26 Week Picture

Here is 26 Weeks!



Getting bigger! I think the growth seems to be more and more rapid lately! One week is making a bigger difference than it used to.

In the world of itchiness, I have it under control overall with twice daily application of medicated lotion, and the occasional spot-treatment during the day, and overnight. It's still there, but not life-altering like a couple days were in the last few weeks. I'm starting to wonder if it is an early/mild case of PUPPPs, but the only way to know is to wait and see. I sure hope not. I googled images of some cases of PUPPPs, and if what I have experienced thus far is a mild case, looking at these poor women... It's no wonder they end up inducing PUPPPs women a week or two early!

Nursery Progress

We had a great weekend with Jeff's family. It's always fun to relax and see them!

Before they arrived on Friday night, I got the bookshelf about 80% put together. I've learned that I actually do enjoy projects like that. I guess it's seeing something go from a pile of boards to a pretty bookshelf!

We met them for dinner at Texas Roadhouse when they got into town. Yum! When we got back home, we finished putting the bookshelf together. Isn't it pretty??



On Saturday, we set out to get the ceiling fan hung. Boy was that an undertaking! It makes me happy to know now that ALL of the bedrooms in the house have a fan, and we'll never have to do that again (at least in this house!) What a pain. Jeff, Ronnie, and Patrick worked hard and eventually got it in and working! As soon as the Blairs left for the weekend, I was kicking myself that we never got the camera out and took some pictures. I like having progress pictures and hopefully our kid will appreciate someday seeing all the efforts his/her family is putting into the nursery. :)

After dinner Saturday night, the Blairs headed for home, and Jeff and I set out to put up the crib. I had no idea how long it would take, but I was figuring it would take several evenings of work, but it wasn't a big deal at all! I think it took about an hour, or hour and a half? I love having the crib up and put together. It is so pretty, I love it, and I love looking into that room and just thinking about how real it's all starting to feel. My chore for this week is to get started on the curtains. I think if I just sat down for several hours one evening, I could probably get it all done. Here are some pictures Jeff and I snapped in the crib-assembly process. As you can see, Bailey was a good little "helper" for us! She was in the middle of everything! :)











All done! I love it! I know the crib skirt needs ironing, but I just tried it on for size, and I also realized it'll probably do me no good to sew a little ribbon of the curtain fabric on the bottom of the skirt because the bottom of the crib hides it!



Seeing the crib and bookshelf in the room made me realize that either the furniture is bigger than I thought, or the room is smaller than I thought... or both. All of the furniture will fit in there, but it's going to be a tight squeeze, that's for sure!

And an update on my itchiness... Friday and Saturday were great days. At some point in there, I had a 24 hour period of NO itchiness! That was wonderful. I looked at the ingredients on the Flintstones vitamins I've been taking, and there is no iron in them. So at this point I'm convinced it's iron that I'm reacting to. Especially as bad as it got last week when I took that iron pill as an experiment. Yesterday I did have a bit of itchiness, especially on my legs, but some medicated lotion helped that and made it tolerable. So far today, so good.

No Relief From Itching!

***yawn***

I had another miserable night last night, but more on that in a minute.

Instead of just being a good patient and following my doctor's orders, I went into "self diagnose" mode and browsed the internet to see what I could do about it. I had read on Wednesday that an iron deficiency can cause itchiness, so when I got home I compared the boxes of my old prenatal vitamins to the new box. The old box had MUCH more iron in them than the new box, so I assumed low iron HAD to be my problem... So Wednesday night I took an iron pill thinking the itch would be gone by morning. :)

Let me say, that from the time I stopped taking my prenatals on Monday through Wednesday, the itchiness HAD gotten better. Quite a bit better actually, the itchiness wasn't gone completely, but I was only needing itch ointment on occasion rather than every hour on the hour.

Low and behold, Wednesday night / Thursday morning, I woke up in the middle of the night to some pretty bad itchiness! I was able to fall back asleep without much effort though. Yesterday was pretty miserable, I was itchy all day, despite numerous applications of itch cream. Then we come to last night. The worst it has been the whole pregnancy. I woke up at 2:00 to firey itchiness on my neck and upper chest. I put on some ointment, and tried to ignore it and go back to bed, but I had no such luck. I was just miserable lying there in bed, so I got up and went and sat down in the bathroom for a while, so I wasn't tossing and turning, waking Jeff up. I remembered my mom had read something about putting a cold wash cloth on the itchy area, so I decided to try that. MAN did that feel GOOD. I was amazed! I also dug around underneath the sink and found a tube of hydrocortizone cream. Probably not the smartest thing in the world to apply steroids to my skin while pregnant, but I was desperate. I figure one application can't hurt too bad. If nothing else, the baby will be a better linebacker someday. :) So anyway, I put some of that on, and took the washcloth back to bed with me. I laid it on my neck / upper chest, and tried to fall back asleep, this was around 3:30 am. I woke up this morning, so apparently I did make it back asleep! The washcloth was on the floor, but it's nice to know something worked for a quick fix like that.

So I'm DONE with iron. I don't have any proof that's what brought about this last itchy bout, but it's the only thing that changed this week, so I'm suspicious. I'll go back to my doctor's orders and go without my vitamins today and the rest of the weekend, and see how it goes. If I don't see improvement, I'm going to call my doctor on Monday because itchiness can also be a sign of liver malfunction, which I don't seem to fit all the symptoms for, but I don't want to play any games.

