Take me out to the ballgame

Last weekend we had a double date with one of my best friends from high school and her husband. Katie and BJ welcomed these two handsome fellas into the world almost a year from when baby girl will make her appearance. I can see her already chasing the boys around in their backyard, her desperately wanting to be included in whatever they are doing, them being annoyed some girl is following them around when they just want to play catch. :)

So back to date night...

We both love the Royals, (well BJ and Matt love the Royals, Katie and I love the food and chatting) so this has always been a fun double date we did before the boys came along. We missed going with them last season because Katie was on bed rest the first part of the season and then dealing with new babies the second part. We joined together early this year to make up for it before our baby arrives and postpones further dates at the K.

We decided to get baby girl in on a picture. This was her first and def. not last trip to Kauffman. After they lost they had a great Friday night fireworks show that felt like an awkward celebration after a close loss but was very impressive non the less. We stole a pic after it before heading to the car.

Then when we got to the car I realized we only got a pic of Katie and BJ on her camera and not mine. Since they knew they would be blog famous we grabbed a quick pic of BJ so he could prove his existence in the experience.

Yay for wonderful friends and a fun night, love you guys!

10 weeks left!

I wish I wasn't up right now typing this post but I totally got food poisoning tonight and have been up getting sick since 2 am....awesome. My tummy hurts bad every time I lay back down so I am trying to just stay distracted until I feel OK enough to sleep. Blah

Here is our pic from this week. I know I am in scrubs and it is not the best to show her off but this week Matt and I kept missing each other with our schedules overlapping at night. This was taken at 6:32 after I waited for him to get home from work and quick take our picture. (Side note, in order to get to work on time, I need to leave my house at 6:30....good). I never thought not having a photographer around would be the reason taking weekly pictures is so hard to do some weeks.

Baby Updates:

-She now can hiccup and likes to show off that new trick at inopportune times. When I am counting my babies HR at work and trying to focus or when I am trying to fall asleep seem to be her favorites. She first hiccuped over Easter weekend when we went to see the Hunger Games movie. I was so excited and it was "cute" then. The next time she got them was at Jose Peppers after the movie and Matt got to feel them. He denied there was any sort of rhythm to them and wasn't sold that's what they were. Time 3 and 4 finally convinced him. Time 5 is when I realized they weren't as cute as I previously thought and they were actually a bit annoying. They last a long time and I can't do anything to get rid of them. I try to poke at her or say loud noises but neither of those have proven to be effective. So I am changing my thought process to be appreciative when she hiccups because I know she is doing alright in there. Easier said than done but that is my goal.

-She is moving, a lot. Before this week I got a lot of jabs and kicks, now I am getting whole stomach rolls as she is playing around. She sticks out little body parts and you can feel her much more defined now. I try to guess what I am feeling but I am probably totally wrong. I would love to see an US of her as she is moving so I can see what I am feeling. My mom and I were joking last week that it would be cool to have a Teletubby belly with a TV screen to view her through. Just the belly though, not the creepy antenna. (Can you name all four?....I sadly enough can. I will blame that on a lot of babysitting. I know the theme song is now playing in some of your heads, I am talking to you Amanda :))

-Peeing is a new highlight to my day. It is like my bladder fills up and causes her to rise up in my chest. Then I go potty and she can sink back down into my pelvic region and I can breath again. I imagine it feels like she is riding a slow elevator up and down in there all day long.

-It is officially a chore to put on my ted hose before work now. I have to lay on my back in bed and struggle like a helpless turtle. It has to be the most pathetic site ever. Matt has offered to help but they are so tight, his help is more awkward than anything else. I have to carve out an extra 5 min in my getting ready routine just for those puppies.

-After last week I have a hopeful confirmation that we will have success breastfeeding. That is all I will say about that.

-We picked a Pediatrician, made decisions about vaccinations and began the discussion of what I want to do with my work schedule after my 12 week break with her.

Our first shower is this weekend with our small group friends. It is actually a joint shower weekend, as we will be also celebrating with Ingrid for her upcoming wedding in July. It will be great to spend time with our friends and have space carved out to remember the blessings of marriage and parenthood that we have been given.

One final happy to leave you with. The weather has been awesome this spring and I have now been fully enjoying my favorite chore again. No jokes here, I love laundry and I love our clothesline. The stump of a tree and fallen trunk next to is our former clothesline tree that was cracked in a micro burst last year. Matt and his cousin fixed a new line to its neighbor tree about a month ago and I have been Suzy Homemaker-ing it up around here ever since. It's pretty great we back up to a forest and have no neighbors because I would be lying to say the KS wind has never taken some of my undies and flung them into our side yards. :) Have a great weekend!

