Update

Today we saw the cardiologist. Caleb is looking great. He has gained weight and is now 19 1/2 inches long and 7.1 lbs. We were super excited to hear that. He is starting on a diuretic medication to help clear out the fluid build up in his lungs, and hopefully ease his breathing a bit. He seems fairly healthy though. It makes it all a little more real, I like having him at home and to pretend that nothing is really wrong, but unfortunately that can't go on forever.

On the other hand, aren't these boys adorable. We've been very lucky to have Amy here this week. She's been taking beautiful pictures of the boys and she has been super helpful. I seriously don't think I could have made it throughout this week without her here mentally or emotionally.

Collin has formed a special bond with Amy and physically has not let her rest from his assaults. I'm sure she'll miss him when she leaves tomorrow.

Here is me and my beautiful Caleb. This is the blessing outfit that he is drowning in. I'm sure it will fit better by the time he is blessed. (Don't mind the morning hair in the picture!) And, speaking of morning hair, check out Caleb's version:

Welcome Home

The boys getting their first look at their baby brother.
Collin has been very involved in helping and interacting with Caleb.

Talin has been a little nervous and stand offish, which has surprised me.

The oldest of three, it's crazy!

Collin is happy to finally have big brother status.

Caleb's first bath in the hospital.

Grandma Cyndee, trying to wake up our sleepy head!

He's coming home, yeah!!

Cyndee and the boys made this adorable welcome home sign. Hard to see with this lighting.

Tom is one of the few men I know that adores this newborn stage. He loves to sit and hold his little boy. And I love to sit and watch them together.

The crazy hair that hangs over his clothes.

The cutest outfit that Aunt Amy sent for him. It's preemie so I don't think he'll be wearing it for too much longer!

We are extremely blessed to be able to have Caleb home with us and to have him doing so well. We appreciate everyone who has had him in their prayers and fasted for his well being. He is a huge blessing and we are thrilled with how beautiful and strong he is. He thrills me with his screaming, he's definitely a fighter!

He's Here!!!

Caleb Allen Chambers is here!
He was born at 8:43, 6lbs 11 ounces, 18" long.

Almost

So, Megan is dialted to 7 cm and just got her epidural at 8:00 central standard time. Things are going to happen quickly!

Update

So hallelujah, I did not have to have an amniocentesis this morning. I've been full of nerves over this, but woke up with a surprising calm this morning. At the appointment they scanned my belly with ultrasound for a pocket of fluid to do it in, and found that my amniotic fluid was really low. So the doctor came in and took another look and said, well, we can't do an amnio today!
My heart literally sunk because I thought that meant I was being sent home and would not deliver. But instead her next words were that I'd need to deliver today no matter what because the fluid was so low. Then I was freaking out, is there something wrong that I don't have enough fluid?? Turns out no, that this is actually a natural process of your body preparing to labor, it just doesn 't get caught very often. I guess your amniotic fluid gets low as your body gets closer and closer to delivering. So it's all natural and there is nothing wrong. I'm just excited to meet my little boy today.
Right this minute I'm sitting in my hospital bed in a lovely gown, waiting for my nurse to come in and hook me up. Should be fun. I'll keep you all updated as much as possible.

Four More Days To Go!

Well on Tuesday I broke down. I’m less than a week away from being induced with this baby and I think the stress is definitely there, no matter how hard I try to push it away, it bursts forth at times and I can’t control it.
Tom was working Tuesday night, he didn’t even have time to come home for dinner, its finals week and he’s a ball of stress himself just trying to make it until Friday. So I was alone with the boys, and they had been having trouble listening, just really struggling at minding lately. It’s been frustrating, I’m hugely pregnant, exhausted, and trying to get things ready for Cyndee and baby to come.
So I grilled them out hot dogs and made some macaroni and cheese for dinner. Talin runs to the fridge and starts to get out the jar of pickles. I told him no, not tonight, we aren’t having pickles. My main reason being that I can’t stand the smell or look of pickles, but especially the smell, and especially being pregnant. So he puts them back. But when he puts them back he stacks them on top of other bottles on the side shelf of the door, so when I go to open up the fridge, the pickle jar falls to the floor, the lid pops open, and pickles and pickle juice goes everywhere! It starts to go under the fridge, and into the pantry, so I immediately grab a towel and try to stop the flood of juice as best I can, all the while screaming at the boys. I was so frustrated at this point, and so angry. I yelled at Talin that he would never be allowed to eat pickles again, and he sat there and sobbed, and then I screamed at Talin and Collin to leave me and go upstairs to their room. Then I sat on the floor in front of the refrigerator with the door open and just sobbed while I cleaned up the mess from the pickles. I cried and cried, my shoulders shook, it’s like all the exhaustion and frustration and worry poured out of me. And don’t get me wrong, I also sobbed because of the smell of the pickles, yuck. After awhile I got myself together and let the boys come down the stairs to eat their dinner, I think they were a little shocked at my complete breakdown. Then I called Tom and just talking about the disaster of it all made me cry even more, and every time I mentioned the smell of pickles I got even more emotional. He was so sweet and told me that when he got home that night he would move the fridge and clean up the juice underneath. I’m so grateful to have him; I don’t know what I would do without his continual support and understanding.

