Category: pregnancy

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baby dreams funny pregnancy

past 18 weeks, funny prego dreams

I’m almost 19 weeks along in the pregnancy.  Approaching that halfway point.  I’m starting to feel little flutters in there every now and then.  I had leftover spaghetti for breakfast the other day (I love dinner leftovers for breakfast) and that really seemed to make the baby active afterwards.  I went in for a fasting glucose test (as an early screen for gestational diabetes) on Tuesday.  I’m still waiting on the results from that.  My doc said that as long as it is below 92, then I don’t have to be screened again until maybe 28 weeks (?).  Anyways, hopefully that will be okay.

We’ve been sleeping with our windows open at night.  There’s a crazy bird that has been waking me up around 6 am the past few mornings.  It sounds like a combination between an angry chirp and a sad kitty.  Nathan sleeps right through all the ruckus, of course.  Well this morning, the wacky bird call came in between some wacky dreams…

Dream #1:

I was parked at McD’s, getting ready to leave in our new (to us) mini-van and I put the van into Reverse but still had my foot on the brake.  Even with my foot on the brake, and being in “reverse”, the van launched forward into the building.  An employee (I think a manager) called her son who is a lawyer.  The 2 of them made me sit down with them for a chat before the police arrived.  The son asked me how I felt about all the wars going on in the world and if what I did was an act of terrorism.  I kept trying to explain to them that I had the van in reverse, but they were convinced that I was some sort of terrorist.

***  enter wacky bird calls to wake me up  ***  then I fell back to sleep…

Dream #2:

Gwenyth Paltrow was telling me that Nathan and I need to raise our children in London because that is what would be best for them.

***enter crying 2 year old***

Weird dreams. 🙂

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baby family health pictures pregnancy

Baby’s Here!

The induction didn’t go so well and I ended up having a c-section on Friday morning, January 30, 2009. Mia Iliana Alter was born at 5:28 am weighing 7 lbs., 7 oz. and measuring 20.25 inches long. She was so quiet the first day of her life… we thought we had birthed a child that was a total opposite to Sean. But she showed her real colors later that night ;-). We have another impatient little eater on our hands! When she decides she’s hungry, she sure lets you know… loudly! haha! She’s so precious! Sean is being a wonderful brother to her already. He’s helping us out so much and he thinks Mia is pretty cute. His first reaction to seeing her was “awww, she’s so cute, isn’t she!?”. The novelty soon wore off once he realized that we got the Cartoon Network in my hospital room. LOL! As expected, Mia has day and night flipped around. She was always kicking me and waking me up or keeping me up at night and was pretty quiet in my belly during the day. That’s how she is now that she’s here too. She wants to eat every 1 to 2 hours at night, and rests easier during the day. I’m sure we’ll get the schedule worked out soon enough. We’re just glad to be home. The recovery from the c-section was rough at first, but it’s getting better continually. I’m already feeling much better and am very thankful for the prescription pain killers. My husband has been AMAZING through all of this. He has been taking wonderful care of both me and Mia when we were at the hospital and since we got home too. I don’t know how I would have gotten through all this without him. God really blessed me with a wonderful husband. You can see pictures of Mia HERE

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pregnancy

38 weeks pregnant

I’ll be 38 weeks pregnant in a couple days. All is going well. I’m still able to manage the gestational diabetes pretty well with diet and oral meds. According to my OB, they may induce me at 40 weeks, as opposed to 39 weeks, which I had previously thought. I’ve asked her to discuss with the high-risk OB doc the possiblility of not inducing as long as all the tests and ultrasounds continue to go well. We’ll see what they say. You kind of have to weight the pros and the cons of induction versus waiting to see if it’s worth the risk or not. My due date according to my chart is January 29th, not the 28th like I had thought, but that’s no big difference. They’re going by a dating ultrasound that I had earlier in the pregnancy to come up with that due date. My next ultrasound to get an estimate of the baby’s weight is on January 19th. I’m seeing my OB every week right now, plus going in for fetal non-stress testing twice a week and an ultrasound to check my amniotic fluid index once a week. Lots of appointments! I’m still feeling pretty good. I’m starting to slow down. I can’t walk around comfortably as much as before. The baby doesn’t seem to have “dropped” yet, but I’m starting to have more and stronger practice contractions, mostly when I am up and around a bunch. I had a hard time getting from one end of Costco to the other the other night because of some mild contractions. I had to walk nice and sloooooow. So yeah, if you were one of the people there staring at the pregnant lady walking really slow and wondering if I was in labor, that was me, and no I was not… it was just my uterus getting some practice.

