Family Visits

It is amazing how quickly this first month with Max has gone by and I feel like they will only go by more quickly.  I will eventually blog about Max's birth.  He was born on a Wednesday evening and Marc and I got to go home the following Friday.  My parents made it up for the birth and my mom was able to stay for several days afterward to help us get settled in.

Max's crib had not yet come in so as soon as we got home Marc had to make an emergency trip to Target to get a pack n play, baby monitors, sheet, etc.  Max spent his first night in his nursery, but in the crib.  I can't remember all the details of his first night, but he seemed to sleep pretty well.  The following morning the crib and dresser were delivered and we were able to get his nursery all put together.

We had lots of visitors in Max's first month.  After my mom left, Scott (Marc's twin brother), Jessica and Dean all came up and Max had his first cousin meeting.  It was SOOO nice to see them.  We just did a lot of hanging out around the house and it was fantastic to spend some good quality time together.  We miss the luxury of just being able to pop over to their house in Little Rock.

They brought a Mickey's cake (our very favorite) for baby Max and it was eaten rather quickly.  Here are some pictures from their visit.

Max getting to meet Auntie J and cousin Dean

Dean wanted to help push baby Max

On a stroll in our neighborhood

Max is already ready to get into his first Mickey's cake!

After Scott, Jessica and Dean drove back to Arkansas it was only a few days until my mom came back and my older sister came for their visit.  Mary E. (my sister) was fantastic and came up here to get Max on a schedule and help me figure things out with my new boy.  She also brought up her newest boy, Tull, who is just 5 months older than Mr. Max.  We had fun with our two boys and Mary E. helped me learn tricks on how to soothe Max and many, many other things.  She even stayed up with me when he was fussy and came to hang out with me at the 1am and 4 am feedings!  I still call her ALL the time with questions.  We had a great time with everyone and I was so thrilled to meet my newest nephew.  He looked so big compared to Max!

Our next visitors were Marc's parents who came for Thanksgiving.  We got most of our meal catered from Whole Foods (thank goodness).  It turned out really well and was much easier.  We made macaroni and cheese and pumpkin pie, but everything else we picked up and heated up!  

Max with his Thanksgiving turkey.

The vegetarian Thanksgiving meal (there was turkey, just not on my plate!)

Our most recent visitor was my mom--her third trip up since Max's birth.  I am SO grateful that my mom can come up so frequently.  There is nothing better than having your mom around! :)  While she was up she kept Max so I could go meet with my assistant program director for my 6 month review and she kept Max so Marc and I could go out to eat for our 4th wedding anniversary.  Poor mom was sick while she was here, so she walked around with a bottle of hand sanitizer and a mask and didn't get to hold Max at all!  She will get lots of time later though!

So Max had a very busy month of visitors, not including friends who have stopped by, which we are also grateful for!  

More to come later

Bed Rest

I am trying to catch up a bit on blogging, and although there aren't many readers, I think it will be a good way for me to try to remember things!

From my last post, it is pretty evident that my pregnancy always fell into the "high risk" category, therefore I knew bed rest was always a possibility, but it came somewhat unexpectantly.  I went to my normally scheduled OB appointment (32 weeks, but was just at 33 weeks)--was a little bit late as far as weeks go because I had been on an inpatient peds month and just couldn't go to the doctor.  I was so excited to get a peak at our little guy on ultrasound since I had growth ultrasounds at every single appointment due to my high risk for growth restriction in our little guy.  It was always so reassuring to see our little man and to see how big he was getting. He was always measuring 2 weeks ahead of my due date with weight in the 80th percentile and HC > 97th percentile, so we figured the risk for growth restriction was long past us.  Ultrasound looked fantastic which was always a relief.  Then it came time to be seen by the doctor. . . I go in and have my blood pressure checked and it was 162/98--certainly on the high side.  My doctor came in, of course concerned about me, and started talking about the possibility of preeclampsia and what I might need to have done as far as testing goes. We didn't want to make any decisions until BP was rechecked...came back and BP was 158/102.  A call was made to triage to get a bed ready for me and I was briskly rushed to triage which was just down the hall with Dr. Rose carrying my purse and coat.  He helped get me settled and introduced me to the nurses and then went to talk to the staff on call.