And on the other hand, I’m really kind of getting scared for this baby to come. Every mother and father hopes for one thing, and that is to have a healthy baby, and yet here is Tom and I, knowing that our baby will not be healthy when he’s born. It’s very upsetting and difficult to think about sometimes. I try to imagine how it will be when he is born, how he’ll be taken away, and how long it will take before I can see him. I’m frustrated with that. I want to hop out of the bed after I give birth and follow him down the hallway to the NICU. Obviously that’s not possible. Hopefully I can feel more at peace with this when the time comes. I’m trying to think of the positive things, the fact that he’s gained a lot of weight and that will be very helpful for him in medicating him and so forth. The fact that I won’t be pregnant in a week and that will be very nice too. Also, all the help that has been offered and that I’m receiving from my family. I’m so grateful that my mom is here and that Amy and JoDee will be coming as well. I couldn’t do all of this without so much support. They’ll be a huge help.
Now I’m just wondering if it would be too evil to go wake up Cyndee and start the day, she came in late last night and I’m so excited to have her here!

I want my body back.

There I am, early one morning trying to force myself out of bed when the boys come into my room. Of course my pajamas consist of undergarments only, and I've never invested in maternity ones, so they only cover the essentials while the rest of me hangs out in this pregnant state. And that morning I happened to have the covers off of me exposing the frightfulness of my figure these days.

So there are my two little boys standing by my bed, when Talin points to my hip and says, "what's that mom?"

Hello? Don't they know what a hip is? "That's my hip, Tal". Is the obvious response.

Collin immediately pipes in. "That's a big hip mom."

Yes it is. Yes it is.

Isn't that license to stay in bed for the rest of the day?

Labor Pains

With a normal pregnancy I might be feeling very frustrated right now, but not today. Today I feel like I’ve dodged a bullet.
It all started yesterday, the family laid down for an afternoon nap. The boys went right to sleep, which was a pleasant surprise. So Tom and I took full advantage of the uninterrupted time before falling asleep ourselves. The problem was I couldn’t fall asleep. It was around 3:30 and I just felt terribly uncomfortable. Finally I got up and took a bath, thinking that would help to ease my pains, not really acknowledging what those pains were.
Then I went in to wake up Tom and told him I thought I was having contractions. He was pretty sleepy, I felt guilty waking him up. But when I screeched at him for touching my stomach during a contraction, he said I needed to go into the hospital.
I so did not want to go in, so I decided to call the doctor first and see what he said. He was super wishy washy on the phone and pretty much left it up to me on whether or not I should go in. I hate making decisions! So I decided to start making dinner, with Tom’s help of course.
After dinner I laid on the couch and started to realize that they were pretty close together, so on the basis of better safe than sorry we decided to go into the hospital.
Dropped the kids off at a friend’s house and drove to the hospital. You have no idea how annoying pot holes and bad weather are in a car until you drive over them while in labor. Let’s just say that Tom is a very patient man with me.
At the hospital I got hooked up to the monitors and the contractions were intense, coming every three to four minutes and getting harder. Tom and I looked at each other and silently freaked out. Hello! We are so not prepared to have this baby tonight!!
After awhile the nurse decided to check my cervix. With the first try she couldn’t find it, and that’s when I sighed in relief thinking, I’m not having this baby tonight, thank goodness! I didn’t stay happy for long because she called in reinforcements to help her out with the cervix finding. Yeah…not pleased about this one. The second lady looked like a gentle girl that is until she tried to stick her fist up inside me for the hunt! Holy crap! Tom looked horrified, and I just felt violated. In the end I was only at 1 centimeter.
NEVER have I had a pregnancy like this one. After the nightmare of cervix checking was over the contractions slowed down and calmed down and eventually ebbed out completely. I have never had false labor, never not dilated to at least a three a month before labor. It’s all so odd to me.
So we stayed there for another hour and a half to make sure everything was really stopping and then we were released.
Once home I was up several times in the night with hard contractions, but nothing ever picked up consistently and I’ve been perfectly fine since this morning.
So I feel relieved that I have not had the baby, but I’m scared that he’s going to come sooner than Cyndee can arrive. She comes on the 12th, a week and a half, I’m hoping to hold out. Tom is hoping for that too, he’s kind of freaking out. I’m not aloud to do anything today, no laundry or cleaning, he’s so afraid of the baby coming sooner than Spring Break. Can’t blame him though, midterms are a week and a half away. So we’ll see what we can do!

