Welcome Allie!!

She's here!! Allison Renee Durso was born at 8:22 Friday evening. She's 8 pounds, 13 ounces with a full head of hair. We are in awe and can't stop smiling. It was a long and hard labor, but we're all doing well. I'll try to post more pictures and words after we go home tomorrow.

Letter to my baby

My dearest Allison,

Ever since we found out about you, I have been dreaming to meet you. I can't wait to hug you and teach you, to find out what you will make yourself. I knew from the beginning you'd be my little girl.

This has been a tough year for your daddy and me. But you make all of the bad things go away. I can't put into words the love I feel for you. I can't wait to meet you.

Love,
Mommy

Down to the single digits!

The countdown to due date has reached the single digits! Only nine days until Nov. 5, the day Allie is due to arrive. Due dates really mean nothing, I realize, but I need something to count down to. But I am hoping she will come sooner than that. I'm so ready to be done with pregnancy. I just want to meet my little girl!

Special things for Allie

I'm overdue to post pictures of Allie's finished room, as well as some other special things we have gotten for her!

First, her baby book! Its not a very good picture because its not very easy to take a picture of a book. Anyway, we can put in her picture and under the picture it says "Once upon a time," and the book has a fairy tale theme. Its so adorable. I love it! I'm already starting to write Allie's story in it.

Here's Allie's car seat. Doug and I installed it and got the seat belt tightened as far as I could make it go. The next day I went to a car seat safety check and found that it still wasn't tight enough! But the people checking it made it nice and tight and its all set to bring Allie home from the hospital. One of the more important items we have for the baby, we got the car seat with a generous gift from Doug's parents.

The matching stroller. We're keeping it in the living room for awhile to try and get Monk to be comfortable with it. She is such a scared dog, so we're trying to get her to live with Allie's things. There will be lots of scary stuff coming for Monk to get used to!

Last, but not least, Allie's completed room.

Its too bad I can't get all of the wall's artwork in one picture. Its so pretty.

Here's the other side of the wall art work, as well as the stocked changing table.

The last items we needed for the room are in that corner: A lamp, a book shelf that will double as a table, a clock and a phone. The clock and phone are for mommy and daddy's convenience, as I'm sure we'll spend plenty of time in there! I decided to cover the couch in a sheet and yes, it does look kind of sloppy, but it matches the room better than the red.

And last, but not least, Allie's name! It turned out a little crooked, but you can't tell unless you're really looking for it. Regardless, I really like how it turned out. I'm so excited!

See Allie, we've got so much cute stuff for you, its time for you to come out and enjoy it!!

38 weeks... All we have left to do is wait!

38 weeks, 4 days:
Only 10 days to go! All we can do now is wait. We're done with the whole to-do list. I have a few more things I'd like to do, but I doubt I get the motivation.

Allie dropped some more over the weekend. She's pressing full on my bladder and my pelvis, my right hip joint in particular. She feels so heavy sometimes. I am limited to workouts on the elliptical, but I did get four good workouts in last week. Along with the house cleaning I did last weekend, I say I got five good workouts in. Not bad for 38 and a half weeks pregnant.

But I am ready to be done. I want to meet my daughter! If I am make it to my doctor's appointment next Monday, we'll start talking about options if I were to go overdue. I sure hope it doesn't come to that.

Doug and I have talked a lot about when this will really seem real. It really still doesn't seem real sometimes. How strange is it going to be when I am holding and hugging my baby and I can't give her back to someone else? Because she'll be mine! Its still crazy to think about. I can't wait to stop thinking about it and just meet her!

A better way to reach me

Lately it seems I've been missing a lot of phone calls coming in on my cell phone when I am in my house, but not near my cell phone. I'm sure this will happen a lot more when Allie comes. So as a better way to reach me or Doug, I will suggest calling our land line phone. If you don't have the number you can contact me and I'll give it to you. We just got a new expandable phone today so there's a phone in both bedrooms upstairs (ringer off in Allie's room of course) and I will always hear it ringing! However, I can't guarantee I'll always be able to answer, but thats what the answering machine is for.

Things I miss

In no particular order...

