Well, Hey everyone, seeing as my last blog was rather short and I have a bit more time now I will post a slightly longer, and more detailed account (illustrated too!). We are at The University Of Utah Hospital, got here about two hours ago, and are in our own little room (number 10) in the labor and delivery ward. We have started with the induction process. Buggy had some cervidill-- to "ripen her cervix" along with an I.V. and some monitering equipment placed on her. I included a little picture of my adorable wife in a hospital gown...amazing how she can still look cute, no?

We are expecting to have a pretty calm night tonight, the nurses said that the main goal for the evening is to get a little dialation going and keep the baby happy and comfortable, so that we can plan on a delivery for tomorrow when all the doctors are at here and ready to go.

Hey Everyone....Guesse what?! I'm (topher) actually posting a blog! unbeleviable as that is I am left with little choice as buggy is currently incompasitated on a hospital bed (please forgive the spelling).

Crappy Crap Crap

That is ever so slightly how I feel right now!!!
I just had another OB appointment...I had been hoping/crossing my fingers that I'd be dilated to a 3 or so...since I've been at a 1 for three weeks. But no. I'm still a 1. And so my my midwife, told me she was going to strip my membranes to help move things along.....
Now I've spoken with Emily and I've been informed, that this was totally something I did not need to have done and I could've said 'no thanks'....but alas...I didn't know that until AFTERWARDS.
So...I got to have my membranes stripped. And it hurt!!! Really really really bad. And so, now, yay for me, I'm dilated to a "tight 2" but not at all effaced. Wonderful.
Also, the amniotic fluid went back up, still not super high, but better than it has been, so now they probably WILL do the amniocentesis, which I didn't want to have done either!!
Bummer.
So the plan is to report to the hospital at 1 p.m. on Monday, do the amniocentesis, they'll also check me again. If i'm dilated anymore, I won't go in until Tuesday morning early. If i'm still not dilated, then I'll wait for 4 hours to hear about the amnio results, and then report to Labor and Delivery at 5 that night.
That is the update.
Oh, and i'm cramping, and bleeding, and I don't like my midwife right now!!!!
Other than that, all is well. Its my first day off work where I can be home and get the baby's room cleaned up, but my cramps hurt too bad. What to do what to do!!!!
I need a mommy or a sister that is closer than a 20 mile radius to come play with me.
Anyone? Anyone?

Happy 1 Year!!

Yes, I realize our anniversary was a couple days ago, but I have been ever so slightly busy with every so many things and have not had time to post this. We did have a great day together. We went to IKEA and picked out furniture for our house, new book cases and such, and then we had dinner at a fabulous restaurant, Texas Roadhouse (thank you E for the recommendation, we loved it) and then played games with Daysh and Joe and then I got a back rub and it twas wonderful. :)
But, I did want to share my thoughts about my WONDERFUL husband and the perfect year we've shared together so far. :)
Oh, and by the way, this will be slightly cheesy, so for all of you that are not interested in sappy...you may want to skip this post. :)
achem...
Topher is my best friend in the entire world.
With Topher, I can say anything, do anything, act any way, look any way, feel any way...and he loves me all the same.

I can be silly, grumpy, immature, lazy, quiet, obnoxious, mellow, depressed, annoyed, un-motivated, rude, loud, dramatic, emotional, and every other emotion you could possibly imagine that normally wouldn't be an attractive one...and yet...for all those emotions, Topher has been able to look at me and tell me I'm beautiful and that he loves me.

He knows how to comfort and motivate me.
He knows just how to hold me to help me fall asleep.
Just what to say to make me stop crying.
Just what to say to make me smile.
And just what to do to make my day.
He also does the dishes, takes out the garbage, vacuums, sweeps, does laundry, cooks, cleans the toilet, makes the bed, and puts my clothes away for me...and he does all of these about 90-100% of the time, (except cooking, cuz I really like to cook). What a wonderful helper!!
On top of everything he does for me, he is just an amazing person.
He is smart, helpful, kind, generous, humble, fun, loving, playful, amazingly attractive!, motivated, energetic and the sweetest thing ever.
I love him so much!
I never thought that my first year of marriage would have so many events and emotions and trials packed into it, but Heavenly Father thought Topher and I needed and could handle all of those experiences. Looking back at my life, and the other type of people I associated with and dated, I never could've handled ANY of these emotions or trials with any other person. I'm so glad I was blessed to find Topher and to have him in my life. Throughout the past couple of months that have been so emotionally challenging, I have come to love and appreciate him more than I ever thought possible.
He is my everything and I'm so happy to be married to him.
Not only that, but he's going to make an ADORABLE daddy in 5 more days. :)
Happy Anniversary my Love!!! One year down, only Eternity to go!!

