Success at last!

On Wednesday we went for our redo of the 3D ultrasound. Baby was still breech, but he was wide awake and a lot more cooperative than last week! The ultrasound tech spent about an extra 30 minutes with us - well into her lunch break - which we really appreciated. We went back an hour later to collect our photo book and CD, so we took her a card and some nice chocolates to say thanks. She really went above and beyond for us. Baby was being quite difficult even though he did better than at our first attempt! She got some good pictures and videos in the end :)

After the ultrasound I found out I passed my 3-hour glucose test - thank goodness! That's such a huge relief. Before the ultrasound we went to IHOP for breakfast (my hubby took a few vacation days this week) and while we were there I was thinking how if I failed the 3-hour test that might be my last yummy meal, LOL. Baby must have enjoyed it, he was so active during the ultrasound!

I can hardly believe my baby shower is this Sunday - OMG. I need to figure out some hostess gifts - 3 of them. I really don't know what to get, but I can't spend too much money.

Oh, our kitchen situation is mostly resolved now. We need to get the wood under the cabinets replaced, but that's not urgent. My mom and stepdad insisted on buying us a new dishwasher - they didn't buy us a wedding or housewarming gift, which we'd completely forgotten about, so that worked out great! It arrived on Monday and is awesome! :)

On Monday night our latest foster pug was adopted. We only had him 9 days, that's a record for an adoption from our house!

The same day our dresser arrived for the nursery. It's really starting to take shape now! I bought some wall decals with owls and woodland animals etc. to put on the closet doors. We have textured walls so the only place I can put them is the closet doors! I haven't started with them yet but I think they should look pretty good. Hopefully they'll break up some of the whiteness of the room!

When I get to my laptop I'll add some pics from the 3D ultrasound and the nursery :)

Well, crap!

I've been meaning to post pics of the crib, but we had a bit of a disaster at home and I hadn't gotten around to blogging. Our dishwasher leaked under our kitchen sink cabinets, and had probably been leaking for quite some time before we realized. We never had a pool of water on the floor or anything, so we only found out about the leak when my hubby noticed the wood beneath the cabinets was wet and discolored. Shit!

We had a plumber come out, who was pretty useless. He removed the bottom panel from the dishwasher but kept saying he thought it was the garbage disposal leaking, even though my hubby could clearly see water coming from the bottom of the dishwasher. He tried to pull the dishwasher out without unscrewing it from the counter (duh) and then gave up. He called a restoration company for us - this is about the only useful thing he did - and then left. He didn't bother to switch the valve or anything so that the water supply to the dishwasher was cut off. My hubby did that later that night when we realized it was still leaking - he also pulled the dishwasher out completely. The restoration company sent a guy out who had to smash the bottom of the cabinets because they were a lost cause, and then he set up 5 machines in our kitchen. We have a huge dehumidifier, 3 blowers and another (noisy ass) blower which generates heat. Our house has been around 80ºF since that one went in. Ugh. We could run the A/C but I expect we're using so much power at the moment that we should probably try to avoid using it if possible. The machines are supposed to be on 24/7 and they could be here until Wednesday or Thursday. Ugh! We have been switching off the super noisy one at night - we'd never get any sleep otherwise - but aside from that, the other 4 have been running all day and all night since dinner time on Saturday. It really sucks! For the most part my hubby has been hanging out in his office with headphones on, and I've been in the bedroom with the pugs. It's not exactly ideal! Our house is very open plan, so we can't just shut a door in the kitchen and block out the sound. The kitchen is right next to both of the living rooms, so we're avoiding the main part of the house. Right now I'm in the guest bedroom - I needed a change of scenery!

Thank goodness the equipment should be out before my mom and stepdad arrive (Friday) - and thankfully long before my baby shower, since that's being held at our house. So it could be worse, definitely. I'm glad it's happening before our little guy arrives, too. It would definitely be worse if we had to do this after he's born!