1) Running!
2) The ability to bend
3) The ability to move in bed
4) Sleeping on my back
5) The ability to put on my shoes and socks without difficulty
6) Exercising like I used to
7) Non-maternity pants
8) Pajamas and t-shirts that fit
9) Wearing my wedding ring on my finger instead of on a necklace
10) Having normal feeling in my wrists/hands (as opposed to tingling in my fingers and other pleasures of pregnancy carpal tunnel syndrome)
11) Sleeping without 71 pillows around me (OK, really its 5 counting the ones under my head, but do you know how hard it is to get settled in bed with that many pillows?)
12) Just being able to walk without getting stiff and sore later
13) Having more than two pairs of shoes that fit
14) Having enough clothes that I could put off doing laundry for a week or more
15) Spinning
16) Working
17) Sleeping more than two hours without getting up to use the bathroom (at this point, sleeping two hours in between feedings is looking much more appealing)

This is not an all-inclusive list.

Its amazing the activities you take for granted, the ability to bend, for instance. But I'll slowly be getting back most, if not all of this list, within a few weeks. For now I guess I just get to keep waiting and waiting and waiting... I see the end of the tunnel, but its still a little far away.

On the fun side, however, Allie's room is just about officially all the way done. I got a small bookshelf to double as a table and a lamp yesterday, and those were the two remaining things I wanted to get for the room. I just need to vacuum in there again (I hate how everything is packed in styrofoam!) and put stuff in the shelves, and then the room is really officially ready. I'll post pictures soon. I have a lot of pictures I want to post now... I really need to get cracking!

Lights, camera, action!

Doug and I have been experimenting with the camcorder this week. Last night we learned how to copy video onto a DVD. Its actually very very easy with the external DVD burner we purchsed with the camcorder. We don't even need to hook it up to a computer.

Today I made it my mission to copy video onto the computer and then learn to edit and post video clips. Here are the results of that effort, two clips from my baby shower two and a half weeks ago.

We got lots of special gifts for Allie, but two of the most special are the afghan made my Allie's great-grandma, which is the first clip, and the cross stitch made by Allie's grandma, in the second. I hope this works. Enjoy!

A perfect fall day

Finally, we got nice fall weather instead of icky fall weather this week. Up to now, it seemed like the weather skipped from summer to cold. Too bad the cold weather killed most of the leaves in our yard, but there are still some on the trees.

But this week the temps have gone back up and we've gotten glimpses of the sun. I've enjoyed wearing short sleeves and flip flops and, in turn, not squeezing my feet into normal shoes or worrying about fitting a coat around me.

Today is the kind of day when I would love to run outside. Its warm and sunny and the leaves are all colored, everything is beautiful. My favorite place to run in the fall is the Military Ridge trail in Verona. Here's a couple pictures I took last year:

Isn't that pretty? But instead of running here today, I worked out on the elliptical for 45 minutes at the gym. It was a great workout though! Its so weird how one week I can feel completely lifeless and lethargic and the next week feel great. Thats how its been for me comparing this week to last week. Last week I only got myself to the gym once and my workout wasn't that great. This week, I've worked out twice so far and both were awesome!

Unfortunately I have some more discomfort issues that are now limiting me to just the elliptical. But I am glad that a day away from 38 weeks pregnant, I am still working out at all! Maybe if I keep working out like this, Allie will come out sooner!

Foods I am loving right now

So I don't know if these qualify as cravings, but I definitely have a few food items I just can't seem to live without.

1) Cereal. I had Doug buy three boxes of it this week. We usually get two, one for each of us. But I ate all mine and a lot of his last week. In fact, I finished the cereal on Wednesday. So Thursday and Friday were very sad days. My current favorites are Frosted Mini-Wheats and Honey Smacks.

2) Peanut butter. I made peanut butter cookies last week, and I'm really not a peanut butter cookie person. I'd rather have chocolate chip. But since I'm obsessed with peanut butter, these sounded really good, and they were. Doug and I ate most of them within two days. Other great ways to eat peanut butter? On toast, and in a sandwich with strawberry jam.

3) Chocolate milk. Skim milk with the nestle powder. SO good. I know I shouldn't drink my calories, but I just can't help it. And this way I'm definitely getting my calcium. I've never been a milk person, by the way, so this is better than nothing. In addition to three boxes of cereal, our weekly groceries also include two gallons of milk.

