"Don't worry, big brother gotchya"

In the hospital when Annika started crying, Nolan would say, "Don't worry, big brother's gotchya."

Annika's first cry

When Annika was born it took the nurses a while to get her to start breathing. Not only did she have the cord wrapped around her neck twice, but she swallowed some amniotic fluid. In the video it shows them suctioning the fluid out of her mouth with a tube, but they also had to stick the tube down her throat to get the fluid all out. That's why her cry was so gurgly. I felt so helpless watching from the other table and it felt like forever til I got to hear her first cry.

So far everything has been running smoothly with this pregnancy. Up until today, my NSTs were looking great and there didn't appear to be any problems. Today my NST had about 5 minutes left, the nurse told me I already passed my accelerations and decelerations and everything looked great, we just needed to wait 5 more minutes. As soon as she left, I started to feel a little sick feeling and my ears starting ringing and had a hard time not passing out. Adam happened to be able to come with me this time, which I'm sure glad because I didn't have a nurse call button anywhere near me. I told him to go get the nurse back, I feel like I'm going to faint. It was very strange. It just came on suddenly and I couldn't just shake it off. So, the nurse came back and hooked me up to the oxygen (I love that stuff!) and that helped me, but a minute later, my problem affected the baby's heart rate, it started dropping into the 80s. So, after a bit, the baby's heart rate went up again, but after getting ahold of the doctor, they said they needed to monitor me another hour and a half or so to make sure it didn't do it again. If it did, we would possibly need to do a c-section to get the baby out. I tried not to be too nervous because I knew that certainly would not help. So, thankfully the heartrate didn't drop again and I was able to leave the hospital without a baby. :) The nurse thought what happened was the baby rolled over on a blood vessel which caused me to feel faint and lose oxygen, which of course affected the baby's heart rate a minute later.

Happenings...

I sure haven't been very good at keeping up with this blog thing, but I'll try to do better. So much is happening these days. This will be my last week of working at Hair Pros and then I can relax a little before the baby comes, hopefully. I have so much to do before, I just cross my fingers the baby won't come early this time. I'm due in 20 days and COUNTING!!! I never made it this far with Nolan, so I'm a little nervous of how this is supposed to actually happen. I'm supposed to go to the hospital as soon as I'm having contractions and here I don't even hardly know what a contraction feels like since I never did go into labor with Nolan. I've had a few here and there, but nothing constant, I guess. I've made it thru two weeks of non stress tests so far and the baby is doing great. It has quite a fast heart beat, at some of the accelerations it got up to 190+. It's definitely happy where it's at right now. I have to do my non stress tests twice a week at the Mercy San Juan Hospital. So, between those trips to Sacramento, plus my weekly visit to the doctor in Roseville and working in Grass Valley two days a week, I'm doing quite a bit of driving. I'm hoping the baby won't come this week because of how crazy Adam's work schedule is. Not only does he have his senior care man 4 nights, but 7 catering jobs this week. Adam talked to his senior care job to arrange for at least a couple of nights off when I have the baby. He's been working for them for a year on the 21st, so they told him it could be paid vacation time, starting then. Adam joked with them saying he would tell me to wait til then, as if I can really help it. :) Nolan is sure getting excited about being a big brother. Sometimes throughout the day as he does things he'll ask, "Is this what a big brother is supposed to do?" One of my favorite things he does right now is when he wakes up and snuggles in bed with me for a minute before I get out of bed and he'll press his feet up against my back. The pressure sure feels good on my back. I'll tell him to keep doing that and he goes on for a little while. Nolan is such a friendly boy. He is very outgoing and loves people, which I admire about him because I was so shy when I was his age. I love taking him to the Galleria Mall when we're in Roseville. He could spend hours running around in the play area. The last several times that we've gone, there's usually several other kids. Nolan will go up to one kid at a time and ask, "will you be my friend?" When he gets the response he wants, then he'll get a game of tag or hide and seek going. Sometimes he has 3 or 4 little friends that he made all running around playing tag. It's pretty fun to watch. A lot of the time they're kids that are twice his size and sometimes even twice his age, but that doesn't matter to him. He just loves people. Sometimes he'll go up to really young kids and ask if they want to be his friend and they just kind of stare at him and don't know what he's talking about, so he'll move on to another kid. Nolan loves playing with his friend next door. Their favorite thing to do his ride there trikes together. Nolan has a bike now, but he'll still ride his trike when it's with his friend. We have a really steep hill that they'll get zoomin down, it makes me a little nervous especially since I can't really keep up with him anymore. Oh well, he's pretty good at stopping as soon as he sees a car and pulls off to the side of the road. He's such a fun little boy and is always keeping me busy with his lists of things to get done that day. Lately we've been playing a lot with playdough and making cookies etc. for his stuffed animals birthdays. He has a ton of stuffed animals that come to the birthday parties and each day one of them has a birthday. He's got quite an immagination and it's fun to watch him play. Well, I guess that's about all I have time to write about for now.

This morning Nolan said to me, "Mom, you're a little bit bustin out of that sweater I think." He said it as politely as possible. It was a good laugh! :)

Simba, the lifesaver!

For months and months Nolan has woken up with bad dreams and comes crawling into bed with me. If I take him back to his bed across the hall, I end up staying awake for at least an hour before I can fall back asleep. This doesn't just happen once during the night, at least 2 or 3 times he'll end up in my bed. Finally, I just give up and let him stay with me. I wake up, exhausted because I don't get a decent night's sleep. I've tried every little trick from, leaving his door open with the hallway light on, to teaching him to try to pray to Heavenly Father to help his bad dreams go away. It never fails, starting about 2 hours after I fall asleep, I wake up with him right next to me. I've been getting a little frustrated! Well, on Friday there was a huge consignment sale in Roseville that I went to check out. It had tons of children's clothes, maternity clothes, kids toys and baby items. It was fun to walk through. When we got to the toys, Nolan spotted a big stuffed Simba Lion, from The Lion King. I had told Nolan that he could pick out one toy to bring home with him. He immediately fell in love with Simba, he LOVES the Lion King. So, I had an idea. This stuffed Lion is about the size of Nolan. I told Nolan that we could bring Simba home and he could sleep in his bed with him and scare all the bad dreams away. YES, I was getting very desperate for him to stay in his bed all night!!! Nolan, liked that idea and seemed very excited about it. He carried his Simba all the way to the car (which I accidently parked quite a ways away) and he talked to him the whole way there. Nolan has a very good immagination. That's probably why he has so many bad dreams. He told Simba, "I have an urgent job for you, Simba. I need you to scare away all my bad dreams." I was a little afraid Nolan would wake up and be scared to see a lion in bed with him, but I was still willing to give it a try. The last 2 nights, Nolan has stayed in his bed all night long! I've been sooooo happy and make such a big deal about it when he wakes up! It's been very nice. Thank you, Simba!

Testimony

Yesterday while we were driving in the car, Nolan asked me what a testimony is. I told him and then I heard him in the back kind of murmuring a little testimony. I thought, oh that was cute. Today, it was fast and testimony meeting and I told Nolan that this was when people shared their testimonies. He said that he'd like to go share his testimony. So, he did. I'm so glad Nolan doesn't seem to share the same fear I have of talking in front of a bunch of people. Nolan is a good example to me and I know Heavenly Father knew what he was doing when he gave me this little boy to be a mommy too.