This post is extremely difficult for me to write but I feel it is a good way for me to cope with the recent loss of a close family member. Terry is my cousin Sheila's husband. I have known him since I was a small child. He used to be at my Aunt Judy's house (she kept me during the week) all the time when they were two young teens in love. I saw them go to prom, I saw him leave to join the Marines and I was in their wedding as a 5 year old flower girl. My cousin Christine's (Sheila's sister) husband, Jeff, told me that when I was a little girl that Terry was my favorite person. I had a hard time believing that because Terry is such a hard person to get to know. I don't remember much about him from way back when. Well, once I had my boys and I saw how much he enjoyed playing with them, I got it. He has a knack for being a fun-loving soul with little kids. My boys and Christine's boys can always count on having a good time as long as Terry is there to entertain. Speaking of entertainment, he can always make everyone in the room laugh. He is a total smart-butt and has such a way with sarcasm. He really could crack me up at times.
Thanks to him, I have 2 wonderful cousins-Natalie(22) and Rachel(16). They are both beautiful girls that I have the pleasure of being related to. I miss them very much since I have moved here to CO but I feel lucky to have been in NC long enough to have seen them both grow up. My heart goes out to them and their Mother.
I can't believe that I got that call this morning. I wish I could just forget it. This is definitely a wake-up call as Terry was only 44. He is the second person in my family to die young from a heart attack (I had a 43 year old uncle on the the other side of my family pass from a heart attack back in 1997). It just makes me realize how mortal we all really are. The really bad thing in this situation is that we thought that he was okay. He had been sick the week before and went to the ER on Friday to find out that he had a couple of heart attacks. They put in 2 stints and everything should have been fine. Heck, he was a lucky man to have survived those. He was feeling better and recovering well from what I had last heard. When asked by a nurse what he would like for lunch he replied that he didn't see a whopper on the menu, lol. That's so him to be a smart alec like that. I am sure everyone chuckled. Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse last night and he passed this morning. This just leaves me to ponder "Why?". He wasn't fat, didn't smoke and didn't drink. He was too young to go so early.
I am trying to get clearance to fly home. I am unfortunately really far into my pregnancy and I have had complications to boot. My OB said that she will clear me as long as I don't have any painful contractions (I am currently on Procardia to help relax my uterus) and if I am not further dialated on Thursday. I will just have to wait and see. Hayden's birthday is on that day too so I will try to make it extra special that day if I get to leave over the weekend. We are planning to take him out on that night for some fun but Saturday was going to be all his too since we were going to hopefully meet with some family for a little party. Now Clayton may just have to be in charge of it all.
Sorry I couldn't bring myself to write in the past tense throughout the beginning of my post but my emotions are too raw to fully accept Terry's passing. I have never felt so far from my family as I do right now. :(
This will be the place to read about my 4 journeys as a gestational surrogate and my hectic life with 2 kiddos. I may even share some recipes from time to time. Check it out frequently for the latest happenings. :)
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Surrogacy Update-I had an interesting day yesterday, to say the least
At my 31 week OB appt., I explained to the doctor how I had contractions from about 1am-10am on Sunday morning. They were painful, 2-4 min. apart, caused me back/abdominal pain and ranged from 30 seconds-2 min. each. I took it super easy and waited until shift change at the hospital because I didn't want to be the gal who made an OB get up from their slumber for a possible false alarm. Clayton made me some breakfast and then they stopped, thank God. Well, thanks to all the recent activity I was dialated to a 1. They decided to give me a test that can detect changes in hormones that could possibly lead to pre-term labor. I took it 2 weeks ago also due to contractions and passed it. This time I wasn't so lucky. The nurse that called with the results said that failing was pretty rare so they felt it necessary to do more monitoring and tests to check on baby.
FYI-just because I failed the test does not mean that I will go into labor in the immediate future. It just means that I have had a hormone shift and that *could* indicate labor approaching (or not). "Could" is the operative word here.
