[holdingmybreath]

Cathi - I can't believe that woman. After I read you post I went to my scriptures so I could give you some good ammo to go back to her, but hubby said I was crazy. I told him, it just infuriates me when people stick their noses into others business. I'm a very religious woman too, but that doesn't mean I'm going to bow down to my husbands every whim. I always tell my friends marriage boils down to this: you, your hubby and God, no one else. Don't let anyone tell you how you should be running your marriage. GRRRRR...

Nascar - we were going to get our crib at BRU's too, but after seeing what JC Penney had to offer we went ahead and bought the crib, dresser, and changing dresser on JC Penney. We had it shipped to the store and went and picked it up. We saved over $800.00 on what we would have spent at BRU. We didn't get but one gift card there from all the showers, so I didn't want to pay out of pocket.

Mery - I'm sorry your OB is making you stay at work. I am actually hoping everything goes well and I'm able to work until the 15th of Dec. I plan on putting the rest of my paychecks in savings, since I don't plan on working again after the baby comes. Funny though I would love to have the baby on the 16th of Dec. We find out on Nov 11th whether or not we will be induced.

Hopeful - I'm sorry they made you stop working when you wanted to keep working. I'm torn sometimes, like I said I want to work until the 15th of Dec, but sometimes I think it would be so nice just to stop. We have SOO very much to get done here before my mom arrives and my hubby's parents arrive and the baby arrives. The only time I'm worth anything is on the weekends. I get home from work and I'm almost too tired even to fix dinner. It's crazy.

Martha - I'm sorry you had to do the 3 hour test. I hope it turns out good. I know what you mean about doing everything you can for those boys. This past week I started getting a sore throat and had a headache for two days, so I stayed home and in Bed Tues/Wed. I will not put my baby at risk! Although, while I was at the OB on Wed she lectured me on the N1H1 vaccine, which I refuse to get. I got the flu shot and I didn't even want to get that.

Northeast girl - I'm hating this weather too! It seems as the only good weather is during the week while I'm at work and then every weekend it's raining and icky. I have stuff to put in the shed, I need it to be nice. My hubby needs to mow the lawn and get the leaves up, Weather man please give us some nice weather for a change!

asm not much is going on. We got the crib up last weekend and this weekend we put together to two dressers. It's starting to look like a babies room. We haven't decided if we are going to paint the room or not. I'm now trying to figure out what we need that we didn't get at the showers. I got coupons from BRU for diapers and a gift card, so I decided to check out diaper prices and in case ya'll are wondering Target is the best place for diapers over diapers.com, BRU, Walmart, amazon.com, and Drugstore.com (I was only looking at pampers and huggies, since that is what the BRU coupons are for). Although the prices are pretty comparable and with coupons I would shop at pretty much any of the stores. If I was choosing between Target and Walmart though I would go to Target. The coupons at BRU are printable and some are pretty good. I only printed a few that I will use, but keep in mind if you are registered at BRU you have a 1 time purchase (what whatever 1 item or all items) that are on the registery for 10% off, so I didn't bother printing any of the coupons that were 10% off, since I can get those items with our 1 time offer off the registry. I did however print the 15% coupon on diaper bags (only found one I liked) and the 15% off all bedding sets $100 or more. I'm not sure if I iwll be using either, but the coupons are good through 11/25. There are some coupons on the printouts that are only good this week like $5 off 25 purchase or more (read the fine print this excludes a lot of stuff) save $4 on diapers and get a free $5 gift card when you purchase 2 diapers (which can be used together). At all both my showers I only got one bag of diapers, I was in SHOCK, I thought I would have more diapers than I would know what to do with, so now we are off to buying some. Tomorrow will be my first birthing class, we are taking a three week Self Hypnosis Birthing class and then one Saturday class called Childbirth 101. Other than that not much is going on with us. I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween.

