Pregnancy Week 31: Christmas and Maternity Shoot

This week baby girl is approximately 18 inches long and about 3.2 pounds. This is supposedly the size of a coconut.

I'm a day late with this one. An awesome cold set in Saturday evening/Sunday morning, so I've been a little sluggish. I also didn't really feel like taking a picture of my sick face, but oh well. Here it is in all its glory. The belly is really poking out there now!

8 weeks	31 weeks

And here are some of the things I knitted for the holidays:

This is a blanket I made for mom with some satin binding. The mitered corners return!

These are the scarves I knitted for my cousins as well as some boot cuffs for my aunt. 

This is a scarf I made for mom with pockets for her hands.
Don't mind the kitty butt. He wouldn't move. 

I also knitted a scarf for my father in law, but I forgot to take a picture before I gave it to him.

I got a sewing machine!!! I can finally do crafts without having to barge into friends houses and demand they let me use their sewing machine ;) I also got a mophie phone case charger that I have wanted since I got my iPhone 5S. That sucker loses battery so dang fast. I got a bunch of other things too (three new books, woo!) and baby girl got a few outfits and a blankie. Baby clothes are so dang cute.

I visited friends over the weekend and had some maternity photos done as well. I can't wait to see all of them. I got a couple of peeks at them on the camera. From what I could see, they're super awesome :) I have another mini-shoot I'm doing in January that I won. Any input on poses or cute ideas would be appreciated!

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We are registered at Babies "R" Us (#54941451) and Burlington Baby Depot (#34080180). They can be found by searching for either my or Josh's name.

Pregnancy Week 30: New Dressers and Christmas Crafts

This week, baby girl is the size of a butternut squash (I think this app has lost its mind, I'm pretty sure I've seen butternut squash before...maybe it was a different squash or something). She is approximately 17 inches long and about 3.1 pounds.

8 weeks	30 weeks

I'm not sure why, but blogger is making my lips purple in the side ways shot. When I look at the image on my phone it is quite clearly not purple. Oh well.

I love me a baby bump. My belly button is struggling. The top half is still in existance, but it is trying to become an outie. The bottom half is not having any of that nonsense and is just disappearing into the plane of my bump.

I'm so close to being done with my Christmas craft gifts. Once the holidays are over and the recipients have their gifts in hand, I'll post pictures.

The dressers arrived as well! Now I just need to get the stupid plastic baggies off the drawer knobs. Pics below.

I couldn't get the whole dresser and the wall art in one shot, so it is split into two.
This is the long dresser.

Here is a full shot of the dresser. Guess who got the bigger dresser ;)

This is what I call a "tall boy" and
what the furniture company calls a "chest of drawers"

Now let me tell you about #thestruggle. It is real. This baby bump is finally large enough to make regular pants not a comfortable option. I can get my old pants buttoned, but sitting in them is very uncomfortable. My maternity jeans, however, do not stay up at all. I ordered one of those body band things (for free!) and it should be here soon. Hopefully it will help me through this awkward in between period.

My back pain has increased dramatically. My sciatica flares up as usual, and I can deal with that. The obnoxious nerve pain under my right shoulder blade is proving to be a nightmare though. I can't sit for more than 10 minutes without it starting to throb, so I stand up...and 10 minutes later my sciatica starts screaming at me. There is a lot of stand up, sit down, stand up sit down going on these days.

That and the rib stretching. Holy crap, baby girl your head and or feet (depending on however she's flipped herself around that day) cannot go under my ribcage. Cannot. She is still crazy active and flips around constantly. Some days she is head down, some days she is head up, but most days she is sideways. When she is sideways, she like to hook one foot on my rib cage and the other on my hip bone. Then she stretches out all crazy like.

Those are my pregnancy gripes. Pretty much the same as every other pregnant woman's gripes haha.

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We are registered at Babies "R" Us (#54941451) and Burlington Baby Depot (#34080180). They can be found by searching for either my or Josh's name.

Pregnancy Week 29: Reupholstering the Glider and Other Crafts

Saying goodbye is always quite terrible. It never gets easier and I never get better at it. Due to extreme stress, I started contracting at an alarming rate on Saturday (every 6 minutes or so). I knew it wasn't real labor (contractions weren't painful, weren't increasing in intensity, etc) but in general it's not good to be contracting like that at only 29 weeks. I called the hospital, and they wanted me to come in so in I went.

I was there for about 3 hours and they got the contractions to slow down to about every 15-20 minutes. My cervix wasn't opening, so they let me go home. Baby girl is doing great. My doula came with me so I wouldn't have to be alone (and because contracting like that is really disconcerting), which was really nice of her.

To de-stress (or at the very least evade stress for as long as possible) I have started a number of crafts and DIY projects. I'll post the pictures below my progress photos.

This week, baby girl is approximately 17 inches (this is supposedly the size of a small cabbage) and 2.9 pounds.

8 weeks	29 weeks

Nona knows that I am sad, so she's been giving me lots of cuddles and cuteness.

As I mentioned above, I've also been crafting and doing some DIY projects. A lot of the crafty stuff I can't show right now as many of them are Christmas gifts so those will have to wait.

