29 weeks

Well, I survived 9.5 days of my mother visiting. We had the usual mood swings and she showed zero interest in the hypnobirthing lessons we went to. I'd hoped she'd read the textbook while hanging out bored at our apartment, but nope. Now I'm worried that if we let her into the delivery room, she'll not be all that knowledgable about how we want to do things. I guess she'll get kicked out pretty quickly if she's there and misbehaves.
I also told her that we want to have the first week at home to ourselves to settle in together. I figure letting her be at the delivery and be in town while we're in hospital will be OK, and then away she goes after that. After about 3-4 weeks (depending on baby's arrival date), she'll be away for a month on vacation, which might have been more when I'd be needing her help as DH gets busy busy at work again. Guess we'll play it by ear.
Our car seat is waiting for us to pick it up at the post office. And I'm sad because the great deal I found on the Up.paBab.y isn't so great - if purchased in the US, the warranty isn't completely valid in Canada. If there's a problem, you have to pay for shipping of all replacement parts across the border. I'm not sure if that's a big issue or not, but it has me scared enough that we may have my Dad buy it for us here, even though it's way more expensive. If they declare a value on replacement parts and we have any issues, paying the shipping, customs and taxes could rapidly add up.
As far as the house stuff goes, we're meeting with the first contractor to provide a quote tomorrow morning to sign a contract. He was very nice, seemed reliable, and does a ton of work with our designer and our realtor and her clients. So that makes me think that if anything's not up to par, he'll have real incentive to fix it, since future work will be on the line. He can also start a little sooner than the other contractor, which might give us a hope of getting things done before the baby arrives. Unfortunately, the second contractor's quote (which we waited over 2 weeks to get) was over 20% less than the first guy's. But at this point we don't trust him to follow through on things or to get things done in a timely fashion, given the way this has dragged on. If only we'd gotten a third quote like I wanted to do - DH insisted two quotes would be enough.
I can't decide if we should ask my mother for a dark brown stained or a white-painted crib. Here's a shot of the bedroom as it currently is (current owner). Crib will go against the wall with the headboard on it. I'm planning to use one of our current dressers (Ikea beech colour) in the nook between the closets and the doorway. The floor is a warm dark brown, the blinds more cherryish in colour. I like that you can see the grain of the wood through a dark stain, but I wonder if white might not look better given the white trim, white closet doors?? We're not getting fancy with bedding - white sheets will be on the bed. And where he's got that long low dresser, we're going to have a twin bed for future use, or for me to sleep on if I ever need to stay in with her. What do you think?
This is the crib we like, though we'd get plain white or stained brown, not the distressed antique white.
Other than that, I think we've got most of the initial baby stuff we need.
Here's the 28w (left) and 29w (right) sucked-in belly shots. I couldn't figure out how to download them from my new camera last week, so I'm posting two weeks worth at once today.
Thank you God for getting me to 29 weeks with a long and closed cervix and a healthy baby!

The good: 28w tomorrow. The bad: still only one quote for the basement reno.

I'm getting desperately frustrated with this house stuff. I finally heard from our agent today, and she had not heard back from the seller's agent or his office. The second contractor hasn't been in touch since Monday (today was when he was going to try to go by again). Somehow I'm guessing that he won't have gotten in, and we'll be left tomorrow with no second offer to compare the first one to.

At this point, we have no hope in hell of getting any other name and then getting them into the house far enough in advance to enable us to get this done before baby. Looks like we'll decide tomorrow to go with contractor #1. Might end up telling him that we'd like to try to keep it around our $25000 budget (he'd quoted around $29000), and whether we'll be able to work with him to figure out any ways that we'll be able to pare back the price a little. I must talk to our designer tomorrow about this after I've tried contacting contractor #2 and then our real estate agent to see if she's had any success. I get the feeling that she didn't pursue the other agent's office too forcefully to get anything worked out, which makes me regret that I didn't call her again yesterday to bug her. And regret (again) that I somehow inadvertently pissed the seller off.

The good news for the day is that we're 28 weeks tomorrow, the babe was very very active today with lots of reassuring kicks, and we managed to get Ama.zon to refund us $51 on a DVD box set that was on for a one day sale today, and that we purchased for $51 more all of 6 days ago for my SIL for Christmas. All I did was call and explain that I'd just bought it, the price had fallen significantly, and we'd been wondering if they had any sort of price match policy in a situation like this. Without further ado, she checked out the price difference, and said as a one-time deal, she'd refund us the difference. At least my day ended on a happy note in that respect!

House stuff is going to do me in!

