Birthdays and Homecomings

Sasha had her 7th birthday on Saturday! Unfortunately, I was too fatigued and uncertain in my final week of pregnancy to do a major party. (Yesterday and the day before, I had some painful contractions during some storms, but they seemed to clear when the weather did.)  If I could have, I wanted to invite Sasha's friends from 1st grade. She has not had much luck getting kids to play with her on recess at the playground, and having a party would maybe help her forge some friendships. But we did celebrate, and she received many birthday gifts.

We started Saturday morning by making a rainbow birthday cake together. I wanted her to be involved in making the cake, so she helped with adding ingredients and stirring. She helped me make the pudding filling also. But I separated the batter into six parts and dyed each part a different color. The cake was six rainbow colored layers with vanilla pudding sandwiched between layers, and topped with a cream cheese frosting.

Carol, my mother in law, shares a birthday with Sasha and I got her a canvas print of Sasha. Uncle Joe, Carol's brother, has a birthday the day after so I got him a birthday card. 

Now that we are at the last few days of pregnancy, my family is coming home to me. It has been Sasha and I alone for 9 weeks. My father is coming either on Saturday or Sunday. Cassie flies in on Monday morning. Jon comes home from his Army Medic school Tuesday. And baby arrives via scheduled c-section Wednesday. So it is just a rollercoaster of arrivals.

My father planned to bring his dog with him, but we were unwilling and unable to accommodate his dog. He may be rethinking his plans on coming out so I no longer think he is coming out here.

38 Week Prenatal Checkup

I had my 38 week checkup on Tuesday September 10th.

Blood pressure was normal 127/73, weight 147lb. 

Non-stress test performed to check for fetal distress and he passed, though he didn't cooperate for a bit. Fetal heart rate was in the 120s. It's usually in the 140s and he did not move around much. To get him to wake up and move, the doc put some loud noisemaker on my belly to startle him and he jumped at that. Heart rate accelerated on movement so he is good.

Doctor checked and I am fully effaced and dilated 1cm. So there was some progress. It could be nothing or who knows.

One more checkup next Tuesday and my scheduled c-section will be on Wednesday. Most of that appointment will be the pre-surgical lab tests and pre-admission into the hospital so all we will have to do is show up and go straight to surgery.

37 Week Prenatal Check-up

Today I had my 37 week prenatal checkup, and it was fortunately uneventful. I weighed in at 146lbs, down one pound from my last checkup. Blood pressure was very normal at 113/71, down quite a bit from my last appointment. I had my first non-stress test. They had me lay down on a table while they put a fetal heartrate monitor on my belly, and they handed me a button to press whenever I felt the baby move. They basically watched whether fetal heartrate went up or down with movement. My baby passed that test and did very well. Normal heartrates were in the 130s and 140s, and with movement the heartrate moved into the 150s.
All healthy!

First Grade

On Tuesday August 27th, Sasha started her first day of first grade. She has a very nice teacher. For the most part, it was an uneventful day. She is mostly trying to get into a back-to-school routine.

36 Week Pregnancy Update

Happy full-term pregnancy, Killian! We should be meeting you very soon.

I am now on weekly doctor appointments. I had my 36-week check-up last Tuesday. Things had been getting a bit strange the week before, but my doctor reassured me there was no concern.

I'll start with the story of the strangeness, then continue on with my 36-week checkup.

It started at my 34-week check-up. All seemed very normal. My blood pressure, which had previously been low, was now in the normal range. That seemed strange to me as it indicated a 20 point jump in 2 weeks. At my 32-week check-up, I was 107/71 blood pressure, but at my 34-week I was up to 122/72. Doc asked me if I had any swelling, looked at my ankles, and said "Nope! No swelling at all". Apparently he cursed me.

Two days after my 34-week appointment, it was very hot and I admit I was probably dehydrated. Sasha and I went to Walmart and as we walked through the pharmacy area, Sasha asked me about the blood pressure machine. I explained the concept of blood pressure to her and let her use the machine to take her blood pressure. Her arm is still so tiny yet that it didn't really get much of a reading on her, but I had considered it mostly an educational venture anyways. I sat down and let it take a reading on me so that she could see it actually work. I was at 130/75, which is starting to get a bit high for me. At the same time, I noticed my right ankle had swollen up quite a bit and my right knee was starting to swell as well. I couldn't find my ankle bones, and if I pressed my swollen foot with my finger, the imprint lasted a minute (pitting edema). Later on that evening, I was noticing a few other strange symptoms. I was really irritable and felt angry for no reason.
I told my husband about the symptoms, as he was in medic school at the time, and he thought it sounded a bit like preeclampsia. He encouraged me to get rehydrated and elevate my leg.

