The Waiting is the Hardest Part... Plus Final BB Pic (38 Weeks)

Well, the big day is almost nigh; we go in at 9:00 tonight to start Denine on prostaglandin.  If that doesn't kick start her labor, we will go ahead with the induction tomorrow morning.  So, God willing, by this time tomorrow our family will be one person bigger.....and Denine will be one person smaller (sorry, Honey, I couldn't resist).  I know I should probably be busy packing and getting ready to leave, but I think we are pretty well on top of things.  Plus, I'm in that state where I know there is something I meant to be doing, but darned if I can remember what it was.  As you can see from the post title, I decided to go ahead and grace you all with one last baby bump pic for the sake of completeness.  I have all of these pictures together in a separate folder on my computer, partly so I can resize them to be uploaded but also so that I can flip through them quickly in sequence.  Neither of us thought Denine had really gotten that much bigger since the last pic until we looked at them one after the other.  You don't really appreciate how much a pregnant woman's belly grows in so short a time when you're looking at it day-to-day.

It's like he's defying gravity...

In other news:  Jamie had another seizure on Friday, so he is back on medication for his epilepsy.  We are pretty discouraged about that, we had hoped that his epilepsy had gone away for good.  The older he gets, the less likely it is that it will ever go away, and once he hits puberty - which would be right about now - the chances decrease dramatically.  I believe statistically there's about an even chance at this stage, and if it hasn't gone away by his late teens the chances are slim that it ever will; we will just continue to pray that God will see fit to cure him, and deal with whatever happens.  Needless to say, the timing of his relapse stinks, particularly since somebody else will be taking care of him while we are at the hospital.  He should be fine now that he is back on medication (Denine was a basket case all weekend because we couldn't get a prescription until Monday), it's just that it is one more thing to worry about.  I had to write out instructions yesterday for my sister-in-law regarding what to do and not do if he has a seizure, what's normal behavior versus what to be concerned about, etc.  You take for granted the vast wealth of knowledge you have on your children's behavior until you have to explain all the nuances to someone else, particularly when there is an abnormal health issue at play.

Anywho, everyone cross your fingers and say a pray that everything goes well.  My next post should have my detailed account of the whole event, plus some baby pics (no bump!).  

I'm off to try and remember what it is I should be doing...

Time Creeps By... Plus New BB Pic (36 Weeks)

First things first:  The big news for this post is that we are officially scheduled to induce on the morning of the 24th!  To be honest, I have very mixed emotions about that.  On the one hand, I'm relieved to finally have an end date for the pregnancy set; it's a lot easier to sit around and wait when you know how long it's going to take.  On the other hand, I feel kind of like a hypocrite.  I am typically very vocal about my distaste for using unnecessary medical interventions, in particular the recent prevalence of performing elective c-sections for the sake of convenience.  Doing an elective induction is not quite in the same boat, but I feel like it might be in the same ocean; it's not an invasive surgery, but it is still something we are electing to do, though not necessarily for convenience as much as for impatience.  The doctor is comfortable with our decision to induce then -we're actually doing it a day earlier than we had requested so that it's not on the weekend- and we know from past experience that Denine's body seems to react well, if not a little over-enthusiastically, to pitocin.  So I'm not really worried about complications and feel good about the decision.  Just torn, I suppose.  There is still the possibility of Denine going into labor before then, which I am hoping will be the case; according to my mother babies are never born when they are planned, so by that reasoning we should be guaranteeing that he will be born beforehand.  Murphy never seems to work in ones favor, however...

 I've been getting progressively farther behind on the time between when I take the bump pics and when they actually get posted, so I'm due to take another one around Friday.  Assuming she hasn't popped by then, in which case you'll get a picture of the baby instead of the baby bump.

I'm planning to try and keep up with a blow-by-blow log of the labor and delivery that I can post after it's all said and done.  I have a written journal from when Jamie was born, and it's pretty neat to be able to go back and read what was happening and my thoughts at the time.  Ren's delivery is all just a blur now, we've got the pictures but I really wish I had written something down.

