This Post is Brought to You By One Full Term Mom

Woo hoo!  I can't tell you how good it feels to be full term.  I can never have assurance that my child will be totally healthy and live a long life, but now she has as good a chance as anyone else :)  I don't have to worry about going into labor early and being given some sort of IV to stop labor, or some sort of medication to mature Avery's lungs.  If anything happens now, we're ready to go.

This last weekend we went to our friends the Jeske's wedding.  Preparing for it was a lot harder than I anticipated.  Betsy and I decided we would take full advantage of the excuse to get really dressed up, but then I realized, nothing dressed up fits me anymore!  Lol.  Until I did some thrift shopping I only had one pair of shoes that I could still get on over my swollen feet, and they were not exactly dressy.  Also, I had one nice dress that still fit, and it's white.  So to the D.I. I went.  And then the next day I went back.  And the next day...I stayed home-but! the next day I went back.  And then, after all that searching for just something (anything!) that would fit and be suitable for a wedding I found two dresses.  And a shirt for Brad.  I guess that's just the way thrifting works when you actually need something.  I found shoes earlier that week also.  I had to go up a whole size and a half, but I got 'em on :)

The wedding was fun.  The ceremony was short and sweet, and the reception was wonderful.  It was at the Turf Club, and it was catered.  Betsy, Brad, and I got to sit in our own private booth in that air conditioned, low-lighted room, while a waitress brought us drinks and we snacked on bags of Hershey's kisses set out on the table.  They even played Sinatra, Dean Martin, Elvis, and...Journey?...in the background.  It was pretty much a pregnant lady's (who happens to love all things retro) dream come true.

And then my hubby asked me to dance :)  Doesn't get much better than that.  He's never danced with anyone in public.  He never went to any school dances, we always had to leave early from other weddings, and we didn't have any room for dancing where we had our own reception, so it was a pretty big deal.  My husband's first dance, with his 9 months pregnant wife.  Definitely a good memory for us and something to tell Avery about.  She was pretty much "central" to the whole thing :)

Then, on Sunday, we had my first baby shower.  I was so blessed by all the thoughtful gifts, cards, advice, planning, all of it!  I hope to post pictures from it later, but for now here's what I took on my phone after the fact:

Here's most of the gifts, and

Here's the cake topper :)  

We went to our first once-a-week doctor's appointment this week, and to be honest, it was a little discouraging.  At my last appointment I was tested for something called Group B Strep.  I guess it's a pretty common bacteria that 1 in 5 women have, but it can potentially be dangerous to the baby after labor.  Not a HUGE risk, but 1 in 200 babies get really sick from it.  The doctor said I'd get a phone call if they had anything to tell me about the test, so after a week or so of no news, I assumed I was in the clear.  I was wrong.  And, unfortunately, this last appointment was a very busy day for our Dr., so I didn't get to ask as many questions as I would have liked, but basically what has to happen is I have to be given antibiotics through an IV for the duration of my labor.  I read online that they can't force me to do it, but after talking it over with Brad, we think we'd rather be safe than sorry.  

Like I said, the Doc was really busy, so it was almost in passing that he mentioned I'd tested positive for it, and then he moved on to something else, but it hit me pretty hard.  I've never in my life had being set up with an IV go well.  More than that, I've almost never had a needle stick me anywhere and go well.  The two times anyone's tried to get an IV in me, they've had to poke multiple times, put warm compresses on my arms to bring my veins out, and eventually had to try a different approach.  When they were trying to put me under to get my wisdom teeth pulled, they eventually turned to laughing gas so they could poke me when I was more relaxed, and when I got really dehydrated and started having contractions at 27 weeks (I still haven't told that story on here yet), they eventually gave up and just gave me a lot of water to drink and monitored me for a long time.  Apparently I have very small veins and most of their needles are too big and they collapse them.  So, just something else to look forward to alongside, you know, labor pains.

