40 Weeks and 5 Days

On a positive note, there is one blessing that has come out of Kiley coming late. We were able to go to our very dear friends Shannon and Brendan's wedding last night. Since I found out I was pregnant, we have known that Kiley's due date and their wedding date were only 4 days apart and it would be questionable whether we would be able to come. Since Kiley is taking her sweet time, we were able to attend their wedding last night. They had a nice Catholic Ceremony and then their reception was at the Park Cities Hilton. Shannon and I have been counting down to this week together all year. Shannon and Brendan make such a great couple and I know that they will be happy together forever!!

It was so much fun to have one last night out before we check into the hospital and become parents. I was very limited on what I had to wear, but I made it work. There were a little over 150 people that came, so it was a good size wedding. Of course being pregnant and not being able to enjoy the open bar, I look forward to the food and cake. They had some roast beef sandwiches that were pretty good and then they had a pasta bar. I had never seen one before, but it was really good. You picked your noodles and then you chose from chicken and all kinds of veggies to add and then you chose red or white sauce and then they added cheese and heated it all through. It was really good. The bride's cake was a white cake and the groom's cake was carrot cake. I am not a carrot cake fan, but I had two pieces of the white cake, it was very moist and delicious.

Mom and Dad were at the wedding too. Mom hired Shannon at her current job, so Mom had friends from her last company there to mingle with. Mom actually got Dad up dancing. They looked like they had a great time!! Something cute that the DJ did, is during dinner, you could go up and request your wedding song be played. Mikey requested ours, so we did get one dance in. It was fun to dance to our wedding song, but it was a little challenging with a big belly in between us.

This morning we woke up and went to Breakfast. We went to a place called Benedict's here in Addison that is pretty well known and very packed. I had eggs benedict for the first time and it was delicious. We never go out to breakfast, so it was a very special morning that we will never forget. This afternoon we are taking the dogs up to Mikey's parents where they will stay while we are in the hospital. Then we are going to a baby shower for our friends Eddie & Ashley who are expecting their second son, Hudson, early next year. After the shower, we will pack the car up and then we are going to dinner at Mycah's. Mom is making tacos!

I'm not sure that I will blog before we check into the hospital tonight, so my next blog could be announcing Kiley's arrival. We check in tonight at 8pm and they are doing one last procedure on my cervix that will last 12 hours. I will wake up and shower and then they will start the induction tomorrow morning. We will try to send as many text and emails with updates as we can. Feel free to call any of our cell phones for updates!! Please keep us in your prayers. Love to all!!

40 Weeks and 4 Days

My treatment at the hospital didn't show any signs of Kiley coming on her own. I was still dialated to a 1, and I didn't even have any contractions this time. So needless to say, they sent me home. I was pretty down on the way home. Why doesn't Kiley want to come? When I got home, Mikey surprised me by taking me to a nice dinner at Ruth Chris. It was such a nice surprise and got my spirits back up. We enjoyed our last steak dinner together before we become parents!! We came home and watched a movie and got a good night something...something else we know we won't see for a while.

40 Weeks and 3 Days

Today is Friday and Kiley still isn't here. Mom is on her way to pick me up. We are going to go run some errands and go to lunch and then we have to be at the hospital at 2pm for another Cervix Ripening. The more time goes by, I really want to have her NOW. If we have her this weekend, that gives us even more time with our baby girl, but she just isn't wanting to come! Deep down, I really hope that they won't send me home from the hospital today...we shall see. Keep us in your prayers.

40 Weeks and 2 Days

Sorry that I did not post sooner, but I didn't get home until late last night and I was exhausted. Our sonogram appointment was at 115pm and our doctor appointment was at 145pm. We checked in right at 115pm. We were there about 5 minutes and the receptionist called me up to the desk and told me that Dr. Stevenson had been called away to a delivery and probably wouldn't be able to see me today. I was so let down for two reasons. First of all, someone else gets to have their baby today, why not me? Secondly, I told the receptionist that I was past my due date and was hoping to get some answers today. She told me to go ahead with my sonogram and she will see if she could get me in with Dr. Reyes.

So 30 minutes later, we were called in for our sonogram. She performed what is called a biophysical profile (BPP) to be sure Kiley is still thriving. This test is an ultrasound to look at her overall movements, breathing movements (movement of her chest muscles and diaphragm), the amount of amniotic fluid that surrounds her which is important because it's a reflection of how well the placenta is still supporting her. They also checked her Fetal heart rate. She scored an A+ in all of these areas, which basically means that all is well in there and there really isn't any urgency for her to come out.

