Week 26

Week 25

Diagnosis!

In my post a couple of weeks ago I said to stay tuned for a diagnosis of what's causing my pain, and now I finally have some answers to report!

First of all - the placenta moved up!!  Woohoo!  So we don't have to have a required c-section for that reason anymore and we can proceed normally.  Yay!

And the second good news is that I don't have gallstones!!  YESSSS!!!!  I was starting to really stress about that because they had said I'd have to have surgery when the baby is six weeks old, and that would've interfered with breast feeding and getting my body back to normal and all kinds of things.  So I'm SO relieved about that!!

Turns out I do have hydronephrosis, which is basically swollen kidneys (it's my right kidney).  So it's very painful, but it can be relieved when pressure is lightened.  It helps explain so much!  That's why resting helps SO much, and why I have no appetite, and why it hurts to walk around for very long, ...  Also everything I've read about what helps with hydronephrosis is what's been helping me the most (baths, lying on the opposite side of your affected kidney, etc).  Sometimes you can get a stent put in, but they don't do that as often for pregnant women because it tends to cause more problems than it solves, so I'm not doing that.  So this all makes sense to me and it's great to have an answer that fits!

The best parts about that diagnosis is that
1. it doesn't hurt the baby at all except in extreme cases where you have to deliver early - but that's not my situation,
2. I can start doing a little more as long as I stop and rest when the pain gets bad,
3. this resolves itself after the birth so no surgery or anything like that is needed (yay!), and
4. there is no indication that having this once means you're more or less likely to have it in future pregnancies (whew!).

So I'm feeling good about what's going on.  And my ligament pain has gotten a lot better so that CONSTANT pain is gone finally and downgraded to occasional pain.  So I feel like my pregnancy is becoming more and more normal!  I'm trying not to be too resentful that my 2nd trimester was the worst when most people say that's when you feel the best... I feel robbed of that 2nd trimester bliss people talk about!  Oh well :)  Only a couple more weeks until my 3rd trimester starts!  Crazy!  And I'm already starting to understand what people are talking about when it comes to 3rd trimester because I am u-n-c-o-m-f-o-r-t-a-b-l-e!!!!  But anyway, like I said, it's so great to have that constant awful pain lessen to a tolerable point.  It's nice to feel normal, even if normal is uncomfortable!  :)  I'm starting to think the rest of this pregnancy may just go okay.  Maybe we'll have a March baby after all???  We'll see!  :)

Baby Shower!

Today was my baby shower!  My amazing friend Chanel threw my baby shower for me and I was SO impressed!!  She put so much work into all the details and I LOVED everything about it!  We decided to do it early because we were in the planning stages of the shower when my doctor was being very intense about possible pre-term labor and January seemed like the time the baby would come.  We didn't want to interfere with the holidays, so we planned it for just before Thanksgiving to be safe.

It was such a great shower!  I was particularly hurting this morning and Chanel has a fabulous new recliner that I got to sit in the whole time so I was very comfortable and made it through just fine.  I think I might just go live in her recliner for a few days...it was sooo comfortable... and such a life saver!  :)  I felt a little bad that sitting in one place prevented me from circulating and talking with everyone there an equal amount, but I think everyone understood and we all had a great time :)

We played a super clever game of Concentration where the prizes perfectly coordinated with the words (if you matched "breast-feeding" you got a Milky Way, if you matched "epidural" you got LifeSavers, if you matched "conception" you got a Skor, etc. - haha! so cute!).  Then we had a super yummy spaghetti lunch and there were delicious desserts as well!  The blackberry lime squares were AMAZING (and purple!!!) and the cupcakes were SO good!!  (with purple sprinkles!)  :)  The water bottles even had cute labels that said "Robinson 2013" or "Baby Girl" - how awesome can you get??  Then we played the Name Game where everyone listed girl names for the whole alphabet and hoped no one else guessed their name.  I actually took notes because there were some really cute names that people came up with and we haven't named the baby yet!  :)

There was a table near the door where people could write down advice for me on one paper, and then address an envelope to themselves as well (for mailing thank you cards!).  We drew from the basket of envelopes so someone got a prize.  Then Chanel took all the advice cards and put them in a photo book to give me.  I read them all out loud and then picked my favorite and that person also got a prize!  It was so fun!  There was some great advice too :)

Then we opened gifts!  People got me such nice things - I loved it!  A few of the cards had long notes in them and I didn't want to make everyone wait for me to read them so I waited until I got home to read them all.  And it is a GOOD THING I did because I was totally crying while reading those sweet messages from my friends!!

