27 Weeks = Third Trimester!

Here we go with the third trimester!  Two-thirds of the way down and coming down the home-stretch!  And speaking of stretch - good lord will my body make it these last 3 months?!?!  I'm continuing to marvel at how big my belly is and the knowledge that it's going to get bigger still.  Continuing to marvel at how such a small (relatively) little being inside there can wreak such havoc on my digestive system, my comfort level, and all of my joints.

Other than my whining about intense reflux despite my daily meds and various other discomfort, things are continuing along just fine.  The midwife appointment I had on Thursday 2/25 showed our little jelly bean is measuring exactly where she should be - despite how much bigger I look than other people in the same place as me.  She said it was just due to the length of your torso, how you're carrying, and baby's position.  Weight gain is up 28lbs so far (!!) but they're happy with where I am and said that they like to see people gain between 25-35lbs and that you usually don't gain quite as steadily through the last 4-6 weeks.  so that's something I guess.  But it sure explains why I'm huffing and puffing when attempting to do anything!  The added weight plus decreased lung function is all the explanation I need!  I also had my 1hr gestational diabetes test (GD test).  So far I haven't heard anything on the results - they said they'd call if there was anything abnormal and expected results on Friday or Monday so hopefully tomorrow goes by without a phone call.  I felt like there was more glucola this time than the first one they made me do at my first appointment, but Jeff thinks that I just forgot how much I had to drink that first time.  Yick.  And it's definitely NOT any better the second time around when you're burping it up.  Just fyi.  bleh.

Our first shower is coming up quickly as well.  While I'm still adding and deleting things from the registry from time to time, both the Amazon and Babies R'Us registries are essentially done.  The invites for the first shower have gone out including the registry info.  We went shopping for an outfit for the shower as I realized that including this one, I only had 2 more shopping weekends left! 

Which brings me to my next rant: maternity dresses.  Okay so you see the pictures online of maternity dresses and they look cute.  In general, I like dresses so figured it'd be a good way to go.  HA!  Let me tell you, the two dresses I tried on made me look like a HOUSE!  And normally I know my belly's fairly big and am fine with it - but i felt like a grandma in a muumuu or something just because the dress comes up over the bump but then just drops down and keeps going.  There's no shaping at the bottom like you get with pants and tops.  So needless to say, I'll be wearing pants and a cute, flattering top for my shower.  Bonus for not needing to shave anyway, right?  :-)

Oh and for anyone that's wondering - belly button is still in!  Woo!  Looks friggin WEIRD but fingers crossed it can make it the next 3 months..  Only time will tell.  :-)

26 Weeks and Less than 99 Days to go!!

26 weeks - 2 weeks left of the second trimester and I've hit double digits.  That is, double digit days left to go till my due date!  Not much else is going on and this will be brief as I lagged in posting this update almost a full week (oops).

Baby continues to push her way further into the ever increasingly valuable real estate of my abdominal cavity.  Right about now I'd put the value of my abdominal space in the category of super luxury home because there is so very very little of it left and its previous inhabitants (i.e. my ORGANS) are not pleased with their cramped quarters.

At least I continue to feel her movements throughout the day.  I've begun to notice patterns and can expect to feel her move about at specific times during the day and notice if I don't which is kind of neat.  It's almost like I'm able to keep track of what she's doing already!

25 Weeks and Finished Nursery!

Well the walls are finished that is.  lol. 

So 25 weeks and still growing.  Still loving my belly though - even though I notice more and more that I'm having difficulty moving around, getting up, etc.  I did have one random morning of sickness but it was apparently a freak occurrence and I've been fine since then.  So overall I'm feeling good - getting more and more excited to meet her and hold my little bundle in my arms instead of my belly!!

One interesting thing I've read is that around this time, babies begin to prefer their right or left hands.  It seems crazy that this starts before birth let alone so far before birth.  I remember mom telling me that when I was really little I would use both my right and left hands for things often and Babci would freak out saying that she was supposed to force me to use my right hand because left handed-ness was some sign of the devil or something (and yes she was crazy.  Clearly!).  But baby is also getting more dexterous and the ability to really make fists and grab for her feet, etc is improving.  So she'll have plenty of time to practice before getting to the outside!!

So - onto the nursery pics as I know those are everyone's favorites.  First pic is showing the finished paint job with the white chair rail installed.  I really like how the chair rail ties in the white stripes and works with the design.  I had my doubts that I could pull off a white chair rail with the stained woodwork in that room unless one of our stripes was also white to tie into it.  Looks like my hunch paid off, huh?

