25 weeks!

Still truckin' along in second trimester land! Nothing too new to report. We are still workin' on names and growin' this babe. We are talking more about how things will be once he or she gets here. How we will set up our room to accommodate baby and how the nursery should be, whether we want to go to the birth center or have the babe in this stinky apartment! So much to think about. We have mostly been focusing on getting settled into our new apartment - which has been adventure that I will tell you about in another post. Mostly we are just feelin' great and enjoying pregnancy! Baby is doing SO many flips and maneuvers in there these days - I really hope Grant can feel it soon, but he hasn't yet been able to.

These are the ultrasound pics that I got when I fell a few weeks ago. Pretty cute kid, huh?

 

This one is my fav! All cuddled up with the placenta and looking at us! 

Amazingly baby is now over a pound in a half in weight and 13 plus inches in length! Getting so big! Mostly working on gaining weight and makin' that brain nice and smart. That's all we have to report this week...I'll come back on later to report on our Memorial Day weekend and apartment adventures.

24 Weeks!

6 months pregnant! That feels like a good milestone, but like there is still a long way to go. I've been feeling really good still and babe has been kicking away in there. The kicks are definitely hard enough to feel from the outside, but easier for me who can feel them both out and in. Grant has tried to feel them, but isn't certain he can yet. Baby likes to stay tucked way down in my pelvis so sometimes the kicks are really low, too.

Last Wednesday we had a little scare. I was attempting to run on the waterfront with Olive when she spotted a bird and lunged for it tripping me in the process. I was TOTALLY laid out - I fell belly first and scrapped up my hands and knees pretty bad. It was a hard fall so I called the midwife after walking home. She had me come in to listen to baby (heartbeat was great!) and gave me the option of an ultrasound to confirm. In the end I decided to go for the ultrasound so I'd be convinced one way or the other of how things were going in there. Thankfully, baby looked great and my placenta was in tact. I was worried about the placenta primarily because it is right out in front. I got a few more pics of the babe that I'll post as soon as we get them scanned.

Babe is working on growing his bronchi and brain this week. He is happily bouncing around in there still with a bit of room to move easily. In the coming weeks it will start to be a tighter squeeze! I'm really excited to start working on the nursery now that we are moved. There are still boxes everywhere and a whole storage unit full of crap, but as soon as we get settled I'm going to tackle that tiny baby's room. I should also maybe work on registering?

23 Weeks!

Trudged through another week! Nothing too exciting to report. I'm still feeling good except for some serious bouts of heartburn, especially when I spend long stretches crouched or hunched over working on our apartment. Though I still feel good physically, I'm starting to feel gross in my constantly revolving 5 maternity tops and one pair of jeans. Hopefully we will get some summer weather soon and I can live in some breezy dresses and flip flops. That is really all I want out of clothes right now...loose and don't hurt my feet! All my shoes are starting to hurt my feet.. not sure if its the 20 extra pounds or the fact that my feet are widening as the ligaments loosen. I may end up one of those girls who wears flip flops even in the rain...I almost cried my converse hurt my feet so bad today!

The belly. I'm getting asked all the time when I'm due and if we are having a boy or a girl. I guess its good to know that I look confidently pregnant and not just questionably chubby. Its kind of fun to be asked, but sometimes I feel like a bit of a freakshow with the extra attention. Almost like I'm advertising something very personal all the time. I love having the belly though - its something I've dreamed of for as long as I can remember. I'm totally one of those annoying people who is constantly touching their belly and when I'm in the apartment my shirt is always pulled up... mostly because it rides up anyway and I get tired of pulling it down, but also because I love the belly. I haven't been able to see baby move in there yet, but I can feel him all the time. Its funny - when I've been crouching for a long time he starts to get all antsy, like he is telling me to give him (or HER) some room! At least once a day I can feel a good hard kick on the outside of my belly, but the timing has always been off for anyone else to feel it.

My pregnancy email tells me this kid is now OVER 11 inches long... that is almost ruler length! And a smidge over a pound in weight. Getting big! Since babe can for sure hear us loud and clear now I've been trying to talk to it, but I never have anything to say. ha! I really want to get some headphones to play music for it, but I haven't made the trek to pick some up yet. We were eating with my parents this weekend and started talking more about some of the tiny babes I'd taken care of in the NICU and it still BLOWS my mind that those babies and families were where we are in terms of 'readiness' for the baby and reality of the pregnancy. I still feel like its not real half the time. If this babe came now I'd be in complete shock. So sad for all involved. Keep cookin' baby! We want you good and chubby!