Nathan’s work has asked that he try to be available (on call?) on the 29th and afterwards because that’s a transition time for PNM to have the gas and electric portions of the company split. Great timing, huh? So now Nathan has to train a co-worker to be his back up, just in case we’re busy having a baby. My other idea is to have a delivery room set up in the 3rd floor conference room of the PNM building… that could work too.

My baby shower just passed this weekend. It was lots of fun, great food, great friends and just a grand old time without the boys being there. I’m sort of in an anti-nesting phase as of this week… I don’t want to do much cleaning or preparing of the house at this point. That seems to have passed when I was 7 months pregnant. What I really want to do is sleep in late, make time for my afternoon nap, read, and go to bed early. 🙂 My energy is starting to wane. I guess it’s a different kind of nesting, in a way… kind of like how a bird will just sit on the egg and just wait… that’s what I want to do… sit on my egg and wait for hatching time. It will come soon enough and I know that when hatching time comes, I won’t be getting much sleep after that for a while. Wow, I need a nap just from typing all of this! 🙂

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family pregnancy

Pregnancy update – 35 weeks

I’ve just passed the 35 week mark… Just a handfull of weeks until my due date. Things are going well, but I’m very busy going from appointment to appointment every week. I’m still dealing with the gestational diabetes, and that’s being managed okay, although my sugars were off this past week due to having a cold, but nothing really major, thankfully. Right now, they’re having me come in for fetal Non-stress tests twice a week, ultrasounds for aminiotic fluid index every week, ultrasounds for checking baby’s growth every 4 weeks, and now I’m seeing my doc every week for prenatal appointments. Lots of trips to the clinic and hospital each week! But all the appointments are making the time fly by even faster. I’m getting big. I can no longer close my winter coat over my belly! All the testing is going fine and baby seems to be doing well. She’s often very active during the ultrasound appointments, so I’ve not been able to get a really good ultrasound picture of her. The issues with my placenta being too low have resolved as well, so that was good to hear that I wouldn’t be required to have a scheduled c-section. I finally started packing my bag for the hospital. I can’t decide what clothes to bring for baby to come home. I can’t remember: is it okay to have baby wear a onesie when they still have the umbilical stump or should I bring a t-shirt instead of a onesie? Nathan and I toured the new OB/Labor & Delivery/Mom and baby units of the hospital. They’ve got nice, all PRIVATE rooms now. With Sean, they only had a certain number of private mom/baby rooms and they were filled when I was admitted, so I had a shared room. Nathan couldn’t stay with me since it was a shared room. This time, he should be able to stay with me overnight and they even have daybeds and sleeper couches to rest on. Glad I don’t have to be alone during the first nights… I remember that was pretty hard. Nathan and I were also talking about how women often say they “forget” how painful having a baby is. Well I said that too, but during the tour, when they showed us the beds in the labor/delivery rooms, it reminded me how much I appreciated the anesthesiologist who gave me the epidural. I just remembered pain… lots of pain when I saw the beds. haha! So that’s what’s going on. Not much longer to go. We’re excited to meet this little girl and I can’t wait to hold her in my arms.

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Albuquerque funny pregnancy

Pregnancy invisibility super power

I think it was when I was pregnant with Sean, I was at a local asian grocery store. I believe I was standing near the check out counter, waiting while my mom was paying. There was a little old Asian lady pushing a cart near me and i thought she would walk right past me, since there was plenty of room. Well, she bumped her cart into me instead… repeatedly… saying nothing to me, just bumping me, not hurting me, just gently bumping me…repeatedly. I kept looking at her because I wasn’t sure what she was doing. I thought maybe she’d apologize and walk around me. But no… just bumped…repeatedly. So I stepped away from the cash register and moved out of the way. She walked on like nothing had happened. That was bizarre.

Yesterday, I ventured to walmart. I already don’t like going there because of the long lines and crowdedness of the place. While I was in line and waiting to swipe my card and pay and get my receipt, the elderly woman behind me kept bumping (almost pushing) into me (with her body, not her cart)… repeatedly. The cashier hadn’t started ringing up her items yet… she was still finishing my transaction. Bump. Bump. Bump… repeatedly. I’m waiting for my card to process now. Bump. Bump. Bump… The cashier is staring at the lady behind me… Bump. Bump. Bump. I looked down at the tiny lady behind me and she says, “Oh, I keep bumping into you!”… and then it continues… bump. bump. bump. Waiting for my receipt to print up. bump. Bump. Bump. I get my receipt and tell the cashier to have a nice day. One last bump before I walk away. Now you might wonder if she had some sort of medical condition that made her unable to keep herself stable as she was standing. She was perfectly fine and not invading my bubble while we were farther back in line, so I don’t think that’s it.

