Pediatrician visit and first bath

Yesterday Jacob had his first visit to the pediatrician. It isn't surprising that he is less than 5-percentile for weight, height and head circumference. It will probably take him a few months to make it onto the charts. Jacob's now up to 5 pounds, 1 ounce. He gained about 6 ounces since his release from the hospital only 3 days before!

While Jacob was being weighed - his umbilical cord fell off. Which means that Jacob was able to have his first bath today. The fact that he pretty much slept throughout the entire bath told us that he didn't think it was all that terrible. It did seem that he really hated being taken out of the bath and getting cold though.


Check out that pot belly on Jacob - someone has been eating well!


This isn't Jacob crying, he is just yawning - it is so tiring to be given a bath.



Jacob was not so happy to leave the nice warm bath.

Mom & Dad's best present ever!!!

Jacob came home on Christmas Eve! After being told on Tuesday night that he would not go home Wednesday and maybe not even on Thursday, it was quite the pleasant surprise when we got to the NICU on Wednesday and they asked if we would be ready to take him home in just a couple hours. Here he is when we took him home - he is really tiny in his car seat.



So far we have been adjusting to taking care of Jacob full-time instead of just visiting him for a few hours a day. Wednesday night was extremely difficult since Jacob kept waking up after only sleeping for about 20-30 minutes at a time. We think it was a combination of factors - he was in an unfamiliar place, his diapers kept leaking and soaking him, he was hungry, etc. Thursday night and Friday night have gone much more as expected - Jacob sleeps for about 2 - 2 1/2 hours at a time and then will wake up very hungry.

Overall, Jacob is a really good baby. He seems to only cry when you change his clothes or diaper, or when he is really hungry. He is even getting better about crying when you change his diaper.

Since it was Jacob's first Christmas, we decided to start leaving cookies for Santa using a special plate and milk mug that I got a couple years ago. Here is what we left for Santa:


And this is what it looked like the next morning:

Looks like Santa visited!

We couldn't resist and took a super cheesy picture.


My friend, Amy, sent a super thoughtful package to us that included the cutest little onesie for Jacob to make it look like he was a present with a tag that read "Mom & Dad's best present ever!!!". Sadly we didn't get a picture of Jacob wearing it before it fell victim to a diaper leak - but the sentiment is so true. Jacob really is the best present ever and we are so grateful that (after a long wait) he has finally joined our family.

Jacob meets Santa

Since most of the babies in the NICU came early, Santa comes to visit them early.

Jacob dressed up for the occasion, wearing his "My First Christmas" onesie, from Mindy.

Tonight he should be in an open crib, instead of the incubator.  And, we hope to have him home on Christmas Eve.

Jacob coming home soon?

We just got an interesting call from a doctor at the NICU.  She said that they are moving Jacob to an open crib and out of the incubator.  She also said they are going to let him eat as much as he wants.  If he gains weight and keeps his temperature stable, then he could be coming home in 2-4 days!

That would be quite the Christmas present.

Jacob Update

Well, our little one is doing fine in the NICU.  

He is eating well, breathing on his own, and had his IVs removed.  Now all he needs to work on is keeping his temperature stable in an open crib and putting on a little weight.  Then he should be able to come home.

Labor

Sunday starting at about 5pm things became quite the blur for us. About 3 times a day they were putting the monitor on me to check Jacob's heart rate and to see if I was having contractions. Around 4:30, after being on the monitor for 45 minutes, my nurse came in telling me that I had to roll over to my side and put on an oxygen mask because the baby's heart rate was elevated and they needed to try to bring it down.

Things got really frantic really fast. The nurse was now saying that my blood work from that morning had been lost (which they needed to know if I was starting to get an infection) and that they would come draw some more blood and that she was calling the doctor for a decision on whether or not to go ahead and induce that night.

At 6pm, I was being wheeled into a Labor & Delivery room and about 15 minutes later they started my drugs to induce labor. 30 minutes later I hadn't had any contractions (at least, no more than I had been having for the last few days before) so they increased the drip a little and told me it would most likely be hours before I was dilated to 4cm.

About 5 minutes later, I had a super intense contraction that caught me completely off guard. I really thought the contractions would gradually get stronger. 2 minutes later when I had another contraction, I thought it was in my head that they were so strong and so close together but I also knew I wasn't going to be able to handle much more without an epidural (that pitocin is terrible, by the way). 5 minutes later when the nurse came in and checked, I was dilated to 4cm.

The nurse called for the anesthesiologist who came in and said he didn't want to give me an epidural because of the infection. With contractions coming strong every 1.5 minutes, this didn't make me very happy. He finally agreed to give me the epidural as long as I understood I was at an increased risk for complications and within 20 minutes of me calling the nurse, I had the epidural and the pain from the contractions was subsiding.

The nurse checked me again, and said that she would get everyone in the room and ready. Turns out I was already dilated to 9cm. At this point it was about 45 minutes since my first contraction. They said that with the epidural I would still feel the pressure of the contractions, just not the pain. I felt nothing - it was fabulous!

It took about a half hour to get things set up, but about 10 minutes after 8pm they had me start pushing. After only 5 pushes, Jacob was here.

I have had a few people tell me I don't know how lucky I am to have had such a short labor because their labor lasted hours and hours. I really feel like there were 2 reasons for my super short labor. The first is that I was on bed rest in the hospital for about 10 days before the labor - so I had almost 240 hours of misery before labor.

The second reason that my labor was so short is because Justin couldn't have handled a long labor. That may sound strange, but remember that Justin had major surgery 5 days before Jacob was born and had just been released from the hospital the day before. As it was, by the time that Jacob arrived, Justin had been on his feet for way too long and was having difficulty having the energy to still be up and moving around.

We really feel like we have been blessed in a lot of ways over the past couple weeks while we have been dealing with all kinds of trials. My short labor was just another blessing that we have received.

Lots of pictures!

Here are just a few of the pictures that we have so far of Jacob. Since he is in the NICU (and will be for an unknown amount of time) we only got to see him for a few minutes after delivery and now we get to see him a couple times a day. We are hoping that he learns everything that he needs to so he can come home as soon as possible!

Pictures right after delivery:



He didn't get a bath until today once his breathing starting stabilizing - but they haven't had to put him on oxygen at all yet (hopefully they won't have to).

Pictures from this afternoon:




He looks so tiny with Justin's hand on his back!

