Christmas and Second Christmas

This year I worked a 12 hour day shift on Labor and Delivery for Christmas Eve. I was crazy busy with 3 new admissions and 3 births within about 4 hours. I had a student who was pretty good and was able to do some of the work for me, but I was beat by about 5pm. I waddle like a pregnant person when I am tired, and there was some definite waddling by the end of the day. I got home around 9 and Shawn and I got up at 5:30am to drive down to Leah's house in Southern Maryland. We were there by 8:20 and joined in the present opening. We brought gifts from my parents in addition to a few for each other and presents for the Haas/Detrick/Montoya crew. It was a lovely day of watching Olivia play with her new computer from Santa and other fun toys, and Andrew crawling around getting into everything. We had a nice prime rib with Yorkshire pudding (a real treat in a house with 2 celiac's,) mashed potatos, green bean casserole, and gravy. After a few naps and lots of nice visiting, we headed home so Shawn could sleep before working the next day. I spent yesterday sleeping and reading, it was fantastic.

Katrina and Randolph came over last night so we could have second Christmas today. We re-enacted Christmas Eve last night and Christmas morning today with stockings, breakfast, and of course more presents! I got some maternity clothes and kitchen gadgets, and Shawn got a new flash and camera bag. Today we had waffles with berry compote and whipped cream for breakfast followed by an all important nap. Then our friend Rob and his girlfriend Erica came over for Rock Band and dinner. It's been a nice extended Christmas. I have been very bah-humbug this year with so many things going on, it has been nice to just be with friends and family for a few restful days. We have one more day off which will start with breakfast burritos featuring applewood smoked bacon, green chile, New York Chedder, and flour tortillas from El Paso so it's gotta be a good day!

Belly update

Here's me at almost 27 weeks. The baby is moving around like crazy now. I used to only be able to feel it at night when I was going to sleep and randomly throughout the day, but now it's a lot. My back is definitely starting to hurt now. It's funny, I complained to Mary about my back and she said, "get a maternity support belt." If I had a nickle for every time I said that to my patients, I would be rich. But did I remember it for me? No way. There are some things that I can be very clinical about and tap into my midwifery brain for, and others I am clueless. I guess that's why we have sisters, right?


I have been doing prenatal yoga, which is great. There is a class in Bethesda that I like to go to, but it is only on Monday nights and my work schedule is never set enough for me to go consistently. I do have a DVD that I have been doing at home. It's not as good, and definitely not as relaxing with my cats running around and laying on my yoga mat, but it's better than nothing. Without my rock climbing, I am feeling like a lump.

I am awfully tired, but other than that am okay. My belly button is pretty much gone, and I am oiling my belly every night to prevent stretch marks (fingers crossed.) We are no closer to names for a boy yet. We have tons for a girl, but the boys are eluding us. We still have some time. I am looking into a childbirth prep class called hypnobirthing which I have seen be very effective for patients in the past. We also went crib shopping last weekend. Things are still a long way from ready, but we are closer than we were!

Hardwood floors lead to disaster

We decided on which room will be the nursery, and relocated the office stuff to the basement. The second step towards preparing our home for the new baby, was to pull up the nasty carpet upstairs and refinish the hardwood floors underneath. Sounds fairly simple, right?

Our floor company started last Monday and we moved out of our house and into the hospitality of our neighbors, Brooke and Oscar's home. Thursday morning brought the completion, and the floors look beautiful. We stayed away an extra day to let the fumes air out and moved back in on Friday night in time for my mom to come visit for the weekend. We slowly started putting the upstairs back together and things went smoothly until Sun night around 11. Shawn and I heard a soft crash somewhere below us, but couldn't identify it so went back to sleep. I got up to pee at 1:30am and heard water running downstairs. I thought maybe my mom was taking a shower, but she was asleep in the guest bedroom. I went downstairs and turned on the light in the kitchen to see water POURING from the light fixture. The ceiling was bulging, there was water all over the floor and flooding down into the basement. We turned the water main off, mopped up the mess, and went to bed with visions of thousands of dollars worth of damage and prayers that our homeowners insurance would cover it in our heads.

