This is what Saturday looked like

in pictures

Halloweeeen

Saturday night we went to a super fun halloween party at Gretchen and Eric's. We were introduced to these things called 'walking tacos' which were frickin' amazing and perfect for a party (and i will be stealing this idea). Walking tacos are regular taco fixings shoved into a snack size bag of doritos. All you need is a fork! Genius! I should've taken a picture of this!

Anywho, we had a great time! We played some games and chatted and ate yummy food, plus my trick or treating through Gretchen's clothes, it couldn't have been better!

Take a look at the pics!

Hugh Hefner and his bunnies (and JFK in the background, typical?)

If Marilyn Monroe lived, you know she would've had his baby, right?

This would've won best costume if there were such a competition at the party!

The girls! :)

12 weeks left! Hello 3rd Trimester!

Preview of Halloween

 Well well well.. we're finally in the 3rd trimester. This day also marks seven months of being pregnant. Only 2 more to go!!

Exciting news! Gretchen gave me some clothes!! This should extend the time that I can wear normal clothing (her shirts are longer and some flowy-er than ones I have) not to mention she gave me some super comfy bras that I am totally taking advantage of. Thanks Gretch! That's right, my boobs are now officially huge (before it was unofficial). But i'm super excited at the fact that I don't need to buy clothes. I do however need some work appropriate black shoes that are comfortable.

Not so exciting news! I can't zip my winter coat. It's kind of sad actually. So my thought is, we'll buy Alex another coat and I will rock his for the winter. I can't bring myself to buy a maternity coat.. at least not at this point. I'm not quite that desperate yet (let's hope I don't get there either).

In baby news since this is supposed to be about the baby. She's supposedly around 2 lbs 2 oz and about 15 inches long. I obviously don't have gestational diabetes because they didn't call me with the results so she's doing quite well at this point. She still kicks around but her positioning is such that I can't feel it quite as much as I used to be able to. Laurel felt her kick yesterday a little bit.

I think I waddle a little bit. I've been a little crampy in my lower abdomen which I'm assuming is some stretching. So the tiny pain that is walking makes me waddle.. a little bit. I try to counter this as much as possible when I realize it's happening!

Whhhat else? Today is Day 8 of being sick with a sinus infection. Last night I was pretty desperate so I purchased myself a NetiPot and that seemed to work but when I woke up this morning I was back to sick and congested. So I rinsed again this morning, success again but the congestion came back quickly so I'm not sure what's really going on. I called my doctor so hopefully he has some insight. I really want to just take some NyQuil and pass out but that's not good for the baybay. I will say though, I think she's scared when I cough. How could she not be?

That's probably enough for a 28 week update, right?

My First Baby Dream

Though I dream multiple times a night, this was the first time I dreamt about my own baby. I don't remember what she looked like (though I'm sure she was gorgeous). I just remember some details of the dream.

Basically, it was a mini-nightmare but not in the way that most nightmares are.

I dreamt that people (who these people were, I don't know) were feeding my baby the wrong things. Things like water, chips, etc. Anything other than milk or boob juice. I don't know where I was or where Alex was when these things were being fed to her but I just remember coming into the situation like, "what did you feed my baby??" "Whyyy?!" and being super upset. Even though I reminded myself throughout the dream that this would never actually happen in real life because there's no way I'll be without my baby but the dream persisted and I walked into multiple situations where my baby had just been fed something I didn't approve of. I mean, in the dream the baby was only a couple weeks old!

I know why I dreamt about this. It's because I read a board on babycenter about horror stories and people insisting that babies need water when in fact they do not and people actually giving other peoples babies water (or other foods/drinks) without their consent.

I know this won't happen to me but I guess that's why I'm calling it a mini-nightmare. I'm sure people have way worse baby-related dreams so I feel lucky that this is all it was.

Story over. Back to work everyone ;)

PS. I'm still sick and it's still super annoying! I'm trying to send lots of positive vibes to my sore lymph node so that it can keep fighting whatever infection is in there. Go Lymph Node, GO!

13 weeks to go!

Sorry for the awful picture. It was taken Sunday night, so that's my excuse. (i'd actually rather not post it but what's a bump update without a picture?)

The bump looks the same to me still, so I won't mention anything regarding it. I however, feel like I look like a whale (no comments, please, you won't change my opinion).

I do have one complaint though.. it's called maternity clothes, especially jeans. I know I wrote a couple weeks ago that I love my jeans and I still do. BUT they need to be washed every couple days because otherwise they loosen up too much and then fall down all the time. Kind of like the skinny jeans I got from Motherhood that fall down regardless of whether they were recently washed or not, therefore I cannot wear them. Irritating!

Vent over.

In other maternity clothing news, I haven't bought anything else. However, I'm almost at the end of road with most of the shirts I have because they're getting increasingly shorter and 'belly shirts' on pregnant girls is just not attractive, I totally know this. I will be working on it soon (because I have no choice left).

Appointment Update:

It went fine. I had the glucose screening. I don't know what everyone was talking about with the 'gross soda like drink' I thought it tasted fine and had no problem chugging it down. Maybe it's because I was hungry for some sugar though. After I chugged I did have my normal appointment, nothing too exciting but the midwife (I think) Lisa was very nice. They've all been nice but she was a little bit older so she seemed more like a mothering/nurturing type that the other ladies i've seen. I wouldn't mind having her deliver my baby. She told me what position the baby girl is in which was cool to hear. I was basically right though, she's shifted more into head down. Her heartrate was 148 bpm which I think is close to what it was last time. After the regular check-up I waited another 30 minutes before I could have my blood drawn with the biggest gauge needle ever. I distracted myself by having the lab girl talk to me about how much she likes drawing blood and how everyone at work calls her the Vampire. It was a good distraction.


