Yea, yea, yea

Well...I am no longer waiting for my baby anymore! There has been a bit of a delay in posting a new blog (not like I was great at updating on a regular basis anyway!) Since the little one has arrived I've discovered that I have absolutely no time to write!
As of right now, she just started crying for me so I must wrap this up very quickly.

I am totally in love though- she's the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to us and words just can't describe the feeling.

I will try to find more time and words to update later though.

Poor baby's getting rather upset and hungry (I am amazed at just how much they eat!) so so long for now!

Waiting Game

Been having mild contractions since Tuesday. They informed me that my contractions were 5 minutes apart when I was on the monitor and I didn't even realize I was having them. The doctor really thought I was going to have the baby soon.
Three days have passed now and some of the contractions have gotten stronger and I'm a little more uncomfortable but nothing yet. I kind of regret knowing that I started having those contractions because time is passing so so slowly.
I have had little "freak outs" where I'll look around the house and see how disgusting it is and will then have to start cleaning like a mad woman...yes, I sound like a typical 9+ month pregnant woman. The house really was bad though since I have been unable to do much from being so sick- but it is slowly getting clean. Now my attitude about bed rest is- screw it! I'm going to clean and shop and walk and whatever else as long as I feel comfortable because I know this will help get things moving. I'm resting and monitoring things.
I think part of my little "freak out" episodes is this overwhelming anxiety about labor and about being a parent. Bringing in a newborn into this house and being responsible for it just seems overwhelming sometimes. Though, just recently babies on TV- especially little newborns are looking really cute to me and I sometimes daydream about her laying next to me on the couch. I am thinking this has to be all a part of the prep work my body and mind is doing right now.
I had not anticipated having to miss so much work and keep trying to tell myself that things will be okay. I probably should have gone in today but the contractions were actually painful enough to keep me up a lot of last night so I only got a few hours sleep- this seems to be what has gotten me into trouble (meaning in the hospital) so I thought it best to play it safe and stay home. Plus, I was (and still sort of am) in the pissiest of moods today. It's like, I was up off and on last night feeling so crummy and wondering if it was time yet and then boom...it just subsides. Grrr...
So I am napping off and on today and cleaning the house. Carpet in the baby's room will be installed on Monday so at least I can focus on decorating the nursery if I haven't had her by then. That is one thing I am really looking forward to.
Man, it still gets me that I am going to be a parent literally any day now. We'll all just have to learn together. Maybe I should be reading baby books and stuff but I'm just not interested right now. I think we'll have help from friends and family as we need it and we'll just take things day by day at first and will do the best we can. We've taken baby classes and I have plenty of magazines around the house (seems like every class gave us tons of literature and we got a huge packet when we registered!)
Ah.. back to cleaning. Contractions come on every time I get up and move now so it makes me feel productive in a number of ways!!

Oh, the weather outside is frightful

So the waiting game is on. Every little twinge is making me wonder...is this labor?
Just got over a horrendous bout of stomach flu that landed me in the hospital again. Am starting to feel better- though I don't know what better is at 91/2 months pregnant.
I decided to work on jewelry and kicked out a ton of stuff last night and this morning. Maybe I'll take some pictures and post them later.
Mr Manx is painting the baby's room and we were planning to get carpet installed this weekend but still haven't heard back from our guy. Bummer.

This morning I woke up early and decided to make coffee and work on jewelry. As I was sitting there I hear Mr. Manx's phone ring. I was hoping it was our cousin (the carpet layer) but it was not. I find out it's my mom calling his phone to tell him to not let me out of the house today due to the "black ice." Apparently my Aunt had already slid through an intersection before 9am.
So I checked out my favorite weather site http://www.weatherunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=62704
and saw this.

	Local Storm Report
12/01/2007 0920 am Springfield, Sangamon County. Freezing rain u0.00 inch, reported by co-op observer. Traffic crawling and sliding in Springfield.

Traffic crawling and sliding? I have never read this before but it cracked me up.

