Protected: Checking Blood Sugar
Week 31 Belly Pic
50 Days
Today marks 32 weeks and 5 days, which means there are approximately 50 days left until Baby Franza’s arrival. There is something good and also overwhelming about that.
#1 The good part is that I will feel more like a human again in about 50 days–minus the sleep. I am extremely exhausted lately, and it is definitely from the pregnancy insomnia that is happening right now. I feel like I just toss and turn all night. I also keep waking up on my back…which feels amazing to sleep like that, but pregnant ladies are not supposed to sleep on their back. Flipping over in the middle of the night is quite the hassle, but Peter is a good sport about me grabbing onto him as a lever to hoist myself over. What a nice guy 🙂 I’m pretty much dead once 8pm hits. It’s a miracle if I can make it through a TV show at night. I find that it takes about 3 days to actually make it through a television show lately.
My pelvis is pretty sore right about now so I’m trying to distract myself from pain by walking around stores and window shopping. It is nice to walk around a store at my own pace and just browse through each aisle.
#2 The overwhelming part about things is just feeling like I have to wrap up projects at work and possibly train a temp; this idea sounds like a nightmare to me, and I dread the idea of it. I also have to clean the house one of these days but see point #1. The days are much shorter when you are exhausted.
The idea of having maternity leave during the fall/winter actually sounds pretty good though. Here are some highlights:
- Not having to drive to work at 8am in the dark
- Not having to drive home at 5pm in the dark
- Being able to plan Emma’s birthday party
- Being able to have a little cupcake party for Emma at her school during the week of Christmas
- Being home during the holidays
- Having Peter work from home during this leave which means I might actually be able to shower and brush my teeth
- Actually being able to celebrate Christmas this time versus last time
- Being able to walk around the block during the month of November/December before it gets too cold
- Hoping that most people take lots of time off at work during this season so I don’t miss much at work
Protected: Glucose Testing
Week 28 Belly Pic
This week marks the start of the third trimester. Feeling kind of large this week. Starting to get a little paranoid that someone is going to ask when the baby is due and then say, “OH MY GOSH? YOU STILL HAVE THREE MONTHS TO GO?”
Peter and I went to the doctor last week for the glucose test. Once again, I opted for fruit punch because it pretty much tastes like Hawaiian Punch. They took some blood, did some tests for vitamin D levels, iron, and diabetes. Hopefully all tests come back normal. I don’t mind having to take a little extra iron if needed. I know I had to do that with baby #1 so that’s expected.
I think I felt some hiccups yesterday. I have occasionally been feeling a rhythmic “thump, thump, thump” feeling, but because it’s so light I didn’t associate the feeling with hiccups until yesterday.
This weekend we sorted about 13 boxes of infant/toddler clothes so we can see the baby’s bedroom floor again. It’s so much better walking by a bedroom that doesn’t look like a mess.
Peter made a nice shelf last week from scratch and painted it white. He installed it this weekend. I will have to post some pictures of it up on the wall. It’s looks really nice.
More things to come. Maybe that’s what I’ll do when I have pregnancy insomnia at 4:30am one of these mornings.
Week 27 Belly Pic
I accidentally wore the same outfit for the week 27 picture. Oh, well :). You wear what fits.
And here’s a little picture of me and Emma snuggling before church.
Week 24 Belly Pic
A Baby Room
If you asked me what I’m most excited about right now, I’d probably tell you decorating a room. There is something so fun about taking a room that you were never really happy with and making it your own. Or someone else’s own.
Our spare bedroom has always been intended for child #2. For the longest while, we just kept the door shut because it was this hideous dark blue/dark gray color, and the previous owners had this lovely habit of painting the ceiling the same color as the wall.
Once Emma got a “big girl bed” for Christmas this last year, we moved her baby furniture into the spare bedroom. It was funny to see it look like the beginning of a real room, but it still wasn’t right. It just felt like a dark cave with a crib in it.