I'm trying to stay really positive about it and just praise the Lord for it, but when I'm being honest, it's difficult right now.  I thought that one reason I could probably do natural childbirth was because I dreaded the needles, interventions, and possible side effects (for me AND baby) about as much as I dread the pain.  But now I'm facing both.  I'm sure women who have already been through it would tell me that when you're in that much pain, a needle in your arm doesn't make much difference.  And I'm sure they're all right.  I'm just trying to re-prepare myself for what feels like a whole different ballgame.  It's silly, I'm sure.  But I would appreciate any prayers or encouragement any of you have to offer.  Right now I'm just focusing on the fact that Brad'll be by my side the whole time, it's the best chance for a healthy Avery, and the Lord is in charge.  If things aren't the way he wants them, He'll change them.  If they are, all I can do is praise Him.

To get off that subject, here's how I look today:

To tell you the truth, I'm in quite a bit of pain right now, and I think I need to go home...lol (I'm at the library).  Crazy.  I'm not sure it's anything for "real" yet, though, but I guess we'll find out.  Thanks for reading!

It's a Combo Deal!

This blog's gonna be a bit of a two for one, because I plan on talking about what's going on now, as well as digging up a memory from before I started blogging my pregnancy.  I think it's safe to say that if I ever became a novel author (which I really highly doubt will ever happen), my books would be the kind that jump back and forth.  Very self indulgent writing, but when you're 9 months pregnant, you don't mind doing what you feel like doing when it's not likely anybody will mind either way.

So here's what's going on now:

We've added some furniture to our bedroom.  Here's the bassinet my dad and stepmom bought us, and a dresser we picked up at the D.I. yesterday.  $25.00.  It seems like whenever a dresser shows up at a thrift store anymore, it's scooped up immediately, so we must've been in the right place at the right time.  I love this blue color.  I keep calling it Dowton Abbey blue :)  This will be my dresser now, and at long last, Brad can have his back.  He's been using a smaller one, and it pretty much only has room for his t-shirts-and that man has a lot of t-shirts.  So t-shirts took up his whole dresser and some bags and boxes in the storage room.  We're both pretty thrilled about our new furniture addition.  This also means that Avery, whose clothes are small, can have his small dresser.

That's it on the bottom.  The top part was something I found in the back lot of the Salvation Army for $15.  I was thrilled, because it looks somewhat antique.  It needs a little cleaning up, and we need to get rid of the sticker someone left inside the cupboad-it's a badger saying, "Hello!" lol....very strange.  Anyways, hope I didn't bore you with that part of the blog.  I'm just really excited about our house getting closer to being ready for the baby, and had to share.

Not much else new this week, besides the baby dropping.  Just means a few more aches and pains, and every time I get up in the night to use the bathroom my entire pelvis crackles and pops.  It's very exciting though, because it means the exciting part's getting closer.  There's been a couple signs that I've been able to check off that mean labor's coming soon, but I won't gross you all out with those.

So now here's some more memories:

This was at 2 or 3 months, when I went through all of my clothes and packed up what wouldn't fit over my growing child.  I thought this would be the only time I had to do this.  Boy, was I wrong.  I'm still trying on and going through things and finding out what works on weekly basis.  It's getting to where most of my maternity shirts aren't long enough anymore, and I have to be very careful to check on my tummy every time I'm in public.  I've unearthed some of Brad's really old, really big t-shirts.  Honestly, though, when I'm just at home alone or with Brad, I've taken to just pulling up my shirts and letting my tummy be bare.  I never thought I'd dislike wearing clothes so much, but this warm weather's doing it's work on me.

Here's at 17 weeks.  My caption that I wrote under this picture said something about this shirt "workin' hard."  This shirt's been out of work for awhile now :)

I took this at about 18 weeks.  Can't wear that dress now, either :)  I really like this picture.

And then, we found out that she was a she :)  Very exciting day.  The ultrasound tech was a little rough, and I was sore for awhile, AND she wasn't satisfied with our reaction to the news (silent tears and smiles to one another), but she couldn't ruin it for us.  We had been under the impression that we had ourselves a boy a-cookin' in there, but we were just as delighted to find out we were wrong.  The next couple of hours consisted of taking Brad back to work and then dodging the phone calls asking what news we'd received.  I wanted to do something at least a little creative to announce our news and not just spit it out, but our dear family made it pretty difficult ;)  So I went out and bought this onesie with the sweet little pink flowers, took a picture, and sent it out into the world.  Very exciting day.

That's all for now.  Thanks for reading!