hahahaha I definitely just felt Archer's butt for the first time through my belly. I LOVE this because I felt Connor's butt through Michelle's belly around the same time with her, and it thoroughly amused me. Baby butt!!!!! :D

Also, nesting is a mean trick by nature. I've been attempting to 'nest', especially before the shower this Saturday, and the whole having to stop every 5-10-15 minutes does NOT make cleaning and nesting very easy at all! UGH!

A funny thing just happened... Archer was pushing his foot up in my chest, so i put my fingers there to kind of block him. I didnt push down, i just blocked him. He eased off, tried pushing again, my hand was still there, so he moved his foot around to the other side of my hand and pushed there instead. I laughed and called him a punk, and moved my hand, and now he's doing an Irish jig upside down into my chest, cause he CAN.. lol, silly baby...

and I'm 35 weeks today!! I completely cannot believe it at all! It happened soo so fast, and my baby shower is this weekend!! SO EXCITED!!!!

I went in today for my first round of fetal monitoring, after my crazy night in the hospital last Wednesday.

My blood pressure is fantastic, my pee check came out great, and I have 10cm of amniotic fluid right now :) So far, so good, I have an appointment scheduled for this Thursday afternoon to go back to the hospital for monitoring, but I also have an OB appt on Thursday morning, and he'll tell me whether I actually do have to go to the monitoring that afternoon.

Oh, and they had to do a test to make sure his heart rate went up when he moved, so they apparently had to scare the HELL out of him! The super nice u/s tech came in and was like "okay, I need to make sure his heart rate goes up when he moves. This--" (and she held up something which resembled the waterproof money holder necklaces you would wear to the pool or beach as a kid) "--is going to make a little noise, it's not going to hurt him and you wont feel it, but he should move pretty good from it." so I say "alrighty" and she sticks it at my belly, and this weird vibrating noise was emitted, and my poor, relaxed, completely unsuspecting baby got scared out of his skin and flipped out! I felt horrible, but I laughed because it was so shocking. she only held it to me for a couple seconds and he moved right away and she got the perfect text-book response she was looking for, but I'm like "holy shit, was that okay?!" "oh yeah, perfect!" after I left the hospital I spent the 20 minutes drive home talking to him and apologizing for scaring him and that mommy loves him, lol.

Well yesterday was definitely unexpected.

On Saturday, I started feeling nauseous, and I think it spurred from eating something not-so-savory. Around 6p or 7p I started feeling worse and worse, then, at 11ish, a horrible thing happened... I got sick (threw up) for the first time in over 10 years. 10 years!! So not only is my body going through major massive changes, it is now dealing with the horrible feeling of using muscles I haven't used in so long. After getting sick, I did feel much better, but my body was thrashed. The baby moves SO MUCH, so that the time I should have had to recover, my stomach and other muscles were getting poked and rolled on and kicked and abused.

I stayed nauseous for about 3 days. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, Monday I ended up calling my doctor, because I was still nauseous, but was also starting to get a tight abdomen/sore abdomen with light to moderate walking. Basically, if I'd walk, say, around a shopping mall, even superslow, my belly would start to get tight, like contractions I suppose. And if I didn't stop walking or just would leave and go to my car, it would turn into a soreness above the tightness.

When I called, they moved my appointment up a day to Wednesday, and offered to call me in a prescription for some nausea medication. I decided to not do the meds and just wait til Wednesday, or at least Tuesday, to see if I was feeling any better.

Tuesday morning around 4:30a I woke up completely and totally STARVING. The first time I had felt legitimately hungry since Saturday morning or Friday night. From Saturday til Monday, I was forcing myself to eat small things here and there, but never anything really substantial because I'd be hit with a horrendous wave of nausea. I got up and had a piece of toast, then went back to bed. I ate a little better throughout the day, and ended up going out with the hubs to eat some lovely Corner Bakery ravioli and salad. It was so good after not eating for so long!!

Wednesday was my doctor day. My appointment was set for 12:30p. I got there about 15mins early cause I had nothing better to do... turns out I ended up waiting until 2:15 to even be taken back to the room! I saw the doc, and found out my blood pressure was high when they took it. 140/90. I've always been 120/70 pretty much every visit, never going high, never going low, always right on spot, so they were a bit concerned. He had me lay on my left side for about 5 mins, then he did a retake of the blood pressure. 140/80. Better, but not great. Also, when they tested my urine, it came back negative, so they weren't worried about that. He gave me some orders to go have my blood drawn at Quest Diagnostics, and told me to go straight from his office to there, so I did. I was pleasantly surprised there.

