25 Weeks

It has been a while since I posted any updates on my pregnancy so far!  Part of the reason for this was my own life being busy and part of that was because Nate has been needing to take the computer to work with him some days making it unavailable to me when I wasn't busy.  So here is what you've missed in the last 5 weeks (there really wasn't that much though):

My belly is definitely a baby belly now, instead of a big lunch/poo belly - which I am very happy for!

Since Nate has been spending a couple of weekends camping and hiking in the High Uintas, I've been using my alone time to clean out Nate's man cave and turn it back into the 2nd bedroom that it's actually supposed to be!  Pretty much everyone has a junk drawer in their house so I'm sure you can understand how over the 2 years that we have been married, it was really easy for our 2nd bedroom to turn into a whole junk room.  Hopefully soon we'll be down to just a small junk drawer in the kitchen.  Since Nate has an over abundance of books, the baby's room will most likely have to double as a library but at least it will be more organized by the time she gets here.  As soon as I'm finished getting it all set up, I'll post the before and after pictures.

My last Dr visit was kind of boring so there's not much to say about that other than everything looks to be on track.  I do have my next appointment set up for Monday though and they will be doing the glucose screening test at that time.  I highly doubt that I have any risk for gestational diabetes so I'm not worried about the test itself; but ever since I've been pregnant, my gag reflex has been in overdrive so I don't know how drinking that sickly sweet beverage is going to go.  I never used to have any issues with taking pills or anything before, but now I have to be really careful or whatever it is comes right back up.  So let's all cross our fingers.