[holdingmybreath]

*****Warning about to ramble about diaper prices, if your not interested skip this post******

So I have to correct something I posted yesterday. After looking through my two page lists of diaper comparisons (front and back) I said Targe looked to have the best prices. Well I was wrong. I entered all this data into an excel spreadsheet and figured out what each boiled down to in price per diaper. It turns out after doing this that BRU had the best diaper prices most often. So most of my comparisons were on the large diaper boxes because my coupon said I had to purchase either Pampers (92 ct to 252 ct) or Huggies (72 ct to 288 ct).

Here's how I made out today when we went shopping for diapers. We went to BRU. I had store coupon for $4.00 off (stuff above) and I had two manufacturers coupons for $2.00 off one for Pampers and one for Huggies. BRU was offering a $5.00 gift card when you purchased two diapers (same stuff above). So I purchased the Pampers Swaddlers stage 1 216 count for 40.99 and Huggies Snug N Dry stage 1 to 2 264 count for 41.99. I was able to get $4.00 off both boxes with the instore coupon and I had the $4.00 worth of manufacturer coupons, I essentially saved $12.00. I purchased 480 diapers for 70.98 (if you want to count the gift card as savings too it was 65.98) This brings the unit price per diaper to 15 cents (14 cents if we are still counting the gift card). On a side note I used the 5 dollars off 25 dollar purchase coupone that I printed as well, but it said not good with diaper purchases so we got another item that was 25.00 (because 5 off is 20% and that's better than I will do on the day we decide to purchase whatever left on the registry for 10% off); however, on the receipt they took off and extra $1.63 and $1.68 on the diapers (I didn't add this to my price per diaper because I wouldn't have used the coupon without purchasing something else since it said not valid on diapers)

I also shopped at Target today for diapers as well. They have Jumbo Packages (not as big as you think having the word Jumbo in the name) for $8.99. I also had a Target Store coupon for $2.00 off Pampers Swaddlers Sensitive and in today's paper there were $1.50 off coupons for Pampers (I happened to purchase 4 papers (not a good choice if you are ONLY going to use the Pamper coupon as I paid $3.50 for two papers and the two coupons I used only saved me $3.00) So anyhow, I got two packages of diapers one the Pampers Swaddlers Sens stage 2 - 34 count and Pampers Baby Dry stage 1 - 50 count both for 8.99 minus my coupons. The total was 17.98 - 5 = 12.98 with a unit price of 15 cents per diaper.

Now I personally think to know if you are getting a good price on diapers you need to break it down by unit price. (Diapers.com does this already for you) You may still be saying how do we know what is a good unit price? Well frankly I don't, but I googled it last night and read several chat forums and here's what four different posts had to say about unit prices. The First lady (if I achieve what she suggests I will feel like I won the lottery) says she never pays more than 10 cents per diaper (I do not know if she's buying store brand or brand name; however, she did mention using coupons in conjunctions with sales and mostly that going to be your brand names) The second lady said for stage 1 & 2 diapers (because the number per package decreases as the size increases and the prices usually stay the same) was 12 cents per diaper. The third lady said she the best she saw diapers for was 15 cents per diaper. And the last lady said anything that was 17 cents or cheaper was best.

The best price I found on my spreadsheet was 16 cents per diaper and this was without coupons. I would be happy to email anyone my spreadsheet if you are curious to see what it looks like. My hubby is suppose to spruce it up for me, so all I have to do is enter the number of diapers and price and it will give me the per unit price. I did everything in the current spreadsheet by hand.