Pictures from tonight when I got to hold him for the first time since right after delivery. I got to give him about a teaspoon or so of formula and then I got to "kangaroo" him (skin to skin contact for an hour).






The video is a bit grainy - but we love how alert he seems in it!

Jacob Mathew

At 8:12pm today, our boy, Jacob Mathew, was born.  He weighed in at 4lbs 10.8 oz and is 17.25 inches long.  He arrived a few weeks early, being due January 26th.  

From 1st contraction to delivery was 82 minutes.

His elevated heart rate and mom's high white blood cell count triggered the events of the evening.  They induced her fairly soon after getting her to the room.  After that, it all happened pretty quickly.

Now, time for a little rest for all involved.

And here we go!

Let the games begin!  We have just moved from Ante-partum to Labor and Delivery.  The baby's heartbeat has been elevated for a while now.  They will be coming by soon to give Julie her petosin shot to help induce labor.

So different!!!!

Things have happened so different for Justin's surgery than the one he had in August.

Last time he had a lot of trouble getting his bowels to wake up and he didn't get discharged from the hospital until the 10th day after surgery.

He was discharged today! The 5th day after surgery and he is well enough to go home.

He is sore from surgery, but really doing great.

We don't know what we would do without the help of my mom and his dad this past week.

We know that the Lord is watching out for us and listening to everyone's prayers for us. We are feeling really blessed.

One week down

Today makes one week since my water broke and I came to the hospital. When the neonatologist came in to visit with me yesterday, she informed me that I am definitely an outlier since I hadn't gone into labor, had any contractions, etc. But last night I did start having some minor contractions - really not too painful, very spaced out and very short-lived.

I have told our baby boy that he needs to be patient until Justin is released from the hospital and haven't felt any more contractions this morning. We will see how obedient he can be, right?

Justin is doing extremely well since his surgery. He came over to see me for about a half hour on Wednesday (day after surgery) and then about an hour and half yesterday. He is already doing lots of walking around, was moved to clear liquids last night and will be getting full liquids this afternoon. I really think that it makes a huge difference that he was feeling healthy for this surgery whereas the last one he was very sick. Plus I think he is very determined to recover to be here for our baby.

Here's hoping that the next few days are very uneventful - that Justin's is able to be released from the hospital on Monday and that nothing causes me to go into labor before Tuesday. And praying that although our guy will be very small, he will be very strong.

One obstacle down

I am still in the hospital and still on bed rest. Luckily there have been no contractions and no sign of infection yet. As long as our little guy can hang on for another week my doctor wants to deliver him next Tuesday on December 16th.

One good thing is that Justin just got out of surgery. The surgery started a bit late and also took a bit longer than we thought that it would, but the surgeon said there was lots of scar tissue to work around from the last surgery. But everything looks good so far.

In case you are wondering - we do not get to share a room. I am in the women's center at the hospital where I am being taken care of the way I need to be, while Justin will be in another building, receiving the care that he needs. We are hopeful that as he starts to be able to move around over the next few days, he will be able to visit me but I am not allowed out of my room to try to see him. Too much moving around for me could bring on contractions which we are trying to avoid.

We hope that Justin's recovery is quick and not quite as complicated as the last surgery. We also want to thank everyone for their continued prayers on our behalf. This has certainly been one crazy year for our family!

Private

As we get closer and closer to the birth of our baby, we wanted to make a point of something. Our blog is not private, nor do we have any intention of making it private. However, you may notice that we have never listed our last name anywhere on our blog since its creation.

Please help us to stay as anonymous as possible on the internet by not leaving any comments which have our last name in them, nor linking to our blog from yours by use of our last name. It may seem silly, but it will help us feel better about all the things we post here.

Our world of craziness

Check the baby countdown at the top and you will realize why I really had no idea that it was my water that broke this morning. Baby "J" isn't due for over 7 weeks and yet, I am in the hospital where I will stay until he makes his appearance. So far everything looks good and I haven't had any contractions - but once the water breaks, you never know what you are in for.

The hope is that baby boy will hold out until I reach 35 weeks to make his appearance. So - hopefully it is a boring couple of weeks for me as I lay here on bed rest being monitored.

Anyone keeping track might also realize that Justin will become a patient (at this same hospital) on Tuesday, when he goes in for surgery #2. We are really hoping for the best, meaning that we are hoping that he is released from the hospital before our little boy arrives.

Needless to say, Christmas cards will be going out very late this year - if at all now.

Please keep our little family in your prayers!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We would be amiss if we didn't mention something this year we are especially grateful for.

We are grateful for medical technology.

Because of medical technology, Justin and I will soon be parents.

Because of medical technology, Justin gets to have a normal life even though he had an awful illness he had been battling with for over a year.

Back from Florida

The post about our trip to Florida will come a bit later, but here is a little bit of what has been going on with us now that we are back.

We flew back home Wednesday night and came straight home to check on Colby. After he got over the initial excitement of us being back home, the three of us headed out to the car to go grab something to eat. We got a block from the house when we smelled something burning and then a loud noise started coming from under the car. By the way - this is the same car we just drove home from the airport and the same car that had over $1500 worth of work done on it a mere 7 weeks ago.

Using our insurance we had to car towed back to the shop on Friday and today we found out that one of the engine mounts that was put on at the beginning of October broke and a piece of it got stuck somewhere where it completely thrashed one of the belts. Luckily we didn't have to pay for the towing and we also don't have to pay for the car repair, it is just inconvenient to have only one car for now.

While we were in Florida we both started getting sore throats and by Thursday night we were both definitely sick. However, we still left Friday afternoon to head up to Dallas where my mom, and my sisters Sherry and Sheila threw me a little baby shower and we got some great stuff for the baby. We planned to leave my parents' around 8am yesterday morning to return home, but since we are both battling colds we ended up sleeping later than we planned and taking quite a bit longer to get our act together so we didn't leave to come home until close to 2.

This morning I had another visit with my doctor to hear that the baby is growing great, despite the fact the I have only gained about a pound over the past 7 weeks. I really hope to gain no more than 5 more pounds for the last 9 weeks of the pregnancy. Today baby boy's heart rate was 154 bpm. Because I have been sick for a little while, my doctor gave me an antibiotic and something to help with my cough and congestion. Right now Justin is on his way to see our regular doctor to see what they can give him. His immune system isn't in the best of shape ever since he was on such strong meds for his ulcerative colitis and we need him in tip-top shape before he has to go in for surgery #2 on Dec. 9th.