I got to Quest Diagnostics around 2:35, with a waiting room full of people, of course. And me, being a walk in patient, I thought it was going to be at least another hour waiting in there. OH JOY. So I went to the sign in area and asked how long it was going to be, she said 15-20mins, and I let her know I came straight from my doctors office and just had to had some blood drawn quick and it would be great if I could get out of their way pretty quick. She said "let me see your forms and I'll call you up in a second." I got sent back, blood drawn, and out of there, within 5 minutes, it was so great! But by that time, it was pretty late in the afternoon and I had to get going to pick my hubby up from work. (We share 1 car right now).

I got there around 4:10p and was just parked hanging out and all that, waiting for him. While I was there, around 4:30p, I got hit with a wave of dizzy/light-headedness. My vision was NOT blurred or distorted or anything, I just got really light-headed. I called the doc office, to be safe rather than sorry. The nurses told me to sip on some water and relax for 15 mins and call them back letting them know how I was doing. I did that. After 15 minutes, it definitely didn't get worse, but it really didn't get any better. The nurse had me on hold for a second to talk with the doc, then she came back and said he wanted me to go to Labor&Delivery, since I had the elevated blood pressure, and the dizziness wasn't going away.

Slightly surprised, I didn't think I'd be going there for quiiiiiite some time! Hubby and I got to the hospital about an hour later (yay 5:00p rush hour traffic!), they were expecting us. They checked me in, had me in a room, and hooked up to an external fetal monitor within 10 mins. When they checked my blood pressure, it had gone down (barely) to 140/78. That was still too high, so I left another urine sample for them. They said it came back with a teeny tiny slight trace of proteins, but nothing uncommon for a pregnant woman to have. They said it was very very slight, and that wasn't concerning them at all. They took more blood from me to run their tests. The results came in about a hour or so later. I had a high white blood cell count, signaling an infection (I was sick on Saturday, that could explain that.), and trace liver enzymes were coming back, signalling Pre-Eclampsia, or Pregnancy Induced Hypertension. So, with those two, plus my elevated blood pressure, they decided they wanted to keep me overnight for observation. The hubs got to stay with me, thank GOD. I'd never stayed in a hospital before, so I was very glad to have him there with me.

I had the external fetal monitor on me the ENTIRE time I was there, keeping an eye on baby. Everyone that came in and checked him said he was doing phenomenal and appeared to be doing fantastic, so there was no concern for him at that point, it was all just preventative observation being done on me.

My doctor was actually in the hospital today so he was to see me in the morning and let me know how things were going.

I got woken up about 4 times throughout the night, after going to bed around 12:30-1a. The first two times, it was to adjust the external fetal monitors, cause the baby is just a roly poly and loves to move. The third time was to refil the paper in the monitor. The fourth time was to have my blood redrawn at 6:20a. So, not the greatest night sleep by far, but I'm sure it could have been a lot worse.

The tests came back better. My white blood cell count had gone down, and my liver enzymes went way down. They had me tracking how much I was peeing throughout the night/morning, and I was doing a good job in that department, apparently. My doctor came in to talk to me around 8, let me know how the tests came out, and said he was waiting on my white blood cell count (that was the last result to come back), but that I was looking to be a lot better and would probably be released today and be home on bed-rest soon. He came back in at 10, told me it was great, and that he would get a nurse in to discharge me and all that.

I ended up having lunch in my room (honestly, the hospital I'm at has some of the best food EVER, as far as hospital food is concerned, I'm totally fine with eating there!), my nurse got pulled into a birth, so she was delayed in getting to me. Another nurse ended up coming in to release me, and was very nice about it, apologizing profusely for the mix-up, of course it was alright, I just couldn't wait to get home at this point.

She rechecked my vitals before she released me, and my blood pressure was down to 115/58! Talk about some good news. Everything was going back to normal.

My doctor told me he wanted me on good bed-rest with very limited activity (which is easy, I don't work, thankfully.), and to go back to the hospital twice a week for monitoring. I got my first appointment made for the monitoring at 9:00a on Monday morning.

I'm so so glad to be home, so thankful that my baby is safe and well, that I am a lot better than yesterday, and so grateful for all the support I got from my husband and my family and friends. I never realized I had so many people who cared until I got put in peril! My sister came and stayed with me and my hubby til about 11p. She stayed with me while hubs ran home to feed the cat and get us a few things for our unexpected stay. Even my grandmother in Texas called me at 12:30a her time to let me know she was praying for me and baby to be safe and get better... how sweet is that!? :)

And, just so everyone knows, I had absolutely zero complications in my pregnancy so far... not even a hint of morning sickness or nausea at the beginning. I definitely didn't think anything like this was going to happen, but I'm so glad I called my doctors office, just to make sure. I'm not excited about having to stay at the hospital overnight and all that, but I'm so glad I was being taken care of swiftly and soundly. All I can say is, if you have any unsure feelings, TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS. If something doesn't feel right, chances are, it isn't right. It's much easier to be safe than it is to be sorry.