The time is near!

We are now down to the final stretch as we await the birth of our new baby! We are all ready with everything we need so now we just wait. My body is making some slow but sure progress as it has done with the two previous births, and we are hoping for a quick labor and delivery as we had with the second child. I believe he will be born around his expected arrival date of April 28, but as I tell my daughters, babies come when they are ready so we will just wait!

In the meantime I seem to be growing larger every day and people are starting to shake their heads at me and say things like, "Bless your heart." Actually, nothing hurts and it's not hot here so I'm just fine! I'm enjoying these last few days while my whole family looks forward to meeting the new little one.

Good doctor's visit today

I went to the doctor this morning for my now-weekly visit and am happy to report that the baby and I are doing wonderful, we were in and out of there in one hour, and I wasn't harrassed much about my Medicaid application!

I'm dilated "a stretchy 2," according to the doctor, up from between 1 and 2 cm last Monday, and I'm 80 percent effaced. Nothing else has happened so I'm sure I'm doing the same thing I did the previous two times, just getting all ready for the due date. I hope that's what happens, since I'm rather busy up until the last weekend of this month, and I am thoroughly enjoying these last few days free from breastfeeding, diaper changing, and being on 24-hour mom duty!

They did ask about my Medicaid application and just shook their heads at DHS when I reported that the application is still pending but they said they'd see if they could put a rush on it.

Best of all, I got there at 11 a.m. and left at noon!

A bad mom and proud of it

I was a bad mom today but I still have my sanity and I'm proud of it!

My kids got out of school an hour early today for parent-teacher conferences. Of course they were rather rowdy and it was raining outside, so I couldn't send them out to play. I had plan B ... let them watch television. That they did, to the tune of FOUR movies!

First they watched an animal show on VHS, then they watched Babar on VHS.

After that we watched an old movie on TV. (Does it count as parent-child time that I was in the living room with them working on my laptop and watching the movie with them?) It was called "Showboat," a 1951 movie based on the 1928 Jerome Kern musical, about life on a Mississippi River showboat.

They also watched an old Kurt Russell movie (he looked 20) with their dad.

Normally they don't watch near that much TV in the run of a day so this was really unusual for them. But they were nice and quiet and I didn't have to threaten to do bodily harm to anyone and I had peace all afternoon long.

So maybe I was a bad mom for letting them watch that much TV, but I think I'm better person (or at least still sane) for it!

All morning at the doctor!

The girls and I spent all the morning long at the doctor's office today. It was actually two doctor's offices, as I had to take one of the girls in to see about an eye problem and then I had my regular prenatal checkup. The whole thing lasted from 9 a.m. to noon today, with much of that time spent just waiting.

My older daughter started complaining about something being in her eye yesterday afternoon, and it got really red and irritated. She didn't get much sleep last night because of it, which of course means no one else got much sleep either. (Except her sister.) Her dad wanted me to take her to the doctor this morning, so I got her an appointment at 9 a.m., right before my prenatal checkup at 10 a.m.

We got her to the doctor, and they looked at it and put some stuff in it that made her eye glow in the dark. They didn't see any foreign material but they did see a scratch. Evidently what happened was something got in her eye and scratched it. We're supposed to put medicine in it and cover it with an eye bandage until tomorrow morning, and the doctor wants to see her back in the morning.

We got out of there in record time, in time to get to my doctor's office in time for my 10 a.m. appointment. We sat out in the waiting room for over an hour, and then in the exam room for at least 15 minutes before I was seen. Of course it only took one minute for the doctor to examine me after we'd waited for so long.

The exam revealed that I'm dilated between 1 and 2, which is typical for me. I started dilating four weeks before both of my other children were born. My blood pressure is excellent and the baby's heart rate is wonderful. I won't mention anything about my weight gain but it is right in line with what I weighed two weeks from delivery with my other two children!

We went back out to the waiting room to wait for another appointment, and it was noon before we left. We were there for two hours for a one-minute exam. Goodness.

How's that for an adventurous morning?