23 Weeks

Warning: This is a whole bunch of randomness.

I think the mood swings have kicked in. I feel like I am PMSing....like I could cry at the drop of a hat. :( Not a fan.

I am also not a fan of this pain in my left ribcage. Doc thinks its a pulled muscle from my ribs stretching to accomdate the baby, but dear God, its killing me. It hurts more and more every day. It started only occuring at the end of a long day of sitting at my desk, but this morning it started hurting when I got in the car to go to work.

Other than those complaints, that's all I got. It was Thanksgiving last week and we certainly had a lot to be thankful for. We went down to Brownsville to spend the holiday with my family and we'll spend Christmas here in Austin with Justin's. My little sister, my mom, and my dad all got to feel the baby move and that was exciting for them. My dad is ready to be a grandpa, my mom is ready to be a grandma, except she doesn't want to be called grandma or grandmom or grammy or grandmother. ::eye roll:: Okay mom, you figure that one out. Needless to say, I probably packed on about 5 pounds that I didn't need to pack on between all the turkey and tacos I ate. Last week's appointment had me at +14!!!

Anyway, my little sister gave me her gently used Canon Powershot XS10 for my birthday and I was psyched. We had been talking about getting a newer nicer camera before the baby came and while its probably not the exact one I might have gone with, its a free awesome camera to learn on! She gave me a crash course on its operation while we were down. Now the pups get to be my subjects for the next few months. Muahahaha!

As far as any baby preparations have gone, I ordered some bedding to see if I like it. This is what I got - the Bananafish Lily collection.

I think I want to go with brighter colors for her room. I ordered two variations of the bumper, a sheet, and the crib skirt. I'll keep you posted!

Here's me tonight...large and in charge...ok so maybe not quite....but I feel it.

Very Exciting Development!

Last night, I was sitting on the couch and felt some rumbles in my ute. Stronger than I've felt before. I lifted up my shirt to see if I could feel her from the outside, but before I could move my hand, a little area on right side of my stomach poked out!

"Oh my God!!" I exclaimed. Justin was in the kitchen and heard me laugh and squeal and thought something was wrong. "No!" I said, "She's moving big time!"

He finished up washing his dishes while I saw another jab in my stomach. He came over, got to see another one, and then placed his hands on my stomach to try to feel her. She stopped making such big movements. :-(

"I'm not crazy, you saw that too, right?!?!" He said he saw it, so I'm not completely crazy.

She's been really active today now and I was able to feel a kick down low from the outside. It's crazy how I went from feeling little flutters or rumbles to feeling full fledged movement AND seeing it from the outside. It's so exciting and strange, I love it. I've waited for what feels like forever to feel this.

On another note, I'm seeing numbers on the scale I've never seen before. I officially crossed over 140 for a total weight gain at 21 weeks of 10 pounds. And it's only just begun huh? ::side eyes scale:: Slow down there scale.

Here's my latest picture, 21 weeks, 3 days.

Tomorrow night, I get to evoke the fifteen year old girl that resides inside of me at the midnight premiere of New Moon. Hopefully I can stay awake!!

Great Deal!

Sunday, we went to wander around and look at baby stuff. We ended up at Buy Buy Baby where we found the glider (by Best) I've been drooling over on sale. It was slightly damaged in shipping, but nothing that a furniture pen couldn't cover up. I don't blame the people for returning it, I would too if we paid full price for it. But their return was our gain! It was about $120 off, plus they let us use our 20% coupon on it...for a savings of almost $200, making the cost a whole lot more reasonable.

It looks a little green in the picture, but the upholstery is a light chocolate brown.

We are now trying to agree on bedding. I'm trying to go with a pink/green color combo with birds and trees either on the bedding or on the wall. Justin wants to go pretty girly, but to me, some of it is just "too much". Decisions, decisions!

20 Weeks, 4 Days

It's a..................

GIRL!!!!!!!!

We were right all along and my stupid recent dream meant nothing except to throw me for a loop. Justin never wavered.

Everything looked good, she's already after her daddy's heart by weighing a "perfect" 12 oz....daddy's favorite measurement as he so proudly proclaimed in the room when the tech said that. (Be jealous, he's alllll mine.)

I'm going to try to explain this clearly, I forget some of the terms they used, but the short answer is that I/we shouldn't worry too much about it. The one "concern" they have is that her right kidney appears to be a little more dilated than the other, so if she's working on kidney issues, she's taking after me. :-( They weren't too concerned, the range for a minor concern they said was this certain measurement being between 5 and 10 and hers was 6. Usually it clears up before the baby is born, but they like to keep an eye on it in the event they need to notify the pedi.

