updating and stuff

Phew. It's been quite the week at the Maurer house. I finally stopped vomiting and was able to eat regularly (which for me, means I can have ice cream) by Thursday. Jude apparently got the same virus right about that time, except he's now had diarrhea for the past two days. He's now on the mend though, and has done nothing but sign "more" and indeed, eat more all day today. As I type this, he's yelling, "Uh gooo!" which is his version of "On your mark, get set, GO!" and running down the hallway. He's kind of a big ball of adorable wrapped in blonde hair, blue eyes, and excessively cute cheeks right now.

We had an OB appointment on Friday morning, and I think excluding our wait time we were at the office for an entire twenty minutes. Everything looks wonderful and is right on target! We were just starting to realize that we may have a pre-term baby at this point in my pregnancy with Jude, so it's very strange to feel so nonchalant about appointments.

I did ask the nurse about the Vitamin D I've been taking. I've been wanting to include this information in the blog, but wanted to wait until I was told by my doctor that it was okay. Basically, I read an article that Vitamin D deficiency can cause pre-term labor in pregnant women, and that most people are Vitamin D deficient. I started taking about 2,000 IUD extra (on top of the 400 IUD that are in my pre-natal vitamins) a day, and within two days I pretty much stopped having contractions. I may get a spell of three or four contractions every week or so, but they're much less intense and obviously less often than they were before. We went to the zoo last weekend with Shawn's family for something like six hours of walking in 90 degree weather. I drank as much water as I feasibly could, let Shawn push the stroller, and got off my feet when possible, but I was a little concerned about the price I'd be paying in contractions that evening. Would you believe that I did not have a single contraction? Not a single one. The only thing that has caused contractions recently was the vomiting. It was disconcerting, but once the vomiting stopped the contractions stopped, so I'm okay with that.

Never in a million years would I have thought to take Vitamin D, but whatevs. It's working!

Our nurse also told us that as we're getting closer to my due date, we'll need to start seeing the doctor every 2-3 weeks, and then once a week after I get to 36 weeks. It seriously feels like just yesterday that I found out I was pregnant. Am I really 30.5 weeks already? Do I really only have less than ten weeks left? You'd think I'd be used to the fact that I'm pregnant by now, but I'm still surprised by the large bump and need to be reminded that there's a reason I'm so tired. I feel like I have a split personality right now. There's one part of me that is very concerned about the details of having this baby. I have lists and a timeline and am scrupulously working on what our finances and budget will look like as a family of four. Then there's the other part of me. The part that genuinely forgets that we're going to have a baby and feels like I'm way too young to have a family of four. The part that just realized that we still need quite a bit before we're ready to have two kids still in cribs and diapers. This is the part that wants to scream at least once a week, "Holy crap! We're having a BABY! How on earth are we going to do this, are we plumb crazy?!"

Don't worry. I think it's the freaking out part of me that pushes the OCD part of me to prepare. I mean, if I'm going to have multiple personalities, the least I can ask is that they get along, right? Right. Right.