Thirty Eight Weeks

(Apparently, I am larger than last week. When the nurse called me back for the appointment, she told me how much I had grown since last week. She said I surprised her when I stood up. That is good, I guess...)

Yesterday I had my thirty eight week appointment. The night before, we put some finishing cleaning touches on our car and Will attempted to install the car seat. I am finding a hard balance between being prepared for the baby to come at any point and not getting my hopes up. Unfortunately, I do not think I balanced those two things very well yesterday. I keep hoping my doctor will tell me I am having contractions that I am unaware of and that I should go to the hospital, ha. So I found myself pretty emotional yesterday wondering how long I will have to wait for her. Will kept reminding me that I have not even been pregnant the allotted time of 40 weeks yet, so to just be patient.

The good news is that my body is preparing for labor. I keep reminding myself of this because a lot of first time moms do not show much progress at all. My doctor told me he hopes to see me this weekend, ha. He mentioned how cool it would be to have a fourth of July baby. I agree with him, but once again I can not set myself up for something that might not happen. I am really against inductions for non-medical reasons, but I am beginning to understand why people induce. The lack of control as to when I will have this baby is difficult to handle sometimes. Actually, the lack of control pregnancy has brought on is hard to handle. I am thankful though for being forced into finally giving up control, but I still try and fight it.

I keep asking Aspen when the baby is going to come, but she refuses to give me a straight answer.

Even though I was unable to travel to Houston this weekend for the baby shower, we were still showered with gifts. Claire came up on Saturday and we ate at the Hula Hut. It was great fun to catch up with her and see the part of Austin I grew up loving. Hula Hut is a mile from where my grandparents house used to be. We would walk to the lake Austin quite a bit when we would visit them. We also went by their house to see what it looks like. It has been vacant for two years, but all the memories of the house are still so fresh. Sometimes I wish life did not have to change and time did not keep ticking away.



She gave me the most adorable outfits and a portable newborn cradle/rocker thingy.

Then on Sunday, some of Will's friends came up to see us. They brought with them a fantastic diaper cake, more cute outfits, and a matching set of towels, burp cloths, and bibs. I was too eager to get everything out of the diaper cake to take a picture. We really enjoyed getting to catch up with friends we had not seen in a while and celebrate the baby. We feel extremely thankful for everyone's generosity and excitement towards us.

We are going to head to Target to get a couple more last minute things and then to Michael's. I am getting the itch to make more stuff for the baby. Possibly decorate the letters of her name. We are about 95% sure of a name at this point, but hopefully you won't be waiting too long to find out what it is.

"Full Term"

We had my 37 week doctor's appointment yesterday. Everything still looked great. His guess on how much she weighs right now is about 6 1/2 pounds. She is not too big, but definitely not small, is what he said. Even though everything says at 37 weeks the baby is full term and ready to come, I think it is more like 38 weeks that she would be good to come. So maybe we will have a next week baby??

The doctor also strongly advised against traveling at this point. We had plans to come to Houston for a baby shower some of Will's friends were putting together, but had to back out of it. I was pretty upset about this because it would have been wonderful to share this time in our lives with friends. We will just have to share the actual baby with everyone now, since we will be on lock down for the next couple of weeks.

I am really feeling like it is getting close for her arrival. I have no idea what contractions feel like, but I am growing increasingly more uncomfortable. One of my fears is not knowing for sure if I am in labor, but everyone swears I will know. It is strange to just be sitting, waiting for something, never knowing when it might come. The not knowing is something that I do not deal with very well.

I pretty much marked everything off my to-do list the past two weeks and I do not have much to fill my time now. Will's suggestion was to make stuff to do. For example, take all the clothes out of my closet and put them back in. Silly boys...

Will still has a job he has to do for a professor in Montana, so he carts his lonely wife with him when he goes to do work. I think today will be a Barnes and Noble day.

Nesting Projects

1. Our brand new couch from Ikea. We made the mistake of wandering into Ikea two weeks ago to "just look" at some of the couches. We both loved this one and the concept of being able to replace the cover. It is really difficult to not fall into the consumerism trap when everything is so adorable in Ikea and they make it incredibly easy for you to mimic all of their decorating ideas. We decided that we were most likely going to have this couch for a while because the next place we move we will actually hire movers instead of just pulling a trailer. (the couch is gray)

2. This picture is not a very good angle of the crib, but I wanted to capture Aspen's new favorite spot. The crib fits perfectly in our room and it causes us both to get waves of excitement every time we get a glimpse of it. My mom just finished the bumper so I will post better pictures once the crib is fully set up.

3. I knitted these headbands up fairly quickly for the little miss. I think they will look adorable on her wee little head.

