Holiday Blitz!

It has been a very eventful week of family gatherings, which have included a plethora of eating and napping on the part of me and Joey in our spare time.  As far as gifts go, my favorite was the certificate for the hour long pregnancy massage and pedicure that I received from Joey.  I can't wait to use it!  It has been a great holiday season so far, and it seems that all of the occasions have a little more meaning this year as we think about sharing all of these moments next year with our little girl.  Things are slowly becoming more and more real as the nursery bedding fabric swatches have come in and we have started creating the registries for upcoming baby showers.  The more frequent kicks have also been quite the reminder, and as a little holiday gift from baby girl, Joey was able to feel her kick, which was pretty cool.

We have also began narrowing down name choices, but I have a feeling that we are still pretty far away from having something concrete enough for monogramming.  Oh well, we still have plenty of time for that decision.

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

As always, here’s the weekly update:

Week 22 -

At 11 inches (the length of a spaghetti squash) and almost 1 pound, your baby is starting to look like a miniature newborn. Her lips, eyelids, and eyebrows are becoming more distinct, and she's even developing tiny tooth buds beneath her gums. Her eyes have formed, but her irises (the colored part of the eye) still lack pigment. If you could see inside your womb, you'd be able to spot the fine hair (lanugo) that covers her body and the deep wrinkles on her skin, which she'll sport until she adds a padding of fat to fill them in. Inside her belly, her pancreas — essential for the production of some important hormones — is developing steadily.

Best Hubby in the World

Throughout pregnancy, the focus tends to be on the mother and the job that she is doing by nurturing and protecting the baby for 40 weeks.  While that is an important job, and mom does go through quite a physical and mental challenge, the daddy of the baby also works hard by being supportive and helping out where he can.  My hubs has definitely been very supportive and a great help during the past 20+ weeks, so I just wanted to give him a little kudos by listing the great things he has done the past few months.

1.       Going to appointments – even if we have to reschedule three times, he has wanted to be there for every appointment, even the boring Doppler and blood draw ones.  Just having him in the room makes me feel so much better, and I’m so appreciative.

2.       Being proactive in helping out around the house – during the first trimester, I was useless, sleeping all day on the weekends and being the waking dead during the week.  Without Joey, the house and laundry would have been a disaster zone. 

3.       Listening to my hormone driven pregnancy rants – I think I have only had one or two, but instead of ranting against me or just ignoring me, he just listens and moves on, which I appreciate later when I realize how silly I have been.

4.       Just being there for hugs when needed – sometimes preggos just need a hug.  If you have been there, you know.

5.       Just being “____” with me – the best part has been going on this journey with someone who is just as scared excited, elated and confused as I am.  I can mention crazy things that are going on or silly fears that I have and there is always a sympathetic ear to listen and validate my thoughts.  I can’t wait until he can feel her kicking so that we can share that experience as well.

To sum it all up, I am so happy that I have such a great partner in life, and I know he’s going to be an awesome, supportive and loving dad to our little girl. 

 

21 weeks - YAY!

After a very eventful week of traveling, and appointments, it’s good to settle down and really let it sink in that we are going to have a beautiful baby girl in our arms in less than 5 months.  We are going to register this week and also get started on the nursery before Joey has ear surgery next week.  I am starting to get kicked more and more lately, and the doctor said that it should be pretty consistent in the next few weeks.  We have booked our child birth class, and have decided on the Bradley method, and our classes start in January.  Once we get into the class and get started, I will go into a little more detail about how the classes and the method works.

In other news, the name selection process has somewhat begun.  We are making lists, but who knows how long this will take.  It’s such a big decision!

Enough about me, here’s the 21 week update on Baby Girl B:

Your baby now weighs about three-quarters of a pound and is approximately 10 1/2 inches long — the length of a carrot. You may soon feel like she's practicing martial arts as her initial fluttering movements turn into full-fledged kicks and nudges. You may also discover a pattern to her activity as you get to know her better. In other developments, your baby's eyebrows and lids are present now, and if you're having a girl, her vagina has begun to form as well.

It's a...

GIRL!!!!!  We are so excited and so blessed to have such a great group of family and friends to share this with us.  I update the post soon with pictures of the wonderful cake! 

It’s all I can do to not go to Target today and start buying things.  I guess we will start trying to figure out a name soon.  That process should be interesting…

As far as the actual visit as we had to reschedule 3 times due to our crazy busy schedules.  The time of our appointment was actually was the same exact time that Joey was flying in from Detroit.  Luckily, the staff at Dr. Walker’s is amazing and let us stall for a little while so that he could be there for the ultrasound, and my mom came along too for moral support in case Joey couldn’t make it.  Dr. Walker was awesome about respecting our wishes to not know, and she made sure to tell us to look away when there were important things on the screen.

My next appointment is the glucose screen, and I am not looking forward to the beverage that was supplied.  I got orange though, so maybe it won’t be too unbearable.  I will keep you all posted!

Boy or Girl???? Tomorrow’s the Day!

Well, tomorrow is the big day!  Actually it’s tomorrow night, as we are going to do things a little differently.  We are getting the doctor to write the sex and put it in an envelope.  The envelope will immediately go to our friend Jessica who will bake a cake that will be either pink or blue.  Later that night we are having our friends and family over for some dinner and then we will have the big reveal!  We wanted to have a little surprise element to the experience and we are so excited to be sharing this moment with those that are closest to us.