So here are a couple of pics of the crib, anyway:

I know we shouldn't leave toys in the crib due to SIDS risks, but I just put them in for the time being. We ordered a dresser for the nursery yesterday - it's being delivered next Tuesday, 2/26. :)

Here's a pic from Thursday, at exactly 27 weeks:

I had an OB appointment this morning, and had my 1 hour glucose test. My normally very good vein in my left arm was uncooperative, so I ended up with both arms being used (a yellow bandage on one, and a green bandage on the other, haha). I also got my Rhogam shot (in the ass - yay, LOL). My BP was high of course - no surprise there, since we're not exactly having a great time at home right now! I told my OB that whenever I take my BP at home, it's always fine (which is true). She told me to take it twice a day at home and call her if it goes to 140/90 or higher so I can get pre-eclampsia labs done. I'm pretty sure I'm fine, but I will do that and keep a log of my readings.

Some good news from my appointment is that I haven't gained any weight in the last 4 weeks. I think it's because we've been walking the pugs a lot more and eating more salads. I definitely haven't been starving myself, but I have been trying to make better food choices. Nothing was mentioned about my lack of weight gain over the past 4 weeks, so I'm pretty sure it's OK. Baby is very active and his heart-rate was good again today (I don't know what the reading was, but it sounded about the same as it usually does). In 2 days we get to see him again at our 3D ultrasound! We're very excited about that! :)  I actually suggested to my hubby that maybe we should cancel it, seeing as the kitchen disaster is costing quite a lot to fix and we have landscapers here today to sort out our mess of a front yard. He refused to consider canceling, which I'm very glad about because I didn't want to cancel it in the first place. I just feel bad that we're trying to save money in other ways and spending $150 on the 3D scan... And the money we're having to spend getting the kitchen sorted out would have paid for the rest of the baby stuff we need, with money left over. Typical! We'll be OK, it's just one of those things.

Oh, when we were at my appointment this morning my hubby got 2 calls from his parents on his cell phone (he didn't answer because we were busy). Um, great. For those of you who don't know, we don't have a relationship with his mom and haven't for almost 18 months now (long story short, she's off her rocker and in a cult-like religion which she repeatedly tried to force us into - wouldn't take "no" for an answer and eventually we just decided enough is enough). His dad has been very flaky - we don't actually have a problem with him, he's not like his wife, but the last time we saw him was December 2011 and then we heard from him January 2012, then nothing until July 2012! He said in July that he'd be calling "in a few weeks" (which would've been around the middle of August), and since then there's been nothing. No voicemail was left when they called today, which is kind of odd - it makes me think it might be his mom rather than his dad. They have no idea we're having a baby and we like it that way, honestly. I dread to think how his mom would act if she knew - she'd probably be bashing our front door down and trying to steal our baby. Seriously, she's not right in the head. I'm pretty sure if his dad was the one calling, he would've left a voicemail. I don't know what my hubby's going to do, it's super awkward of course and he doesn't want to call and have to speak to that crazy woman. If his dad left a voicemail then he would have called back, but the whole thing just seems kind of shady really.

I'm sure this whole thing isn't really helping my BP today!

27 weeks!

Today I'm 27 weeks pregnant. Time is flying now! The first trimester seemed to drag on and on, but since about week 15 time has just flown. Yikes!

I've scheduled our birthing class - it's a one off class, for 5 hours on a Saturday in March. We'd much rather do that than weekly classes, and my husband's work schedule has been a little crazy during the evenings lately so I think the Saturday class was our best bet. There's a tour of Labor & Delivery during the class, too, so that should be good.

We ordered our crib on Sunday night! We got it from Diapers.com - they had a special where you get a free mattress. Sold! We were going to order it from Target but they had an offer where you could get the same mattress for half price. Free is better than half price, obviously! The mattress arrived this morning and the crib arrived this afternoon! :)
I really want to get going with the nursery now. It would be nice to have the crib set up before my mom and stepdad arrive next Friday. If not by then, definitely by my baby shower. The shower was originally going to be at a friend's house, hosted by 3 friends, but the venue got changed to our house. That's fine, but I'm expecting that people will be wanting to see the nursery so it'd be nice to have it somewhat set up! We have some pictures to put up on the walls and I wanted to get some of those super cute wall decals, but we have textured walls so that wouldn't work. I'm thinking that we might be able to use them on the closet doors, though - we'll have to see if they'll work!

