doctor's appointment

My doctor's appointment went well last week. I decided I like the morning appointments- It was scheduled for 9:45 and I was out of there by 10:10! They thought my blood pressure was low (104 over something) compared to the past couple times I've been in, but when Josh takes it for me at home, it's always that low. So no biggie. I gained 7 3/4 pounds, so I've gained a total of 9 so far in 23 weeks. I'm up to a whopping 131 now. I've never been in the 130 range, it's a new experience for me. :)

The baby's been moving a lot the past few days. Wonder what's so exciting in there. I didn't sleep worth a darn last night, my back has been hurting so bad that I would just rather not go to bed at all. Last night, I was in tears because no matter what I did, it still hurt. I even tried sleeping in the recliner in the living room, and that didn't do anything either. So I ordered an expensive pregnancy pillow finally this morning. Hopefully that will help, because it will be a l-o-n-g four months if I can't sleep ever!! Last night, however, every time I was awake (which was most of the night- I think I only got good sleep between 4:00 and 5:30 this morning), the baby was up moving around too. Must be quite the party in there.

in school. :(

So we just finished our 3rd day of summer school. It's sure different this summer. Our two morning classes don't meet, they're just "work on your own and check in with me" type classes. One is to type our B Paper, and the other is an instrumentation and arranging class where we have to arrange a song for our own group at school at home. That shouldn't be too hard.

I tried real hard to work on my paper this morning, but technology got in my way. First, my Adobe Acrobat wasn't updated on my laptop that I hardly use except for in the summers, but we have dial-up internet here so it took almost 2 hours to download. Then my printer ran out of ink. THEN I find out that my committee chairperson is only going to be in the country from July 1-17. So I have to be done and defended by then!

I'm living in the same apartment that we lived in our first summer when I met Josh. I think that's kind of neat, it's like making a full circle since this is our last summer. We started and ended in the same apartment. This apartment has lots of good memories for me, that's for sure! :) I'm living with Erin, who I've lived with every summer, and our friend Kris. Kris is the choir teacher in Torrington and he's always hanging out with us, so we told him he might as well just live with us since he was over at our apartment all the time anyway! We gave him Josh's old room- it's the biggest and has it's own bathroom.

I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning, so I'll let you know what happens. Probably nothing too important. Our next ultrasound isn't until next month, so I'm assuming they'll just make me pee in the cup again and measure my belly. We'll see how much I've gained, too. I have a feeling it's more than the 1/4 pound I gained last month.

moving!

I keep forgetting to post this, but the coolest thing lately about this baby is that now when he kicks, you can see my belly moving! It's so fun to watch. Especially when he moves whatever he's moving all the way across my stomach- you can see the whole movement go across.

The baby went to his first football game last night, the Shrine Bowl. I think he liked it- he was moving and squirming and kicking for most of the game. And most of the way home. He's been quiet so far this morning- yesterday must have worn him out. :)

No big news here, but some big news for my sister. Kristen is 37 weeks pregnant now and has been having problems for the past 5 weeks or so. The poor girl- her husband's wedding ring doesn't even fit on her fingers, and her feet and ankles remind me of an elephant's feet and ankles. :) She's been diagnosed with pregnancy-induced hypertension along with pregnancy-induced carpal tunnel syndrome and she can't keep her blood pressure down. She has another doctor's appt. today, and they might just decide to induce her. The baby isn't growing enough because her body is so strained, so maybe they should just induce her, get baby Ryan out, so he can grow and Mom can get better! If they don't induce her today, I bet she won't go past next weekend anyway. So I should have another nephew very, very soon!

Tomorrow Josh and I are headed to Casper for the Shrine Bowl. One of Josh's players for the Saratoga team got chosen to play in it, along with the Saratoga head coach and Josh's coach from high school getting chosen to coach. So we'll go up and watch. Then we have to come back because Sunday morning Josh gets his big chance to play at Old Baldy. He's in a tournament there, and then when he's done, it's time to head to Laramie so I can start my last summer of my master's degree. It's only 4 weeks this summer, so that is super nice. I will then just have to get my paper done and defended before July 25!