My instructions were to head up to Fort Collins for monitoring at the hospital there. I picked up the boys from their schools and tried to get in touch with my husband a million times to no avail. Ugh! Why is it that he is completely unreachable when I need him most?? I drove over to his work and hung out in the lobby about 30 min. before I even saw anyone that could help me locate him. All the people that I had numbers for weren't at their desks and there was no one near the front to ask help from (the problem is that the building has major security and you can't walk past the lobby without an ID badge). Finally a gal came through the security gate as she was leaving for the day and I stopped her. Thankfully she knew how to page Clayton. He was shocked to know that I was in the building and left work immediately.
We checked into the hospital just before 5pm and I got settled in with an external monitor. Baby girl was ticked off having that belt around me. She kept kicking at it which made it difficult for the nurse to keep the monitor on her. Heck, she can't stand when the kids lay against me, when I prop a book on my belly or when Clayton puts his arm around me so this was no shock, hee hee. The kids and Clayton took off to eat at Coopersmith's and I enjoyed room service (the food is actually good!). After a while on the monitor, the OB made the decision to give me a steroid shot to help develop the baby's lungs just in case she is a preemie. About 45min. after that, they gave me another shot to help stop contractions. That was only a temporary thing though and it wore off in 30 min. As soon as it wore off, I began having lots of contractions which was weird. They made the decision to send me home as long as I felt good and gave me some pills to stop the contractions at home. I have to take them around the clock. Unfortunately, I have already experienced a few contractions despite the pills so we will just have to wait and see what is going to happen. I have to go back to the hospital tonight to get a second dose of the steroid and then report back to my OB in her office on either Thursday or Friday. Fun stuff I tell ya.
It really doesn't help that I have to keep going up to Fort Collins for everything as that is a 45 min. drive each way for me. My local hospital doesn't have a NICU and my OB is only in the local office one day a week making it impossible for this to be easy. Oh well, at least baby girl is being given the best shot at survival should she make her appearance early into the world. If she didn't get those shots then she could have major issues breathing due to lung maturity. Thank the Lord for modern science. :)
FYI-just because I failed the test does not mean that I will go into labor in the immediate future. It just means that I have had a hormone shift and that *could* indicate labor approaching (or not). "Could" is the operative word here.
My instructions were to head up to Fort Collins for monitoring at the hospital there. I picked up the boys from their schools and tried to get in touch with my husband a million times to no avail. Ugh! Why is it that he is completely unreachable when I need him most?? I drove over to his work and hung out in the lobby about 30 min. before I even saw anyone that could help me locate him. All the people that I had numbers for weren't at their desks and there was no one near the front to ask help from (the problem is that the building has major security and you can't walk past the lobby without an ID badge). Finally a gal came through the security gate as she was leaving for the day and I stopped her. Thankfully she knew how to page Clayton. He was shocked to know that I was in the building and left work immediately.
We checked into the hospital just before 5pm and I got settled in with an external monitor. Baby girl was ticked off having that belt around me. She kept kicking at it which made it difficult for the nurse to keep the monitor on her. Heck, she can't stand when the kids lay against me, when I prop a book on my belly or when Clayton puts his arm around me so this was no shock, hee hee. The kids and Clayton took off to eat at Coopersmith's and I enjoyed room service (the food is actually good!). After a while on the monitor, the OB made the decision to give me a steroid shot to help develop the baby's lungs just in case she is a preemie. About 45min. after that, they gave me another shot to help stop contractions. That was only a temporary thing though and it wore off in 30 min. As soon as it wore off, I began having lots of contractions which was weird. They made the decision to send me home as long as I felt good and gave me some pills to stop the contractions at home. I have to take them around the clock. Unfortunately, I have already experienced a few contractions despite the pills so we will just have to wait and see what is going to happen. I have to go back to the hospital tonight to get a second dose of the steroid and then report back to my OB in her office on either Thursday or Friday. Fun stuff I tell ya.