I wasn't every SUPER worried about things, probably because I had just seen Max on ultrasound and knew he looked great and I hadn't had any symptoms at all of preeclampsia.  Marc couldn't come to my appointment with me so I tried to remain calm for him knowing that he couldn't get down to the hospital for a bit.  I underwent further work-up and everything continued to look okay, lab work and everything.  My blood pressure came down slightly to the 140s and in came the staff physician with my new plan.  It was bed rest immediately and I had to start betamethasone (injectable steroids to help with the baby's lung development in the case of a pre-term delivery).  After I was "cleared" I had to go complete the MRIs I was scheduled to have that day.  It was not pleasant to lie flat and still at 33 weeks pregnant, but I was grateful that the staff still did all of my imaging despite my being late due to my adventures in triage!

  I had to go back to Mayo the next day for a 2nd injection and again my BP was high in the 150s, so it was back on monitors again and again things looked okay.  I had to go back for a follow-up appointment just 2 days later to see how the BP was and to see if bed rest was still needed.  BP was still on higher end of normal, but was a bit better and labs still checked out okay, so I had medication changes and remained on bed rest.

I was on bed rest from 33 weeks until Max arrived at 38 weeks 4/7 days.  I had to drive to Rochester twice a week for ultrasounds and non-stress testing (monitoring baby's heart rate) along with doctor's appointments.  It was not pleasant. . . I had a lot that I needed to get done and finally had the time to do it, but was unable to do it.  Days were long for sure.  I am just grateful to my co-residents and program staff for taking so much of the stress away for being gone from work.  I can't even begin to tell you wonderful everyone has been!  I am also so appreciative of Marc for all the chores, grocery trips, and just generally putting up with me and for my mom who came up while Marc was traveling for work.

Thank goodness bed rest is over!

Pregnancy

As some of you might have noticed, I was, throughout my entire pregnancy, a bit hesitant to talk too much about things and certainly waited to make the news public.  I worried every single day about our baby boy until the day he arrived--I still worry, but it's a different kind of worrying!  When I was young (probably 10 or 11), I remember my doctors saying that adolescence and pregnancy would be the most difficult times for my health.  In fact, there were many times when I even wondered if I'd be safely able to carry a pregnancy.  I remember being upset about this even as a little girl because I was the girl who packed a diaper bag for her dolls and brought them to our church nursery where Oma would "watch" my babies.  I remember making "bottles" for my babies by mixing water and baby powder and positioning all of my Magic Nursery babies in the living room floor and watching them all.  I even had a magic nursery pouch that had 3 babies in it that was designed to wear on your belly.  It even had a button you could hit to make the babies "kick."  I don't really know what Mattel toys was trying to promote with that, but I had one and I thought it was super cool.  All this to say, that even at a young age I realized what this potential "difficult time" meant.

Soon after Marc and I got married, we decided to go see a Maternal Fetal Medicine Specialist to discuss if pregnancy was even an option for me.  We weren't interested in having kids at that time, but we knew that if pregnancy wasn't possible that adoption and/or surrogacy were paths that would take a lot of time and we wanted to prepare appropriately if needed. (We still may adopt some day too!) Fortunately the doctor told us that it was certainly possible, but remained risky.  I was a third year med student when I went to see him and remember him specifically saying that I needed to be in a place in my career where I could go on bed rest if need be at 20 weeks.  He even told me that if I were a lawyer he wouldn't even worry about me so much.  I repeat that only because my older sister is an attorney and my little sister will graduate from law school in the fall.

There were a variety of procedures and tests that were recommended to me to have done prior to thinking about having children.  Some more invasive than others and most that I didn't want to do!  Still without thinking about kids yet, once we found out we were moving to Minnesota, I started establishing specialty care up here at the Mayo Clinic, which was the only place my providers at ACH (Arkansas Children's Hospital) knew about to best manage my medical care.  I traveled up to Mayo in May 2011 just after med school graduation to see a cardiologist in the Vascular Center at Mayo.  He, again not being an OB, gave me much more reassurance that I could carry a pregnancy and even said that the procedures recommended to me were not necessary in my case, which relieved me!  He dictated my clinic note while I was still in the room and kept referring to me as "Dr. Whipple (hadn't changed my name yet), which sounded so weird to me!

Once I found out I was pregnant, it was easy then to decide to go back to Mayo for care.  So once we found out that we were expecting, back to the cardiologist I went and same day met our OB.  We got 2 pieces of great news that day.  The first of course, seeing our little peanut on ultrasound and knowing that I was in fact pregnant.  The second being that I didn't need Lovenox, an injectable blood thinner, during my pregnancy.  Our OB was fantastic and so knowledgeable.  He even emailed me several articles about Klippel-Trenaunay in pregnancy.  There were few case reports and limited literature, but nonetheless all good information.  Maybe one day, my case will be written up.

