Birthday and the Dentist and Influenza and More!

I have had a busy past few weeks and unfortunately haven't had a chance to write about it until now. So please bear with me as I go through some highlights of the last several weeks!

On Saturday March 5th, my birthday celebrations started early with a little get together at Dad and Sue's with Brian, Nicole, Bryce and Sam.My birthday isn't actually until March 13th and Sam's isn't until March 14th, but Robbie and I were going to be out of town that weekend so they wanted to celebrate early. Sue made some yummy eggplant Parmesan and after opening presents and watching a movie we had some yummy birthday cake (angel food cake with a cool-whip-like frosting topped with fruit; I don't like sweet cakes). Dad and Sue were very generous and bought me lots of much needed maternity clothes. I got a few bottoms and several tops including a green sweatshirt which was much needed because all my regular sweatshirts have become belly shirts and aren't particularly comfortable anymore!

19 weeks wearing a new birthday outfit

19 weeks wearing a new birthday outfit

19 weeks wearing a new birthday outfit, glad to not look terribly pregnant from behind!

That Monday I had my regular six month cleaning at the dentist. Getting your teeth cleaned while you are pregnant is a pretty important thing; pregnancy and it's associated hormones can do awful things to your teeth! My dentist has a new test where they take rub a swab around my teeth and gums and put it into an instrument to determine my susceptibility to getting cavities. The instrument spits out a number, and if that number is greater than 1500, you are at high risk for cavities. Thankfully my number war really low (in the 300's) and the dentist said my teeth look great. It felt good to have them cleaned and polished, hopefully I can keep them healthy!

Later that week (my 20th week of pregnancy), Mom took me shopping for some more maternity clothes. This time we stuck with more spring/summery things like tee-shirts and shorts since spring is fast approaching. I am really excited about all the outfits I have now, and I don't think I'll have to buy anything for myself for the remainder of my pregnancy besides maybe a sundress or two this summer. I have been so lucky to have my family get so much clothing for me, it has saved us lots of money and we really appreciate it!

On my birthday weekend, Thursday 3/10 - Monday 3/14, Robbie and I went on a little trip paid for by his work (IDEXX). Robbie had signed up for a Java conference for that weekend just outside of Boston, and since it was my birthday, IDEXX agreed to pay for my room and board as well, and allow us to stay a couple of extra nights in a hotel of our choosing. For convenience, and because the hotel looked really fancy, we decided to stay where the conference was being held (which was in Danvers). Robbie really enjoyed his conference and I enjoyed room-service, swimming (they had a sweet pool with a lane dedicated for lap swimming), and exploring around Danvers. Friday was a really rainy day and I decided to venture to Salem. I had never been there before and it was only 20 minutes away so I thought it was a good opportunity. There wasn't much open, but it was cool to walk around the little city in the rain. I went to the Salem Witch Museum and learned about the Salem witch trials and history of witches which was pretty interesting. I also stumbled upon this cool bookstore where all new books were 50% off. Apparently the guy who owns it buys books from big book stores that are going out of business and sells the books at a huge discount. He says he makes a lot more money selling the books for cheap. I was pretty excited because the books were even cheaper than they are on amazon so I got a few New England classic children books for Mattimeo: Blueberries for Sal, Make Way for Ducklings, and One Morning in Maine. Robbie had never read these books, so we took turns reading them to each other that night. On Saturday, Robbie got out of his conference a little early and we headed down to Boston to visit his sister, Jess. We went to her studio at Mass Art to check out her latest prints and paintings and had yummy home-made Thai food at her apartment for dinner. We also got to see our friend Ryan for a bit which was nice. On Sunday, which was my actual birthday, Robbie was away at his conference for most of the day. I decided that I wanted to spend sometime outdoors and ended up at Bradley Palmer State Park. It was beautiful there! It has miles upon miles of trails, and since I had never been there before I just picked a direction and walked until I got tired. There was lots of horse tracks and dung on the trails which made me miss horseback riding so much! It was wonderful to have some quiet time in the woods to think about the past year, the year to come, and finally just to revel in the peaceful, bird-song filled present. Usually I am afraid to be alone on my birthday, but this time, it felt like it was exactly what I needed to do. I suppose technically I wasn't alone, since I was carrying little Meo around in my belly! When Robbie got back to the hotel, we went out to dinner at this amazing, romantically quaint Italian restaurant called I Pazzi. I had the best meal there! We shared capresse (Fresh homemade mozzarella cheese served in combination with fresh sliced organic red and yellow tomatoes and a touch of roasted red peppers, Greek Kalamata olives and basil) for an appetizer, and I had an arugula salad (Organic baby arugula mixed with sliced heart of pal, fresh strawberries, crumbled Gorgonzola cheese and toasted pine nuts with extra virgin olive oil and aged red balsamic vinegar) with my delicious four cheese ravioli (Fresh Ravioli served in a light cream sauce and Parmesan cheese). Robbie had linguine alla puttanesca (Linguine pasta sautéed with black Kalamata olives, gourmet capers, olive oil, garlic, and fresh basil, in tomato sauce). I cannot rave about this meal enough, I think it was the best birthday meal I've ever had!