Shawn and I flipped a coin and decided that since he stayed home for the water heater explosion a few months ago, that it was my turn to handle the house disaster. I got up at 7:15 to call work and beg for coverage at my office hours, and began the day. My first call was to USAA to start a claim. Courtney was very nice, but of course made it sound like our coverage was limited and if there was any prior damage we were going to be screwed. She told me to call the plumber and get the extent of the damage before officially filing a claim. The plumber said they could be here the next day to which I explained the extent of the emergency and unacceptability of that plan. Two hours later, the plumber showed up. After exposing an 18" x 24" hole in the ceiling, he discovered that when the floor people replaced one of the boards in my closet, they pierced a water pipe. The crash was some drywall in the sub floor collapsing under the weight of 6 days of water accumulation! The floor people are taking responsibility of course, but now I have drywallers tearing out huge sections of damp drywall in my kitchen and another weeks worth of house disruptions.


The missing section of floor in the closet access panel.

The kitchen ceiling bulging.

The nails piercing the pipes.

One giant hole in the ceiling.

My kitchen :(


Oh yeah, and it's Christmas and we have no gifts, cards, tree, or lights up.

Thanksgiving with the Shackelfords (and some belly shots)

Here are some belly photos first. These are two weeks old (at 23 + weeks), so I'll try to get some updated ones up soon. Shawn's flash is in the shop so he wants to wait for another photo shoot until his camera can do what he wants it to. He has a reputation to maintain :)









Yesterday we went to Brampton to celebrate Thanksgiving with Katrina and Randolph, his parent's Jane and Shack, and his grandmother Josephine. It was very pleasant. I made apple and pumpkin pies on Tuesday and we drove down to Orange, VA at 8am. We spent the day cooking and and talking. Since Katrina is in Minneapolis now, it was great to spend so much time together. One always has the best conversations in the kitchen! Dinner was fabulous starting with butternut squash soup and salad, then on to turkey brined overnight in many herbs and spices, mashed potatoes, stuffing (not stuffed in the bird so no salmonella,) gravy, acorn squash, spinach casserole, cranberry sauce and rolls.

Although I miss my own family, it was nice to be so welcomed at the Shackelfords. Unfortunately, Shawn has to work today so we were unable to stay the night at Brampton and hike. Hopefully it will be a slow day and he'll get to come home early.

Apparently, my ass is getting bigger...

Tomorrow is 24 weeks and I have been doing pretty well with my weight gain, about 10 pounds total.  Over the last 2 weeks though, co-workers have been commenting on the size of my butt.  Today's quote was, "I thought the belly was supposed to get bigger, not the backside."  I have noticed that my clothes are fitting a little differently and I haven't been climbing as much as before, and we did take 2 vacations in 1 month, but seriously.  Do people think that just because I am pregnant they have the liberty to say whatever they want about my body?  I'm sure no one means for it to be malicious, but I can't help being a little offended.

Disney World

Last week Shawn and I went to Disney World with Leah, Mark, Olivia and Andrew. Let's just say it was a interesting. It was the third time Shawn and I went, but being there with kids was a whole new experience. On one hand, it was fantastic to see things through the eyes of a four year old. Olivia was so excited to see the characters and reassured me that the Lilo we had breakfast with was the real Lilo, "for real Aunt Anne." On the other hand, she vacillated between frenzied joy and utter meltdown. While totally normal for a four year old, it was a little over whelming for a pregnant lady. It made me seriously doubt our ability to be good parents. Mark and Leah did a great job with her, but holy smokes it took a lot of energy just to witness it! Shawn will post pictures soon.

Shawn went on a quick climbing trip to Hueco Tanks this weekend and will be back on Sunday night. It's nice to have a little bit of time to regroup and get my home back together after being so busy. Work is still crazy and I am doing way more than 20 hours a week. I will definitely be more insistent about only working my 20 after the baby is born.

This baby is moving around like crazy now and I am 23 weeks. One more week and we reach viability if my little one makes an early appearance. I hope not, but it will be comforting to know. We are still so not ready, we are going to need the full 40 weeks. We are no closer to childcare than the last post, and the nursery is still a mostly empty room. I think it is also time to start thinking about childbirth classes. I'm considering hypnobirthing. I saw a lot of clients do well with it when I was at the birth center. We'll see. We are also no closer to naming this baby either. So much to do!!!

The Baby is Moving!