I do know if you didn't take advantage of the diapers.com thing that Martha told us about a couple weeks ago, diapers.com has a pretty cool deal going on right now. It's free shipping with over 50 order and $10 off for first time customers code for this is AFF10. Now I'm not telling you guys form my experience because I haven't purchases any yet, but it was on a website (blog) called Baby Cheapskate. Here's a link to the article that I was brought to last night when I was googling price per diaper Baby Cheapskate: Five Ways To Deal With the Diaper Price Hike (Little side note: while I was on this link to get it for you guys I noticed something I did not notice last night: there's a section on the right called BC Essentials under this in orange letters is a Chart: Diapers per Pack, when you click on this it gives you a simple here's how many diapers come in each type of size and here's the unit price you want to beat when purchasing diapers. For Swaddlers and Little Snugglers (which tend to be the most expensive) it says the price to beat is 17 cents, so I now (which I already did, but it helps to have this reinforced) I feel AWESOME about my 15 cents per diapers. Ok and wow there are lots of good resources on this website. I just got side tracked reading diaper reviews that different members have posted and then others commented on.

Anyhow, so that's my diaper info. Our birthing class was interesting. We have two more of this particular class and a one day long birthing 101 class. This is a Hypno type class to help you with the process.

[Nascar01]

Holdingmybreath...I love it! You are one efficient girl. Whenever DH and I go to Sam's Club, we pick up a box of diapers. You should see his face when he sees how much diapers are. I am going to have to start clipping diaper coupons. Thank you so much for the information about diapers.

[NorthEastGirl]

Martha, I am glad your 3 hour test went well.... That's good news...

Holding, you are amazing about the whole diaper thing. I have always bought my DD's diapers from Target. I thought that it was the cheapest, but I never really broke it down. One thing I would add from experience is, do not by no brand diapers. I once bought the Target brand and I had the worst blow outs you can imagine. I think I used them for maybe 2-3 days and then went back to either Huggies or Pampers... I don't know if it was just us, but I will never experiment again with store brand names for diapers. I have friends how have used the Costco brand and swear that they are Huggies diapers with a different logo on them. I even asked for one to try out, and it seems like they are indeed the same as Huggies. Having said that, i have never bought a whole box, so I can't tell you for sure.

Anyway, I am exhausted today. I will write more again later. Have a great night everyone....

[mery71]

martha - i am so glad your 3 hour test is done and that your guys look great..that is music to my ears! i know..i cannot wait until halloween next year..we passed out candy at our house and i just loved seeing all the kids...so cute!

holding - you go girl on the diapers...i love all the info..thanks so much for sharing!! my parents and MIL have been buying us a lot of diapers which has been great. i didn't get ONE pack of diapers from anyone at either shower...just MIL and my parents..crazy! i am glad your childbirth classes are going good...it's interesting huh? did your doctor say why they would want to induce you?

afm - well, i can say i am officially very hormonal and have absolutely ZERO patience....mostly with strangers. some lady was rushing at costco today and ran into my feet and i flipped out on her....and then we went to dinner and the restaurant was pretty much empty and they try and sit us at the the smallest booth in the world with my big old stomach! sorry for the rambling gals!

i hope everyone is doing good, hopeful...tomorrow is your first day off..i am jealous!!! i'll be back at work but at least get to leave early for fetal monitoring.

[Hopeful12]

Holding - Thank you soooo much for the info! You are amazing!! Hubby is a big stickler on the diaper issue. He wanted to just register for diapers! I got two big boxes of the swaddlers at my shower. I've been keeping all the coupons I can find for Huggies and Pampers.

Northeast - my co worker uses the Costco brand ones and she agreed that they are just like Huggies. She's got a 3 year old and a 1 year old. She swears by them...I dunno...I would not want to waste the money on a whole box and hae them.

Martha - glad you test went well! yea, first day but I am doing a little work...since it's the first day and I work at a Bank so it's a busy day for them...I am doing what I can remotely. I am working on the kitties...I feed them later last night hoping they would not want to eat so early...but 4:45 I got meowing at the door...I made them wait til 6...I am not going to feed them until even later tonight...they'll just have to get used to it...believe me an hour or two won't hurt my fatties!

mery - the same thing happened to us...do they not see the big bellies??? We go to this place weekly and they know I'm preggo...why fit me in a booth??!! My patience are short as well with strangers...they are just so oblivious...there was a man last week carrying his moster umbrella and just swinging it back and forth...he was so close to whacking me. People just do not care about who is around them!

afm - tired and headachey...the weather has been really crappy and hoping that is what is giving me the head aches and not the BP...we will see...I have doc appointments all week. Have a great day!!

