told is need to be done.   But at the same time, I just wanted him to know that, if at all possible, I really want Carter in his home on Christmas day.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) I’ll be 31 weeks pregnant and 31 weeks marks the beginning of month 8.  I can’t believe I’m that far.  I’m down to single digit number of weeks until he’s here.  Wow!  I have so much still left that needs to be done….

But for now, I’ll watch re-runs of The Vampire Diaries and eat my Reese’s ice cream :)

My Big Fat Belly - 30 Weeks

I can’t believe I’m 30 weeks pregnant…well, I’m actually a couple of days away from 30 weeks but I know I won’t have time to do a post during the week this week so it was today or never :)

I’m a mere 10 weeks away from having our son.  Possibly even less.  That is unbelievable to me.  It really feels like I just got pregnant yesterday!!  So much is about to start happening.  Our 4D ultrasound is on Friday.  I can’t even vocalize how excited I am about it.  I haven’t seen Carter since we found out he was a boy at 18 weeks.  I’m dying to know so many things!  Is he really 3lbs. like he should be?  Or is he measuring bigger still?  Is he still in the breech position or has he turned head down (I think he’s turned, but this is my first rodeo so I have no idea)?  Is he around 16 inches like he should be?  What does his sweet face look like?  So many questions…

And then my maternity pictures are Sunday with my sister.  She’s coming up to Birmingham and we’re doing them on the trails in Ross Bridge.  It’s so gorgeous back there and every time I’ve gone, it’s been swarmed with photographers doing photos for families, engagements, maternity, etc.  I’m a little upset that Justin won’t be in them, but as long as he’s present for the newborn photos, I’m good.  Since this is his busy season it was too difficult to nail down a date that both Lindsey was available (this is also her busy season because everyone is taking family photos for Christmas cards now) and that he was available since he usually comes in town on Friday and leaves on Sundays.  So we had to just pick a date and hope for the best, but unfortunately Justin is flying out before our pictures on Sunday, so he can’t be in them.

So now for changes I’ve noticed….

HELLO AGAIN FREQUENT URINATION…it’s been a while.  Mother of all that is holy, I pee every hour.  Momma ain’t getting any sleep these days because I’m up to pee at least 4 to 5 times.  Not to mention the last couple of weeks I’ve been waking up way earlier than normal and haven’t been able to go back to sleep for some reason.  I used to be able to make it through the night and not even have to pee and if I did, it was only once.  Bye bye to those days….because apparently this is my body’s way of preparing me for the lack of sleep that I will soon be experiencing.

Belly button is still tucked away and I actually had dinner with several girls that live on my street (have I mentioned how much I LOVE living in our new neighborhood?) and most of them said their belly buttons never popped at all.  Maybe mine won’t.  We’ll see.  The belly has definitely grown as you can see in the pic below.  I’m still having trouble eating full meals.  My eyes are ALWAYS  bigger than my stomach.  Back pain isn’t too bad, but breathing is.  There were times before where Carter would position himself on my right lung and it would take the breath out of me when he was in that position.  Now, however, he’s so big that I am permanently out of breath. 

I’m still exercising, but I wonder if I’m going to have to start going to a gym to walk on the treadmill instead of walking outside.  I hate that because it’s starting to get cooler outside and I LOVE being in the cold.  But now that he’s so big, anytime I even walk, he’s bouncing up and down on my bladder and I have to pee even more than I normally do.  It’s difficult to walk outside when there’s not a bathroom every half mile :)

I finally got my hair cut and highlighted by the way.  It was in desperate need!  Also, I’m up to 22 pounds now.  I’ve said it before, but I knew I wouldn’t gain just 25.  I’m more or less expecting between 30-35, but we’ll see how it goes.  As long as I’m not gaining any weight any where else on my body I’m fine, and I don’t think I have.  To me, my face and arms and legs still look the same, but maybe I’m bias.  I know certain areas will get swollen as I get closer to D-Day, but swelling goes down after the baby is born, it’s not actual “weight” I’ll have to lose.

Hope everyone has a fabulous week!!!