It really doesn't help that I have to keep going up to Fort Collins for everything as that is a 45 min. drive each way for me. My local hospital doesn't have a NICU and my OB is only in the local office one day a week making it impossible for this to be easy. Oh well, at least baby girl is being given the best shot at survival should she make her appearance early into the world. If she didn't get those shots then she could have major issues breathing due to lung maturity. Thank the Lord for modern science. :)
Monday, January 19, 2009
Monday, Monday....(Peanut Butter, Cruises, Grocery Game, etc.)
I seem to be keeping a trend of updating the blog on Mondays. I have just been so tired lately. The ole blog has been the last thing on my mind. This past week was complete hell for me. You know that peanut butter recall thing that CNN has been talking about? Welllllll, I found out about it a little too late. I bought a box of Keebler peanut butter crackers a little while back and I ate one pack just about every day for the past week and a half. Little did I know that they were making me incredibly sick. Since I am pregnant, I just assumed that the massive headaches and nauseous stomach problems were a result of Miss Thang. Lo and behold it was the stupid crackers. I didn't catch on to the issue until after I opened the last pack this past Saturday night. When I saw the news talking about it they reported that the bad ones were made by Kellogg's. I thought mine were fine until I read the backside. Who knew that Keebler was owned by Kellogg's? Ugh. Needless to say, I won't be eating any more peanut butter crackers in the near future. I was pretty much bed ridden and miserable as a result from eating them. Now my girl scout cookies (Do-Si-Dos and Tag-Alongs-both have peanut butter) that I just ordered better be okay to eat!!
***I just learned that the girl scout cookies should be fine. Thank the Lord!***
I got my awesome new pink Blackberry Curve this week and I am in love. Having a full keyboard is way better than having 2 letters per key on the Pearl. Maybe crunching my pink Pearl in the car door wasn't such a bad thing afterall, lol.
The kids were out of school today so we went to see "Hotel for Dogs" at the theatre. It was really cute and the kids seemed to like it. I was really only there for the buttery popcorn and cherry slushie though. Yum....
Anyone have any cruise line recommendations? We are looking at going to the Mexican Riviera sometime this year (Cabo San Lucas, Mazutlan, Puerto Vallarta) but we are not sure who to book with. We took a Carnival cruise to the western Caribbean for our honeymoon and while it was alot of fun, we feel that another cruise line may suit us better. I am really looking at Royal Caribbean at the moment. Their ships seem really impressive. We would like to look at Norwegian and Princess too. Anyone know anything about the differences between lines?
There has much talk lately about saving money at the grocery store. I cannot stress it enough but if you are truly interested in doing something about it other than buying generics, shopping at Wal-Mart (which is the pit of hell in my book and I boycotted them years ago-GO TARGET!) or only buying sales items, then you need to change your way of shopping. The Grocery Game is the best and most reliable way to get your weekly grocery bill down all the while causing you to build a nice stash of groceries. I have been doing the GG for over 3 years now and it has changed my way of grocery shopping forever. There is a 4 week trial that you can do for a dollar but it really takes about 12 weeks to see it in full effect. The reason I prefer the GG over other sites is simply because Teri makes it so easy. I don't have to put together the sales lists at all because it is already done for me every week. I went to King Sooper's (yes, that name is completely idiotic, lol) last week and got $116 worth of groceries for $50.35. I did not buy any generics. I simply used coupons from the Sunday paper on name-brand items to achieve that nice discount. The list told me what was on the best sale and what week's newspaper the corresponding coupons for the items came from. It's that simple. If you decide to give the site a try, I would love to have your referral so that I can earn free weeks. Just use my email address of: brandylogan@gmail.com
BTW, if you want to see my previous posts on the Grocery Game, click here to read them. I have pictures of my loot plus a 2006 year-end savings report. Those old posts help describe just how the GG works.
***I just learned that the girl scout cookies should be fine. Thank the Lord!***
I got my awesome new pink Blackberry Curve this week and I am in love. Having a full keyboard is way better than having 2 letters per key on the Pearl. Maybe crunching my pink Pearl in the car door wasn't such a bad thing afterall, lol.