In anticipation of the big moment, I have been conducting some research, and it appears that all signs are pointing to girl.  I have taken the Chinese gender predictor and also took a quiz that was based on the old wives tales.  To test the gender predictor, I talked to my friend Sarah, who welcomed beautiful baby Anna in September.  According to the predictor, Anna was supposed to be Steve Jr.  My mother in also took the test and my brother in law was supposed to be a sister in law.  So, it’s not looking too accurate at the moment.  However, Sarah felt that the old wives quiz was a little more accurate, so I am going to say that the jury is officially out, I guess we will just have to wait until tomorrow night to know for sure.

Stay tuned folks!!  I will make the announcement sometime this weekend.

Meet me Halfway!

I'm out of town this week, but I thought I would post the 20 week update.  It's hard to believe we're already halfway there!


Your baby weighs about 10 1/2 ounces now. He's also around 6 1/2 inches long from head to bottom and about 10 inches from head to heel — the length of a banana. (For the first 20 weeks, when a baby's legs are curled up against his torso and hard to measure, measurements are taken from the top of his head to his bottom — the "crown to rump" measurement. After 20 weeks, he's measured from head to toe.)
He's swallowing more these days, which is good practice for his digestive system. He's also producing meconium, a black, sticky by-product of digestion. This gooey substance will accumulate in his bowels, and you'll see it in his first soiled diaper (some babies pass meconium in the womb or during delivery).

Extra! Extra!

 I am not one of those people who has a super cute story as to how I told Joey about the new addition that is about to come into our lives.  On the day I took the test, I just had a feeling that something was different.  I can’t really explain it, just a feeling of anticipation.  I fully expected the test to be negative, so needless to say when the little plus sign showed up, I couldn’t believe what I saw.  In a daze, I went outside to where Joey was working in the yard and just handed the test to him.  He was like “What is this?” I said “I think we’re having a baby.”  It was just a crazy surreal moment.  After that, I took a couple more tests and then called the doctor first thing that Monday morning.  After the doctor confirmed the pregnancy, we decided to wait until making the news official to family.  With all of the things that can go wrong during early pregnancy, we just wanted to make sure that we at least had a good heartbeat before breaking the news to immediate family. 

After an appt. at 7 weeks that showed a little bean and a crazy fast heartbeat, we told my mom by putting the sonogram in her birthday card, and told his parents by saying that we were going through some old pictures and ran across a pretty cool one, which was of course the sonogram picture, both sets of parents were pretty surprised and of course completely excited. 

The best reaction by far was from my sister in law.  We asked if her and my brother in law could meet us for lunch.  I casually asked how she would feel with sharing her birthday, which is 2 days after Baby B's due date.  She said “Do I have to share with the dog?” (We had just adopted our dog Rigby).  I said “No, maybe with a niece or nephew.”  She looked at me for a good minute before she realized what was going on.  It was great!

At 9 weeks we told family and close friends (it seriously took my grandmother a day to really realize what we had told her), and at 12 weeks after getting the heartbeat on the Doppler at the doctor’s office, we started to tell everyone.  It has been a really positive experience, and I’m so glad that we have gotten to share this great news with everyone, and to see that everyone is just as excited and happy as we are. 

So the journey begins...

Since we are almost half way through the pregnancy (19 weeks tomorrow!), I thought I would give a little insight as to how we got here, as one of the most frequent questions I have been asked is “Was it planned?”  For future reference, don’t ask pregnant women this question, it’s personal and it could be bringing up feelings that the pregnant woman is trying to work through if it wasn’t planned.  Granted, it’s mostly people that don’t know me or know that I plan everything in my life.   Bringing a child into the world would definitely not be an exception to that rule.  We made the first steps in the beginning of the year when I went off the Pill.  There were several reasons for going off the Pill, one for obvious reasons and also due to me converting to the Catholic Church.  No, I’m not one of those holier-than-thou people that think everyone should go off the Pill, women have worked way too hard to make their own decisions about their bodies for progress to stop now.  However, through the RCIA process, we had a class on morality and the Church's teachings in regards to contraception and family planning.  

The discussion really got me thinking about my role as a woman and my role in my family.  I personally felt that I was messing with God’s ultimate plans for me and my family, and being off the Pill has consequently made me realize that there were medical implications that I didn’t even now were happening until the medication had worked its way out of my system.  As we were still not immediately ready for a child and as I also wanted to let my body recover from the hormonal changes that are triggered by the Pill, we began charting.  After much research and conversation with friends that were also charting, we began using the Creighton Model of natural family planning.  In a nutshell, you observe the signs that your body gives you to determine your fertility that day which actions you will take according to your family plan, which are achieving or avoidance of pregnancy.  I will not go into details here, (if you want to know more just ask!) but it really was the best method for us, and it has ultimately brought Joey and me closer in our marriage.   

We started the method not really knowing when we wanted to start our family, but my grandfather’s passing in June made me personally wonder what we were waiting for and thus began our conversation in regards to exactly when we wanted to get start our family.  We were finally settled in our home, have completed most of our desired renovations, and were ready for the next step.  Of course, once you see that positive sign on the EPT, you immediately begin to second guess yourself J, but more on that later.  As I will be 19 weeks tomorrow, I thought I would add a BabyCenter update (the idea stolen from my dear friend Sarah).

How your baby's growing:

Your baby's sensory development is exploding! Her brain is designating specialized areas for smell, taste, hearing, vision, and touch. Some research suggests that she may be able to hear your voice now, so don't be shy about reading aloud, talking to her, or singing a happy tune if the mood strikes you.

Your baby weighs about 8 1/2 ounces and measures 6 inches, head to bottom — about the size of a large heirloom tomato. Her arms and legs are in the right proportions to each other and the rest of her body now. Her kidneys continue to make urine and the hair on her scalp is sprouting. A waxy protective coating called the vernix caseosa is forming on her skin to prevent it from pickling in the amniotic fluid.