Preparing for Bedrest

I have been pretty busy lately trying to get things ready for putting myself on bed rest for the rest of my pregnancy. You see, Baby #3 was born a full month before my due date and with Babies #4 and 5, I spent one whole month each time in the hospital hooked up to all kinds of drugs designed to stall preterm labor.

Thankfully, Babies 4 and 5 made it to full term, but those weeks I spent away from my family were definitely inconvenient, to say the least. With my last pregnancy, #6, I decided to take action and find out everything I could about what causes preterm labor and what the remedies are. Basically, I learned that doctors have absolutely no idea what triggers labor or how to prevent it from occurring before the baby is full term.

I took what I could, though, from the possible remedies and tried to apply them as best I could. I drank one gallon of water each day, put myself on bed rest, and took extra zinc and magnesium. This seemed to work because I never had any signs of preterm labor, like I had experienced in the 3 previous pregnancies.

I am quickly approaching the time when most of my problems have begun in the past, so I have been trying to stock my freezer with ready made casseroles. This way, while I am resting, MaddieLynn can pop one into the oven and we can still have a homemade dinner.

This past week, I have made 3 lasagnas, cooked and de-boned 4 whole chickens, with which I have made 4 chicken and rice casseroles and bagged up 4 bags of cooked, cubed chicken, and made 150 biscuits. (Check back tomorrow for the biscuit recipe.)

I mixed up the biscuits and rolled them out, and all the kids had fun cutting them out for me. I gave each one a kiddie size cup and they cut as many as they could and put them on trays. We kept rolling out the excess and cutting away until none was left.

I put the trays in the freezer until the biscuits were hard and then I sealed them up with my food saver in batches of 12. On each package, I wrote the instructions for baking, so it would be easy for one of the kids to get them out and put them in the oven for breakfast.

Next, I plan to stock the freezer with a huge batch of pancakes and 3 pans of chicken spaghetti, and then I am going to waddle over to the couch and stay there until this baby I am carrying is close to full term.

I hope to continue homeschooling and blogging and incubating this baby without having to spend any time in the hospital until delivery, which should be around Christmas time, Lord willing.