The kids were out of school today so we went to see "Hotel for Dogs" at the theatre. It was really cute and the kids seemed to like it. I was really only there for the buttery popcorn and cherry slushie though. Yum....
Anyone have any cruise line recommendations? We are looking at going to the Mexican Riviera sometime this year (Cabo San Lucas, Mazutlan, Puerto Vallarta) but we are not sure who to book with. We took a Carnival cruise to the western Caribbean for our honeymoon and while it was alot of fun, we feel that another cruise line may suit us better. I am really looking at Royal Caribbean at the moment. Their ships seem really impressive. We would like to look at Norwegian and Princess too. Anyone know anything about the differences between lines?
There has much talk lately about saving money at the grocery store. I cannot stress it enough but if you are truly interested in doing something about it other than buying generics, shopping at Wal-Mart (which is the pit of hell in my book and I boycotted them years ago-GO TARGET!) or only buying sales items, then you need to change your way of shopping. The Grocery Game is the best and most reliable way to get your weekly grocery bill down all the while causing you to build a nice stash of groceries. I have been doing the GG for over 3 years now and it has changed my way of grocery shopping forever. There is a 4 week trial that you can do for a dollar but it really takes about 12 weeks to see it in full effect. The reason I prefer the GG over other sites is simply because Teri makes it so easy. I don't have to put together the sales lists at all because it is already done for me every week. I went to King Sooper's (yes, that name is completely idiotic, lol) last week and got $116 worth of groceries for $50.35. I did not buy any generics. I simply used coupons from the Sunday paper on name-brand items to achieve that nice discount. The list told me what was on the best sale and what week's newspaper the corresponding coupons for the items came from. It's that simple. If you decide to give the site a try, I would love to have your referral so that I can earn free weeks. Just use my email address of: brandylogan@gmail.com
BTW, if you want to see my previous posts on the Grocery Game, click here to read them. I have pictures of my loot plus a 2006 year-end savings report. Those old posts help describe just how the GG works.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Holy Crapola...
I did a bad thing on Saturday and I am so mad at myself. As I was getting into the car at the grocery store, I managed to shut the door on the bottom part of my sweater coat. Since it is maternity it is huge on me. The pockets hang really low. Unfortunately my pink Blackberry Pearl was in that pocket and it got crunched. Ugh! I loved that phone. It wouldn't turn on and just kept blinking a red light at me. I am so mad that I didn't make sure to pull my coat in all the way before shutting that door. Anyway, after some deliberation, I decided to look at getting a new one. Verizon has them really cheap right now and Clayton's phone is up for renewal. He offered to give me his new phone option to replace mine. Isn't that sweet of him? I ended up ordering a pink Blackberry Curve this time and I can't wait to get it. The Pearl had 2 alphas on each key so having a full keyboard is going to be wonderful. I would have gotten a new BB World Edition phone because it has a better keyboard but I didn't like the overall size of it. It was a bit wider than the Curve. BB users look like that are talking into a flapjack so my opinion is that smaller is better, lol.
I woke up this morning to a fresh blanket of snow. This immediately bummed me out because I hate driving around in it but at least now I will get to try out the new snow boots that Clayton bought me for Christmas. Whoo hoo!
Baby girl is doing very well and is sooo active lately. She pokes and prods me all the time, lol. My tummy is definitely getting bigger. Hopefully I will show you guys soon. I still haven't got a card reader for my laptop just yet and transferring photos is a huge pain. Can you believe that we will be 30 weeks along tomorrow? Wow, in just 6 short weeks I will be ready for potential birth. That is insane! The time sure has flown. If baby girl decides to hold out until induction day then she will be here on 3/17. We decided to set an induction at 39 weeks so that the parents can attend and it would make everything easier. Wish us luck!
I woke up this morning to a fresh blanket of snow. This immediately bummed me out because I hate driving around in it but at least now I will get to try out the new snow boots that Clayton bought me for Christmas. Whoo hoo!