We're not painting the nursery, although I'd kind of like to. The whole house has white walls, which is fine because nothing clashes, you know? Part of me would like to paint the nursery, but I think we'll probably leave it as it is and just brighten it up with pictures and furnishings - we might get a nice colorful rug for the floor. We already bought a laundry basket which came with a bunch of smaller baskets - I figured the small baskets would be useful for things like baby toiletries and small things like socks, burp cloths etc. We haven't ordered a dresser yet, but hopefully we'll do that soon. We didn't get the one that matches our crib, because it was like $400 and the 4-way convertible crib was only $209! The dresser seemed to be a bit of a rip off, honestly. I guess they price the crib like that to pull you in so you'll pay through the nose for the matching items. I'm sure whatever we end up with will look just fine, anyway! :)

I can't believe it's only a little over 2 weeks until my shower!! My friends wanted to throw it when my mom is here, so they picked Sunday March 3rd. I'll be 29 weeks 3 days then. It's probably a little earlier than most baby showers, but the plus side is that I shouldn't be too uncomfortable by that point. I'd hate to have my shower at 36 weeks or something like that! Now being from the UK I've never, ever been to a baby shower so I have to admit I don't really know what to expect. It'll be interesting, that's for sure! I think baby showers are becoming a "thing" in the UK now, but they never really were when I lived there. It'll be an experience! I think we'll have about 25 people here in total. My friends are coming a couple of hours before the shower starts to get things set up, and they said they'll clean up afterwards too. I'm not allowed to help with anything, although I keep offering, LOL. I really appreciate that they're going to all this trouble for me, I really never expected to have a baby shower in the first place.

So as I said, my mom and stepdad arrive a week tomorrow. They're staying with us from 2/22 until 3/9. I think my Narcissist dad has really put me off having house-guests, because even though I should be looking forward to it I'm kind of dreading it. I don't know why, because I know they'd never act the way he did. I'm sure they'll be good house-guests. I think I just kind of like our normal routine and not having to consider other people very much. Wow, that sounds really selfish - I promise I'm not, I just like my privacy! :) At least they'll have a car so they can go off and do things. They're going up to Sedona and spending a night there, and they're also going down to Tucson for a day. They have a horseback riding trip planned for one day, too. I don't know what else they'll be doing, maybe they'll go to the zoo (or both zoos, LOL). We have a big adoption event one of the weekends they're here, and they said they want to come and help out there. Fine by me - I'll sit down and do paperwork, haha. 

We had a foster pug for a few weeks, but he really wasn't working out with our own pugs (he kept snapping at them for no reason) so we had to give him to a different foster home. I just found out last night that we're getting a new foster on Saturday, he's 9 years old and hopefully sweet like most of them have been previously! Out of 10 fosters we've only had one not work out, so that's not a bad record at all. We did give him a chance, but 3 weeks with no improvement is kind of ridiculous. He's 12 years old and honestly not that adoptable, which wouldn't bother me at all, but if he was going to continue being that way I couldn't imagine fostering him for a year or more - especially with a baby on the way! I'm looking forward to getting our new foster, anyway. It just sucks that we have to drive almost an hour to get him - we were looking forward to a quiet weekend with nothing planned, since it'll be our last quiet weekend for about a month!). I think we're picking up 3 pugs, though, to bring them back to our side of town (we're fostering 1, the other 2 will go to other foster homes) - so it's a very worthwhile couple of hours of driving. :)

23 weeks

Today marks 23 weeks - time flies! Or at least it's flown since the start of the second trimester. Before that time stood still, or at least that's how it felt!

