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!

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.

Let's Play Catch-Up!

Well, it's taken me awhile, but I think I've collected all the pictures I've taken of myself this pregnancy, and I want to put them on here to see the progression.  I'll try and post an updated one soon, as Brad, Avery, and I have been through some memorable things this past week.  But here we go.  Hang in there.

Let's start at the beginning.  We found out our lives were changing on October 27th, 2012- just five days after our one-year anniversary.  It was a Saturday, and unlike most Saturdays, Brad had to work.  I took him to work and dropped him off, then made a beeline for home and that test with all the answers.  

I found out I was pregnant at around 8:30 a.m., and Brad would be unreachable until about 1:30 p.m.  A+B= 5 hours of torture.  With all this time on my hands, I formulated what I thought would be a genius plan.  I needed a plain card for Brad that I could write in, in code, explaining my discovery.  Than, we needed a way to tell our parents.  Again, I had a genius idea.  Unfortunately, most of my genius ideas require a lot of little variables to line up just right.  They didn't :)  I went to every thrift store in town (and other gift shops that I thought might have what I needed), looking for coffee mugs that said "World's Best Grandma/Grandpa."  In our family makeup, we needed 3 grandma mugs and 3 grandpa mugs.  I found 3 grandma mugs and 1 grandpa mug.  Failure.

Finally, I got the call from Brad that he was almost finished and I could come and get him.  I got there, texted him to let him know I was there, then sat in the car trying to breathe.  This went on for a long 5 minutes, and then he called me again.  "There's just a few of us left here, so if you wanna come inside and wait, you can."  I didn't think I could handle it.  "That's okay.  How long do you think you'll be."  "Not long, but you should come wait inside.  No one will mind and it might be a bit."  "Oh, alright."

Now my "acting experience" needed to come in handy.  I didn't want to tell him in the warehouse with a few guys I didn't know lurking around, so I had to make sure the news wasn't all over my face.  I guess I did pretty good, because he didn't suspect anything, and I even was able to meet one of his coworkers and make small talk.  But on the inside, it was time go.

Eventually, it was, and we got out to the car.  I handed him his card and a candy bar.  He looked a little confused, but he opened it and read it with a little smile on his face.  In hindsight, I should have come up with a better code.  It was a little too vague, and it took him a few minutes to understand what I was talking about.  But, then, it hit.  "Really?!"  I nodded.  We took a few minutes to celebrate, then I went ahead and put the car in drive.  I went on to explain how I called the clinic and they needed us to come in and take a pregnancy test there before they would set up a first appointment for us.  Then I proceeded to explain the plan I'd had for telling our parents, but how now I wasn't sure it would work because apparently grandpa's hold onto the mugs they get, and maybe don't have extras to just give to thrift stores like grandma's do.  Afterall, I had had all day to get used to the news and get the ball rolling.  Poor Brad sat there in shock.  It hadn't been fifteen minutes yet, and I was already unfolding this big plan for him.  I realized what I was doing and gave him some time.

Then, a little bump.  Just a little bump.  Betsy texted me to tell me she was on her way over, because Luke needed her to look through his things for a car title.  This is when the acting really needed to get good, and on Brad's part, too.  It didn't seem right to tell her our news when we weren't sure yet how or when to tell the folks.  Thankfully, it was lunch time, so all we had to do was act really preoccupied with our lunch.  Since it was about 2 p.m. at this point, it wasn't hard.  She came in and said "Hi" to us, then headed upstairs.  Now we needed to figure out how to leave for the clinic without telling her where we were going.  Things like that don't seem like they would be that hard, but they are for us for some reason.  Brad hollered up the stairs, "We need to go run errands!"  Betsy answered, "O...kay...", and we rushed out the door.  Safe!  

You would think it would be a little awkward to go up to the front desk in our noisy clinic and announce to the receptionist that I needed to take a pregnancy test, but I was so excited and sure of my results, I did it proudly.  They took me back and sent me to the bathroom.  I came out and handed the nurse my...specimen...and she told me their machine took about 5-10 minutes, and I could go wait in the waiting room.  I walked out and took my seat next to Brad, told him it would take 5-10 minutes, then immediately heard my name called.  The nurse had a big smile on her face.  She brought us back and said my test lit up as positive right away (Sidenote: this, along with other factors, would lead to my future sneaking suspicion that I was pregnant with twins, but that's something for a future blog).  So we got all set up, I told her which doctor there was my favorite, she said she'd ask him if he was free to take me on, and we were off.  We had medical proof of pregnancy!

