35 Weeks, 3 Days

I'm humongous!  Brad took this picture of us Sunday morning, the day Avery and I became 35 weeks along.  I'm dressed for church, but didn't make it to church this last Sunday.  It started with a bout of contractions, and even though they had subsided by the time Brad was ready to go, I was left in a little bit of dizzy fog.  A couple of weeks back I had a dizzy spell in church and had to go find somewhere to lay down until I was ready to rejoin the congregation, and I didn't want to risk being any trouble this time.  Oh the joys of late pregnancy!  (I really am rejoicing- don't take my sarcasm too seriously.)  Anyway, Brad went to church, I went back to bed still dressed for church, and afterward when he got back and I got up he took this picture.  This is one of the first pictures we have that was taken in our new house, too.

Monday we went to King Hill to visit my folks and have my mom take some maternity pictures.  I felt a little hurried to get on those, because Avery could really come any time now, and I'm growing out of all my maternity clothes :)  Here's my favorite:

I love this picture for many reasons.  One of them is that it's a great example of King Hill.  Hilly landscape in the background, brown dead grass and sage brush that is somehow charming all the same, what's left of last spring's sunflowers, and those tiny wildflowers we found in the midst of all of it.  Another reason is we liked the idea of holding the flowers next to Avery to represent new (and pretty and feminine) life.  A more shallow reason from my side of things is that it's one of the more flattering shots of me.  Of course, I don't mind my big watermelon sized belly.  That's my baby.  She can show herself as much as she wants to.  But I've gotta be honest, it's a struggle as a woman to see the rest of my body transform.  Especially seeing myself next to my very handsome, very lean husband.  BUT, praise the Lord, I'm learning from it.  I'm relearning humility-who could count how many times I've had to relearn that- and I'm learning sacrifice.  It's not about me anymore.  It never really was, but right now all that's important is that Avery's getting everything she needs.  Do I still think it's important to take care of my appearance for my husband's sake?  Of course!  But, Lord bless him, he's been very understanding, loving, and focused on mine and Avery's health above all of that as well.  Which is another thing I've learned: just another way the Lord blessed me very much when he gave me Brad.  Here's some more pictures:

Something else to note from this week- Presents have started arriving!  Some of Brad's relatives he hasn't seen in years, and I've never met, have been sending us things.  Right now we're up to two homemade quilts, a homemade quilted bib hung on a hanger that's been crocheted/knitted around, and a gift card.  It's incredible.  People love babies!  And that's just been this week.  I've already been given lots things for Avery; clothes, blankets, a baby bath, a bassinet, stroller, car seat, changing table, even a crib! (We haven't received that one yet, but it wasn't long after we announced we were pregnant a good friend told us she wanted to buy one for us.)  Baby fever is for real!  We're so grateful :)

That's all for now!  Thanks for reading!

Back to the Memory Archives

This is the first picture we got of Avery :)  This was at 8 weeks- my first Dr.'s appointment.  This was taken after the Doc tried to just listen to her heartbeat, but found I have a really strong pulse in a really inconvenient spot.  Instead of listening to her heartbeat, we would have to look at it.  We knew we shouldn't get greedy with the ultrasounds, but we sure weren't going to argue with him.  At first it took him awhile to find baby and get a good picture of her.  He decided that he wasn't going to be able to print a very good one, but did his best.  She looked like a blurry little white wisp.  He said that I probably wasn't as far along as we thought.  We were a little disappointed, but satisfied.  Then, he decided to try one more time.  And this is the picture he got.  Her head is pointed down and to the left with her tiny arms and legs up and to the right.  Kind of like she was going down a slide head first :)  Here's a close-up:

As you could see from one of my previous posts, my early pregnancy consisted of a whole lot of reading and researching pictures and sketches of the baby in the womb at different stages.  At this stage, according to the books and web, she should have looked something like a seahorse.  I still would've thought she was an adorable seahorse, but then I saw this.  Does that look like a baby or what?  Maybe he caught her at a good angle, but all I see is a sweet, teeny, tiny little baby.  Even when she was supposed to be a seahorse, she was a baby.  Even when she was supposed to be a microscopic cluster of cells, she was a baby.