21 weeks, 4 days

Here it is: Here's what I look like at 21 weeks, 4 days. My waist is at about 37 inches!

catching up

Summer's here!! We got out of school Friday and Josh and I headed up to Lingle. Josh's aunt Barbara, his cousin Holly, her husband Caleb, and their kids Benjamin and Gabriel came from Missouri for the long weekend too. It was fun to catch up with them. Holly is about 5 weeks behind me in her 3rd pregnancy. Josh golfed in a tournament Saturday and Sunday, then Monday afternoon we headed for Denver for our anniversary. Monday celebrated 2 years!

We shopped until we dropped in Denver, that's for sure! Hit some great sales and came home with a summer wardrobe for me, some new things for Josh and some new things for the baby, too. He has a great start on clothes now! Josh got a little polo-shirt happy. He bought 7 for the baby in one store. I told him the baby would look just like his Daddy now, since Josh has something like 53 polo shirts. :)

The baby had a pretty quiet week until today. He's been wiggling like crazy today. I'm pretty sure he had hiccups too- felt the same movement every 3 seconds for about 30 seconds. That was pretty fun! He also moved hard enough to make me jump awake from my nap this afteroon!

We got registered at Babies-R-Us this week. If you want to look, search for our name, but make sure you put in WYOMING for the state we live in. There is another Joshua and Kara Sandlian registered there (VERY STRANGE...) but they live in Colorado and they had their baby already. Plus, I think the stuff she registered for is kinda ugly, so please don't buy anything from hers. :) We bought our crib and stroller this week, and ordered our beding this afternoon, so things are coming along!!

Here's our bedding:
http://www.beyond-bedding.com/caca9pcinqua.html

This is our stroller:
http://tinyurl.com/ptz5y

This is our beautiful crib:
http://tinyurl.com/mrq6t

And this is our diaper bag:
http://tinyurl.com/sx2gw

And since BRU has had our high chair out of stock online since I registered for it, we found it at Target so here's a picture so you can see what it looks like:
http://tinyurl.com/nkz89


Kara

scary!

Well, the baby gave us a little scare last night. Yesterday, about 1:30 or 2:00, my belly started getting sharp, sharp shooting pains going through it. It was killing my back, too. I could hardly walk, and nothing was helping. It didn't go away. I went home after school and laid down on my side, and they went away, but then I had to get up and go to Encampment's athletic banquet and they started up again as soon as I got up. When we got dinner, I took 2 Tylenol and they went away for an hour, but then came back pretty strong again. I was almost in tears. And the baby wasn't moving anymore. Dr. Noton, our only doctor in town, and who loves Josh because of all his EMT stuff, was at the banquet so when it was over, Josh asked her if she'd come take a look at me. She asked some questions, poked me in some places, and said I need to go to the clinic. They had an intern this month, (none of us knew about him!) that is leaving on Friday to go back to Casper to finish his OB stuff and do that full-time, so that was handy, since our clinic doesn't normally do OB! She called him to see if he could meet us at the clinic.

So we got there about 8:45 last night, and he took my history, asked lots of questions, and thought he better find a heartbeat. The dopplar at the clinic HURTS! It has a tiny little poky end and he practically had to push all they way through my stomach to get a sound. Owie! But he found the baby's heartbeat, 156 bpm. Whew! He took a urine sample to rule out a UTI. It came back that I DON'T have a UTI (thank goodness), and he doesn't *think* I was having pre-term contractions, even though I was pretty dehydrated, he said most likely it's those three sets of muscles on each of my sides stretching and they all got pulled yesterday. That's why they hurt. I had done one dance with my kindergarteners, but it wasn't a strenuous dance, but it must have been enough to pull all my muscles. So he told me to go home, lay down (he liked that I felt better when I laid down, that showed more that it wasn't contractions), and drink water. He said he'd send me to the hospital to get hooked up to all the fancy machines, just to make sure they weren't contractions, but he had a feeling they'd just tell me the same thing he did and charge me a lot of money for the "fancy water" that I could get for free at home. :) He was really nice.