I also get the occasional hankering for a Culver's double cheeseburger and I love all things ice cream... no wonder I've gained so much weight in pregnancy! There's not much I can do about it now, however. So I'll enjoy it for these last couple weeks and then see about getting back on track.

Just about ready

The to-do list is shrinking, thanks to my sister Jeni. She came up here yesterday and helped me get a bunch of house stuff done. We got Allie's room cleaned up and stuff hung on the walls, her dresser organized, laundry done, carpets vacuumed and some dusting.

So Allie's room is all ready for her to move in and the house is all clean. Hopefully we can maintain the clean state of the house to make it easier once we have Allie.

On Thursday, I took the car with car seat installed to a safety check. I had gotten that seat buckled in as tight as I could make it, and it was still too loose! The person checking the seat changed its angle in order to get it tighter, something I hadn't thought of. So Allie will be safe riding in the car.

Also on Thursday, we bought the last few things off our Target registry as well as some other stuff for the hospital, including Allie's coming home outfit! Its so cute! I'll post pictures, I promise.

We're just about ready for Allie to get here. We only have a few small tasks on the to-do list including a bit more dusting and the mopping of the kitchen. I haven't mopped the kitchen in quite some time! I also need to get my hospital bag started. I can't pack it all, but there is some stuff I can pack and it would be nice to get that started. We still need to buy a few things too, but that has will be done when the budget allows. And thats about it. We're pretty much ready for our little bean's arrival!

Full-term baby

Allie is at 37 weeks today, what's called full term. Her lungs, the last part of her to develop, are developed. If she were born today she would be able to breathe and survive outside my womb. If labor started today, there wouldn't be any efforts to stop it. For all intensive purposes, we could have her arriving anytime from now to five weeks from now, though I certainly hope it won't be five weeks because that would be two weeks overdue.

I feel like I've been pregnant forever, and its getting old. As much as I'd like Allie to come out right now, I do know its better for her to stay in the full 40 weeks. But sleeping is increasingly more uncomfortable, my back tends to hurt all the time and I'm ready for my body to be mine again. On the other hand, the house isn't ready for Allie yet. We're getting close, but not quite there.

Domestic diva?

Not quite. This is what I did yesterday:

I finally finished installing knobs on the cabinets in my kitchen. Domestic diva worthy, I suppose, except that it took me more than a year to get it all finished! I started this sometime in July of 2008. I did the top cabinets, except the ones over the stove. Then the stuff sat on the kitchen counter a few months before it finally got shoved in a closet. This summer I took it out and installed a few more, but it still wasn't done. The knobs and tools sat on the kitchen counter until yesterday when I finally finished the project!

I thought installing knobs would be easy enough, but it really wasn't. A lot of the knobs next to each other aren't level. Then again, niether are the doors they are on! Its not perfect, but I'm happy its finally done. It won't work when we're ready to sell the house, but we'll be getting new cabinet doors and stuff at that point anyway because there were already a bunch of holes in them when we moved in.

My next house will most definitely have cabinet hardware already installed! Or someone will do it for me. I have enough knobs left to install them in the half bath, but I think I'll wait awhile before I will tackle that project.

Its nice to be getting all of this stuff done. We're working slowly to get the house all cleaned up and then to maintain it before and after the baby comes. I've also been baking a lot. In the last week I've made zucchini bread, banana bread and peanut butter cookies. I think Doug is enjoying the benefits of my nesting. Don't these look yummy?

Not bad, not bad at all

I finished Allie's name hanging for her room yesterday. It ended up bigger than I thought it would, but overall I'm really happy with it!

Now I just need to figure out how to hang it on the wall. I'm concerned it might be a little too heavy for just a single nail at the top, especially since there's not a stud in that area of the wall. I used to have a little picture-hanging kit with all sorts of gadgets, but I can't seem to find it right now. But I wasn't sure how I'd put the name together and I figured that out. So I will figure out how to hang it!

The wall hanging is sitting on our coffee table right now, because its too long for the kitchen table. Funny thing about this picture: When I went to take it, I had to bend over a bit because my big belly was in the picture!

First of the weeklies

I had my first weekly doctor's appointment today and with it the first internal exam. My pregnant brain got the better of me this morning because I thought the appointment was at 9:45, when it was at 9:30. So I thought I was leaving early enough to take care of things before the appointment, when that actually made me late! The funny thing is that Doug kept trying to remind me of the time too, not to mention I've had a printout of all my appointments hanging on the refrigerator for months now. I think I've just had a lot of appointments at 9:45, which is what made me think this was too.

