What I’ll miss and what I won’t

Things I will miss about being pregnant

– Knowing exactly where Baby is and what he/she is up to and that they are safe 🙂

– Having significantly less migraines and less severe migraines when they do come.

– Being able to eat whatever I want (as long as it’s not bad for Baby) without calorie guilt.

– Not feeling guilty for taking a nap or pampering myself a bit.

– Seeing the scale numbers rise and knowing it means something good.

– Everyone being so very nice when you are pregnant… strangers smile at you, people offer to help, everyone cares.

– My hair and skin looking so fantastic!

– Drawstring and elastic pants!

Things I will not miss about being pregnant

– The funny little dance I have to do to get into my pants.

– Not being able to pick things up when I want them moved, so I have to ask for help.

– Having to be so very careful about what I eat… sushi 😦

– Sleeping on my stomach…. sigh. I love sleeping on my stomach!

-Everyone feeling the need to tell me scary labor stories.

Surprisingly I’ve enjoyed being pregnant. Perhaps, it’s because I have had an excellent pregnancy. Everyone keeps asking, “Are you ready to finally be done with this?”

Well, the answer is of course I’m ready to finally hold my baby in my arms. But as for being desperate for being done with pregnancy I don’t feel that. I don’t feel bad.

I want my baby to arrive … because I’m excited, not because I’m uncomfortable. I’m trying to take the perspective that I can’t wait for Baby but that every day that he/she doesn’t arrive is one more day I can enjoy on my own. I know that it will be a long, long time before I have days in which I get to completely decide how my day will go. My world will no longer be just about Steve and I so I’m trying to enjoy each day as it comes.

But I can’t wait 🙂

 38 weeks 3 days

exactly 39 weeks!

Sweet Dreams little one

Nursery is all done!

Can’t wait to put our baby in here… we’re both so happy with how it turned out… the room is very relaxing and peaceful and just feels so full of promise and hope 🙂

This is our little changing station… ever since we moved in Mom has referred to this as the changing table… and it is a perfect set up. The bathroom is immediately to the left and we have the diaper genie all set up there. We made sure to have a little bag that holds diapers, wipes and powder so if we decide to change elsewhere we can just scoop up the bag and travel 🙂

On his or her door a nail waits for the letter of his/her name. Steve and I painted them. I painted the L and P for a girl and he painted the G for a boy.

Inside the room….

I like to think it’s warm and comfortable… cozy and clean. The theme officially is meadow… a combination of turtles, songbird and trees. There are lots of details that mean things to us…let me start from one corner of the room and go around.

The back of the door has chalkboard clouds that currently say “Steve+Angel = Baby”, someday Baby can write on these and play. We also have a white board/magnetic board that says “Welcome Home Baby, We love you- Mommy and Daddy” Soon we can write his/her name there.

Next is an adorable little turtle that Debbie painted for us 🙂 I love him!

Following the room around finds the crib and our tree. We knew we wanted a tree… we started off with the idea that we wanted a simple graphic tree but then mom started painting and we loved this one. It’s somewhat cartoony and whimsical and perfect. The bird took some debate. As mom will glee-filly tell you there originally was another bird there… more of a pheasant or a partridge. I had pictured more of a songbird so after a lot of angst the partridge was painted over and we got our little bluebird. I hated asking mom to paint over original bird, hence her glee and the story of the murdered partridge. But I love how it looks 🙂

The bedding is beautiful and so sweet and all of the little stuffed animals await 🙂

Next we have the china cabinent which has been a huge source of debate. Steve isn’t sure he likes it. I like it very much for a baby and for a little girl. I think if we have a little boy it may have to go eventually. What neither of us like is it takes up so much space. But I do like the storage.  Now it has books, baby’s first piggie bank, toys and pictures of family inside 🙂

Next Baby’s toy hammock filled with new and old. The giant Bee is the first stuffed animal I bought Baby 🙂

Next the couch. Some people have told us we are genius for having it there… it will be great to sleep on etc. Others have told us it’s ridiculous because it doesn’t rock. We’ll see. Ideally we’d love to have both it and a rocker/glider but there isn’t room. We figure right now the couch is comfortable and we like it. We are still trying where to put a rocker/glider in the house. Nana has kindly offered to give us hers… we can’t figure out a place yet.

