Happy April 15th!!

Oh my, I can't believe we made it through another tax busy season!! It was one of the hardest that I've been through (due to the pregnancy alone), but it feels so good to see the finished product and have something to show for all of the long hours and hard work. Baby has been a real trooper right up until the end. It must have been really boring with mom sitting in a chair for most of the day :)



This last week it was a little questionnable if we were going to make it or not. Sunday night I noticed a lot more discharge than usual, so I called the doctor to make sure it wasn't anything to be alarmed about. The doctor on call told me to come in right away. I was beginning to worry a little bit, but my husband remained calm and told me that it was probably just a precaution. We arrived at the maternity center at St. Vincent's and ended up having to fill out a ton of paperwork "just in case I ended up staying for a little bit". This made me even more scared, but at least we would get all of this paperwork out of the way before the real deal. We went into a triage and they hooked me up to a monitor where they could monitor the baby's heart rate. After I had been sitting for a while with the monitor going, the nurse came in and said, "do you know that you are having a contraction right now?" I had no idea! I couldn't feel a thing. The nurse did a bunch of tests on me. My cervix wasn't dialated, but she said it was very soft. That means that things may or may not be progressing. I wasn't feeling good at all by this point. I was only 33 weeks, and not ready at this point for the baby to join us. Thankfully, she said that the baby is doing just fine and has a healthy heart rate. That is the most important thing :) After all of the tests were done, the nurse said that she didn't think that I had anything to worry about and was planning on sending me home. However, the doctor had different plans. She said that she wanted to take some precautions and put me on bedrest until my doctor could examine me again. I told her that I was a tax accountant, and being on bedrest during this time would not be ideal. She insisted, and I complied. The baby's well-being is infinitley more important than tax season. I ended up spending all of Monday in bed, and then I was able to get an appointment with a doctor in the evening. The doctor said that I should be fine and gave me the ok to return back to work. However, if I have more than 4 contractions an hour, I was to come back to the hospital immediately.

Since then, I've been trying to take it easy. I haven't had many contractions since, so hopefully I'm good for a little while longer. Each time I look back on this experience, I keep trying to think what I could have done to prevent this. Was I working too many hours at work on top of trying to keep up with family time, church priorities, and signing myself up for more things that I knew I couldn't do? Was I letting myself stress too much about getting our house ready and getting the baby room ready and not allowing myself to just enjoy the experience? If it is something I did, I would have a really hard time forgiving myself for putting my baby in harm's way. I have come to realize that even though we haven't officially met face to face, we have shared so many beautiful moments together already. Through all of the nausea, kicking, heartburn, waddling, etc. we've always been there experiencing it together. She has been my constant companion through all of the good times and the bad, and I genuinely love her so much already.

Anyway, enough of the mushiness... hope everyone has a HAPPY TAX DAY!!!