Robbie watching tv in our room at the Crowne Plaza

The rest of our hotel room

The bookstore I went to in Salem

My new maternity bathing suit

I wish I could wear maternity clothes forever, this bathing suit was so comfortable

Buffet breakfast

Bradley Palmer State Park

Bradley Palmer State Park

Bradley Palmer State Park

Bradley Palmer State Park

Last week, at 21 weeks pregnant, I reached a new milestone: the need to buy new bras. My other bras had finally gotten too tight and were leaving red lines around my torso. As I am planning on breastfeeding, its really important for me to to take excellent care of my breasts, so I decided to get more suitable bras. With lots of help finding a decent size from the fitting lady, I finally settled for a deliciously comfortable 100% cotton, wireless bra from Victoria's Secret. Hooray for happy boobs!

This weekend was quite event filled as well. First of all, on Wednesday and Thursday I did a lot more dog walking than I usually do because I needed to cover for the West end in addition to my usual East end pack. Luckily Sam was there to help me in the rain on Wednesday, and Mom helped me on Thursday. Unfortunately by the end of the day Thursday my back and abdomen was killing me from walking (stress on my ligaments) and I managed to slip on the one patch of ice I walked on all day. I called the midwife when I got home and she told me that I should be okay. She told me to drink lots of fluid and take Tylenol, and to call back if I started bleeding, had intense pain, or had cramps like menstrual cramps. Luckily I didn't have any pain from the fall and I felt the baby kicking so I knew he was okay.

I ended up going to yoga class that night because I felt fine. Unfortunately someone who had been out for the past 3 weeks with ammonia caused by a virus showed up coughing, and I may have caught her virus. That night my whole body was in pain and I tossed and turned and was dripping in sweat until about 6 am when Robbie got up and got me some Tylenol and I finally managed to get some sleep. By 10 the next morning I tried to get out of bed, but I was in so much pain all over my body and completely freezing.Just walking to the kitchen to try to find something to eat caused me so much discomfort that I started crying. I decided to call my midwife and she told me that I probably had influenza and that I needed to stay in bed. She told me to drink tons of fluids, to take Tylenol, and to not walk any dogs for the next several days. She also told me I should call Robbie to come home and help me since I couldn't get up to make myself food, and needed to be taken care of. So I got people to cover for me at work, and got Robbie to come to my rescue and work from home. The midwife told me to call or go to the ER if I started coughing or felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. We also knew that I needed to go to the ER if my temperature got above 100.4. I'm not sure I've ever felt so sick, I was so uncomfortable, tired, achy and shifting between sweating profusely to shivering all day. At one point my fever got up to 101, but Robbie made me take a "luke warm" bath (he said it was warm, but to me it felt very cold) with Epsom salts (for my soreness) and that fortunately brought my temperature down to 100.3. Apparently a temperature above 100.4 starts to break down the babies proteins and is really dangerous, so I'm glad that bath worked so effectively. From that point on, though I still was sick, I started improving.

By Sunday I was completely back to my old self. Today I still didn't walk dogs even though I feel great because it snowed all day and I didn't want to chance a relapse from being out in the cold for a long time. I am so glad that my case of influenza passed so swiftly. I am sure I would still be sick if Robbie hadn't taken such good care of me, and I didn't have the loving company of my boys!

Pi brought me one of his monkeys

Theta laying beside me

Great Winter Weekend

Robbie and I had a great time this weekend. We were really productive with catching up with our financial records and bills and doing some cleaning, but we also had lots of fun. On Friday night my brother Brian, his wife Nicole and their baby Bryce came over for a few hours. We made homemade pizza and had some of Nicole's delicious fruit salad followed by playing a board game. My sister Sam got to come for a bit too and it was nice to have all the siblings together, it had been a while since that happened! Later that night our friend Paul came over to play some more games.

On Saturday, Robbie and I went shopping. We had to go to Best Buy to get a bunch of random things like printer ink and a new mouse. While we were there though we decided to stop by the maternity clothing store and see if I could find a cheap pair of jeans. It was the first time I've actually gone maternity cloths shopping and it was pretty fun. They had a silly pillow you can strap around your belly to guesstimate how clothing will fit you when you get further along in pregnancy. Mostly it made me look like an alien hehe! I was successfully able to find a great pair of boot-cut jeans for cheap, which luckily came in petite so I don't have to deal with rolling them up. I also found a really cute pair of pink Pooh pajamas that were on sale that we couldn't resist buying. I had noticed that even my comfy pajama pants had been leaving elastic marks on my belly and thought that maybe getting some actual maternity pajamas might be a good investment. They are really comfortable, and the last two nights I have slept much better than I had been. I think part of the reason I was having trouble breathing and getting comfortable was from the pressure my pants were putting on my tummy. With these new pajamas I haven't even needed to stuff pillows between my legs to get more space and have had no discomfort at all. Yay!