Although we had some good news, we realized the potential speed bumps in the road ahead and kept the news to ourselves for quite some time.  I was able to avoid bed rest for about 13 weeks longer than originally anticipated at the very first MFM consult several years prior and continued to avoid the injections (until post-partum). Although there were some complications, Marc, my family and I all feel blessed that the pregnancy went as smoothly as it did and now we have our sweet, sweet Max!

Thanks for reading this and now maybe understanding a bit of why we kept things to ourselves for a while.  I am sure all of the daily anxiety didn't help my blood pressure, but now we have our little one who makes it all worth it!

More to come later, and as Max and I establish a routine, I hope to be blogging more!

As some of you know, Marc and I attempted to refinish some of our hardwood floors ourselves.  This was quite the task and took over a year for us to work on, mostly due to my work schedule and Marc's travel schedule.  Now we can say that the floor is finished, however it took a different turn that we expected.  Just as a reminder, this is what the room looked like BEFORE...

Don't you love the light fixture, carpet color and drapes?  We HAD to fix this!  So we started with carpet....

There was not only a layer of carpet and carpet pad but also this HORRIBLE plastic (linoleum-like) layer with felt backing that was GLUED to the hardwoods!  We finally got the carpet up (it was gross) and were left with this below:

It took use a long time to figure out how to remove this horrible layer.  We tried glue removers, strippers, and NOTHING worked, so we were left to scrape it off.  Of note, we did have the felt and glue tested for asbestos before we got too into the job.  Fortunately, they were both negative!

It took WEEKS to get this stuff off.  It was a great way to let off steam after a long day; however, it did result in some floor damage, which we attempted to cover up or sand out.

We had to sand and sand the floors to get all of the glue off and to get down to a stainable layer of wood.  We just used a belt sander, which is tough to use.  I can't even remember how many different grit types we had to use, but it was quite a bit.  Marc did all the sanding, I did all the vacuuming.  Then I got to do all the staining because Marc was in London by the time we finally got to the staining point (yes, it took from about August 2011 to January 2012 to get to this point).

This was after 2 coats of stain, which we had to do to cover up all the imperfections in the floor.  It looked pretty good and then the polyurethane came.  First coat of polyurethane looked great, then we had to sand that. That's when things started to not look so good.  In the daylight there was this white film that was pretty inconsistent.  We didn't know what to do about it.  Reading some about it, maybe it was too humid when we did the application?  Who knows.  We did decide to have the floor in what is to be the nursery refinished too before that furniture came in, and given that I am not much help in my bed rest state (not that I would want to do any floor staining in pregnancy anyway), we decided to hire professionals.  Best decision we could have made!  They did 3 bedrooms and they now look fantastic and took 1 full day + 2 days of maybe 2 hours of work (polyurethane application that had to dry between coats).

These guys got all the imperfections out of the floor and it now looks wonderful.  We were so impressed with their work.  Below is a picture after the first application of polyurethane, which isn't dry, so it looks very shiny!

We (meaning Marc) still has to get the quarter round back down and then we will be ready to hang curtains and move into this room with our new bedding to prepare for renovations to the back of the house!  Will post with completed pics soon!

UPDATES

As many of you know, Marc and I are expecting our very first little one this November.  We were a little bit late to announce it, just because we were extra cautious, and as a result, I never blogged about it due to the late announcement and because we've been so busy.  Now, however, I am on bed rest so I do have a little bit more time than I did while I was in the NICU and on inpatient peds!  :)

We do know that we are having a BOY!  No official name yet, but we are working on it and certainly need to decide soon.  I am 35 weeks 4 days today and he is a big fella (consistently measuring over 2 weeks ahead of schedule)!  Due to some of my health problems and risk for baby being growth restricted because of them, I had very regular ultrasounds to be sure he is growing normally.  Here is one of my favorite pictures from our 20 week ultrasound (sucking his thumb):

Since our 20 week ultrasound, he hasn't been super cooperative and won't let us get a good profile picture!  

