Update

Sorry for the long silence. I'm finding it hard to keep up with everything these days. Let's see...everything is going well with BABY. I've officially graduated from the specialist in Denver, and now I get to visit a regular OB in Loveland. On the one hand, it's nice to have graduated into the "low-risk" category. And of course, our major goal is to have the baby be healthy. However, the one benefit of the "high-risk specialist" was that I got to see the baby on Ultrasound every visit, and I was there every two weeks to ask questions and get extra attention. Now, I don't get all those high tech views. I won't have another ultrasound now until Week 20, which is when we can find out whether it's a girl or boy too. Also, I now only have to go to the doctor every 4 weeks for the time being. Health-wise, I am still using medication to control my all day "morning sickness," and I'm feeling very, very tired. Still, I'm doing pretty well.

People often ask me, "What has baby taught me so far?" Let's see...Lesson #1 is never take the freeway to work in the morning when you are pregnant. You never know when you will need to quickly pull over, and the back roads are much more convenient for this purpose :). Lesson #2--the scale may say you haven't gained weight and in fact have lost weight, but your clothes still won't fit right. Lesson #3--once you tell your students you are pregnant, they get very opinionated. I finally told them last week, and I now have lists of names they like for baby, very firm opinions on whether I should have a boy or girl, and several kids running campaigns to convince me that I should name my baby after them :). As one very cute kid told me, if I name my baby after him, "there will be another person in the whole world who has my name!" He does have an unusual name, but still it's a little dramatic!

I'm looking forward to our 3-year anniversary on Wednesday. We won't do much since it's on a weekday, but we are planning to go out for dinner at least. And we have a 3-day weekend this week because it's fall break, so that's exciting! We are hoping for a good weather day so we can get out and about and enjoy our day off. I'm also gearing up for Halloween at school. I'm not sure whether to be excited or to dread having to do the costume and treats thing. Oh well! It will all be over in two weeks! And, we don't do much at home for Halloween, but I'm starting to think about plans for Thanksgiving and the holidays.

Update

It's been a rough week, with Mike's car getting rear ended and me throwing up all the time and working extra. I'm glad it's the weekend! We have to do some yard work tomorrow, and the usual chores of laundry and groceries, but there should be some time to relax too. We have to take out our garden, and we also have to cut up and haul away the giant branch that fell from our willow tree during a wind storm last Monday.

I have my next doctor's appointment on Monday. I think I'm doing pretty good, but struggling with some of the symptoms. I'm having a hard time working with 24/7 nausea, throwing up 2-6 times a day, and also headaches. But, we are hanging in there, and I'm hoping this phase will be over in a few weeks!

Baby has a heartbeat!

Here's the 115 beats per minute of him or her, and everything's healthy so far! I was disappointed for about a second that we didn't get multiples, but it was so exciting to see our baby and hear his or her heartbeat, that the disappointment didn't last at all!

Our Fun Weekend!

My New Workspace

I won't write much because I'm exhausted, but I've been trying to get something here for days, so I'll settle for some pictures to show you where I'm spending time these days. This is my new classroom space, which is much different from my old one! The first few days of school have gone pretty well. I'm generally completely worn out by the end of the day, and I often feel like I have no idea what I'm doing, but then I also have moments where I'm really enjoying it too, so I'm not regretting it yet. The kids are cute for the most part, though a few are certainly challenging, and it's also refreshing to be doing something new. I am also enjoying getting to teach all the different subjects though they, too, present a challenge since I don't have any materials built up yet (can't use many of my old teaching materials these days :)). On a personal note, our next Dr. Appt is Sept 7, so we should have some updates after that.

Visit from California

We had a lovely visit this past weekend from Mike's parents. We enjoyed a brief trip to Estes Park Friday, and then went on an overnight trip to Colorado Springs Saturday/Sunday. We enjoyed wandering around old town, had a fun dinner at the Flying W Chuckwagon Dinner and Show, and then a fun ride on the Cog Railway to Pike's Peak on Sunday. The trip up was great and had some wonderful views, but then a storm rolled in just as we reached the top, so we didn't see much up there. It reminded me a lot of our visit to Alaska. Still, it was worth the experience. Then, Monday, we poked around in Loveland and Fort Collins and Marie and I spent an hour poking through my favorite scrapbook store. Unfortunately, our visit was cut short Monday when the doctor's office called and told me I needed to immediately return to Denver for a new medication because my Estradiol levels had skyrocketed. We were supposed to have dinner and play some games, and I was about half finished preparing dinner, when the phone rang, so we had to dash off...Still, the visit was fun overall. Here are a few pictures from the weekend:

And the winner is....

Highest Salt Content in Chips:

Boulder Canyon Malt Vinegar and Salt Chips at 490mg salt for a 1 oz serving.

2nd place in chips, Cheetos at 290mg of salt in a 1 oz serving.

What has even more salt than chips? Beef Jerky has 590mg per 1 oz, and the overall winner...cup of Noodles at nearly 700mg for a 1 oz serving.

Why do I know this? I was literally walking through the grocery store looking for foods with high salt yesterday. My doctor wants me to eat a high sodium diet right now. I feel gross eating these types of foods, which I don't normally buy, but there's some absurd humor is salt shopping. It helped me to laugh instead of crying as I walked down the aisle reading the backs of the chip bags.

I have to eat salt because my Estradiol levels are extremely high! They went from 900 to 2000 from Saturday to Sunday, then shot up to 5427 by Monday morning, putting the whole deal in jeopardy. I had to stop all my meds and start taking another medication called Certrotide last night to stop a danger of ovulating early through my meds. I have to get my Estradiol levels under control or they won't complete the transfer, and sodium is all I can really do myself, so I've been eating salt. I must have eaten 300% of the usual salt intake yesterday and today, but it seems to be helping because today my levels were back down to 2500! I feel really ill and unhealthy with all the salt, but I've also been drinking gatorade, Pedialyte, and lots of water to counter balance as best I can. In addition, I have aches and pains all over, but it's coming time...

I've been directed to do my trigger shot at 2am tomorrow morning, which means my retrieval surgery will be at 1:00pm on Thursday! Hopefully, my Estradiol will be back to normal by then too so that we can continue with the day 5 transfer. After yesterday's scare, things seem to be going much better today.