FIVE POINT SEVEN!!!!!!

Yes, that's right 5.7. That was my Hgb A1C last week, the absolute lowest it's ever been. For those of you whose worlds don't revolve around blood sugar testing, the "A1C" is sort of an average of your blood sugars over the past 3 months. The lower, the better.. for the baby, for my kidneys, for overall health, etc. Mine is usually somewhere in the 7 range and normal people are probably low 5s, I think. Less than 7 is recommended for pregnancy. So, without ruining it with all the details of how it might not be quite as good as it sounds because maybe the average of lots of lows and some highs falls somewhere in the normal range, I'll just say it's my best ever and be satisfied!
Our workshop has also made some huge progress this week, thanks again to Conrad Construction! We now have walls, and the trusses are to be delivered on Monday. Very exciting!!
For the life of me, I cannot get the last pictures from my camera to show up here to upload. You'll have to wait in suspense to see the progress on construction and the latest GameDay photos (with the most recent ones of Grandma Overman cheering on her Gators from her seats!!)

So Many Fun Things..

Well, I didn't realize it until I finally sat down to post, but we've had quite a few fun things going on! How nice to have something to write about other than my blood sugars!
For starters, college football has begun! I really do enjoy this time, and was so excited for the first game. Well, the actual "game" turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, but I'm sure our boys will have their act together by the next one! We still had a good time and enjoyed getting to visit with some more Overmen! After pretty easily surviving the summer without cable, and then trying to limp by with ESPN 3 online for football season, I was actually the one to say that it just didn't quite seem right last Saturday. So, the digital cable with DVR is on it's way back into our lives!

Then, we got to spend Labor Day out at the river with the Conrads.. always a good time. And, yes, I got to do some pregnant skiing, thanks everyone for making sure that happened; my summer is now complete.  And thank you, Tilleys, for introducing us to a new game. We had quite the "Settlers of Catan" battle on Sunday night!

And yes, that is a picture of Chad skiing, not me. Honestly, the ones of me are not on my camera, but I can't imagine that I would have wanted to post them anyway! 

Tuesday morning was our next excitement for the week- Groundbreaking for our Workshop!  We are both so excited to be getting this under way. Thank you, Dad for making this happen!!

                                    

Disney and my growing belly!

I was excited last week when I realized I was actually not working on the day that Suzanne was taking the girls to Hollywood Studios, so I tagged along. It was HOT, but we had a great time!!

Well, my belly is going through a very awkward and transitional stage right now that causes a wardrobe crisis just about every morning. I'm looking forward to having an actual and obvious "baby bump" rather than feeling like I've just put on a few too many pounds around the waistline! I went back to the doctor yesterday after my week off. I suppose I should say that overall he gave me a good report, and I got to hear the heart beating again which is always fun. My blood sugars are still definitely better than they have ever been, but I can't help but to be getting rather frustrated with my doctor. Thank you Chad for patiently listening to me vent afterwards! The next time he laughs me off when I complain about having too many lows and says they really aren't that bad, I think I may jump off the table and jab him with a syringe full of insulin and then sit and wait until he gets down to 32 and see how he thinks it feels.  Yikes, maybe it's still too fresh on my mind to be blogging about it!!  Try not to panic, I won't really do that, and I'm probably exaggerating his reaction a bit, too. Now that I'm officially in the second trimester, I have a feeling the days will be coming where I'll be dealing more with highs than lows, so I'll try not to dwell too much on the current issues. Although I don't like the lows, it's the highs that are not good for little Baby O. Your prayers for overall good control and health for the baby are still much appreciated!

12 Weeks and Counting..

Whew..  for two weeks in a row my doctor has been happy with my numbers, so I get to take a week off next week! And, for the record, last week he gave me permission to go waterskiing (up until 20 weeks anyway). Since I whined like a small child when we were at the river last month and I thought I had to sit out on the all the fun activities.. (ok, really just skiing) I was very excited to hear this news!
I'm happy to report that my parents and their traveling expedition have arrived safely in Alaska for their 2 week visit. They've been talking about doing this for years, so I'm glad to see it happening! Here they are enjoying breakfast in Anchorage, possibly still a little sleep deprived from the previous long day of traveling!

The Doctor, Take Two and other happenings

So, just a quick note to say that I saw the doctor again on Wednesday. He seemed much happier with my numbers. They were, overall, much lower than last week, and for that matter lower than I've ever seen in the 20 years since I started checking! Let's just hope my body starts getting used to the lows so I don't feel symptomatic quite so often. (thankfully, we did make some changes to hopefully not have them SO low all the time.) Thanks to everyone who's praying for us!

In other news...  in order to make room for a nursery in the house, we are getting started on building a workshop out back. It will house all of the "stuff" currently in the garage, and also have a built in area for Chad's office. So, we'll move his indoor office to the workshop to free up a bedroom in the house. Thanks to Bill Conrad with Conrad Construction for the so far top notch contracting work!! We got started a few weeks ago clearing some trees.. so far there are 16 pine trees gone from this part of the yard!

 

This is our "tree guy" and friend, Tank, with Tank's Tree Service.. we highly recommend him!

