Week 25.

Dear rutabaga (what the heck is a rutabaga???),

well kiddo, it's been an interesting week once again.  After spending a day and half home sick last week, my "illness" (which I think may have just been allergies) developed into a lovely cough.  I went back to work though and was feeling mostly better!  On Friday afternoon, I noticed a strange tightening of my belly.  I texted Champaign girlfriend to ask if this was a Braxton Hicks contraction and see confirmed my suspicion.  Totally normal.  Didn't hurt, just felt weird.  I noticed a few more before heading home for the day.  Your dad was out on Friday night, so it was just me and Lita, relaxing.  I was still having BH contractions though.  I wasn't really concerned since I knew that this was NOT a sign of impending labor at all and I had no other issues going on.  I had trouble sleeping that night.  Lots of coughing.  And anytime I would turn over or move around a little, my stomach would get tight.  By Saturday morning I was exhausted, but still contracting.  I tracked them and was having 8-9 an hour!  Time to call the doctor.  They got me in for an early appointment and your dad and I headed off. 

Thankfully, everything checked out fine.  I was not "progressing" at all.  And 20 minutes of monitoring revealed that *you* were doing just fine... wiggling around, kicking the monitor, heartrate looked good.  The doctor basically figured that with all the coughing I had been doing, all the muscles in my abdomen just started contracting all crazy like.  Yay.  So she told me to start taking some over the counter cough medicine and spend the day at home, doing nothing but drinking water.  Fun.  So that's exactly what I did.  And things got much better. 

I've been on the cough medicine for a couple days now.  Cough is lingering but is MUCH improved.  Still getting the occasional contraction, but that's not surprising since my abs have not gotten a break in a week now.  *sigh* 

On Sunday night, we had our first Bradley Birthing Class!  Your dad was pretty nervous going in to it... but it ended up being just fine.  There are 4 other couples in class with us, most of them are pretty close to our age.  It's a pretty eclectic group though--a pair of Austrians, a couple from Russia and Bulgaria, I'm not sure where the other couple is from, and then one other pair of Americans.  :)  I think it will be a fun group.  And our instructor is pretty awesome.  Our first class was all about nutrition and exercise and relaxation.  Pretty low-key.  But we had fun doing the baby food taste test game.  Ha! 

The Bradley classes are a natural childbirth class.  We decided to at least attempt to go that route knowing it's the best for you.  And could potentially be the least complicated for me.  But we're still keeping an open mind.  You can't exactly plan these things.  As we've noticed already... ;) 

Keep growing, baby!