Suzanne did such a fantastic job with our maternity shoot. I love all of the photos she took (over 200!) Here are a few more of my favorites:
How far along? 34 weeks, 1 day
Total weight gain/loss: +17 lbs
Maternity clothes? Yep. Today I am wearing a black maternity tee shirt and some regular jeans
Stretch marks? No
Sleep: It’s terrible! I finally broke down and bought a pillow that wraps all the way around my body, found here. I hope it helps! Should arrive soon.
Best moment this week: No great moments this week, at least not yet.
Movement: no change
Food cravings: Pink Lady apples, root beer floats (Thomas Kemper’s Low-Calorie Root Beer + Dreyer’s Slow Churned Light Ice Cream in Vanilla Bean - just 150 calories total, people, and sooo yummy!)
Gender: boy
Labor Signs: Contractions all the time, and stabby pains in my pelvic area. Another hospital visit last Friday, but now I have a prescription to Procardia, and have to take it when my contractions get to 4 or more per hour.
Belly Button in or out? IN
What I miss: going to work and bending over to tie my shoes without pain
What I am looking forward to: Baby shower #1 on Saturday!! I can’t wait!
Weekly Wisdom: Pay attention
Milestones: Nothing major this week, at least not yet.
The questions..
1. Mens chests..hairy or hairless?
I don’t like hairy chests or backs.
2. How often do you run red lights?
Three times since I got my license, and all by accident. Luckily for me, none of these traffic lights had a camera attached.
3. If you could raid any celebrity’s closet..whose would you raid?
Sarah Jessica Parker’s, of course!
4. Would you rather have more followers/friends on Facebook, Twitter, or your Blog?
My blog! I love having readers, it’s so much fun to see the numbers climbing everyday! 
5. What makes you feel sexy?
When I’m having an interesting conversation, if I get through all of my talking points, and come out feeling intelligent and witty – then I feel VERY sexy. In addition, Tim does a pretty darn good job, but high heels and a dab of perfume on the backs of my knees help. 
6. I get excited when………..?
Well there’s a can of worms for you! I get excited over all kinds of things. Like, if I find a used book in good condition, or a beautiful pair of shoes. A visit with a friend. New episodes of ‘House’. A new recipe turning out perfectly. Walking the cobblestone streets in Italy. Dinner at a favorite restaurant. Strawberries coming back in season.
7. Are you the “outdoorsy” type or more “indoorsy”?
‘Indoorsy’. I like to read outside, and the occasional hike can be fun; but I don’t like camping and I’d prefer to be in a temperature-controlled environment.
8. Would you rather have your dream home or a million dollars?
Toughie! I suppose the money; with that amount we could finish our house and make it exactly how we want it, and then funnel the rest into a college account for Marco and a travel savings for all of us.
Here are a couple of pictures from our maternity shoot with Suzanne; I haven’t seen them all yet, so will share more with you later!
Finished season 1 of ‘Mad Men’, and here are 2 of my conclusions:
First, I love Don Draper. I know, I know… such a cliche! But those good looks were already getting to me, and then he was kind of awesome in dealing with a certain scoundrel. Loves it. Don’t love the womanizing, though.
Second, I HATE PETE CAMPBELL. I want to stab him in the eyes.
Another weekend marked with a hospital visit!
Yesterday morning I had an appointment scheduled at the OB office. They took another fetal fibronectin test, and checked everything to make sure I wasn’t dilating or effacing (I wasn’t). My OB office closes at noon on Fridays, so Sue said she’d have someone from the hospital call me with the results of the test when they came in. She wants me to stay off my feet as much as possible, but did mention that if I’ve had a day with slow/light contractions and am really going nuts, I can go out to get some dinner, or go to a movie. PHEW! A reprieve!
So, I waited all day for the phone call. I was feeling pain in my lower regions and the contractions were really hurting. I was sitting or lying down for most of the day, with the exception of the time spent on the caramels (which involved a lot of sitting and waiting for it to cook down anyway). Tim arrived home at 6:30, and finally my phone rang. I was told that the test came back negative, which was a relief. However, then the doctor asked about my contractions and when I explained how I was feeling, she asked me to come into the hospital to be monitored. The contractions weren’t too frequent but they were REALLY strong. I was very annoyed at having to go back in, especially because Tim had a migraine and I wanted him to rest and relax. 
We arrived at the hospital at about 7pm, and they hooked me up to the monitor. I was only there for fifteen minutes before they saw how strong the contractions were, and immediately they decided to give me a shot of terbutaline, which works faster than the Procardia. I’d had some the first time I went to the hospital. It makes you REALLY jittery, like you’ve had way too much caffeine to compensate for an all-nighter. It slowed my contractions, but they wanted to keep watching me for awhile. They did some other tests/cultures and a quick ultrasound to check on Marco. He’s perfectly healthy, but they commented on how low he was sitting again, and apparently they don’t like it much. :/ ME EITHER! Tim and I were starving at this point (it was 8:30pm), so the nurse brought me some tomato soup, and Tim raided the vending machines (cafeteria closed at 6:30pm, worse luck). I don’t think the frozen chimichanga and bagel dog he scarfed down was exactly good for his tummy, but he enjoyed his purchases. 
