This Texas Baby: Week 34 Check-In

 

BABY'S TASK FOR THE WEEK: This week your central nervous system is maturing and your lungs are continuing to mature as well. Also, you can recognize and react to simple songs. Well neither your daddy or I have been singing to you much, but we have been reading you lots of bedtime stories! When we crawl into bed your daddy grabs a book and says "earmuffs off!" to get me to lift my shirt so he can read to my bare belly.  It's so much fun watching you wiggle about while he is reading, especially if he says something really loud it kind of startles you!

SYMPTOMS: Peeing all the freaking time! And I still have a little over a month left of this!?! It's funny that I am going to the bathroom so much, this week you now urinate about one pint per day. I do not mind the having to go to the bathroom all the time, I just hate how little I pee when I go, it's kind of like "really? that's it?"

CURRENT MOOD: Yesterday I received a call to set up a meeting for a project that is for an event in March. MARCH! Seems so far away, but then it hit me that I will be on maternity leave in March. How crazy is that? Starting to work on projects that I wont be finishing up, nuts. But it also has me starting to look more at how to hopefully get things wrapped up, as much as I can, before my maternity leave starts. Several people asked when I was going to start maternity leave and I just had to tell them that unless my doctor tells me to stop working I plan on working up until I go into labor. It's kind of funny imagining that in a little over a month I could be sitting in this very spot where I am typing this having contractions!

THIS WEEK'S GETTING READY FOR BABY FINISHED HOMEWORK: Baby girl, it is possible that you received more gifts this past week than your daddy and I did, and you're not even here yet! I think that just shows how excited everyone is for you to get here. We got several items we have been waiting on getting, like a safety/grooming kit and the video monitor. We also received several generous monetary gifts that we are going to stick in savings to help pay bills etc when I am on maternity leave.

NEXT WEEK'S GETTING READY FOR BABY HOMEWORK: I need to start pulling together a list of items for my hospital bag and get my birth plan/wishes typed up. Your momma and daddy also need to get your room a little more organized! Right now we just have boxes of gifts from Christmas and the shower stacked up on your changing table. I also need to run a load of laundry for you with all your sheets and mattress pads in it! Still so much to do!

This Texas Baby: Week 33 Check-In

 

BABY'S TASK FOR THE WEEK: Keep packing on that weight and length! Baby girl did you know that you could grown up to an inch more this week? ONE INCH! IN ONE WEEK! That's a lot. You are also, probably, weighing in at close to an impressive 5 pounds. Every day I get more and more excited to see and meet you but every day I say a little prayer for you to stay inside me until it's time for you to come out. As much as I would love to meet you, say today, it sure would be good of you to keep on baking until your due date!

SYMPTOMS: Hello swelling! Haha, it really is not that bad or at least not as bad as I was expecting it to be and it is only really bad when I am just standing on my feet. Although, I have noticed that my feet are a smidgen wider than normal, lots of my shoes are too tight across the width of my foot. But standing is the worse, they start to hurt and I start to look like I have cankles! My hands are not that bad, my rings still fit, although a smidgen tighter than normal, but no problems getting them off or anything like that.

CURRENT MOOD: Faaaareaking out. I think I have just hit that super paranoid pregnancy phase. I think a lot of women go through it sooner in their pregnancy when the baby is super vulnerable. But for some reason I am going through it now! I think a lot of it has to do with "I've made it this far how terrible would it be for something bad to happen now!" But I am trying to not really freak myself out or express any of this to your daddy, no need to freak him out too! I am headed to the doctor today where I will get to hear your strong little heart beat and hopefully that will calm me down for the next two weeks until I get to hear it again!

THIS WEEK'S GETTING READY FOR BABY FINISHED HOMEWORK: I finished all of the thank you notes for gifts we have received, woo! I am so, so, so glad that is done. I have a feeling we will be receiving some more gifts for you baby girl this week with all of the Christmas happenings. So, I am so glad to have all of these done and wont have to carry any over to after Christmas. I also filled out our pre-admission forms for the hospital, I am going to drop them off on the way to my doctors appointment today.

NEXT WEEK'S GETTING READY FOR BABY HOMEWORK: Your momma and daddy need to practice this whole actually HAVING a baby process. Mostly what I mean by that is that we need to practice breathing with each other and make sure your daddy has a good list of things to try to help calm me down and relax me. I really want to have you without any drugs so we are both going to need to really be prepared to do whatever we can do to make things easier for me to bring you into this big world.

This Texas Baby: Week 32 Check-In

 

 

Ahhhh! That is my big 'ol bare belly for the whole world to see! I have had your daddy take weekly pictures of me since about week 11 and I figured it was time to post one on here. It's really funny how the top photo looks like just a ball stuck to my stomach with how round it is at the top!

 

BABY'S TASK FOR THE WEEK: Grow some nails! You now have finger and toe nails, how crazy is that? I have read that it is a good idea to pack baby nail clippers in my bag to take to the hospital because you could come out with long nails and the hospital wont cut them. So, I need to remember those, I don't want you scratching your pretty face, me or daddy!