The next day, the irritability was gone fortunately, but the swelling was still very significant. I made much more effort to stay indoors (it was hot outside), drink lots of extra water, and keep my swollen leg elevated. I felt some strange pains on my left side abdomen, and the baby dropped. With the dropping of the baby, I felt a whole new range of symptoms. My rib pain disappeared and it was easier for me to breathe, but I felt a lot more pelvic pressure and my bladder capacity was significantly reduced. I also had a harder time walking around.

It took about a week for the swelling to go back down. It never returned to normal, but fortunately the swelling stayed just on the right ankle and didn't spread elsewhere. At some point the next week, the baby un-dropped. I didn't know that could happen but it did. He somehow clawed himself back up into my rib cage.

So, back to the present! At my 36-week check-up, I told my doctor of the symptoms I had earlier in the week, and he was quite unconcerned. Clearly my baby was no longer "dropped", and my swelling was very mild he said.

My blood pressure was 132/75. Weight was 147 pounds. Baby's heartrate was 144. And I will now be seen for weekly appointments.

Credit Card

It was a nice Thursday. Sasha was playing on her computer. Lately, I've been limiting her to one or two hours of computer time a day, which she has to earn by doing a chore for each hour. Some of the chores Sasha can do to earn an hour of computer time are:

Pull 20 weeds from the back yard
Water all our plants
Wash Dishes
Sweep or Mop the kitchen floor
Vacuum (doesn't work well yet as it is still too heavy for her)
Clean the toilets
Clean the bathtubs

I figure even if she does a horrible job, it is better than nothing and she is getting practice at it. I stay critical of her work and I do point out the errors, which makes me feel mean. But in the long run, I think true criticism is probably best as it will teach her to be critical of her own work. She doesn't seem to have her feelings hurt when I point out that she missed a spot washing dishes or scrubbing the bathtub. I do not expect perfection from her. I actually do expect mistakes or overlooked bits. It seems to be working out well. And I expect that I might have to go over some of her work later. That said, she usually does a pretty decent job. She is a bit of a perfectionist personality.

Anyways, on this particular Thursday, Sasha was playing World of Warcraft. She thought she heard the ice cream truck outside and asked me if we had any money for ice cream. I had $3 in my wallet, and told her she could go into my wallet to grab that. A few minutes later, she still had my wallet in her hand and was acting kind of funny, but I didn't think much of it. The ice cream truck never passed our house, but I let her keep the $3 just in case, and we went to the farmer's market for about an hour.

About an hour after we returned home from the farmer's market, my husband texted me. He was alerted via email to some purchases made within the World of Warcraft store on Sasha's account. Those purchases were made with his credit card. We worried that her account had been hacked. We immediately investigated, but on a hunch I asked her about it. She immediately and sheepishly admitted she had made some purchases in the Warcraft store, but insisted, "I didn't know it was with Dad's credit card!". (She thought she was using MY credit card, not Jon's, as if that made a difference).

I had her walk me through her actions. She showed me the Warcraft online store. I simulated the purchase of an item and it took me to the checkout, where it asked me for all the credit card information. I was confused, as I had assumed that somehow the credit card info had been stored on her account, but it wasn't. I asked Sasha to tell me how she got the credit card info. She recited to me by memory the credit card number, expiration date, and even the cvv info. Holy crap! She had it memorized! This was worse than I thought! Where did she get that info, I asked her. She told me she grabbed the card and memorized it when she grabbed the ice cream money.

This child is six years old. And she was able to steal our credit card and use it to make online purchases. This was horrible and fascinating!

Fortunately, she used it to make two purchases at $15 each. They were vanity cosmetic helmets for use within the game of World of Warcraft.

I grounded her from the computer for a week. I gave her many lectures. And even worse, I retell this story to family and friend members, which irritates her greatly. Every time she overhears me tell the story, she gets upset and asks me not to tell people anymore. She is quite embarassed. And she promises she will never use our credit card again or tell people the numbers.

Today I asked Cassie to see if she could convince Sasha to buy stuff for her or tell her the numbers, and Sasha vehemently refused. Lesson learned thanfully, but wow.