32 Weeks and March of Dimes

With all the fun things happening lately I have been getting behind posting our weekly updates. She is looking more rounder if you ask me.

Baby Updates: 

• We have her name list scaled down to a top 6. Big improvements from where we were last time. We have not discussed middle names at all yet so that might be our next tactic to see if we can eliminate anymore. Matthew still thinks it is a possibility we could still have a new one jump out there at us, I think her name is one of these and we will just know eventually. I am sure once we do decide, all the other options will seem weird to call her by but they all seem to be on such a level playing field right now. There are pros and cons to them all and names were taken from both our lists.
• Her dresser in her room is finally done and it looks awesome. My parents bought it for us and fixed it up. They painted each drawer a different color, which sounded like an easy project but actually ended up being the biggest headache of anything we have done in her room so far. I think all of us are glad it is done and looks great.
• I am now not sleeping as well anymore. I knew this time was soon coming and it has arrived. I still am tired and can take great naps but I can no longer go to bed at midnight and sleep until 11 the next morning (minus potty breaks). Now if I get up to potty or reposition myself I am awake for awhile.Or I am just restless at night trying to settle in. When I work night shift, I usually sleep from 8am when I get home to around 3:30 or 4. For the past 2 weeks I have been only able to sleep until 2 or 2:30 (with a potty break thrown in around noon). Overall not terrible but that third night has been a little rough running on less sleep. It is harder to get positioned comfortably and those charlie horses are rampant as ever. I have a lot of friends with terrible reflux though so I know it could be much worse.
• We looked at my work schedule this weekend and insurance options trying to decide what would be best for our family. My three options are to 1. Stay the same, 3 days a week of work, 2. Drop to 0.8 (which is still considered full time for insurance purposes) and work 3 days, 3 days then 2 days, so every third week drop a shift, or 3. Part time 0.6 and work 2 days a week. Insurance is a killer to switch to Matt's plan or to pay for part time rates through my work so that is a bummer. While we don't want this decision to be made only based on our income, we do recognise it is a big factor in it all. I know at some point of motherhood I will scale back to working very infrequently but it is hard to know at what pace to take to get to that point. We have offers from my mom and Leslie to help watch her, which we are so grateful for, so we will have to work with them too in figuring out a plan. Overall I really love my job and want to still be working, I just can't make up my mind how much. Who knows, staying at home with her for 12 weeks this summer may make my decision more clear.
 

This weekend was also the March of Dimes. My work sponsored the walk this year and we raised close to 100 thousand dollars for the cause, yay Children's Mercy! We had a tent set up with different colored beads that walkers could wear to symbolize what they were walking for. Purple beads meant they were walking for a premature baby, blue beads if the baby was born with a birth defect, and silver beads if they had lost a baby.

It unfortunately rained, well down poured, most of the morning. People were all huddled under the P&L covered area. Here we are listening to the opening ceremony speeches and mingling with friends we found. We had made a mad dash to get under the overhang and we already wet at this point. Luckily it was warm that day so we weren't cold. We left after the ceremonies and skipped out on the walk. When we were leaving though, we saw a bunch of silver bead families trucking through the rain, walking in honor of their babies. It broke my heart to see their dedication and what this meant to them. I wish the weather would have cooperated more.

Here are the Copes, hanging out keeping us company under the NICU tent. They are sporting the shirts our hospital bought for the walk. Matt and I just wore the same color scheme and called it good. I wasn't sure if I would fit in one back in Feb or Mar when we ordered them and Matt didn't want a shirt he would never wear again. Lame points for us.

This special lady in the pink hat and Children's Mercy shirt, wheeled by us with her stroller. There were lots of people with their babies and some people even brought their dogs for the good 2 mile walk. This lady however brought her cat....in a stroller....so weird. And it wasn't even a kid stroller converted into a space for her cat, it was a genuine cat stroller. Insert eye roll. Matt wanted to go over and ask about her baby and then act shocked when he saw there was a cat in the stroller. Megan and I wanted to go ask her if it was a premature cat. What cat enjoys riding in a stroller through large crowds of people in the rain? This is my issue with pets, I don't hate all animals...contrary to popular belief, but I do hate when they are treated like humans. This is a prime example. Leave the cat at home and donate the money you spent on that crazy stroller to MOD for a good cause. Sigh....

This last picture is of one of my primaries all grown up. I took care of Iliana when she was a premie in our NICU. Her family and I have stayed in touch and they actually go to our church, which is pretty awesome. We got interviewed to be on the news and people claimed they saw me but I couldn't find the clip anywhere online. She and her sister Noelle, also a NICU grad, looked so cute in their matching outfits. Should have snapped a picture of them both. Seeing kids all grown up like this make my job feel so rewarding.

That's all I got for now, I will post our 33 week picture soon and get all caught up. :)