Round 2

Bed rest. That's the verdict. For now I suppose :) Friday I went to the doctor for my weekly appointment and my bp was up. I tried to explain that I had just had a stressful morning and after two minutes in the office laying on my side in the dark with Dan kindly rubbing my back and saying nice things, it went down. Evidently this means that work is too stressful and I need to be home. More blood tests and my platelet count was back down and another one of my counts were off, so she said that 'bed rest is define telly justified'. Yay. After a few days of taking it 'easy' I am beginning to wonder if I can make it three whole weeks doing nothing! I will go crazy! Of course, if it keeps Ella and I healthy, I will be a good patient and try my best to be still. I go back to the doctor today and we plan on asking her best guess as to how she sees this going. At this point, I can't imagine that my hopes of a natural birth is a real possibility and am starting to wonder if we should just go ahead and schedule a c-section. There is something appealing about knowing when the little lady will come, especially after so many times of thinking that today's the day. I am three weeks away from my due date, but Dr. Stewart thinks Ella's hanging in like a champ. Anyway, I hope to have some answers today - I can't stand not knowing what will happen!! I am too much of a planner for all this uncertainty. I suppose that's a lesson that I need some work on anyway :) As long as everyone's healthy I can stick it out.

Well, we are getting close! Ella only has about three more weeks before her scheduled arrival, and I am ready!!! Last week we thought we were going to get to meet her early - but she's decided to wait. I went for my weekly visit last week and Dr. Stewart said I had some protein in my urine. So, Dan and I immediately went into the 'it's happening again mode'. She sent me for some blood work and Dan and I half expected the same kind of phone call that we received with Ethan, telling us to come on in to the hospital. After a few hours of sitting by the phone waiting for her to call us back, the phone finally rang. She said that my platelet count was low and wanted me to come back the next day for more blood work and told me if it was still low, the chances of a C-Section were strong. Strangely, I wasn't that scared - Ethan had come much sooner and was fine, so I assumed all would be well with the little lady as well. What did freak me out was that I was not ready - again! I felt fine so I went to work and made a list of everything that would need to be taken care of while I was gone, went home to pack our bags and clean the house. We managed to get everything ready by the next morning. I went first thing to get my blood taken and began the waiting game again. When Dr. Stewart finally called she said that my platelet count was up but she wanted me to come back on Monday to do it all again. She said she had asked other doctors for their opinions and called it an sort of enigma. That's me. By this point, I was actually disappointed that we wouldn't be meeting Ella and frustrated with the idea of having to go through this regularly wondering if today would be the day! After more tests and more waiting on Monday, Dr. Stewart called and said it was 'interesting' but my counts were all back in the normal range and we could stop the tests for now. She still didn't understand what was happening, but all looked okay. Whew. Now I am back to counting on mid-April. Hopefully. Full term is always best of course, no matter how impatient I may be :)

In other news, can I say I love Ethan?! He's too cute. Everything is adorable. It's causing problems. How can I properly discipline a two year old when I can't stop laughing at him?! I am working on it, but it's hard to get tough! I find myself just wanting to take around a recorder to tape all of his ramblings, but I don't think that's too practical. Anyway, he's so curious that when we do get the video camera out he just want to be the one recording, not be recorded.

He's going around saying thinks like 'I do it Mama, I do it' insisting on trying to take care of everything himself - even if it's way too difficult for him quite yet. Like pour his own milk - can you imagine? We are trying to let him do as much as he can, or at least help, but he really just wants to do it on his own! I am starting to realize that he's going to be big soon and it's making me really sad!!! He's learning and growing so fast, I can hardly keep up. Last night we were playing with the seek and say and he could tell me the difference between the duck and the goose, the turkey and the chicken. He's been good at his animals for a while now, but I thought it was really something to be able to tell the difference between animals that looked so similar. I don't even know when or how he learned it! I want him to stay little! Yesterday morning, he said 'I little Mama' pretending to be a baby - I told him he could stay little as long as he wanted.