OB Appointment

I had another appointment this morning...in case any of you are ever in doubt of when they are, my OB appointments are every Thursday morning. Normally they're done by about 10. So you can call after that and I'll normally answer my phone....unless its lost....as it often is.
So, this morning, I had another appointment. They checked my amniotic fluid since it's been low lately, and alas it is lower than last week: 6.2 from 6.8 last week. But, they also did the Non-Stress Test and since baby was very active and had a really good heart rate they said everything was fine. They'll just keep checking me each week, and as long as she's active and has a good heart rate, she'll be fine to wait until the 17th. My Dr. did however say that since the fluid level hasn't raised at all, they plan to fore-go the amniocentesis before induction. If the fluid level does increase however, back up to about 8-10 then they'll keep the appt. As for right now however, I don't need to plan on it.
Something else that I cleared up, mainly for Emily's sake, is that I'm being delivered 2 weeks and 2 days before my due date, and the main reason they wanted to do the amniocentesis was because since it was prior to 40 weeks, and it was going to be a forced birth, they take every precaution to make sure the baby is ready. When moms deliver early ON THEIR OWN however, that normally means the baby and the mom is ready, so they don't check the lung maturity.
So, the Dr. was just trying to take every precaution to make sure she was healthy and ready to come out.
On to the next topic...at my Birthing Class, my teacher recommended I start drinking Red Raspberry tea, or take Red Raspberry leave pills...she pretty much swore by them that they would help me dilate. So, I went and got me some and have been taking the max. dosage, (yes I checked with my OB first!) and today they checked my cervix to see if I was dilated at all. And I was! Sure it was only to a 1...but dilated none the less!
Lately, I also have been having to relieve my waters, if you will, pretty much every 10 minutes...and today I found out why!! When she checked my cervix, she only went in about 3/4 of an inch til she shouted "Oh! There's the baby's head!!". So, little girl's head is very very low and the cervix is still up pretty high...
She dug in super deep to check my cervix, and so now I am massively bleeding and cramping. Yuck. It hurts.
So. That was my OB appointment update, for any of you that were lacking/wanting in the info area.
OK. That's all.
Love you all lots!

My Car Resurrected!!

Topher and I finally came to the point about 2 weeks ago where we realized that although we had been surviving with one vehicle....other things were suffering. Such as Topher's school schedule....him being able to come into work with me....meet me at appointments etc...

So...we decided it was time to resurrect my vehicle...if it even was going to be possible.

For starters, we had to call USAA (yay for free roadside assistance!!) and have them come tow the car since it wouldn't start. It took Topher about 15 minutes to dig the car out for starters, and then once it was dug out, we couldn't get it into neutral since it had been out of commission for so long. The tow guy actually had to dis-engage a couple parts of the car just to get it into neutral, but then we got her on the tow truck and taken to Burt Brothers.

They took the car for a day and a half, got it running, fixed and registered for me and it ended costing under $500!!

Something funny about all of this was that initially, 6 months ago, the reason we stopped driving the car was because it was over-heating...or so the gauge said. Well...as it turns out, the gauge is broken, the car really was never over-heating. BUT, because Topher and I had stopped driving it...the battery eventually just failed...causing us to have to buy a new battery...also...Topher at one point tried to put water in the coolant tank to get it to start, and this water that sat in there over the winter, froze and messed up our cooling system...we had to pay to get that fixed as well...

So...in the end...nothing had been wrong with the car at all....and Topher and I pretty much caused all the problems that costed us $500!!

Oh well. Lesson learned I suppose.

But after the car was all fixed up, we took my car and Topher's car to a really nice car wash and detail and got them nice and clean!! Topher also got me really cute new seat covers and steering wheel cover so that I would feel comfy in my car again!!