Over the couch is the first line from Songbird by Eva Cassidy. It’s Steve’s and my song and part of the inspiration for the room. I love how perfect the song is for Baby. Grace was wonderful enough to paint it up there since a. I am too pregnant to safely climb and b. I wouldn’t trust my handwriting! It looks perfect!

Next we have our little tree…. I found bumble bee lights and strung them up there. We have them on a timer and they glow in the evening. We also have a little turtle that projects stars on the sky. The little wagon was a gift from a friend and it’s so full of toys… none of which we bought. We’ve been so blessed by friends and hand me downs.

And a closet full of clothes…. mostly gender neutral. We have a few boy outfits and a few girl outfits that we got from consignment sales or that hopeful friends or family got us 🙂

And I love this… my mother painted it when she was pregnant with me 🙂 It’s very true

There are other little touches like a frame with Baby’s ultra sound picture and the bears given to us for our wedding. Baby has my Lamb doll which was the first thing my Mother bought when she was pregnant for me and one of my favorite toys growing up. There are so many things I can’t wait to share with him/her! And I so hope he/she likes the room. I do the typical mother thing and spend a lot of time just sitting in there waiting. The room is so full of hope and joy. I love that I find Steve in there too, just relaxing and soaking up the atmosphere we’ve created!!

When baby first arrives he/she will be sleeping in our room in this bassinet. The bassinet is special because it is the one that Clinton and I both slept in as babies. I just can’t wait to lay our baby here!

 Lots of friends waiting….

Also very special is this cradle. My Poppop made it for my mother when she was expecting me. My brother and I both slept here…. Another thing I can’t wait to see Baby in.

We have clothes that belonged to both Steve and I. Baby has my coming home outfit and the blanket that wrapped Steve up on the way home from the hospital. There are so many memories… and I can’t wait to make fresh ones!

We are good to go!

37 weeks! whoo hoo!

I’m very excited for this week because it means Baby can technically be considered full term. If they came from now on out we wouldn’t have to worry about their health and safety, they would most likely be perfectly healthy and fine… AND I wouldn’t have to go to a hospital for delivery. I’m safe to head straight to the birth center in case baby comes.

They are still happy with progress at the center. I’ve lost two pounds which they said sometimes happens to moms in the 9th month. For a minute they started to freak out about my weight but I reminded them that I lost and regained 10 pounds in the beginning…. so they aren’t worried.

The midwife thinks the baby probably currently weighs around 5-6 pounds and will be around 6.5-7.5 when they are born… but she says weight is very hard to guess.

She did accidentally keep saying “she has a strong heart.” Then she caught herself and said it was funny because she usually calls all babies “he” so maybe it’s a sign she says… she never guesses but she’s going to go with girl because it’s so unusual for her to slip that way.

They said I’m right on track and gave me something called Labor Enhancer to take a few days a week in preparation of the big show. It makes me have a about a half hour or so of Braxton Hicks… she says it’s like doing reps for your uterus lol. My doula, Nashira,  has also given me Red Raspberry Leaf tea for toning so I should have a very toned, fit uterus for the big day!

I just started having some swelling on my ankles and fingers and they said it could be because I was a bit dehydrated yesterday… nothing to worry about, just keep an eye on it.

The last visit we had the student midwife was there… we hadn’t seen her since my 16 week appointment. She got all excited because it was the youngest baby she had worked with and she found the heartbeat. Baby did run away from her but it was the last time Baby had run fromsomeone looking for their heartbeat. What was funny was she was remembering that story when she went to look for the heartbeat again… I said that Baby had been well behaved and had not run away since then… as soon as I said that the baby took off and made her chase him/her around. We have a baby with a sense of humor for sure! lol

The Baby is also messing with me because I know movement is supposed to slow down as we get close to the big day as Baby drops and he/she runs out of room but we’ll be active and average and then just stop the next day… no gradual slowing down. So I got worried and called the midwife… she said I just needed to make sure I was getting at least 10 movements by morning and 10 in the afternoon and 10 in the evening. We are definitely getting that but Baby still seems to have an average active day then a very quiet day and then back and forth…. keeps throwing me off! Steve just gets excited figuring it means we are that much closer to the day….