We are hoping to be doing much better by the time Justin's brother and his fiancee come for Thanksgiving.

The past week . . .

Things have been busy for the past week and will be until we leave on Friday morning.

On Monday
I had my 28-week appt to hear that everything looked good with the baby (heart rate = 145 bpm) and that the doctor already wants to see me every 2 weeks instead of waiting another 4. This was a bit surprising to me at first, but then I thought about it and decided that I am a problem case. In fact my list at the doctor's office is quite long - 1) infertility with unknown origin, 2) IVF pregnancy, 3) vanishing or disappearing twin, 4) gestational diabetes (I think there was one other thing on the list, but I can't remember for sure). When I told my doctor that I would be in Florida 2 weeks later, she said that she would see me in 3 instead so apparently it isn't too urgent.

Justin stayed home from work again on Monday. Ever since he went back to work (which corresponds to when he was done taking the steroids he had been on for quite a while) he has been pretty sore. Achy joints and muscles, some days making it very hard for him to just get out of bed. However on Monday we learned that he is not diabetic (at least one of us isn't) nor does he have rheumatoid arthritis. The doctor gave him something to take for the next 6 days or so to help with the pain so that he can function a bit better.

On Tuesday
Tuesday was not only Election Day, but it was an evening that we had been looking forward to for a while. One of our favorite authors, Vince Flynn, was doing a book signing here in Houston. It was cool to be able to meet him and to now have an autographed copy of his book that just came out. If you are curious about the kind of books he writes you can check here and here.

On Wednesday
I had a follow-up with a dietitian to go over my blood sugar numbers from the last 3 weeks and see what I needed help fixing. And the answer? I need help with nothing. My blood sugar numbers are always in the ranges they are supposed to be. Pretty interesting since I have limited my intake of sugary things (I really haven't eaten much of that leftover Halloween candy, although I have eaten some), but other than that I eat what I want. I do not limit carbs the way they told me to, nor am I always eating at exactly the same time everyday (another thing they told me to do). I think that the truth is that my body didn't like receiving straight sugar for the test and therefore didn't process it correctly. But who ever takes in straight sugar anyway? Even if you are eating ice cream (something else I have even had some of in the last week) or something else sweet, believe it or not, there is more than just sugar in there. Most foods have some kind of protein as well. I plan to continue to monitor my levels, but I am hoping after seeing my OB on the 24th she tells me that I don't have to do it 4 times a day anymore.

This weekend
Justin and I are pretty proud of ourselves that we are almost done Christmas shopping! We typically don't even start shopping until around Thanksgiving. But since we are planning for him to have another surgery in December we (at least I) have felt an urgency to get things done. In addition to being about done with that this weekend we did tons of cleaning around the house: Cleaned out the fridge; swept, mopped and vacuumed just about everywhere; cleaned bathrooms; Justin straightened up both of our desks; and we began sorting through all my craft stuff to clean it up and get it organized (yeah, I think I am nesting). Throw in the fact that I went to not one, but two baby showers on Saturday and it has been a super busy week/weekend. We had hoped to buy the paint for baby boy's room as well, but there was too much to do and we didn't make it to the store before they closed.

Justin finished off his medication for achy joints and muscles and is already starting to feel a bit sore again. We are hoping that the doctor will give him some type of refill or something so we don't end up with a miserable trip.

We also have made arrangements for someone to come over and feed and play with Colby twice a day while we are gone. I know that if you don't have pets you probably don't understand, but we feel so bad that we will be leaving him for 6 days and 5 nights. He really is part of our family and he loves us so much. He can be a handful when he has tons of energy, but what he loves the most is to just sit or lay down with us and be cuddled and feel loved. It will be really hard on him to be alone for so much time.

This next week
I'm not sure about Justin and his work, but I have quite the to-do list for before we leave: I have two different tutoring sessions set up for this week, I just realized that I need to make the invitations for our next Christmas Enrichment (only 3 weeks from Tuesday!), I need to write an exam review and an exam, and I am giving an exam in 2 classes on Tuesday that have to be graded by Thursday morning. On Wednesday Justin has an appointment with his surgeon and we are hoping that we will then know an exact date for his next surgery so we can better prepare.

I think I will sleep the whole first day we are gone.

Our productive weekend

For the first time since we moved to Houston, we did not throw a Halloween party this year. Once we learned that IVF worked, I told Justin that I didn't think I wanted to deal with the hassle of the party because it is always tons of work for me. At the time, I had no idea what we would go through with Justin's health the past few months.

Because we weren't having a party, I also didn't mess with costumes for us. But I already have an idea for next year. :) Halloween night, Justin went to early vote on his way home from work and didn't make it home until almost 8pm. By the time he got home, we had only had about 10 trick-or-treaters. We only had about 20 for the entire night.

Friday night we made a list of things that we need to get done, and Saturday afternoon we went to work (after going out and running errands in the morning). We are actually quite proud of our accomplishments for this weekend. We finished clearing out baby's room, we did some much needed yard work, we did some laundry, we put away all the Halloween decorations and gave Colby a bath.

We hope the next week and half is just as productive as we get ready to go on our trip to Florida.

Tagged!

My friend, Carrie, tagged me about a week or so ago so I figured I should play along. So here we go with 7 weird/interesting things about myself. I'm not sure if they are interesting though, so I will say here are just 7 things about myself.

1) I am very picky when it comes to lettuce. I don't really care for iceburg lettuce at all, and when it comes to other types of lettuce I am picky about what goes with lettuce and what doesn't. I don't really understand it myself (I like lettuce on a hard taco, but not a soft taco; I can eat green leaf lettuce on a hamburger, but don't like it on a chicken sandwich) but it kind of has to do with the way flavors mingle.

2) When I was in junior high, there was an early release day and I went out to eat with about 10 of my friends. Everyone made me laugh so hard that I almost choked on my food and ended up throwing up all over the table. Needless to say, EVERYONE was talking about it and me the next few days at school.

3) I wanted to do a walk-on try-out for the BYU women's soccer team when I was a freshman. I showed up for the first day of try-outs and they sent all the walk-ons inside and individually sat us down and gave us a reason why we couldn't try-out. Apparently I had high blood pressure and wouldn't be able to handle playing in the Utah heat. Funny since my blood pressure was fine in Texas where it is quite a bit hotter (and more humid). They didn't allow anyone who showed up as a walk-on to actually try-out.