Here are some letters of my and hubs' first initial that I decorated.

My big project is the nursery glider. I'm almost done reupholstering it. I just need to sew up the bottom cushion cover and it will be good to go. We got it for free, but it was blue so it needed an update.

Original blue upholstery (dirty and stained to boot, woo!)

  

Cutting out the shape and sewing up the cover (L), plus what the fabric looks like up close (R)

First arm on the glider on the left, and 3/4 of the way done on the right.

Update: Completed project!

I also finally got new dressers for Josh and I. We have both been trying to use one tall boy (I call it a tall boy anyway; the store people keep calling it a chest of drawers). The one tall boy has never been enough for both of our clothes though. The plan was always to give baby girl the dresser we were using and get new ones for ourselves. They will arrive Wednesday! They are dark brown and I absolutely love them.

I opted not to get the mirror though as I don't care for the weird 3/4 length of the dresser mirrors. The shorter of the two will go against the wall at the foot of the bed as well, so I'm pretty sure I would scare the pants off myself thinking there was someone in my room anytime I woke up in the night and caught sight of my reflection.

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We are registered at Babies "R" Us (#54941451) and Burlington Baby Depot (#34080180). They can be found by searching for either my or Josh's name.

Pregnancy Week 28: Welcome to the Third Trimester!

First, an update on the cat situation: Baby is doing okay for now! It wasn't his liver :D They still aren't sure what the issue is, but it's better news than I expected. Plus, he ate a whole can of food the last day I was home.

Now for baby updates! We are now officially in the third trimester. Baby girl is approximately 16 inches long (which is apparently the size of a head of cauliflower) and weighs around 2.5 pounds. She now blinks, coughs, hiccups, and practices breathing. She also apparently experiences REM sleep now, so she may even dream :)

Here are some progress pictures followed up with some baby drama. Look at that bump!

8 Weeks	28 Weeks

As you may or may not recall, two weeks ago I had some bleeding. I also had some braxton hicks contractions (about three per hour for two hours), but they stopped so I did not go to the ER per the OB triage nurse's guidance.

Today, I mentioned all this at my prenatal appointment just to make sure there aren't any lingering issues. My doctor decided to do an exam to see if my cervix is still hard and closed.

The visual exam revealed my cervix had in fact opened. He also reaffirmed that I have a friable cervix. It either has gotten significantly more friable or the first doctor to mention it did not indicate just how much so. As this doctor put it, he would not be surprised if I experienced bleeding every day just because of how friable it is.

Anyway, he then performed a physical exam and found my cervix cannot be penetrated, so the inner portion you can't see with the naked eye is still closed. He ordered a fetal Fibronectin (fFN) test. fFn is a protein that shouldn't be detectable until your body is prepping for birth. If the test comes back negative, then I can keep on keeping on. If it comes back positive, they want to set up a birth plan for me as it's an indicator that the baby may arrive preterm.

I also had my glucose tolerance test today, which was not nearly as awful as people make it out to be. It actually wasn't that big of a deal at all. I should have the results of both tests tomorrow.

Update: I got both the fFN test and my glucose tolerance test back today. fFN is negative and I passed the glucose tolerance test with flying colors! We are in the clear, wooooo!

Baby Moon

Josh and I went back home for Thanksgiving and we also went to a Bed and Breakfast for a baby moon. It was seriously the best mini-vacation. We went Tuesday-Thursday so no one else was there. There was a common area with a fire place and TV, but since we had one of the fancier rooms we had our own fire place, TV, and Jacuzzi tub.

 
 
 

We went to see two plays at the playhouse Josh and I went to on our first date in college. It is a recreation of Shakespeare's indoor theatre, meaning the audience and the stage share light and it is candles in chandeliers. We went to dinner between the plays at a fancy Italian restaurant (because this baby is going to be a tomato). We also had a couple's massage (mine was a prenatal massage). It was pretty much awesome.  

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We are registered at Babies "R" Us (#54941451) and Burlington Baby Depot (#34080180). They can be found by searching for either my or Josh's name.

Pregnancy Week 27: Christmas and Cats

The bump is finally here to stay. I figured out why my app was saying baby girl was only about 9 inches and other apps were saying 13+ inches. My app was using crown to rump length until this week rather than head to toe length. My app now jives with other apps. Baby girl is about the size of a cucumber. She is 15 inches long and approximately 2.2 pounds.

8 Weeks	27 Weeks

Josh and I did Christmas today since he won't be here for the real holiday. He got me a lot of things I've wanted for awhile now: an elliptical, an interval timer, and a fancy GPS heart rate monitor. I got him an iPad, a Survivor iPad case (protects from dirt, rain, sand, and shocks plus it makes the iPad shatter-resistant if dropped), Breaking bad seasons 4-6, and The Walking Dead Seasons 2-4. 

It was a nice Christmas. 

Then I found out my cat Baby (the one we got when I was 12 and lives with my parents) is very ill. He hasn't eaten in days and he has bacteria in his urine. It is most likely his liver. Barring a miracle, we will have to put him down tonight. There is never a good time for a pet to get sick, but right now is just really not it.