Weddings and Registering

We took our picture late in the week, courtesy of Matthew being out of town. I thought about taking it Friday but I waited until Sat when I knew I would have to look presentable anyway. My co-worker Megan and her husband got married in FL and had a reception back home that we could all come to and celebrate with them. Ironically, Matt's childhood friend Jake also had a reception for his wedding the same weekend. Him and his wife Lesley also got married in FL. So Sat we went to one reception and Sun we went to the other. I of course wore the exact same outfit to both, and now that I think of it, Matt did too :)

Baby girl all dressed up to go to the reception

Aunt Beth :)

Work friends: Stacey, Amy, Alicia, Me, Billie and Beth

Me, Alicia, Megan and Beth

Us with the newlyweds

I was lame and did not take a picture at Jake's reception but it was lovely. Matt caught up with a bunch of childhood friends and basketball teammates from college so they probably didn't want their pictures taken anyway. I was very thankful to have my friend Katie's maternity dress to wear to the occasions. Score for awesome loaner outfits! This was the dress she took her maternity pictures, which were adorable, and I loved it the first time I saw it. She filled it out a little better and made it certifiable maternity with her twins but it served its purpose for me.

This week I was also going to record my registering escapades. I asked Beth to come with me to do the first round of registering. It was the same technique I used for our wedding registries except that time it was with my mom's helpful advice. Since Beth works with me and is around baby paraphernalia all the time but not a biased mom yet herself, I thought she would be the perfect helper. Before I get too far, I will throw out the disclaimer that Matthew prefers we register this way. He thought the wedding process went smoothly and wanted to replicate it with the baby. So what we do is I go first and register for all the smaller items. Then I take him back for round two and he weighs in on all the bigger items. So he had a total of about 8 things to help with for the baby. This leaves him feeling less overwhelmed and able to focus and actually help when his opinion is needed. Besides, the bigger stuff is more stressful anyway.

So I went to Buy Buy Baby first and sat down at the registry counter. An over-energetic lady comes up and asks if she can help me, to which I reply I am here to start a registry. She asks, "For you or someone else?" Who sets up someone else's registry, what a bizarre question? I tell her it is for me and she comments about how I don't even look pregnant. She asked how far along I was and made a shocked face when I answered. Then she asked what I was having. At that point I wanted to say, a monkey...thanks for asking. But I swallowed my tongue and curtly said we were expecting a girl. Then she asked what my log in information was for our account. When I told her I had not set up anything online yet, she instantly seemed confused as to why I would have skipped this step. She responded, "Well looks like you will have to fill out all the paperwork here then before you can start." So I am bracing myself for a bunch of paperwork, not too bothered by it since I sort of like filling out forms, and I am handed one sheet. It asks about 8 questions about names, addresses, due date, shower dates ect. As I am writing down my info, she is sitting across from me trying to type it all into the computer as fast as I write it, reading it all upside down. I slide the form back to her after I am through and she huffs and puffs about my handwriting not being clear enough for her to read upside down and she has to basically retype all the lines she messed up on. I was thinking, you should see what it would have looked like if Matt had filled that out in his 3rd grade handwriting. Then she tries to make small talk as she is editing, which I am not into at this point. She gets to the bottom of the sheet and told me I forgot to fill out the due date. To which I responded, no I didn't we just don't know the due date. I told her baby was coming sometime at the end of June and we weren't going to be fixated on a date. I asked if she could just put June 2012 on our registry. Now she was really looking appalled. "You don't know you due date?! Well I HAVE to have one or we can't set this up." I told her to just pick a date at the end of the month then thinking how dumb is this, I am sure plenty of moms who don't get good prenatal care don't know their due dates....then again those moms probably aren't registering either. So she picks June 3rd and prints off my scanning sheet, because June 3rd is def. at the end of the month. Insert eye roll. Glad to be done with her I get up and start to walk away with the scanner. She hurries around the table and tells me she will give me a little overview of the store. Then she precedes to walk up to the closest item on display and starts to give a sales pitch. At the end of it she asks if she can scan it to my registry. No, no thank you, I do not want that dumb light up turtle that has a speaker feature I can sing to my baby through for $45. So she moves on to the next item on display and proceeds to start another pitch. At this point I cut her off and told her I would come find her if I needed anything and I would be fine from here. That was not an OK response apparently because she launched into a whole talk about essentials for my baby, describing what a boppy, swaddle blanket and bumbo were. I was really annoyed at this point. She never asked if I had other kids or was familiar with baby stuff. I feel like those would have been good questions to ask. She just assumed I was an idiot first time mom who needed her to explain everything to me. As she was explaining how great swaddling was for infants because it comforts them, I interrupted again and said I would be sure to look into swaddle blankets and walked off. Beth arrived a minute later and once she saw me with someone else she finally left me alone.