Baby girl is doing very well and is sooo active lately. She pokes and prods me all the time, lol. My tummy is definitely getting bigger. Hopefully I will show you guys soon. I still haven't got a card reader for my laptop just yet and transferring photos is a huge pain. Can you believe that we will be 30 weeks along tomorrow? Wow, in just 6 short weeks I will be ready for potential birth. That is insane! The time sure has flown. If baby girl decides to hold out until induction day then she will be here on 3/17. We decided to set an induction at 39 weeks so that the parents can attend and it would make everything easier. Wish us luck!
Monday, January 05, 2009
New Year, New Us for the Future
Sorry I haven't put any pics on the blog. Either my card reader is broken or something is wrong with my laptop. I originally thought that it was my reader but now I am almost sure it is the computer. I have had it for almost 5 years now and it just recently started giving me trouble. **Sigh** I hate to buy a new one but I can see that it is inevitable. I cannot even hook up my either of my cameras to it to directly transfer the files. Ugh.
So what is going on with you guys? Did you make any new year resolutions? We kinda made one. We are going to try to get our future planned out. We don't have credit card debt but we do have a car, house and student loans to pay for. We also are now seriously thinking about retirement and college funds for the kids. Here are a few things that we are working on:
-To start the year off right, Clayton and I both now have savings accounts. We are great spenders but saving is something that we are going to have to learn.
-I already have a life insurance policy but Clayton is going to be getting one too soon. The kids and I would be completely devastated if something were to happen to hubby. We simply could not make it on our own. I could never afford the mortgage and car by myself. It also doesn't help that I haven't worked in 6 years. My lack of work experience sure wouldn't help matters.
-We are going to write up our will next month to make sure that our final wishes are carried out whenever that time shall come. We are appointing my SIL Stephanie as legal guardian of our kids just in case something happens to us while they are young. She would make a fabulous guardian for them so I want to be sure that she wouldn't have problems gaining custody.
There are lots of other things that we are going to do but my post is beginning to sound a little too gloomy/doomy so I will end it here. Just trust me, if you haven't been thinking about your financial future, there is no better time than now. Every pregnancy I seem to think about death alot and that is what has spurred this all. I just want to be sure that all of us are taken care of should Clayton or myself die. I have a huge load lifting off my shoulders as we take each of these steps to protect our family's future.
***Clayton is a little bit worried that I am going to push him down the stairs, lol. He is worth wayyyyy more to me alive than dead so I don't think so. If anything I should be watching my back, lol.
So what is going on with you guys? Did you make any new year resolutions? We kinda made one. We are going to try to get our future planned out. We don't have credit card debt but we do have a car, house and student loans to pay for. We also are now seriously thinking about retirement and college funds for the kids. Here are a few things that we are working on:
-To start the year off right, Clayton and I both now have savings accounts. We are great spenders but saving is something that we are going to have to learn.
-I already have a life insurance policy but Clayton is going to be getting one too soon. The kids and I would be completely devastated if something were to happen to hubby. We simply could not make it on our own. I could never afford the mortgage and car by myself. It also doesn't help that I haven't worked in 6 years. My lack of work experience sure wouldn't help matters.
-We are going to write up our will next month to make sure that our final wishes are carried out whenever that time shall come. We are appointing my SIL Stephanie as legal guardian of our kids just in case something happens to us while they are young. She would make a fabulous guardian for them so I want to be sure that she wouldn't have problems gaining custody.
There are lots of other things that we are going to do but my post is beginning to sound a little too gloomy/doomy so I will end it here. Just trust me, if you haven't been thinking about your financial future, there is no better time than now. Every pregnancy I seem to think about death alot and that is what has spurred this all. I just want to be sure that all of us are taken care of should Clayton or myself die. I have a huge load lifting off my shoulders as we take each of these steps to protect our family's future.
***Clayton is a little bit worried that I am going to push him down the stairs, lol. He is worth wayyyyy more to me alive than dead so I don't think so. If anything I should be watching my back, lol.