The Doctor Is In

Seriously, I don't make this stuff up, my family is chronically ill. Why have I been cursed with the sickness? And once again I have to praise the miracles of modern medicine, which you're probably sick of hearing from me, but get used to it, the next few months aren't going to get any easier with this family.

Talin has been running a fever since Monday night. So finally this morning I decided that viral infection or not, he needs to see a doctor.
So this morning we first went to Collin's ENT appointment on the fourth floor and then went to the third floor for Talin's doctor's appointment.
Collin first: The appointment went great. He does not have hearing loss, just a build up of fluids that are expected to clear up fully with Spring and Summer on the way. We go back in three months from now to make sure that happens. Sigh of relief, no tubes needed!

Now for Talin: He has a nasty viral infection which is causing the high fever, major congestion, and a lot of fluids all over this kids head. Nothing to do but wait it out and treat the fever and congestion with over the counter meds. I guess they've been seeing a lot of cases of this extreme cold going around where kids are having the high fever for a week straight. I was told that if it is not gone after ten days to bring him back in. I'm praying it disappears over the weekend.

Everyone took a turn playing the role of doctor in our house last night as Tom listened to Talin and looked him over with all his fun doctor tools. The boys love it when he gets out the doctor bag.
Talin on the other hand is still running a fever and it's almost five o'clock, but he insists he's feeling well because he has free basketball tickets for a game tonight that he got from school. So Tom says he can go, but he looks terrible. I guess if he feels too bad we can always leave early, he is so excited to go. Me on the hand, not looking forward to going to a basketball game tonight. I've had a head cold for the past few days, and it sucks because being pregnant all I can take is Tylenol! Curse! So I haven't been sleeping well and that makes me cranky. But who knows, maybe basketball and family time could put me in a good mood.

Update

Yesterday I went in for an ultrasound. Everything looks great. He's becoming quite squished in there these days, but giving quite a fight. His weight gain is looking good. He has put on weight and now weighs 4 pounds 15 ounces. So he's almost to the five pound marker, which is great. He did drop in his percentage again though, and now he is in the 18% bracket, which isn't bad. I'm trying to be optimistic about this. My doctor says that if he gets to 10% then they'll deliver him right away, but I have three weeks before I get induced anyway, so I'm not too worried.
On the other hand I find it quite amusing. I'm three days from being 36 weeks along, which is the same gestational age that Collin was delivered at, and he came into this world weighing 7.6 lbs. So it's crazy for me to have a small baby, never had that happen before!

Here's his heart, pumping away. It's so ironic to think it can work so perfectly while he's inside me and yet when he's born it will slowly fail. All I can say is that I feel extremely blessed everyday to live in a world of modern medicine.

So today Talin is home sick. He had a fever all night and was still running a 103 degree temp this morning. So he's at home. And we had a bad winter storm last night, nasty ice outside, so I didn't take Collin to preschool because I didn't want to drag Talin out into the weather this morning. And maybe I'm just a little lazy and am justifying not leaving the house today.

I'm scared it's going to be a long day; already I've broken up a fight. Supposedly Collin is teasing Talin while he's watching Star Wars on the couch. Sometimes I wonder, I mean isn't the older brother suppose to be the tease? And Collin is already getting bored, ate breakfast an hour ago and keeps asking for treats. Argghh!! It's going to be a long day. And my throat hurts and I just want to lie down in bed!

