34 weeks!

We are now almost 34 weeks (tomorrow) along with Katherine! Although I am so excited to finally meet her, a part of me is sad that Abigail will not be the only child anymore. Right now she had all of my attention and I wonder how she will react to a new baby sibling. I'm not sure she understands that there's a baby in mommy's tummy right now. I hope she doesn't feel neglected after Katherine is born. That would break my heart. :( I am so worried about how I am going to manage my time and attention with 2 little ones in the home. The major sucky part is that I have to go back to work after only 5 weeks of maternity leave. I told myself I would definitely take a longer maternity leave this time around with Katherine (I was only allowed 6 weeks with Abigail) but it turns out I couldn't change my insurance plan at work and add short term disability be to able to still get a portion of my pay while on maternity leave. :( I told Jim how important it was to be to stay home with Katherine longer, especially while trying to adjust to having 2 kids under 2, but I guess we just haven't been budgeting for it (I ahd assumed we were), which was a major shock for me. I don't want to blame it on him (but I guess I kinda am)... he is the one who does our budget and pays all our bills. After I found out, I vowed I would be more involved with our budget. And if anything ever happened to Jim, I need to know how to pay my own bills and since I do make half the income, I should know. But finding that out was definitely a shock to me. I totally thought we were budgeting this whole time for me to be on a longer maternity leave. I actually have 4 weeks paid which isn't bad compared to 0 days paid with Abigail. A cool thing my hospital does is that an employee can donate their PTO to another employee and my mom so willingly said she would donate 3 days to me! (Which actually equals a week since I work 3 12.5 hour shifts) I just hope we get all the paperwork turned in in time and approved. Ugh I hate all this talk about money. Of course money is not more important to me than my children, but it stresses me out thinking of how tight we will be (or more in debt we will become) if I don't go back to work in the time-frame that we discussed. I'm still hoping I can be off longer, but we will see. I already talked to my manager who agreed to let me come back to work part-time (2 days/week) until I am 8 weeks postpartum, then I'll go back to work full time (3 days/week). It stinks that the more money you make, the more money you seem to spend. I wonder why we still have debt with 2 full-time decent incomes. It is just annoying. There are too many "things" that I want, which is so stupid. I wish I could purge all these earthly desires and not care about how my home looks and not wish my home looked like the ones I see on HGTV. But anyway, back to what I was saying about work. I also talked to my manager about switching to day shift after Katherine is born. It makes me sad when I leave home on the week nights for work and Jim had a super busy, stressful day and Abigail is fussing and nothing seems to calm her down. :( I just want to stay home and make it all better, but I can't. If I worked day shift, at least I would be home every night and we could split the nighttime duties together instead of it being all on him when I am at work. It looks like I am next on the list to be moved to day shift (the other nurse who was in front of me informed me yesterday that she decided to stay on nights) and I just found out they hired another nurse for nights, but there are currently no openings for day shift. I am hoping that by the time I go back to work after maternity leave there will be a spot open for me.

 

 

So in the past week, we finally got mostly everything moved to their appropriate rooms. The only thing left is the crib. The crib is still in Abigail's old bedroom where she still sleeps at night. Her new room is all set up and waiting for her, but she just does not want to sleep in her toddler bed yet. Although Katherine's room is not decorated yet, I have all her newborn to 3-month old clothes washed and ready to wear and diapers/wipes ready. Just the crib needs to go in the room! (Which is a major part of the nursery lol.) But we're thinking Katherine will probably sleep in our room the first 3 months, then hopefully by the end of that time, Abigail will be well adjusted to her toddler bed and everythign will be just dandy. *One can only hope!*

 

 

I still don't know where we are going to deliver. I thought delivering at my hospital was supposed to be way cheaper (supposedly only paying for the doctor fees and not room/board) but our bill last time still ended up being at least a thousand if I remember correctly (for an uncomplicated routine delivery!). It may also be the type of insurance plan I have though. If I deliver at the hospital where our normal OB doctor delivers, it would definitely be more, but I don't know how much more. It also depends on if my water breaks while I'm at work or if I'm at home going into labor. My work is about 40 minutes without traffic and up to an hour and a half with and the other hospital is only 15-20 minutes away. But I know we need to decide though so the hospital can already have all our prenatal care records and such.

 

 

I really wonder when I'm going to deliver this time around. With Abigail, I was exactly 1 week overdue. But with Katherine I feel like I will delivery sooner, hopefully not too much sooner though, we definitely need all the time we can get! I really hope she waits at least until after New Year's, preferrably until January 10th, because that is my Tita Catherine's bday (aunt she is being names after) and also my dad's birthday! And I know that would just make then overjoyed if she was born on their birthday. And I would feel so bad if she was born on or right around Christmas, due to fear of her not feeling special on her birthday or getting gypped with gifts. But we shall see when she decides it's time to make her grand entrance. :)
 

So Abigail is almost 19 months (will be on Dec. 8!). This past month I feel like she has had so many words have been added to her vocabulary! Words that she says often (old and new) now: mama, mommy, daddy, Abby, puppy, Japer (Jasper) no, down (when talking to Japser), "ow-sigh" (outside), nice (while petting Jasper or something soft lol), Papa, Berda, nummy (when she sees us eating something she knows tastes yummy and wants a bite lol), mo (more), apple, sun, baby, boon (meaning ballon), ba (ball), ovoooo (love you), up, buh-bye and muah when she sees someone leaving, my (mine), owee (when she had a boo boo and wants us to kiss it), shoes, feet, sos (socks), yeah and yay! I worry that she is not talking as much as some other toddlers her age, but Jim is not worried at all. I know she's okay, but I'm just a worry wart and I'm glad I have Jim to balance me out. :) She understand mostly everything we tell her to do, which I think is so cool. I am so proud of her and love her so, so much!!!!!!!