34 weeks and more great news!

We had our weekly visit this morning to check on the progress of Mom and baby. We got to meet with Dr. Olson again after not seeing her the past three times, what a relief! The news is all VERY good news, so we were thrilled and somewhat relieved leaving the doctors office today. We started out with the non-stress test on the baby and again, she passed and is proving to be doing great. My blood panel came back perfect as did my urine check for protein. Even my blood pressure was right where it should be today...super great news!

So, that being said, Dr. Olson said that as long as we continue down this path that she is willing to keep meeting weekly and even see about keeping the baby in there a little longer, so she mentioned that we will keep monitoring and potentially extend the "due date" to sometime between 37-39 weeks. Even though this seems like they are giving us two more weeks of pregnancy it is actually an awesome feeling to hear them say they are that confident that everything is okay. And it puts me one step closer to having a natural birth instead of an induction, which I am great with!

Of course I still need to keep up the good work of allowing my body time to rest and making sure that Mom and baby stay healthy, so they will keep me on the restricted activity, but it obviously seems to be working its magic, so I won't complain!

The hardest thing is the lack of human interaction during the day, but friends and family have been great and meeting me out for lunch or dinner here and there to get me out of my four walls and to humor me and tell me the latest news, etc! The days when I don't have the "treat" of getting out of the house, by the time Mike gets home I am about bouncing off the walls!

All in all everything is really good from our corner of the world! We are again so thankful that we had such a great appointment and thank God that everything seems to be going so well! The goal is to have a happy, healthy Mom and baby and we are happy to report that, that is exactly what we have!

A Great Day!

Today we had a follow-up doctor's appointment, we will be meeting with the doctor weekly now until the baby is born. I had to do another 24 hour urine collection yesterday leading up to my appointment, we dropped that off for lab and then went straight into my Non-Stress Test for the baby. Once again, she passed with flying colors! We then went in to meet with Dr. Bemus, another doctor on our rotation. He said all looks great, my blood pressure is where they want it and the baby is doing really well...so we got clearance for another week of limited activity, he said "keep doing what you are doing!"

I am so relieved by that news considering I got myself all hyped up about going in and "flunking" my first week of instruction. It was so nice to hear that both of us are doing great and that everything seems to be paying off. They are still planning on taking the baby early, the week of the 13th, it is much better to deliver a healthy baby with a healthy Mom than to risk infection, so we are a-ok with that call! I am hoping next week when we meet with Dr. Olson again we will have a firm date set as to when we can expect this little girl!

When walking out of the doctor's office I got a phone call from the delivery company that they were heading to our house to deliver the crib!!! YAY! I got home and sure enough they were waiting out in the driveway for me to let them in the house. About 30 minutes later they had the crib all situated in the room and they were gone! What a slick deal!

It truly completes the room and is SO beautiful. It was somewhat emotional for me considering it is the last piece of furniture that we needed. We are still waiting on the bedding, so that is the last of the furnishings. We will of course do some art and pictures as we continue to go along, but we are in no huge hurry at this point!

I am so thankful to say that things are on the right track, everyone is healthy and happy, and we are one step closer to being "ready" to bring this baby into the world!

Showered...with love!

This week I had two baby showers! My first shower was thrown by my co-workers (also very dear friends). Shannon, Noelle, Jennifer and Carissa all put together a beautiful shower at Shannon's house on Wednesday evening! They did an amazing job matching the pink & green motif that the nursery is done in...down to the M&M's!

The company was great and the food was amazing! We got awesome gifts to take home and incorporate into the nursery: diapers, wipes, sound machine, tummy time mat, baby sling, bottles, blankets, toys, outfits, etc. (where will we put it all?)!

It is always so nice to get together outside of work, it gets hard to coordinate schedules, so I thank everyone so much for coming, it really means a lot to have such great people to work with that I can also call good friends!

Saturday was my "girls" shower at Cibo! My closest girlfriends: Taylor, Monica, Racquel and Jackie put together a wonderful shower!

This shower too had wonderful food and they did an awesome job putting together the finest of details...even handing out my very favorite candy as a little shower gift to the guests...Cadbury Mini Eggs (yum)!

We got another big load of baby gear to take home: outfits, diapers, wipes, blankets, bath time stuff, night light, picture frames, books, pack n' play, toys, and even a diaper cake (with over 100 diapers in it)! And not to forget...cowboy boots & her very first horse! The girls got us a gift certificate to a photo studio to get us started when the baby arrives...GREAT gift, that is definitely one that will last a lifetime.