It was a pretty painful night, every time I rolled over, I woke up hurting real bad. But this morning I only ache on my right side and it's not nearly as bad as it was last night. Josh is pretty cute- he put restrictions on me. I cannot move around today, I have to drink LOTS of water, and tomorrow during clean-up day, I am NOT to walk with the kids, I am to ride in the pick-up with my co-class sponsor. :) He even told me if I don't drink enough water, he's calling his little EMT friends to come put an IV in me.

I joked to my family that now I'm catching up to my sister in Dr. visits- she now has to go 2 times a week, she had to do a 24-hour urine collection Monday and Tuesday, she's back on modified bed-rest, etc. Sheesh. She has about 5 weeks to go, but the dr. doesn't think she'll go more than 2-3.

Today is better- I only am sore sometimes. Nothing like yeserday's pain though, so that's good.

HALFWAY!

We're halfway there! I hit the 20 week mark today. I can't believe how fast time has flown. It seems like yesterday that we found out that we were finally pregnant, and now we're halfway through! The baby (who shall remain nameless- we HAVE a name, but you don't get to know it!!) was pretty active yesterday. Lots of partying going on down there. He did stop moving around and took a nap at one point, until Josh decided to see if he could wake him up by using his finger to push on my belly gently. Gently, but enough to wake him up, because it worked! He didn't stop moving for several more hours. I even got a kick hard enough to move my hand! He's a mover and a wiggler, that's for sure. (Maybe he'll be the next star kicker for his high school football team?) I made Josh promise that after the baby is born, when he is sleeping, there will be NO waking him up just to see him move. :)

I have now hit the 11 day mark for no throwing up! It's a wonderful feeling.

ultrasound!

Well, we're pretty sure my Grandma won't be getting her great-granddaughter she's been wanting. Dr. Keeler wouldn't confirm anything since we weren't totally positive we wanted to know what the baby is, but he knows we saw (as far as we know,) some boy parts, and at the end of the ultrasound, he said, "Well, you already have your suspicions", with a knowing smile on his face. So we're pretty sure we're having a little football player. We can get it confirmed on our next ultrasound if we want to, which I'll get to in a minute.

We got to the appt. at 2:00 yesterday, and there was NOBODY in the waiting room. I thought that was strange. The lady at the desk then told me that Dr. Keeler had to go do an emergency C-section, and could we come back at 3:00 and see if we needed to re-schedule? I said no problem to the coming back at 3:00, but we couldn't re-schedule because we came from so far away! So Josh and I went to Wal-mart to kill time and then came back at 2:45. Good thing we came back early- Dr. Keeler was on his way back from the hospital and we got in within 5 minutes! (And when we were done, there were no empty chairs in the waiting room- we would've been there all night!) My blood pressure was high though- need to watch that. It was 134/64, and it never gets that high. Josh took it later that night and it was pretty low- 104/something. Crazy. And I've gained a whole QUARTER of a pound since a month ago- I'm "up" to 123.25. A whole pound and a quarter heavier than where I started! :)

The baby looks great- everything is measuring as it is supposed to, and there's no thickening of the neck, which could indicate Down Syndrome, no extra vertebrae, we saw the footprint, meaning no club feet, no cleft palate, etc. He has a good beating 4-chamber heart, too. :) It was beating at 150 bpm. He pushed the "camera" away at one point, we saw him turn towards it, then put his hands up and his hands got bigger while his face got smaller- he was pushing away! He was awful squirmy, too, Dr. Keeler had a hard time looking at things at times!! He flipped around since the night before, too- Josh felt him kick on my right side Tues. night, and yesterday, his feet were on my left side. But then when we went to bed, he was kicking on my right again! Dr. Keeler said they flip a lot when they have this much room. Yesterday was the first day I've felt distinct kicks- and they're coming pretty often now! Josh felt them last night and giggled each time it happened. It was pretty cute. :)