So for now we better just finish packing our bag and wait! 🙂

Dreams of Baby

When I found out I was pregnant a lot of friends warned me that I would get anxiety dreams about being pregnant. The websites warned that I would dream of giving birth to various animals or under strange conditions. So I expected a lot of dreams where I dropped or lost the baby or gave birth to a litter of puppies or something. But I did not have any of those dreams.

But I did have some….

The first I had was just a week or so after we knew we were expecting. In my dream Steve left me or rather was going to leave me. I begged and cried and pleaded with him not to leave the Baby and me… so he decided to do the right thing and stay, but he was clearly miserable. In the dream later on I was very pregnant and he had died and I felt all this guilt and sadness. I woke up so relieved that it was a dream that I hugged him and apparently was digging my nails into his back and he woke up to reassure me that this was silliness (which I knew) and he wasn’t going anywhere. That was the only “anxiety” type dream I had.

All the rest were various dreams of already having baby to giving birth… none of them bad.

I dreampt that I was holding my baby and trying to breastfeed but suddenly realized we didn’t have a pump or storage and I felt sad.

I dreampt that I started early labor and went back to sleep… woke up again at 6 am and told Steve it was time to go. For some reason we had to go to a hospital where they kept discussing my heart, which was weird. I was 8 centimeters by the time we got there. In that dream I woke up later (missed the birth) and Steve was holding our red haired daughter. The director of the hospital came in to see the beautiful baby and Clinton had already taken 100’s of pictures of little Penelope in various outfits with different backgrounds and poses.

I had one dream that we had a little boy playing… but it was the most vague dream.

I had another that we had our daughter, a dark haired little girl, who was about 2 in the dream and wanted a red velvet Santa style dress at TJ Max lol. She was running around laughing.

I had one where I went into labor on August 15th… and I was nervous because it was early. The midwife said to come on in but we said we’d have to wait because we hadn’t packed our bag. I remember being worried that we didn’t have clothes to fit a baby coming two weeks early so we packed the softest blanket we could find in case we had to wrap them in that.  Baby came and was a little girl.

The most realistic and recent one was that we were in the bed at the birth center… it was very realistic and detailed. I remember the baby came and they held it up to me and wrapped a blanket around the baby. I reached out and pulled the baby to me, Steve was behind me and we were just marveling. Suddenly Steve said, “We didn’t even check if it’s a boy or girl!”  We laughed and unwrapped the baby and there she was… a Penelope again.  What was most interesting about that dream is that the very next night at our birth class the teacher told us that couples that wait to find out are often so excited to see the baby period that they forget to check gender… which is exactly what we had done.

Of course I’ve read that if you dream girl it means the baby is a boy and vice versa… we’ll see 🙂

I love Daddy

Well in the ongoing debate concerning is Baby boy or is Baby girl I think I can verify one thing for sure… Baby loves Daddy!

Most of the time if baby is kicking up a storm and I tell someone, “Baby is kicking. Feel here.” Baby will go instantly quiet and stop the show. I can’t figure out if this is just being contrary or if it’s because Baby likes the attention…. the Baby book says that they can feel the touch and respond. So it’s either fear (which I don’t think it is) or just soaking it up.

But for Daddy we dance! I already wrote about how Baby has Daddy time… well we’ve taken it to a whole new level. I was on the couch and Steve put his head in my lap, his cheek against my belly, to doze and nap…. my whole belly shifted from one side to the other as Baby decided he/she had to be on the side that Daddy was on. Then the pats and kicks started till we were properly aimed at Daddy’s mouth… lol Steve had to laugh because the Baby would not let him sleep.

So just as an experiment he moved to the other side of my belly… sure enough we watched the whole belly swing back to the other side and the pats adjusted to get Daddy!

I think it’s so amazing that the Baby already knows, and loves, Daddy!

The responses I have been getting is that if Baby starts to go nuts and I sing softly to him/her we quiet down….. I can tap my fingers across my belly and get a response but most amusingly I’ve already irritated my child. The Baby gets way up under my right rib and presses on something, possibly my gall bladder, and it hurts all the way through my back. My only real painful symptom. So I will take my hand and gently push Baby off that spot.

Sometimes, since Baby is stubborn, I have to leave my hand there… but the other night when I did it I felt a distinct push back followed by a kick. As if to say, “Mom leave me alone!” I had to laugh… Baby has definitely lived up to the nickname Thumper 🙂