Hospital Tour

This past Sunday, we went to the hospital for a tour. After running around a bit to find the classroom, we joined a huge group of people there for the tour. We missed the first half of the "presentation", but still got some valuable information. Then we were off to see the Labor and Delivery floor and rooms.

I had a wheelchair. Yeah! :) When I had signed us up, I requested a wheelchair since I'm on bedrest. I think some of the other moms-to-be were a little jealous. Hahaha... ;)

The hospital was really cool! It's a hospital that has been around for a while, but they have recently built a new wing, and are in the process of renovating the rest of the building. Nice! First we went up and looked at the standard recovery room, and then one of the upgrade suites. Nice, typical hospital room. Poor Tim... the bed/couch/cot looks like it'll be a little small.

Then we headed up a floor to the Labor and delivery area. We went into one of the LDR rooms and our "tour guide" (who was pregnant herself) told us how things would typically go. I guess she also teaches childbirthing classes, and she recommended that once you arrive at the hospital, try and stay off your back (and out of the bed) for as long as possible. She recommended leaning against the bed, or using a birthing ball, or just walking around the room a bit... she told us that the belly monitors had really long cords attached to them, so unless you had an epidural already administered to you, you should try and stay up and about. (Hmmm... as she talked, I got the feeling that she would be a "natural" birther...)

She also went over the "rules" of the hospital (i.e. only 3 guests can be in the delivery room with you), how the nurse-patient situation would work (i.e. one patient per nurse...if you don't "click" with the nurse, request another one), and what exactly might happen after you've given birth (i.e. you can request to hold the baby immediately after birth, or you can have them clean it up first).

As we walked down the hall back to the elevator, we could hear some lady moaning out. :P Ick. hahaha... At one point, we paused in the hallway and a nurse came out of an LDR room. Tim looked in and said he saw a lady with her legs up and everyone surrounding her. He was like, "Woah, I want to watch." hahaha...so maybe he WON't faint. :)

Just before leaving, I asked the tour-guide-lady some questions. She was pregnant with her third child, and her first two did come naturally (w/o an epidural). She said she just used a "wait and see how I feel" stance, and decided that her contractions (aka "birthing waves") weren't too bad, and so declined the use of the epidural. She told us that once we got to the hospital, the nurses would most likely automatically start prepping for an epi, but that we should let them know that I want to "wait and see", or whatever.

As we were leaving, I ran into a coworker of mine who's wife just gave birth (via c-section) to twins that past Wednesday.

I brought my camera...but OBVIOUSLY forgot to take a pic of me in the wheelchair. Darn! Tim says we'll get a picture later. :) it would have been a good one, though...we both had some nasty bedhead.

Bed Rest Day 5

I'm laying in bed right now. Munching on some cold red grapes. Mmmm... I have my work Remote Desktop open so I can see if I have any new emails.

Not too shabby. :)

It's actually quite nice and relaxing to be able to work from home. Though, I think if I thought about it TOO much (being in bed rest for several more weeks), I might start getting antsy and crazy... but I just take it one day at a time. It reminds me of running on a treadmill (since I hate running outside). Once I get on a treadmill, I can't think about how long I'm going to run/jog for...I just have to do it. I have to focus on the T.V., or music, or something. The moment I start thinking, "Ah! 30 more minutes!", I feel like I can't do it.

So I try to space my day out so that it's still relatively "normal". I've been able to wake up easily at about 5 or 6am...usually I'm begging the alarm clock for more time, but maybe b/c I'm working at home, it's actually fun to wake up. :)

Anyway. Then I'll read some scriptures, then get up and brush my teeth, then head back to "bed" and login to work on my laptop. If nothing's going on yet, I might start working on a project...or grab something to eat. Then I try and do job-related stuff for a while... I basically try and stay in the bedroom until about lunchtime when Tim comes home. Then I get back into bed. Find something to do, and just keep myself busy till about 4pm. Then I usually feel better about going into the other room and watching T.V. (as if I had just returned home from work).

The days ususally go by w/o any problems... it's when it starts getting dark...and I have to stay inside. And just sit there. :P

Today I set aside some time to clip my Sunday Coupons and put them away in my coupon-folder-thing. I also registered online with my hospital, and went through other paperwork that I have to complete.

Pic of my setup...

My point of view...

Another couponing deal...

Look what I bought for $7.00:

But the $7.00 DID come out of my Walgreens gift card. So I actually didn't have to pull out my credit card or cash for this one. Not too bad of a deal, considereing the EDGE shaving gel retails $3.99, those TUMS retail $9.99, the face moisturizer retails $9.99... yada yada yada...

