Category: Rebecca

Tiffany was at it again, but this time it was my turn! I haven’t had my hair cut (aside from my bangs) for YEARS! Actually I think my last haircut was in the summer of 2005. Check it out:

Ya really long, lots of split ends (which gives it that uneven look). Now don’t get me wrong, I really like having my long hair, but it was time for a trim. And so Tiffany cut my hair:

Now it’s nice and even. Tiffany cut off 12-17 inches of hair, remember it wasn’t all even, so the 17in hairs are few in number. But that is still a lot of hair to cut off, and I still have plenty left. I plan to donate the hair that was cut to Locks of Love just as soon as I find out how. 🙂

Life is rather crazy these days. Ethan and Tyra have  school during the days, Jeremy has preschool twice a week. Ethan has cub scouts, and Tyra has girl scouts and an after school reading program to go to (since she has been struggling with reading). Dinah and Chloe just stay home with me all the time, but while I am cleaning one thing they are often making some kind of mess somewhere else in the house. 😛

Lately I’ve been spending my days wondering when I’m going to wake up fully. I’ve just been SOOO TIRED! Some days I don’t even get dressed or make my bed, which is really unusual for me. Usually those are the first things I do in a day (right after having my bowl of frosted mini-wheats). I’ve been really lacking in energy, and I spend my time thinking “I have so much to do” then I can’t decide what I need to do, and I’m too tired to get up and do it anyways. The past couple of days have been a little better. Sunday I pulled the whole dining room apart and swept and mopped and I wiped both sides of the plastic table cloth clean. Then I noticed that the kids had got gunk on the underside of the table so I cleaned that and I wiped the table legs clean. Then I refused to put any of the chairs back in the kitchen until I had cleaned all the crusty yuck off. Then I couldn’t just stop there, I vacuumed the fish tank and wiped the algae off the glass, and vacuumed again. I changed the filter and pulled the cave out to scrub the algae off of it, and I cleaned the outsides of the glass and the stand that the tank sits on. Since it’s right there in the dining room it was just covered with food splatters, which is just yucky but now it’s all clean. I don’t know why I was being obsessive over the little details in the dining room, aside from it’s been bugging me and I had the energy and Kyle was home to help keep the kids out of trouble while I got something done.

Yesterday I attacked the laundry pile that has been accumulating through all those days of me having no energy, and I went to clean out any old yucky food from the fridge and I got sucked into pulling everything out and wiping the whole inside clean.

Today, I haven’t been as productive. I continued with washing and putting away more laundry, including washing my bedding. But that’s really all I’ve done today aside from keeping my kids alive. 😛

This week is spring break. So the kids are all home and there’s no scouts or anything. I had a dentist appointment scheduled for yesterday, but the dentist office called to say that something came up and the dentist wouldn’t be in the office during the afternoon, so that has been rescheduled for next week. The kids have learned that they better not even ask me if they can watch a movie or play a video game until their chores are done. So they have been pretty good at getting them done first thing in the morning so that they have the rest of the day to do whatever.

I’m feeling so big and lopsided lately. Of course, people will look at me and tell me I don’t even look big enough to be so close to the end. The baby is sitting down in my pelvis which causes me some lower back/hip issues on my left side. My left leg can’t really support my weight, which means I have to sit down to put my pants on in the morning (or to put pjs on at night), and when it’s really bad I tend to limp. Occasionally the baby will be in a position that causes my right leg to feel like a nerve is being pinched. And it really stinks when these two problems happen at the same time. But baby is head down, all ready for delivery. It’s back is on my left side, and I can occasionally feel it’s rump in the upper left area of my belly. It’s feet are very often kicking me in the upper right area of my belly, and in my ribs/lungs on the right side. Space is very limited in there now. I often have that yucky heartburn feeling, and the ‘do I really need to pee again?’ feeling. In the evenings as I sit here at the computer waiting for the kids to fall asleep, the baby seems to be at it’s peak activity level for the day. I sit here and can watch my tummy rumbling all over the place, and sometimes the baby is really aggressive with it’s kicking which will actually take my breath away and cause me to gasp. So it’s a very active and strong baby, which is rather uncomfortable sometimes but it’s a good thing. 🙂

Every day we are one day closer to this baby’s birthday. I have no idea when it will be, but I know I’m one day closer. As of last Thursday I was one day shy of 36 weeks, and dilated to 2cm already, with the baby’s head low down in my pelvis. My midwife made the comment that she could probably add 4cm to the height of the uterus based on how low down the baby is already. Dinah is SO excited for the baby to be born. She keeps asking when it will come out of my belly. When I help myself to some food, she asks me if I’m eating so the “baby can grow”. She likes to come to me after I’ve put her to bed, so she can put her hand on my tummy to see if the baby is moving. When we ask her if the baby is going to be a boy or a girl she says “I don’t know”, but if we ask if she wants the baby to be a boy or a girl she says she wants it to be a girl and she wants us to name her Ella. We’ll see how that goes, Ella isn’t one of the names that Kyle and I have considered or talked about.