SYMPTOMS: I have sadly lost a sense of the size of my belly! I went to Jason's deli for lunch yesterday and I was trying to get to the cup lids and there was a person at the soda machine and another person back to back with them at the salad bar. I turned sideways to slide through the two of them and hit the guy at the salad bar with my belly! I was SOOOO embarrassed! It never even crossed my mind that I would not fit. Guess I will be more aware of the size of my belly from now on.

CURRENT MOOD: Content. I feel really confident that if for some reason you came today we would be ready for you. Maybe not mentally ready for you yet! But house and home ready for you. Sure we are still missing a few important things, like a baby monitor, but we have your crib, we have clothes, I think we would be a-ok!

THIS WEEK'S GETTING READY FOR BABY FINISHED HOMEWORK:  We took our last childbirth class on Saturday and we got to tour the hospital. We were both a little disappointed with how old the rooms looked and that I would have to move rooms after delivery, but I guess that is one of those things when we live in a smallish town with one old hospital! I con over look everything else as long as I get a private recovery room! Some of them are semi-private, which would not be so terrible except that your daddy could not stay the night in the room with me. I am not sure if I could handle that!

NEXT WEEK'S GETTING READY FOR BABY HOMEWORK: Just keep trucking along with everything and start picking up the last few things we need. I also really need to write thank you notes for my baby shower gifts!

This Texas Baby: Week 31 Check-In

BABY'S TASK FOR THE WEEK: Baby girl, you are getting so big! You are weighing in at over 3 pounds by now, but what's crazy is that weight will double plus some in the next two months, I hope my belly can take it! Also, your grip is getting stronger and stronger, you could probably grip my finger tightly if you were born now.

SYMPTOMS: Weird charlie horse/side stitch like pain under my belly. It's suuper weird feeling. I think it is just my uterus stretching and growing and stuff, but I am not 100% sure. I am going to the dr today and I plan on asking her about it then.

CURRENT MOOD: Worried about how everything is going to be once you are here. Not how much I am going to love you or anything like that. But just worried about how I am going to manage everything (you, the house, your daddy, work, cooking, laundry, etc) after you are here and especially once I go back to work. I read in one of my books that no will ever be able to do it all, do it all well and do it all now, that all I can do is decide which of those above things can suffer. What's sad is the one thing that I feel like can suffer really can not, I am talking about work. It would be a significant blow to our income if your mama stopped working. How many places do you read that these days? I feel like most pregnancy blogs/baby blogs say that daycare will cost as much as the mom brings home. For you daddy and me it will only cost about 1/4th of my monthly income, so see does not make sense for me to stop working. Plus, I am a huge believer in daycare! I really think in the end I will really enjoy having work as MY time but who knows, that might all change once I see your face. I am hoping that your daddy will start picking up some of the slack with cooking, cleaning and laundry but your momma is crazy and likes to have everything done NOW and you daddy is not like that. Ok, I need to stop going on about this or I will stress myself out. It will all be ok and we will get it all figured out!

THIS WEEK'S GETTING READY FOR BABY FINISHED HOMEWORK:  Ha, between last and now I found a rug for your room! The original rug I wanted for your room ended up being WAY too busy for the space. So last night I headed to my favorite place, Target, and found a nice neutral shag rug that I think looks perfect in there.

NEXT WEEK'S GETTING READY FOR BABY HOMEWORK: Go to our second and last Childbirth class this weekend. This is the one where we get to take a tour of the hospital, so we are super excited about that! Cleaning up the house from all the tissue paper and bags from the baby shower. Probably more getting ready for Christmas stuff than getting ready for baby stuff!

This Texas Baby: Week 30 Check-In

 

(Just a note: I am going to move the day that I post my updates to the start day of that week, for example, tomorrow I will bet at 31 weeks 0 days so I plan on posting another update tomorrow. I imagine today's and tomorrow's update will be very similar!)

 

BABY'S TASK FOR THE WEEK: You're getting your smarts! Your brain is developing all those grooves and indentations increase surface area, meaning more room for that oh-so-essential brain tissue which prepares you for life out here and the street smarts you will need.

SYMPTOMS: The urge to pee all the freaking time! It's almost like a UTI, you feel like you have to pee so so so bad and you go and it is NOTHING. I get mad several times a day with this, as in "are you kidding me? That's all I had to pee?!?" And I know I am just going to be back in the bathroom in the next 45 minutes! Thankfully, I am able to go most nights all the way through without having to get up and go, I am so so thankful for that.

CURRENT MOOD: HOLY THIRD TRIMESTER! When did you get here? Can we slow things down just a little? I am so excited and ready for you to be here little girl but at the same time I need just a little more time to get things 100% ready for you! Will I ever really be ready for you? I doubt it, but still, how about we agree that you keep cooking until at least February 8th, a week or so longer would be ok with me too!

THIS WEEK'S GETTING READY FOR BABY FINISHED HOMEWORK: Baby shower = done! I had so much fun at my shower, I know I was kind of down on it all last week, but it ended up being a lot of fun. Plus, you came away with a ton of loot! We also got all you clothes hung/folded. I think you have PLENTY to last you for the first few months.

NEXT WEEK'S GETTING READY FOR BABY HOMEWORK: Figure out where to store all that loot you got for the next two months. We know that our living room is going to become babyfied after you get here so we are not ready to put stuff out there yet. We might just have a stack of stuff piled in your room or on the guest bed.