Baby boy is moving a lot these days. I've been feeling him since about 16 weeks, but it started out as tiny movements that were inconsistent. I'd feel something I thought was the baby, but couldn't be quite sure, and then there would be nothing for a while. Gradually the movements became more noticeable, and couldn't be passed off as something else. Now I often feel him moving from the outside, and my hubby has been able to feel him a lot too. On a couple of occasions I've actually been able to see movement, which is pretty bizarre I must say. I didn't expect that to happen until much later. Every so often there will be a fleeting little bulge, it's pretty crazy but amazing at the same time :)

We cleared out the baby's room last week, but so far we haven't bought any nursery furniture. We'll obviously need a crib, a dresser and probably some kind of chair too. We've bought lots of adorable little clothes, because I couldn't resist. Honestly I've been buying stuff for quite a while now, just a couple of little things at a time. I was surprised when I got all of the clothes out, because there was a lot more than I thought! We got some great little things last weekend, all 40-60% off. We've only bought one set of newborn things, because newborn is supposed to fit until 8 pounds and we think it's fairly likely that he'll be needing 0-3 month clothing rather than newborn. If we're wrong and he does need newborn stuff, we can buy it at the time.

Now onto the non-baby-related stuff! Our foster pug, Kineta (KiKi), was adopted at the weekend! She'll have a great life, we're very happy for her. Our pair of fosters, Lilly and Milo, who we've been fostering since March 2012, are also adopted! They leave on Saturday. A lady from Canada was interested in them and decided to make them part of her family. She has two female French bulldogs, so I'm sure they'll have a lot of fun! She's driving about 1700 miles to pick them up, and then of course driving back with them. That's dedication! We'll miss them a lot, of course. They've been with us such a long time - 10 months - and it's impossible not to get attached really. However, we know they're going to have a wonderful life and it's not like we could've really kept them anyway. With the baby coming, 2 sets of vet bills are enough!

I was asked to take a 12 year old male pug as our next foster, so we're picking him up on Sunday. I'm sure he'll probably be a long-term foster too, 12 years isn't what most people are looking for after all!

When I took Lilly and Milo to the vet yesterday, I ran into the mom of one of the other volunteers. She was there with a 10 year old black male pug who we just got out of the shelter a couple of days ago. He has numerous issues, so I stayed while they examined him. He walks funny, so they did a spine X-ray and he has a chronic issue where the joint space between 2 of his lumbar vertebrae has gone. That's not something we can change, unfortunately. On top of that, he has really inflamed/dirty ears to the point where the vet couldn't even look in one of them because the dog wouldn't tolerate it. He's also very skinny, will need to be neutered and needs a dental - badly. His skin is a bit flaky, but I think with good food that can be resolved fairly easily. He doesn't seem to be in any pain, he gets around fine and has control of his bodily functions. He's perky and seems fairly happy.

Anyway, I offered to take him home with me as the woman who was fostering him works really long hours and he's likely going to need a lot of attention, not to mention a lot of vet visits. We live about 5 minutes from the vet, but her mom had to drive 30 minutes each way. She wasn't concerned about that, but since the dog had blood-work yesterday and the results weren't available until today (they just now called, actually), I thought it was a bit mean for her to have to come back for medication again today. Also, the lady who's in charge of the rescue is coming to our house on Saturday so I thought it would be good for her to see him for herself. I know a tough decision might have to be made.

As for now, his blood results show slightly elevated kidney enzymes - it could be caused by infection, or it could eventually turn into kidney failure. He has elevated white blood cells, so there's an infection somewhere (we knew that!). His glucose was normal though, so no diabetes. We're going to go ahead and try him on antibiotics, steroids and pain meds and see how he does. I have a feeling once his infection is cleared up he'll do much better. I just don't think he's a lost cause yet, he still has a strong appetite and seems to want to live. If any of that changes then I'm aware it might be kinder to let him go. It's a tough call to make, though. I'm glad it's ultimately not my decision, really.

I'm going to incorporate fish oil and coconut oil into his diet, give him a bath and use oatmeal conditioner on him, and see if that helps any. I know he won't have a complete recovery, but I think we can help him have a decent quality of life. Even if he only has a couple of months left to live, at least he'll know love.