We watched some episodes of ‘House’ and I tried to imagine that Hugh was my doctor. I swear I’d be a verryyy cooperative patient…
Marco’s position is the cause of all the stabbing pain lower down, so I have no option but to just deal with it. They were going to keep me there overnight, since I was still having some small contractions; but Tim was in bad shape and I convinced them I’d sleep much better in my own bed. Luckily, they decided it was alright for me to go home, but they gave me one Procardia to take if the contractions picked up again. My doctor is going to call in a prescription of it to my pharmacy, and I will take one every 4-6 hours if my contractions get up to 4 or more per hour. Tim and I finally got home at 11pm and we went to bed (but not before snacking on a few more sea salt caramels, tee hee). It took me a long time to fall asleep, but finally sometime after midnight I made it into dreamland.
Unfortunately, I’ve been awake since 5:30am. I was really hoping to get a good night’s sleep, but it was not to be. Timmy is still sleeping and I hope that he is feeling much better.
I just have to make it a little less than 3 weeks and Marco can be born safely. Come on, dude! My uterus is clearly confused (Micaela officially coined the term ‘confuterus’ for me) about the stage of pregnancy I’m in; fortunately, my cervix is not responding. Hope it stays that way for the next few weeks!
I was reading a recent blogpost by Emily from Cupcakes and Cashmere, and she’d made some caramels from a recipe on the New York Times website. They sounded tasty, so today I decided to make some of my own. I followed the recipe step by step, with two exceptions: I used three big pinches of regular salt instead of just one, and while it cooled I sprinkled coarse sea salt over the top. I ended up with enough for 48 pcs, which I then wrapped in wax paper.
They taste AWESOME. Yay for caramels!
BTW: if anyone pronounces caramel as ‘car-mull’ in front of me, I will give you a dirty look. There is no such thing. There’s Carmel (car-mel), as in the seaside town, and there’s Caramel (Care-uh-mel), the sugar-butter-cream substance.
That is all.
Adrienne filled this out, and since I need something to distract me, I’ll give it a whirl.
1. The first thing I do in the morning is try to get out of bed without having a contraction.
2. Every night before bed I massage the Palmer’s lotion onto my tummy, brush my teeth and take an Ambien. Then Tim and I talk until one of us falls asleep; usually Tim goes first, and I’ll read until my eyes droop.
3. My favorite thing to do when I’m having a bad day is read of my favorite books for the hundredth time, or go in the kitchen and tinker until I come up with something tasty.
4. Something that makes me cringe is having to take my shoes off in other people’s houses, and not by choice. It’s always made me uncomfortable; there’s something too personal about walking around barefoot , like forced intimacy or something. Whenever it comes up it actually makes me go into slight panic mode – weird, I know. Plus, there’s always someone (usually someone I don’t know very well) with nasty feet or dirty socks. GROSS. Let’s just say I could never move to Japan.
5. Social situations are fun when it involves the few select people in the world that I actually like, LOL. Just kidding! I do like to meet new people, but only if they are intelligent and interesting – and they often aren’t, so things can get awkward really fast for me.
6. I like to collect books. I have a lot of shoes, too.
7. Weekends are for brunches with Tim, cleaning up the house and visiting with lovely people.
At any given time, I’ll have about 40 different topics swirling around in my head, all vying for prime space in my brain’s receptors. All this jostling and shoving around can sometimes throw the important stuff into the background where it may remain for several hours, or even several days! This is one of the reasons I enjoy lists. I make lists for almost everything. Groceries needed, household chores needing to be done, books I’ve read, books to be read, people I’m not speaking to (KIDDING! Although, Stephen Colbert’s ‘On Notice’ board isn’t a bad idea — I’m looking at YOU, mean woman from a certain winery!!)… Anyway, this blog post is going to be a little like one of my lists. Slightly random and probably completely unhelpful to anyone other than myself.
-Tim is the loveliest husband. Example: He removed the chipped nail polish from my toes the other day because I couldn’t reach them very easily, and he HATES the smell of polish remover. He offered to help me paint them too, but I was kind and told him I’d keep them plain for now. Further cementing his place in the ‘Awesome’ category: when we take showers, he always angles the shower head around my back so that the warmth can get through to my muscles; he runs out to get me veggie sandwiches even when he’s tired (and I don’t even have to ask!), and he not only tolerates my fussiness over picking the right shoe for the outfit – he’ll go through my stacks of shoe boxes and offer ideas (and funny justifications for polka dot espadrilles!) when I’m frazzled! Tim’s also a faithful reader of my blog (how sweet is that!?) and I know this post will make him blush a lot little – sorry, hubby! 
