The week leading up to G’s birth

*disclaimer* this post may or may not make 100% sense...working on less sleep than normal LOL *end disclaimer*

Hey everyone! Chris and I slowly but surely adapting to our new lives with G. Hopefully in the next week or so, we’ll be posting both of our versions of G’s birth story in installments. 

I’m taking a “mommy-break” right now at McDonald’s drinking some decaf coffee. I miss being productive and working on the laptop all day, so it’s nice to be here doing something other than being a human “Dairy Queen” (I stole that term—yes, from you Lisa!). ;-)

The 2 weeks following our babymoon were super busy, as I had a HUGE “before baby” to do list. I baked lots of bread and tried to get freezer food ready to go, made triple batches of lacto-fermented veggies, yogurt, as well as stock the pantry with some of our “essentials”, and washed our first set of cloth diapers, which we'll use once G is about 12 lbs. 

 Cloth diapers on the clothes line Chris made for our apartment! 

4 dozen-ish soaked kamut tortillas (yeah, sounds weird, just know they are really healthy) made using my awesome old-school tortilla press!

Loaf 1 of 5 of fresh baked bread. This one is white whole wheat soaked english muffin bread. Yum.  PS--if you haven't baked bread, you should. It literally costs a quarter to make bread that would cost $4 at the store. And you can count the ingredients on one hand and pronounce all of them :-)

So, the last picture you guys saw was from our babymoon in Broken Bow at 37 weeks. Here is me at 38 weeks:

 (Yes, you've seen this outfit before. This was literally my go-to staple pregnancy outfit.)

--------------------------

 Between 38-39 weeks, Chris and I both got sick. Chris had been feeling really crummy on Tuesday, January 15^th and even came home early. He felt fine the next day, but then I felt sick starting Tuesday night so Chris stayed home to take care of me. I went to my midwife appt and everything was dandy with the baby. I was super congested and felt like I had some upper respiratory thing that I normally get once a year. Wednesday afternoon-Thursday morning I had an on again/off again low grade fever of 100.5 and felt pretty crummy. Ugh. I hadn’t taken any medicine the entire pregnancy and certainly didn’t feel like starting now, but I know it’s not good for the baby for me to have an internal temp over 100, so I took 1 Tylenol at I think 3 different times. I moreso relied on home remedies and my good immune system to fight the sickness, which I was worried could actually be the flu. They included:

·         Ice pack on forehead

·         Sleep

·         Honey/lemon in Upper respiratory or Cold Season Tea

·         Turmeric in pretty much all the food I made

·         Homemade soup with leftover turkey bone broth

·         Neti-pot ( clear out snot)

·         Vicks vapo-rub + steam treatment over the stove (One day I’ll make my own vicks…)

·         Detox bath (Apple cider vinegar, baking soda, and Epsom salt)

·         Apple-cider vinegar water (good for detox/sinuses)

·         Lemon water (detox)

·         Lecto-fermented veggies (probiotics for good gut flora, in case I had to end up taking medicine that killed all my healthy bacteria)

·         Whey with OJ (same as above)

·         Gargle warm salt water

·         Extra prenatal vitamins

Basically. You name it, I did it. All those home remedies were EXHAUSTING let me tell you. Anything I could think of that would help congestion, fever, stuffy nose, or boost my immune system, I did.

By Thursday evening I was better, other than this horrible junk in my lungs that I’m still coughing up. Unfortunately, the next day, Friday, Chris came home sick with a fever that didn’t go away...

On Sunday, January 20^th, when his fever finally got to 102, we decided that he needed to go to the Emergency Care Clinic because it was getting a little too close for comfort to G’s “due date” (January 27^th) and we knew that both of us needed to be healthy, recovered, and well rested for the weeks ahead.

Well, it turns out that Chris had the flu and was put on a 5 day/2x a day medicine. We hate medicine, but knew that it was really important to fight his flu with everything we could and make sure I didn’t get sick again. 

That afternoon I was feeling awesome and really back to my old self again. I decided to get some much needed fresh air. Y’all know I like to combine exercise and productivity, right? Well, I recently started using an app called “Shopkick”. Basically you walk into stores, scan certain items, and look at ads to rack up “kickpoints” that translate into giftcards. I knew a few ppl who used it and it’s literally so simple. If I’m already going to Target, why wouldn’t I take a few extra minutes to scan some products if I can benefit from it? I needed to get out of the appt on Sunday and get some Vitamin D (sun), so I ended up walking 3ish miles to different stores. It was great to get out and I felt awesome. (PS if you want the app, you can click on my link above, and both you and I will get extra points) I think with that one day of walking, I got like $6 in giftcards. Small, but a start, and I got a workout at the same time. My kind of a good time. Haha. 

I went to Mass by myself because Chris was basically one big tired germ bomb, and I prayed for a healing miracle for Chris and that G would stay put until her due date so that we could be healthy. (**keep this in mind for later**) God is funny in the way he answers prayers. 

Once I got home, Chris took this week 39 picture of me. I hate all of the ones he took, I felt like an ugly blob who was still coughing up a lung. Yes, I’m dramatic. 

In the evening, I decided to sleep in the guest bedroom because Chris was super sleepy and I was having trouble falling asleep because I had messed up my sleep schedule from being sick and coughing all night made my ribs really sore, coupled with being, you know, 39 weeks pregnant. 

Little did I know what the rest of the night would entail and that 12 short hours later, I would be holding my baby!!!!

I got in bed around 8:45. I read for a bit and fell asleep around 9 pm, only to be awoken at 10 pm by a horrible pain my back…

…To be continued

OOPS, I forgot. Y'all probably want a couple pictures of Gianna, so I'll sate your appetite. :-) She is literally so cute it makes my heart ache!!!!