Maybe I'll try to go out when it gets warmer. I have beads and carpet to buy!!

Hero

I was feeling pretty cruddy last night so we watched some Hero's episodes (we prefer to watch them in blocks). I went to bed shortly after we finished a few episodes and I guess I was dreaming about it in between bathroom breaks.
My life seems to consist of checking my blood sugar, checking my blood pressure, checking for fetal movement and spending the majority of my time in the bathroom due to the fact the my bladder is now pretty much a squished pancake. I have to see a high risk pregnancy specialist today so that was making it a little more difficult to go back to sleep.
At one point, I tried to clear my mind of doctor related stuff and started thinking about hero's and what I would wish my super power to be. It dawned on me that it was simply to have this baby. This seems like a super feat in and of itself. I mean the whole concept of it just amazes me (and scares me).
So, for now, this is the super power I wish for. It seems like I will need super human strength in order to do this. Seems like I need all the strength I can muster to just get through this doctor stuff alone.

Update

Well, it's about 6am and I can't sleep. Figured I'd blog about what's been going on. Briefly, anyway.
Things have been pretty crazy lately. Went out last Saturday to celebrate and had a great time. The shower went great as well. Had a few friends come in from out of town for the shower/weekend and one very close friend flew in all the way from Pennsylvania! We got to spend some of the week with her which was awesome.

The sucky part was that I started showing signs of pre-eclampsia last week (nasty pregnancy related thing) and had to be hospitalized over night. Test results came back ok so they let me go home. Though, I just got out of the hospital again yesterday and am showing almost pre-pre-eclampsia signs now (whatever that means). So I have to take it pretty easy from now on and this is really bad because the baby's room still needs painted, need carpet put in, all the clothes washed, have to put the crib together, install the car seat and try to prepare myself for labor and delivery!

Looks like I might be looking at an induction pretty soon. The doc said if I go into labor now she wouldn't stop it. She also won't put me on blood pressure meds at this point- she'd just induce. So this has me kind of a nervous wreck- luckily, I'm too tired to be too nervous. Interesting, I'm tired- yet I can't sleep?

That's it for now. Poor Dad is worried about us- he's helping with everything and being a wonderful, supportive partner (even if his boss is not being so supportive).

Ginkgo

I had the privilege of walking by a ginkgo tree as it was shedding it's leaves today. Apparently, they shed all their leaves in a very short time span (sometimes in 1 day).
We walk by the tree almost every day, but today was different. There were all of a sudden so many leaves on the ground that you couldn't even see the sidewalk. The leaves emit a very strange odor.
I've been walking at lunch around the same area for a few years now and this was the first time I was able to witness this event. We stopped for a while and looked up at the magnificent tree and watched the leaves streaming down around us. Just seemed kind of cool.

Ginkgo trees fascinate me.

Here are a few interesting facts:

The Ginkgo tree is the sole surviving species of the family Ginkgoaceae and is the world’s oldest living tree. In fact it is so old that the Ginkgo tree links us to the plant world of over two hundred million years ago. For this reason it is often referred to as a ‘living fossil’ The Ginkgo is the sole living link between the lower and higher plants, between ferns and conifers.

During autumn, the leaves turn a bright yellow, then fall, sometimes within a short space of time (1–15 days)

Extreme examples of the Ginkgo's tenacity may be seen in Hiroshima, Japan, where four trees growing between 1–2 km from the 1945 atom bomb explosion were among the few living things in the area to survive the blast (photos & details). While almost all other plants (and animals) in the area were destroyed, the ginkgos, though charred, survived and were soon healthy again. The trees are alive to this day.

There are no native ginkgoes living in the wild. All wild trees were wiped out hundreds of thousands of years ago but human intervention has saved the modern tree.