4) I don't like most condiments on things - ketchup, mustard, mayo, sour cream, pico de gallo, guacamole. I can eat a few things with ketchup, and I will cook things that have mayo or sour cream in them. But when it comes to my sandwiches and burgers, I eat them dry. When I worked full-time and went out to have Tex-Mex for lunch with people, they always wanted to sit by me because I gave them all the "good stuff".

5) Since becoming an adult, I have lived with 3 families that I am not really related to - my roommate's family in Fairbanks, Alaska for 3 months; the Fuller family in Houston, TX for 2 months and the Keifer's in Kansas City, Missouri for 2 weeks. I lived with my roommate's family because they offered to let me live there for the summer and I couldn't afford to live anywhere else. The Fuller's let me live with them when my lease was up and I had another 2 month's before leaving for grad school and the Keifer's saved me from a very unfortunate living situation that I was stuck in while doing an internship.

6) We lived in Tampa, FL the first 2 years we were married and although I had some pretty good friends there, I couldn't stand Tampa. I don't know what it was, but I was so ready to move away from there just about as soon as we moved there. When we found out Justin could transfer to Houston, I was overjoyed.

7) I have a hard time falling asleep if it is too quiet. I feel like I can hear every cricket outside and every car driving down the road. So I have 3 Enya CD's that play one after another for 2 hours on very quietly in the room so I can fall asleep.

I won't specifically tag anyone, but if you want to play along - go ahead.

The miraculous cleaner

It turns out that the Magic Eraser did not work so well on our graffiti. Neither did Spray & Wash or WD-40 (other things suggested to me). Someone suggested using "Goo-Gone" but when I looked up where to find it, it looked like it was made to clean up sticky messes.

However a little research online this past weekend suggested using baking soda toothpaste to clean up permanent marker. After forgetting to get some at the store yesterday, I remembered to pick some up today.

It took a bit of scrubbing, but we no longer have graffiti on our house!

Cleaning the toothpaste off the house afterward was pretty easy - we just sprayed it with water. It would probably not be the best for cleaning marker off inside walls, since you would later have to clean all the toothpaste up as well - but when all else fails, this method works!

And again

This morning I failed my 3-hour glucose test. Apparently, when you fail in the first 2 hours, they don't make you stay for the 3rd hour. Luckily I wasn't over by a lot - I was in range before drinking the sugar stuff, 13 points too high an hour later and 22 points too high an hour after that (50 - 60 points over is a lot).

I have to meet with a dietitian on Friday morning to learn what to do next, what to eat and what not to eat, and I'll have to start pricking my own finger multiple times a day. Didn't I deal with sticking enough needles in my body when going through IVF?

Loving Craig's List

Not sure if it is me and Justin or just me, but I have learned that I am super picky when we are making decisions for stuff for the baby's room. I decided what style of crib I liked and decided that I wanted to get a dresser/changing table combo unit. And it turns out that to get what I liked in good quality, it was going to be pretty pricey. Ouch!

So I have been browsing Craig's List for a little while. We actually got our crib months ago. Here's a pic of our crib:


While looking for the right combo unit, I found the cradle swing that I liked and they just happened to be selling it with the matching bouncer seat.



And then everything fell into place and we were able to get this beautiful dresser/changing table combo unit.


For all 4 items, we paid less than we would have just by buying the crib I liked brand new. Although I admit that it is a bit stressful to me to deal with Craig's List, I'm loving it right now!!!

We also registered at Target and Babies R Us. We may have gone a little crazy - we registered for both things that we know we would need as well as things we have seen other people have, so maybe things not needed but they looked pretty neat!

Only 15 weeks to go!!!

What we came home to find

We weren't gone for long - we left Saturday morning around 8:45 and got back to our house around 5pm on Sunday. When we turned into our subdivision, we both noticed graffiti on the sign for our neighborhood. I am always so annoyed when people do that kind of stuff. So imagined how annoyed I was to turn onto to our street and have our house come into view to see this:




Lucky for us it isn't spray paint, so we are hoping it can be removed with one of those magic erasers (add that to my list of things to do today). You can't help but feel completely violated when someone does something like this to your personal property.

This is the same graffiti as on the neighborhood sign, but we haven't seen any other houses so far that were targeted. Our next-door neighbor is pretty sure that when he walked down the street Sunday morning, our house was fine and feels certain that he would have noticed it especially on the garage door (it does stand out if you look up at the house at all). We think it is because our Sunday morning paper was sitting in the driveway so they assumed we weren't home, rang the door to see that we weren't and quickly went to work. We are pretty shocked that someone was so bold as to do this in daylight, especially since our garage door is very open to the street.

We filed a police report, even though the officer from the sheriff's department tried to make it sound like it could be a waste of time. If we decided it was a waste of time, the kid (I'm assuming it is a kid) would never be held accountable for what he/she did. At least by filing the report, if he/she is caught they will know that they damaged our house too since these idiots keep on doing the same initials, or symbol or whatever whenever they graffiti.

Our nephew

I don't think that I posted it here before, but my older sister had a baby boy on September 5th who they named Grant. Because of everything going on with us (Justin got out of the hospital on the 4th and the hurricane hit the night of the 12th), this past weekend was the first time that we went to Austin to meet our new nephew.

We were actually taking a lot of stuff with us to be there for 2 days and one night so, needless to say, we forgot something. About 45 minutes after leaving the house, I realized that we forgot our camera! For pics of my cute nephew, (who looks just like my older sister and my younger brother when they were babies) check out my sister and brother-in-law's blog.

I FAILED!!!

Today was my 24-week appointment as well as my 1 hour glucose screening for gestational diabetes. Everything looks pretty good - baby boy's heart rate was 146 bpm today.

The bad news is that I failed the glucose test and therefore have to go in for the 3 hour test next week. I was actually pretty sure that I was going to fail for a couple reasons. The biggest reason is one of the reasons we weren't able to get pregnant without help - I have PCOS which greatly increases the chances of gestational diabetes.

Even though I was pretty sure I was going to fail the test, I have been trying to limit my sugar intake so I would have a chance at passing. Maybe that is why I was so close! My level was 147 and anything over 135 is failing. I hope that being so close is good news for the 3 hour test for next week.