Anyway, things are moving along as they should be. I am 1 cm dilated, 70 percent effaced and -1 station, which refers to baby's position in my pelvis. Allie is definitely head down too. I was pretty sure of that, but its good to get it confirmed.

I'm in the home stretch, but it sure doesn't feel like it. Time just keeps going slower and slower. As it all draws closer I'm getting more nervous. Not so much about the pain, but the whole labor and delivery process in general. Thats to be expected, of course, seeing as how I've never done this before. I just hope everything goes how it should.

36 weeks... Uncomfortable but not miserable

Here's my latest picture, at 36 weeks and 3 days.

I'm huge! Baby has started dropping though, so I'm not sure I've grown as much as redistributed. My lungs aren't squashed anymore, so I'm breathing a little easier for the most part. But the trade-off is that my bladder is being pressed more so even if I don't have to use the bathroom, I feel like I do. Bending is still difficult and my back gets sore when I'm on my feet too long or even when I'm not. It pretty much has a mind of its own.

Laying in bed is the worst, though I can't complain too much because I still get pretty good sleep. Every couple nights or so I have some time up in the middle of the night. The good thing about not working, however, is that I can usually make up that lost sleep. With my sore back it often hurts to turn in bed. I don't move in bed as much as I used to and when I need to, its easier to get up and use the bathroom and then lay down in the position I wanted to switch to. My shoulders and neck are sore off and on from sleeping on my side.

I'm uncomfortable, but not miserable. I'm still able to do most things for myself, though its always nice when Doug is around because I can make him do things. Thank you honey! I can still work out, though I'm more limited. Right now I use the elliptical and I swim. Hopefully I can do both up until I deliver.

Its kind of strange that my attitude is better today than it was a few weeks ago. I guess a lot of the annoyances don't seem as important. However, the tingling in my middle and ring fingers of the right hand, from the carpal tunnel, is still quite irritating.

This morning I discovered that none of my coats fit around me. I can button only two out of four buttons on my winter coat. Hopefully the temps warm up a bit or else I guess I just get to look silly in my ill-fitting coats. Its a small price to pay though. As of today, only 25 days until baby Allie is due!

Exhausted

But look what I accomplished this week!

Allie's dresser is now stocked, a little too stocked. This represents a portion of the baby laundry I did this week: 13 loads in all. Allie has plenty of clothing, and in a good range of sizes too. Doing the baby laundry was fun at first, but now I hope to wait a few days before using the washing machine again.

The room is still a mess, however. The organizing process is just beginning. Here's what I have to work with:

Plans for the coming week include installing getting the car seat and inspected, finishing Allie's name hanging for the wall and making sense out of this mess! Once we clean up the closet, I can better organize the dresser and put away all the stuff surrounding the couch. It sounds to easy, doesn't it?

This has been my most productive week in months, I think. But there's still so much to do. Doug and I are taking a break this weekend, or at least trying to. I've been so stiff and sore after my work this week and I kept saying I would take it easier, but I didn't.

We'll see if I can keep the taking it easy pledge this weekend. It shouldn't be too hard. Doug and I helped a friend move today. Well, Doug helped move and I watched college football. Doug is sore and I think feeling the way I feel a lot of the time now. So yeah, we're both exhausted. Hopefully we have a whole lot of nothing on tap for Sunday.

Surprises along the way

A friend asked me a couple weeks ago if there's anything about pregnancy that really surprised me. At the time I said no, I had read about pretty much everything. But thinking about it more, I have decided there are somethings that surprised me, things that have made me scratch my head and wonder why that's part of this process? Other things I read about but was still surprised to have happen.

The thing that has bugged me the most is my clumsiness. I trip over things and drop things. The worst part of this is slopping my meals all over myself. I used to do this when I was a kid - my mom would always say she could tell what I had for lunch on a given day by what was on my shirt when I came home from school. But I'm grown up now! The worst part of this is with my shelf, aka belly, I've had to spend a good amount of time pretreating my shirts before washing them. And there's something about the material maternity shirts are made out of that makes them really like to hold onto those spots.

