31 Weeks Along (Friday, 12/19/08)

Saturday was my baby shower with my friends given by my best friend Amy at my house. A lot of people didn’t end up attending due to various illnesses but we had a decent turnout and a good time. Amy really outdid herself with a beautiful ‘Welcome Baby’ sign that she drew and colored herself, a Classic Pooh themed décor, and Pooh approved snacks of honey related items. I got a lot of great gifts for the baby. I got a pooh bear bank, a diaper bag loaded with goodies, nesting baskets, pooh clothes, crib sheets, bath supplies, a bathtub, a bath seat, blankets, a gym, bibs including some handmade by my mom, a book, a calendar, a high chair, a spoon, a bowl, a dishwasher basket, sippy cups, a bottle brush, a harness, a soothing crib accessory, a bottle rack, pacifiers, a car seat cover, and lots of cute clothes. Here are some pictures from the event:



getting food under the cute sign Amy painted


the cake


the diaper cake and more


Julie, Meghan, mom, Cate, and Lois playing a game



Cate and Lois


Julie and Meghan


time to open my gifts


adorable bibs handmade by my mom

My dad came with my mom and during the shower, he and Paul put together the changing table that I had Paul get me for Christmas then went to the movies. After the shower, my parents took us out to dinner at Border Cantina to celebrate Paul’s birthday. It was quite a celebratory day.
Sunday was Paul’s actual birthday. He worked on the mural a little and took advantage of the relatively not-so-frigid weather to clean out the garage a little so he could set up his new table saw stand. I gave him his gift of a new work jacket which came in handy in the cold garage. He watched Sunday night football and helped me set up the tree then put lights on it for me. We had delayed putting up the tree until after the baby shower since it greatly decreases the usable space in the living room. I started hanging up the ornaments but Amber was so viciously enthralled with undecorating the tree that I decided to cut my losses in hopes that she would eventually grow sick of the tree as a toy. This has yet to happen.
Monday evening I had the fun pregnancy symptom of my hip pain. I could barely walk and could not bend over to save my life. We went grocery shopping and I had to have Paul get anything that required bending as I limped along leaning on the shopping cart. It took me forever to get back in the car when we were done since I couldn’t bend down. I finally had to drop into a sitting position from standing which resulted in me whacking my head on the top of the car. Not fun! It is so odd because I woke in the middle of the night with it still hurting then by morning it was magically better.
Paul worked on the mural a bit this week, not nearly as much as I wanted him to. He put countless coats of paint onto Pooh, Piglet, and Tigger then was able to shade Tigger. I finally put all of the ornaments onto the tree, concentrating on the branches that Amber can’t reach. Every day when I got home from work I had to rehang the branches and ornaments that she tore down. She should be thankful that she is such a cute cat because she is a pain in the butt sometimes. Thursday was no fun as the brakes on the car started making scary noises on the drive home which resulted in Paul having to finish cleaning out the garage, get new brake parts, and change the brakes in the garage in less than 10 degree weather until midnight. We wanted to get to bed early that night because of the huge winter storm that was forecasted to hit that night but no such luck. We got up really early and navigated the slick and snow covered roads into work on Friday without incident. The hardest part was just getting up the hill on our street. Most of our patients for the day cancelled due to the weather so it was a pretty easy day. I never found out how much snow we got but I assume it was about a foot. Tomorrow we pick up Rachel from the airport for her Christmas break with us. I am glad that she didn’t fly in today. The snow is supposed to hit New York too so hopefully things go okay tomorrow.

News from the womb…
By now, the baby may have a callous on its thumb from sucking it in the womb. The baby sits in the womb in a fetal position with the legs drawn into the chest because there isn’t room for them to straighten out. However, strong methodical movements from the baby continue to be felt. The baby’s brain is still developing rapidly, increasing the number of interconnections between individual nerve cells and identifying groups of cells that will perform complicated functions throughout its lifetime. Rapid ossification of the baby’s skeleton is taking place. The baby can now register information from all five of its senses but after birth, the sense of touch will be the most sensitive and well developed of all of them.