Now it was time to tell the folks, plan or no plan.  My dad and stepmom were going to be in town that evening, and we planned on having dinner with them.  It seemed pretty unfair not to tell them now, when we had the rare opportunity to tell them face to face.  So, even though we were still trying to comprehend our new information, we were about to relay it.  So I wrapped up one of the grandma mugs and the one grandpa mug, and we awaited their arrival.  They came over and sat down with us.  I left the wrapped mugs in the other room for now.  As most conversations with my dad, we ended up talking about why I wasn't in school, and how it wasn't too late.  It's nothing to hold against my dad.  He's always been confident in my strengths and abilities, and wouldn't want me to think he didn't care about whether or not I was successful in life.  But anyways, he said something to the tune of, "You'll need to do it now, before you guys start having kids."  Apparently, it was all over our faces because my stepmom immediately turned to me and asked, "Are you pregnant?!"  "Umm...yep!"  My dad: "What?!"  I rushed into the other room for the mugs.  The previous conversation totally behind us, we hugged, were congratulated, everything was good.  Our regularly planned dinner date became a celebration dinner.

We made a new plan to tell Brad's parents and my mom and stepdad.  This plan did not work.  This plan was thrown out the window a good fifteen minutes after it was formulated.  This was the plan: tomorrow after church, we would invite Brad's family over for lunch.  We would make our announcement, celebrate, and then take a little drive to King Hill, where we would repeat our announcement, and then celebrate some more.  Then, we realized something- We were going to have to go through church tomorrow, with all of it's greetings and catching up with people, without letting anything slip.  We couldn't smile ridiculously big for no reason.  We would have to tell people nothing was new with us.  Same ol', same ol'.  Our lives were about to change!  There was one more of us hiding right there under my blouse!  It was just too much.  We had to go tell his parents right now- it was about 9:30 p.m.- and call my mom on the drive.  So that's what we did.

My mom was doing something at the sink and almost dropped her phone in it.  "You said you wouldn't tell me over the phone!"  I agreed, it wasn't the way I wanted to do it, but I didn't see any other way.  When we got to Brad's parent's house, we walked right in and sat down with them.  I could tell from Wendell's face that he knew something was up.  So I'm sure you know how it went.  After a little delay, we made our announcement, and we celebrated.

This blog ended up being much longer than I anticipated.  And this is only the beginning of Avery's story!  So, I'll continue it soon, and try and keep a more recent one going at the same time.  Here's some pictures of how I looked a day or two after we found out (5 weeks along):

And here's the damage I did at the library those first few weeks:

 

And here's me again at six weeks (like you can tell the difference yet):

That's all for now!  Thanks for reading!

Hello!

I know I'm a little late in the game, being a whole day into my third trimester, but I've decided to do what I can to document the rest of my pregnancy.  So here we are :)  27 weeks and 1 day.

I am officially one big pregnant lady!  There's a lot of adjusting to do.  A lot of figuring out what works now.  This morning I figured out that I can't lay down on the couch with my head on Brad's lap, because without a lot of struggling and work, I can't get up. 

Avery's kicks are getting stronger ever day.  I'm not someone who can usually sit in the quiet and be content, but when she's really active, just lifting my shirt (and lowering my jean panel lol) and watching her move across my belly is all the entertainment (fascination) I need.

Anticipating a daughter has had me embracing my more feminine side.  I really wonder why I neglected it for so long.  God's decision to make me a female is a terrific blessing, and I see no problem now in embracing every ounce of it.  The past few days I've decided to spend a little more time on my hair than usual.  I'm actually giving some of those Pinterest tips a try.  My sweet little girl has inspired me to seek after God-intended femininity, and I hope to teach her all about it.  We're talking flowers, beauty, skirts, and in very specific instances, pink.  I know there's more to God-intended femininity than those things, but they certainly don't hurt.

Our nest will soon be available to us (sale closes on the 26th), and we're so looking forward to preparing the nursery.  There's a lot of things we want to do to the house to make it our own, but only when we talk about what the nursery do we get big grins and warm feelings inside.  We long to prepare a place for her.

I'd do best to run off now.  Dinner's not gonna make itself, and Brad should be back from his route any minute.  I'm not sure how often I'll update this blog, but I hope to be more consistent with it than I am with most things.  Thanks for reading and please keep our little family in your prayers.  It's a hard, exciting, beautiful, and momentous time in our lives.