I phoned the second contractor on Monday for an update. Got an email back late that night saying that he'd gone to the house last Thurs and no one had answered the door. My biggest fear realized. Had I only kept my fingers off my email for another few hours, we might have been ok. He said he'd try again this Thursday, but really, time's slipping away from me and I want to get this booked.
I contacted my realtor to see if she can help facilitate the visit to make sure it happens this week. Still no sign of the plans/drawings/permits/surveys. I'll have to call her again today to see what's going on. I hope things all work out.
I guess worst case scenario is that we book the contractor we have the quote from, who's redone our real estate agent's house and multiple other places for people I know, who works a lot with our designer, and who I've been assured usually has a good price and does great work. At least with him I feel like we have some pull - if he screws anything up, he's going to be motivated to fix it to our satisfaction in order to continue being recommended by our agent and designer. This other guy? Not so much. I just really really want to have another number in hand to just be sure we're in the right ballpark. It's too bad DH hadn't wanted me to find a third contractor to give us a quote, or they'd have already been through with us and we'd have a means for comparison.
Oh well. It's probably worth a couple thousand dollars extra (possibly) to get the work done in the exact time frame we want it done in, so that I'm not dealing with hammering and a screaming newborn at the same time. I want to have it all decided by the end of this week - we'll see what happens. Just pray it's the right decision!
On a more positive note, my mother's visit is going well so far. And she's planning to buy us our car seat and a crib. And will do the legwork on the crib for us - we're supposed to give her a good idea of the style and colour we're looking for, and she'll make sure it arrives. Sounds fantastic to me! She gave me a great diaper bag from LeS.portS.ac for my birthday along with some other cute things. Blankie, onesies, night light. And she brought along an album she'd made up of my childhood photos, and has written up my baby and childhood history too, which I might just have to read this afternoon. Interestingly, she'd always gone on in the past about how my brother was 2 weeks less premature than me (I'm a 34 weeker), but he'd been the sickly one. And she felt so bad that she had to give up breastfeeding him for some reason at 3-4 months. Well, looking back through her notes on me, I supposedly had tons of ear infections and was constantly sick, and she gave up feeding my at 3-4 months because she got pg with him. Hm. All those years of favouring him a little because he was the "delicate one" - apparently not necessary!

House stress

I guess I pissed off the seller, who'd let us contact him by email with questions over the last month. We asked for all the surveys/permits/plans/mechanical drawings etc for the house last week (had tried to get them a month ago, but didn't specifically ask for each thing that had been outlined in our purchase agreement). Got an email back saying that he knew he had them, but they were in storage somewhere and would take a while to find. There was no time frame given on how long that would be.
So yesterday I decided to follow up and ask one quick question while I was at it. I just asked him how long he thought it was going to be before he got his hands on them. The email that came back said something to the effect of 'I'm insanely busy, have no time, and to be honest, finding them will be a "last minute detail".' I risked his ire by writing back to ask whether by that he meant sometime in Jan (like a week before we close), and sure enough, no response, but his agent called our agent to ask that we not contact him directly again.
Figures. He'd offered to let us in to the house extra times if necessary, been very open with info, and had been very helpful thus far. Up until the point where it would be really inconvenient for him.
I sure hope he still lets in the contractor that he'd used previously who was going to check things out today to give us a second quote on the reno work. Pray for me that I haven't shot myself in the foot on that one!

Thank God, I can start getting back to work!

I had another appointment today. The kid got me a little worried because she was so quiet this morning and while I was waiting for my turn. She finally started moving a little more just before I got called in for the ultrasound.

BP: 110/78. Weight 71.5kg (started at 62.5). She looked good on the scan, now up to the 35th percentile (from 27.5th last time), weighing in at a guestimated 933g, or just over 2 pounds. Lots of amniotic fluid (I'd been a little worried fluid might have been leaking cause my belly isn't big, and I've had some very liquidy oozing from the progesterone suppositories at times), I think the AFI was above 16. As far as I know, the umbilical artery doppler showed good flow.

She was kind of obliquely positioned, with her head on the lower left, and her butt and legs up on the upper right. Any time my uterus has tightened up the last couple days, I've had a huge bulge on the upper right - very lopsided.

For the first time, they didn't measure her heartbeat during the scan (or measure it with a doppler), so I guess everything else was looking good enough that they didn't have to worry.

