Circle of life

This has been a hard week for us. We had taken Teddy, our dog, into the vet 10 days ago because his lymphnodes looked enlarged. The vet aspirated fluid off and sent it to a lab telling us that she'd have results for us in about 5 days. She put him on some oral steroids to help with the swelling and we went on our merry way not thinking too much about it. When we were at work last weekend, one of the NNPs was talking with Daniel as I was in doing a set of cares on a baby. I overheard her saying that she had just put her dog to sleep. She explained that this is her second dog that has gotten lymphoma, a golden retriever that died last year and now a golden that died recently. Wondering if swollen lymphnodes are a sign of lymphoma, I came out into the hallway and told her that we had just taken our dog in because he has swollen lymphnoes, but is otherwise seemingly healthy. She just shook her head and said that he probably has lymphoma. So Daniel and I had prepared ourselves a little for the news when the vet called on Thursday to tell us that he does have lymphoma and that he probably has 2 to 3 months. Daniel and I are both pretty torn up about losing Teddy. We both love him so much. For now he's acting pretty healthy -- tired, but still eating and drinking without too much trouble and getting around pretty well. We talked to the vet today and she said that she could put Teddy to sleep here at our house when the time comes. She also said that we could keep him on his steroids to help with the swelling and maybe give us a few extra weeks with him.

So we're just anxious to have the baby come. We'll be 38 wks on Wednesday and at our appointment yesterday, the midwife said I am 50% effaced, 1cm dilated and the baby

is in -2 station. In layman's terms, I'm moving in the right direction, but still have a ways to go. I feel like my body is really getting ready for it though. I have contractions a lot and those are always good to move things along. There's no real labor contractions yet, just the irregular practice ones, but I'll take them. :) The midwife thinks the baby is in the 7 pound range now, so we should have a pretty good sized little one.

I had my first labor dream the other night. We had a baby girl and it was a yorkshire terrier?! The oddest part of the dream was that it seemed completely natural that I had just given birth to a DOG! Didn't skip a beat -- "Isn't she beautiful?" As much as I'm mourning Teddy, I'm really hoping to give birth to a human. :)

We are able to look at the proofs of the belly pictures that we had done a few weeks ago. If you want to look through them, go to www.amylwagner.com and click on "enter preview gallery." Then enter the password: ohara. There's a short slideshow on this page or if you want to look through all of them you can click on where it says "select a category" and select proofs. We got a few that I think we'll get some prints of, but we both think pictures of the baby are going to be way cuter. :)

So keep your fingers crossed for us that the baby comes soon and Teddy stays healthy for a bit longer. It'd really be great if we could have them meet. We're planning on planting a tree in the backyard and underneath the tree burying Teddy and our baby's placenta. The circle of life tree.

More soon on our ever growing garden, a very fun baby shower that some friends had for me, some crafty finished objects and our strike on Thursday!