After the sonogram, I told Mikey that he could go back to work since it didn't look like they would be rushing me over to the hospital and I wasn't sure how long I was going to have to wait for either Dr. Stevenson to come back or to get in with Dr. Reyes at the last minute. His appointment cancelled, so he decided to stay. We were only in the waiting room for about 5 minutes and they called us in. That must have been a record. My weight still has not changed in the last month, and my blood pressure was a little high. She checked me for dialation and I was at a little over a 1. At least I had made some kind of progress in a week.

Next we talked about plans. The last thing I wanted her to say was to schedule another sonogram and appointment for next week. Luckily she didn't!! She decided to start me on what is called staged induction. This is where I go into the hospital for a couple of "cervix ripenings" and then they induce. We were really trying to stay away from an induction because we are trying to avoid a C Section if at all possible, but we are also getting really anxious to meet Kiley and I am getting a little tired of being pregnant. Almost 50% of inductions result in C Sections which is a pretty high number. So we worked with both doctors to put a plan in place that seemed to make the most sense for us.

We went directly over to the hospital yesterday after we met with Dr. Reyes for my first ripening. After we checked in, they monitored me and Kiley for about 20-30 minutes before the procedure. The procedure only took about 5 minutes. They basically inject a liquid into my cervix to help it get ready for labor, and then they have to monitor us both for 2 hours afterwards. Mikey had a 430 appointment, so he left for that and Mom came to sit with me for the rest of the time. I had contractions for the entire two hours (which is what the liquid is supposed to cause), but Kiley was a trooper through it all, so they let me go home. They checked my cervix once more and apparently it is still posterior, which they are hoping that these ripenings will help correct.

I spoke to my doctor before I left the hospital. She is going to call me today to schedule another ripening for Friday. Then we will check into the hospital on Sunday at 8pm, where they will do some other 12 hour procedure to continue the ripening and then they will induce on Monday morning. Originally we were going to go in tonight and induce Friday morning, but we decided to give Kiley a little more time to come on her own without going past the 41 week mark.

So that is the plan. Kiley will definitely be here by Monday, November 10th! I was a little discouraged after we switched from Friday to Monday, but I know it is better for both of us and at least we have a plan in place now. Something to look forward to, finally! So we have a wedding and a baby shower this weekend that we better start planning for! We still pray that Kiley comes on her own in the next couple of days. I will keep everyone posted!

Random Pictures

So today is November 5th, one day past my due date. I just got back from an hour long walk and have a couple hours before my doctor appointment. I figure I would use this time to share some random pictures. Throughout my blogs, I have mentioned pictures and not posted them, so now is my chance to catch up =).

Here is a picture of my cousin Matt and his precious baby girl Macy. She is going to be about six weeks older than Kiley. They will have so much fun growing up together.


This is a close up picture of Macy. Isn't she gorgeous? Hopefully she can come to Thanksgiving and we can get some great pictures of the two of them!! She is so adorable. I wonder what Kiley will look like.


This is a picture that Mycah had on her camera of Mikey and I at my Grandfather's 80th birthday this summer up in New York. I guess my tummy has grown a bit. I was a little more than half way through my pregnancy at this point.


This is also a picture from New York this summer of all the girl cousin's on my Dad's side of the family. Isn't the sunset beautiful?


This is the picture of me and my sister as pregos. We were at the maternity store looking for a dress for my shower. I found the pillow and Mycah put it on. It was pretty cute, but she didn't have the pregnant boobs to pull off the look. She reminded me of Juno.


This last picture is of Mikey a few weeks ago when he, Mycah and Dad all went to Jacksonville to chop wood. As most of you know, Mikey loves to dress up. He had his Alaskan Logger suspenders on that we got in Alaska and he chopped a lot of wood that day. We knew they would come in handy at some point.


That is all I have for now. I will have to start getting a little more creative so that I don't start boring you guys and losing readers. I leave in about an hour for my doctor appointment, so stay tuned for a post on how it went.

November 4th

Today is the day that we have been looking forward to since February 29th. Not because it is going to be a historic election day, but because it is the day that we have been counting down to meet Ms. Kiley. I know that very few babies are actually born on their due date, but it sure is a let down for this day to be here and Kiley not. Each day that goes by we get more and more anxious. Today especially. We have been looking forward to this day for so long and Kiley still isn't here and we don't have our doctor appointment until tomorrow, so we don't even have any news to share. I am officially home from work, so I need lots of entertaining and things to keep me busy. Feel free to IM or email me as much as you want.