New Diggs

After a long and exhausting search of homes to buy and apartments to rent all over the Portland metro area we settled on a spot. I can hardly believe it! It really felt like the day would never come! There were so many factors to consider - the greatest being that this would be the place we will plan to birth and begin our babe's life. Plus Olive is such an active little thing we had to decide if we could do without a yard. Grant really wanted to continue living the urban lifestyle and since it doesn't seem like there will be a better time in our life to give that a go we focused our apartment hunt downtown. And we found ONE! Amazingly, it has two bedrooms, is just outside the Pearl, has a dishwasher, fireplace and is affordable! There is a lot of work to be done to make it pretty so here are the before pics. I took them real quick this weekend so please excuse the grainy/blurry parts...

what you see from the front door

the living room and fireplace is to the right

you walk straight ahead into the dining room. We can still use our table!!

the dining room has three big windows which help with keeping it bright!

opposite the dining room windows is a door to the 'master' bedroom...it has black moldings and a serious lack of closet space, but we are working on improving both...

from the master you can go to the left in to the bathroom. It has a cute, old clawfoot tub which is charming, but needs some TLC in general...

The bathroom is a 'jack and jill' that leads into the other bedroom, which will be the nursery.

Its pretty small, but should serve the babe well. I'm really excited to start decorating it!

there is a tiny door from the nursery that wraps back around to the kitchen. The other entries to the kitchen are from the back of the apartment or from the dining room. I'm sure its hard to visualize, but its basically a big circle.

this place is not our dream home by any means, but allows us to affordably live downtown and also have a second room for baby. the other bonus is that we are on a month to month lease (we didn't even ask for that!) so we can leave as soon as we want or need to. Not that we think we'll leave soon, but if our dream home comes on the market and we just have to buy it we won't have to worry about breaking the lease!

our stuff will arrive from storage a week from friday... and we have to get every inch of this place painted before then. Wish us luck!

22 Weeks!

Made it another week! I feel like these pictures are becoming less and less flattering! In my defense I'm fighting a cold and this was early Sunday morning. Oh and I gained 13 pounds in the past month. THAT COULD HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT! I saw my midwives today and it is optional to get weighed, but I opt-in to see if I'm on track. Well.. apparently I caught up! I've gained 21 pounds so far... now I need to get back to the one pound a week thing or I'm gonna be one of those women who has 90 pounds to lose when its all said and done. Also, this was a different scale than I was weighed on last time and I had my shoes and jacket on. All those things could add up to a 5lb difference, right?

Anyway, other than the giant jump in the numbers and the cold I've been feeling good. I was still running 2-3 times a week until early this past week. It started getting hard! Baby was bouncing on my bladder so I'd feel like I needed to pee almost immediately after starting, my feet hurt, and my calves cramp up. I'm throwing in the towel on that one. I'm trying to continue to take Olive on long walks and I walk around downtown alot for errands, etc. I also do prenatal yoga once a week... did I tell you that? I've been doing it since we moved back and I LOVE IT. I'm going to buy a DVD so I can do it at home a few more times a week. I go to a class at the Matt Dishman Community Center and its awesome. A great group of women and after people have their babies they come back to show baby off and tell us their birth story. I love it. Everyone is very open and supportive even though we are all making different choices in pregnancy, birth, and baby-rearing.

At my appointment today baby sounded good - heart thudding away in there and laying transverse across my belly. When I ran last week Olive stopped to say hi to a bum that is always hanging out near the Hawthrone bridge. He is always really cheerful and nice. I slowed and was encouraging her to move along when he said, "You have a boy" I thought he was saying Olive was a boy, but I noticed he was looking at my belly! I laughed and said, "Oh, thanks. We'll see" and he repeated, "its a boy" Cracked me up. Apparently me and the bum are on the same wave length regarding our guess for baby's sex. Wonder if we're right?!

Apparently we have entered the stage where baby's growth isn't quite as dramatic each week so we just get one fruit a month. Its the month of papaya! Baby is working on refining his facial features and is in general looking like a mini, skinny newborn. He is also working on kicking his mama nice and hard! I love it! That anterior placenta made it so hard to feel the nudges, but now they are very distinct. I'm just waiting for a time when the kick is hard enough that Grant can feel it! 

