Playdate

Today my cousin Alex came over. He brought my Aunt Robyn and Gramsi along. First we both had a long lunch... then we did a little photo shoot.

I was totally chill'n... I don't know what Alex's deal was. Maybe he had a problem with me laying on him? Here I am with my Aunt Robyn (Alex's Mom). I'm just yawning here. :)

pampering from daddy

Daddy, Mommy and Grammsy gave me a royal spa treatment. I got a full body oil massage with my wonderful Calendula Oil that smells so good. Grammsy was in charge of oiling me up because she was so fast at it. Then Mommy gave me a foot rub while Daddy brushed my hair. Oh I sooo loved my hair being brushed! It was so soothing. Grammsy also posted this on her blog, but I wanted to show my friends too!

I love hanging out with Daddy!

Thanks!

I just look too cute! I'm so lucky! My Aunt Pat made me some really cool blankies and burp-rags and brought me this boppy on my birthday. I REALLY like my boppy. I get to lay on it when I eat and sit in it so I can look all around the room.

My Uncle Sam & Aunt Emily got me this cool onsie. I wore it all day today. It fits great with some growing room. They also got me a cute t-shirt and my most favorite stuffed animal, Mr. Penguin.

I'm Four Days Old!

I'm just too precious!

So far Mommy and Daddy consider me a pretty mellow little guy.
I am very good at night and all day long. I really like to eat a lot between 3 and 6 am. I really like to have the deepest sleep in the late afternoon around 3 to 8 pm. Mommy and Daddy are trying to find creative ways to wake me up for my dinner.... so far with no luck.


Today I had my first Dr's appointment.This is my pediatrician, Dr. Young. He's very cool.
I only lost 4-ounces so I am now 7lbs. Dr. Young gave me a lot of compliments too. My next appointment is in 3wks. I'm not crying in this picture. I just scrunched my face up. I don't really cry about anything actually.

Happy Birthday Dominic!!

Dominic Joel Bermea
Born: April 26th, 2008
Time: 6:00 PM
Weight: 7 lbs. 4 oz.
Length: 21 inches
Head: 13 inches


















(above) about 4 hours old in the heat-lamp bed. I loved this thing!












Grandma love! I love my grandmas!

















Daddy's gives me my first bath...

Inchworm: 38 wks

Dominic is now 38 weeks! For those of you who don't know, a full term pregnancy is 40 weeks and a baby is technically OK to deliver after 37 weeks.

Today John and I decided to go into the Dr's office for some baby movement monitoring - called a Non-Stress Test. Over the weekend Dominic seemed to have slowed down in this area so we thought just to be on the safe side we'd call in... well, wallah, we ended up going in of course.

We had an appointment scheduled for tomorrow so they just mushed it all into one and we got it all covered today.

Results from todays appointment:

• Blood pressure is looking good
• Dominic's monitoring looked really good (heart rate and contractions for me)
• I'm dilated to 3cm now
• Effaced 80% (this means my cervix has thinned. Needs to be 100% for birth)

We decided to just make an appointment for inducing because I'm simply sick of sitting around worrying about him. Although all the tests have ended up good in the end.

We had decided to make the appointment before we were checked for dilation, etc. So now we may not even make it to the end of this week. We would like things to happen naturally of course, but for inducing they are just going to start with popping his water bubble.

If we do actually make it to the appointment, it will be next Tuesday, April 29th - the day before my little brother Daniel's 19th Birthday. And hey, if we have an insanely long labor he could even be born ON Daniel's B-day. :)

----------------------------------------------------
(edit: THE 29th IS THE DAY OF DANIEL'S BDAY!! DUH! I knew this! I am such a dorkus!!!)

fire station

This is our stop by the fire station in Central Point to get our carseat checked out.We learned a tip from the guy on how to position a carrier/car seat more efficiently so that you aren't straining your back, shoulders and arms. John's trying it out here (left). We thought we'd share this amazing trick. Anyone currently doing this?