30 Weeks Along (Friday, 12/12/08)

Most of this week was spent with Paul working on the mural while I cleaned the house, finally put up Christmas decorations, and wrapped Christmas presents. I am finally done shopping now. Usually I am done before Thanksgiving or at least by the weekend after but this pregnancy just doesn’t have me in the mood for a whole lot of walking around and shopping. It’s too tiring and too likely to make my feet swell so I have to do it in small increments. Over the weekend we finished putting on the third coat of blue and green and Paul drew and painted Pooh’s house on the left side of the mural wall. He spent hours shading the tree which I thought was crazy until I saw how it turned out. It is amazing! I would have just painted it plain brown and been done but he added highlights and lowlights of many different colors until it looked almost real. He then did another tree during the week in the right corner of the mural wall which extends partially onto the adjacent wall. This tree he shaded amazingly as well. Then he drew and began painting Pooh, Tigger, and Piglet but ran out of time to finish them as it was Friday already. The mural is nowhere near done like I wanted it to be for the shower but it looks so much better than I could ever imagine that I can hardly complain. I have been taking pictures of its progress and will post them when it is all done. Tomorrow is my first baby shower. I am excited.

News from the womb…
The baby’s brain has now begun to take on a wrinkled appearance because of its rapid growth. A wrinkled, or convoluted, brain contains more brain cells than a smooth brain and is potentially more powerful. By now the red blood cell production by the spleen has been taken over by the bone marrow. However, the spleen retains its potential for blood cell formation into adulthood. Myelinization of nerves continues which speeds nerve cell transmissions. Most of the lanugo (the downy hair that covered the baby’s body) has disappeared now except for patches on the back and shoulders. However, the white (as yet unpigmented) hair on the baby’s head is well developed. The baby’s crown to rump measurement is now about 11 inches and its weight is at least 2.75 pounds.

29 Weeks Along (Friday, 12/5/08)

I didn’t sleep well on Friday night worrying that we would miss the alarm at 3:30am. I finally fell asleep around 1:30am to be awoken by choking on a bunch of acid reflux. That is a new one for me. What a horrible, gross, and disturbing way to wake up. It took forever for me to stop choking. I took some Tums, drank a bunch of water, and tried to go back to sleep but then I started wheezing because of all the coughing and the fact that probably some of it got into my lungs so then I had to get up again to use my inhalers. I still had a lot of residual coughing so I think I finally fell back to sleep about 20 minutes before the alarm went off. The very grumpy and sleepy Ryssos left the house about 4:00am to head to the airport. While we waited at the gate for the plane to board, Paul and Rachel worked on their Jonny Quest story while I tried really hard to keep my eyes open. With an unaccompanied minor, she is the first on the plane but we can’t leave the airport until her flight is in the air. That didn’t happen until about 6:45am and we got home around 8:00am. I went straight back to bed but poor Paul was awake by then so he stayed up. I finally got some good sleep which is fortunate because I signed up to work the afternoon shift in the Blood Gas Lab for some more overtime. When I got up to get ready for work, Paul was taking advantage of the nice weather and putting the Christmas lights on the house. He hates this task and his hatred of it was reinforced by all of the problems he encountered. First, only 1/3 of the strand would work and after struggling with it for a while, he decided to just go to the hardware store for new ones. Then he tried to hang the new strand only to find that most of the gutter clips were so old that they were breaking so he had to make yet another trip to the hardware store for more of those. Plus he discovered that the gutters were clogged so he got to clean those as he went. Thus, a half hour job turned into an all-afternoon extravaganza.
Sunday and the rest of the week we began working on getting the nursery painted. My goal is to have it ready by the baby shower that will be at my house on 12/13 which doesn’t give us a whole lot of time but we procrastinators work best under a tight deadline. We repainted three of the walls the same color yellow that they already were. The fourth wall which is the wall you face when you walk into the room is going to be a Winnie the Pooh mural. We worked a lot on the design this week but did manage to get the top half of the wall painted blue for the sky and the bottom half green for the grass. We got delayed a day on our paint buying run due to a lovely blizzard. This weekend Paul will begin the mural portion since I am artistically useless. I am more of a director. I tell him what I want it to look like and he makes it happen.
Lily’s kicks have gotten a lot stronger this week. Unfortunately some of those karate kicks are directed at the bladder. This sends me running for the bathroom even if my bladder is mostly empty. What fun!