My Big Fat Belly - 28 Weeks

Bye bye second trimester, hello THIRD!!!  I’m in the final leg of this journey and so ready for it to be over!!  Not too much has changed since week 27.  My back has started to hurt a little more, but it’s nothing that a sweet little heating pad or hot bubble bath can’t fix.  No swelling yet, thankfully.  Belly button is still tucked in and I am obviously not good at estimating when it will start poking out so I won’t even try.  Sleep is still pretty good and it’s awesome that it’s as good as it is UNMEDICATED.   For a while I was having to take Tylenol PM to be able to sleep through back pain and sometimes I would just take Unisom (no pain reliever in it, just a sleep aid) on nights that I couldn’t sleep.   But in the last probably month or so, I’ve been able to sleep just fine without anything.  I know that won’t last so I’m soaking it in while I can. 

It’s starting to get difficult to eat full meals.  I get full pretty quickly because I’m running out of room.  I can snack on foods with the best of em’, but I can rarely sit down and eat a whole dinner.  I’m still keeping up my exercise routine, though I haven’t done as much this week as the past several.  Weekends are the best days for me to exercise because I can do it in the morning.  I’ve been so busy with work that I’m not getting home until 6pm or later and by then I’m starving and have to eat and after I eat, I’m so full and too tired to do anything.  So I’ve been slacking a little this week, but that’s not because of pregnancy, it’s just because I’m busy.  I still plan to walk about 10 miles before Sunday.

Justin gets a kick out of watching my stomach move when Carter kicks.  He’ll just stare at it and say “BAM” every time he sees it move.  It’s quite hilarious.  The other night, while he was “BAM”-ing, he looked straight at me as if he’d seen a ghost and said “Babe…have you seen your stomach lately?”  Immediately I wanted to laugh at him…yes thank you, I see it every second of every day because it’s gigantic.  Anyway, he said “oh my gosh there’s a huge line going down the center of it!!!”  He hadn’t seen the line yet and had never even heard of it and the surprise and shock in his voice made me laugh.  I explained what the line was to him and he said “well….I love you and all, but will that go away when he’s born?”.  Gotta love my husband.

And Carter is kicking all the time now.  He’s running out of room just like I am and now I can feel most of his movements instead of just the ones that happened to be hitting the uterine wall.  He’s gotten big enough where I can feel most anything now.  My strapping young lad is about 2 1/2 pounds and can open and close his eyes (which are sporting eyelashes apparently).  Because he can now open his eyes, they say he is sensitive to light.  Some moms shine a flashlight on their stomachs to get the baby to move because the light will cause the baby to move away from it out of reflex.  For some reason this little test just seems kind of morbid to me and I just want him to be comfy, so I haven’t done the whole “shine a flashlight on your belly and watch him move” thing yet.  Not to say I won’t later, I just can’t get over the thought that it seems kind of mean right now.  But I’m sure if there’s ever a day where I haven’t felt him move at all and I get worried, I’ll be whipping out a flashlight like it’s no one’s business making sure he’s okay.   

For my 28 weeks picture….(and in case you’re curious, the TV in the picture isn’t the main TV in the living room and it doesn’t normally go there.  We brought in two extra TV’s into the living room for football season so that we could keep up with all the SEC games since most of them are on at the same time).

The invitations for my first shower went out this week.  I haven’t actually gotten mine yet because they forgot our address changed, so I’ll probably get it today.  But my sister got hers and sent me a picture of it.  It’s so cute!!!

LOVE IT!!!  The ladies hosting the shower for me are so awesome and crafty.  I know I’m going to have a blast at this shower and I’m really glad it’s my first one!  I think this will be the shower where I get most of my gifts because of the number of people invited to it. 

I’m so ready to do more in his room, but honestly, a lot of the decorative things I want to do can’t be done until after he’s born.  There’s going to be a collage of organic bloom frames with his newborn pictures in them above his crib, but obviously he has to get here first for us to do that.  Also, my sister is going to paint a canvas to hang above his dresser that will have his full name, birth date, weight, height, etc.  Again, kind of need him here to be able to know those things.  I’m sure his room will look more full once we start getting gifts and putting them in his room though.

That’s about it for now.  Until next week….or maybe the next week….