Wanna know something really weird and sad? The youngest baby I ever took care of in the NICU was 22 weeks. OMG they are so little and fragile! Breaks my heart to think of my baby being outside the safety of my body when its so tiny. Its amazing medicine can even keep them alive at this stage, but sometimes I wonder if its for the best.

A day at the Beach!

Our day at the beach consisted of... Olive loving life, eating, lounging, and walking. IT WAS AWESOME. The food part of our day started off with some delicious crepes from the new crepe shop in Cannon Beach.

Olive REALLY wanted to share some. I might have given her my last bite...

Her first visit to the beach and she was ENTHRALLED. She could not get enough of the sand, water, seaweed, people, and the smells. Nose to the sand all day long!

We found a few spots of beach that were less busy and let her off leash. I wish she could always be off leash...maybe when she gets older and less spastic. There was lots of sprinting and stick chasing.

Haystack Rock.

Nice to take a break from house/apartment hunting and do NOTHING productive all day long.

She pounced over the waves!

Poor girl hates the leash...

She can jump so high when she really wants something!

See the pouncing??

We got stopped by lots of strangers who wanted to give Olive love. This lady was particularly loving...she cuddled up to Olive and gave her lots of kisses. Olive ate it up. It was a great, sunny day at the Oregon coast. I hope we never go so long without seeing the ocean again!

Bithday Bunco!

We missed the past two years of Birthday Bunco and we were SO HAPPY to get to join back in! Lindsey always makes shirts for the birthday girls...this year it was pretty funny because she missed the 'r' in Birthday so for the night it became Bithday Bunco, hence the post title.

Lindsey and Dan the Man! So fun to get to know him better!

Me and the Hubs... The pictures from this night taught me not to wear this shirt anymore. Lookin' a bit whale like. Glad to get a pic of us together with the bump though.

After we completed four rounds of bunco Lucas treated us to his party trick... rip and sip... apparently it is much easier than one might think to rip the top off a beer can with your bare teeth and then chug the contents! It was SUCH a blast to get to spend time with some of our favorite peeps and play bunco. It is seriously one of the most fun games that gets a random group of people mingling like no other. 

Though I get BORED not working and was so stressed about finding a place to live, things like Birthday Bunco and getting to meet Maddie early on and seeing my family on a weekly basis make me SO HAPPY TO BE HOME!

21 Weeks!

Look at that - a belly on the beach! It had been almost a year and a half since that body had seen the ocean and oh man did it feel good. I will share more pics of our day at the beach this week, but I thought this one was fitting for the weekly update. You see... I sometimes cheat and take my weekly photo on Sunday so Grant can take it for me. This week we woke up Sunday after being out til 1am and I looked ROUGH! I didn't even drink! Seems like if you can't drink you should get to wake up looking all gorgeous and sparkly. Instead I had a swollen face and tired eyes... makes a prego girl look washed up. Anyway.. Those pics are below. I just thought this one was a bit more flattering.

There were lots of, umm shall we say, "impressed" looks and questions at the party Saturday night about just how far along I was and some comments of, "WOW you are big!" Lovely. I also get winded easily and I noticed a few people looking concerned when I had to take some deep breaths. Ha! Have I told you yet HOW MUCH I MISS BEER? I really do. It will be a happy day when I can down a cold one without worry. (That is related because it was REALLY HARD to be the only sober one Saturday night.)

The biggest news of the week is that this kid likes meat and gets pissed when I've gone a few days without it. I was really sick last Wednesday morning - I felt awful and couldn't figure out why. I finally realized it had been 4 days since I had any meat. I'd had protein, but not actual animal flesh (sounds good, huh?). I decided to try eating a huge bacon cheeseburger for lunch and I've felt fine ever since! I've been trying to make more conscious decisions to include meat in every meal because apparently its what this kid needs. Gotta keep it happy to keep mama happy. 

Most of the week I felt barely any flutters from baby, which was a little stressful and concerning. Then this morning and throughout the day I've felt some big thuds like baby is flipping around in there. I wonder if it got bigger or just moved into a different position. Pretty crazy that baby went from cantaloupe to banana... seems disproportional! I guess we are supposed to just focus on the length of the banana. Baby is working mostly on growing this week. We are still working on names, but I think we made some progress yesterday. For boys we are thinking August Eugene, Holden Miller, or Reed Miller and for girls we like Maren and Aurora. We don't know about middle names for girls yet. What do you think? Names are SO hard.