It deserves to be noted...

That I am not the only one enjoying my gift from Papa Noel...

We are like two little kids together!

32 weeks!

At 32 weeks my baby's bones are well developed but still quite soft. Rhythmic breathing movements are present and the central nervous system is developing. The baby is accumulating body fat while he/she learns to regulate his/her own body temperature. Up until now, I have had an impeccable pregnancy, very little nausea, very minimal weight gain, no real change in energy level...

However, a week ago I began having some interesting symptoms that my doctor did not seem the least bit concerned about. I was going blind. Not literally blind, but 3 or 4 days on one week my vision began to blur, I could not see straight and clear, and I felt weak, a bit dizzy, and out of sorts. These episodes were almost always followed by an excruciating head ache that could only be dealt with by a dark space and a few hours of sleep. My doctor's response to this was, "Go to the eye doctor."

So I did. It was there I found out I have perfect vision, with no problems in the iris or imbalance in the tension of the eye. It was there I found out that what it sounds like I am experiencing is called: Aura Migraine. Apparently these are common in pregnant women due to the extra amount of hormones floating around a soon to be mommy's body. The blurry eyes are a warning sign of what is to come. What neither the eye doctor, nor my obstetrician told me, and what I found out on my own, is that migraines are a common part of the third trimester of pregnancy, BUT... are usually indicative of low iron levels! So I upped my iron and cut out my every once in a while coffee and my every day piece of chocolate and have not had an episode since.

Now knowing what stage of growth my baby is in, it is only logical that even the slightest stimulant could cause the central nervous system to go overboard, which is probably exactly what was happening.

Other prego news: I have started my pregnancy gym class! I go twice a week to do cardiovascular exercises that strengthen and ready my body for labor. We work the specific muscles that will be necessary at the moment of labor, as well as the breathing methods that will be useful to help me through the process. It is a great group of soon to be mommies and I really like going!
Then on Tuesday nights Claudio and I have started going to informative lectures about labor and parenting. We have gone to two classes so far and they are super interesting. The first was all about exactly what happens at the moment of labor and all of the different methods that exist to deliver a baby. The second was all about anestisia, something I have chosen not to have. If I was decided agains having the epidural before the lecture, I am far more decidedly against it after the lecture. What a scary scary process!

These are the dangers:
Epidural typically involves using the opiates fentanyl or sufentanil, with bupivacaine, Fentanyl is a powerful opiate with a potency and side effects 80X that of morphine. Sufentanil is another opiate, 5 to 10Xs more potent than Fentanyl. Bupivacaine is markedly toxic, causing excitation: nervousness, tingling around the mouth, tinnitus, tremor, dizziness, blurred vision, or seizures, followed by depression: drowsiness, loss of consciousness, respiratory depression and apnea. Bupivacaine has caused several deaths by cardiac arrest when epidural anesthetic has been accidentally inserted into vein instead of epidural space in the spine. Epidural correctly administered results in three main effects:

• Loss of other modalities of sensation (including touch)
• Loss of muscle power (hence, a risk of falling)
• Loss of function of the sympathetic nervous system, which controls blood pressure

The worst part is that during the lecture, the question was asked, "does the drug pass to the baby?" And the answer is a definitive "YES!"

I would rather feel all the pain 100% than take the risk of the epidural.

And that doesn't include the side effects and aftermath:

• Epidural slows down labor significantly because it lowers the blood pressure whereby decreasing both adrenaline and oxytocin, the hormone necessary for dilating.

Studies have shown a delayed onset of breastfeeding and shorter duration of breastfeeding in babies born having used the epidural. If the baby takes longer to latch on, the milk takes longer to come in, if the milk takes longer to come in, your levels of oxytocin are lower causing all sorts of problems in the magic that is the human body.

Tonight we will be going to hear the lecture about newborns. Lets hope it is far less scary than last weeks seminar.

I must have been a very good girl!

Christmas in Argentina is not exactly like Christmas in the U.S. For starters, we are in the middle of summer here, AKA, it is hotter than crap-ola! Secondly, Santa Claus goes by the name Papa Noel. Papa Noel does not wait until the little kiddies are fast asleep to bring the presents, he comes at midnight on the 24th of December. After dinner, we wait anxiously, then run into the streets to look into the sky, filled with fireworks, and sometime someone dresses up as Papa Noel and can be seen in the distance, on a roof-top, or in a far off field waving. Then everyone rushes back into the house and presents are everywhere. But Papa Noel doesn't just bring presents for the children, all of the presents that are exchanged on this night are from Papa Noel. We then open a bottle of champagne and cheers to the night.
Well, this year I must have behaved extra good because, while Papa Noel didn't leave me anything under the tree, "our neighbor" (Claudio) called me to tell me that Papa Noel had left my present in my front patio...