The good news is, I get a 3rd ultrasound. (They usually only give you 2- once at the beginning, once around 20 weeks.) The bad news is, it's because my placenta is really low, which could indicate placenta previa. That's when the placenta is really, really low and covers the cervix, meaning I can't deliver "normally", I would have to have a c-section. We'll check it again in an ultrasound in July and see if it's moved up any. The next ultrasound will probably be a 3-D one, so we'd really get to see what the baby looks like!!

moving

Josh got to feel the baby last night! We were laying in bed watching
teh 10:00 news and I felt the baby get all wiggly. He put his hand
there and a minute later, BAM! He felt him move! Just once though,
then the baby must have decided to go to sleep because he quit being
wiggly. I'm beginning to be able to feel him move a little more often
now too.

kids say the darndest things.

I've had quite a few humorous things said to me by my elementary students as they figure out I'm pregnant. Most classes know now, I think it's only the kindergarten that hasn't figured it out. A few of those kids know, but not all of them. (Don't know how they could miss it the past couple days- I've gotten pretty big this week!) Anyway, here's some of the highlights of what has been said:

2nd grade found out first, since our principal's son is in that class. They came to music one day and Guy said, very accusingly, "I know about you." He then told the rest of the class and they all looked straight at my belly and said, "You don't look like you are." (This was very early in my pregnancy.) I told them to wait until we got back from summer vacation, and I was going to be super fat! A few days later, I was wearing an empire-waisted dress shirt that I love and Hunter said, "You're right, Mrs. Sandlian! You ARE getting fat!"

An aide in our school has a kindergartener who was VERY upset one day because she had to share her birthday party at school with a boy in her class who has the same birthday. This little girl, Micaiah, cried the night before, because the little boy was bringing the cupcakes and Micaiah was bringing the punch. "Mrs. Sandlian is having a baby and the baby NEEDS a cupcake! And Mrs. Sandlian LOVES cupcakes! Can't we cut into my birthday cake early so I can bring a piece to Mrs. Sandlian?" That story just about made me cry. How sweet that she was so worried that I wasn't getting a cupcake!

5th and 6th grade found out next. They were all just very worried that I wasn't coming back next year. Coming from a class that is a continuous struggle to get them to do anything, that was a nice compliment.

1st grade came in about a month later and one of the girls said, "I heard on the playground that you are having a baby." I told them that was true, I was having a baby! Mollie, our secretary's daughter, said, "OH! Are you getting married now?" HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Still laughing about that one. Her mom was so embarrassed when I told her that. It's still the joke in our faculty- they want to know if I've found a husband now that I'm "in the family way". I'm telling them I'm still looking. :)

3rd and 4th grade were the latest to find out. WAY later than the other classes! They figured it out when I was about 16 weeks along! One kid said in class, "I can't wait to see your baby!" The rest of the kids gasped at the same time and I heard a big, "YOU'RE HAVING A BABY!??!!" Keona told me, "No offense, Mrs. Sandlian, but I wondered why you were gaining weight in your stomach." Still laughing about that one, too. :)

Oh, kids say the darndest things...

This is cool!!

Every once in a while, we get out the stethescope to see if we can hear the baby's heartbeat. We haven't been able to yet, but last night I got it out and could hear the baby moving around for the first time! I gave it to Josh to listen, and he found the baby kicking!! It was so cool! I listened and heard the baby kick 4 times. Sounded like a thump in there. Then I had Josh check my blood pressure, just to check, and then listened again but either I couldn't find him kicking, or he got bored and stopped. I could still hear him moving though. I've felt movements that feel like little twitches for the past week or so, but nothing too strong and no kicks yet. Soon, maybe!