The Doctor

Well, today I had my much anticipated appointment with the doctor. I guess I was still kind of riding on a high from last week's ego stroking from the diabetes educator, so I was in for a shock when the doctor was less than impressed with my control! I must say, it was pretty much the opposite of last week, but definitely a dose of reality and a bit of a kick in the pants. In a nutshell, he has a MUCH narrower range of acceptable blood sugars (60-135) and emphasized that, for the baby, low is much better than high (ie. I shouldn't treat until I get less than 50). I won't say I wasn't a little disappointed that he didn't even look at all of my fancy spreadsheets of endless data (hmph!), but that's ok, I really do want to get this under control and making me feel good about bad numbers I guess doesn't help.  As Katie would say, I need to put my big girl panties on and get this figured out, not the time for a pity party! So, the plan for now: to tackle what I always thought was impossible and get myself on a schedule (eat about the same things at the same times every day) and meet back with him every week.  Seems easy enough.
Oh, and no ultrasound.. I guess that makes sense since I just had one last week, but for some reason i thought there would be another.
At the end of the day, I know that God is in control and pray that He gives me the diligence to do my part to take care of this baby the best that I can. I am SO thankful for Chad and his support, it was nice having him there with me today, he prayed before we went in to the appointment, which is, I'm sure, what kept me from completely falling apart at a few tense moments.

Pictures!

Well, I'm a bit behind in posting, but I had a great appointment last week with my new diabetes educator (nurse).  I think she must see some of the worst, most non-compliant patients out there, so when she looked at my blood sugars, she had nothing but good things to say. I must say, it was refreshing to be praised for my efforts, even though I know that my control is far from what it should be. She couldn't believe they scheduled me to see her without having had and ultrasound yet, so she had them do one right then! I thought I was going to have to wait another week, so that was very exciting. Luckily, the office was just around the corner from Chad's work, so he was able to rush over and got there just in time for them to call me back... and see our little one's heartbeat! Yay!

Ok, now even I know there's not a whole lot to see there..  But, that little flash in the middle is a heartbeat, God is clearly at work knitting this little baby together!

Four Wonderful Years

Yes, as of July 8th, Chad and I have been married for 4 years.  It's funny to me how time goes by, because 4 years really doesn't seem like all that long, yet it's hard for me to remember life before marriage, it just seems so normal and comfortable now (ok, most of the time!). I really do just have to praise God for having a plan for our lives and leading us to each other. It has been a wonderful adventure and I'm especially excited for what the next year holds!  As we've been adjusting to the idea of being parents, especially in the first week or so of finding out, Chad commented that one of his fears was that he "didn't want to loose what we have with the two of us" (with the arrival of the baby). For some reason that still just almost brings a tear to my eyes. I know, from what everyone tells us, it will just get better and we really can't imagine it until it happens.. but to know that he really thinks we have something worth holding on to is still pretty sweet to me! I also found it pretty sweet to be surprised at work with the largest bouquet of flowers I've ever seen. (and it was a surprise, because we both admit that we aren't really "flower people", so I never would have expected them, but LOVED them, especially since I do like "surprises"!) We also got to enjoy a nice dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Stonewood. Yum!

The Word is Out!

Yay, we have finally started slowly sharing our news with other loved ones and friends, what a relief! Thank you to all of your who are so excited for us, your prayers are much appreciated! Well, on the blood sugar front.. things are not so hot. I guess overall, I'm still doing better than usual, but things are still pretty all over the place. Please know I am trying!  My OB has me seeing a diabetes educator that works with them next week, hopefully that will be helpful.
Well, in the world outside of babies and blood sugars.. We had a great Fourth of July celebration out at the river with some family and friends. I had to work on the actual holiday, so missed most of the fireworks (which is ok by me) and apparently, the rain. We got out there late Sunday night and enjoyed a great day of relaxing on Monday since everyone was off work. Chad and dad got to talk "workshop" plans.. hopefully we'll be starting that soon! Yay! Unfortunately I don't think I took a single picture, I guess if I'm going to amount to much of a blogger, I've got to start remembering to get out my camera!

First Visit

I had my first visit with the doctor today, except that it wasn't really with the doctor. They started by telling me how much this baby was going to cost us (before it gets here anyway!) and I just have to say, thank you Lord, for insurance! Then I met with the nurse, who basically filled out  a bunch of paperwork and put together an official "OB" chart for me. Chad was really hoping I'd come out with some sort of written proof that there was in fact a baby inside of me (the 6 pregnancy tests I took weren't enough!), but no luck. I did provide them lots of samples to test for various things, but I didn't get to see any of the results today. Yes, we are experiencing a little bit of denial around here!  She did confirm that I am six weeks along, I guess we count from the easiest date to determine rather than any where around when the pregnancy started, go figure.

God is so good with His perfect timing. I got to talk to another BFF, Pam, this evening. She and her husband, Rhys, just had their first child at the beginning of the month. What a joy to get to hear about her journey through parenthood and have her help me prepare for what's ahead. And, more importantly, reassure me that it will be worth it and not to freak out! 

I feel so blessed to be surrounded by such loving friends and family! I was able to spend the day with my mom and I just got off the phone with Suzanne, who I have deemed my pregnancy mentor, thank you for listening! Chad was able to share our news with a few more family members tonight.. so fun! I am really not sure how much longer we can keep this on the down low, I'm about to burst!