Maybe I develop some sort of invisibility super power when I’m pregnant that only manifests itself when I’m standing adjacent to cash register. Is that possible? Maybe I become magnetic when I’m pregnant, hence the shopping cart being drawn to me and perhaps the other lady had a metal hip or something. I don’t know. It will forever remain a mystery to me.

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pregnancy

21 Weeks Pregnant

I had another prenatal appointment this morning. My doc and I discussed the ultrasound findings with baby’s heart and agreed that it may not be of any significance. She also mentioned that in the ultrasound report, it said that my placenta was too low (placenta previa). My doc said that as my uterus grows, the placenta could move upwards as well, or it could just stay low. If it stays low I’ll have to have another C-section. I’m okay with it if I have to have the surgery. The recovery went well last time and I know we have tons of friends and loved ones to help out while I recover. It would just be nice not to have to be cut open ( I suppose that generally is a good thing). On the other hand, if I have to have a C-section, that means it would be planned and I wouldn’t have to endure labor this time around. So of course, we’ll do whatever is safest for the baby. The risks of a repeat C-section versus not having one are pretty much the same for me. I have another ultrasound in mid-October to check on the position of the placenta. I’m hoping it moves.

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dreams pregnancy

Pregnancy Dreams

When I was pregnant with Sean, I had the most outrageous, funny and entertaining dreams. They were often pretty bizarre and very amusing. This time around, I’ve started having nightmares. Nothing baby related, thankfully, but nightmares, nonetheless. In one dream, we were planning to go camping, but that morning I had a few contractions. We started timing the contractions and they seemed to have gone away. So we went ahead and went camping. Nathan was fishing in a stream near the campsite and Sean was playing with the rocks and sticks in the grass nearby when he started screaming about a big black spider. I ran over to Sean and saw a huge black widow spider. I tried to stomp on it and it jumped out of the way, and suddenly it turned into 2 spiders. I tried to step on them again and then there were 3… you get the picture. And just so you know, I don’t like spiders much.

Another dream involved lots of snakes and one that bit my kitty cat. Another dream involved a mass murdering samurai dude who I was hiding from and trying to escape from. Everywhere I hid, I found another one of his victims. Last night Nathan and I seemed to be stuck in a Jurassic Park type dream where we couldn’t get away from the T-rex. I was so scared, but Nathan kept telling me not to move so the T-rex wouldn’t see me. I was shivering in fear so bad, I was sure I was going to be seen and get eaten. The T-rex finally went away and we were running to a safe area and all these little dinosaurs were following us and nipping at our heels. I was beating them with my purse. Then I woke up.

I don’t so much like these dreams. I want my funny dreams back.

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pregnancy

12 weeks pregnant

I had another prenatal appointment today. My doc couldn’t hear the heartbeat with the doppler machine at the clinic, so I had to go to OB triage at the hospital to have an ultrasound. Neither I nor my doc were worried that anything was wrong. We figured it was just a little too early or the baby could have been hiding behind the placenta. Anyways, I got to see the little munchkin again and saw the heart valves fluttering away. The baby was also pretty wiggly, so that was cool to see. I can’t wait to feel the baby moving in there! So things are going well. The only complication so far is glucose intolerance, so I have to watch my diet and get some exercise. Other than that, I’m feeling good. My next appointment is in a month.

Categories
health pregnancy

Ultrasound pics

Had an ultrasound the other day to confirm how far along I am in the pregnancy. I’m am confirmed to be about 9 and a half weeks along. Here’s the pics from the ultrasound. The baby is the white blob in the black area. The head lies to the right and the rump is to the left with what appears to be the legs pointing upwards. I got to see the heart fluttering on ultrasound and hear it beating via doppler as well. I LOVE THAT! It just confirms that there’s this little person growing inside. Still no morning sickness or nausea. I get indigestion every once in a while, but never real bad. I have very few negative symptoms of pregnancy, so I’m very blessed. Next appointment will be July 21st, and I will be 12 weeks along by then (heading into 2nd trimester!)

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food health pregnancy

Bring on the Greens

Okay, 7 weeks pregnant and counting. I go in for a dating ultrasound in a couple days to get a more accurate due date. So far, no morning sickness (yay!). I did get a call from my doc today and she said that my 1 hour glucose tolerance test result was high, which means that my body isn’t clearing out a high sugar load very efficiently. The remedy? I have to stick to a diabetic diet (boo!). The good news is that I currently have less of a sweet tooth than pre-pregnancy and I’ve been craving salads (with some kind of meat in them) a whole lot. The problem is that I’ve lately been too tired (or lazy… whichever you prefer) to make them myself and not very creative in putting salads together. I’m often even too tired to go to the farmer’s market or grocery store to get the stuff. So… I guess I just need to git er done and buy some salad ingredients and keep them in stock. If anyone has a yummy and EASY salad recipe for me, please share!