Busy week this week- I have my photoshop class tonight, and Josh has a fire meeting. Tomorrow, all 3 animals go for their shots at 4:30. I'm making Josh come with to help. Last time I did it by myself and it was a disaster. Birdie is nervous and whines and cowers, Hogan is all excited and wants to run and play with everyone, and Charlie sits and howls and hisses in her cage. So much fun. Then, we have to hurry and get to Encampment for Josh's football meeting at 6, then my elementary program at 7. Each grade is doing a couple songs on their own, instead of like the Christmas concert where everyone did all the songs together. That's nice so I don't have to rehearse them all together, but I have a lot more stuff to get organized, like the 2nd graders' kazoos, the 1st graders' rhythm instruments, etc. One more concert after tomorrow's- on teh 16th. Then I'm "done" for the year!! No more concerts until after the baby's born. That's kind of a weird feeling!

so tired!

For all you ladies that read this, and haven't had children yet, here's something that probably nobody else will tell you. NOT EVERYONE'S FATIGUE GETS BETTER IN THE SECOND TRIMESTER!! Everyone always tells you, "oh, don't worry. You're only tired the first trimester and then it's so much better." Not for everyone! I'm so tired STILL. My house looks like a tornado went through it. I have every intention on cleaning a little when I get home from school, but I just can't. I sit down and I pretty much cannot move again! Last night, in fact, I fell asleep on the couch at 7:30. And that's only because I MADE myself stay awake that long! I woke up at 8:45 and went to bed right away. I DO live with 2 boys that should be cleaning up for me though... Wonder why they haven't started that.

I hit the 16 week mark yesterday. Didn't take any measurements because my tape measure seems to be missing. I did weigh myself, but my scale is different from the doctor's office because I only weighed 120 (barely) on it, when I weighed 123 at the doctor's office last week. So I really can't count that weight. I know I'm not losing weight, so I'll just have to wait until our next appointment.

catching up

I had my first run-in with the pregnancy police last Wednesday. I was talking to a teacher friend of mine about my headaches and migraines and how they've come back since week 13 after not having a single one for the first trimester. I told her the doctor prescribed me Midrin and that caffeine helps sometimes too. In walks another teacher and starts chewing me out. HARD. Tells me I need to start thinking about my baby (hello, like I don't always?!) and how all this is going to make the baby's head wired wrong and so on and so forth. I told her that I'm going to trust my doctor and what he tells and she starts in on me again about how none of this is good for the baby. I walked out the door at that point, saying, "And the baby's mom, laying in bed in pain so bad that she throws up until 4 in the morning, then has to go to work on 2 hours of sleep isn't good for the baby either, so I'll take the pills and ceffeine." Next time, I'll tell her to be glad she won't have to have my "mis-wired kid" in her kindergarten class because there's no way I'd chose to send my kid to Encampment if she's still here teaching! She's a grump anyway and is ALWAYS "right" about anything and everything.

I went to Salt Lake City Wed. night-Saturday last week. WHAT A BLAST! I had so much fun. I found some great bargains while doing some shopping, too. A $30 yellow newborn sweater at Baby Gap for $8, some maternity clothes on sale, and on Saturday coming home we found the Outlet Malls in Park City where I found more great deals. More maternity clothes, and a green sweater and Christmas onesie at Osh Kosh B'Gosh for $11 total, and a sleeper and 5 washcloths for $11 total also.

While at the conference, Mom and I got to meet Keith Lockhart, the conductor of the Boston Pops Symphony. He's awesome! We also got to sit 20 feet in front of the Army Herald Trumpets, which only presidents of the US get to do. Those herald trumpets play so great! That was an awesome part of the trip. We also got to see a concert by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Oak Ridge Boys!! It was recorded to put on TV this summer, so make sure you keep your eyes out for that and watch it! What an amazing experience that was!

