Love Christmas, but not this year

Christmas is my favorite time of year.  I love all of the baking and parties and fun times with my family.  This year, I’m 8 months pregnant and have gestational diabetes, and am being monitored very heavily for the onset of pre-eclampsia.  So, this year just hasn’t been all I like it to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved doing fun crafts with my daughter. I loved watching her excitement when she saw Santa.  I loved watching her open her presents.  And, I’m still loving watching her play with all of her new toys.  This Christmas has been the best ever!  Never before has anyone appreciated so much all the hard-work I put into decorating and shopping to make their Christmas special.  She is awesome, and this was awesome!  Plus, this year, Jade and I made cookies together, and decorated them together.  This was so much fun!

But, every year, I usually make tons of peanut butter balls.  But, since I can’t eat them, and I’m supposed to be resting, I was told not to make them.

Every year, we have lots of parties to go to, and I get to make something different to take to each one.  We were invited to 3 parties that we had to turn down going to because of my state of pregnancy, and the couple that we did go to, I wasn’t allowed to make anything.  I had to just buy stuff to take with us.  I was very disappointed that we couldn’t go to see our friends and have a good time. I was equally disappointed that I wasn’t able to make new, yummy things to share with our friends.

My husband went away the week after we bought our tree.  Because I was having sciatic nerve issues, I couldn’t bend over to check the water level in the tree, and it went dry. So, my beautiful tree started to sag before Christmas.  It was pretty pathetic looking on Christmas day, and here we are 3 days before New Years Day, and it is completely taken down, and our house is de-Christmased. Talk about depressing a highly emotional pregnant woman.

And now, I’m more pregnant than I’ve ever been.  I passed the 37 week mark (Jade was born at 36w6d), and I’m miserable.  I’m contracting about 4 times an hour, pretty regularly. I can’t eat anything good, and my sugars are still wacky.  I have a constant headache.  My vision gets blurry a few times a day. I ache everywhere.  I am also so nervous!  We have 1 1/2 weeks left before our scheduled c-section.  My husband has been working so hard to get the nursery done. It is painted a beautiful chilled Lemonade.  The carpet is ordered and being installed on Monday.  Then, he has 1 day of vacation left to get the furniture together.  At least, this is something I can help with!

Wish us luck! I’m not sure if I’ll be able to write before the baby is born!

Leaving my daughter overnight

My little girl is almost 3 years old, and this weekend will be the first time that we leave her overnight.  Since we are having our baby boy in just 4 1/2 weeks, we figured it would be a good idea to test out how she does being left overnight (waking up without Mommy) before we head off to the hospital for 4 nights.

So, with a great discount from a great family relative, we are heading to Disney’s Swan for a night.  We’ll check into the hotel, head off to dinner, get “the best seats in the house” at Cirque de Soleil, sleep in comfort and quiet, sleep in, enjoy a delicious breakfast in peace and quiet, and then come home to our lovely 2-year-old.  It should be a very nice weekend.  I just hope that she doesn’t freak out when I’m not there in the morning.  She has never gone to bed and woken up to me not being here.

I’m doing my best to prepare her for it, but it’s hard, when you have no clue how she’s going to react.  She could be fine, since she’ll have Grandma Cindy over.  Or, she might be very upset.

Of course, I doubt this will help my worries about the birth.  1 night is one thing, but 4 nights is a completely different story.  I won’t be coming home the next day. She’ll have to come see me in the hospital, with IVs, and in pain.  Plus, when we do come home, we’ll be bringing home her baby brother.  So far, she seems excited about it, but that could change pretty quickly when he is actually here.

I need to stop worrying.  It is not helping my blood pressure.  But, she’s my little girl. She will always be my baby girl, and I am always going to worry about her and her sensitive feelings.  If people want to think I’m weird for not just running off happily to my fun weekend with my hubby and not thinking about how my baby girl is going to handle it, then they can think I’m weird!