The other interesting thing lately is that I have developed a wicked case of carpal tunnel. My hands go completely numb as I sleep and it usually wakes me up around 5 am. At first I could move my fingers a little to make the numbness go away and go back to sleep, but then it got a bit worse and I actually have to get up for a couple minutes to get my hands to feel like normal. The last few mornings it has gotten even worse and along with the numbness I have pain in my wrists. My doctor told me that I could get braces for my wrists at a local drugstore, but considering the fact that propping my hands up doesn't help there is a good chance the braces won't help much either. Here's to 16 more weeks of numb hands and sore wrists when I should be sleeping!

Warranty

When we were first married, Justin's car died. At the time it didn't really matter, because he was working out of town all the time - I would take him to the airport early Monday morning and pick him up Friday evening. We were perfectly fine being a one-car couple. However, after a couple months he started working in town again and I started substitute teaching. We realized that we couldn't make it with only one car, my schedule was crazy due to times different schools met and Justin needed to be able to drive back and forth between his office and different clients.

Even though we had hoped to not have to purchase a new car for a while, we found ourselves in the market for a car. Our budget was pretty limited since we had both just gotten out of school so we knew that we were definitely not getting a new car. We went to CarMax and test drove a few cars before making our decision to get a 2002 Ford Focus ZX5 (this was back in 2004). We wouldn't say now we are thrilled that we ended up buying this car, although we are pretty happy about what we bought with the car - an extended warranty.

Almost 2 years after we bought the car (and just days before we were moving to Houston), we realized something was wrong and took it in. For $50, a problem with the air compressor was fixed. The day after picking it back up (and the day we were leaving to drive here) one of the windows was rolled down and wouldn't go back up. Without charging us another $50 (since we had just picked up the car the day before) the window was fixed.

Lately we have been noticing that the engine in this car has been running really loud and has been sputtering while we drive. It was tempting to just take the car in for a tune-up somewhere, but then we realized that the warranty is still good so we took it into the nearest CarMax instead. I can't even keep track of all the things that they found wrong (one of the reasons we aren't so stoked about the car - I've never had all these problems with my civic that is 3 years older). What I can keep track of is what we are having to pay for these repairs.

$50

We have broken motor mounts, and something having to do with the timing belt is even covered by the warranty (which means we are getting a new timing belt which is pretty expensive and belts themselves are usually not covered), as well as something else having to do with the air compressor is messed up. Over $1500 worth of repairs and we are paying only $50.

It isn't all the time that I think a warranty is worth it - I bought an extended warranty on my civic when my factory warranty was up and I don't think it ever paid for itself. But this warranty has definitely paid for itself - about 3 times over, in fact.

We will be so happy when we get the car back later this week. It is so hard to have to share a car (in other words, we are so spoiled). Tomorrow morning we leave at 4:30 in the morning so I can take Justin to the airport and anyone that knows me very well knows that I am not a morning person. I have been working everyday this week and since Justin also went back to work this week, we have had to make quite a few adjustments on how we do things.

4 months to go!

Baby boy's official due date is exactly 4 months from today - so we figure we have four months plus or minus a week before he will be here! There is so much to do in that time! We already know which room will be baby's room and we have a crib and bedding, but we have been using that room for all of our random stuff. So it is time to clear it all out. I want to paint the room - we are really leaning toward a light green that matches the bedding we bought, but will hopefully match any future bedding (in case our next baby is a girl, for instance).

Justin is feeling tons better since his surgery and will be heading back to work on Monday - just in time for his company to take them all to Dave & Busters for their own Employee Appreciation Day. Then on Wednesday he will be heading over to Louisiana until Friday as he gets back into the swing of things for work again. It is kind of hard to believe that his surgery was almost 5 weeks ago!

We figure we have about 2 months worth of weekends to do what we need to on the baby's room before Justin goes in for surgery #2, which will be just as major as this first surgery meaning he will have about 5 weeks of recovery time. We could put this surgery off for up to a year if we want, but we have already met the deductible and our annual maximum payout on Justin until June 30th of next year so we want to be able to get his next 2 surgeries done before we cross over into another policy year. Plus, we think it will be easier for Justin to have the next surgery and time to heal before the baby is here, rather than to wait until afterward.

This year has been so crazy so far (IVF, Justin's illness, Hurricane Ike) and it looks like it is just going to keep on. Here's hoping that we will really be ready when baby boy arrives!

beef, beef and more beef

We were really lucky - we hardly lost anything out of our freezer, mainly some ice cream. All of our beef products were in the top of our freezer, and even though we didn't lose any of it, it all was thawed by the time we got our generator on Sunday. Which means we have eaten a lot of beef over the last few days. Everything else in our freezer stayed frozen.

Saturday evening we had hamburgers, Sunday we also had burgers and fed burgers to some of our friends. Monday night we had steak. Tuesday we had burgers for lunch and tacos for dinner. Today (Wednesday) we had burgers for an early lunch (and finally finished off the burgers) and beef stroganoff for a late dinner (with Arby's in between). Right now I am cooking up the last 2 pounds of plain ground beef that we had in our freezer - one pound we will season for tacos and then both batches will go back into the freezer. Tomorrow we are having dinner with friends, but we will cook the pot roast we had in the freezer and will eat roast for the next few days after that.

One thing that is really interesting - a lot of people are getting their power back for a little while, but then losing power again. In fact, after getting our power back on Sunday night - the people across the street (and our friends a block and a half from us) lost power again Monday morning and didn't get it back until this morning. I actually have a constant fear that we will lose power again.

The good news is that a cool front came in Sunday evening and cooled things down here a bit and has really lowered the humidity level. The temp will start going up this weekend though (and the humidity level will go up as well), so we hope that everyone that has power is able to keep it and those that don't have it yet get it soon.

The bad news is that after about 12 hours of use by Justin's aunt and uncle, our generator stopped producing any power. The breaker is fine and everything else seems fine (the generator runs fine and burns gas) except that nothing is getting any juice when you hook it up. You would think that the generator should run for quite a bit longer than that - especially since we only used it for about 4 hours before getting our power back. We met Justin's aunt and uncle at Home Depot this afternoon and dropped off the generator to have it sent off for repairs. There are almost no generators in Houston so we didn't have the option to exchange it and we didn't want to return it because we have decided that having a generator is actually a really good idea. We hope that they are able to find some stupid little wiring problem that is easy to fix and we can get our generator back soon.

