Big day today **Updated with pics**

Today was a big day. I had one of my now twice-weekly NST/AFI checks at my OBs office. The lion cub did well – he actually stayed on the monitors well this time! And his fluid is still about the same – 6.5. The doc from the big hospital recommended I get steroid shots for his lungs and my OB decided that since there is no harm in doing it he would have it administered today. He said he’d held off before now because babies of mom’s with pregnancy-induced hypertension (aka gestational hypertenstion or PIH) tend to mature faster than babies of mother’s who don’t have it. And given that the baby has been coping well under these conditions for three weeks now, he thought it wasn’t necessary. But since it doesn’t hurt anything we went for it. I have another NST/AFI on Friday afternoon, after our appointment for our car seat installation.

We had our hospital tour tonight. I learned some great things – each room has wireless telemetry so even though I have to be on bp and baby heart rate monitors while laboring, I’ll still be able to get up and be mobile to work through labor. Woohoo! I’ve been concerned about it since I learned we’d most likely be induced a bit early and even if I’m not they will want me to labor in the hospital instead of at home anyway. The hospital has a bunch of birth balls in all sizes for laboring moms. The beds are transformers and allow mom’s to labor in just about any position they want. All the delivery and recovery rooms are private. The rooms for vaginal birth are awesome. The recovery rooms for c-section moms, not so much (way way “cozier”). There is wireless internet access in the lobby but not on the maternity ward. So we can bring the laptop and I’ll be able to write posts and then Dh will have to take the laptop downstairs to post and send emails. It’s not ideal but it is totally doable.

In preparing-for-baby news, I was able to return dupes to both Target (with original receipts) and BRU and get $300 in cash and credits to use to get things we actually need (instead of the 2nd tub, 2nd mobile, 5 extra fuzzy blankets, etc). I did most of my shopping last week and got the last few items yesterday (breast pump parts, basket for dirty clothes, bottles, bath towels, cloth diapers for burp rags). It feels so good to be done shopping! Now I just have to finish organizing.

Part of the shopping involved upgrading our photo and video equipment. Our brand new digital SLR arrived today. Woohoo! It’s so great – I can’t wait to play with it tomorrow. We already had compatible lenses (including a telephoto lens) from our old non-digital SLRs. And we had the right size memory card since we bought one for my brother’s similar camera when we borrowed it for our trip to Paris in October. I’m so excited to have a camera that can handle low light and the need for a fast flash. We regularly miss pictures of the nieces and nephews due to low light and it makes me nutty. I’d go crazy if that happened with our own child.

Last weekend we also got a new video camera. I read about it in the NY.Times and it sounded perfect – pocket sized, no memory cards, disks or tapes and it does really well in low light. It is so small and so easy to use I can’t imagine getting anything else. And it was cheap! We used it at my dad’s 60th bday party last weekend and I was impressed. It has 2g of memory built in, enough for 60 minutes of video and when you are done, you plug it into your computer via the built-in USB. Love it!

I’m also keeping myself occupied with knitting and sewing – for our baby and the babies of my two friends and two SILs who are due at the same time as we are. I’ve cut out two knit blankets and just need to sew them up. And I’m working on embellishing the cloth diapers to make them a bit more fun.


Last week I started and finished a knit cap for our lion cub – I’ve made the same hat at least a dozen times for the kids of our friends and it felt so good to make one we get to keep. But I finished it so fast (waiting for just two appointments), that I had to find a new project to keep me busy while waiting. This came across my blog reader and it is just perfect. But I can’t afford $120 for yarn to make it and none of my local yarn shops carried anything as vibrant in a yarn that was machine washable and dryable (a must for a blanket for a baby I think), so I went to Michael’s and was surprised to find just what I needed.
I bought six skeins of Lion.Brand Wool-Ease Thick and Quick (pumpkin, butterscotch, grass, sky blue, fisherman, and taupe), needles and still spent half the cost of the original yarn. I started it tonight and it is knitting up quick and easy – perfect for waiting for appointments twice a week.

Since things are still looking okay three weeks after I started leave, I’m hoping I can make it four more weeks at least. Partly because my OB is on vacation for two weeks in mid-June and partly because I still have so many little things to make and do before he gets here. And I really want him to be a Cancer (like his dad) so he can wear the super cute onsie we got him at the Gap when we found out he was a boy. I’m greedy like that.