I had a little bit of a scare last week though.  I randomly started getting intense back pain on the lower right side of my back 2 Saturdays ago while at work and I was assured that it was normal pregnancy back pain so I tried to take it easy and hope that it would get better.  When it was still really hurting me on Monday, I went to the chiropractor.  I have hyper-mobile hip joints, and before I was pregnant I could get them to pop back in all by myself.  Since I've been pregnant though, I haven't been able to pop them back.  The pain that I was feeling was all right on my spine muscles and I could feel that they were really really tight so going to the chiropractor seemed to be what I needed.  After I got adjusted, I was feeling a lot better.  My muscles were still tight, but at least I could walk without Nate's help.  By that night I was starting to feel sore again but I took some Tylenol and went to bed and Tuesday morning I was feeling ok again.  Still tight muscles, but able to walk.  After having to take a sick day from work on Monday, I felt like I'd better go on Tuesday.  I ended up having to leave work 4 hours early because my back was cramping up too badly.  I'd been using heat packs and Tylenol to help with the pain and tight muscles since Saturday and I at least felt better while the heat was on it.  After I got home, I heated it and Nate even massaged it for me but it didn't seem to be helping.  It was honestly the most intense pain I have ever experienced in my life and I had absolutely no idea how I was supposed to go 3 1/2 more months being pregnant if this was normal pregnancy!  The next day I called in sick again to work and went back to the chiropractor.  They told me that I'd need to come in at least one more time after that because my back was so out of alignment.  They even gave me massages while I was there to help loosen the muscles.  I spent all day Wednesday, Thursday and most of Friday in bed with heat packs and Tylenol and a few times I started to feel better but for the most part I was pretty miserable.  Friday morning I was feeling like my entire right rib cage was recovering from a cage fight and by that evening I started to feel like my abdomen was cramping too.  That's when I really started to worry.  While writing this, I'm realizing that I probably should have realized that it was not normal pregnancy back pain, partly because it was only on my right side and I hadn't had any back pain previously and partly because if normal pregnancy was that excruciating, people would NOT be having so many babies.  I don't know if you've figured it out yet, but I was really really hurting.  So after I started feeling abdominal cramps, I called my doctor's office after hours nurse (of course it had to be on a weekend, after hours).  The nurse told me that it didn't sound good but that she'd have to get a hold of a doctor before she could tell me for sure what I should do.  I got a call about 20 minutes later from a doctor.  After she asked me several questions, she told me I needed to get myself to labor and delivery at the hospital because she though I might be going into preterm labor.  Now for those of you that don't know, 24 weeks along is NOT a great time to be going into labor.  The survival rate isn't good.  Of course now I was starting to panic because Nate was still at work (and in Salt Lake of course) and because I could barely walk and was supposed to rush myself to the hospital.  So I called Nate as I tried to hurry and find some shoes and get to the car.  When I got to the hospital, I went right up to labor and delivery like I was told.  The stupid nurse was very unsympathetic and explained to me that back pain is normal when you're pregnant.  Well DUH, thanks Sherlock!  After telling her that I was told by a doctor to get my butt in there she admitted me to a room.  A different nurse came into the room a bit later to have me give her a urine sample and to check to make sure I wasn't having full blown contractions.  We discovered that the baby's heart rate was at least really strong so that was good news.  After answering about a million questions (my back was throbbing the whole time, sometimes so badly that I couldn't even get words out for a minute), Nate got there and convinced her that she needed to go call my doctor and get me something for the pain.  She came back with 2 cups of water and told me I needed to start drinking because she was sure that I was dehydrated.  I informed her that dehydration was very unlikely considering how I know better and that I actually keep track of how much I drink per day.  2-3 quarts is the recommended amount for pregnant women; since I drink out of a mason jar, it's really easy to tell when I've had a quart, and I'd already had 2 quarts that day.  She kept telling me I must be dehydrated though so I drank her stupid water.  When she talked to my doctor, he told her to either give me a shot of morphine or a Lortab.  Since I hadn't eaten recently enough to be sure I could keep a pill down, I opted for the shot.  She told me it would take about 20 minutes to kick in and that I would probably get really tired and so would the baby so if there was a decrease in movement not to worry.  I still had a heart rate monitor on my tummy so they could make sure the baby was fine.  During those 20 minutes, the on call doctor came in to see how I was doing and let me know what he knew so far.  Which was nothing, but he said the urine culture would be back soon and he was hopeful that it would tell him what he needed to know.  So then we waited.... Even after the morphine kicked in, I could still feel my back pain, but I could manage it with the morphine's help.  The doctor came back in and informed me that I had a really bad Bladder infection and that some antibiotics would do the trick.  I was in shock!  I had no idea that a silly little bladder infection could cause me this much grief!  He told me there would be no need for any more pain medication because as soon as the antibiotics kicked in, I'd be feeling a thousand times better.  He came back in with a prescription, but after talking to me a bit more and feeling my back to see how much area was tender, he decided that the infection was even worse than he thought and that it was on it's way up to my kidney.  He said that if i'd gone much longer without antibiotics that I would have ended up in the hospital for longer than just a couple of hours with a full on kidney infection.  He doubled my prescription and told me that my doctor wanted me in for an appointment in 10 days, when I was done with the medicine.  Of course, I had to ask the doctor if there were any signs that I was dehydrated.  He informed me that according to my urine sample that I seemed very well hydrated and that he had no reason to suspect that I was dehydrated. So there you stupid nurse....  Now I have been on the antibiotics for 7 days and I am feeling SO much better!  I have been insanely tired every day but I'm not sure if it's because of the medication/infection or if it's because I barely got any sleep last week or if it's just because I'm pregnant.  I kinda feel like it's a combination of all those things though.  I'll take tired over being in pain any day though.  So the moral of this story is, if your doctor tells you that you have very small amounts of bacteria in your urine sample but that it's probably nothing to worry about (which is what mine did), change doctors, because a month later when the bacteria doesn't go away, you're going to be really sad.  Also, I just want you all to know that I did change doctors, not because of this whole incident but for other reasons and now I'm even more glad that I did!


-New belly pictures coming soon-

Crocheted Baby Hats

Recently I have been playing around with some different patterns for baby hats.  I usually start out patterns from either the internet or a book but then halfway through the hat I decide that I don't like something about how that person did it.  So I change it.  But then I end up making like 3 variations on the same hat, either because I changed the sizing a bit, or the stitching in a particular spot or whatever.  So all of the hats here are basically the same hat but I did change them all from the original pattern because I felt that it was flawed.  I plan to make more hats and they will be different looks than these; these are just what I already have finished.

Some of the hats I plan to give away to people having babies but I'm especially in love with this yellow one and only had enough yarn to make the one so I'm keeping it.  After all, I'm bound to give my own baby a little bit of preferential treatment right? :)

Also, for people that are interested I can post the original pattern and my alterations but I didn't feel like there would be a lot of a demand for it.