Sunny days, sweeping the clouds away!

So after several complaining posts (my bad day yesterday, the rude lady at Kohl's, and my no-fun news at school) I figured it's about time to talk about the good things going on right now!

1. As bittersweet as it is, school's out!  I have to return Monday for post-planning but am completely finished after that.  I am looking forward to having lots of free time to finally finish up the nursery and get other things ready for baby's arrival. I'm also happy that I will have plenty of time to just rest and get some good sleep before the arrival because I know things will be very different once he's here!  I'll at least have a little while where I can return to thinking 4:30 is actually night time, not morning.
2. I have my third (yes, I said third) baby shower tomorrow.  I had my friends and family shower in late April, then my work shower (which I completely forgot to post about!) early in May and now the ladies at my church are throwing me a shower.  I am so thankful to have so many amazing people in my life, and so excited that so many of them will be an amazing part of Floodling's life too!
3. Minus this minor cold I've come down with, I'm still feeling pretty great!  Heck, I walked 3 miles last weekend!  
4. And even with still feeling pretty miserable from this cold I slept through the night pretty well last night.  I am so thankful for my ability to sleep!
5. I am still really enjoying the feelings of Floodling moving around.  It never seems to get old.  Lately I've been able to feel his little elbows sticking out on my right side as he presses his butt out on my left.  It's fun to poke back at him.  I think he gets hiccups sometimes too and I enjoy lightly rocking my belly until they go away.
6. I got another piece of awesome, necessary furniture from our friend Jessica (and her daughter Lilly!).  Thanks for the dresser! She is the one who gave us our crib.  She has also offered up anything else we need (as have another set of friends), so if we don't get some of the last baby-gear items from our registry we can use some of their stuff.  
7. I finally have a car seat!  I can't believe it took this long to get one.. I just kept putting it off, but with people telling me baby might be here in a week and a half I started freaking out and decided I needed to get it NOW!  Thanks to the gift cards from my work shower I was able to get the car seat.  Now we just have to install the base....
8. And last but not least, I am so excited that Floodling's arrival is getting closer and closer! We're down to 4 weeks now!  Here's what he looks like and might be up to these days at 36 weeks:
   
   
   
   
   

   Your baby is still packing on the pounds — at the rate of about an ounce a day. He now weighs almost 6 pounds (like a crenshaw melon) and is more than 18 1/2 inches long. He's shedding most of the downy covering of hair that covered his body as well as the vernix caseosa, the waxy substance that covered and protected his skin during her nine-month amniotic bath. Your baby swallows both of these substances, along with other secretions, resulting in a blackish mixture, called meconium, that will form the contents of his first bowel movement.
   
   At the end of this week, your baby will be considered full-term. (Full-term is 37 to 42 weeks; babies born before 37 weeks are pre-term and those born after 42 are post-term.) Most likely he's in a head-down position. But if he isn't, your practitioner may suggest scheduling an "external cephalic version," which is a fancy way of saying she'll try to coax your baby into a head-down position by manipulating him from the outside of your belly.

9.  Okay, so that gives me one more thing to be glad about-  that he's in the right position already!

Hello pregnancy, where have you been?

So it seems like all at once all the pregnancy complaints I have yet to complain about came crashing down on me today.  I attribute it to a mix of things really more pregnancy-unrelated, but today was the first time I really felt like a pregnant woman and wondered if I can handle this...

It started yesterday really when I came down with a cold.... or finally succumbed to Spring allergies... or got a sinus infections... or whatever it is.  My throat was burning so bad and I had so much mucus I could hardly breathe or swallow.  The most miserable thing was not being able to take anything to make me feel better!  Jason was at work so I couldn't even get ginger ale which is my "mental medicine" when I get head colds.

I hardly slept last night... I've actually slept really well throughout the pregnancy only waking up once or twice to use the bathroom then going right back to sleep.  Last night I woke up almost every hour nearly choking.  I would cough and hack, drink some water, go to the bathroom, cough and hack some more, then go back to sleep.  I repeated this at least 6 times.

Needless to say I was not in the best of moods this morning when it was time to get up to go to school.  I still wasn't feeling good and totally would have stayed home if it weren't the last day of school with the prospect of not returning next year.  I wanted one last day with the kids.

To add on top of feeling miserable, my back decided to join the game this morning.  Amidst running late and trying to make parfaits for my News Team (as a farewell "thank you") my back decided to seize up.  I got a sudden sharp pain on the right side and simply could not move.  It eased up a little, so I continued my running around only to have it seize up again.  I was limping around trying to get myself out the door on time wondering why it decided to start doing this now.  I've complained about the occasional back pain, but this was like nothing I've felt before.  I think it probably has more to do with coughing and sleeping uncomfortably last night than with pregnancy, but it definitely didn't make my morning easy.

Because of all my running around I managed to more or less skip breakfast (not something I do these days!).  I got a few bites here and there and intended to eat with the News Team kids, but it just didn't happen.  I always get "emotional" when I'm hungry.... but that mixed with little sleep, uncertainty about next year, and of course pregnancy hormones made for a very explosive situation.  I cried in front of the entire first grade when the music teacher told me I should go home because I didn't look well.  I cried to the principal for half an hour as I tried to get questions answered about the upcoming school year.  I cried to teachers walking down the hallway who offered to help pack up my room.  I would never try to claim I'm not an emotional person, but I have honestly only cried at school twice in my three years there.... to people's knowledge at least.  On top of that I've been really happy throughout this pregnancy, seeming to have avoided the raging hormonal mess I expected to suffer.

Coming home and taking a nap helped me feel a little better, but I think the hunger monster struck again without me realizing.  I was in the middle of making dinner and grabbed a pot off the stove that needed to be cleaned.  The handle had been resting up against another pot that was boiling water... I knew it would be hot so I used a glove.  I set the pot on the counter, walked away, did a few things, came back to the pot and grabbed the handle full on (having forgotten by now that it was hot) and burnt three of my fingers.  I immediately went into hysterics, crying like a toddler having a temper-tantrum!  Jason had to finish cooking dinner...

Sigh... what a day.  I'm hoping the sleepless night, the back pain and the hormonal roller coaster of today will be just that... simply the events of one "bad day".  These typical pregnancy complaints really only came about by being fueled by other factors, but I still thought to myself, "wow, this is how it feels to be 8 1/2 months pregnant! No wonder people complain so much!".

I'm believing that once this cold is over though I shall hopefully return to my happy, relatively comfortable, pregnant-self!



Added later: Wow... not even joking.... no less than 2 minutes after publishing this post I went to the bathroom to get ready for bed and discovered....a tick! On my back! How did that get there!?  We all know how much I love bugs... (I'm paralyzingly afraid of them in fact).  So.... that led to another break down as I freaked out while Jason tried to get it off, which led to uncontrollable coughing thanks to this cold, which led to me throwing up.  Woo hoo!  What a day!  I really should have titled this post "My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day".  Has anyone read that book?  Maybe I should add it to my list of books for Floodling...