Update: Diagnosis is postpartum cardiomyopathy based upon results of an echocardiogram and bloodwork, as well as an ekg. It is nerve wracking. For now they will be monitoring (referral to a cardiologist as well) and medicating. I truly hope that I will continue to be able to do it from home as we apparently caught is very early. Thanks for all the words of wisdom, experience, advice, and kind words. Here I thought when little Max arrived we would be through with all the drama!

Thank you for this. I read it going in for my tests and felt like I was better equipped to ask questions.

Thanks:) Yes, having an echocardiogram tomorrow afternoon...

😞😞😞 Very scary. I hope things get better for you....

The Electric Grandmother? I remember that movie, but think it was an 80's thing. I thought the end was really quite depressing.

The tests are scheduled for tomorrow. They took blood today to rule out HELLP...

First off, i am trying REALLY hard not to get freaked out or panic. I am hoping others have seen this and have had it turn out to be much less serious than it sounds. As many of you know from the picture I posted of my sweet baby boy, I just gave birth via csection after a very difficult pregnancy. After I left the hospital on Tuesday my lower half started to swell. No big deal right, all that IV fluid. Except this is extreme. Literally from my belly button to my toes became grossly swollen. I phoned the doctor's office and was basically told what I knew. They were not worried as long as my bp was not elevated (it isn't) and that edema in extremities is very common post-partum. But there really isn't a way to convey the extent or the fact that I would never panic over a bit of hands, feet, face swelling after birth! But everything has continued to swell! I went to the OB/GYM this morning to have staples removed and had to wear hubby's pants and slippers. My entire legs are literally twice their size, painfully tight and rigid, and any indentations you make actually stay like a memory foam pillow. When I was weighed I came in at 132 lbs--7 lbs more than when I was pregnant! Long story, but doctor took one look and became worried about congestive heart failure. Unfortunately the blood test to confirm would be elevated post-partum anyway. He sent me for other tests and started me on HCTZ to try to get rid of some of the swelling, and if not will admit me to hospital. Apparently the lungs can fill with the same fluid very quickly. I have been short of breath and have had a constant headache, but just thought it was part of recovery. Anybody had problems with massive swelling like that? Or know anything about it? I am in limbo waiting to see if the meds work and have the heart and kidney tests. Very frightening:( Also, of course this is secondary, but the HCTZ can apparently dry up milk supply. Anybody have any tried and true ways to boost production? Assuming it will even still be a possibility?

My dd did the K-3rd list, and the books on the list are quite a nice range...everything from lovely picture books to series such as Laura Ingalls Wilder. It would, however, be A LOT to accomplish in a summer since many of the entries are series. Still, you can combine any manner of reading, read-alouds, audio books to count. It took my dd almost a year to finish all of them, but at the end it was the first reading program that she WORKED at and she was incredibly proud:) she got a neat certificate as well as the t-shirt--although their smallest size is closer to fitting me than my dd, lol. She is hard at work on the 4-6th grade list as her goal for this year.

My dd has several of the Melissa and Doug sets. Her favorites have been the felt sandwich set, the Velcro pizza set, and particularly the birthday cake set to have tea parties (coolest set we got in the UK from the Early Learning Company, I can link it if you are interested). She loves the regular groceries and the ice cream set as well. On the shelves of the walk-in closet I made her a 'grocery store' with empty boxes of real groceries, and an extended selection of plastic produce. Those styrofoam mushroom containers got filled with colored paper, Pom poms, and anything else I could come up with and Saran wrapped over the top to make them more realistic. A shopping cart, aprons, cloth grocery bags, cash register and a scale to weigh all give hours of fun. The food from the kitchen and store routinely get mixed and used interchangeably. One other thing that has gotten a ton of play: when she was two I entered the living room to discover she had pulled all the individual tassels (silky but not the braided rope kind, thin) out of a drapery tassel tie-back. It looked so much like cooked spaghetti noodles that I put them in a pot in her kitchen. They 'stir' really well and she has played with them for three years! I have also given her dried beans and dried pasta shapes such as mini bow tie that she loves. So many things around the house can be used! She had a jar of different sizes of new nuts and bolts we gave her when she was little to practice matching sizes and fine motor skills--she loves to cook them in a metal pot because of the hideously loud noise it makes:) The only thing I vetoed was when she asked for the cardboard carrier for daddy's beer, lol. Probably not something to get overly worked up about, but unnecessary and I had that visceral reaction:)

I fixed the picture!!!!!

After the looong pregnancy filled with the tedium of bed rest and pregnancy issues (that the Hive talked me through!) I am proud to announce the birth of our little guy! We had a bit of a scary emergency csection but he is very healthy:) Meet Maximillian Sebastian Charles, born April 12 (which is unfortunately, not a date shared by any awesome scientists or mathematicians, lol). He weighed a whopping 6 lbs, 15 oz. This is his going home day picture and I managed to take the photo just as he 'smiled.' Thanks to the Hive for keeping me sane during the pregnancy:)

Hilarious, as I was just recently lamenting the fact that the ice maker in our fridge went out and you have to actually open the door to get ice. Considering one of the main requirements in a new fridge/freezer for us was the built in ice maker/water dispenser option, this is a big issue for me! (But in my defense I am in a wheelchair and it makes my life easier! However, still unnecessary:) Hubby laughs because I complain that every time I use the plentiful, beautifully clean water from the tap heated just to my desired temperature to wash hands I can't stand the feel of my dry skin and am forced to use lotion:) wah...

There are some great versions you can actually purchase, including one with a book by Nora Gaydos...but I always found them easier to do on the fly:) One of our favorites was to just incorporate rhyming into ',I Spy.' So say 'I Spy with my little eye, something that rhymes with bee...I spy a tree.'