The hair dye (that's auburn) had a coupon...but I couldn't use it b/c it would have made Walgreens OWE me money. But from what I've read online, I can take it back, RETURN IT, then start another transaction where I use it to buy other things (it was on clearance for about $1.30...and I have a $4.00 off coupon).

Still working on it... Oh. And I ended up returning 8 Vitamin Waters to Randalls b/c they only double coupons on the first item. (This probably will only make sense to one or two people reading this post).

Bed Rest Day 2

Day 2. This is how I spent most of my day. Hmmm... I'm "back-posting", so I don't remember what I was going to write about this...

Anyway, it's me just lying in bed with my laptop.

Bed Rest: Day 1... and just one more shot...

Should we always reserve a couple hours when we visit the hospital? For some reason, it always sounds like we're just going to a quick in-out thing. Nope. We went to the hospital for my second shot, and were there for at LEAST an hour and a half. I guess part of the hold-up was that there weren't any standing "discharge" orders for me...so they had to call my doc (or the person on standy-by) to see what they wanted to do with me.
So I guess this was a stress-test for the baby. Everything went perfectly fine. Got the shot in my hip. Ouch. And we were good...

Oh, and this was Day 1 of my bedrest. Went very well! Got setup to remote access my computer at work...nice.

On our way to the hospital, we stopped by my office building and Tim ran up to grab some of my stuff (i.e. my birthday flowers, some of my snacks/treats, my rice heat pack, etc.)

Take me out to the ball game...

One of Tim's colleagues/clients/customers(?) invited us to a baseball with him and his wife. What fun!

We ended up getting there late, and didn't have any cash on us for parking, so we had to drive around until we found an ATM, find a parking lot, and walk about 5 minutes to the ballpark.

Because it was a "business meeting", we were able to expense our dinner/treats. Boy was it expensive! I got a hot dog, a salad, and a small brownie.

Ooh! And Tim and I were put up on the BIG SCREEN during the "Kiss Me" portion of the game. Tim said it took him a little while to realize that it was US on the big screen...I told him that I noticed my "turtle neck" right away. haha...

Before the game started, three helicopters hovered over the open stadium. It was chilly outside, so they closed the top soon after...

Heartburn...again.

So after my first post on heartburn, I didn't seem to have heartburn for a few days afterwards. Oh how nice that was!

Then I came to work this morning (after staying up till about midnight last night because we were watching Australia), ate some oatmeal... few hours later ate one PopTart... 30 minutes later ate a free cinnamon roll (someone brought in)... and NOW I have heartburn. Ugh.

Maybe I can just ignore it. Haha.

Gas?

So Tim's mom had told me before that when she felt babies move in her belly, it kind of felt like gas. Well, is that what I'm feeling right now??

I'm sitting here at work, and occasionally I feel like food is moving through my system...like my bowels are working things through, and air is bubbling around. It makes me feel a little nervous because what if it IS gas?! And what if I toot at work? Normally, not a huge problem...but last night, I had the WORST gassy-gas in the WORLD! Silent, deadly, and slightly burning. :P hehe...

Anyway, today, I'm feeling a lot of "gas" movements in my belly...but I don't think it's gas. So it must be the baby girl in there. Gross... :P

A bottomless pit...

Last Saturday was my first time feeling like a black hole...a bottomless pit. I'd feel a little hungry. I'd eat something. I wouldn't feel full, nor would I feel satisfied. I ate a sandwich. I ate some soup. I drank some water. I ate some leftover Corn Krispy Treats from Christmas. I ate some chocolate. I made a fruit smoothie. After a while, it was useless, so I just stopped. Blah. Tim offered to make me something else. Ugh. I've got to stop while I'm ahead.

Fortunately, I've only felt that on that one day. Hopefully that's all I'll get. I guess that's one pro for working-while-pregnant. I'm able to space out my snacking/meals better (and occupy my mind with work or web surfing) so that I'm not randomly eating during the day.

InStyle (Germany)

So this is pretty cool... awhile ago I helped a friend with some product shots for his laptop accessory company. I found this image on his website, and I THINK that one of the images I took is used in the InStyle magazine (Germany).

It's the gold laptop case in the top-left of the 4 laptop images at the bottom of the page. It's called the Goldfish from Isis dei. (Granted, I could be TOTALLY wrong, and they could have reshot those products... but then again, it could be the one I took!)