It was so great to have all of my closest friends (and family) there to help me celebrate the arrival of this new girl into the circle...I can only hope she has the type of friends that I do when she grows up! I said this at the shower and I truly mean it, the real gift is the love and support from my family and friends as I enter into motherhood and Mike and I take this next step in our lives...we truly couldn't do it without you all!

Slowing down...a bit!

Mike and I found ourselves at the doctor's office again today after the results of my urine collection and blood work were in. We learned that they were pleased with my results and that I am maintaining a very healthy pregnancy. With that being said, they want me to continue to maintain a healthy pregnancy and my blood pressure spiking a bit has warranted them to put me on a restricted activity plan. They have ruled out preeclampsia at this point, but with the elevation in my blood pressure they don't want to take any chances. When you have preeclampsia they say that the blood pressure reading will not go down once it has gone up, in my case once I take a deep breath and count to 10 and they recheck it, it goes down, which is very encouraging.

I am still able to work...from home and still run a few errands, have a dinner out here and there, everything in moderation. It is by no means a chained to the bed, bed rest situation, it is precautionary so we don't run into any problems as we get closer and closer to delivering the baby. When she was talking about limiting my activity she realized that I was getting anxious and reassured me that this is not something to be concerned about, that again, they are just wanting to give me the best odds of not having that blood pressure start to climb and not come back down which in turn could put either me or the baby into an unfavorable situation.

I was alarmed at first, but as we talked through the situation with the doctor again and again, I came to realize how lucky we are to have a doctor that is really looking out for what is best for both me and the baby. This is by no means a terrible situation and one we can deal with very easily, I am thankful for the ability to keep working so I can stay busy...otherwise I would be scaling the walls by day 4!

They have also determined that they will induce us if we haven't gone already when we are 37 weeks, so we will for sure be at least 3 weeks earlier than our due date of May 5th. This also freaked me out a little, but the doctor said that at 37 weeks they are considered full term and at that point the babies are just putting on pounds and inches, so as long as she is hefty enough they are going to go ahead and schedule an induction around the week of April 13th. We need to get ourselves in gear and get some things done before that week arrives...it is definitely forcing us to prepare a little faster than we thought, but we are excited to know she will be joining us in the very near future...right about 4 weeks!

Mike is already practicing his Dad skills and will make sure that I obey the doctor's orders 100%...no worries there! We will still be out and about here and there, but we will just have to make some adjustments to how much and how fast we go all the time, in the long run I know it will be good for us all and it is good practice since you shouldn't be going like crazy with a newborn!

We are both so thankful to know that everyone is happy and healthy and that we have a great team of medical professionals looking after us...we much rather be proactive than reactive. It isn't exactly what we expected, but we are okay with how everything is proceeding and have faith in the fact that everything happens for a reason.

32 Week Check-up and more...

It has been awhile since we last checked in and boy have we been busy!

We had our 32 week check-up today and everything looks great! Baby Girl Eddins is growing right on track, she has a strong heartbeat of 155 and she is head down, let's hope and pray she stays that way! We met with Dr. Messenger on our rotation and she was very nice! Mommy had a very small spike in my diastolic reading on my blood pressure. They came back in and re-tested me and everything went down, but considering I have been right on track with my blood pressure they didn't want to ignore anything, so they put me on at 24 hour urine collection in which they will perform an analysis of when I turn it in. They reassured both Mike and I that they do not foresee any issues at all, especially since my sample this morning didn't have any protein in it, but considering we are SO close to delivering they want to be sure everything is 100% and not take any chances.

This last Friday I was able to take the day off and head to Iowa City with my Mom, Jen, Celia and Ruby to enjoy a girls day of lunch and shopping! It was a beautiful day, we didn't even have to schlep coats around! We started out by stopping at Mom's house to meet Etta and see Echo and Ezra!

We then took off for Iowa City! We had lunch at Graze, shopped at Dulcinea and then on to Coral Ridge! At Coral Ridge the girls rode the carousel, did Build a Bear and we ended the day with an ice cream cone and watched some ice skating! It really was a great day, we don't get to do it all that often with conflicting schedules!

We have been putting together the nursery slowly but surely. Mike spent some time a few weekends ago putting in new shelving in the closet, which was quite the project, but in the end I know he was very proud of himself! We got some cute baskets to help us better organize and believe it or not things are starting to fill up!

We also received the changing table/dresser (Luca is happy to help show off the new piece of furniture) which was pretty exciting and we got word that the crib has officially shipped, so any day now for that! Amazing to think that in a few short weeks we will have a baby to actually bring home to enjoy all this stuff!