Then the moment of truth: my cervix is still at 5cm! I'm just so grateful. Dr S told me he'd take me off progesterone tonight if he thought I'd do it, but that he really wants me off it by 28 weeks. I'm not sure why, and didn't really ask. I decided that I'll cut back to 200mg at night (from twice a day) for now and see how it goes for about 1.5 weeks before considering going off it entirely. I don't have a problem with the supplements, and I'm not overly worried that they're doing bad things to my baby. I also aced the 1h glucose tolerance test (1h glucose = 5.6), so no worries about gestational diabetes here, despite the PCO history. Yay! I'd hate to have to follow a diet.

So I've been cleared to go back to work! I've got 3 days next week, and then 3-4 days the week after. I'm really looking forward to it. One of the OR desk clerks was so sweet when I phoned in to say I can work again - she said she'd just been asking if anyone had heard from me that morning, and was so relieved to hear all is well. I love my workplace. It's like a big happy family for the most part.

We're still waiting for quotes on the basement reno. Sounds like $29000 is one of them. We'd been hoping for more like $20000, based on what our designer had guessed. We'll see what the other quote comes in at - should have it by Friday, I hope.

Mover is picked, dates booked, service elevator reserved.

Car decision is slowly getting there. DH wants to get it asap (which means it'll arrive in March). I'd be happier if we got it in May, just before I go back to work. Or even later than that. Really, I can't see either of us driving it much when I'm off work and he's working from home. He seems to think that we won't be able to handle grocery shopping with a baby without it. Winters here haven't been so horrible lately, and I think I'd be fine to pack her in a sling, bundle up, and take my little shopping pull-cart (if you know what I mean) the 8 blocks to the grocery store. I'll enjoy the exercise. We'll see who wins this argument.

House insurance is down to two companies, and we're waiting on their quotes to arrive by mail to review the fine print and come to a decision.

House alarm is another question. Do we get cellular backup installed for $200-250 and pay the additional monthly monitoring fee, or do we cave in and get a cheap landline? We've lived with cell phones and no land line for 5 years, and it's been great. TV and internet provider is another question too. Guess I'll start calling around and organizing that next week.

But for now, despite all the uncertainties about house stuff, I'm a very happy camper. 27 weeks on Friday, cervix holding strong despite the continued tightenings, and a baby that's growing on track. Thank you God - I never thought I'd get this far when all started up at 16w2d.

26 weeks

Whew - made it safely to 26 weeks. Though this means a sigh of relief, I'll feel much much better after 28 weeks. Just pleast God let us make it there! Some nice ultrasound reassurace of no changes to my cervix would be helpful, but I won't get that till Dec 2nd. The belly seems to have really popped this week.

And I'm getting a little freaked about the move. I hope everything goes smoothly. Seems the decisions keep mounting: mover who'll do it in two days (we've got stuff 2.5 hours away that needs to be taken out of storage and my mother's basement, plus the stuff in the apartment) with 2 men at $80/h, vs mover who wants to do it all in 1 day with 3 men for $96/h, but who I think probably underestimated the amount of time it'll take them. I wonder if two men can safely get an upright piano up 12 basement steps?

Add to that: car, carseat, alarm company, telephone/internet, contractor, crib, new mattress... I'm overwhelmed!

I'm getting old

Today I turn 35. It's hard to believe that I'm this old, and still live in a rented apartment, without a car, and with no baby. I guess at least I'm happily married! And thank God, I finally have a baby on the way. Advanced maternal age, here I am!
We're not doing much today. We'll probably watch some TV, DH will cook dinner, and he got us tickets to the symphony for later in Dec.
We'll need to pick our mover and get them booked, and I've got to try to get hold of the contractor who didn't end up making it on Monday so that we can at least get a quote from him for the work to be done on the new house. It's so sad - I love the place, but when we went through with the other contractor on Monday, we realized that there's only one air return vent working/installed in the entire house. There's one between the kitchen and living room that doesn't appear attached to anything, nor do I really know if there's duct work behind it. The bedrooms have none in them at all. I hope it's not going to be a huge issue, and that we'll be able to figure out some way to fix the problem without ripping up the whole house and paying an arm and a leg for it.
I hope we'll be able to take the car we want to buy for a test drive to one of the baby stuff stores to try out car seats in it. So far, we're not sure if either of our potential car seats will fit in it, and if they don't we'd better look for a different car instead. So many decisions and challenges these days!
Yesterday I had quite a number of tightenings again, doesn't seem as bad today so far. I really need this baby to flip over and get over kicking my cervix though - it's just not that fun!
ETA - and now I just got a call from our lawyer post title search. He thinks we may get stuck paying for a survey of the property for the title insurance, and that that could run us about $1000. Great.
And my great deal stroller from the US may not be such a great deal, once you add in brokerage fees for the courier. Hm. Might just preorder in Canada at this rate.