In the midst of all this, it is super easy to lose track of time. It really feels like the hurricane came 2 weeks ago, instead of just 5 days ago. It is also very easy to have no idea what day it is, since all the days seem to be running together. Sunday we didn't have church because the building had no power. The different community colleges that are part of the system I work for are closed for the week due to power outages and other damages. With nothing to differentiate one day from another, we have to keep asking each other "What day is it today?"

Our hurricane update

I have to admit - we probably weren't as prepared for this as we should have been. Afterall - we were in Tampa in 2004 for 3 hurricanes that affected the area. Each time, we had lots of canned foods and planned to heat them up with our fondue pot as well as lots of water. And each time, we never even lost power. When you go through that over and over, it is super easy to become complacent.

So for this hurricane, we filled one of our cars with gas. We filled the bottles we have saved with water. We made sure everything from our backyard was stored in our garage (thanks to some people from church who moved our giant grill that is way too heavy for a pregnant woman and a man recovering from abdominal surgery to move). But that is about all we did to prepare.

This was by far the worst natural disaster we have been through. We lost power around 11pm on Friday night. It flickered a couple times before it actually went out, but when it was out for 10 minutes without coming back on - we knew it was not coming back anytime soon. Throughout the night, the wind howled and I hardly slept. Around 5 am, both Justin and I couldn't sleep because the storm was so loud so we got up to check our house for any damage. The wind was still ferocious outside and the darkness made it really difficult to see anything.

Around 7, we could see outside that all of our trees were still standing, but the wind was still pretty strong. We checked out attic to make sure we couldn't see any leaks and then we each went back to bed for about an hour or so. When we woke up, we looked out again to see that one of our trees was leaning to one side. We got some rope from our garage and went out in the wind and rain to secure our tree.

By about 10 or so in the morning, it seemed that the storm had passed. We were able to actually go outside and look around. Our roof looks undamaged as far as we can tell and luckily the rope we used on our tree seemed to hold it up. Besides the fact that we had no power, we had no other damage. As we took a drive around our neighborhood, we realized how lucky we are. Lots of people had trees that had fallen over or snapped in half, lots of broken fences, damaged roofs, etc.

Without power, our house continued to get very hot and humid inside - not so great for two people in mine and Justin's situation (i.e. pregnant and recovering). As the day turned into night we hoped that a night breeze would come through our open windows. But that didn't happen - turns out all our windows are on the wrong side of the house. We also hoped that we would be awakened in the night by our lights turning on as the electricity was restored. Yet again, that didn't happen.

Instead we were awakened as a huge storm came through around 3:30 in the morning with lots of lightening and thunder. We ended up having to go through the house and clean up water that had come into our open windows. We were also quite upset to realize that another big storm meant it would take that much longer for us to get power restored.

Luckily for us, we have great family that really look out for us. My BIL had put his name down for a generator in Austin (even if we could have found one here, neither Justin or I could have carried the thing to bring it home and set it up). This morning he got the call that the generator could be picked up. Because electricity here was scarce, and gas stations that had elecricity didn't have any gas, Rick (and his nephew) brought us the generator and 15 more gallons of gas to keep it running. In addition, he brought the window A/C unit that he and Sherry bought a few months ago when their A/C was out for a few days.

As fate would have it, our electricy was back about 5 hours after getting our generator. We are glad that in the meantime we were able to cool down the family room in our house so it was actually comfortable as well as save most of the food in our freezer. We are also happy to have a generator for the future - you never know when we could use one again. And we are glad that we are going to be able to let Justin's aunt and uncle use our generator now since they have no power still and since they have no power they also have no water.

The past two days have pretty miserable, but we also realize how blessed we have been. Our house has no damage to it and the uncomfortableness of no power, although it seemed to last forever, was less than 48 hours.

The splurge

For weeks (ok, I admit - months) I have been looking at baby stuff online. Starting about 2 weeks ago I started really looking at baby bedding. I looked at both boy bedding and girl bedding since we didn't know until yesterday what we were having. A few days ago I decided what I liked the best for each. Although Justin didn't look at bedding nearly as much as I did - he said he liked best what I liked (maybe because we agree on everything?).

After finding out yesterday that we are having a boy, I spent a good couple of hours last night looking over all the baby boy bedding again. But I kept coming back to the same one. I kept trying to look for something else that was about half the price, but nothing said this is how you should decorate your baby's room like this one set.

And because it was on sale this week AND had free shipping (and it isn't available in the stores) we bought it today! And not just the bedding - also the mobile, diaper stacker and window valance.


We also have a crib (not the one pictured here) that we bought a couple months ago so you can bet I will put it all together once the bedding comes next week to see how cute I think it is all over again!

Its a boy!!!

If you couldn't tell from below - it seems that some went along with the masses without really knowing for sure what they were looking at - here is the explanation of the pictures.

Picture 1 you can easily tell that is baby boy's profile. If you weren't sure about picture 2 - baby boy is actually facing the "camera". You can make out where his eyes are and you can actually see his ribs - he really looks like a skeleton in this one.

Picture 3 is the tell-all picture that he is a boy. If you think of it this way - he is sitting on the camera. His rear is pretty much right in the center with both legs pointed up and to the right. And right between the legs is how we know that he is a boy! We actually had some trouble getting this picture. We saw what we needed to see, but then when we tried to take the picture, he kept crossing legs or holding on to himself right there. There isn't much else to hold on to in there, so I guess he has to find somehow to occupy his time.

Picture 4 is one of his cute little feet; if you enlarge it, you can actually make out the separate toes.

We are so happy to be able to make plans as far as the nursery and all that now!

Blue or Pink?

Today we had the 20-week ultrasound and so we now know the sex of the baby. The question is - can you tell?





That means all you people that usually just read our posts, but not make comments should actually tell us what you see in the pics here!

Happy Day!!!

We have had quite the turn of events this week!

On Tuesday night we assumed that Justin would be staying in the hospital for a few more days at least since he still had his NG tube in place and hadn't eaten or drank anything since Saturday. However, yesterday morning they removed the tube and allowed him clear liquids for breakfast.

He must be doing really well because they automatically moved him up to full liquids for lunch and real food for dinner! Justin's first real meal since August 21st!!!

He had breakfast this morning and after I teach my last class, I am going to the hospital to pick him and bring him back home. We are so happy that he is doing well and is able to come back home. Both Colby and I have really missed having him here.