So many things:) But have you seen the books 'What your Preschooler Needs to Know' and 'What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know' have such great comprehensive lists with everything all in one place. In addition, the Montessori Early Childhood lists are fantastic for the more practical, sensorial skills and include community/safety/academic/physical etc., as well.

We live in a place where there is not a whole lot organized either-especially for the younger set😒 We do always go in the middle of the day to the Disney Earth Day movie. This year it is Monkeys! Last year we turned off the electricity to everything except the essentials such as the fridge and freezer. We made a game of using as little water as possible, etc., and it was so cool we will do that again...if the birth of new baby holds off! Scheduled csection for the next day, lol. I have a slew of books we have been reading, and we have been working on letter writing to government officials. Daddy is taking her out to the local landfill and recycling plant so she can see for herself. Seems simple enough, but ai think many miss this and detach themselves. It can be really overwhelming to see the massive trash mountains:( It is a bit warmer here so we ordered her and new brother trees from the nursery to plant, and she has been busy helping us research local plants to replace our current water-guzzling foliage. This has been eye-opening for the whole family, and was inspired by learning more about the drought in California. She is also getting the Snap Circuits Green set to explore alternative energy ideas as a gift from new baby brother:) this feels like so much irony, to buy her plastic probably from China to celebrate Earth Day, but it is what it is... That is about it this year. We try to make Earth Day sort of like New Year's for resolutions: what change, however minor, can we make as individuals and as a family that we can carry through the next year?

"I walk slowly but never walk backward" -Abraham Lincoln

When I was a kid my mother always told me not to pout-that if I did a bird would poop on my lip. When I was 8 yo I was visiting an aunt on her farm. She had a huge old barn, and my cousin and I loved to play in it. We had found a dead baby bird and were watching the barn swallows fly around way up high in the rafters...I SWEAR one of them was flying 50 feet away in a straight line in front of me when it suddenly, evily, with malice afore thought, changed course and b-lined for me. It dropped its putrid bomb right onto my lip, open mouth and all down my shirt before returning to fly merrily on its original course. I, of course, have to take the word of my cousin on this as I had melted into a hysterical sobbing ball of nonsense😩 To this day, barn swallows make me shudder. My dd5 loves to show me pictures of them when she encounters them...and occasionally Googles them for a laugh at mom's expenseðŸ˜

2-3 ounces of pickle juice. I kid you not. Professional athletes use it for muscle cramps and dehydration. It works extremely rapidly, then you can continue all fluids.

I had this exact issue when dd was 2.5...I thought it was a bit of an overreaction for a toe, but when I called the pediatrician insisted we should come in for an X-ray. For several reasons. Broken toes in small tots can be more serious. If it is displaced it may actually be necessary to surgically repair it in littles! Who knew? Our ped also mentioned the fact that it was a really good idea to have anything like that documented in the records 'just in case.' The good thing is they have space between their toe bones so hopefully it landed there, as it did on my dd. It was huge and blue, and I would have sworn it was broken but ended up being fine.

There are tons of resources for fun in this manner:) I have a dd5 who loves words and origins. But one of the very first things that popped into my head is that he would love the Brian P. Cleary books. They are light and fun: there are books for parts of speech, homophones, similes, metaphors, palindromes, you name it. Your local library will have them:)

Thanks! I get up a little each day. Since I am in a wheelchair anyway, it is pretty much ALWAYS pelvic rest, lol. Who knew the wheelchair would have a benefit?! These days I probably rest more than strictly necessary:) as much as I am ready for this baby to.be.out., I also want to hang in as long as possible:)

Thanks for the link, I printed out that list! Hubby likes Hadley in there...but insists it would be just a plain bad idea to name a boy after the man who discovered embryonic fertilization, lol!

So awhile back I got some great suggestions for baby boy names from the hive. We are definitely in the final stretch now as I will be 37 weeks on Sunday!!! Yay! I can't even believe it as the doctors thought several times we would be delivering him, starting at 26 weeks. It has been a rough one, but everyday now is just bonus:) As a bit of a refresher, we know we will go with a long NAME to match the syllables and style of dd5's name. Her name is Alexandria Isobel McCall Lastname, and so we couldn't very well call this child something like Bob:) We have not managed to settle in anything, but do have some contenders, which I will list below. But here is the fun part I could use some help with! My dd5 actually came up with the idea, and daddy and I think it will be fun (within reason!). There are many famous mathematicians, thinkers, and scientists born in April. Alex wants to name the baby in part after one of them, depending upon which bday baby arrives:) So we are creating a master list. I have found a couple of famous bday lists online, but it seems every time I search I get new names. Anybody want to help and join in on the hunt?😄 Here are the contenders or parts we are considering, with 2nd list of some famous bdays in April. Our family has started placing bets:) we know the 2nd middle name will be Charles, after family... So we have variations of the following but are not stuck or set on them. Maximilian Sebastian Charles Atticus Maximillian Charles So say if the baby came on 15 April (Leonardo Da Vinci's bday!) we might go with Maximillian Leonardo Charles, or some variation thereof:) If baby arrives on 23 April (Max Planck AND William Shakespeare's bdays!) we might go with Maximillian William Charles... And so on. Dd is desperately hoping that the baby will wait until 30 April as that is Freidrich Gauss' bday! She would be absolutely ecstatic, but this is a REALLY a longshot:) Anybody want to research some possibilities? Place bets? Otherwise help me pass the final part of bed rest, lol?!

I needed to be reminded of this today:) Thanks for taking the time....