Gingko biloba is most effective as a concentrated extract, found in either liquid or tablet form. It has beneficial effects on the circulatory system, particularly among the elderly. Studies have shown it can help in treatment of their short-term memory loss, headache, tinnitus (ringing in the ears) and depression by improving blood flow in the arteries and capillaries

not so fine dining

I don't understand why Mr. Manx and I seem to be cursed when it comes to eating out? Usually he is the last person to receive his food- sometimes everyone else is done eating by the time he gets his food! Though, recently I have been the one to suffer at the dinner table. Why people would do this to a pregnant woman I don't know- they must not understand our hunger...and how overpowering it really can be!
We recently went out to Indigo since we figured there wouldn't be much of a chance for fine dining and romance for much longer (either because I'm feeling like a waddling whale or because we will have a little one that demands all our attention).
We got a table right away and he ordered the wine I suggested so I could have a few sips and we started out with these wonderful Cali rolls (which, is ok'd for pregnancy - no raw fishies) - they were as good as what we ate in Chicago and were served on a slab of cold granite...mmmm. Next, we had a salad with a really strong basalmic vinegarette dressing with cranberries and nuts (I thought the dressing was a bit too overpowering). It was served with hummus, olives, garlic and pita bread and then went on to our main course.
We decided to do split some "serf and turf" - I ordered the "turf" and he ordered the "serf"
Our waitress came out with his scallops and informed us that my meal was taken out by mistake by another waitress. She said she'd comp us the glass of wine. So we munched on his scallops for a bit but we wanted the combination so we sat there for about 5 minutes while his food got cold.
Finally my food was brought out- the steak was way more rare than I had ordered it but we were so hungry and desperate at that point that we wolfed it all down. It was very good though.
All in all, we found the dining experience to be pleasant. The sushi was awesome...everything else was good but not the best meal I've ever had- the place had great music playing, nice decor and lighting so it sort of made up for it.
It just seems like one stupid thing always has to happen.

Our most recent dining experience was one of the worst I must say. I was craving fried chicken yesterday- I crave it once or twice a year and it sounded really really good to me.
I'm pissed I even agreed to go to "Willie Mac's"... it's that new place where the ground round used to be...ugh! No restaurant has worked there for years but we were driving by and Mr. Manx suggested we try it. He actually suggested it a couple of time- I refused the first two times but I though he really wanted to go there so agreed...apparently he thought they would have good "country" fried chicken since it looked like a "country" place. Plus, they were close and I was hungry. Good intentions, bad results...
When you have 3 servers walk up to you at the same time, show your your plate and ask you if your meal looks right to you, you have to wonder what the hell you have gotten yourself into! They brought this freeze dried piece of chicken fried steak and tried to tell me it was fried chicken without the bone. No...first, they tried to tell me fried chicken wasn't on the menu- that it was actually only chicken fried steak. I corrected them and told them they both were on the menu- they made up some lame ass excuse for that one- all three of them talking at once, then they tried to pass off chicken fried steak as chicken without the bone. I cut the piece open and said no...this is not chicken...what are you not understanding? Then they tell me that they are actually out of fried chicken....WTF? Why didn't they just say this to begin with? They actually tried to pass off one food as another?

Now, fried chicken is not healthy food- I know this and already felt bad enough for attempting to eat it. I rarely have it but damn, it can taste good and it's so nice to go somewhere that actually knows how to prepare it. The shit they served at this place looked like a frozen dinner-there was no way I was eating it!

Mr. Manx had just ordered a burger and it looked safe enough to eat and I was starting to get really shaky from not eating so, once again, I had to share Mr. Manx's food until mine came out.
Luckily, I had just told them to get the crap I didn't order the hell away from me and just bring me the same thing that he ordered so we could split his and then split mine when it came out.

The most annoying part is that they charged us full price for the burgers. The poor waitress (it was her first day- there were 3-4 other servers that seemed to busy gossiping than to wait on us) got a disgusted ear full from me and I didn't even bother talking to a manager because I get a little scared of my pregnancy hormones and there was still a knife on the table...it was probably better to just leave. They'd probably only take off a few bucks and I'd have to argue with some dimwit who doesn't know how to run a restaurant...plus, the whole knife thing...

argh...thank goodness for the times we are blessed with a decent meal and decent service. Seems to be rare though.