I am so happy - I am almost willing to forgive Colby for what he did last night while I was at the hospital. Now instead of having 2 shoes that look like this:


I have one that looks like this:


This is the second time he has eaten up one of our shoes. The other time was when Justin was in the hospital in July, he ate one of Justin's shoes. We obviously need to be better about keeping our shoes up.

Exhausted

I am exhausted from so many trips back and forth to the hospital. I feel like I am never home. Poor Colby doesn't know what to think - Justin left almost 2 weeks ago and hasn't come back and I am gone all the time.

Things have not gone as well as we planned and Justin is spending his 13th night at the hospital tonight. We have no idea when he will be coming home.

On Saturday, he started feeling a lot more pain than he had been the few days before and had no appetite for his full-liquid meals. On Sunday the doctors decided that his bowels were still sleeping from the surgery and they needed to put an NG tube in his nose to drain his stomach to help with the bloating and also move him back to nothing but a few ice chips by mouth.

Besides the actual surgery, I think Justin feels that the NG tube is the worse thing he has gone through since being in the hospital. On Sunday he was miserable and it was really hard to see him that way. He couldn't talk and kept gagging because he could feel the tube in the back of his throat. They got a lot of stuff drained and we hoped they would remove the tube on Monday.

Monday he was doing quite a bit better. He could talk and although the tube was still annoying to him, he wasn't nearly as bad as the first day. And he took quite a few walks in the hallway.

As of tonight, they still haven't removed the tube. They are afraid that if they take it out, they will have to put it back in later. So once again, Justin has gone for a few days with no nourishment besides his IV's. We know that in order for him to be discharged to come home his body has to be able to process solid food correctly and since he isn't eating now, we think his stay is going to be quite a bit longer than we had hoped.

We are hoping that if he is still there as of Monday, the hospital staff will be lenient with us and let us wheel him over to one of the connecting professional buildings where my OB is. Anyone keeping track to the pregnancy countdown above will see that I am only days away from 20 weeks, so on Monday we are scheduled for an ultrasound to find out if baby is a boy or girl. Justin has missed all the good ultrasounds and we are not letting him miss this one!

What?!?

This has been the reaction I have gotten from a lot of people when I tell them Justin is in the hospital. Now think of the reaction when I follow that up with, and he just had his large intestine removed on Monday night.

The first 12 hours after surgery were really tough on Justin. I said in the last post that even though they kept upping the dosage of morphine, he wasn't feeling any relief to his pain. In addition, he was itching terribly all over his legs and back and the benedryl they gave him was no relief. So approximately 12 hours after being brought back to his room was when the discovery was made. Justin had a slight allergy to morphine and (maybe it was because of the allergy) it was not helping him with pain at all. He was switched to demerol and was then able to sleep for a couple hours.

Later on Tuesday (less than 24 hours after surgery began) he took his first walk out in the hallway - what a difference the right pain medication makes! Anyone who has had their abdomen cut open knows that moving around is not an easy task. Wednesday, he took 2 walks around the hallways and said he felt better than he had for months, in spite of the pain from the incision which was much better since he was no longer on morphine. He also spent quite a bit of time sitting up in a chair instead of laying in bed. Also yesterday they let him have clear liquids for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Today he was feeling pretty sore though, probably from the moving around he did yesterday. The more he moves around - even though it makes him sore - the better it is for him and his healing. So he went on 3 walks around the hallways today. They also moved him on to full liquids today - which we are happy includes foods with milk (no lactose-free diet!).

We are guessing that he will be coming home on Tuesday, but we won't know for sure when he will be discharged until they come into his room and say he will be going home that day. We do know that he has to be eating normal foods and having his body process them and digest them correctly before he can leave the hospital.

Even after he comes home he will have a few weeks of rest and recovery at home before he will be released by the doctor to go back to work. And the doctor said that he shouldn't do anything strenuous for about 2 months or so post surgery. The lengths Justin goes to in order to avoid doing yard work!

The road to recovery

I just got home from spending all night at the hospital with Justin and am about to go to sleep, but wanted to post an update about what was going on.

We learned yesterday morning that Justin would not be able to have surgery on Tuesday (today) as we had thought due to when the OR was available, when the surgeon was available, etc. Instead we were told that surgery would be sometime yesterday through Thursday and it would have to be in the evening to work around other surgeries and patient visits that the surgeon had. We were finally told around 1 yesterday afternoon that his surgery would be last night and I quickly made sure that I would have subs for my 3 classes today. Since Justin hadn't had anything to drink (but sips of water) since Friday evening and nothing to eat since Thursday afternoon they didn't want to draw out when the surgery would be. Even though he was receiving vitamins through a pick line, the doctor said that is nothing compared to the nourishment you get from food and they couldn't allow him to eat before performing the surgery since they were cleaning out his system. The longer he went before the surgery, the weaker that was going to make his body, and the longer would be his recovery time.

Justin's surgery began around 7pm and finished up around 9:30pm. When the surgeon came to talk to us afterward (me and Justin's dad) he let us know that the surgery went well and in his words "Justin's colon was very, very sick". We headed back up to Justin's room to wait for him there.

He was brought back to the room just after 11pm and was in an incredible amount of pain. They have him on a morphine pump, but they actually had to increase the amount released with each click by 50% in the middle of the night because Justin was hurting so bad. They gave him other pain meds in addition to the pump as well and although he is still in a lot of pain, he is doing much better this morning than he was last night. Both he and I only slept about 10 - 15 minutes at a time throughout the night so after Justin's dad got back to the hospital this morning, I came home to try to get some sleep and will head back to the hospital this afternoon.

Justin has already starting breathing exercises (to work-out his lungs so he doesn't develop pneumonia) and later today they will have him get up out of bed and move to a chair. Even though moving is quite painful, he will recover much faster the more he is able to move around.

I told Justin this morning that I honestly hope this is the worst birthday of his whole entire life.

The update

It is official - Justin will no longer have a colon (large intestine) as of sometime on Tuesday. So far all signs have pointed to ulcerative colitis and not Crohn's disease, but they won't be absolutely certain until they send his colon in for testing (once it is removed, of course). If it is UC, this will be the first of 3 surgeries that Justin will have. The timing of the surgeries will depend on a few factors - how long it takes him to heal, where we are relative to when the baby is coming, etc. If it turns out he does have Crohn's disease, this should be his only surgery.

Although I am worried and nervous believe it or not, Justin is very happy. He can't wait to have the pain and sickness he has been dealing with for the past year and a half over with. We do have confidence in Justin's surgeon and know that he has done this many times so we are praying for him that he will be able to do everything just as he needs to so that Justin can be on the road to recovery.