[holdingmybreath]

Mery and Hopeful that is too funny. Yesterday after the class we went to lunch at a pretty much empty resturant too. I had two sets of newspapers (so I could clip coupons for out trip to Target and BRU) and they TOO sat us in the smallest booth ever! I was like really, is this belly just for show. I was going to ask if we could move across the isle to the big booths that NO ONE was sitting in, but just toughed it out.

I too am being annoyed by people. I told my hubby I don't know if I can be in another mall before Xmas. The BRU and Target were both in a mall in Springfield and people just kept stopping in front of us or better yet, when my hubby was lugging the TWO large boxes of diapers from BRU back to Target (where we parked, Note to self park at BRU next time) people kept walking into him. He told this one guy, excuse me (genuinely) and then told me, I don't know why I'm apologizing to him, he walked into me! It's not like the big boxes are hiding themselves. But he was as annoyed with people as I was, so I didn't think it was hormones as much as just not liking crowds right now.

Hopeful - you should ask your friend if you can have like 4 or 5 diapers out of her Costco kind and see if you like them that way. I agree buying such a large quantity just to find out you don't like them is nuts. I did have a friend suggest that if I did do something like that, I could send the diapers I don't like (the cheapies) to daycare (daycares typically change the diapers on an schedule whether the child needs it or not, so using the cheapies there is a good idea) with the child and/or just put them in the crummy diapers during the day and us the good ones at night. Another thought I had though, was (and I haven't priced the per unit price of Costco, Sams or BJ's so I don't know what that is) if I can get brand name with coupons at per diaper amount that I can for store brands, why do that. Most store brands don't have coupons and depending on the store might not go on sale.

Oh yeah on that website I sent ya'll baby cheapstake you can print Huggie $2.00 off coupons. It allows you to print 2 per computer, so if you have two computers like I do you can print 4 or have friends and family print them! Baby cheapstake aslo posted some GREAT deals of the week on the website; I've never shopped at Riteaid since moving here because I didn't understand the Single Check Rebate, but it's worth it this time to figure it out.

[mery71]

well, i ended up in the hospital for a while last night..around 10:30pm until about 3am with contractions..i started getting them right around 8:30 and didn't know what the heck that feeling was...until i started timing and they were every 10-12 minutes..they felt like period cramps. so i kept thinking they would go away, i tried water, laying on my side, and then finally dh was bugging me to call the doctor and they told me to go straight in...and sure enough I was having some pretty big contractions. they gave me a shot in my arm of terbutaline and they stopped, and found out that i have a bladder infection and that is what was probably causing them. they also checked my cervix and said it is soft, but closed...OH....and they said that i have a very narrow pubic bone and that if i went into labor today i probably wouldn't even be able to deliver vaginally because of the pubic bone and the baby would get stuck..so, i am pretty much guaranteed a c section. i am SOOO exhausted, of course i didn't go to work today and i started the scheduled fetal monitoring this afternoon..i have to go every monday and thursday now. and i guess i have to go back to work tomorrow...which annoys me so bad...i am just done with work...

hopeful - i am sorry you are tired and headachy....i hope you are feeling better. how often will they be monitoring your bp? i probably would have just freaked if there was an umbrella waving in my face!!!

holding - i am glad i am not the only one with no patience...it seems like we are all kind of feeling that. i told dh the same thing too about malls..i am so over it! we told our whole family no christmas gifts this year for us and vice versa..we just cannot do it this year. if they want to get baby gavin stuff that is fine, but we are not exchanging with anyone and we made everyone promise that!