Denine had her first baby shower Saturday (well, not her first one ever, but the first one for Asher).  I am subsequently feeling better about what we have left to buy vs. the money we have left to buy it with.  We also have our "family shower" this weekend, although I am still not sure who exactly is supposed to be attending.  We see most of our family two or three times a week, so I assume that this shower is for some of the extended family, but every time as ask Mom about who is supposed to be coming I don't really get an answer.  Maybe she is just trying to surprise us.

I've spent the last two weekends cleaning up the garage, the first organizing what needed to go to the garage sale last week and then last weekend cleaning out all the refuse.  I know I threw out two suitcases, a steamer trunk, and three boxes of stuff that whoever owned the house before my brother had left in the garage rafters; a set of sliding shower doors and the rest of the scrapped walls from my shower demo; a back door; two non-working gas trimmer motors;  and an assortment of scrap wood that was not worth keeping any more.  I still have a pile of campfire wood I've been "holding onto" for my brother which he doesn't want anymore and a half-pallet of solidified bags of Quikrete that haven't made it to the curb yet.  Now, for the first time since we moved in over three years ago, I can finally fit a car in the garage!  Unfortunately, I still have a full-size van / mini-motor home parked in my driveway, which prevents me from actually making use of said space.  Step one has been completed, though, so there is hope that, someday, one of us will be able to park in a covered parking area for the first time.  Huzzah!

You Haul 5840 Tons, Whadaya Get...

I am officially another year older - though thankfully not deeper in debt - as of last Saturday, which is going down as my most disappointing birthday in memory.  I woke up Saturday morning to find Ren lying on the couch with a trashcan in front of her, never a good sign.  She had apparently gotten sick early that morning, and spent the entire day napping on the couch and hurling every time she tried to eat anything.  This, understandably, put Denine in a bad mood all day.  The highlight of the day was when Jamie and I spent the afternoon running errands and acquiring a rare Pokémon; I did discover that a game I've had my eye on went down in price to $20, so that's birthday-money-expenditure #1.  Friday night was our traditional birthday dinner with my parents at a relatively expensive, which was nice.  Denine couldn't resist the urge to tell the server that it was my birthday.  This netted us a free dessert, which I let Ren eat so that I could get tiramisu and illicit my mother’s annual questioning of why I love tiramisu when I hate coffee (FYI, I don't get it either).  And, no, I don't think the cake had anything to do with Ren getting sick, though in hindsight I am glad no one had to pay for it.  Sunday was a pretty standard "LTC practice and life group" Sunday.  So, the weekend as a whole wasn't bad, it was just that my actual birthday was disappointing.

We splurged and bought electronics for birthday / tax return presents this year.  She got a new laptop to replace her old one with a messed up screen (everything has a purple tint) and I got an iPod Touch to replace my Sansa Fuze+ (the touch screen is impossible to use in the car at night).  I am ashamed to say, I'm now an iPod junky; I never really cared about having a smart phone before, I don't even have texting on my phone, but this thing is making me really wish I had an iPhone.  Not that that is anywhere near in the cards, but I'm just sayin'...

In baby-related news:  The nursery is, insomuch as we are responsible, done!  One of the errands we ran Saturday was to buy some cord for curtain tie-backs, which I put up Tuesday, and I convinced Denine to finish scoring the quilt while we were out.  So, excluding the decorative things that Mom is working on (which we can't have until after the family shower she's doing) and getting the rest of the extraneous stuff out of the room (which won't happen until after our garage sale donations are picked up) we are officially finished.  

 Ignore the toys on the floor; our nephew decided to break in the nursery for Asher.

The crib quilt.  Design by me, execution by Denine.

This Saturday is the main baby shower, which we're kind of pumped about; it's like an extra Christmas!  We also had the first of the weekly doctor visits Tuesday, complete with regular pelvic exams; the official status is 1cm and 0% effaced - better than nothing, but I'm sure Denine was hoping for more with all the contractions she's been having.  The nurse told us that almost all their patients having been delivering two weeks early lately; it just dawned on me, that would be the week of spring break.

Okay everyone, pray/cross-fingers/whatever that Denine will go into labor sometime between the 11th and 18th of March.  I'm counting on you!

P.S.  Bonus points if you get the subject line...