Tomorrow will be a busy day since I need to make arrangements at the school to have a sub for my first day of classes which is also Tuesday. And I want to be able to spend as much time with Justin at the hospital since he will be pretty drugged up for a few days following the surgery as he recovers. As long as all goes well, he should be coming home either Sept. 1st or 2nd, but out of work an additional 3 weeks or so after that.

I guess we are definitely going to get our fill of hospitals since we had to deal with all the IVF stuff in April and May, Justin was in the hospital last month, now again and having surgery, possibly having surgery again in 3 months (this all depends though) and then the baby is coming the end of January. Wow - aren't we grateful for good health insurance?

Not such a good week

This week was supposed to be a relaxing, get-things-done kind of week. Justin was on vacation starting last Friday and last Thursday was my last day of class for the summer. However, it has not turned out anything like we had planned.

The first 2 weeks after Justin got out of the hospital last month, he was doing pretty great. Feeling way better than he had felt for months. However, just over two weeks ago things changed and he started relapsing again. And as in the past, each relapse seems to be worse than before. He has been running fevers - sometimes as high as 102. His joints (knees especially) have been aching and all around he has just been feeling sick. This time he had a new symptom - nausea and vomiting.

We had thought that just by him taking time off work and being able to rest more without as much stress would help him feel better. Maybe it is better than what it would have been if he were working this week, however he has been steadily getting worse all week.

On Monday we went to see his gastroenterologist and learned that surgery may be the only thing to help him with this disease. He is already on such strong medications and not responding to them. So on Wednesday, we met with a surgeon for a consultation who also said that there weren't really any other medications for him, and for us to consider the surgery option. In fact, one of the drugs Justin has been on is typically used for people after receiving an organ transplant. Apparently, Justin's colon is so sick that they needed to put him on this drug to tell his body not to reject his own colon. The surgeon ordered some tests for Justin for this week to make sure it is just ulcerative colitis and nothing else (like Crohn's disease). In the meantime, if Justin was feeling too sick, he could admitted to the hospital again.

Once we got home from our consultation yesterday, Justin started feeling tons worse and practically slept the rest of the day. Today (after not being able to keep down breakfast), he called the surgeon and asked to be admitted. Since they admitted him today and they are not allowing him to eat in order to rest his system again, he may be staying there for a while to have surgery. And sadly, the hospital where he is now is a bit farther away than where he was last month - this time he is staying where his surgeon can check on him daily.

Things are really up in the air and we are now going day-to-day, not quite sure what the next day will bring. We do know that tomorrow Justin will have one of the tests done that the surgeon ordered to check for Crohn's disease and that after that he will be getting a central line so that he can get full nourishment through IV, which he needs for before and after surgery (assuming that he will be having surgery during this stay).

Beyond that, we don't have all the answers right now. A lot depends on the outcome of the tests that he had yesterday and will have tomorrow. We have no idea how long this hospital stay will be or even if he will be coming home with a colon or not.

What a terrible 31st birthday for Justin this coming Tuesday!

Please keep Justin in your thoughts and prayers as the doctors try to decide what is best for him.

Today is a good day

2 Big Reasons Today is a Good Day:

1) Justin comes home tonight instead of tomorrow night and is on vacation from work until August 25th! We aren't going anywhere special - just planning on relaxing and getting stuff done around the house.

2) Today is the very last day of summer classes! And I made the final exam multiple choice to make it that much easier for me to grade. Now let's hope that I don't get picked for jury duty on Tuesday so that I can spend that time with Justin.

16 weeks and counting ...

Today I had my 16 week appt with my doctor. Things are looking really good and today baby had a heart rate of 153 bpm. I have to admit though, I am going through withdrawals. It has now been 3 and a half weeks since my last ultrasound and I don't get another one for 4 weeks! Ugh! I have been super spoiled when it comes to ultrasounds. Here are the best from each week (I know my mom has been dying for me to post the pics already).

Here is the first ultrasound on the day of embryo transfer. The white swirls in the middle are our two embryos!

The next u/s was 3 weeks later, one week after we were told we were officially pregnant (and therefore almost 6 weeks along). The dark spots showed us that both of our embryos implanted, one had a yolk sack and the other appeared empty.

The next u/s was only a few days later, 6 weeks and 1 day along. The small arrow is pointing to the heartbeat in one of the sacks, the other sack now had a yolk sack.

Another ultrasound at the end of the week 6 showed that both our embryos had heart beats (where the rings are) and also freaked us out because it showed another empty sack - we're glad nothing ever developed with that.

Week 7, day 1 was my first OB visit, where they also wanted to do an ultrasound to verify the pregnancy and the twins. Looking at the picture now, I have to admit that I have no idea what I am looking at! The OB now wanted to see me every week, too, to monitor the twins.

Two days later, week 7 day 3 (our anniversary!), I went back to the fertility clinic where they also did an ultrasound that again showed both heartbeats. I love this next picture, they were able to get one of the babies at a really good angle and you can make out the head and arms!

Week 8 day 2 when I headed to the OB for my second visit was a bit sad - this is when we found out that one of the babies no longer had a heart beat. We decided to focus on the fact that we were still pregnant and this meant an easier pregnancy. Here is our baby that made it where you can make out the head and umbilical cord. Since we were no longer expecting twins, the OB decided she only needed to see me every 4 weeks now.

Week 8 day 3 had me back at the fertility clinic, where they verified that we had indeed lost the heart beat for one of our twins. They didn't give me any pictures of the ultrasound for this one, just pointed out to me the differences between our two little embryos.

Week 9 day 3 and I was back at the fertility clinic again. This was probably the most exciting ultrasound so far, because this is the only time I have seen the baby move! The baby wiggled arms and legs at us (head at the top of the pic, legs at the bottom). Since we were no longer expecting twins and everything looked good, I was told that would be my last visit to the fertility clinic (and no more medications for IVF, yay!).

Week 12 day 5 I did the first trimester genetic pre-screening at my OB, just for another ultrasound. Afterall - it had been about 3 weeks since I had been able to see the baby and I was starting to go through withdrawals. We had also hoped Justin would be able to go to this one, but sadly this was the week he was in the hospital. This is the best pic from that visit. Baby didn't move at all because it was sleeping. You can see it kind of curled up, face down with arms and hands in front of itself.