I can't help but take a second to express how deeply defensive I've been of this baby's personhood from the very beginning.  Before a test could tell me she was there or not, I kept aware that at any moment she might be there.  Pray always, friends, that more and more women will identify with this defensiveness.  It's possible I just didn't notice them before I was pregnant, but there are pregnant women everywhere right now.  Not all of them are Christians.  Not all of them are married.  Not all of them have moral compasses.  However, most of them are celebrating their coming babies.  Though nothing could be as encouraging as all of them knowing the Lord, I do find some encouragement in so many women being excited and hopeful for the child growing inside of them.  Pray that they will be aware enough to know that the precious life they carry should never be considered something to discard, and that they express this awareness openly.

Back to the archives.  Here's the first picture where you can see her from the outside :)

This is at 9 weeks.  You can't see them, but I'm wearing my first pair of maternity jeans.   I was pretty excited about them.  I had been wearing the loosest jeans I own, and for awhile I used this elastic button thing that was supposed to give me more room, but it was no good.  She wanted to grow and she was expanding her area quickly.  Again, according to all those darn books, it was too soon to maternity wear shop, but something had to give.  See what I did there?

I told this story on Facebook, but I'll tell it again here.  I went to Old Navy to look for maternity clothes.  As I always do at Old Navy, I rush past everything else and go straight for the clearance racks.  I wasn't even sure Old Navy had a maternity section here, but I had seen lots of Old Navy maternity tops at the thrift stores, so I gave it a try.  What did I find on the clearance rack but three pairs of maternity jeans in my size!  However, they weren't priced for the clearance rack, so I decided to go ask an employee about them.  Apparently I asked the right one, because he told me that they didn't actually have a maternity section, but that someone had returned those here, and they were regularly priced still.  Which was like, $35 a piece.  But, since they were in the clearance section, he told me he'd make them $10 a piece for me.  Score!  I still had to try them on, and only ended up getting the one pair, but I couldn't help but feel God had a hand in it.  Little things like cheap pants can be a huge blessing at times such as those.

That's all for now!  Thanks for reading!

33 Weeks, 2 Days

I've done horrible at this blog!  I should have remembered why I did so awful in High School English class-I like to tell stories, and I think I do pretty good at letting my voice come through in my writing, but I can't seem to tell something from beginning to end.  This whole "pregnancy brain" thing doesn't help it one bit.  BTW, they should call "pregnancy brain" what it is: a decrease in brain cells because your body currently has something more important to focus on than short-term memory, rational thought, and pretty much anything that requires average intelligence.  So in this blog, I'm going to embrace it!  I'm airheaded, I have no train of thought, and I probably make even less sense than I think I do!  So here we go!  I'm gonna show you some pictures and tell you about them.  If I can think of something to tell you :)

This is from somewhere between 27 and 28 weeks.  Holding the baby lol :)  

This is at about 14 weeks.  As you can see, I didn't take long at all to show.  I'd been in maternity clothes for about a month at this point.  My mom took this on one of the days I drove over to King Hill while Brad was at work.  That hasn't been a possibility for awhile because we've all worried about me traveling that far by myself this far along.  My mom plans on taking more maternity pictures of me now that I'm so much farther along.

This is at 29 weeks.  This is in the old house.  This was just a month ago, but I feel like I've doubled in size.

I could still kind of see my feet back then!  Kind of :)

This is from today :)  We had a Dr.'s appointment today and he says everything's right on schedule.  Even though it seems contrary to every book I've read, he thinks I'm at a healthy weight and the baby's measuring right on.  He says I'm the easiest patient he has right now.  So we're pretty encouraged.

Where'd my feet go?!

I think that's all for now...again, sorry this blog is so unorganized and there isn't much depth to it.  I'll try harder next time.  I just hadn't posted in so long I felt I needed to just DO SOMETHING.  So I'll probably start on the next one now, so hopefully I can post something sooner than usual and it'll actually be worth reading.  Pray for my brain!  And Avery's :)  She's probably 10 times smarter than me already in there.