Week 32

32 down, 8 weeks to go...gettin' there!

Not much to report this week.  Have my next doctor appointment on Wednesday.  Hope to find out some good news on baby's measurements.  Also  plan to ask her about working as much over-time as I have been.  We have 10 hours next week and  I'm just not sure how much more sitting for that long every day I can take.  My back just kills by the end of the week and when I get home every day my feet and ankles are crazy swollen.  (check out this pic...especially the left foot...sheesh!)

Anyway, that's about all for this post.  We had a great time at the fair with friends this week.  Today is the last day and we are planning to go a little earlier so we can eat some oh-so-bad-for-us fair food.  :)

Here are a couple of fun pics from the other  night to share...

Week 31

(In lieu of the typical belly-bump pics this week, here is a pic of my friend Kim and I at the fair - Dierks Bentley concert)!

Baby P is due to arrive exactly 2 months from today!!  And we can't wait!  Well, actually we can, because we still have lots to do before he/she arrives, but we are truly very excited and anxious for our little bundle of joy to be here. 

I will make this post short and sweet since I have been tending to ramble on in the last few posts.  My 30 week appointment last week went well.  Baby is still measuring 2 centimeters large, but my midwife keeps urging me to not worry, so I'm taking her advice and really trying not to...at least not too much anyway.  She almost scheduled me for an ultrasound for my next appointment, but decided to wait till after that visit to see how my measurements are then.  If I'm still 2 centimeters large, they will do an ultrasound to see if they can see why.  She said it could just be the way baby is sitting in there, could be a lot of amniotic fluid, could be the baby is breach, could be just that baby is a little large, or could be (worse case scenario) that baby has some kidney problem that I can't remember the name of anymore.  But she reiterated that she is not worried at this point, and if she was at all, that she'd be scheduling an ultrasound for me right away.  So, I'm just taking it easy at this point and playing the waiting game.  I tell you what though, feeling this baby swim around inside me sure makes all my worries melt away though.  I can't explain the pure joy I feel when I just think about the little baby growing inside me.  And lately, all the movements have been extra fun.  When baby pokes out a foot or an elbow, I poke back at it with my fingers and it squirms away.  We play this game together for a few minutes before Baby eventually wins by tucking back away and hiding till next time.  :)  Such fun!
We are going to the fair tonight to see Montgomery Gentry play, so I'm anxious to see how Baby reacts to all the loud music!  And Dierks Bentley plays Thursday night...can't wait!

Week 30 & Baby Shower!

Officially 3/4 of the way! Woo hoo!  Today we had a simply LOVELY baby shower at Aunt Mary's house.  Everything was so cute and fun.  Excellent food, cute decorations, and a great turnout of guests.  Couldn't have asked for anything more.  :)  I know how much work goes into planning showers, and I am just SO grateful to Rachel and Mary for all they did for Jeff, me and Baby P!  Also so thankful to everyone else who helped out with things, like Grandma V, Aunt Debbie, and Ashley.  Everything was just PERFECT!

We got lots of fabulous gifts to help start out Baby P's life comfortably.  Everything is sitting in the baby's room right now, waiting for me to put away, but I just don't want to do it yet because I love looking at all the cute little baby things.  Here are some pic's from the shower...

A pic of some of the decorations at the shower, the cake (which was a bunch of little cake "blocks"!), and the candy!  The little blocks next to the candy were empty boxes for guests to take some candy home with them. 

Some pictures of me with Jeff, and my mom and sissies...

Gus wondering what the heck all this stuff is!  While I was making piles of everything after we got home, I literally fell asleep right on the floor in the middle of all this....

And here are just some cute little Hawkeye onsies I picked up for Baby P this weekend.  Too cute to resist!

It was a great weekend and a great shower.  Baby P is truly blessed to have such an awesome group of family and friends that already love him/her so much! 

Week 29

So, I actually started writing a blog post for this week on Wednesday after my doctors appointment.  I was a little frustrated with some things at the time, and I've since gotten over those things, but I thought I should probably still post what I had drafted up, since I am kind of using this blog as a sort of diary.  So here's what I had written...