Next is the finished walls with the crib put together.  Have I mentioned how much I love this crib?  Cuz I really really do.  :-)  The angle I took this pic you can totally see how it will make a gorgeous headboard and footboard for a full sized bed someday too, right?!  Definitely a good choice.  :-)  Still no mattress or bedding in it, obviously, so I'll post another pic once we get that bit all set up.

We probably should have cleaned up the tools from the install before taking pictures, but this is the dresser.  It was apparently the heaviest furniture that Jeff and his dad had ever had to move (up two flights of stairs no less!!).  The drawers don't even come out - must be some kind of safety feature - and the whole thing was already put together in one piece in the box.  I'm glad we didn't have to put it together, and I'm glad it's clearly a solid, good piece of furniture, but man is it heavy!!!  hahaha..  Very pretty though and plenty big enough to put a changing pad on and still have room which is great.

And the last pic is just a close-up of the final paint job with the chair rail in place so you can really see the stripes.  They are definitely not perfect, and we did have a few issues that we want to touch up, but I'm really really happy with how it finally turned out.  :-)

We've so far gone to 3 of the 12 birthing classes, and are really enjoying it.  There are definitely some sorta 'hokey' bits to it - as there are with most things like that - but it's been great to get information and different exercises to do to strengthen the muscles that will help the most with labor and birth.  It's also fun to have the things I've previously mentioned to Jeff validated by having someone else say them as well.  :-)

24 Weeks: V is for VIABILITY!

24 weeks = "V-day" in the pregnancy world.  And that's a whole different V-day than most people think of.  We're not talking Valentine's Day people, we're talking viability!  At 24 weeks baby has a greater than 50/50 shot if she were born early and chances just get better from here.  It's a really good spot to get to for a mama.  :-)

Movement has also kicked up a notch - I still can't tell hands from feet from general moving around, but Jeff did finally feel his first kick on the 28th!  I finally made him sit down with his hand on my belly until he felt her - there's no way for me to know when she'll move and she doesn't always KEEP moving after the first bump so it was hard to otherwise make sure he was there at the right time.  Way cute - I had to tell  him when she kicked because he couldn't believe what he felt wasn't just my tummy in normal status.  hahaha..

We've also begun work on the nursery - all the previous 'spare bedroom' furniture is gone and we started painting.  Here is a photo timeline of what we have so far starting with the 'before'  picture.  We did the top half of the wall first, then started working on the stripes.  Because of how the stripes are laid out we were able to tape and paint two of the four colors of stripes at once which was nice.

I also got the call from Babies R Us that our dresser has arrived and is ready for pickup.  Thankfully we have 15 days to get it so can wait a week to go pick it up.  I'm hopeful the shape of the box will allow us to get it INSIDE my SUV - the crib was a no-go in that department and we had to ride it on my roof rack tied down.  That was...not the plan at the get-go.  I mean everything always fits in my truck!  But no - not the box for this crib.  Ah well.

I also ordered our crib bedding because the site was showing it as suddenly discontinued and since we spent such a long time deliberating on the 'right' set to get, I definitely wanted to be sure that we were able to get that one!  Particularly as I based my paint color choices off of it - so it was important that our decor actually match the paint job we're spending so much time in creating here!

Ignore my super cool 'painting' outfit here.  One thing I've learned about maternity wear is that it definitely puts you in a sticky situation when it comes to 'crap clothes' for things like painting.  So I have a pair of maternity pj pants and one of Jeff's too-small t-shirts on.  they did the job and I only caused minimal damage to them, so that's all that matters right?  lol..  Cuteness was definitely not a factor here.

In the end, we found we did have some trouble with the paint bleeding under our tape in some places.  This may be a problem where it happened on stripes that are going to be painted white in the next stage, but the other stripe color is dark purple so that should cover anything - the white is the only issue.  I've gotten some tips since discovering our problem as well on 'burnishing' the tape with a credit card or something to ensure full contact with the wall all the way down, and we also plan to pay close attention to the amount of paint we're using towards the tape to hopefully prevent bleeding again.

And last but not least, is a pic of the bedding we're getting.  We're mixing and matching from this set (Kids Line: Lilac Garden) and the Carter's: Garden Party set.  The bedding is all Lilac Garden but we're taking some of the ancillary pieces of the Garden Party set and using them instead because there are some things I just liked better and most of their stuff will match the Lilac Garden stuff anyway.  I can't wait to get the crib built and the bedding all set up!  All we need now is to build the crib and get the mattress!

23 weeks - More Big Purchases and Birthing Classes!

Movement is picking up!  I feel bouts of movement several times each day now - most commonly during/after eating.  I'm soooo happy to finally feel her - it's just such a comfort to feel her in there doing well and have that reminder.  To not have to just assume things are fine just because nothing bad has happened, etc.