Then began a very long 3 hours of walking through the store making fun of crazy over the top baby items and debating over what my daughter might actually need. This was harder than I anticipated because of the indecisiveness that has plagued me this whole pregnancy. I kept wondering about our friends and family shopping for us. I would be tempted to not put things on there because they were so practical or boring and not fun to shop for, like safety locks for cabinets. Or I was tempted to pick the cheapest option because that is what Matt and I would most likely buy. But Beth reminded me I would need all these things eventually and I didn't want stuff that wouldn't last multiple kids. So I tried to stay middle of the road. Certain things I knew were going to be expensive but other things floored me. Like playmats with hanging toys and mirrors....ridiculous. Yea I tried to pick one that wasn't obnoxious colors, wasn't scratchy and had a few toys for baby to interact with and it was a crazy amount of money. So then you just feel dumb scanning that. My other option was to not scan anything and potentially forget we didn't have one. So I ended up scanning anything I thought I would need/want to buy at some point almost as a checklist for myself. I figured I could always go back and sort threw things left to buy as she got closer and I wouldn't forget my brainstorming.

After we were done we needed food and drinks asap. We tried going to Yogurtini, which is right across the street, and they were closed! So sad. We settled for SPIN pizza and orange leaf, which was a delicious second option. Then we headed off to Target to finish up. Target was a whole different story. By this time we were a little tired and had looked at this stuff for many hours. We cranked it out in target, scan scan skip scan. I think I scanned more fun mommy things at target like books and clothes but oh well.

Matt and I went back that weekend to finish up and he was a huge help with bigger items, which had been stressing me out since the first trimester. So after many reviews, opinions, advice from friends and family and hours researching I had narrowed down the bigger items to about 2 or 3 in each category. Matt quickly assessed the options, picked his favorite and moved on. It was wonderful to not debate or think about it any more.

And that was my very long memory of our baby registering experience. Glad to have that milestone checked off our list. :)

GTT

Yesterday was my first 3rd trimester appt and I had my Glucose Tolerance Test. I expected to have to drink a large amount of super sugary "juice" as everyone has warned me of. Some girls got to choose their flavor between lemon lime, orange and fruit punch. Others have said they got to take theirs home, drink it and come in just for the finger poke. I got advice to drink it fast, turn it into a slushie (if I could take it home), pick the fruit punch flavor, don't drink it on an empty stomach and so on. So I was a little worked up headed into this appt. Besides, I have a sweet tooth like no other and honestly I was going to be really upset if I had to give up or limit certain sugary foods. It seems to shallow to type that, I mean I only have about 10 more weeks left of pregnancy, I could suck it up and deal. Anyway....I got there are waited 30 min before I was allowed back. I have never had to wait before at the office, of course it would be this appt. So I sat out in the waiting room thinking about having to drink all this stuff, debating if I really wanted fruit punch or orange instead. When it was my turn I went back and the lady sat me down next to a very cold 5 oz cup of lemon lime drink. She told me to take that, it would taste like really sugary sprite and she would be back. No decisions for me to make. So I threw back the 150ml and thought to myself, that was actually kinda good. I waited for her to return and bring me more but when she came back it was just with a piece of paper saying to report back in an hour. That was it?! No second round of drink? I don't think you could even turn 150ml into a slushie if I had that at home! I don't know where I got the idea that you had to drink a large amount of liquid or maybe other drs do it differently. I also don't know how people puke it back up during their wait and have to retest, it was not that sugary. You also have to drink it in 5 min and people said that was difficult as well. Some people even had to come back and retest because they took too long to get it down! I was also told my baby would be really active and crazy in there after I took it, which she was not. Overall, every single one of my expectations about this test was incorrect. I guess I am fine with that. I came back and she poked my finger for the blood sample. A min later she said I passed and I was on my way. Horray! So maybe I really do have a higher tolerance to sweet things, or maybe my body is so used to consuming lots of candy or not all drs do the test the same. Whatever the reason, I am glad it is over and was not terrible.