To start the day entertaining myself, we are going to talk about an owl and our livingroom, but not at the same time. I will start with the livingroom. I keep hearing all of this talk about this nesting instinct that I am going to get before Kiley comes. Well it hasn't come. I have had no desire to scrub my closets. Which is another clue that Kiley is not coming anytime soon. Anyway, this weekend, we did get some cleaning done and we also bought a new rug for our livingroom. We have been looking for one for quite a while and we finally bought one. It makes such a difference in our livingroom. It makes it feel more warm and "homey". We also decided to attach the 4th piece of our couch to change things up.

Here is a picture of the rug close up. You can see all of the different colors in it, dark brown, light brown, blue and off white. They all go perfect. We are very excited about it. It will give Kiley and little more cushion once she starts moving around and we are hoping it will keep things a little warmer in the livingroom this winter. It gives the livingroom and whole new "feel" and we love it!

So last night, Mikey went to go run. It was already dark, due to the time change, and when he came in, he said that we had an owl in our tree in the front yard. He took the camera outside and got some great pictures of it. It is kind of little, isn't it cute? He is looking to the side. He was actually in a bush. You don't see them too often, but they are so neat. So that is the extent of the excitement at the Baird house these last couple of days.

Just an FYI...I have been thinking more of how we are going to communicate with everyone from the hospital and how we feel about visitors at the hospital and once we get home. Mycah will have my cell phone and she will be sending out text messages with status updates. Feel free to call my phone or text her back with any questions. We plan on just having the family up at the hospital for labor and delivery, but once Kiley is here and we are in our Recovery room, visitors are welcome. I don't think the room is too big, so call first. As for when we get home, it is such an unknown of how things will be. We definitely want all of you to come meet Kiley, so please understand that we will just need to play this one by ear. We have no idea how this "no sleep" thing is going to affect us. Once we get settled in, we will know more =).

Please keep us in your prayers over the next few days. We have another sonogram tomorrow, so hopefully we will have a better idea of when Kiley will be here. We are so excited to meet our little girl and every day seems like an eternity. Please pray that I will have another night of good sleep and less backache, less pains in my legs, more of an ability to breath, and less acid reflux. I know that it will all be worth it once Kiley gets here, but it is really wearing on me. Most of all, please pray that Kiley comes to us very healthy! Stay tuned for more blogs.....

39 Week Checkup

Yesterday we had our 39 week checkup and sonogram and it made for a very long afternoon. We spent 3 hours in the doctor's office, mostly in the waiting room. I do have to commend my husband for being patient. I think this parenting thing is working out. Not to mention, neither one of us were feeling good, but we made it through. We had our sonogram first. It gets harder and harder to see what the heck is on the screen. We only got a couple of pictures and they are really hard to see. We were able to see her chubby little cheeks and her cute lips and nose. As for her growth, the sonographer measured her leg, head and stomach again. It all seemed to have grown in the last 3 weeks. They estimate that she is 6 pounds 11 ounces. She is measuring at about 36 weeks and I am 39 weeks, so they are still a little concerned with her growth. Her heartbeat was a strong 156 beats per minute and her movement was good. The sonographer said that Kiley looks good.

After the sonogram, we met with the other doctor in the office, Dr. Reyes. My doctor is out of town this week. Dr. Reyes is really great. It doesn't make me nervous if my doctor is out of town or not on call, they would both be great for delivery. We went over the sonogram results and she said that baby looks good, but since there is still some concern about her growth and I am approaching my due date, they would like to take a look at her again next week. Apparently once you reach your due date, they get concerned about your placenta. The longer you go, the more worn out it gets, and the less nutrients baby gets. So they will measure her tummy again next week since the tummy is the first place she would start to lose weight. I didn't gain any weight and my tummy didn't grow. My blood pressure was good and then she checked my cervix. The good news was that it wasn't facing backwards as much and it is beginning to open. She could stick her finger tip in there, but I am not quite dialated to a 1 yet. She tried to "help" the cervix and all I have to say is "OUCH". I won't go into any more detail.

So after our long afternoon, I can honestly say that this is the first time I have left my appointment feeling a little discouraged. There aren't any signs that Kiley is coming anytime soon. We go back next Wednesday, November 5th, for our sonogram and another checkup. In the meantime, I will continue to try to get some rest and this weekend, we plan on packing our bags and installing the car seat. Maybe Kiley really is waiting until we are packed and ready to go. Or maybe she is waiting for my doctor to come back from vacation. I know that she is a smart little girl, but I also know that she is going to have a mind of her own. She will come when SHE is ready!