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Friday, Jul. 05, 2002 - 11:42 p.m. - Shower Recap and all Kinds of Other Stuff
I have been meaning to post an entry all week. I always hate it when I can’t post an entry right away because when time goes by, often times the excitement of the event has passed somewhat and it isn’t as fresh in my mind. I don’t feel like I capture it as well then, but I will give it a try. On Saturday, I had my wonderful 1st baby shower!!!! It was even more wonderful than I could have hoped for. The house looked lovely and then my dear friends arrived to prepare the food and decorations. The shower was hosted by “The Spinsters” (former roommates of mine) and they did such a wonderful job organizing, setting up and cleaning up that all I could and had to do was enjoy my guests. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. Between the Spinsters, my mom and my friend, I, my beautiful home was filled with flowers! Just wonderful! One of the Spinsters set up a “project” at the kitchen table. She had bought onsies in all sizes and a whole bunch of fabric paints and every one got to “paint” a onsie for the Peep. People made the cutest designs and I think they had a good time. I’d never seen this idea before and I have some wonderful little memories to put on the Peep when she arrives. Each one will remind me of the person who made it. Too neat. (Picture to come soon, I hope.) The only baby shower game we played was that each person was giving a baby pin to put on their outfit and then when someone said the word “baby” the person that caught them saying it, got to take their pin. The person who ended up with the most pins at the end of the party received a gift. Of course, I lost my pin fairly soon, and my mom lost hers shortly thereafter. It was fun and it made us all laugh when someone lost their pin. The rest of the time was spent chatting and opening the multitude of gifts we received. Concerning gifts I noticed that most people didn’t buy many “practical” items, but rather the Peep will be beautifully dressed and outfitted for the first year of her life. Everyone said that they had such fun buying and looking out little girl’s outfits. I don’t blame them, I always love to have an excuse to venture into that area of a store myself. The Peep sure received some beautiful, beautiful things, and everyone said or wrote about how much they knew the Peep was a dream come true for me. Everyone was SO happy to be celebrating this special time with us and I felt so grateful to get to celebrate this wonderful occasion. It was especially wonderful to see a lot of friends I hadn’t seen in a while, though due to the nature of gatherings like this, I didn’t get to spend as much time with friends as I would have liked too. Fortunately, my friend, I, stayed the night with her little girl, S, and Miki (who came all the way from Victoria, BC to attend my shower) stayed to dinner with her husband who came to pick her up after the shower, so at least we got a chance to chat more with them. I was so happy about that. The following day, I, left at around 1:00 to head back to Portland and our wonderful SIL left to visit a friend, so after so much hustle and bustle for the last week, it was quiet in our home. After all the work we’d done getting the house and nursery ready for the shower, Michael and I were both pretty pooped, so we made a lazy day of it. Michael napped and watched movies on the couch and I curled up in my reading nook on the stair landing with a blanket and book and read and napped in turns. It was a much needed and much appreciated lazy day. Since then we’ve kept busy running errands and various things. I don’t know where the days go, but we seem to keep busy all the time. When we aren’t busy running around I’m lying on the couch because I’m pooped. I’m surprised that I’m so tired. I mean you always here of people being tired while in their last trimester, but I wasn’t ready for this. As always the 4th of July was a cold and wet day. That’s pretty typical for Seattle. In fact, July 4th is usually the wettest day in the month of July. We actually got pretty lucky yesterday. We decided to go to Woodinville to the winery where we were married (almost 3 years ago now) to view the firework show put on by the Chateau St. Michelle Winery. Pretty much my whole family was there, which was fun. We talked my Thai SIL into coming down from Oak Harbor to join us for the holiday and so we were able to share her first real 4th of July here in the US. (Last year she said my BIL didn’t do anything with her!) Best of all, we seemed to have lucked out on the weather. When we left our house it had started to rain big huge drops, but by the time we reached Woodinville (maybe 8 miles south), the ground was dry and the sun was shining. Just as the fireworks were going to start we got sprinkled on a little (we were all wrapped in blankets already since it still gets chilly here at night) but then the clouds moved on and we were able to enjoy the fireworks show just fine. The funny part about the weather was, that on our way home we noticed that the road was just overflowing with rain and it was so foggy you could hardly