I was surprised to get a haircut at the end of April and to see my hair barely grow in the next several months. Now at the beginning of October, more than seven months after that haircut, I think my hair has grown a little. I am finally able to get most of it to stay up when I put it in a pony tail. My hair has looked really good lately too. Thats because of the hormones. They're making my hair thicker so I guess I have more of it coming in, instead of having it grow longer.

I had read about nesting and thought it was a silly idea. But nesting has definitely had its place along the way. I kind of willed another round of nesting to start this week because I was convinced I couldn't get everything done without it. So far its helping.

The lack of energy really took me by surprise too. I read about third trimester fatigue, but I thought it would be like how I was during the first trimester, where I just wanted to go to bed early. But this is different. I am napping during the day more. But I can't sleep all the time and when I'm awake its hard to make myself function. Its like I feel Allie sucking all my energy, like she's stealing all my food before it can benefit me. At the same time, I sleep a lot more, but its pretty uneven. Some nights I'll sleep 10 hours and nap an hour or two during the day. But then I'll have a night like tonight where I'm up for a couple hours in the middle.

So I guess there is plenty that has surprised me along the way. I thought I'd enjoy the "shelf," but that hasn't been the case. The only thing I've been able to use it for is a place for my food to fall instead of the floor.

But at least right now, I'm uncomfortable but not miserable. Its hard to move sometimes and I have to pace myself as I go through my day. But I'm doing my best to be patient for the next month until Allie decides she wants to come out and meet her mommy and daddy in person.

Done with baby class

So does that mean we're supposed to know what we're doing? I sure don't. I'm not ready!!

Busy day

Today was the most productive day I've had in quite a long time. Our to-do list keeps growing, and its time to get moving on it!

I have finally realized that if I'm going to get anything done, I need to quit being lazy in the mornings, at least some days. So I started this morning by putting towels in the wash and going to the gym. By 1 p.m., I had all the towels in progress, my workout, shower and lunch all done. Thats pretty good considering most days I haven't even showered by 1.

Of course I know I need to pace myself, so after lunch I relaxed a bit and took a nap. I'm so tired lately!

Then this afternoon I cleaned the basement. I cleaned a couple months ago and got rid of a lot of things. Today I needed to clean the dirty laundry area and get rid of a lot of junk thats accumulated. I broke up the big furniture boxes, swept the floor, washed the rug and cleaned the top of the washer and dryer as well as the shelves next to them. It looks so pretty.

I had decided I wanted to wash Allie's clothes in a clean laundry room. So now that I've gotten that task checked off, next is getting the laundry going.

Tonight we had the most fun of the day, though I was pretty exhausted for it. We started our shopping to get the rest of the stuff we need before Allie comes. We got the diaper bag, some scented drawer liners for her dresser and the changing table items.

Needless to say, I'm skipping the gym on Wednesday. I'm in for a sore body.

Next on the list is starting to organize Allie's room so I can get all the laundry out and start washing. We have so much stuff to wash, I wonder how long it will all take.

Being realistic, I know I can't have a productive day like this every day. I just don't have the energy. But I've gotten a good start and if I can do this two or three times a week, it'll get done. Doug is going to help me at night and on weekends as well. I'm so happy its all coming together. Our Allie will be here in no time at all.

Baby Allie is due one month from today!

Yikes! Going through so many days, they seem so slow. Then all of the sudden, today is Oct. 5, and Allie is due one month from today! This amazing experience is moving toward its conclusion. I think I can see signs that Allie is getting ready to join us. I think she has dropped or is dropping. My belly is protruding a bit more, but it looks a bit lower. I am softer up top and getting harder down toward the bottom. I'm still having plenty of the practice contractions. In about a week and a half we'll reach full term.

A great party for Allie

I feel so privileged to have my great friends and family. My baby shower yesterday was awesome, thanks to Jeni and Julie, along with my mom, Johanna and Jocelyn. Just look at this great setup! They got a chocolate fountain!

I didn't get to have very much chocolate stuff because I ate too much of the other yummy food. Julie, if you read this, I LOVED that quiche!

I also chuckled at one of the games, where people had to guess what childhood events happened to me or Doug. I didn't even know everything on the list! Of course my family had to drag out some embarassing pictures from my childhood too.