And I want the itchiness to go away!

26 weeks today! It's my last week of the Second Trimester. Third Trimester here I come!

100 Days to Go!

Yikes! I can't believe it. I remember when I first got pregnant, and looked at my pregnancy ticker (see above) just how far off "double digits" seemed. I know I say it all the time, but I can't believe how fast this has gone. Not that it's over yet or anything, but we're getting close!

I got a bit of good news yesterday - I passed my Glucose Screen test! Woohoo! So basically all that means is that I don't have Gestational Diabetes, and I can eat whatever I want. Whew!

I had a dream last night that I had this baby, and it was actually twins! A boy and a girl. I was excited, but I remember being mad that the doctors never detected the twins any earlier than delivery! haha. They both had brown hair and blue eyes, and looked very "Blair."

Jeff's family is coming down to Dallas this weekend for a visit. While they're here, we're going to put them to work hanging a ceiling fan in the nursery! :) We're such great hosts, aren't we! Maybe while they're working on the fan, I'll work on getting the blinds hung. Once those two things are done, then we're really just down to getting furniture in and curtains hung! It'll be great!

In other nursery news, Bailey LOVES the nursery. Maybe it's the paint fumes, but she goes in there all the time. She must think we're making her her own little room. :) Sorry Bailey! Just this morning while I was doing my hair, she was in there rolling around on the carpet. Weird dog! At least she likes the room to begin with, so she'll have a positive connotation associated with the nursery!

The Nursery is Painted!

My parents came over on Saturday and helped us paint the nursery. Boy, did it feel good to get the nursery EMPTY!!!! It was a complete disaster in there. But, it all had to go somewhere, and now the rest of the house is a disaster... But we decided that between now and when the baby comes, we are going to take one room in the house on a weekend, go through it top to bottom, and throw away everything we can... And what we can't throw away, find a place for it. Because we know once the baby is here, none of that will ever get done!

Without further ado, here are the nursery pictures.

Before painting:





After painting:



And here's the curtain material held up next to the wall:



Now that the room is painted, we can really get moving. We need to buy blinds for the window, then I can sew my curtains, and we're also going to install the ceiling fan. I think we'll try to get those things accomplished in the next weekend or two. I could spend my evenings sewing, it shouldn't take too long. I'm so antsy to go out and buy my furniture! I can't wait to get the nursery looking more complete. We're holding off to see if the furniture ever goes on sale, so I'm trying to be patient!

Last Friday I checked out 3 baby name books from the library. I'm starting to feel a lot of pressure on my girl name!! Time is running out! While we were waiting for the first coat of paint to dry, my mom paged through the books and we discussed some girl names. We got a couple new ideas, but nothing that feels 100% right yet. I have a feeling we'll be going to the hospital with a list of several girl names, and then if it's a girl, see what she looks like and then decide. :) Now if I could just get Jeff to agree to my favorite girl name!

25 Weeks & Picture

Here I am at 25 weeks!



This morning was my 25 week appointment. Weight gain so far - up 4 pounds from the day I got my positive pregnancy test! (But I had lost a few pounds in the first trimester, so in reality it's a little more than that!)

I got to hear the heartbeat on doppler again, I never get sick of that one! Dr said it sounds great.

I asked him about my itchiness, and he told me to try stop taking my vitamins for a week and see what happens. It actually sort of makes sense, because the company of my prenatals changed their formula, and I started getting itchy right when I started my new box with the new formula! So we'll see! I don't feel comfortable going completely off the vitamins though, so I still have a bottle of OTC Prenatals I was taking before I got pregnant, and they never made me itchy, so I'm just going to switch back to those for a week. HOPEFULLY that's my cure! Because the itchiness was so bad last night, I was kept up in bed for an hour with uncontrollable itching. It was miserable.

I also asked him about the pain I was having a couple weeks ago. He said it definitely sounded muscular to him, and he said if it comes back, to buy a maternity belt to give me more support. So that's good to know, if it comes back! (Let's hope it doesn't!)

We set up my next appointment for 3 weeks from now, and then he said after that we move on to bi-weekly visits! Yikes! I can't believe how quickly it's going. He also said it's time to start looking into our birthing classes. I'll call the hospital sometime this week and get that set up.

Three Days Pain Free!

Amazingly, tonight marks three days that I have been pain free. I think I mentioned it before - the abdominal pain I was having - but starting right around 22 weeks and ending just after 24 weeks, I would just hurt and ache every night. From people I asked and talked to, it was just the muscles and ligaments really getting stretched. I'm not sure what happens next - they get to the point of no return or something? But it doesn't hurt anymore. It feels great not to be in pain every night, I can eat like normal and have no pain, and waist bands don't hurt anymore! I'm making a point to truly be thankful for times like this when I'm really feeling good! I'm only a few weeks from the third trimester now, and who knows how long I'll be comfortable beyond that! haha.

Still not much progress on the nursery, I had hoped to have it empty by now, but it still sits rather full of empty boxes... But luckily those will be easy to clear out. Plus I have another 25 auctions ending on Ebay tonight, all of which have bids, so that's 25 more Breyers and boxes I'll have out of here! Hopefully tomorrow night I'll get it cleared out! My mom is coming over on Saturday to help paint, so I better have it all done by then!