-I’m really having fun with this Richard Doyle’s FairyLand coloring book. I grabbed some colored pencils and am enjoying picking out my colors for each character and shape. I also have this coloring book arriving today or tomorrow from Amazon, and I’m looking forward to shaving off a few hours of my day with some scribbles.
-Haven’t seen anything more hilarious/oddly adorable than Hugh Laurie saying the word ‘Ba-donka-donk’ in his charming British accent. Check it out at the 1:59 mark
-Just finished reading The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff. Also, Tim and I are finishing up Season 1 of ‘Mad Men’. What do they have in common? They’ve both got me thinking about how far women have come, in terms of our place in society. Do we still have far to go? Of course – we’re leaps and bounds away from true equal footing with men. BUT, in consideration of where we’ve been, I think it’s fair to say that our roles in the lives of our husbands/boyfriends/lovers have grown into real partnerships; and, I do also think it’s fair to say that some (NOT ALL) of the ‘imbalances’ today are probably more our own fault than we women would like to admit. One more note about Tim – bear with me! – watching ‘Mad Men’ has made him positively indignant about the way the men in the show treat their female co-workers and wives. I love him even more when he goes on a rant about it.
-Tomorrow I have another appointment at the OB office (2 in one week!). I’m having another fetal fibronectin test, and the unfortunate news is that I think the labwork has to be sent out, so I may not find out the results until next week.
-Need to remind Tim to pick up more Pink Lady apples. I <3 them.
-I’m really excited to see the pictures from our maternity photo session. The shoot was yesterday evening, (yes, I know I’m supposed to stay at home; but I wanted to make sure we had this done BEFORE Marco showed up!) and our photographer, Suzanne Becker Bronk, was great! There was a little bit of a rough spot when a winery worker yelled at us for being on the property after hours (the gates were still open and it hadn’t quite closed yet when we arrived), and then drove down the road and proceeded to LOCK US IN. She saw that I was pregnant, knew we’d arrived on foot, and even after speaking to us she still locked us in. The three of us had to climb over a few rocks and onto a bridge (with a small creek below) in order to get back out to our cars. Apparently the woman couldn’t wait the 5 minutes for us to walk to the gate behind her truck. I was wearing 4 1/2″ heels, for cryin’ out loud! Don’t worry, they were one of my most comfortable heels – but she couldn’t have known that!
-I’m becoming more and more excited about my baby showers – and a lot of that has to do with the all the yummy food that’s set to appear. Is that sad? Probably. Will I be stuffing my face? OH YES.
I told you my grey matter was disorganized!
How far along? 33 weeks
Total weight gain/loss: +16 lbs (I thought I’d gained at least 3lbs since being put on bedrest! I feel like I’m eating too often, and obviously exercise is out the window!)
Maternity clothes? The past few days I’ve worn pajamas and Tim’s tee shirts for most of the day!
Stretch marks? No change! Even my doctor commented on it today, as a positive for me to focus on, LOL
Sleep: I feel tired all the time, and though I have plenty of opportunity to sleep, it’s not always possible. Usually I can do about 40 minutes – 1 hour before I have to turn over to my other side or get up to pee. I never seem to get through a whole REM cycle.
Best moment this week: Leaving the house to have breakfast on Saturday. I am so tired of my house right now, because it’s all I see!
Movement: Marco moves around all the time, without rhyme or reason. His foot is always finding its way into the right side of my ribcage.
Food cravings: Vegetarian sandwiches with cheese, Pink Lady apples and these yummy gluten-free lemon wafer things from Whole Foods.
Gender: boy
Labor Signs: I am still having constant contractions. They are averaging out at 3 or 4 per hour. Saturday it got up to 6 between 6pm and 7pm, and then 8 contractions between 7pm and 8pm. I called the hospital and they asked me to come in. I was there for about 90 minutes, they gave me another Procardia pill to keep the contractions slow, and sent me home. I was glad I didn’t have to stay the night, but annoyed that I had to go back to begin with. :-/
Belly Button in or out? IN
What I miss: work,walking my dog and tending to my flowers
What I am looking forward to: I’m scheduled for another fetal fibronectin test on Friday, so I am looking forward to the results of that. If it’s ‘negative’, then there’s only a 5% chance that I’ll go into labor before 35 1/2 weeks (the test can only predict 2 weeks out).
Weekly Wisdom: LifeSavers are good to keep on hand. At the hospital they keep your mouth from becoming too dry when you’re on the IV, and they’re tasty, too.
Milestones: I’m getting to know the staff at St Helena Hospital very well (whether I like it or not), and all the nurses in the maternity ward get 2 thumbs up.