I only took these two pictures because my camera batteries were dying and I was too busy visiting to take pictures. Besides, how could I take pictures of myself? I did bring the camcorder along and I had Jocelyn do some filming. We're going to use this to learn how to get video off the camcorder and onto a DVD. I might even try to figure out how to post video to the blog! Stay tuned.

By the way, I love how this shirt made me look not as huge as I am. Oh, and my hair has been looking really good lately, though its hard to tell in this picture. There will be some things I miss about pregnancy.

And I felt so special to have so many people come to celebrate with me. Several family members and friends traveled into Rockton for the day. I am truly blessed.

We got a lot of useful stuff for Allie and now the race is on to get the rest of it! Doug and I have a priority list with all the stuff we need. We need to hurry and get it all and get the house organized. We're going into the time where the to-do list is growing every day and time is getting quite short!

On a side note, I had a great workout today. This is blog-worthy for me just because I've been writing so much lately about how uncomfortable I am and how I have no energy, so I'm happy to write about positive happenings. For some reason I had great energy today and still feel great after that workout. I don't know what made it so great, but if I could get a few more workouts like that, I certainly wouldn't complain.

Energy, energy, where have you gone?

Geez, it seems like I'm exhausted more often than not these days. Seems like I get wiped out so easily and its been ages since I got anything crossed off my to-do list. Some days its just a struggle to get the kitchen clean and get a workout (or at least a shower) in.

This had been pretty infrequent over the last month or so, but this week has been terrible. My sleep has gotten really inconsistent. I get so tired and sleep in big clusters, but then it gets uneven and I don't sleep well at all. Last Sunday I napped for two hours and still slept about 10 hours that night. But maybe because of that, I didn't sleep nearly as well Monday night into Tuesday. Wednesday I had to get up early, so I was dead tired and slept late again on Thursday. Then I napped again Thursday and slept late today. I have a feeling I'm due for a sleepless night tonight.

I've also been having some morning sickeness-like nausea this week. Its terrible because sometimes eating makes it better and sometimes eating makes it worse. Maybe its yet another growth spurt for Allie... but how many more are there going to be? Will I just be exhausted and feeling yucky for the next month?

I'm really starting to understand why many women are antsy to get their babies out once they reach full term, 37 weeks. My round ligament pain as well as hip/groin/lower back soreness have been back with a vengeance this week. In addition, I'm now experiencing sciatica, the pinching of the big nerve that goes from the spine down into the legs. I also had to add another pillow to my sleeping arrangement because my belly feels really heavy in bed.

Doug has been so sweet. He's now volunteering to do most of the grocery shopping. Thats a big deal because usually I have to really twist his arm to get him to set foot in any store. I still have to make the list, but not having to physically do the shopping is nice. I'm also constantly apologizing to him for complaining so much and he insists that I'm not! I may be pushing him out of bed with all my pillows, but he is at least acting like he doesn't mind.

Through all of this, I'm doing my best to stay positive and keep my eye on the prize. Allie will be here soon enough and all of this discomfort will be forgotten.

Its October and the countdown is on

Well, 35 weeks down and 5 weeks to go. Thats only 35 days!

This is crazy how fast time is flying. I feel like it was just the other day I wrote I didn't know where the summer went, and now I don't know where September went.

Allie's arrival is drawing closer. If she decides to come early, we could have her here later this month! One of the couples in our childbirth class had their baby last Sunday - a month early. Wow.

I feel like Doug and I are somewhat prepared if Allie were to come really early. But there's still plenty of preparation to do. And I'm sure as her due date gets closer, the confidence I'm feeling will go away.

There's a lot more to do in coming days. My shower is this weekend, then after that Doug and I will have to determine what we don't have yet that we really need. We'll need to get the house cleaned and all of Allie's clothes washed. Starting in just over a week, I'm going to the doctor's office weekly. There are a few things I need to get for the hospital time. And I'm sure there are many more tasks that I don't even know about yet. I'm also hoping Doug and I can really take advantage of the time we have left with just the two of us. Everything will change in a pretty short time for all of us.

While the time seems kind of slow when its actually happening, in just over a month when we have Allie in our arms, I'll still be marveling at how quickly time goes by. I'm sure I'll be saying that a lot as Allie grows. This is an amazing time in all our lives and I am hopeful we will cherish every minute.