News from the womb…
The baby’s brain has reached another milestone. It can now direct rhythmic breathing and control body temperature. This is important because if the baby is born early, the brain can usually stimulate the baby to breath without medical intervention. The baby is becoming mores sensitive to light, sound, taste, and smell. This is preparing the baby to see me, hear my voice, recognize me by smell, and taste the liquid nutrition I will provide. The baby’s eyes are moving in their sockets and the baby is practicing looking. What does it see? Under bright lights or sunlight and without the protection of clothes, the baby’s world may look pinkish as the light shines through my vessels. At night, with clothes, or in a darkened room, it must be dark. The baby is probably aware of changes in light intensity but “pink” is a stimulus that will takes months to perceive since, even at birth, the baby’s color vision apparatus seems to distinguish only among pure reds, greens, and yellows. The surface of the baby’s skin is smoother and whiter as body fat is accumulating under the surface. The fat the baby is putting on is white fat, not the brown fat that is used in temperature regulation earlier in the pregnancy. White fat is insulating and is an energy source.

28 Weeks Along (Friday, 11/28/08)

I am seven months along now!
Saturday we spent the morning cleaning the house then picked up Rachel at the airport. When she gets home she likes to spend time with all of our pets, explore the house for changes, and settle back into her bedroom. Then my parents came over and we all went out to dinner at Red Robin, one of Rachel’s favorite restaurants, to celebrate her being home. Sunday we had a lazy morning then went to the Exhibit Museum of Natural History on U of M’s campus, took a traditional voyage to Wal-Mart to do our grocery shopping, and watched Madagascar on the couch for movie night.
Since Paul and I are saving our time off for when the baby comes, we did not take Monday through Wednesday off to spend with Rachel but instead she spent the days while we were working at her friend Kassiana’s house. The girls had a blast giggling privately, having snowball fights, playing video games, sewing, doing spa treatments, and generally being goofy girls. They are excited to get together again so we may do the same for a few days over Christmas break if her parents are game. We spent the evenings with Rachel mostly talking and watching very old Jonny Quest cartoons that I had gotten Paul for Christmas last year. Paul and Rachel are very into bonding over the cartoons of Paul’s youth and even got the idea over the week to write their own Jonny Quest adventure. They are taking turns with every other sentence with me interjecting every once in a while. The story is going along well and they have plans for many more. My silly kids!
Monday I did my glucose tolerance test and Tuesday I had my monthly OB appointment. He said that my bloodwork was perfect and there was no concern or tendency toward gestational diabetes so that was good news. I lost another 4.5 pounds making a grand total of 10.5 pounds lost since the pregnancy began. My OB is still not concerned because the baby is growing well and getting all that she needs.
Thursday we went to my grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. She is 88 years old but still does everything on her own. What a woman! It was great visiting with her, my parents, my Aunt Robin and Uncle Lee, their kids Ashlee and Todd, Ashlee’s husband Jeremy, and my Aunt Gloria. We spent the night afterward at my parents’ house and watched a movie on their giant screen TV and home theater in the basement which Rachel always loves to do. The next day the girls went shopping, mainly for Christmas presents for Rachel as she is getting harder and harder to buy for in her ‘tween years. The boys stayed home to do a small amount of work on my car then go to the movies. Unfortunately, changing the turn signal in my car turned out to be a giant pain for them so the movie never happened. We had leftovers for dinner then headed home to pack up Rachel for her return trip to New York. Lisa booked her on a 6:15am flight which means that we will have to get up at 3:30am. No one is looking forward to that. The week really flew by but we all had a lot of fun. Poor Rachel had a few meltdowns over loving it here in Michigan and not wanting to return to New York but we reassured her that Christmas would come quickly and she would be back before she knew it to enjoy another holiday with us. In a way, we were also reassuring ourselves as it is never easy to part with her.

News from the womb…
By now, the baby’s body is composed of 2-3% body fat. The baby’s eyelids have unfused and now open partially. The baby’s eyes are completely formed and eyelashes are forming. The baby’s sucking and swallowing skills are improving. The baby now measures about 10 inches in length and weighs 2.13 pounds.