I've been doing lots of research recently regarding delivery. So I had some questions to ask Lisa (finally, i usually don't have any) and here are the questions/answers.

What are the advantages/disadvantages of not clamping the umbilical cord right away after delivery? Her answer was that some would say that the baby gets a little bit more from the placenta by waiting to clamp it, others might disagree. I asked if it could compromise the collection of the cord blood for banking/donation and she said it very well could, which I thought would be the answer. So we'll have to weigh the pros/cons.

Why must the baby get the eye drops and vitamin K shot right after delivery? The eye drops are azithromycin and help prevent blindness in babies whose mothers may have an undiagnosed STD. And the vitamin K shot helps babies blood clot since that system is immature at the time of birth. We might forgo the eye drops.. we'll see.

What's my blood type? Turns out, it's A+ which is pretty universal she said. Now we just need to find out Alex's.. just for the sake of knowing.

If the baby is head down, does the blood rush to her head (this was just a fun question, not meant to be serious)? She said that since the baby is living in it's own little bubble, they have a completely different circulatory system then we do which means no, the blood doesn't rush to her head.

Our next appointment is in three weeks and then we'll start having appointments every two weeks until December when I think it might go down to once a week. I think all the major stuff is done though, so the rest of the visits should be fast and easy. Next week, we're going to Womb with a View with our parents as a special treat so they can see their future granddaughter on the big screen. I think it'll be awesome to see her one last time in utero and hopefully that'll hold me over for 12 more weeks until I can meet her face to face!

Last night we had our 2nd childbirth class so I'll try to post on that later this week!

Weekend Happenings

Friday after work, Alex was attending a beer tasting at a friends in Manchester, so I headed up to my Grama's for a visit and then over to my parents for a visit. Quite an eventful Friday night!

Saturday morning we slept in as long as possible before Domino just wouldn't shut his meowing mouth up anymore. Alex went to work on the farm and I went to Kauffman's for apples and cider (and some other groceries) and then to JoAnn Fabric for some paint and some glue that would actually work. Later I completed one of the roman shades that you saw yesterday. Alex and I got subs (yum) for dinner and while he watched The Wire, I put together the mobile that you also saw from yesterday's post.

Sunday, Alex started early prepping his garlic cloves for planting. I cleaned the house, cut some apples (trick: after cutting, put the apples in some ginger ale to soak for a couple minutes, this helps to keep them from browning and it totally works!) and made sure all the craft stuff I had was ready for friends coming over. Courtney, Jen, Laurel and Jen came around 1pm and we ordered some yummy dominos and got down to business. We painted pumpkins (big and small) and created candles with leaves attached. It was super fun and we're planning to have 'club meetings' every month or so where we can get our craft on!

I stole these pictures from Jen! (thanks Jen!)

After everyone left and I cleaned some things up, I just relaxed on the couch for a while. I was pretty tired for some reason and there was nothing on TV. Alex came home from watching football at Dan's and while he watched The Wire some more, I took some pictures and wrote a couple blog posts and then headed to bed. I slept pretty terribly due to allergies and uncomfortabness (yep, i just made that word up). I was awake from 5:00am to 6:20 where I fell asleep for about 30 minutes before my alarm went off, lovely!

Thus starts another week, week 27 of pregnancy! Keep flying time, I do not mind one bit!

The Nursery {Part 3 cont'd}

If you remember from the first "Part 3" post, this part is all about the Nursery DIY projects I'm working on.

I recently completed the mobile that we're going to hang over the changing table. I definitely cut out more flowers and butterflies then were needed but that's okay. Maybe I can use them for something else?

Basically the materials needed for this were:
Scrapbook Paper
Scissors
Embroidery Hoop
Fishing Line
Floral Wire

Though it wasn't hard to put together it was time consuming. I jabbed myself a couple of times with the needle to put the holes through the paper but it's all in the name of love.

I just hope that those colors look good against the blue walls in the nursery. It appears the colors we're going with are purple (light/dark/in between), pink (magenta, light pink, maroon) and of course most of our furniture is white, while the walls are an aqua blue. We'll see how it all turns out, fingers crossed.

The next project looks easy. I thought it was going to be easy because the directions are so simple. Well, it's not as easy as it looks folks. It's not hard, just time consuming. Probably because i'm a beginner (this makes me dread the sewing machine a little bit) But since I have to make two of them, I definitely think I can cut some time off of the project with a few short cuts.

Behold, the roman shade. The color looks lighter in the picture then it is in real life (my skills behind the camera are sub-par). There is a navy felt backer which will help create a 'black out' effect when the shades are down, which is exactly what I was going for.

I used our existing mini blinds, felt, fabric and fabritac which is probably the best invention ever if you're trying to glue fabric. The glue they say is just for fabric did not do as well as this and is getting returned! Of course there was a tape measure and scissors involved too. If you want to do something similar, i found the idea on pinterest (where else?) but it links to this blog: Little Green Notebook.

I do need to train them to go up a little bit easier, but the existing mini blinds weren't that easy to get up and down either so I don't expect it to run perfectly.

Couple more projects in the works so stay tuned!