the nursery is coming together

above you can see the refinished white dresser with the changing mat and diaper supplies on top

in this pic you can see the rocker, the bookshelf and the crib (which david was finally able to find time to set up yesterday. woohoo!!) i think the bedding looks very adorable. dave says our baby is already spoiled beyond belief...i think he's right.

in this corner we have the pack n play. once we move the birth tub out of the front room, we will probably put the pack n play in there, next to our bedroom door. the baby may sleep in there at night, or they may sleep in the crib. i really haven't decided. and there you can also see the carseat which will be in our car soon. so once that stuff is moved out, i may push the crib over in front of the window. although that may be an issue when the baby is old enough to grab the curtains. oh well, then we could figure something else out. :) i love moving furniture.

i still have several pieces of artwork to put on the walls. but that's kind of the story in every room of the house. no exception in the nursery. we just hate to make holes in the walls after all the work we've done to make them smooth and blemish free. :(

we set up the birth tub friday night. we're having some issues though with our water. it is very murky and muddy looking. all the sediment has now settled to the bottom of the birth tub but it looked disgusting at first. there was no way i would have given birth in it! so, we have to figure out a way to suck out the sediment now and hopefully figure out a way to get our well fixed that's somewhat affordable :)

37 weeks and 6 days!

i just took this pic today, at 37 weeks and 6 days. so flattering, huh?

it is hard for me to believe that the due date is only a couple weeks away. it is very surreal. i asked dave sunday afternoon if he knew what was about to happen to our lives. he said an a-bomb is about to hit us. nice. that's kind of a good way to put into words how i'm feeling. :) i think that we've been so focused on remodeling and getting as much done as possible that we haven't been mentally preparing ourselves to become parents very much. of course i'm not sure that we can actually do that anyways, so i suppose it's good we're just keeping busy and not stressing out.

for 5 hours saturday afternoon, we had a childbirth/breastfeeding/newborn care education session at our hosue with one of the midwives. that was pretty informative. a lot of the stuff we'd heard before but it was great to have that refresher session and that time set aside just to focus on this blessed impending event...

last night we had our 38 week checkup with the midwife. my blood pressure was lower than it has been for months, so that was a blessing. i was praying that it wouldn't be high again. the midwife commented on how cheerful and joyful i am, more than when she first met me. i think that i'm just really excited that we're actually starting our family now and i'm feeling at peace with what i'm going to have to do to have a home birth, etc...we heard the baby's heartbeat again. the midwife said the baby is in LOA (left occiput anterior) position which the other midwife said Saturday is one of the most ideal positions for birth (basically it's head is down...way, way down according to the midwife, she was pretty surprised again...and the rear end is on my left side and the feet are on my right side). they also said i have lots of amniotic fluid and that the baby is "good-sized". i'm trying not to dwell on that "good-sized" thing. ugh. or i might just stop eating for the rest of the pregnancy, which probably wouldn't be good.

last week i had a couple things happen that indicate impending labor. and there was a spell of contractions happening about every 3 minutes thurdsay night that fizzled out after about 15-20 minutes. so we're getting pretty excited. now if only dave could find time to finish the baby's room. and oh yeah, set up the birth tub! or we won't have a water birth...

i have been pretty emotional lately. crying at the drop of a hat. ugh. sometimes i even laugh at myself while i'm crying. it's craziness. just uncontrollable. we have taken walks the past 2 nights. i regret that i haven't been more active this whole time but at least i'm doing something here at the end.

i'm feeling very huge these days. i never realized how challenging or near impossible it would be to do certain things with a stomach this size. trimming my toe nails and especially painting them myself is out of the question. that's now dave's job (as if he doesn't have enough to do, right?), putting on pants is a huge challenge and picking anything up off the floor is hard too. i'm looking forward to meeting the baby and being able to do this mundane stuff again for myself with ease.

our friend nick guesses the baby will be born july 19th since that's his bday. and our mom's guess the night of the full moon (the 25th/26th). so do any of you have any guesses?

35 weeks and 5 days today!

this pic was taken saturday after our midwife home visit (at 35 weeks and 3 days). i was talking to emily on the phone but didn't want to miss having dave take my pic while i looked nice and he was here and i actually remembered to do it. i've been forgetting all sorts of things the past few weeks. it's driving us crazy.

it's amazing how big this baby is getting, isn't it? i think i'm really, really looking pregnant now. i still just feel fat when i look in the mirror though but this pic helped me to see that it's mostly baby.  i have been feeling more and more uncomfortable i guess because of my size. ugh. it's just awkward to have all this belly. and when i roll over in bed or something, the baby feels like it kind of wants to do its own thing and not roll over but then it does, kind of like a delayed reaction. it's weird. and i've been having practice contractions off and on the past few weeks. mainly when i'm doing a bunch of stuff that i probably shouldn't be doing. haha!

last week at the 34 week midwife appt she noted that the baby was still breech (as it was at 32 weeks). and she said that 80% of babies have turned by week 32, it's a developmental milestone. so...she referred me to a chiropractor to do the webster technique and they both gave me a bunch of random things to do to encourage the baby to turn. the craziest of these was when i had to lay upside down on a door propped up on one end of our couch and dave had to burn these little cigar things next to my pinky toes for 20 minutes. of course the pyromaniac in him loved that!

