Good news all around!!

In my last post, I mentioned that I thought the baby had flipped. I am very pleased to announce that I was wrong! I suppose it’s not common for someone to be happy that they are wrong, but I certainly am this time. I admit that I have never been very good at deciphering if this is a foot or if that is a knee, so I wasn’t for sure about what I was feeling and I was very quick to point that out to people. Thankfully, when I was checked, the head was definitely down.

That was on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we had to travel about 2 hours south to Nathaniel’s neurology appointment and while we were down there, it occurred to me that I hadn’t felt much, if any, movement all day. That was at about 1 pm and I had that nagging at me until 5 pm, when we past through the town where the hospital is on our way home (it’s about 40 min away). The clinic was still open and they put me on the NST (non stress test) machine to check the heart beat and movement. They want to see the heart rate accelerate for 15 seconds while there is movement and they want to see movement at least 3 times in 20 min. Wouldn’t you know it, but the heart rate was great and there was 3 separate movements in 8 min! That was quite the nap, I guess, and I instructed this little one that they should not be scaring their Mama like that. The little bugger!

I also got good news at my appointment this week that I am Group B Strep negative! Woohoo!!! I have tested positive for the last 4 babies (when I was pregnant with the older girls, it was not a routine thing to check for) and I am what they would consider colonized. However, last February I began to see that I have an intolerance to gluten and I was having problems. I then began to take acidophilus every day and have been since. Taking them have helped with different issues that I’ve had (although since becoming pregnant, I can eat gluten again. Not sure why, but I’m not complaining! ) and apparently, a wonderful side effect of taking them is that the over abundance of Group B Strep in my system has been tamed (it is a normal Strep to have in your body, but for some people, it flourishes more than in others). That means that I won’t be hooked up to a large dose of antibiotic during labor, although they may still want to give an IV port just in case of something. I’m hoping that I can get away with out having an IV, but probably not. They want the laboring Group B Strep positive woman to have at least 4 hours of the antibiotic before giving birth. I know they do it for preventative reasons, but I don’t agree with it. I’ve done my research about it and I don’t think that giving that massive dose of antibiotics proves to be helpful. In fact, I think it does more harm then good. But of course, it is hospital policy and the patients don’t get a choice. So I am quite thrilled that I don’t have to try and avoid it this time!!  I didn’t get the antibiotic with Damaris because it took them nearly 3 hours to get a working IV into my vein. Seriously. By the time it was working well enough to give my anything, she was born. That’s also the reason I didn’t get any pain relief medication, even though I asked for it. But that turned out to be a blessing, and I’m quite happy that I “did it” all on my own, although I wasn’t so happy about it at the time. I’m going to attempt to do that again, but if I can’t I’m not going to beat myself up about it. I’m not interested in being some Amazonian supermom who refuses help when help is needed. That’s just stupid.

I suppose I’ve been what people call “nesting” this week, although I’ve never had it correlate with the baby’s birth. I’ve been reorganizing lots of things! I’ve gone through the school supplies and things, and I have them mostly organized and ready for school. I’m still working on a game plan for this year, but it’s coming together. We aren’t going to start until after the baby is born and we are in a nice routine, so I’m not worried about a time frame. I’ve gone through all the toys (and with 6 children, did we have toys!!), children’s games (like UNO and bingo), and all of the art supplies/paper that we have. We bought two 3 drawer towers and I have whittled things down to fit into them. Most of the toys are in the bottom drawer of a 4 drawer filing cabinet and the Duplo blocks are in 2 of the plastic tower drawers. It looks to much better already! In what used to be the guest room on the main floor, we have 2 8’ x 4’ bookshelves that house our books, games and other things. I’m want to move one of those shelves into the living room, and since I don’t want it to take up 8’ of my wall space (basically from floor to ceiling), I’m striving to condense our stuff onto one bookshelf. I think I can do it.

I had also previously mentioned that we are talking about remodeling some rooms. Adam isn’t that keen on the idea of using the current washroom as an addition to our commercial kitchen, but I’m not willing to give up the idea of having all of the children’s clothes in 1 central location. So I’m proposing a compromise: leave the washer and dryer in the washroom and move things around in the spare room so we can hang up rods and shelves for their clothes (hence the rearranging of those massive shelves). I’m also wanting to bring in the totes of clothes that are in the garage and store them on shelves in that room, making it much more handy to bring out the next size of clothes needed and put the “too small” clothes away. The closet in that room will then be used to house the jackets, shoes, boots, and other winter necessities that always seems to grow and multiply each year, no matter how much I purge. No, it won’t be as convenient as having their clothes in the same room as the washer and dryer, but they will at least be on the same floor and in the same room. I still want to remove the carpet in that room (I hate carpet!!), but that can come later. Or I just might get a bee in my bonnet and pull it out myself and just live with the unfinished pine floor that’s underneath (knowing myself, I think the latter is more probable than the former). We can also keep the piano in there, for which we have no other room to move it to anyway. Their dressers will all go into the room as well and I will have a table to fold the clothes on. Moving this stuff around will free up lots of space in the washroom (there is a dresser, a table (+ junk under the table), a bench and some wall shelving in there now) that will allow us to have a shelving unit for storage (for the commercial kitchen) and possibly a second dryer some time down the road (and I am seriously praying for this!).

All in all, I have big plans! Of course, the irresistible drive in me wants to get this all done before the baby’s arrival, but the realistic part of me knows this will not happen. Not only because of the sheer amount of work that will be needed, but because I need my husband’s help in some of it. He’s a good worker and he puts up a lot with me, but he does have a day job and while I can do a lot without him, I need him for the big stuff. So, this will be a “work in progress” kind-of thing, which is fine. I’m just hoping to have it all finished by the time we need to pull to jackets out of hiding again.

Jennifer