I still have so much to do. I look around and certain areas of my house are looking better (like the dining room 😉 ) but other areas are still so cluttered! It would be so much easier to clean if there was no clutter in the way. Really I’m just going to have to take it one day at a time and declutter and clean up what I can, then just not worry about the rest. Now I think I’m going to go make myself a chocolate hazelnut shake, and when that’s gone I’m going to bed!

I’ve reached the halfway point of the pregnancy, 20 weeks. Of course our last three babies were born about 2 weeks early which means that if this one follows suit I’ve already past the halfway point! CRAZY! Of course the first part of the pregnancy always seems to go by faster than the last half. I had an appointment last week, at 19 weeks. My check-ups are every 4 weeks at this point and in the four weeks between my last visit and this most recent one, I have only gained two pounds. Valerie (my midwife) says she wishes that I would eat. But I DO eat. She wants me eating 6 small meals a day, which I try very hard to remember to get them all in and it makes me feel like I’m eating nonstop. But having five little ones means that I am very active, and so I just haven’t gained very much weight, but there’s still plenty of time for that.

In taking my blood pressure (which was really low) she looked at me like how could I possibly be alive? Then she asked me if I get dizzy. Uh actually I do. It’s always been something that happens to me while I’m pregnant. When I stand up too fast I will get dizzy, and the room with start spinning and my vision will become dark and then I feel my body shaking and I just have to sit down. I remember the first time that happened to me when I was pregnant with Ethan I sat down so fast to keep from falling over that when Kyle saw me he thought I did fall. I remember being conscious enough to have seen Kyle come into the hallway right as I was rounding the corner right before my eyes went dark and I was shaking so bad that I purposely sat down on the hallway floor as fast as I could. The dizzy spells must have stopped after my pregnancy though because I remember the next time I had one it was the first indication that I was pregnant again, and sure enough I was. I have talked with my midwives over the years about my dizzy spells and I have never been given an explanation for them, until my last check-up when she just saw my blood pressure and asked if I get dizzy. So now we know why I get dizzy spells, and Valerie wanted to know if there are any stairs in our house because, obviously she is concerned about me getting dizzy and falling down them. I told her that we do have a basement, but we don’t go down there much since it’s not finished. But I do go down there to do the laundry, so her fears of me falling were heightened. So I’ll just have to be super careful about carrying laundry up and down the stairs from now on. 🙂

When people ask how far along I am and I tell them that I’m halfway they just look at my tummy and say that I don’t even look pregnant. Kyle likes to say that I start out concave and need to fill in before I can pop out! So here’s a picture of my belly at 20 weeks:

Yes I know, really not much there! But at this point in the pregnancy the baby is supposed to only be about 10 inches long and 10 or 11 ounces, so baby is still really tiny and it’s ok for my belly to be tiny too. 🙂 Actually Valerie says that I have a really large pelvis and most of the uterus is down inside it so the belly that we see is what has grown up beyond the pelvis. 😉 I’m still wearing my regular clothes but I’ve filled out the waistline of my jeans so it won’t be long before I’m going to need to break out the maternity pants. I tend to always need the maternity pants first and LONG before I need the maternity shirts.

The past few days I’ve thought that I’ve been feeling the baby move. But when the baby is still so small it’s hard to be sure. But this morning as I was laying in bed with my hand pressed to my tummy I felt a definite bump! The baby had kicked or hit right where my hand was and I’m sure that I have been feeling the baby move. 🙂

I LOVE being pregnant. The early part of a pregnancy always seems like a dream, where I’m not sure that I really am pregnant. Then I hear the heartbeat at the first appointment and things seems to sink in a bit more. Then the baby’s movements get strong enough for me to feel them and the whole being pregnant thing is suddenly very real!

I’m 18 weeks and still not really showing. Well I have a bit of a bump that I notice and Kyle can see, but the rest of the world can’t tell that I’m pregnant by looking at me. In fact, when everyone was here last week, I made a comment about how when I get hungry I still feel the morning sickness, and Tiffany said “Oh ya! You’re pregnant! You don’t look it.” She had totally forgotten until I reminded her!