According to the books, she now weighs about a pound, which for some reason seems monumental to me.  We're no longer talking about fractions of ounces anymore, but measuring in actual baby weight measurements!

We have also been working on our registries some more, and finally have a fair amount of stuff on there.  We may still add something here and there, but we've made the bulk of our decisions and between Amazon and BRU are pretty much covered.  Soooo glad that's over.  It's very hard to think of all the things and then to pick between the gazillion options out there and what's the best/safest one to choose?  How do you know?  What's just a gimmick and what's for real?  It's crazy out there.

Some of the biggest news is that we purchased our crib and ordered our dresser!!  The crib was almost a disaster to try to get home - it didn't fit in the back of my full sized SUV!  I couldn't believe it!  It takes a pretty big box to not fit inside the back but there was no way it was going in.  So they got us some rope and we did a bang-up job tying a ton of knots to secure it to my roof-rack. I canNOT wait to put them together.  I'm in love with them.  So pretty.  The crib will become a toddler bed, day bed, and full sized head and footboard as well.  They truly are gorgeous!  We got an awesome deal too - between the two pieces we saved $200 with a $100-off coupon plus a 10% off coupon that worked on your entire purchase when you add to your registry in-store. 

Now THERE'S a story - adding to our registry.  Doesn't seem like something that would imply a story,  right?  Yeah.  So we spend like an hour and a half

walking around with the little registry gun and wound up adding about 54 items.  We go to turn in our gun and the registry they print out and hand us?  ISN'T OURS!!!  They programed the wrong registry into our gun so we'd just spent all this time adding things to someone else's registry!  The "good" news was that this other girl's due date was in 2009 so it wouldn't affect hers, but we wound up having to sit at the registry desk, checking off each item we thought we added to the registry so that someone could manually add it to ours.  The confusion came when she found someone with the same name living in MA.  I apparently set up the registry under Nikki and not Nicole.  And the fact that this chick's due date was last year didn't register I guess.  So yeah.  Craziness.  And definitely NOT something that happens when you register for stuff online!!  lol.

Other things going on with me are that after my last midwife appointment we decided that I would get an upper abdominal ultrasound to screen for gallbladder problems.  I've been having this awful ache way high in my right ribs, right under my boob, that seems to start after eating.  I have it every day, usually multiple times a day, and have since just before Christmas so definitely been a while at this point.  The thing with the appointment is that it's supposed to be an 8 hour fast beforehand which obviously makes for some cranky pregnant ladies if the appt is not in the morning.  I was supposed to have it scheduled on the 28th at 2 in the afternoon but because of a scheduling snafu it is now scheduled for Feb 4th instead and now it'll be at 7:30 in the morning which of course is much better in terms of fasting.  I'm fairly convinced at this point it's NOT a gallbladder issue as the pain does not fluctuate in intensity or frequency based of the fat content of what I'm eating.  I can get it after a bowl of chicken soup or salad the same as I do after a burger and fries.  Nothing is different about it.  My hypothesis is that my stomach has squashed up into a bad spot and presses in on my ribs when it expands with food and that is causing the pressure/pain.

Also!  We started our birthing classes!  I randomly happened to contact a local Bradley class instructor to find out when her next session was going to start on Friday the 15th, and come to find out it was supposed to start that Monday the 18th!  There was some snow on the 18th and so the first class was postponed until this past Monday the 25th.  It's at the instructor's house in Newburyport and there are 3 other couples in this session.  I'm the second earliest due date in the class!  That's something.  The first class was good - I'm actually the only one giving birth in a hospital setting though!  Two couples are using the free-standing birth center in Stratham, NH that I was going to look into if I didn't like Anna Jacques at our tour, and the other couple is having a homebirth.  It's costing us $350 and classes will be once a week for two hours and last 12 weeks.  I've heard so many good things about how Bradley classes really help a couple have a natural birth and so I'm hoping it really works out for us as well.

22 Weeks - First Outside Kicks!

22 weeks and on Friday 1/15 I saw my very first "outside kicks"!  Movement has still been very hit or miss - but I at least feel a few "somethings" every day now - mostly after eating I can count on it.  Most are little movements - presumably buffeted by the anterior placenta, and when I feel things it's off to the sides or top/bottom of the belly, but I definitely saw my shirt jump twice with two little kicks that day for the very first time!!  That was so fun.  It's happened a couple times since then when I've been watching and sitting quietly at work - I love it!  Poor Jeff still hasn't been able to feel her since we're both working and so there aren't a ton of chances for him and as it is, the movements you can feel from the outside are definitely fewer than the movements that I can feel from the inside still.  But hopefully soon!

