Week 26!

Wow, I am now officially at Week 26. That's amazing.

I'm so greedy though. I want to make 28 for sure, and I REALLY hope for 30. But, really, 30 kind of sucks and what I REALLY, REALLY want is 35. At 35 there is a good chance that the baby will breathe fine and not end up in the NICU. He might just go home with us! He would weigh like 4 or 5 pounds! How amazing would that be, after all of this worrying and waiting and hoping and praying.

I have these odd dreams all the time now... I'll have a dream that I'm out doing something, like, say, walking down the street. Then, suddenly I remember that I should be on strict bedrest, so I panic and then end up laying down on the sidewalk.

Last night I was dreaming that I was going back to college to finish my bachelor's. I was in a dorm room looking over my class schedule, and I thought about how I needed to buy school supplies and was so excited about that. I was going to buy some cute little folders and matching pens. Then, I realized I was supposed to be on bedrest so I quickly laid down flat on the floor. I will have to order the folders and pens online, I thought, since I can't get up. :)

Our current favorite name for the baby is Phineas. It was always one of my favorite names since I read the book "A Separate Peace." I loved Finny in that book. So when Kevin said it was his favorite name, it really stuck with me too. It is an odd name, difficult to pull off, but if anyone can do it - it is our baby. I hope Finny isn't mad at us in the future for using such a name. :)

Here is an update that I posted on one of my message boards:

Everything seems to be going remarkably well! I've had a few scares due to my white blood cell count going up and down, but today it is back down again so it looks like my count is just fluctuating, rather than a sign of an infection building up.

I've been having an ultrasound every 2 weeks, and I had one on Monday. The baby looks great - we saw a little penis, so it is definitely a boy! He weighs almost 2 pounds at this point, and there was a little more amniotic fluid than I normally have (AFI 3.7). We could actually see the baby opening and closing his mouth to drink! So that's a great sign.

I'm still having some problems with my appetite... first I'm a vegetarian, and second I'm pregnant. So it is really difficult for me to eat hospital food all the time. I still throw up now and then, and the doctors offered me Zofran but I refused. I don't feel I throw up enough to make it worth it.

Unfortunately I'm in a hospital almost 2 hours away from home, so it is difficult for my husband to bring me food. He has brought me snacks, which really helps. I now have some food from each of the food groups: salty snacks, chocolate snacks and sweet candy snacks. Yesterday he brought me the sweet candy, and included were some Jolly Ranger lollipops. Oh man, an apple Jolly Ranger lollipop must have been one of the best things I've ever tasted.

He also brought me pizza one time. It was a little cold, but it was so incredibly delicious. I feel like my stomach has shrunken so much so it is difficult to eat much all at once, but I ate so much pizza I thought I would explode! It was great though. Good times.

I also feel the baby kicking all the time now. He's doing a new thing recently - a slow kick, like a stretch. It looks so funny because you can see my blankets and everything move up slowly, then back down. I'm sitting here laying down all the time, so it is very easy to pay attention to all the kicking.

I started Heprin shots a week and a half ago, meant to reduce blood clots. I have to get a shot twice a day, every day. I don't mind being stuck by needles, I'm getting to be a pro at that, but man, the medicine going in really STINGS. But, hey, it's worth it. The last thing in the world I need is a bloodclot!