I'm a little frustrated after my 28 week appointment today...Why am I so HUGE?  I'm measuring 2 weeks larger than I should be!  :(  I'm sure everyone reading this already knows how they measure a baby, but for any that don’t, the doctor or midwife basically just takes a measuring tape and runs it vertically from your pubic bone up to the top of your uterus.  The centimeters you measure should coincide with how many gestational weeks you are.  So if you're 28 weeks, you should measure about 28 centimeters...not 30 like I currently am.  I already knew that I felt and looked bigger than "normal", but since up to this point I wasn't measuring bigger, I wasn't too concerned.  And I am probably making a way bigger deal about it than I should be, especially considering my midwife didn't seem the least bit concerned.  In fact, she said as long as it's not more than 2 centimeters off, they aren't concerned at all.  But I can't help shake the worry from my mind.  I'm worried for lots of reasons, but mainly because I want this baby to be as healthy as can be, and also because I am SO SO SO afraid to deliver a large baby (naturally)!  The midwife did ask me if there had been any discrepancy with my due date, but I told her no, because there hasn't been any.  All three ultrasounds have put me at exactly an October 3rd due date.  I go back in 2 weeks for another appointment (appointments will be every 2 weeks now, until week 36 and then I will go once a week), so hopefully I can find out more.
In the meantime I will just have to keep practicing my patience, because almost EVERYONE keeps telling me how big I am.  I didn't mind too much at first, but I have to admit that it's getting really annoying. It's like, I KNOW!!!  I'm huge!  Enough already.  Of course I don't say that, because people don't know that I hear it all the time, but for this rant-session I'm having sake, I just want to say "SHUT IT, PEOPLE!".  :)  ha ha ha.
The good news from my appointment is that baby is in the head-down position, which is right where we want him/her to be.  She couldn't tell if baby was forward or backward facing though.  And I didn't ask, but I assume as long as baby is head-down, it doesn't matter which way they are faced (right??).  There was also a big bump protruding from higher up on my belly and she said "I don't know if that's a butt, or what that is!", so that kind of weirded me out too, that she didn't know.  But I think it's normal that they can't tell exactly what every bump is.  She was pretty confident that baby was head-down, so I'm sure it was a probably the baby's bottom poking out.  :)
One kind of fun thing that happened while I was there though, is that I had a contraction!!  I didn't even realize that's what it was, which the midwife said was great.  She said if they ever start to become painful or last for a long time that I would need to call her, but otherwise it's totally normal that I could have up to 6 or 8 contractions in an hour.  She had me feel my belly where I was contracting and I could totally tell once she pointed out what it was.  And I'm pretty sure that I've been having those for a while now too, but just never even realized what it was.  I just always thought it was the baby doing something goofy in there.  So, now that I know what it is, I'll have to pay more attention to it.  It's rather fun!

Ok, that was my draft-up from the other day, but I have some more news to share, too.  Jeff and I have gotten SOOOOOOOOOOOO much done this weekend on the baby's room!  It's all so exciting.  And the more we keep doing, the more motivated I am to get done.  I guess that's why they say your "nesting" instincts will kick in as the baby's arrival approaches.  There is still a lot to do, but I am very happy with the progress we've made.  Here's what we've completed so far...
Walls are painted "Celery Sticks", all the new trim and crown moulding is up and painted white, carpet was cleaned, Jeff put the crib together and both dressers as well, I made the crib skirt, hemmed the curtains, made curtain ties, put together the mobile, and.......well that's about it.  But what a world of difference it has made.  It finally looks like a nursery in there.  I just LOVE walking by it.  In fact, I can't help sneak in there occasionally just to gawk at it a bit.  :) 
Here are some pic's of Jeff putting the crib together (notice the pic of all the hardware that came with the crib and how Jeff put all the screws in size-order piles...this is his minor OCD coming out!).

A few more pictures to share:

Gus wondering how the heck he is gonna escape this "jail"!  "Please take me out momma, I'll be good!"

Here's the crib all put together with the crib skirt I made.  The aqua-colored sheet and the awesome mobile are gifts from my BFF, Krista.  (They were a shower gift, but we got them this past week and I couldn't resist opening the package!  Thanks Krista!).

And I just thought this was too cute....  While I was busy making the crib skirt last night, Gus decided to get comfy and make himself a bed in the fabric!  So sweet...

Well, Baby P is still one very active little munchkin, which I just love.  It's so fun to feel all the kicks and punches and pokes.  I just cannot wait to meet this little gymnast inside me.  Sometimes when I'm alone, I talk to the baby and ask it if it's a boy or a girl.  I say "Baby...are you a boy baby or a girl baby??  Kick me once if you are a boy and kick me twice if you are a girl!".  Of course, this gets me no where….

I'll leave you with a quick little video of the baby's room.  There will be more to see at a later time, but for now, Enjoy! 

Playing with Baby P

Here's a little video I took about two weeks ago of me playing with Baby P.  It's hard to see but Baby was going nuts in there so I just had to try and capture it on video.  :)

Week 28

Thought this picture was kinda funny.  :)  Since my belly is resembling a watermelon and I had just purchased this one at the Farmer's Market yesterday, I thought I'd take a pic.

So, week 28 starts my Third Trimester!  Woo hoo!  But sheesh, where has the time gone?!  Seems like only yesterday Grandma V was screaming and jumping up and down in the family room at her house after we told her our news.  At the same time, I still have another 12 weeks left and that seems like a really long time on some days, then other days I can't believe that's all we have left until we get to meet the little booger.