The best part was the great people that showed up!  So many people commented to me about what a great group of people we had there.  A lot of people from the ward came, a couple of my coworkers were there (current and former), and my aunts, cousin and Grammy came!!  We had a great turn out - probably 18 people or so.  I was just so incredibly impressed by Chanel and all the amazing things she did to make my baby shower so special.  And I know a few other awesome people helped her out and I'm so grateful!  Everyone who was there was so sweet to come and make it such a great day!

My one sad thing is I didn't think to get a photo with me and Chanel!!  :(

Here's a ton of photos that my cousin took!  :)

 

 

 

 

Can you tell we had a great time??  :)

Love this awesome lady!!!

THANK YOU CHANEL!!!  :D

Selling and Buying our Cars!

Well we had quite the week when it comes to cars!  Aaron and I both said good-bye to our cars that we love and had as our own before we got married.  It was bittersweet.  We were relieved to finally get them sold so we can get a family car, but it was hard to say good-bye!

We've had three cars for awhile now (long story).  We have Aaron's Solara, my Nissan, and my Prius.  Aaron bought his Solara when he got his first job after college, I bought my Nissan while we were engaged, and we bought the Prius together within the last year to replace my dying Nissan.  The plan has been to eventually sell my Nissan, and then once the baby comes Aaron was going to commute with his Solara while I used the Prius that we bought for me.  Aaron and I were commuting together so we drove my Prius together pretty much every day (hello, at 49mpg how could we drive anything else?!).  But since I've been having to stay home and not drive, Aaron hasn't wanted to transition back to his car because he LOVES my Prius.  So he's been driving that every day.  It's all high-tech so he can talk to it and tell it to set the temperature or navigate to the house or whatever else.  Recently he decided he wants to keep it long term, so he suggested we sell his car so he could keep the Prius instead, and we could get a small SUV for me so that I have more room for groceries and a stroller and all of that "stay-at-home mom" stuff.  I love my Prius too, but I'm pretty sure Aaron has fallen more in love with it than me and it makes sense for him to have the better gas mileage for commuting, so I agreed.  And let's face it - when Aaron is happy, I'm happy.  So if my Prius makes him happy, he can have it :)

Thus began all the car selling and buying!

So Aaron sold his "bachelor car" Toyota Solara.  Aaron was sad to see it go because he's had a great experience with that car, but he's barely driven it in the last few months and he wants to be able to put our baby in his car too (not happening with a 2-door coupe!) so he was ready to say good-bye.  We sold it to a really great couple that live nearby and it was a great selling experience where everyone walked away feeling good :)  I am bummed that we didn't get a photo of Aaron in front of the car though!  I planned to get one but I was out of the house when he sold it.  When I got back and mentioned it to him he was disappointed he hadn't thought of that.  But the couple lives close by so maybe we can sneak over and get a picture sometime!  ;)  Just kidding.

I sold my Nissan Sentra (my "Angie" car).   I love that car!  It was falling apart though so it just wasn't safe anymore.  I sold it to a mechanic so he can fix it up and use it as a commuter car.  It worked out well in the end.  But I was surprised how hard it was to hand over the keys!  :(

So we actually sold both of our cars on the same day (same hour too - how funny is that!?) and that was Wednesday.  (and a huge THANK YOU to Jeanette for giving me multiple rides to sell my car!)

Then today we drove up to this awesome little dealership a few minutes north and took a second look at a Toyota Rav4 that we had liked a couple weeks ago.  It's in really great shape and very well-maintained.  They had dropped the price as a Thanksgiving sale so it was a really good deal and we both felt good about it - 

so now we own a Toyota Rav4!!!  

We love it!  We're really excited about our first "family car" and even more excited about paying cash for a car for the first time!  That felt very good.  So we're really excited!  It's fun to have two cars that we both jointly own, instead of our individual cars we had the first few years we were married.  And we can put a car seat in either one!  We had a really great experience at the dealership so if you are local and looking for a great deal from some honest guys, we highly recommend Happy Trail Motors off of I-25 and Hwy 66.  So now we own a Toyota Prius and a Toyota Rav4 - can you tell we're Toyota fans?  :)

Here are a few photos from the dealership of our Rav4...

It's crazy to me to think this is the car where I'll have a car seat in the backseat and a stroller in the back, .... so weird!  Sometimes I still can't believe this is all happening!  This will be an adventure for sure  :)