This is me enjoyng life on Christmas day.
Thanks Papa Claudio, I mean Noel!

Feliz Navidad!

On this very Merry Christmas Eve, Octubre and I, the baby to be, Claudio and Brownie, the baby and me,

Are falling all over ourselves with kisses and wagging tails...

To tell you all how much we love and miss you during this holiday season.

You are in our thoughts, today and always, from all the way down in the city on the river in the southern tip of nowhere...We love you!

Two birds are better than one

Yesterday I ran around on a while turkey hunt, literally, looking for a turkey in every nook and cranny of the city, only to end up settling for chicken. I have never baked a turkey before, in fact, I don't think I have ever made Christmas dinner before, which is why I decided to volunteer last minute to make my first attempt. Sometimes I ask myself if there is not something neurologically wrong with me, WHAT WAS I THINKING!?!

I stood, belly up to the stove for nearly 4 hours yesterday in the sweltering heat, perspiration dripping from every crease in my growing body to merely prepare for an entire day of baking today.

God must have heard me bitching and complaining under my breath, for this morning the rain has come to wash away the heat. There is a fresh breeze that comes with the calling of the mud hut making swallows and I am happy to be preparing Christmas dinner, not only for my first time, but for what will be the first "Traditional North American" Christmas dinner for Claudio's family. (It is typically so hot here on Christmas, we eat salad and ice cream.) Lets just hope she also hears my pleas for this experimental meal to come out excruciatingly tasty!


The menu consists of baked chickens,
stuffed with homemade hand cut bread stuffing
(no prepackaging here folks)
fresh hand cut french-style green bean casserole mini portobello mushrooms (again all fresh ingredients), and candied butter-nut squash topped with cinnamon toasted walnuts.

Finally, for dessert, I thought I would make pineapple upside cake, something that does not exist here and is sure to be the hit.

Where this sudden fire came from to prepare so last minute, I am not exactly sure, though I am grateful for it's burning sensation.

Baby Shower

My baby shower was one of the most beautiful days of my life and something to be remembered for all time.

There is a group of ladies whom, like me, have fallen in love with an Argentine man, married him, and have decided to stay here in Argentina to build a family.
All together I think we are about 7 that live here somewhat permanently. We have all met in different ways, and are all very different, but we all have one thing in common. We are foreigners in a culture that is not ours, that will never really be ours, who all miss our families and friends, and have found a special kind of friendship and support group amongst each other.
From left to right: Kim, holding Lucia, Adrianne's youngest, Valeria (my best Argentine friend,) Susan, Me, Janette, Gordana and Anisa.
Again from Left to right: Kim, holding Lucia, Gordana, Valeria, Me, Adrianne, Janette, and Anisa.

Adrianne, a lovely Mormon mother of two made me this two layered cake of diapers and pads to prepare me for the first week of being a mommy.
Susan, an inspiring Human Resources consultant that has worked all over the world, made the real cakes, banana cream cheese cake, (the best ever ever!) and Chocolate poppy seed bunt cake. Susan used to live in Fiji where she owned and ran her own cafe, that is when she wasn't doing team building for th UN. Just an amazing woman!

As we found our seats around the table, we began by first stuffing our faces with sweets, and continued with a game that the ladies had organized. Adrianne had tracked my mother down, called her and questioned her on things like, "What was Stephanie's favorite toy as a kid?" "What was Stephanie's favorite food as a kid?" "Who was Stephanie's first best friend?" "What was Stephanie like as a little girl?" etc...

All the ladies had to write what they thought the correct answer was and then they read off the answer my mother gave to them. It was so beautiful to remember that my favorite toy when I was a kid, was not a toy at all, but were my books! I remember reading for hours and hours! Not much has changed I suppose. And how my favorite food was strawberries. Not only where they my favorite, but at 18 months old I apparently crawled into my mother's strawberry patch and ate every berry on the vine. Later that evening I broke out into a sort of alergic reaction of blisters all over my mouth, hence impeding me from continuing to suck my thumb.