as of monday the baby was transverse. then wednesday it was back to breech. but anyways, something must have worked because saturday the midwives checked the baby and said that it is now vertex (head down). woohoo! so we are praying that it stays that way till it's born. then it can move around in the real world as much as it wants :) since the baby took its time to turn, the midwife has been saying that she thinks that it won't come until mid august because it might just not be as ready developmentally to come. but then when they were checking it, they realized that its head is very far down for this stage of the game. so that tidbit of info had them second guessing when they think it will come. i of course have always felt that it would come early, so i'm sticking to that. i feel like it was just procrastinating turning but now that it has, it's ready to come meet us. :) of course i'll probably be pretty frustrated now if it is like august 10th when we finally have it. so i try to just take this all 1 day at a time and not think about it.

another thing that i realized last week, and i was talking to dave about is that since i don't know the baby's sex, i really don't feel like i've connected that well with it at this point. i don't know if it's a defense mechanism or what, but i just feel kind of like i don't want to bond too much yet because i'm still waiting to be sure that everything goes alright with the birth, etc. it's like i don't want to count my chickens before they're hatched. i won't let myself get too attached but i feel like when the baby is born and i see it with my own 2 eyes, i will truly bond with it and then i'll feel like i can let my emotional guard down. is this messed up?

also, i feel really good about the homebirth choice after the visit saturday. we gave them a tour so they know where everything is, they brought the birth tub (which we are not setting up till next weekend), and they checked to make sure that i had all my supplies in order (fun things like chux, depends, hydrogen peroxide, baggies to store the placenta for them to take for research or something, a cookie sheet in case the baby isn't breathing they can resuscitate it on that, etc, etc.)  i was also able to meet 3 other ladies who may be attending the birth with the midwife (depending on who is on call i guess at the time). 1 is a nurse and 2 are also midwives. our midwife said that the other 2 midwives have probably attended more births than her, especially the one who is from the UK and worked in a hospital there. i was very glad to meet them since i had only met 2 other assistants in the practice, 1 of which is moving and the other who is expecting her baby 5 days before me. so, i feel better knowing the people who might be here for the birth. the nurse who was here will only be here thru july so she will only attend the birth if it happens in july. she reminded me a lot of the riggles that we grew up with so i felt instantly close to her. i hope that it works out for her to be here.

we feel like God is really preparing us and helping us grow up these last few days before our baby is born. we've both been a lot quicker to forgive each other, to compromise, etc. we're moving from our extreme opposite tendencies and merging more into the same person. for example, i'm becoming more anal retentive and dave is becoming less anal retentive. it's nice. i've been an emotional basketcase the last few days though so that's been a challenge for us both.

update

i blogged a little on our main blog about the pregnancy right now. things have been crazy lately trying to wrap up remodeling. took a belly pic about 2 weeks ago at 31 weeks and 2 days. i know...outdated now...

right now i'm 33 weeks and 5 days. feeling pretty good. just huge. sometimes i can't wait till we meet the baby. sometimes i'm scared and think it can wait as long as it wants...

here's the pic...

update

we are in the 3rd trimester now. can you believe that? i've gained more weight so far than i wanted to the entire pregnancy so i'm a little bummed about that. but i am still getting around really well, feel great, etc.

we had our 28 week dr. appt. last night. everything went really well. my blood pressure was back down to normal (it was on the high side of normal on april 1st, the day i was frantically preparing for vacation and rushing around, and there was some concern that if it continued to be high then i'd have to transfer to an ob/gyn...and/or take meds). i also passed the diabetes test, so i don't have gestational diabetes (even after eating a bunch of sweet stuff this weekend! woohoo!) we will also have to wait and see on the results from the blood test about the hemoglobin. last time (a couple months ago) it was really, abnormally high and she attributed that to dehydration. hopefully it will be lower this time. i've really been trying to drink a lot of water (although this weekend kind of threw me off because we were travelling, etc.)
we also got to hear the heartbeat again. last few times it's been around 138 i believe, and this time it was around 130...and it was much louder and clearer. penny (the midwife) said that it sounded really good for this stage of the game. we could hear all the valves working and then we heard the baby move...that was neat. dave also got to feel it move last night when he put his hand on my belly. i think that the baby is sort of a night owl...it seems to always move more in the evenings and when we are getting ready for bed.

we had our first baby shower this past weekend in ohio. my mom and my sister threw this amazing shower. they rented out a room in a restaurant. the food was amazing. the decorations were amazing. the theme was "feather her nest" and there were little glass bird favors and little bird nests at each place with 3 handpainted (by emily) eggs inside...she painted each one a certain color then flecked dots on it with paint on a toothbrush. i think she said she painted 90 eggs. she is an amazing woman! so patient and loving!! also keeping with her amazing attention to detail, emily bought me a handmade necklace that is a birds nest with 3 pearl eggs inside it. it is so sweet and i will treasure it forever!

it was such a warm loving shower. everyone blessed us with amazing gifts for the baby, and a few things for me and david even too! and it was so much fun to see everyone that i hadn't seen for ages. my only regret is that i didn't get to talk to each one of them more.

our bedroom is coming along. we are almost ready to sand and prime the walls some more. then we can paint and get the new carpet and move back in :) at that point, we can clean out the nursery and start setting up the baby's things in there. the crib. the glider. the bookshelf. the dresser/changer (that does not exist yet). and all the beautiful blankets and toys and clothes. yay!

26 weeks today!

well, there you have it. 26 weeks photo. taken just like 5 minutes ago.

more of a belly showing now i think :)

my friends' little boy and i just went for a walk in our baby's new stroller/carseat combo that our other friends gave us. :) we walked 2.5 miles. woohoo! i think that he liked getting outside in the fresh air...and he gave me the biggest smile when i said, "can you say 'dadadadada'?" then he made an "mmmm" sound as if to try to say "mom". how sweet!