Josh left early yesterday morning for the week- he took the 8th graders from Saratoga to the Teton Science School. I can tell the dogs miss him- they look all over the house for him in the morning. I miss him too. :(

I thought maybe my morning sickness was going away, since I didn't throw up for 5 days. But it came back this morning. Maybe it's a fluke. Keep your fingers crossed. :)

Another doctor's appointment

Well, Josh and I took a half day each off work yesterday, using my precious sick days that I want to save for maternity leave. Our doctor's appointment in Laramie was scheduled for 2:45. At 4:20, we finally saw the doctor. If I would've known that, we wouldn't have had to take any sick leave!! And we saw the doctor for a whole 10 minutes. What a good baby I have though, he (or she) kicked Dr. Keeler. Dr. Keeler was trying to find the heartbeat with the dopplar, but the baby was moving around too much. (I wish I could feel that! But I can't yet.) Dr. Keeler pressed a little harder with the dopplar, and BOOM! The baby kicked him like he was saying, "HEY! Leave me alone!" We finally heard the heartbeat though. Steady and strong, that's for sure!!

I did get a prescription for my migraines. The first 3 months of pregnancy were WONDERFUL. Like headache heaven. I didn't get a single headache, let alone migraine! Then 13 weeks hit and not only do I get a headache every day, but last Monday got my first pregnant migraine. I was up all night in throbbing pain and throwing up until 4:00 a.m. What a long night! Poor Josh was probably pretty tired the next day too, since he was up with me! Hopefully this medicine will help when I feel one coming on.

It hit 71 degrees on our way to Laramie, and on our way home, it was 32 and blizzarding. No joke. Gotta love Wyoming weather in the springtime!

Hope everyone had a great Easter! It was just me and Josh this year. We didn't get any days off school for traveling, and I HATE eating Easter dinner in the afternoon and leaving to come home right away. Especially now that I get so carsick now that I'm pregnant. So we had a nice quiet day by ourselves. It was very enjoyable.

I'm off to Salt Lake City for the MENC National Convention tomorrow, so I'll catch you all up when I get home!

Ultrasound

Finally, it lets me post our ultrasound picture! This was taken at 11 weeks. It's only one baby, but two pictures. I think it has Josh's head. :)

This was taken at 13 weeks, 1 day. Weight- still 121. Waist- 33 inches and a tiny bit. Sorry, it's a little blurry.

PS....

I just noticed for the first time that Robyn left me a message! Whoo-hoo! :) Robyn, I have the Sea Bands. I've been wearing them for several weeks now. They do help a little! I recommend them to anyone!!

Changing

Boy, has my stomach changed in the past couple days. Not only is it getting bigger, but it's getting wider. My belly button is pretty shallow already. And Josh noticed a few tiny stretch marks the other day. I'm thinking maybe they were just marks from my waistband of my pants, because I can't see them any more.

Whacky weather here- it was in the 60's Wednesday and then today and yesterday it's been snowing. Supposed to be 60 again tomorrow. Strange.

Have a great weekend!

Man, I'm not very good at keeping this updated, am I?! I guess that's because there's really nothing new to report. My morning sickness is getting WORSE. I'm now throwing up every single morning unless I get to sleep in. But when I get up for work, forget it. I spend the first 5 minutes of my morning over the sink!

It rained and rained yesterday. At one point, our dogs were outside and when I went to let them in, both dogs were dripping wet and Birdie was just caked with mud. She had a great time playing outside. And she went straight into the bathtub when she came in, I made sure of that! The drain got plugged with so much dirt. She doesn't mind a bath though, she knows she'll get a bone afterwards. :)

I'll be 13 weeks tomorrow- one more week until the 2nd trimester starts. Then maybe all the puking will stop!!! (HA! Wishful thinking!!)