We also spent the long weekend making massive (in my opinion!) progress on nursery/baby decisions!  We made our first significant baby-related purchase - our glider!  It's cherry stained wood with 'fern' microfiber cushions.  Personally I think they look more tan than fern but I'll let them have it.  It's a Shermag locking glider so you can lock it from moving - which is a safety feature for curious toddler hands later on - but it will also lock in a variety of the gliding positions most notably the 'way back' glide so while it doesn't "recline" per se, it comes acceptably close.  We also got the glider/ottoman as a set that was on sale plus an extra MLK day sale, plus we had a 20% one item coupon that we used and returned the extra Snoogle that mom got me for Christmas with the cover so had $70 of store credit to use and in the end only had to spend $109 of our own money on the $300 glider.  Woohoo!!  Saving money is awesome.  :-)

While we were there, we also decided on what crib and dresser we are going to get and confirmed with my mom, who has said she'd buy our nursery furniture, that it was in her budget as it was a bit more expensive than some others.  But it's sooooo beautiful and will make an awesome full sized bed when the time comes.

Also, over the weekend, we finally picked a decorating style for the nursery and even purchased paint so there's no going back now!  This is a rough markup just using MS Paint to give the idea of our plan - so be kind!  The horizontal white line will be a white chair rail.  I think we're going to measure so that the green stripe is equal to the width of the light and dark purples together.  Or maybe the green with the white stripes is equal to the two purples..not sure yet..we haven't done our measuring and marking yet.  But we have oak stained woodwork in that room for baseboard trim, windows, and doors (of which there are FIVE!!) so while I hated the idea of a stained wood colored chair rail, I didn't think I could get away with doing a white one if I didn't add white into the paint scheme somehow.  Hence the white with our stripes.  Fingers crossed it comes out as nice as it looks in my head.  :-)

We also *finally* started registries.  They are nowhere near finished though.  We opened a universal registry on Amazon which is great because they have a lot more things that we want than Babies R Us does, and most times you can get free shipping over $25, plus you can add things from other websites that aren't even sold by Amazon which is a cool feature.  With the added bonus that many things available at both BRU and Amazon are significantly cheaper at Amazon, and I'm sold.  But I understand that people like to shop "in-store" for things so still have things on the BRU registry, and we plan to put more little things on that one once we get back to the store and walk around with the registry gun.  My mom booked our shower for March 14th at the Summit View Banquet House so we realized it was definitely time to start getting our registry together.

All-in-all it was definitely a week of progress!

21 Weeks - Not Too Much New..

I now get comments from random people that don't know me about being pregnant and when am I do, etc.  There is no more question for the general populace and people at work are more comfortable asking me about it.  Yay for the pregnant belly!  :-)

There's not much else happening aside from that.  Things are pretty status quo.  Still trying to decide on nursery decor/paint style, still trying to decide on a bedding set, and still haven't set up a registry.  Lol..  Soon though!  Soon!  And I am at least making progress on deciding things on the nursery - I at least have most of the decisions narrowed down to two or three options which is way good for me, ya know?  But a big motivator is realizing how quickly the first half of this pregnancy went, and guessing that it will be time before I know it and I'm starting to get antsy to have things 'ready' even though I logically know I have plenty of time.

Our newborn diaper stash is pretty much complete at this point and I succeeded in purchasing *everything* used.  Some is purchased second hand but unused so actually new but at a reduced price, and others are used in excellent condition etc.  We need to start practicing the prefold folds - but first I have to order us a package of snappis otherwise our attempts are pretty pointless.  I've got some stuffed animals that are a good size for us to use to practice on.  I may get a few more dipes for the next stage but also want to wait and see what works for us and our specific baby before getting a ton of any one kind in larger sizes.

I've been feeling little twitches and flutters more and more this last week - I'm hoping this means I'll start feeling *real* movement soon.  I definitely know these are baby movements that I'm feeling - I notice them frequently after eating and often multiple times a day now as opposed to one or two one day and nothing for another few days or more.  I wish I had a little window to my tummy to say hi to her, and see what she's doing.  My books tell me that she is getting sleeping and waking cycles of a typical newborn at this point and some research suggests that she's starting to set her own internal clock based on my eating and sleeping habits along with levels of light and noise.  *crossing fingers* my regimented schedule makes for a well adjusted baby at birth!  hahahaha..  I'm sure you more experienced readers are laughing at my hopefulness right now.  :-)

Next midwife appointment is the 19th at 22 weeks.  I'll be meeting Jodie this time - I haven't met her at all yet so this will be good.  Ideally I'd like to at least meet all the midwives in the practice as any one of them could be working when I deliver and that's the kind of person I am.