Labor Day

Well, Labor Day this year almost became LABOR day for me. I think my body got confused and thought labor day meant it was time to go into labor or something. I was literally one contraction away from making a trip to the labor & delivery ER yesterday. I have this contraction home monitoring system where I have to monitor my contractions for one hour twice daily and send the data over a fax line to a nurse station so they can keep an eye on me. If I have 4 or more contrax in one hour, I have to hydrate myself and remonitor for another hour. If I have 4 or more the second hour, they call my doctor and decide what I need to do. So, I often have to remonitor, however by the second session my contrax have always tapered down to 2 or 3. Yesterday, after several days of feeling really good and having very few contrax, I decided to clean up my messy kitchen just a bit, as my in-laws were coming over for a BBQ and I couldn't stand the mess. Steve was asleep during all of this, so he can't be blamed for my moment of weakness. The big mistake - monitoring right after this little escapade. As soon as I strapped on the monitor I knew I was in trouble. I counted 3 contrax in the first 10 minutes! Now, these contractions I have are not painful, they are just a tightening of my abdomen that lasts 40 seconds or longer. So, I often don't notice them. After my hour was up I sent in my data, thinking I'd had 5 or 6 contractions and knowing I'd have to remonitor. The nurse called me back sounding very concerned - the verdict = 9 contractions in one hour. That's a record for me. I didn't even feel all of them. So, I was told to take a second dose of my meds, and drink loads of water (dehydration triggers contractions, as does a full bladder, so basically I should just camp out in the bathroom with a bucket of water). My second monitoring session was not much better - 8 contractions. So, being labor day, my doctor's office is closed, so they had to call my doc at home and get her opinion. During this time, I'm sitting at home waiting for Steve and his dad to finish grilling food so I can eat, and I have an apple pie waiting for me that I've been craving for weeks. So, needless to say, I do NOT want to go to the hospital, where I'm gonna have to wait for 2 hours probably for them to strap monitors on me, only for my contractions to stop (just my luck) and then I get sent home hungry and tired. I WANT that apple pie! So, finally after what seems like an eternity, the nurse calls me back and says my doctor wants me to drink more water (I already feel like I'm floating by this point) and remonitor a 3rd time. If I have 4 or more contrax the 3rd time, it's off to L&D, otherwise I can stay home and enjoy my apple pie. So, by this time I'm so paranoid, everytime Isaac moves I think it's a contraction. During my 3rd session I was pretty sure I'd felt 5, maybe 6 contractions, so we made plans to go to the hospital. But when the nurse called me back, turns out there were only 3!! Yay! No labor this labor day!! They really tapered down after all that, thank goodness, and I got to enjoy my apple pie and postpone my tour of L&D for a while longer!

So far this morning, my uterus is being pretty irritable, so hopefully we don't have a repeat of yesterday. I did learn my lesson - no more cleaning, even a little bit. I'm going to stay on my butt from now on, as long as I have too. This little guy has a lot more baking to do. Luckily I have my weekly doctor's appt today, so we'll make sure all those contractions yesterday didn't cause any more damage to my cervix. After a week of very few contractions and overall feeling great, I was really hoping this appt would give rise to a lessening of my restrictions, but after yesterday, I doubt it now. On the upside, I do have permission to attend childbirth classes one night a week for the next 5 weeks - tomorrow is the first night. I'll get to leave the house once a week in addition to my doc appointments - yay!!

Sooooo, on to the knitting of the holiday weekend. I finally got out the beautiful angora/lambswool blend that Joe gave me for Christmas last year. I've been saving it for the perfect project and the perfect moment. I've had the project picked out for some time, but was waiting for the perfect moment when I felt the strong desire to work with something as delicate and soft as this luxurious yarn. It was so amazing! I've never worked with something so soft, I couldn't help but rub it against my face the whole time I was working with it. So here it is. Isaac will be so spoiled after wearing this, he'll turn his nose up to anything made of acrylic or itchy sheep's wool.




Pattern: Baby Hat from One Skein by Leigh Radford,
Jimmy's Baby Booties

Yarn/Needles: Lorna's Laces Angel; hat: US8, booties: US6

And lastly, here's just a pic Steve thought was funny: pregnant lady digging into ice cream