You can see it in the real estate picture above. It looked good enough for buying a house, but obviously this is not in my color palette.
As soon as we heard that the baby was probably a girl, I was excited to start painting. Now, if you know me, it really doesn’t matter what gender my child is; I’m probably going to paint the room a neutral gray/beige or light aqua blue. Because that’s what I do.
I decided to go a bit out of my normal and pick a minty color. Yes, I know. CRAZY. 😉 It may look bluer depending on the monitor setting, but it’s got a slight minty feel to it.
Peter was very quick to run out to Lowe’s, buy paint, and start getting rid of that dark cave. It took him four coats of white paint, but the cave is gone forever! He also added a nice ceiling fan.
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This room below was kind of my inspiration for the baby’s room. I loved how colorful it was.
IÂ found an adorable banner at Babies R Us and decided to buy it. I figured if the baby ended up being a boy, I’d just return the banner. It has a similar blue-ish color, some coral, green, and brown. This was perfect because a lot of Emma’s crib sheets and hand-me-down bedding stuff is in this color scheme as well.
For the walls, I created some custom art in Photoshop and printed them. These colors pretty much give me the option of adding any color to the room, and it will fit in. The middle picture is a song that I sing to Emma at night before bed, and she absolutely loves it so it seemed appropriate to welcome baby #2 with this song as well.
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I am hoping to get one or two crib sheets to add to the mix, but other than that, we really don’t need one of those big, fancy bedding sets. I realized just how little we used most of the stuff inside the bedding set for a year. You’re only allowed to put a sheet on the bed so all of the other bedding doesn’t really get used until the baby is at least one year old.
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I also got four really cute organization bins from Target in the dollar section. They were $3 a piece and are pretty nice quality. I will post more pictures as I start to clean up the room. Right now, there are about 9 million bags of baby girl clothes that I have to sort through and organize.
A Little Sister or Brother?
So about 3 weeks ago, Peter and I went to my 20-week ultrasound visit a few days earlier than 20 weeks. Unfortunately, the ultrasound technician said that many babies aren’t very wiggly at that time, and that proved to be true.
When the ultrasound technician tried to take a peek at Baby Franza #2, that baby just stayed in place and was very comfortable in that position. The u/s tech tried everything she could think of to wiggle the baby out of place but no luck. She told us she had an inkling of what gender the baby was and told us her prediction was female. She told us she wanted us to come back in 2-3 weeks for a better look–and to drink coffee and eat something sweet before the visit. Then at the very last minute, the baby moved a hair, and the u/s tech screamed, “Yay! Ok, now I’m 90% confident it’s a girl.”
It was actually ok to keep the news to ourselves for a bit because we needed to figure out how to tell Emma the news. Emma had been positive the baby was a boy, named Harry. She would refer to the baby as “when HE comes, HE will…,” “when HE eats…,” etc. Then one day Emma said, “I think the baby is a girl. I just changed my mind.”
Skip ahead to 3 weeks later. The u/s tech was very positive it was a girl and gave us a billion pictures to show our families. I laughed hysterically when I saw the baby flexibly folded in half, just the way Emma sleeps at night.
Since we aren’t really big into gender reveal parties, we decided to make Emma announce the news to everyone. We also figured that would help her feel like part of the excitement! When Emma got home from school, we gave her a box with a present for her in it. If it was Nonny the boy Bubble Guppy, then the baby was a boy. If it was Anna from Frozen, then the baby was a girl. Knowing how much Emma loves Frozen, we figured this would be perfect for her. She opened the box and was happy to see Anna in there. She also made sure to mention to us that she knew it was a girl. 🙂
So we repeated this activity for the family, and Emma enjoyed being the bearer of the exciting news.
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While it is slightly calming to know that we have tons of girl clothes that can be reused, it is also slightly nerve wracking to think of how Emma will react once the baby girl gets here. Will she be jealous? Will she be happy? Will she regress in her “big girlness?” Probably a little of all of those. I just want her to know we will still love her and that she is still our “little elephant.”