On the other hand I'm not looking forward to this week, I have to go back to the hospital tomorrow for stress testing, and Collin doesn't have preschool on Wednesday which means I'll need to drag him along.

And then on Thursday I'm going on his preschool field trip to the Historic Building downtown, this involves riding in a crusty school bus with fifteen other four year olds.

And then on Friday I have to take Collin into the ENT (ear, nose, throat) to let them have a look at his ears and decide if he needs tubes.

Then on Saturday we have a tour at the hospital to check out the NICU and meet the staff that will be caring for Junior when he comes.

Sorry, don't mean to sound so whiney today, but I feel exhausted, and four hospital trips in one week is tiring. I know, I know, I should get used to it! In a few weeks it will be two to three times a day I'll be down there! But for now I'm dealing with this.

SPT - Pick Me Up

What do you turn to when you need a quick "pick me up?" I actually don't like the royal dark chocolate, I'm more of a pure milk chocolate kind of a girl. But when things get me down and I need a pick me up, this is what I turn to.

Chocolate.

And Easter happens to be the one holiday that has my favorite kind of chocolates around, Cadbury Eggs.

Here I am holding my own bag of eggs, unfortunately I ate the rest of the bag before I could get a picture of it.

Thought I'd do a pregnancy picture update as well with this SPT.

Here is the official 34 weeks and four days shot.

I know it a terrible shot. I can't seem to take a decent one, the flash causes chaos and you can't see anything, but the non-flash makes it blurry. I'm not very camera savvy.

And I stuck this picture in because I thought it turned out kind of cool in its blurry craziness.

Sunday Snow Day

Sunday morning we woke up to a snow day, and church was canceled. Apparently someone forgot to tell this little guy that it wasn't a good idea to get out of bed today.

How cute is he?

I leave peanuts outside for him everyday, I like squirrels. They might be diseased, but they're cute.

Here's the backyard. It wasn't a bad amount of snow, but we had a lot of ice built up under the snowfall, and some nasty winds creating blizzard conditions.

It's only this beautiful first thing in the morning, when nothing is disturbed yet.

We've all been there, right??

Okay, so I know I probably don’t live in the most fertile state, people often freak out at the idea I’m going to birth my third child and I look so young. I used to be pleased with this and take it as a compliment, now I realize that people just don’t have a lot of babies in their twenties anymore. That is unless you live in Arizona or Utah, where I would be behind in my child producing at this point.
So I went into Talin’s classroom yesterday to attend the Valentine’s Day party, and eighteen kindergarteners turned around and could not stop staring at my belly, wide eyed with mouths open. Many of them started shouting out, “do you have a baby in there?” or “are you going to have a baby soon?” It was a little embarrassing, there were other parents around and I didn’t realize it was such a big deal to have a protruding stomach these days.
Sitting down at Talin’s table with five other kids to color our Valentine’s, the questions became quite interesting.
“Do you really have a baby inside of you?” (Must be an only child asking this??) “Why don’t you take the baby out right now so we can see it?” Um…not a good idea.
Talin’s response, “My mom has to go to the doctor’s to get the baby out.”
“Where is the baby going to come out of? How does it come out?”
My response, “maybe that’s something you should talk to your mom about, she can tell you.”
Talin’s kindergarten teacher walked by with a big grinner, it was quite amusing.

Earlier that day I went to Collin’s party, but not before I had a complete and utter break down. The morning started off well, I woke up and Tom had bought me potted tulips that I can plant in the spring, a box of chocolates and a card. So sweet.
I knew the day was going to be busy; my first run was to Wal-Mart to get the groceries for dinner I was making that night, and get it into the crock pot before heading to Collin’s party.
I waddled around WalMart for an hour, collecting everything I needed, plus some extra stuff for lunches and what not. The store was crowded, everyone was there picking up last minute Valentine’s Day goodies. So the line behind me in the check out was quite significant.
The lady starts ringing everything up. I look in my wallet for my food card.

No food card.

My stomach dropped.

What was I going to do??

I needed this food for dinner tonight, I couldn’t imagine telling the lady I couldn’t pay for it, and I was way too embarrassed as I thought of just walking away and wasting the past hour I’d spent collecting all the food. It takes me a lot of energy these days to do menial tasks.
I was seriously freaking out.

While I contemplated she finished ringing it all up and the total came up as $87.

