Cortney's Crew

Saturday was Joy School Graduation! It was so cute, a little windy (ok a lot!), but a fun time for the kids anyway. I was bad and went instead of being good and staying down, but hey it's a once in a lifetime event! Plus Mom took the girls afterward so I could be good for the rest of the day. This is the only time her hat would stay on....granted she kept messing with it and that's why I have a video of them singing to post, but for some reason it just won't load, so I will try again on a new post and see if it will work. They even had graduation cupcakes! Then they got to play on the playground for a while. When we got home I had Mom take a "Belly Pic". This is the biggest I've ever been!! And I still officially have 7 weeks to go! ARGH!! I know they say that you get bigger each time, but seriously I feel like I've shoved a basketball under my shirt. One of the good things about being tall, is that usually when your pregnant there is a lot of room...

Last Wednesday was crazy hair day at school. So here is what Riley wanted. Actually she wanted me to make the front ponytail stick up like a unicorn horn...unfortunately I have no hair products that would do that for her. Although if we had been able to I think she would have asked me to fix it so it didn't stand straight up. Alexandra of course had to have some crazy hair too, although she somehow manages to make even normal hair look crazy through out the day.....

So my appointment went really well yesterday. Everything is still about the same, bleeding wise. My blood pressure is back to normal though!! But I'm definitely doing bed rest, not completely flat down, but everything that I had been doing, grocery shopping in electric wheelchairs, helping with the laundry, making dinner....all gone. Now most people would think "Yay!!! Nothing to do!!" But this has been very hard for me. I was barely doing anything, and now I'm doing nothing. Plus I have to trust Dean to do the laundry correctly and pick up the correct stuff at the store (luckily he's been shopping with me since the beginning of the pregnancy, so he's got a shot at it) It's just been hard for me to give up that last little bit of independence and control. We're just hoping to buy a few more weeks before she decides it's time for her to make her grand appearance. So we did another ultrasound yesterday and my cervix looks the same, so good n...

Ok, the actual shot didn't hurt that bad, it was just the after effects. The nurse at the hospital was awesome. She sat and talked to us about all the stuff we're watching and what numbers (blood pressure wise) actually mean and what numbers they are looking for. I must say one of the things I really like about Kaiser and them being contracted with only certain hospitals is that they have all my records no matter where I go or when I was seen. Their computers are linked together. So the nurse today was able to look at my blood tests from yesterday and tell me that they looked good, plus she was able to have all of my history without me having to repeat stuff over and over and over. Very nice, especially since I feel so forgetful lately. Things are pretty much the same as yesterday. Blood pressure was the same (still high for me, but not quite to the scary range). Baby's heart rate is great! (I loved this nurse, she was like since you're here lets just listen to...

So I woke up this morning to find that I had started to bleed some time during the night. It was mostly old blood and only a little bit, but with my history - always a cause for concern. So I called into the doctors office and they set me up with an appointment to come in - had I been contracting or more blood/new blood they would have just sent me to the hospital. So I went in and they did 2 ultrasounds and my doctor checked to see how the bleeding looked inside. On the one ultrasound it was to check the cervix, which is still measuring normal (same as last week) only you can start to see a funneling (which just means that I'm starting to dilate - which we already knew). She didn't want to check to see if I'm further then a two, because that would make the bleeding worse, but she said the funneling was only a little bit, so she thinks I'm still around a two. Had I been contracting she would have checked, but she didn't want to make it worse then it already wa...

So I had my appointment today and it went really good. My blood pressure is good and no more protein in my urine!! So who knows what my body is doing, I think it just wants to try out every different complication that it can. Or I'm just getting really good at freaking out at little things. We (well the doctor) decided that since I haven't had any more contractions, that we're good with not doing the preterm labor test today. She feels pretty confident that I know what I'm looking for and will call or go into the hospital if needed. Plus I can see her point of not messing around with the cervix if we don't have too. We don't want to be starting contractions or anything else. I have been having some braxton hicks lately, but supposedly that is just normal (didn't have them with the others - only real contractions for them!) so I'm just gonna take the word of the doctor and every other person I know who has normal pregnancies! (Although I think I i...

So after bugging Dean everyday (seriously) and telling him he wasn't going to get to pick (that happened everyday too), I finally got him to give me an "I guess" (close enough to a yes that I'm not gonna let him back out). Her name will be.... SCARLETT PAIGE BILLINGS I'm not gonna let him change his mind either! (Plus now I can say "I already posted it, we can't change it now!" HEHEHE) Also on another note here are links to my mom's blog where she posted pictures of the girls sewing their presents for the baby and then when they gave them to me at the shower. http://cmjones99.blogspot.com/2009/05/riley-sewing-for-baby.html http://cmjones99.blogspot.com/2009/05/alexandras-baby-gift.html

Tuesday I had a migraine. This was probably the weakest migraine I've ever had (thank goodness). This was supposed to be my last week teaching Joy School. One of the other mom's had offered to take over for me, but I really wanted just one last day with the kiddos. So Tuesday even though I was hurting pretty good, I decided that I would just push through it and let the other mom have Thursday. Well, as I'm in the shower, my vision starts to go, then I start going numb....so we have to cancel Joy School. I really think it was Heavenly Father's way of telling me that I wasn't supposed to do Joy School. "Well...if being in pain isn't enough to get her to give up....lets try a migraine, she can't ignore that!" Yesterday I saw my doctor. It was supposed to be the follow up appointment for the contractions from last week, but ended up being more. So first we talked about the contractions and this weird pain I keep getting on my right side. I ha...

Last Saturday was my baby shower!! I meant to take tons of pictures of all the presents, but it just hasn't happened. I haven't been feeling the best (which will be a later post). This was the first baby shower I've ever had. With the other two girls we just were never able to plan anything with being on bed rest and in and out of the hospital, and I never felt up to it after they were born. My friend Johanna threw it for me and she did such an awesome job. She totally went over the top, but it made me feel so loved!! We had a little brunch of chicken salad sandwiches on croissants, and fruit, veggies and cheese platters. And then she made me key lime pie (so yummy) and cookies and chocolate covered strawberries for dessert. We played a couple of games and just had a good time talking. Both girls got to come (they had made me presents - Grammy helped them sew them - again no pictures yet...) Riley told us though that grown-up parties are boring! It was an aweso...

Today is the large item pickup date for my area of the city we live in. So yesterday Dean took all the stuff to the curb since he didn't want to do it when he got home at 2 in the morning from work. The big stuff we were getting rid of was the old swamp cooler and a lawn mower (both didn't work anymore). We had a couple of other things out there too, but you could only have a 4'x4'x8' amount for them to pick up and the swamp cooler took up most of that. The stuff wasn't out there for 30 minutes before someone had taken the swamp cooler and the lawn mower. It made me laugh so hard. Here we had paid our $10 to the city to have them pick up these things, when apparently we could have just put them on the curb with a free sign on them....or maybe a "Do not take" sign. Plus these things have been sitting on our porch for over a year because we missed last years registration date. The rest of the stuff was things that could go out with our regular tr...