see the car in front of you!! Today we found out that there was a deluge in our area that dumped almost 2 inches of rain! I guess we made the right decision to go to Woodinville, but still how funny that just a few miles away the weather was so different. There really isn’t any other news to report from around here. I’m working on getting my thank you notes out. My mom took 3 rolls of film at the shower and already got them processed and printed, so I’m dating the backs of all of them and plan to send them out with the thank you notes to the people who attended or sent gifts. That’s taking quite a while. I’m hoping to get done with them soon though, and certainly before my next shower which is on the 20th of this month. As far as we can tell the Peep seems to be doing well. She’s moving more, or perhaps it is just that I can feel her movements more now. She doesn’t do a lot of kicking but rather just seems to roll around and wiggle here and there. I mostly feel all the movements at my lower left (pelvic bone area) and upper right (rib area). It’s almost always the same places and occasionally also across the belly button region. She seems to stay in one general area or position. Sometimes I feel something sharp digging into my side like a heel or knee and occasionally a big lump seems to be pushing out of my belly button area (perhaps a butt or a head???). It makes me wonder just what she is doing in there. Oh, and I did find out some rather disturbing news from my RE the other day when I went in for a blood test. I ran into him in the hall and after many happy exclamations about my growing belly, I asked him about my delivery situation --that being that I wasn’t sure if the myomectomy that I had in April of last year, might require me to do a c-section rather than a vaginal birth. It was something that I hadn’t really thought about much until now. And when a friend of mine who had also had a myomectomy (fibroid surgery) before becoming pregnant, mentioned that her doctor was requiring her to have a scheduled c-section rather than delivering vaginally due to fear of her rupturing her uterus during labor, it made me start wondering if that might not be the case for me too. After all, my fibroid was quite large and I know that while the doctor didn’t actually penetrate the endometrial layer of my uterus, he came awfully close. Add that to the size of the fibroid removed and the length of the incision made into my uterus, it increases the concern of rupture during labor. He said that I needed to talk it over with my OB, but that that it might be a safer option for both the baby and I to do a c-section. Especially since I’ve been on heparin for so long and might bleed more anyway. A uterine rupture during labor could be extremely dangerous. While I rationally agree that perhaps a c-section might be my safest and best option, I was so set on going through a “normal” labor. I’d really rather not have surgery again. And yet, ultimately I just want a healthy baby and I want a healthy labor for me as well. I still have to talk this over with my OB, but I need to know soon so that I can get used to the idea that my birth experience might not be what I had always pictured it to be. In the end I just want a baby, my baby, safe in my arms; if it is by c-section or otherwise I can deal with that. I just need some time to readjust my thinking. Lastly, I received some sad news from my new Kindred friend, Miki. After many years of trying to conceive and numerous miscarriages she was finally pregnant and we reveled in the thoughts of sharing our motherhood experiences. She was glowing with happiness at my shower and I was already thinking of how much I looked forward to showering her little one with tiny things when her time came. Sadly on Tuesday I received a sad email from her letting me know that once again she had miscarried. It really shook me up and made me so sad. She’s been on my mind a lot. Please send some positive thoughts her way. So I think I have you mostly caught up. I’m not even going to promise to try and keep my journal updated regularly. I guess I’ll just try to do it as I find time and see fit. It’s funny, for someone who ached to keep a pregnancy journal for years and year, I’ve done a rather poor job of doing it. I’m afraid my poor paper pregnancy journal hasn’t been written in for months! First I was too afraid to write too much out of fear that I would miscarry and then when things started looking more positive, I just got lazy and didn’t keep up with it. It’s a good thing I have my readers to push me to update from time to time here. Can you believe it has almost been 2 years since I started my online journal?!!! Wow, I can’t believe it. Thank you for being so supportive and for giving me a reason to keep this thing going!! PS. I finally fixed the formatting of the previous journal entry with the nursery pictures. Can you believe that it all came down to the formatting of a quotation mark that messed me up so much! Ack! I don’t think I’d ever have the patience to be a programmer and have to find a touchy little error like that that is causing a whole program to freak out.
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