I wanted to chronicle all the many interesting and challenging physical/medical things I have experienced during this pregnancy.  I have struggled so much with feeling like I am complaining all the time; and have asked God repeatedly to give me joy when I have felt my worst.  This baby that is coming soon will be a grand blessing, and I know all these crazy things will be forgotten, or at least greatly minimized.  But I just gotta write ’em down, since it has been such a different journey than with my other two.

Starting from the beginning of the pregnancy:

• Intense nausea (for 4 months)
• Insomnia (the entire time)
• Ptalysis (excessive bad-tasting spit production, for 4 mo’s)
• Sciatica (down my left leg, entire time)
• Low belly aches due to baby sitting very low; needing to wear belly belt almost constantly (starting at 4 mo’s)
• Intensely painful low cramping/spasms, initially thought to be pre-term labor, later thought to be possible kidney stones (peri-natal hospital visits at 25 and 34 weeks)
• Very strong Braxton-Hicks (much more than other pregnancies, starting at 7 months)
• Hips ‘opening’ – such that sometimes my legs don’t quite move where I want them to go (like a pirate with a peg leg, in this last month)
• Overall feeling that someone traded my body in for a 90 year old body!

She’s been taking classes for about 5 months, at the Curtis Dance School, which is only a block away.  Max has been my awesome go-to-guy; he walks her there and then goes to get her and walk her home.  This has been very helpful in recent months, when the idea of me walking even a block is hard.

Lucy did so well in her recital; she had seemed quite nervous about it, but she was one of the most energetic ones in her class during the show.  Lots of smiles, big kicks and movement – quite the beginning little ‘ham’ (wonder where she gets that from?).  She also totally loved wearing blush and lipgloss.

We called her the beautiful yellow banana girl!

With best friend Emma – super fun that they are in the same class.

My Carpinteria Blockbuster (which we parked in front of today) had a huge window poster up for the video game called ‘Kick A**’.  I was very disturbed at this, and walked calmly into the store and talked to the 2 twenty-something guys working.  I said (I tried to be nice and non-abrasive), "I have young kids, and this poster here really offends me, you guys.  We’re trying to teach them to have clean speech, and this really makes my job harder.  Would you please consider taking it down?"  And they said yes, and removed it right in front of me. 
So yea! one small victory for decency.  And here’s hoping they didn’t put it back up when I drove away…

So, because we had our nice church clothes on, and Mommy didn’t look like a train wreck, we used the timer on our camera and took lots of pictures.  Yes we had to take 800 to get a few decent ones, as there are goofy children who like to make goofy faces.  Here’s some of the best:

Well, never a dull moment in this pregnancy, huh?!  It turns out that the pain I was experiencing was not actual pre-labor contractions, but possibly kidney related.  I had blood in my urine, and so my doc says the pain could have been a small kidney stone that may or may not have passed.  So, I have meds for further pain, and drank more water today than should be humanly possible, to ‘flush me out.’ 

Baby is fine and hopefully will stay cooking inside me for several more weeks.  I feel blessed to have such a helpful hubby, and our good friends the Allens who watched our kids from 2:30 am on, and the sweet nurse Sherry, and that we were in and out of the ER in about 2 hours.