Maternity pajamas were worth the investment!

Saturday afternoon we went to our friend Paul's house to make music with his dj equipment. We were there with Rob, Gib and Gib's cousin and cousin's wife which was lots of fun. After we all went to Otto to have some pizza for dinner. I had never been there so it was an exciting time for me. Four of us shared a butternut squash, cranberry and ricotta cheese pizza which was both unusual and delicious. That night Paul and Rob came over our house to play lots of board games, most of which I won (smile). The fellows had quite a bit of beer in them so at the end of the night it was surprisingly easy to coax them into playing a couple rounds of Disney Princess UNO (a joke souvenir I brought back for Robbie when I went to Indonesia for five weeks). It was a pretty hilarious experience.

Disney Princess UNO

Finally, today Robbie and I had an awesome day. We made french toast for breakfast and snuggled with the cats while listening to jazz music. This put us in the mood to play some jazz ourselves and we took out our instruments (me on clarinet and Robbie on trombone) and our Real Books and made some music. That was great, hopefully we'll get in the habit of playing more often (fun fact: Robbie and I met in the concert and jazz bands in high school). Then we headed to Gilsland Farm in Falmouth to get some fresh air and exercise. We walked around the snowy trails and made snow angels. We tried to make a snow man, but the top layer of snow was too icy. It was such a beautiful day, so bright and sunny. It was really great to be outside. I was really excited that the animal sculptures were still out there (I thought they were only going to be out for a month) and Robbie finally got to see them in person. They are entirely made of metal rods bent into life size sculptures of Maine mammals. I pretended to be eaten by one of the wolf sculptures. To end our great weekend, we had a yummy pasta dinner and watched "The Fountain" again, which is a beautiful and enlightening movie.

Making a snow angel at Gilsland Farm

The snow was actually quite comfy

My snow angel

Robbie walking at Gilsland Farm

Me walking at Gilsland Farm

Getting eaten by a wolf

I actually could have taken a nap right about then

15 Weeks!

Already 15 Weeks! It seems to be going by quickly lately. Everything is going well. I am certainly showing now, and can't comfortably wear a lot of my normal cloths. Luckily I am not completely without options. I have a couple of outfits that Mom and Sam had gotten for me, plus Aunt Darlene brought me her overalls to borrow, and someone I walk dogs (Kate) for gave me her belly band. It's fun to have a belly, it makes the pregnancy feel more real.

Fetus at 15 Weeks

I haven't been as nauseous anymore which is great. Sometimes I am a little in the morning before breakfast, but definitely not like I used to be. I also feel a bit more energized. Most days I am fine without taking a nap. Although Tuesdays are really tough for me. On those days I run an adventure program with my co-worker Kate and we pick up 6-10 dogs (depending who's signed up that week) and take them someplace where they can run around off-leash for a few hours. We try to go someplace new each week, so we walk a lot of trails and visit lots of beaches. Then right after adventure I have to walk a few more dogs for regular walks (takes about 1.5 hours). By the time I am finished picking everyone up and dropping them off I have been running around non-stop from about 7:30 am to 2:00 pm and am physically exhausted. Tuesdays are the days I take naps! It is a lot of fun and it's nice to get so much fresh air and exercise, but I have to be careful and make sure that its not getting to be too much of a workout for me. Plus walking dogs this time of the year is pretty dangerous for me. I've been wearing nonslip studs on my boots to help prevent falling, but it still gets really slippery. In general, the dogs have been pretty good about not pulling, but I have had a couple minor slips. Years of clumsiness has taught me to be a pretty good faller, so I've managed to have pretty controlled/painless falls. But it only takes one bad fall to mess everything up, which worries me! Mom has been coming on Tuesdays and days when I have a few dogs in order to help me out so I don't fall, which is awesome. Plus I think the chocolate lab, Ruby, senses that I am pregnant (her mom just had two babies, she is the one who lent be her belly band and has been awesome to talk to). On Tuesday it was really icy and Ruby would walk really slowly beside me, never pulling, and even stop to sit and wait for me if I was going really slow during an especially slick stretch. She looked so concerned, she is the sweetest!

Me walking Casco and Ruby

Casco and Ruby after wrestling in the snow during our walk

Bodie, Tika and Kelley running through the forest during adventure

Yesterday, it was really snowy! Robbie ended up working from home on his laptop, and I didn't have to walk any dogs. We ended up playing Wii Fit in the evening to get some exercise, which was a bunch of fun. We hadn't played that since we were still living in Waterboro. Now that I am pregnant, it felt like much more of a workout!

Wii boxing with a baby belly

I think the only other thing new this week I'd like to add is that I've been finding it a little more difficult to get comfortable in bed. There was a couple of nights where I kept tossing and turning and couldn't find a position that either didn't squish my belly and make me nauseous, or made me feel like I couldn't breath. But I figured out that if I stuff a pillow or two between my legs, it gives me the extra space I need for my belly and makes it much easier to breath. I know this will only get worse in my third trimester, but I think it was just taking my body a little getting used to having a belly to deal with!