Oh my goodness!

I did not have $80 in my account even, and all I had was my debit card.

What to do, what to do??
I rummaged in my purse and realized I had $37 left over from JoDee’s contribution to our Valentine’s dinner. Thank goodness for JoDee! So I handed her that.

$50 more.

Took the risk and ran my debit card, fully expecting it not to go through.

It did.

Sweet!
Unloaded my groceries into the car and drove away and lost it. I just could not stop sobbing. Twenty minutes later I’m still going at it, sobbing away, gut wrenching sobs, over this money. It was just so upsetting to me to think I had $400 on my food card somewhere, but not in my wallet to use that day. Made me sick.

Then the low point came.
There I am sobbing as I put the milk in the fridge, I go to blow my nose, and consequently wet my pants. Yeah, it was that kind of a morning. I mean I know I’m nine months pregnant and these things happen, but the timing of it all, I couldn’t believe it! It really sent me into a whole new commotion of tears, more for self pity reasons than anything else.
In the end things worked out well, I pulled it together in time to make it to Collin’s school for the party. Tom was not upset at me, like that’s a surprise! I found my food card. We had a lovely dinner, and my husband was very sweet (won’t go into those details!). And this morning I was able to go into Wal-Mart and get the money refunded onto my debit and repaid with my food card. But wow, what a morning!

Maybe tomorrow I can laugh about it, right?

My Valentine

Happy Valentine’s Day to my one true love, Tom.

I first met Tom at a young single adult activity, he had just returned from his mission a few days earlier. I was informed, I can’t remember if by him or someone else, that he had a girlfriend in Flagstaff that had waited for him. It seemed like a sealed deal that he was taken and practically engaged. So of course my guard was completely let down.

Thus I found it rather shocking when one of the first few times I hung out with him and another friend, we were squished in the front of a pickup truck going somewhere, and he nonchalantly placed his hand on my thigh. Hello! Fireworks erupted and I was very surprised. But then he realized what he’d done and jerked it away as though I had leprosy. I had to remind myself, yeah, he’s taken.

Not very surprising, he was broken up with his girlfriend by the end of the month and started coming over to the house more regularly “to bug me”, is how he put it.

I didn’t mind.

One day while hanging out, Aleta (a family friend), called and had two theatre tickets to a production downtown that nobody was using. So Tom and I decided to go. It didn’t seem like a first date, especially since he didn’t ask me out, it was more like two friends consenting to hang out without the group.

Well he drove us out to Phoenix, and we saw the play, I can’t even remember what it is that we watched, it didn’t matter, I realized I really liked him.
After the play we walked around for awhile and then stopped to hang out and talk.

Except we didn’t talk, we just stood there.

I casually watched people walk by, and Tom casually watched me. I couldn’t take it anymore; I finally turned to him and asked, “What?” He just smiled at me and replied, “Just looking”.

Yeah, he melted my heart right there and I haven’t looked back since. Two months of dating and we were engaged; three months later we were married. It was a whirlwind, but once I realized I had found a man that treated me different than I’d ever been treated before, who had so much respect and love and loyalty for me, I never wanted anything different.
Seven and a half years later and I’m still so happy with my Tom. Each day I realize how much he means to me, the little things he does for, the emotional support he gives to me, and the fact that he’s the only person out there that can calm my inner demons.
I love him!

Thai Delight!

So I've found my new love this Valentine's Day, move over Tom, I'm in love with Thai food!
We went with a group of friend last night to The Spice, an upscale Thai food restaurant. I was definitely a little worried, never partaken of Thai before, and knew that their dishes were typically spicy. And well, with my stomach squished up into my ribs these days, that didn't forebode well for me, and I had forgotten to bring along my stash of Tums to get me through the meal.
Well let me just say that I was wondrously surprised at how amazing the food was. So so good. Amy had made some suggestions on what I should order and I was brave and went with her on the Pad Thai. It's thin rice noodles sautéed in three-flavored sauce with egg, chives and bean sprouts, and I added in beef with it. It was fantastic. I even sampled the other five dishes of everyone else at the table; yeah, I was one of those people, with my wandering fork! But I wanted to experiment, I even went for the spicy ones too, and they were all great. So glad I went and was daring with an actual Thai dish, paid off. So if anyone is going out to eat anytime soon, go to Thai food.
I really wish I had pictures of the food, next time I'll take a camera.