4. This is the chest of drawers Will and I repainted. It was originally white, but we both agreed an antique look would be better. I was pleasantly surprised at how it turned out since we were newbies at repainting furniture. It is in our living room and our new television sits a top of it. (Even though we still do not have cable.)

5. This is the glider chair that my mother purchased for us. It is incredibly soft and comfortable. I also have it in our living room. I have this strange feeling that I will be up quite a bit in the night and it will be nice to come in the living room so Will can get some sleep.

It has only taken us about two weeks to get the apartment to feel like our home. Round Rock is by no means a place we would like to settle, but we both agree it is a perfect fit for right now.

Eight Months Down, One to Go!!

I am not able to really grasp the reality that we will be welcoming our baby girl in a month or so. I feel I have entered a place where I try hard to imagine what it will be like to go into labor, to be at the hospital, to drive home, to spend the first night home with her, but I just can not. I think it will all be surreal. I will be depending on pictures to help me remember all these things because I know my head will be spinning the entire time.

We have been keeping busy here in Texas. I will hopefully be putting together some pictures of our place. We are still waiting on my glider chair to arrive and put some finishing touches on the dresser we repainted. It seems as if the list of "to-dos" might not ever end. I just want everything to be in as much order as possible before baby arrives.

We are off to go the grocery store. It is still hard for us to adjust to the huge crowds everywhere we go. Round Rock itself as double the amount of people in all of Bozeman. The population difference and all that goes along with that are sometimes difficult to get used to.

Thirty Five Weeks

This week marks the thirty fifth week with thirty five days remaining. For some reason, thirty five days left seems a lot less than five weeks left. This week also marks the first week Will has been back in Texas and poor Aspen gets to experience the Texas heat in all its glory.

Will took this picture of me as we were headed out the door to my doctor's appointment. This doctor is very laid back, which I greatly appreciate, but he also tends to stay away from details. Such as what my exact blood pressure reading is, what the beats per minute of the baby's heartbeat is, how I am measuring, etc. He just says, "perfect, great" over and over again, ha. So when I asked at the end if he was concerned about baby not being head down, he said, she is head down. Which was quite exciting and I am so thankful I asked because I would have been worrying about it. I am pretty sure she flipped once Will arrived. The doctor also said I am starting to make progress and oh so casually said, "any day now" as we were walking out the door.

We have basically put everything away in our new apartment. I have the crib assembled and her bed all made. We are in the process of redoing a piece of furniture Will's mother brought us. We should be having the glider my mother so graciously bought us arrive next week, and hopefully we will have a new couch that Will's mom is going to buy us very soon. After we have the rooms set up, I will take pictures of our new place.

I have loved being able to get things ready for baby. Her clothes are washed, cloth diapers washed and put away, hospital bag almost packed, checked into the hospital, car completely cleaned and detailed, and car seat and stroller bought.

Our heads are still spinning from the huge move from Bozeman, actually living in Texas again, having a baby, "any day now," where we are going next, but I think we are both really trying to enjoy each moment of the here and now. I am trying to just focus on one day at a time and really soak in all the little moments of just us.

I think we are going to go over to my mother's house tonight to watch the NBA playoffs. It is such a strange thing to live next to my mom and be able to casually drop by to use her cable.

Thirty Four

Here we are, yet another week has gone by. This week is extra special because Will is coming in THIS weekend. In fact, he is packing up the trailer at this very moment. I finished up the last little details of the moving into our new apartment today, so we should be good to go. I do not think this apartment is going to feel too homey because we know it is going to only be temporary, but I can not get over how it will be pretty much double in size of our old apartment. I know that once Will gets here the weeks are going to fly even faster. I can now officially say we will have a baby next month.

I have been getting frustrated with the ever increasing amount of shirts I am outgrowing. I think that the problem is not how huge my belly is, but the combination of the belly and the long torso. All shirts are hitting me short. Will says it makes me look like Homer Simpson.

This white shirt is a new one I bought yesterday. It is maternity, but still pretty stretched. Oh well, six more weeks, right?

I guess having babies is a popular thing these days because it seems like every day someone new announces their pregnancy on Facebook. It is strange to me to see people with due dates in January. That seems so far away. It is hard for me to believe that my pregnancy is nearing the end while others are just starting their journey.

I treated my mother to pedicures today. Even though it does not even put a dent in all the things she has helped us with and done for me since I have been here. It was very relaxing. Especially since my personal foot rubber has been several hundred miles away and I can no longer bend in a way that allows toe nail clipping.

Well, I am off to feed this baby belly and then work it out at the gym. The evenings are the optimal time to go because all of the seniors have already turned in for the night.