All clear for arrival!

I'm so happy for my dad! He harvested the biggest buck he's ever taken this weekend. We don't care that much about the size of the rack. It's more about the amount of meat! From what I hear, he was a Big'un! It took 3 of them to load the buck on the ATV. Can we say, "Deer sausage!!!!" Yum, yum, yummy!!!

I love eating wild game instead of the over processed meat from the grocery store. I wish it was more like the "olden days" of fresh farm meat. No antibiotics and steroids and stuff in the meat. The best chicken I've ever eaten was clucking an hour before I ate it.

Okay, so now with my dad's successful hunting trip over...and my sister-in-law is home from the Philippines...Maverick is clear to arrive any time now!!! LOL!

Of course now that there is no worry about all the family being home, Maverick is going to take forever getting here. Ha ha!

Nah, I'm actually not in too big of a hurry. He will get here when he's supposed to.

Although, last night I was having some pretty regular contractions for a couple hours, and then they completely stopped. And nothing since. They weren't painful at all...more weird than anything!!! My entire stomach would get really, really hard and oddly shaped for 20-30 seconds, and then stop. Crazy!

On the set of "Scrubs?"

As I sat on the examination table this morning for a routine prenatal visit, I was woken out of my morning fog with a gentle tap on the door and greeted by a young woman who couldn't have been a year or two older than me (mid 20s). Having to go to a free/reduced cost clinic at a major metropolitan hospital, I'm very used to seeing a different doctor every visit so it wasn't a red flag to see a new face. However, I could immediately tell she was very unsure of herself.

In a small voice she introduced herself as a medical student, and was very quick to say that the resident doctor would be in after her. I think she was afraid that I would be scared by her inexperience and would demand to see a "real doctor" and storm out of the room. But I couldn't be more happy to be her first patient without a doctor over her shoulder! I was excited that she would probably remember me out of the thousands of potential patients to come in her career.

On her clipboard she had written out all of the questions she was supposed to ask in these neat little bullet points. (Later, the resident doc would let her put this information into the computer system after she double checked it.) Then she grabbed the hand held doppler to measure Maverick's heartbeat. I felt sooooooo bad for her because she couldn't find his heart! She felt my tummy and quietly said, "I think his head is up here" pointing up toward my rib cage. I didn't have the heart to tell her that it was really down in my pelvis.

I could almost feel her wanting to shrink in height after struggling to find his heartbeat for 10 minutes without success. Part of it was that she didn't have the wand in the right place, and she wasn't pressing very hard either (afraid to hurt me I suppose). She kept apologizing profusely, and I kept reassuring her that I was glad to help her learn. After I explained to her that I was a science teacher who thrives on hands-on learning, she relaxed more and we had fun conversations about college biology lab classes.

After measuring a few more things with uncertainty, she got up to get the resident doctor and the poor thing stubbed her toe on a doorstop and almost smashed her head into the door. We both just laughed and blamed it on being Friday the 13th. :)

Fortunately the resident doctor was awesome about trying to boost her confidence. I was afraid that the doc would come in and take over with lots of rolling eyes or something. The doc had her measure everything again (heartbeat found this time with a little guidance!) and was very calm about directing her through it all.

Granted, by the end of the appointment I did sort of feel like one of the helpless creatures I watched being dissected from my chair in a college lecture hall. But that's okay. I hope I was a good first patient for her!

By the way the exam showed that I'm about 2cm dialated and about 60% effaced. The doc wants me to take it a bit easier because she wants to slow my progression only for the reason that the closer we can get to 40 weeks, the better. No long shopping trips for me!

Tick-tock!

It's so weird how excruciatingly slow time passes, but at the same time, you're not in a hurry for it to pass either. Ever feel that way???

I've been feeling like that since Saturday night. I've been having some contractions, so I'm anxious to get this whole labor thing going. We're sooooooo excited to meet our son, and curious as to what he's going to look like. How he's going to act, etc.

But at the same time, it's terrifying to think we're going to have a baby! You would think that 9 months would be plenty of time to prepare your mind for this. But it doesn't! Are we ready? The answer is no. But who is ever ready to be first time parents?? Nobody I know!!

So back to being excited!

During my NST this morning the nurse administering the test kept glancing at the printout from the contractions monitor, and asked me how I was feeling. I was like, "Ummmm....fine. Am I supposed to be feeling something else?" And she showed me that I was having pretty regular contractions that weren't huge or anything, but enough that I should be feeling them.

When I had another contraction, she let me know so that I could be aware of what it should feel like. I was like, "Oh! I've been thinking that was the baby moving or something!" She almost called my doctor to see if I should go get checked out at the hospital. But they weren't quite that bad yet.

Now back to waiting!

My gut feeling is that he's not going to arrive for at least another week or two. That would be good because the closer to 40 weeks, the better.

Plus--I've been given specific instructions to wait until Sunday night (at earliest) for 2 reasons:
1) This coming weekend is opening rifle season for deer hunting, and my dad is an avid hunter who doesn't want his grandson's birthday interfering. LOL! :)

2) My sister-in-law Johanna is out of the country until Sunday night. She had to go to the Philippines for work. Maverick needs to wait!

And I think he will. :)

Oh Internet, where for art thou, Internet?

Isn't it funny how something can be so frustratingly important one day, and then no big deal the next? And what makes it even more worse is when the situation is completely trivial. I'm talking about not being connected to the internet. Yesterday our modem wasn't working, therefore my glimpse into the outside world and my boredom cure for bed rest was gone. It was like living in 1995! (gasp!) :)

I guess it wasn't so much the fact that I had no internet at my fingertips. I have plenty of other activities I do during the day (see below). It was more about the time I spent on the phone with our internet service provider trying to figure out why our modem stopped working. To spare you the agony, I will sum it up by saying that I spent over an hour on the phone talking to 4 different people who probably live halfway around the world. And NONE of them could help me. Needless to say they suffered the wrath of an emotional almost 9 month pregnant woman!

So we ended up scheduling a service tech to visit the house today to fix the problem. You know how that goes--they say they will be there between the hours of 8am and 4pm. And they show up at either 6:30am or 5:30pm.

But now...as you can see...we woke up and the modem is working fine. I wanted to call and try to cancel the service tech visit, but Robbie still wants him to stop by just to make sure everything is okay. Easy for him to say! He doesn't have to stay here!

...oh wait...I was going to be home all day already! :)

Here is one of the activities I've chosen to help make bed rest time pass. I'm really excited about them, but at the same time I sort of regret the commitment to making my own birth announcements because I'm already thinking about if another baby should come along--I most likely won't have the time to make special announcements for them too. Can you tell I'm the youngest of 3? I'm not bitter... :)

I'm just gonna show you the cover. I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise!