Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Full Term!

How preggo I am: 37 weeks, officially full term (although I expect it will be a few weeks, I'm still thinking the 22nd or around there is most likely) I'm officially on baby watch. It's a bit surreal to just be on alert to go into labor with a full term baby and not be worried about it being too early or my placenta being in the way.

37 weeks!

Baby size: Smallish newborn sized probably.

Food cravings/aversions: Pumpkin. It is also basically pumpkin spice season and I'm antsy for cooler weather and not having an allergy attack every time I get a slight whiff of outdoor air.

Sleep: Why do I even include this? It will be crappy for the next few years. I keep having apocalypse dreams lately. I either need to write a book or find some good apocalypse fiction to read or watch.

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Mood: I swear I'm generally a cheerful nice person but this pregnancy I am a grouch. I'm still annoyed with how many comments about my size that I'm getting. I get it, I'm very visibly pregnant. But what do you expect? I'm not exactly huge to start with, I have a nearly full size baby inside me. But the "ready to pop?" and the, "is it more than one in there?" questions are just so rude. And after months of them, I'm done. Also basically no clothes fit, which sucks.

Names: Maybe we'll name him someday. This is the last detail besides some burp cloths I have to make so I'm starting to dwell on it.

Lyra stats: Trying to get in some good quality time in with her before this next one shows up. We let her stay up the other night and watch a movie and then went to the park to look at stars. She was totally into it. It was entertaining, even the part where she was cuddled up on me, farting on purpose, and announcing it.

Her new favorite toys are empty dvd boxes, so that's ridiculous.

Labor signs: Nothing. He's down super low though and in a good birthing position at the moment. I've been "nesting" I suppose. Although I tend to think that it is just my natural state to overly clean and organize my life and home.  I am trying to stay as up to date on all chores as possible. Plus I've made little breastfeeding stations and postpartum care stations around the house. I've stocked a few freezer meals and snacks. I may make a few activity baskets for Lyra too for when baby needs quiet time.

Other symptoms: My hips hurt, getting up and down from laying or sitting is rough. I'm visibly wincing or making those "ooooh this hurts" noises. This is different from Lyra's pregnancy. I'm pretty convinced it's due to his positioning much lower down. Plus the extra weight I'm carrying can't help. I've gained about 35 total so far, still seems like that slowed a lot the last few weeks so I'm hoping that won't be too rough the last bit. I've just never been this sore for this long, ever. I am basically in a constant state of discomfort and/or pain. The headaches I had earlier in the pregnancy were worse pain level wise and close to as consistent, I wouldn't trade for those, but this is still wearing.

I also am pretty sure I pulled a muscle in my right ribs from allergy induced sneezing and coughing. It is getting fairly excruciating actually. I'm hoping that doesn't last long or bother me in labor.

I can tell with the soreness and general hugeness, my balance is off. I'm trying to be careful but I feel a lot clumsie. Fingers crossed I don't hurt myself too badly before I get this baby out.

Best moment this week: Hitting that full term mark. I've been waiting a long time for that.

Other stuff: I finished 2 of the crib sheets! They were a pain to make because I couldn't find fabric big enough (and the fabric lady cut the single one that was big enough too short) to cover the mattress and foam I have to use to close the gap between the crib and bed.



Also, here's an example of this kid's ridiculous gymnastics that I managed to capture on camera. Keeping in mind this is not the craziest I've seen, he's usually calmed down a bit by the time I get the camera out. Stomachs should not look like this. Generally I think these pictures are his butt sticking out when he pushes his legs straight. Lyra did not do this and she was not a tame fetus by any means.

Pretty sure I was also having a Braxton Hicks contraction the same time I took this one. 

This ones a bit older when he was laying more to the right.

Another earlier, laying on the right picture. 
Just for reference, my belly is generally not freakishly misshapen. 

Looking forward to: My mom shows up in a little under 3 weeks!

Sunday, August 26, 2018

8 Month Update

How preggo I am: 36 weeks! I just need to get 1 more week in and then he is allowed to come any time at home.  I'm really hoping I don't go late but everyone is going to be here on the early side so naturally that will happen. I'm also feeling much more ready to be done being pregnant than I was with Lyra. I want to get this baby out and take a freaking break from being pregnant already.

Baby size: About 19 in and 6lbs. Close to being ready for birth. For reference Lyra was born at 20.5 inches and 7 lb 4 oz

Food cravings/aversions: I want pizza. Like really quality home cooked pizza, not Dominos or something. And also cheese stuffed bacon wrapped dates. Handy as apparantly dates are good for things like cervical ripening and likelihood of needing pitocin and shorter labor. Small studies but it's enough excuse for me to make delicious food. And apple juice. Which gives me heartburn but I still want it.

Other symptoms: Same things as per usual really. Typical 3rd trimester with a side of severe allergies, wildfire smoke, and irritable uterus. Not as irritable as with Lyra though, I don't think. It is hard to tell. I might just be busier and/or less stressed about it now that my placenta moved. I did get a virus a couple weeks ago. So did Lyra. She had a fever the first non smoky day we had in like 2 weeks. Then I got a sinus infection which was extra fun. I pulled a muscle in my side and now it hurts anytime I sneeze, blow my nose, or cough. Which is approximately every 30 seconds soooooo that's not fun. My hips are really sore too. Also different from my experience with Lyra. My heartburn is less extreme so maybe this baby will have less hair.

I also had the most ridiculous morning sickness experience of all the pregnancies. I had a morning where I went from 100% normal and feeling fine to "absolutely going to vomit, right now" in under a minute. And upon throwing up, had a similarly shocking speedy recovery and was back to feeling 100% normal and great in under 3 minutes. Besides hysterical laughter because I was so surprised and I half pulled a muscle moving too fast.

Sleep: Still shitty. The newest thing this last week was waking up with a crazy dry mouth, super uncomfortable. Blasting a couple humidifiers all night seems to help.

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Mood: I'm so done, I have no more patience. We're trying to get our car fixed, Travis hit an antelope, and it is taking far too long on the insurance company's part. It happened almost a month ago and we still haven't been able to schedule it somewhere to be fixed. It currently has no AC which means it's a horrible car for Nevada in the summer. The insurance company finally came through though so now we can finally get it scheduled. It's basically going to take like 6 to 8 weeks total and we'll be pushing it right up to when I deliver to get it done.

Also I have the worst hair luck, EVER. I go through these cycles. First I move somewhere new, I'll go to Great Clips or Fantastic Sam's or something for a while and be low key frustrated with weird hair issues, for example, an inch or so section of hair that's an inch longer than the rest of my hair but only 75% of the time. Or someone who dyes my hair red and darker instead of blonde like I wanted and tries to talk me into it, "No, it is the lighting, it's definitely blonder." Seriously. Then I find someone who I think will be really good or is really good but I stop going for some unlucky reason or another or we move again.

More backstory, probably taking the cake for the worst story was when Lyra was about 4 months old and I decided to use the first several hour break I'd ever had away from her to go get my hair dyed and cut. So it had been like 6 months since I'd done anything with it, I was excited for my first taste of freedom. Then I'm chatting with my stylist I'd used before a few times and trusted enough to dye my hair. She asks how my hair has been doing postpartum and I explain I'm having some of the usual expected hair loss and my scalp seems a little more dry and itchy since having a baby but nothing too drastic or crazy. This is where everything goes downhill. She tells me I have lice. I freak out because if I have lice, so does my 6 month old who sleeps with us, and our house requires decontamination. I'm also super disappointed my first day out post baby is ruined and I'm embarrassed. I held it together until I left but basically went home and cried and made Travis go out for de lousing things. And we spend the next couple hours hardcore searching for lice just to find no lice. None. No lice anywhere, on anyone. Good thing Travis is a skeptic and is like, let's research before you just put all this on your head. Upon inspection Travis is like, "Ehhh I mean, your scalp is a little dry but not even extreme...." I still do some intense moisturizing treatment to be sure and after a couple hours my hair is essentially back to pre baby normal. I debated going to get a doctors note to make a point but I didn't want to spend the $30 copay, especially after spending the same on unnecessary de-lousing products. So I never went back to that hair stylist again. It is kind of a funny anecdote in hindsight but at the time it was awful.

Besides the imaginary lice incident, there was the Justin Bieber haircut debacle. That started out as an edgy assymetrical pixie/bob type haircut I had done somewhere I trusted. Then I believe we moved or I couldn't travel to Spokane all the time for a haircut, something like that. So I got it trimmed locally. And it wasn't as awesome anymore but it wasn't terrible. But the next time was. And so then I was like, let's just do a pixie. And then that made me look like a weird cross between Justin Bieber and my baby brother before he hit puberty and if he was white. I mean my brother isn't bad looking, we look eerily like opposite gender, different color twins. I just didn't want to look like his twin brother. I was working on the slope at the time and the company man literally called me to his office once because he was worried he made me feel bad with teasing about my haircut. I still have to laugh because my true feelings were more embarrassed for anyone who didn't realize that I realized my haircut was something out of a horror story.  I gave myself the Justin Bieber nickname because sometimes you just have to laugh. The poor stylist I found in Anchorage to help fix the worst of it clearly was a little taken aback by it. That was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I was coming off nightshift and quite tired and probably had a beer first. I told him, just do something with it to try and improve it for growing it out. I know there's not much to work with and I will be legitimately impressed if you can make it worse than it is, so have some free reign and know I won't be mad. That's how I ended up with my first pink and purple hair ("Maybe some bright colors to just...distract...from the rest of it...."). And that pixie from hell haunted me quite literally up until the imaginary lice incident, that was the last of growing that out.

So anyway, cut to now. I have a stylist who does my hair well, but is so unreliable about scheduling that I just couldn't anymore. I'm talking 5 out of 7 appointments cancelled and/or rescheduled. So I found a new place, scheduled a few weeks in advance and verbally explained what my hair looked like and what I wanted. And I'm not dumb at this point, I sent in photos and gave myself a week before I really wanted it done (for maternity pictures) in case something happened. And 48 hours before my appointment my hair stylist emails to say she can't do it and refers me to someone else. So here we are.  I'm unsure when and how and if I will get my hair done somewhere around here again. I had Travis help me mostly dye it back to my naturalish color with 4 dollar Walmart dye. A frightening gamble but it mostly worked. We're probably giving it a round 2 and hoping for the best. Travis has had to help try and fix or manage so many of my hair disasters at this point that he says he's going to open up his own business.  Something like, Travis' Mediocre Hair. So that's my long winded story about why the last of my patience is gone and why I'm a brunette again. With a few weird patchy spots but, oh welllllll.

On the plus side I found a birth photographer I really like and I'm not stressed about not having one anymore. She's worked with my midwife and doula a lot before and has birth experience as a nurse too. I also found out my mom will  still be able to make it out here as planned as well. So maybe now I can have the last 6 weeks of pregnancy calm and planned as much as possible??

I have everything almost as set up as I can have it before baby gets here. The nursery is done, our bedroom is prepped with a birth space and baby sleeping space, breastfeeding/pumping stations are set up, some meals are frozen. I still need to do a few more freezer meals and stock a couple last minute homebirth items but we're good to go other than that.

Names: My vote is still Oswin Finley. Travis is still Finley Oswin.

Lyra stats: She is 3 now! She's started soccer which is adorable and funny. While "Baby Shark" is still an all time favorite song, a new favorite is "6 Cats," this random YouTube video that is both obnoxious and really catchy. Horrible combo, really. She has a new weird (for a toddler)  food she likes, blue cheese. Her tastes alternate between sophisticated and hating traditional toddler food, and super typical toddler preferences. She won't touch ketchup but she loves edamame. Still obsessed with sushi

She briefly went through a napping phase again but I think that was a growth spurt and she's coming out of it again. She gained 2 lbs for the first time in like a year though. Watching her growth patterns has been interesting. When she was exclusively breastfed, she was on the high end of the growth chart, around 80th percentile. Once she switched to solid food and picky eating, she dropped quite a bit and now she's definitely on the petite side, around 15th percentile. I haven't worried as she's clearly grown mentally and I think she has grown a bit in height, but it was weird. She was in 2T clothes by around 18 month and she still hasn't outgrown it all.

Best moment this week: I got out of jury duty! I was figuring they wouldn't want me as a juror seeing as I was basically full term, but I don't even have to go at all.

Other stuff: I took maternity pictures and I love them! Lyra cooperated beautifully. I also had to take some rainbow baby photos with rainbow scarves. Because there is no better time to climb around in your underwear on rocks in the middle of the desert than when you're 8 months pregnant. Here's my absolute favorites.







Looking forward to: Getting this kid to 37 weeks, that feels like one of the last few milestones and then he can show up whenever. 

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

33 Week Update

How preggo I am: 33 weeks, only 7ish more to go. I could have a baby in 5 weeks though. That's not out of the realm of possibility. Or 10 weeks, haha. I don't want to set unrealistic expectations for myself.

33 weeks

Baby size: 
Between 4 to 6 pounds roughly, it's weird to think about how baby like he looks by now. He's close to birth height 17 to 19 inches. He definitely feels ginormous.

Food cravings/aversions: I want all the things that are going to give me insane heartburn. Chocolate cookies, jalepeno popper dip. Things I will eat and regret.

Edit: I regret nothing about eating jalepeno popper dip. Worth it.

We did have a good laugh at our mommy and me brunch. You could tell the majority of us that came that week were pregnant by the lack of mimosas and wide range of food from jalepeno popper dip to waffles and watermelon. It was all delicious, I might add.

Other symptom: The usual again, I'm tired, my bladder is the size of a squashed pea, Braxton Hicks (not as bad as with Lyra I don't think, or I'm too busy to notice them), my lower back, hips, and feet are sooooo sore. Heartburn is basically a given these days, zantac still helps but not 100%. I predict this baby will have hair too.

I've slowed on weight gain again, I gained like 5 pounds total the first 20 weeks, then about 25 in about 10 weeks, and the last 3 not really any again. It seems like it all happened at once. And it seems I gain more than average. I didn't really track with Lyra and I'm trying to be chill about it but it is hard. Especially with everyone commenting about how huge I am. The day is coming where I am going to hear "You look like you're about to pop," one too many times and I really will figuratively "pop" on someone. It nearly happened the other day. I'd already heard it once that day and then I am 95% sure I heard a random guy make a comment about me, not even to my face, just about me where I could overhear. I was not 100% sure though. I possibly misheard and I didn't want to look dumb yelling at someone for something they didn't do. But I'm pretty sure it happened. I don't understand how people think it is ok to make comments like that. And for the record, I think I'm just a bit larger than I was with Lyra which is really normal. Not to mention I'm measuring perfectly on track for 33 weeks.

I had a fantastic pregnancy brain moment this week. Travis found a coffee mug half filled with water that I'd put away in the cupboard. While I was pregnant with Lyra I lost a measuring cup of water in the microwave for a few hours.

Sleep: Still pretty awful. I slept so much with Lyra's pregnancy that I didn't feel super tired. This time I don't have that luxury. Also my allergies and the intense wildfire smoke are not helping, I wake up to sneeze and blow my nose as often as I do to pee. It sucks.

Lyra is in a terrified of monsters stage so she is waking up about once a night again. But she's also obsessed with monsters and wants to watch monster shows all the time and recently expressed the desire to be the chupacabra for Halloween. I fully support this and will absolutely make baby brother dress as a goat. It might be my fault that Lyra likes and fears monsters so much, I 100% relate.

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Mood: It is constantly too hot and there's horrendous air quality with the wildfires and my allergies so I'm kind of testy but not too terrible. Other than today is hitting me pretty hard. I had the last miscarriage a year ago. I thought I'd be fine but I'm feeling 1,000 more feelings than I thought I had. I'm debating a whole post about it. I just haven't had a good time or energy.

Names: My vote is still Oswin Finley.

Lyra stats: She had this one day where she was the spawn of Satan despite a 3 hour nap, I don't know what was up with that, it was a new level of terror. But then she had a really good day where she was patient and wonderful through a full day of errands.

Funny toddler quirk moment of the week, she had this weird obsession with my arm for a day. She kept rubbing her face on it and cuddling and kissing it. Just my arm, not me in general.

Best moment this week: I don't know that there's a specific event that comes to mind

Other stuff: Major baby prep happened this week after finding out my placenta moved. Plus Amazon prime day and baby registry discounts kicked in. We have a few more things to get and not everything has shipped yet but the baby's nursery and our room is pretty much set up.

The crib and possibly glider won't stay in the room.

The baby crib will be side-car style next to the bed here, mainly hoping to not have our bed completely overrun by small children.

The baby changing station will also be in the master bedroom too.
I also did some couponing and deal finding and scored big on diapers and wipes. We use cloth mainly but disposable wipes for outings and poop because it's just so much easier. And disposable diapers are our backup for travel, laundry emergencies, babysitters, etc. I got all of this for $100 after stacking coupons and gift cards back from a target deal and Ibotta.


That's 6 boxes of diapers and 2 of wipes, normally it would be $180. There's some tax in there and such but still, great deal. I already had 2 boxes of wipes from previous less extreme but still satisfying couponing. So I'm honestly thinking this should get us through a full year. I'm fairly impressed with myself.

I also set up my birthing space in our bedroom. I know things happen where they happen but I'm thinking it is my probable spot for labor and delivery.

I'm planning on adding some string lighting, birth affirmation decorationy stuff, and hopefully a yoga swing or some type of suspended support system. 

And I have a cozy nook for anyone sitting and waiting or needing a break.

Looking forward to:
 Hopefully making the last few big decisions about my ideal birth plan. I'm trying to decide on a birth photographer and there's a few travel arrangements for friends and family up in the air.