We also listened to her heartbeat and this time she kicked Rachel a few times. Usually she doesn't move during our afternoon appts because that is her sleepy time, but lately she has been up at all hours of the day. We are measuring on track even though I haven't been gaining a lot of weight, so I felt reassured by that. I know everyone's bodies are different so I have tried not to think about weight gain much this pregnancy but I feel like everyone else has been fixated on it. So many people have been telling me there is no way I can be 29 weeks pregnant, I am not big enough, the baby must be not growing very fast, maybe they got my dates wrong ect. You can't help but be a little unsure being a first time mom. So it was nice to hear Rachel thought everything looked good with baby's progress. My mom gained like 15-20 lbs with her girls (she claims she couldn't remember exactly) but gained 40 lbs with Alex so I really didn't know what to expect. We also talked over vaccinations, cord blood banking, and finding a pediatrician. So many decisions to make and she is not even here yet. It was helpful to get Rachel's opinions and add them to Matt and I's research about all those topics.

Now I begin the every 2 week visits! I can't believe we are in the last leg of this journey. I have a feeling the next couple months will fly by. I am just trying to soak it all up and enjoy. Matt is traveling for work this week so there was no one here with me to take our 29 week picture. It will have to be a 29.5 pic when he gets back on Thursday. Have a great week!

Welcome third trimester!

So much for posting our pic on Tuesday. This week at work was a long one. Some really sad sick babies coupled with me not sleeping well in between shifts left me putting this off until I was done with work for the week.
Crazy to think we are here, the last third of our pregnancy! I feel like the pace overall has been so good. God knew just what he was doing making baby's incubation time the length it is. Being pregnant is so fun right now. I love feeling her move around and watching my belly grow and feeling good overall. I wake up everyday feeling so blessed and so grateful for this experience and this life growing inside of me. Here we are before work, I was delivery nurse this week so I wore a T-shirt to work (since I change into OR scrubs when I get there) which shows her off better than most of my scrubs :) I got my hair cut this past week too! So needed. My bangs were out of control and I got 3 inches cut off the bottom. It's amazing how great a haircut can make you feel.

We have our glucose test to take on Monday. Keeping my fingers crossed that my body decides it still likes and can handle massive amounts of sugar, after Easter candy sales will be the death of me if not :)

Looking forward to this weekend and Easter celebrations. Matt and I are watching the Passion of the Christ movie tonight for Good Friday per tradition. It is such a difficult movie to watch but grounds us in the amazing sacrifice that was done on our behalf. It also makes resurrection on Easter Sunday that much more of a celebration. The swing from great sadness and despair to hope and rejoicing is the same range of emotions people have connected with and felt for thousands of years and we feel connected to the body of Christ going through the same journey. God is so good and we are so undeserving. This weekend always has such a humbling effect. I look forward to sharing Easters to come with our daughter and teaching her about God's love and great sacrifice. Hope this weekend is a special time for all your families as well!

Busy Bees

Wow, the end of March flew by. We celebrated two baby showers, a friend's birthday, did our taxes, spring cleaned our house, organized our house to accommodate baby's room and things, cleaned up our yard, changed the oil in both cars, finished registering, painted and reassembled our hutch and other run of the mill activities. It feels so good to have times of productivity like that but now we are slowing the pace down a bit. I totally skipped posting last weeks' 27 week picture. Here we are...

Pregnancy Updates:

-I am officially out of non-maternity pants, a true testament to how high I have been carrying her. I had so many pants to borrow from friends that I was excited about, but when I tried them on I realized pregnant or not, I am still taller than my friends. So I packed away the high waters and caved to buying my own. I bought one pair of jeans and a pair of jean capris a couple weeks ago and that is what I have been wearing every time I leave the house. Luckily the weather has been nice so I have been dragging out some skirts to wear too. I will most likely have to buy a pair of shorts here soon. I can still fit into quite a few non-maternity shirts I have that were longer to begin with but most things are starting to ride up on her and show my belly out the bottom. I am finding maternity shirts are more fun to wear anyway because loose/non maternity shirts I have awkwardly hide her enough that you can't really tell what is going on under there. And she is looking cute as of late so why hide her away. :)  I can also still fit into a select few scrubs that I have. My grandma makes all my scrub tops so the size of each varies slightly. The bigger ones I own I can still pull off but each week that pile grows smaller and smaller. Soon it will just be T-shirts to work for me. My other work attire that had altered is my support hose. Instead of my thigh high ones I normally wear, I am now wearing the maternity style, full coverage, toe to sternum hose....so sexy. I actually haven't minded them too much, they do lift her slightly off my pelvic region and offer some relief. One downfall to them is I can't feel my pants falling down. My drawstring scrubs like to slide around on the nylon surface and slip down showing off my undies, unbeknownst to me of course because I don't feel a draft anymore. A few times co-workers have called me out of this. Luckily I work nights and parents are not around for most of my shift but it is only a matter of time I suppose until they might catch a glimpse too. My feet have not grown at all, which I hear is a side effect of pregnancy some people have. So I am thankful to not have to worry about shoes fitting as of yet.