[Cathi025]

~~~ Mery ~~~ Call your doctor ASAP....I mean Really...Is he still not going to let you stay home...You obviously need to be resting.... I am so sorry you had to go to L&D but I am glad they were able to get your contractions under control...Good luck and Keep us posted...

[marthac]

Mery- I am so sorry about your contractions-I hope everything is OK and that you are able to rest today I'm thinking of you!

Holding- thank you for all the diaper info-you are so efficient! My best friend swears by Luvs and I from what I've read, they get good reviews...and they are much cheaper than the other brands. She also said the Costco brand is the same as Huggies, but much cheaper. I know what you're saying though, I would hate to buy a bunch and have them not work.

Hopeful- I hope your headache is better today! (and the nasty weather!)

I don't have much to report. Just tired and hungry!

[Hopeful12]

mery!! I hope you are feeling better. Your doc has got to do something now! I am seeing the peri once a week for now...and the reg ob once a week too. If my bp is not under control then I am going 2-3 times a week. I did well today...bp a little lower...and sono...Zach looks chubby!

martha - Headaches are better...I think because I am done with work too...I helped them yesterday a lot...but today I totally stepped back...they need to know what it's like when I am totally disconnected...they miss me...but it's my time!

afm - not much...deaking with disability and they are not too smart, but my HR rep says she has it all fixed...they told me yesterday they will see if they are paying me...ummm...I've worked there 21 years AND the dis. insurance co is not even paying me...iut's all from my co...

Have a great night all....feel good!

[mery71]

cathi - thanks so much...i did call doctor today. how are you feeling??

martha - thanx for thinking of me..i bet u are tired and hungry..just rest and EAT!

hopeful - how's being off work? i'm glad your bp is good today..what do you mean they will see if they are paying you??? i'm sure everyone does miss you but you're right, it is so your time.

afm - no work again today, i felt sick when i woke up..then my blood sugar dropped really low this morning and i was dripping with sweat and so then i ate too much and the numbers skyrocketed all day...i cried and cried today...i just want to do everything right for baby gavin. i called OB and he said to call the peri so i did, and he was so nice and just assured me that a couple of high numbers weren't going to do anything, so tonight they are finally under control. i asked him about getting off work and he said he doesn't see why I could not be off work now...so he is going to call my OB and discuss...at least maybe with his recommendation, i will be out. i am fed up with dealing with trying to get out of work..it's more stress than I need.

[marthac]

Mery- that your OB gives in! You are doing a great job of doing everything for Gavin! You are a great mommy and I hope you feel better and relaxed today

Hopeful- that you get your disability $$$ soon! You deserve every penny of it! Glad your BP and headache are better

[Cathi025]

~~ Mery~~ I am praying that your doctors figure it out soon,you need rest and to take care of yourself and baby Gavin...REALLY they are acting like taking you out of work affects there life...

~~Martha~~ How are you feeling??

~~Holding~~ I bought some diapers today..and all I could think is how much am I spending per diaper...lol I love your research...

~~Hopeful~~ have those kitties started sleeping in yet???

AFM~~ What a great day.. We had a peri appt and Megyn is weighing 3 lbs 12 oz. and measuring 5 days ahead...My cervix is still a 5 eventhough, they really aren't checking it any more...We have moved on to weekly appts...they will really be monitoring Megyn from now on..they will be watching her level of activity, fluid and cord flow....So I get to see her every week until December 18th.. I can't wait 6 weeks left... After my appt my mom took me to Target and splurged 400.00 on the nessessity items I still needed..man the little things add up Since I am not having a shower it really helped out...

[holdingmybreath]

Mery - I'm sorry you are having such a hard time. I too hope your OB gets on board and lets you off work now.

Cathi - that's too funny; however, I know it will always be in my mind how much per diaper. I do know what you mean though, I keep thinking about what "necessities" we need still and can't believe how much money we are going to have to still spend. We still don't have a mattress for the crib, carseat, or stroller. I was looking at how many clothes we have an we don't have but a few. A friend at work is giving us clothes from her little one. I can't wait to see what we get from her.

Hopeful - that's crazy about the disability ins.

Things are going pretty good here. I'm tired and that's about it.