Week 30 Belly Pic
Emma wanted to be a part of the belly picture today. Technically, Saturdays are my “new week” day, but I usually don’t get to take a picture until later (or if I remember early on Friday before leaving for work). Lily even got in on the belly poking fun.
This week has been a little crazy. I’m starting to get easily worn out. Lennon ate Emma’s pancakes this weekend, and when after yelling at the dog, I felt like I needed to sit down and catch my breath. Some days my stomach just feels so heavy and hard. I don’t remember feeling like this with Emma until the 9th month so it’s a little daunting to think of 10 more weeks.
I have been washing and folding baby clothes to start organizing them into the dresser.
Next week, I will have to go to the doctor’s office more frequently since it’s the 3rd trimester. I don’t recall when it’s every week, but I know she said it’s coming soon.
Sleep has not been easy lately. I have been waking up around 4:30am and not being able to go back to sleep for an hour or two. Then suddenly, a wave of exhaustion hits…and it’s time to go work.
Baby has moved slightly under my ribs and started getting the hiccups about 1.5 weeks ago. I forgot what they felt like until I realized the movement I was feeling was too consistent and rhythmic to be kicking. This baby has lots of hiccups just like Emma did.
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.
I 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.
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.”
Week 20 Belly Pic
Week 20. No real issues right now. No more nausea. Sometimes a little short of breath, but I think it’s the fact that my heart rate will go from 65 to 130 in two seconds. Emma is excited about being a big sister and thinks it’s a boy, named Harry. I can’t eat most of my meals so I find that I’m full after 1/4 of the meal…but then starving again 2 hours later.
Week 18 Belly Pic
Week 18. Pretty much no more morning sickness…
Except for the day that I woke up, saw a used pull-up filled with pee on my bathroom floor, got nauseated at the sight of it, turned around to see that Emma had peed in my toilet and not flushed, got more nauseated at the sight of it, decided that maybe I needed to take my Zofran for nausea, noticed that my water cup was not on my nightstand, asked Peter it out of Emma’s bathroom, took a big gulp of water with my pill, and realized that Emma had put hand soap in my cup…after I swallowed it. Then threw up. Then laughed at how hilarious that whole situation was. 🙂
Kick, Kick, Kick
One June 16, I started feeling some pretty reliable kicks during a meeting. It was funny because I sat through the meeting pretty much ignoring the little bubbles that I felt in my lower abdomen. You know, sometimes it’s just gas…but about halfway through my meeting, the thought occurred to me that this is about the time when baby kicks start happening.
Since then, the kicking has been on and off, but it’s definitely little jabs and kicks. When I yelled at the dog yesterday for eating Emma’s food, I felt a quick twitch. I think the volume must’ve scared someone in there.
On another note, I feel pretty tired each night by about 9:30. Un-pregnant Lauren likes to go to bed at 11pm and stay up forever. Pregnant Lauren can barely keep her eyes open after putting Emma to bed. However, if I wake up in the middle of the night to let the dogs out or calm a sad child from a dream, I can’t go back to sleep for at least 2 hours. So that’s fun.