So a few weeks ago, I thought I might have felt some movement, but it is really real now! This kid is very active and especially likes it when mommy eats :) At first, I could only feel it at night when I was going to sleep and totally paying attention, now it startles me throughout the day. I love it! We had our sonogram yesterday and that was really cool. We are not going to find out the sex so our sonographer told us to look away when she was heading down the torso. Watching our baby move around and swallow amniotic fluid was amazing. S/he had his/her hands in front of the face and then was sucking on the heel of the palm of the hand. It was super cute. Then we got an awesome 3D image of the face. Our baby has Shawn's forehead and the cutest little button nose. Medically speaking, everything looked good for the baby, no cleft lip or palate, the spine is perfect and all that stuff. I do have a low lying placenta, which is not uncommon at this stage in pregnancy. It is far enough away from the cervix not to cause a problem right now, but we'll probably have a follow up sono in a few months to make sure that it has migrated away from the cervix so as not to interfere with childbirth. At least that's what I would do if I were managing me, but I'm not, so we'll see what my midwives say at my next visit later in November.

We are looking into childcare now and boy is it expensive. It's hard because we obviously want what is best for our baby, but realistically, all we need for the first few months is a place to keep him/her safe. Does a 3 month old really need a stimulating Goddard School curriculum 3 days a week? I don't know. There is much to be done and March is fast approaching. We did a little more work on the nursery today, there is only one piece of furniture from the office left in there.

Peru was fantastic, but I couldn't keep track of where we had been or were going while we were there let alone a week after we got home. I will direct you to Shawn's blog (smseifert.blogspot.com) for a run down of our trip and great photos at smseifert.zenfolio.com. I am proud to say that I contributed more of my photographic skills this time around and there are more pictures of Shawn than usual.

Juno

When the movie Juno came out, we knew it looked really good and got lots of acclaim both from reviews and friends, but it was such as sensitive time for us that we wanted to wait to see it.  I thought that being over 17 weeks would be a safe time to rent it.  I was only sort of right.  It was excellent with strong performances from all actors, but every scene with Jennifer Gardner broke my heart and made me cry.  I felt like I was both reliving my past and glimpsing what sadness my future could have been.  I am so grateful to be naturally pregnant, but it is still hard to completely embrace it.  I keep thinking I am going to wake up and it won't be true or something.  I constantly look at my belly, feel my uterus and inspect my body for the other changes to remind myself that it is real.  I am really pregnant, there is really a baby growing inside me, and I am really going to be a mom in March.  I hope when I can feel my baby move with more consistency that I will feel better.

I am definitely showing more, people are noticing my baby bump without me telling them :)  I'll have Shawn take more pictures this week.

Part time?

With my looming infertility and a nice raise for Shawn, I dropped to part time hours at work in June. That should come out to about 20 hours a week. Unfortunately, just because the pay period averages out to 20 hours a week, does not mean I actually only work 20 hours a week. Last week was 18, this week is 36, and next week is 18. I am 3 days in to my work week (which is Mon, Tue, Wed, Thur, Sat, Mon) and I feel like I have been run over by a truck. This little baby is sucking all of my energy and I can't quite seem to catch up. I sleep about 7-9 hours a night plus an afternoon nap and I am still a zombie. It's barely 9pm and I am going to bed right now!!

17 weeks tomorrow! 3 more weeks and we could find out the sex...but we're not going to :) I am looking forward to the surprise.

Day one

I never thought I would be one for the blogging. Shawn is much more of the techno guy than I am. But with all of our family so spread out, we need a better way of mass communicating our life events. I had hoped between Shawn's photo page smseifert.zenfolio.com and blog, smseifert.blogspot.com we would be covered, however, he tends to write about climbing and food more than daily events. So I will be covering the more mundane details of our life out here in Maryland.

I am 16 weeks and 3 days pregnant today. I thought I might have felt movement the other day, but I don't really know. We had our first appointment with the midwives at Bay Area Midwifery Center in Annapolis where I hope to have a successful birth center birth somewhere around March 12, 2009. (Don't worry family the hospital in a 2 minute ride down a hall and up an elevator if anything goes wrong.) We are starting to rearrange furniture and consolidate the office to make a nursery.

I have a full work week starting in the morning, (so much for part-time) so I am off to bed. Stay tuned...