We learned some other tips too:

• Placing the carseat in the center is better than either passenger side. The baby will be in better shape with your car getting T-Boned and the seat should stay in pretty good shape if you get in a head-on collision.
• Don't jam your front seats back against the carseat (the impreza has a shorter backseat area). The seat needs to be able to shift a little.
• Do not ever have the carrier bar up while using the car seat in the car (even though the cute toys can be entertaining for baby, it's just not safe).
• Don't bundle your kid up too much prior to belting in, it's safer to wrap warm things around them.
• Do a sort of pinch test after belting in on baby's body straps. You should barely be able to pinch the belt up. Of course, keep all belts untangled at all times. ;)

Dr. Appt. Update

Dominic get's a big gold star for todays doctor appointment. :)

Today's report:

• Blood Pressure: 116/70 - HURRAY!!
• Cervix is thinning further (not that all you guys out there really want to know that)
• Haven't lost the groty mucus plug (again, sorry guys)
• Still only dialated to about 2cm
• His head has dropped further down which I think I have felt the results of that in my lower back more.

John is predicting that he'll come this Monday (21st) and will be around 7lbs. I would LOVE for that to happen, but considering I haven't been feeling contractions yet and the mucus plug is still in tact (that I know of), I have my doubts. It is still only Tuesday (today) though so we'll see. Our Dr will be out of town this Wednesday thru Sunday, so he's not allowed to come then! We discovered that if our Dr is not available (out of town) then we get whoever is on call. This doesn't mean from OUR Dr's office. It means whoever in the valley is on rotation at the hospital. I was thinking we would at least get someone from our office. I'm sure this is no suprise to all of you who have had kids, but well really, that sucks! Ohwell, there is nothing we can do about it.

So no stress today. Everyone was quite happy and we made it out of the office in a timely manner. We are still on bedrest because it obviously helped, but we don't have to keep going in more than once a week for strict monitoring or more ultrasounds. Thank goodness!

The rest of the updates...

I know these updates are a bit lengthy, no one really has to read them I guess. :)

I left off with last Monday being that Robyn delivered little 'Zander and we had a Dr. Appt. that Tuesday at 9AM. So we go into our appointment, hopeful things will go better than the week before. John was with me today. After checking my blood pressure it's given a slight "OK" so the Dr. decides to put me on monitors for a bit. These are the ones that wrap around your tummy with little discs with goo on them pressed on various areas of your big round belly. One is for the baby and the other for tracking contractions. So I get to lay on my side on this uncomfortable gynecology table with two stretchy belts wrapped around me, goo getting everywhere and the sound of Dominic's heartbeat... I can't decide if he sounds like a choo-choo-train or hoof beats.

We did this for quite a while. The Dr wasn't completely satisfied with the results so she decided to send us over to the ultrasound office (next door) for a more thorough look at Dominic's activity. From what I have learned though, the in-office monitoring is not as great as the hospital ones. We also had to do some labs (in-office). It was close to 10:30 AM now...

At scheduling, our options were an 11:00AM ultrasound or a 3:00PM ... we did want some lunch, but decided to take the earlier appt. to get it all over with - John was planning on going back to work after this. In between the office visit and the ultrasound we waited to do our labs... made it next door for the ultrasound with 10 minutes to spare.

We make it into our appointment with a technician we normally do not see. So we're in there with goo all over my belly for the second time... all of a sudden she starts shaking and squishing my belly all around, poking and prodding. We can clearly see that Dominic is not wiggling around ...BUT his heartbeat is going great. She fails to explain anything... so we finally ask after a minute. I don't even remember her answer, but it really didn't explain much other than her wanting to see him move. I kept telling her that he ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT liked to be shook. She did not listen. She even made me stand up and hop up and down and drink a big glass of ice-water. No luck, the little guy was simply pissed off at her by now and was refusing to budge. I suggested we go get some food and come back, but she was already worked up about him not moving for her and dashed out to get our Dr.

We met in a side room to decide what to do. Ultimately, the Dr told us that little D only scored a 4 out of 10, which was terrible. You need to get at least an 8 out of 10. There are a certain amount of points your baby scores when he gets checked out like this. Anyway, being on the low end, our Dr wanted to dash to the hospital now to deliver him. We had really wanted to wait until he was at least 37wks... we asked for alternatives, like could we just go get monitored and take it from there. She was stressing that she was worried that we were not on a monitor as we were talking. So we jumped across the street to the hospital (Rogue Valley Medical Center)... which is so convenient being across the street and all.

We checked in at the front in the Maternity Ward, but sadly got dumped in the Post Partum Ward because all the birth rooms were full. These rooms were not as luxurious as the birth rooms... especially John's little chair. I called my mom on the way over to the hospital... she was waiting for Robyn and baby Alexander to be released from their hospital and planned on helping them out a bit because he had screamed all night. Anyway, she gave this job to Dad (although they didn't make it out of the hospital until late that evening so he never got to help) and jetted on over to us in case we really were going to have DJ.