Topher's Birthday

For Topher's Birthday, I took him to Anniversary Inn in Logan...the nicest one there is!! And we stayed in the Oriental Gardens room. He of course loved it. There was a little Zen Garden he could play in, the tub was awesome, there were Chinese lanterns everywhere, the wall murals were all like asian gardens....it was a lot of fun.


After our romantic weekend, we went home and a couple days later, we had the family over (minus Emily :( ) to have a big Birthday dinner. We did it Korean style just for Topher! This means that we made a special trip to the Korean store and spent over $100 on food!! We bought tons of side dishes and the meat to grill, the special Korean drinks and the whole works. We then went home and got to work making the table as full as possible!! In Korea, the more full the table, the nicer the meal is supposedly. I'd say we had a pretty full table. We both had been slightly nervous because so many members of the family are such big babies when it comes to spicy food...but...it actually went really really well and we're pretty sure everyone found something on the table they liked. :) Alan was our master griller...Jen really liked the mushrooms...Dacia was funny because she really liked the soup, but every bite complained she needed more milk and it was too spicy...go figure she's the one that ate the most of it! Daddy seemed to really like the salad. Alan I think liked everything. But hey, he's Alan. :)

He also got some really cool presents! So thank you to everyone! He loved all his gifts!!

Late updates

yes...I'm going to post some very belated events...but...i am going to post them. so be prepared!! for lots of possibly old news!! but you should still read them and be impressed that I'm finally getting around to posting the stuff!

CHD Awareness Week

I was looking through some of the HLHS links and saw that this week is Cogenital Heart Defects awareness week. There are so many interesting things that I didn't know about... here are some interesting facts about CHD's taken from a site to petition the media to raise more awareness. If you'd like to help by signing the petition, please visit this link: http://www.gopetition.com/online/16298.html

-Congenital heart defects are America's #1 birth defect.
-Nearly one of every 85 babies is born with a CHD in the US.
-Congenital heart defects are the Number 1 cause of birth defect related deaths.
-This year almost 40,000 babies will be born with a congenital heart defect in the US. 4,000 of them will not live to see their first birthday.
-91,000 life years are lost each year in this country due to congenital heart defects.
-The cost for inpatient surgery to repair congenital heart defects exceeds $2.2 billion a year.
-Congenital heart defects occur frequently and are often life threatening, yet research into them is grossly under funded.
-Only one penny of every dollar donated to the American Heart Association goes towards congenital heart defect research.
-Of every dollar the government spends on medical funding only a fraction of a penny is directed toward congenital heart defect research.
-More than 50% of all children born with a congenital heart defect will require at least one invasive surgery in their lifetime.
-There are 35 different types of congenital heart defects. Little is known about the cause of most them. There is not yet a cure for any of them.
-In the U.S., twice as many children die from congenital heart defects each year than from all forms of childhood cancer combined, yet funding for pediatric cancer research is five times higher than funding for CHD.
I found most of this information of another blog, http://ethanscottmiles.blogspot.com/. Check it out if you want!

Physical Therapist Appt.

I had an appointment with a Physical Therapist today because of my leg. It's been hurting really really bad ever since Disney World...and it was up in my upper/inner thigh...so my OB thought it would be a good idea to have it checked out before the baby comes...which as you know...I'm still debating allowing to have happen...
But anyways...I went in for my appointment today...and after waiting for 45 MINUTES the Dr. finally appeared and was actually really nice. I wish I clicked that well with my OB.
Anywhoo...turns out I stand the wrong way...which is what causes my shin splints....and then my pelvis had somehow gotten out of alignment so I stood crooked...and my hips and my pelvis were crooked...also making one of my legs seem longer than the other.
so...she did some funky stretches on me, taped my feet, taped my back and gave me a maternity belt. and i have to go back about 3 or 4 more times and supposedly I'll be all fixed.
As of right now however I'm just walking funny (supposedly I'm going to feel lopsided now, because I'm straight and was walking lopsided before...) and I feel like a nerd wearing a big stretchy belt around my butt.
Anyway. Thats the update....not that anyone asked for one. But I thought I'd share anyways...don't ask me why.