Bored, bored, bored

Well, folks. Here is the saga of my weekend. As most of you faithful readers know, our little bundle of joy is due at the end of next month. However, Saturday night while trying to fall asleep I start having some semi-painful contractions, which although not regular were still uncomfortable enough that it was hard to fall asleep. Well, all night long, each time I had to get up to go to the bathroom -- which is like 2 or 3 times a night these days -- I would experience the same problems with contractions and having a hard time falling asleep. By morning time I got up with the kids, mostly because I couldn't go back to sleep, and I was still continuing to have contractions which were starting to become regular -- anywhere from 3-5 minutes apart -- and slightly painful.

Now, by nature, I'm not really a worrier. This is my 3rd pregnancy, I've been having lots of Braxton-Hicks contractions for the last couple of months -- which I'd asked my doctor about and he assured me that this was normal with the more pregnancies you have -- and to be honest I really didn't think that I was experiencing true labor. I didn't want to have to go to the hospital just for them to tell me that it was false labor and to just rest and take it easy. I was also not wanting to go because I was supposed to substitute playing the piano in Relief Society, and I didn't want to let anybody down, AND most importantly I didn't want to miss Ethan's first day of Sunbeams (which was this week because we had Stake Conference last week).

So, I was just going to suck it up and at least go to church before doing anything drastic like going in to the hospital, until I started thinking about it and realized that I hadn't really felt the baby move all that much that morning. When Scott woke up and I told him what was going on, he BEING a worrier, immediately wanted me to at least call the hospital and see what they said. So, after laying down for 15 minutes to see if I felt the baby move at all, and not feeling any movement but still having contractions every few minutes, I finally gave in and called and since I'm still only at 34 weeks in the pregnancy they said to come on in for monitoring.

So, that is how we spent the rest of the day. Hooked up to monitors and being given a battery of tests and finally being put on BEDREST. Lovely. The important thing, though, is that the baby looked totally fine. Her heart rate was perfect and she was not in distress or anything, and shortly after checking in, she started moving around. However, I was still contracting -- at this point every 2-3 minutes -- and they were still a couple notches above merely uncomfortable, so they gave me 3 shots of Terbutaline (to stop the contractions) as well as a fetal Fibronectin test to determine if I was in any imminent danger of going into premature labor (the test did come back negative, so there's a 95% chance that I WON'T go into labor in the next 2 weeks) and they also did an internal exam to see if I had started to dilate at all (which I had, to a whopping 1 cm). AND they also gave me a shot of Betamethasone -- which is a steroid that is supposed to help speed up the development of the baby's lungs -- just in case.

Anyway, long story kind of short, they kept me in for the next couple of hours to continue to monitor me and the baby, and my doctor also ordered an ultrasound to check on the amniotic fluid levels. We were finally able to leave after about 6 hours with a prescription for Nifedepine (or something like that) to keep the contractions at bay -- which I was still having although they were much more irregular and no longer painful -- and instructions that I was to stay on complete BEDREST because I HAD already started to dilate. So there you have it. The reason for the title of this blog post. It has been exactly one day of bedrest and I am already bored out of my mind. Luckily Scott didn't have school today -- thank you Martin Luther King, Jr. -- so he was a huge help with the kids, along with my sister Sarah who babysat for us when we had to go back for my doctor's appointment today as well as another trip to the hospital to get the second dose of the Betamethasone shot. My doctor informed me at my appointment that he wants me to stay on bedrest for the next 2 weeks. Awesome.

So, apparently I'll need to figure out a way to "take it easy and lay down as much as possible" for the next 2 weeks with a 2 year old and a 3 year old underfoot. Its a huge blessing that we're living in the basement of Scott's parents house right now, because they've been so great about helping with the kids and making dinner, etc. but I'm already feeling SUPER guilty, and SUPER useless, and basically like a total bum. So, that kind of sucks. And seriously, laying down all day is not as fun as it sounds.

Okay, enough of that. I'm sure its been boring beyond belief to read about! I did manage to take pictures of Ethan before church yesterday so that I could at least document his first day of Sunbeams. I think he liked it. Although the classic Ethan response grandma got when she asked him about it was "It was long." And apparently he also managed to slip away from his class at one point to go back to the nursery to check on Grace. So, that's really good. He did say that they sang "Scripture Power" 2 times, which is his favorite song, so I hope that will give him a little more incentive to like Primary. He was quite adamant about not wanting to go before church started.

Here's my little Sunbeam!

Anyway, that's about all there is to report about that. Except, should I be concerned that the only Book of Mormon stories Ethan wants to read about every night are the really violent ones? It seems the only ones he knows/wants to read each night before bed are about Abinadi and King Noah burning at the stake, and Nephi cutting off Laban's head with the sword. I don't know. And then at Family Home Evening tonight when Scott was doing the lesson on reading the scriptures every day, he asked Ethan why we need to do this and Ethan's response was so that we don't kick, or scratch, or hit people, or cut people, or be mean. Hmmmmm. I guess these are good answers. But I was kind of hoping he'd focus more on positive actions like being kind, or sharing, or helping others. Oh well. He IS only 3. At least he was paying attention to the lesson which is more than I can say for our little party girl who was busy "making cookies" with her toy coins from the piggy bank she got for Christmas. Oh well. She IS only 2.

On a completely random side note, I thought I'd post some pictures of what our world looks like these days. Although these pictures were taken before Christmas, we've gotten SOOOO much snow this winter and its been so cold (hello, the high today was like 16 degrees), that this is what it still pretty much looks like from our backyard:

This is a shot of Ethan after he tripped in the snow.

Here are the kids making "snow angels."

Here is a shot of a finished snow angel.

And here is a shot showing how deep the snow is -- it was pretty much up to Grace's knees.

And one other random side note -- who else is excited for American Idol tomorrow night? Huh, huh? Go on its okay to admit it. We will be TiVoing it on Tuesday and Wednesday this week when it will be on for 2 hours each night. Yay!

Alright, folks. I'm officially done. Sorry, the text is so lengthy this time without a lot of pictures.

Oh and one final thing, since I'm going to be having so much down time for the next 2 weeks, does anyone have any suggestions for books to read, shows to watch, movies to rent, etc.? That would be fabulous! Thank you!