For the third time this day, I got all goo'd up and had more belts put on for monitoring. By the time we were all settled in, Dominic started moving quite a bit. Clearly meeting his Kick Count rules (Kick Count = moving at least 10 times in one single hour pretty consistently). Even my blood pressure was monitoring quite well. So our alternative to delivering today was a) to be on the monitor and b) to have Dr. Sole, the area's top high risk baby dr come check little D out. We got in about 11:50 AM and was told Dr. Sole would be by at 1PM. I was starving by now, John was also hungry. I was just going to get lunch at the hospital but the nurses told me we had to ask my Dr first. She was in the middle of a procedure and said she would get back to us, we waited a while longer, finally I we got an answer to wait until after the ultrasound and check from Dr. Sole. I had an hour. OK I could handle this. The hour goes by, no Dr. Sole. He finally shows up at 3PM. This was an insane delivery day so he had been running around the Maternity Ward too.

We got to see Dr. Sole's Ultrasound Tech, Mary-Beth. She was great to deal with! Although Dominic was finally moving around for her in the ultrasound, what the other tech had wanted to see was his Diaphragm working out. She wasn't concerned and explained to us that since there is no actual air inside of your tummy, they only play around with exercising this organ. She did catch it moving just a tad, but assured us that he would have passed the test anyway by other means. This was SUCH a relief! So Dr. Sole came by, checked out the ultrasound results, and told us that "he's happy as a clam in there" and if he could, he'd give him an 11 out of 10. WHEW!! No delivering, we could go home today. What a relief.

He didn't make it out of the hospital until about 5PM. Still haven't eaten. So we took my mom to Red Robin and gorged on FOOD!!! I think our day would have gone completely different if we had had a different ultrasound tech to begin with.

Wednesday was a day of rest. What a week.

Thursday, another dreaded (by now) Dr. Appt. We started with an ultrasound...but this time with our usual lady, Carol. We discussed our last appt. with her regarding all the belly-shaking from Tess, the other tech. She said that we aren't the only ones that have complained about that. So we are allowed to request Carol from now on. Dominic passed with flying colors and headed next door to the Dr's office for a quick blood pressure check... which was doing pretty good. WOW! our first appt. under an hour in what feels like months but was really only a week and a half.

That's it! All the updates! We have another appointment tomorrow (Tuesday). I dread these appointments now... :) Will keep everyone posted. I need to catch up on all my other posts.

Inchowrm: 37 wks (Major Updates - NO Preeclamsia)

I guess I should update everyone on our status. I kinda left you hanging after the last post. So last weeks post was I believe how last Thursday (apr. 3rd) went, Friday continues like so...

John and I started at 8AM to get ready for the Dr's office and prepare for whatever the day would give us (possibly delivering little DJ). We had started preparing the night before by washing ALL of the baby clothing in the house...being VERY thankful for little Preston's hand-me-downs from Heidi & Douge, which have filled Dominic's dresser drawers to the brim! We haven't really bought anything clothes-wise yet because I was having my "baby shower" (open house) on Saturday and a lot of people generally buy clothing. Anyway, the only thing we hadn't done was to take a trip to the fire station for our car seat check.

Back to the day...

So off we go with our hospital stuff packed and hoping we won't end the day there. We had an ultrasound scheduled first followed by a doctor appointment. We had just done one two weeks prior to this one and Dominic had been measuring 2-wks on the small side. Which was an additional concern leading to the preeclamsia - which can leave the baby malnutritioned and with less oxygen and bloodflow. That's why they choose to evacuate your baby when you have this condition. So anyway, our results were that Dominic had a huge growth spurt in that two weeks and had grown THREE weeks within that two week period. GOOD NEWS! *sigh* Everything else measured and looked healthy too.

At the Dr. appointment my blood pressure was still up a bit. My regular (low) blood pressure is around 100/60 and I had jumped to 121/98 .... they weren't too happy about that. I think we did more monitoring and another blood pressure check... it's all a blur with this weeks events. They finally let us go, but with strict instructions for bed rest (ugh!) and three appointments for the following week. Our day was still not done.... we had to drop my jug-o-pee off at the hospital at a certain time which we were keeping on ice (haha) on the back seat. So we had some lunch and then off to the hospital. The urine drop off did not go as smoothly as we imagined and John ended up having to wheel me inside on a wheelchair (EMBARRASSING!!) to clear everything up. FINALLY got out of there and on our way home stopped by the Central Point Fire Dept. for the carseat check and install. This went well, I'm going to post separate on it. What an exhausting morning/day.