Baby P's room is coming along quite nicely.  We got the paint up on the walls, but still need to paint the trim and ceiling.  Hopefully we'll get that all done yet tonight.  Next on the list is to get the carpet cleaned in there so Jeff can start putting together the furniture.  I cannot wait to see it all come together!  I'm hoping it'll all be done by next weekend.  Our baby shower is in two weeks from today, so we'll need to have everything ready to go for all the new stuff we'll be getting.  Everything is really starting to get very exciting now!  And definitely starting to feel more "real".

I've still been feeling very good and don't have too many complaints.  The back pain can be pretty intense at times, but I think a lot of that has to do with sitting at my desk at work for so long.  We've been on mandatory overtime for a while now and will probably continue to be thru at least the end of August.  I just have to keep reminding myself to get up every now and then and just walk around.  If I do that, and drink lots of water, and try to get good sleep at night, I seem to be able to keep the back pain down a bit.

I did experience my first leg cramp last week.  That was not fun.  I woke up about 3:45 in the morning with the most excruciating pain in my calf.  It kinda freaked me out.  I've heard about getting leg cramps during pregnancy, but since I can't think of a time that I've ever had a leg cramp in my life, I really didn't think it would happen to me.  So when I woke up with one, I didn't know what to do.  I tapped Jeff on the shoulder and asked him how I could relieve the pain.  He was so awesome about it.  He shot up out of bed immediately and tried to massage it out for me.  Unfortunately this made it worse though, so he stretched the muscle out for me instead.  Much better.  Good grief though...that was very painful.  And even hurt for a few days afterward.  Hopefully I won't have too many more of those.

Jeff and I have been tossing around a couple more name ideas lately and I think we may have come up with our winners, but I suppose only time will tell.  We're still set on the boy name we picked out a long time ago, and as of right now are pretty keen on a girls name as well.  We were practicing saying the names on the way home from Ankeny last weekend after the Missouri family reunion.  Only, for some reason when we practice the names, we end up scolding our child!  So for instance, if the name was Jackie, we'd say something like: "Jackie, get over here!" or "Put that down, Jackie!"  So, apparently we must be subconsciously preparing for a pretty rambunctious child.  :)

Better get back to work now.  I got a new camera a week ago so, hopefully I'll be better about taking pictures and posting on the blog.  My goal of once per week hasn't really been working out for me very well.  But here's some fun pic's I've taken with it this past week...

Week 26

Well, it's been a while since I've posted any pics, and this certainly isn't the cutest one ever (I haven't even showered yet today).  But I really wanted to get another picture and post up so I don't regret it some day...especially since I've grown quite a bit more since my last picture!  In fact, I had another doctor appointment last Wednesday and in the four weeks since my previous appointment, I've gained 9 lbs!!!  I can't even believe it.  Well...my back is certainly feeling it, but otherwise I can't believe I've put on that much more weight.  I am getting HUGE!  And I was just reading on Facebook yesterday about someone I know who just gave birth to a 10.5 lb baby and am truly hoping I do not end up with a baby quite that large.  Sheesh!  Although, in the grand scheme of things, I really can't complain.  I've been very blessed this whole pregnancy so far and continue to feel very lucky that things have been going so smoothly.  As you'll recall, I had to take my glucose screening for gestational diabetes at my last appointment and I'm happy...make that thrilled...to report that we passed the test!  Whew!  I'm not sure how well I would have done with a low carb low sugar diet.  Eek!  I did have a slightly low iron count, but they didn't seem too concerned with that number.  Just gave me a list of some foods I should be eating to help with that and said they'd check it again at my next appointment.  I imagine if it's low again at that point I'll probably have to take an iron supplement or something.  No biggie.
On to other news.... We've been making some really good progress with Project Baby Room!  Well...to everyone elses eye it might not seem that way, but to us we've done lots of "behind the scenes" work.  With our house being on the small side, we've really had to do some creative thinking on organization.  Lots of going through old stuff and getting rid of anything that wasn't necessary, as well as organizing everything else.  It feels really good to get all that done though and even though there is still lots left to do, we really have done quite a bit in the weeks coming home from Aruba.  In fact, Jeff is finishing up installing the crown moulding and trim in the baby's room right now (for those that don't know, we have added new base trim, window trim, and crown moulding in all of our other "finished" rooms of the house, so the baby's room was just next on the list).  Once that's up and holes are all patched we'll prime and paint everything white (ceiling, trim, crown, etc.) and then we can paint the walls, which we decided to go with a color we both love called Celery Sticks!  Fun!  :)
I've got another rather busy and stressful week coming up this week, so I should be heading off to bed now.   Have 8 hours of OT to work, a job interview on Tuesday, a meeting with a potential daycare provider for us, and vacation to Missouri to get ready for.  So,that's all for now.  Hopefully I will post again sooner than this last time!