The funniest thing of all is that I was very prissy as a child! Hahaha! According to my mother, I didn't like to get dirty, I always wanted to wear a dress, and I spent hours "primping" myself. A far stretch from the Stephanie of today. hehe

When we finished the story telling time, the girls did something I had never heard of before. They formed a birthing chain for me.
This is where every woman places a bead of their choice onto a wire. While placing the bead on the wire they declared a wish or a desire they have for me and my soon to be born child. Making it's way full circle, it was then ended forming a chain to grip onto while I am in labor as well as a way for each one of my friends and loved ones to be present with me in the labor room. As you can imagine, there was a steady flow of tears that was only exaggerated when Adrianne appeared with the telephone in hand and my mother on the other end. They had set aside two beads, one for my mom and one for my sister so their wishes and presence could also be felt labor room.

Have you ever seen anything so lovely in all your life?

I could not stop touching it for the first few days, thinking of all the lovely things each one of my friends had hoped for me, feeling myself overflowing with love over and over again.

Time doesn't just fly, it soars...

So many things have happened since the last time I wrote, I don't even know where to begin. First and foremost, the construction crew has finished!!! Now all that is left are the details that Claudio and I are choosing to do on our own...like...

laying the floors...

and painting...

The bathroom, though not completely without tragedy, is completely finished.
The shower is made up of three slabs of granite called "Marron Malambo,"
weighing in at about 250 pounds each.
You can imagine how difficult they were to hang...it took three construction workers and
Claudio, all, of course, using great care.

The contractor, however, wasn't so lucky. As they lowered the slab, placing it on top of the first slab, he forgot to move his finger. They had to then use a crow bar to lift the slab and take his completely smashed finger out. The house of course was flooded with a roar of a scream that sent me running upstairs in a panick, only to discover th small river of blood flowing from his finger. I, nurse Stephanie, cleaned his wound with peroxide and recalled a home remedy my father always swore by...

I dabbed a bit of crazy glue on the tip of his finger, looking like something out the the Flintstones, in order to close his finger up long enough to get him to the the hospital where he later received 4 stitches.

I won't go into the ethical guilt trip Claudio and I took ourselves on after this whole event, but lets just say that there is something disturbing about a man being paid to place stones he will never be able to fathom having in his own home in the home of another and getting hurt, on top of it all, while doing so. We of course offered to pay for the doctors bills, though he wouldn't hear of it. Is that what you call "macho?"

So the rest of the virtual tour looks like this:

These stairs lead you from the living room downstair to a hallway upstairs, all naturally lit. We have yet to choose a railing, but have no fear, there will be one saftly welded in place before the little one begins to move about the living space. As you leave the stairwell you approach what will be the baby's room, with our room to the right and the guest room to the left. Then there is a small laundry station (also done in Marron Malambo,) illuminated by colored glass windows that lead out to the balcony that looks over our back patio and takes you up to the rooftop terrace.



Little by little it is coming together, though I wonder if one ever truly finishes remodel projects. It seems there is always one more thing to do be done.

I can hardly wait to get to the decorating!

29 weeks!

By 28 weeks, they say my baby's lungs are developed to the point that survival is possible outside my womb. His/her eyelids open and close and he/she should be weighing in around 2.5 pounds and be approximately 15 inches long.
We had a doctors appointment on Monday where my doctor confirmed that I have so far gained 15.5 pounds, my blood pressure is perfect, the baby's heart beat is strong and regulated, and most interestingly, the baby's head is already in the downward position.
When he said this, I of course immediately thought, "But wait! does that mean I could go into labor early?"
According to many baby books and websites, the baby doesn't typically position him or herself head down until the 32 week.
But, of course, this poses no threat whatsoever. As it seems, I am simply having the easiest and most beautiful pregnancy possible, with absolutely no worries of any kind.
The baby being "engaged," as they call it, can mean many things. Either the baby is simply swimming around and will continue to move and wiggle in and out of his required birthing position, he/she is quite large, and has been forced more or less into that position due to limited space, or he/she is just getting a head start on things, hehe.
Either way, I am still counting on my due date to be February 22nd, my Grandpa Sherman's birthday, a Pisces, dreamy and independent.
And if my motherly intuition does not fail me, the baby will be born a little boy.

As for other news:
Next week I begin my pre-natal classes, twice a week I will go to the hospital to learn how to breathe, Claudio will be attending as well in order to help remind me to breathe. (probably more important than me learning hehe)
The house is so close to the finish! I can hardly wait to post photos for you all to see the fruit or our hard work!
In the meantime, I love and miss you all and hope that Thanksgiving was fantastic, even if I wasn't there to celebrate it with you.