-I am starting to get the "dreaded" black line. Matt said that was the one pregnancy sign that weirded him out when we talked about all that could happen to me early on in pregnancy. Mine is extremely faint right now but you can see its shadow there. Now that it is happening he claims it's not so bad and that it doesn't look as weird as he thought. We will see if it gets any darker. Such a bizarre side effect of being pregnant.

-I went to the dermatologist a week ago because my skin was OUT OF CONTROL (I rarely use all caps, so you know I am for real here). I have had bad eczema since I was in high school. I use a high dose topical steroid cream to keep it in check and about once a year I go in for a steroid shot. Well, when I got pregnant I called my Derm Dr and he advised me not to use the topical cream because it was too potent for baby and instead gave me a low dose cream. A very, very, low dose. So low it was like putting water on my skin. Not effective. At all. So I just gave into the idea that I would have to deal with this for the next 9 months and try to make the best of it without meds. So since Oct I have been coating my face, neck, and arms with every thick moisturizer known to man. On my days off I would wake up and put aquaphor all over first thing and then reapply every time it dried....which was like every 45 min. I also used reg vaseline, eucerin cream, some mary kay night cream product that a co-worker sweared by, lubriderm ect. It was like my skin couldn't absorb enough to stay moisturized. So I have been a dry, peeling mess for the last few months. Not only that but it itches, so bad. I would wake up at night itching and bleeding and raw. After my last appt. Rachel told me to go back to the Derm Dr. So I made an appt. thinking it would probably lead to nothing since I am still pregnant. The Dr came into see me and did a full body exam. After a min or so he decided it was the worst he had ever seen on me and that my body was in crisis mode. He said because I am far enough along, he felt comfortable giving me a steroid shot. He preferred that to the cream because he still wanted to limit the amount of exposure. He would rather treat it all with one shot than have me start with topicals which could take two weeks of exposure to get it back under control. I almost started to cry for joy. So now a week out from my shot and my skin looks 100% better and I don't itch anymore. This has been one of the greatest gifts I have been given this pregnancy. Take that eczema!

- I am starting to get leg cramps/ charlie horses in the middle of the night. They wake me up from a dead sleep and I am up out of bed faster than you can say boo. Man they are painful but thankfully stretching them out usually does the trick and I can go back to bed.

-She is moving all the time now. Twice she has done what feel like huge somersaults in there and surprised me so much I have jumped. Mostly I feel her low in my groin and lower abdomen. I wonder if that means she is breech a lot of the time. No kicks upward towards my ribs yet. She can play in whatever direction she wants but I hope she migrates head down before she can't move anymore, although she still has plenty of time for that still. Lots of other people have got to feel her which has been fun to share. Matt likes to make sure he feels her everyday and he still gets excited by that. It is fun too to just watch my belly twitch and jump around. Last night my mom had her hand on me while we watched the KU game and she called her movements dances. She said they were so dainty and nice like she was shrugging her shoulders or shaking her hips. The thought of her dancing around in there made me laugh.

-I am noticing I feel more sore on days I am on my feet a lot. At work for 12 hrs or running errands all day on my days off def. cause me to be a little achy. This is more of what I expected to feel as she grows, not the ouchy cramps I had a month ago. I am so thankful those have gone away, I can deal with being sore. I am not noticing being short of breath yet, well unless I am excersising. But day to day activities don't wear me down yet. Why can't you feel this great from this point on? It's too bad because this past month or so has been overall wonderful. I wish I could encourage my 10 week self that 28 week self says it gets better, hang in there, you will like this experience soon!

That is about all I have in updates. The NCAA championship game was on last night and we were rooting for the jayhawks until 11. So when the game was over, we were too tired to take our 28 wk picture. So when Matt gets home tonight we'll take it and I will post tom.

Also if I could ask for prayers, my good friend miscarried this week. She was 13 weeks along and was about to share the news publicly that her and her husband were expecting. Her appt didn't go well yest though and I just ask you to remember them in your prayers. My heart is so sad and hurts for them. Being pregnant myself just makes that all too real. I just keep thinking of how much that worried me early on and how exciting the joy of sharing our news was. To have that ripped away so suddenly is painful. It reminds me to be thankful for what our family has been blessed with and to not take anything for granted. Thanks for your prayers.