The Dr. called us that night to let us know that my urine was fine and we weren't at Preeclamsia levels. They were checking the amount of protein going out of my body through urine. I don't know what these numbers mean, but to have preeclamsia you have to hit "300" ... mine was a little high, but not enough to worry about at "180". This made her VERY relieved and we got off the hook for a Sunday run to the hospital to check my blood pressure. yay!

Saturday rolls around, Baby Shower Day. I'll also post separate on that. :) So that takes all day... Then Sunday, just trying to relax... we had scheduled a hike and mountain biking for dad and John ...which of course, I was banned from the hiking. We just went out to my parents and I got to hang out while Dad and John did a bike ride in Grants Pass. Robyn and Paul showed up ... Robyn was a little uncomfortable... more so than normal... and ah-ha!

Now onto this week. Whew! It never seems to stop! We were scheduled for a Tues and Thurs appointments...but lets start with Monday...

Monday morning, 5am rolls around and I get a call from my mom telling me that Robyn's water really broke and she's at the hospital. We had been thinking Robyn would have a long labor, WRONG! Her labor lasted under 2hrs. Lucky duck! I hope mine goes that well. Such a blurry morning though. I didn't sleep well.... after I finally did get up that morning I realized I had a horrendous head cold/sore throat. I was really bummed because I wanted to go visit my new nephew! I still did of course... terrible going in sick, but ohwell. He seems to have survived. ;)

We had them check my blood pressure while I was at the hospital (not the one we're delivering at) and it was like 130/85 ... the numbers had split ways ... we weren't really sure if that was good or bad so we stopped by our dr. office. They just re-checked my pressure and did a quick urine test (my dr. wasn't in that day), said it was OK and we should just come in on Tuesday at our appointment.

I think I'll post this now... I'll continue our Tuesday - 9hr. dr/hospital day and the rest of the week later. Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm alive and well, with no baby yet. :) We're all doing great.

Dominic hits 37 wks today. YAY! We are safe to deliver for sure at any time....

Inchworm: 36 wks / Preeclampsia

Hello everyone, no fun picture this week because I have to keep it short. I'm supposed to be on bed rest now. UGH! seriously lame. We had another hike scheduled for this weekend too! :( muy mal...

Don't be confused... Here's the gist of it, in short...

I had a dr. appt. this morning. Results: Blood pressue (which is normally very low) was VERY high for me so I got red flagged and had to hang out and be monitored. Then I got sent to the hospital for more monitoring and to check out some lab work.... been there ALL DAY.

Luckily I got sent home with a 1/2 gallon plastic container to collect ALL of my pee within a 24hr period. LOL. This is, from what I gathered, to check how much protien is coming out my urine and totally missing going to the baby. The Dr was threatening to induce and have him today if my lab results were crazy. Basically my results indicate that I'm going have a mild form of preeclampsia and I have to be monitored.

I feel JUST FINE and the monitoring of the baby was also fine.

From the Dr. Appt. - I'm dialated to 2cm and my cervix is thinning already which is good that my body is naturally taking that path to birth, but he's not due for another month (may 5th). We do hit 37-wks in well, a week so that would be preferable to wait to have him then. Giving him another week of growth. Oh and his head is and has been down (she felt his head while checking the exit path).

We have another checkup tomorrow starting with an ultrasound and dr appt to follow. So I will have more news tomorrow.... or disappear for a bit if we end up having him. ;)

Reasons the Dr. might send us in to have him would be:

• If the ultrasound displays little or no growth of the baby from the one two weeks ago.
• If my blood pressure still goes crazy (higher I guess?) or if anything weird happens between tonight and tomorrow

I'm strictly on bed rest which I wasn't too disappointed with until they said I couldn't even do very much computer work. grrr... I am also irritated at not being able to go on at least a neighborhood walk because the weather is really fantastic!

So that's it, now I have to get off the computer for the evening... oh wait, here's a link about Preeclampsia

Inchworm: 34wks (re-posted images)

In case your GoogleReader (or you don't use it) does not show that I've updated this post.... I have. The ultrasounds should enlarge now. They still aren't that great, but I think we have to have more this week, maybe tomorrow anyway. Robyn just got some great face shots of her tubby little guy, hopefully they will post them.

Inchworm: 34wks