They put me on bed rest on Sept 26th, which was about 33 weeks and 3 days for me.  It hasn't been very fun.  It's hard to go from working really long (sometimes 80 hour weeks and a few 28 hour shifts), to sitting or lying on the couch all day.  It also bought me twice weekly doctors appointments and 2 injections of steroids for baby's lung development.  Although going to the doctor (and driving 70 miles to Mayo) is not fun to do twice a week, it does give me SOMETHING to break up the long days!  My mom was here for most of the week last week since Marc was out of town for work.  It was so nice to have her here and she really got a lot done and ready for our little guy's arrival.

Because we were so late with things, the crib and bedding still aren't in, and probably won't arrive until close to our due date, but I will try to make a post about the nursery soon.  We do have a chair for the nursery and have gotten the rug, curtains and changing table.  Lots to do still, which makes bed rest all the more tough--knowing I can't work on things but yet having all the time in the world to do it.

Now that I have more time (at least until the baby comes), I will try to blog a bit more.  We will have more baby stuff I am sure along with home renovation updates!

Thanks for reading!

Good 'Ole Cherry Street/Riverside Drive

I don't know quite what has gotten into me lately, but I have recently become very nostalgic for my small hometown.  Perhaps it is the fact that I am missing so many friends' weddings, showers, the upcoming birth of my sister's third son, or just being at the lake in the summer, but I really have started missing good 'ole Arkadelphia!  Now that summer is nearing up here in Minnesota and school will be out soon (I think!) I am starting to see lots of kiddos riding their bikes, walking their dogs, etc. and it really has me thinking about my growing up on Cherry St/Riverside Drive.

I am very convinced that I grew up in the best neighborhood in the entire world--quiet street overlooking the river with lots of older kids to look up to, kids my age to play with and neighbors who welcomed us into their homes with open arms and often cookies and put up with all of our shenanigans!  We rode our bikes, jumped on the trampoline, played basketball and even got to ride in or drive our neighbor's go-cart.  I played basketball with our mailman who always called me "too-tall," and played football in our neighbor's yard with all the older boys.  We always stopped to talk to all of our neighbors when they were outside and I even got to stop by a neighbor's workshop where he would always tune up my bike and invite us in for cookies.  When I got older I always hitched a ride with my neighbors, which was always an adventure and then returned the favor once I was old enough to drive. For many of my "growing up years" I lived 1 block from my great aunt Mae and from my great Aunt Mary and literally across the street and 2 houses down from my Aunt Pet who was something like my great-great aunt.  I am sure that all of these are really unique experiences that not many people have, but it certainly made for the perfect place to grow up.

Perhaps it is that we don't have kids, but although I love our neighborhood here in Minneapolis, I don't feel quite the sense of community as I did back "home."  I often don't see any of our neighbors!  Everyone is very nice, but they all just seem more private.  Don't get me wrong, we live in a fabulous location with Minnehaha creek just behind our house, 4 tennis courts 1/2 block a way, 2 blocks from Lake Harriet, a beautiful lake with lots of walking and bike paths, and on a really quiet street--we love our neighborhood, but I just don't have the same feeling.  There is probably a component of small town vs. large city, mid-west v. south--who knows!  I just miss my old neighbors!

While my hometown was certainly the greatest place to grow up, it sounds like there are some struggles right now with how to keep it growing, or rather, keep it from declining.  I certainly hope that Arkadelphia moves in the right direction.  Anyone would be lucky to grow up in a neighborhood like the one I did!

Thanks for reading!

House Reno updates

Wow, it has been a long time since I have updated anything on our blog here.   Part of it is that we haven't made a whole lot of tangible progress on renovations.  I hope though that we will have the guest bedroom done soon.  We have a tiny bit of painting left, have to sand and paint the baseboards and then put polyurethane on the floor, but the staining is done, and after 2 coats, I have to say it looks pretty good.  I will be eager to share with y'all.

Bathroom renovation is still on a halt.  We found a guy to do the tile, we just need to bite the bullet and get the courage to pay for it. Haha!

Thanks to my mom's help, we finally ridded our living room of boxes! Below though is what it looks like now:

We have been working with a "design-build" company to come up with a design for our home that would redo our kitchen, family room, add a mudroom (a necessity in Minnesota!), and expand our bedroom upstairs, add a bath and a walk-in closet.  Obviously, we can't do these projects ourselves!  So, now our living room (since we have no furniture) has turned into a design spot.  We have all the plans spread out, measuring tape to mark out the new spaces, and paint samples for the living room.  Marc keeps telling me I need to stick to one project at a time, but I am just eager to get settled into our home!

Hopefully, I will have more updates soon!