He said at the worst case, it will clear up by the time she's two and may have to be on some antibiotics after she's born to avoid any UTIs. That is more rare though. But....he said this is very common, he sees this about once a week and usually will clear up before she gets here. The bright side is that I have another u/s in 7 weeks--just after Christmas to see if anything has changed. We'll get to get another peek at her.

So I'm going to take his word for it and try not to worry. It's a relief to just know what we've got going on in there and very exciting to finally say one way or the other!

We went to Babies R Us to look at girl stuff (since we can now!) and I found some cuuuute outfits. I'm loving Carter's these days, they have a bunch of panda stuff!!! I'll have to post pics later of some of the cute stuff I snagged.

We also went out to dinner to celebrate--which we would have done either way. Justin is "over the moon" excited and thrilled to have a little girl on the way. He confessed (at least this is what he says) that a girl was what he wanted all along. I could have cared less, really, a healthy baby is all I asked for. I'm just happy he's happy. I might have to complain about him one of these days, but the past few weeks he has been wonderful. The first few weeks were rough when I was tired all the time without any "proof", but now that its becoming more real for him and he's seeing the evidence, he's heard the heartbeat, he's seen the baby a few times--he's been wonderful. 99% of the time, he's been so considerate the past few weeks and I am certainly enjoying this Justin.

Anyway, hooray for little girls!!! Now to decorate the nursery and decide on a name!

I'm disappointed we didn't get very good pics this time, except a couple 4Ds of her face. Here she is!

Two Things...One Funny...One Not So Much

1) I received one of those automated calls from my OB's office last night, reminding me about my ultrasound on Monday.

I had to laugh--this is the moment we've been waiting for!!!! How in the world are we going to forget about this?!?!?! :-) It's been on my calendar for a month. No worries message robot...we'll be there.

2) It appears like my belly button is starting to pop out. I didn't think I had a popper. My belly button, she's always been good to me. She's the one part of my body that I never had any complaints about. Cute, clean, nice to look at. That was her. Now, it appears we may have to deal with an outtie for awhile. I've had an innie for 30 years. I don't know how to deal. I hope its not permanent. Sad. Tragic. Goodbye cute tiny little inside belly button.

19 weeks

Almost halfway there and six more days until our BIG ultrasound!

Consider these the "Before" Photos

Here is how the nursery looks...in its "Before" state. The art on the walls is what was in there when it was a guest bedroom. Justin was very excited to get everything arranged, but now it sits empty and undecorated.

I discovered the room is difficult to take photos of. I hope I can get some good ones once we get it all decorated (in pink or blue of course)! As far as furniture goes, we still need to get the hutch, the nightstand, and our glider/recliner.

So far, this is the bedding I like for a girl--Love Bird by Bananafish.

If we go this route, we'll probably put a giant tree decal in the room. I don't know what we'd do for a boy yet, nothing jumps out at me. I've always wanted to do a puppy theme since I love dogs so much and they are a big part of our lives, but our friends who had a baby a couple months ago did the puppy thing already. I don't want to look like I stole their ideas or anything.

If its a boy, I have to keep looking and try to decide on something so I can get Justin his "assignments" to complete over the holidays. :-)

18 Weeks

Had my 18 week appointment last Thursday and all was well. My bladder is acting up, which is unpleasant, its giving me the symptoms of an infection. I'm pretty sure that any spotting I was seeing was coming from my bladder....pretty awesome right?

My urine test came back negative but the doc thought it might be a good idea to give me a round of antibiotics to kill any bacteria. Apparently the Macrodantin that I'm on does a good job of keeping bacteria at a low level, but there must be enough in there to cause problems for me now.

I asked Justin to come to the appointment so he could feel a bit more involved and I think it was good for him. He hadn't heard the baby's heartbeat yet, so he got to hear it for the first time. It was loud and clear at 155 bpm.

He was also introduced to the little thing all us women are very familiar with - the dreaded speculum. Doc wanted to do an internal exam to see if it was my cervix that was causing any bleeding, but all looked well in there. My cervix is nice and firm and very closed, so I need to stop freaking out about the spotting. There wasn't any evidence of any blood coming from my cervix nor any in my vagina. I had seen it that morning, but it must have been my stupid bladder.

Anyway, he was a little uncomfortable. Luckily I had him rearrange the office before the doctor came in and made him move the chair up by my head. Look at me, thinking ahead and all. :-)

So other than my bladder, all appears to be going well.

Here are pictures from last week:

In addition, remember how I was convinced that it was a girl? I had a dream over the weekend where we were in the ultrasound room for the big ultrasound and we saw it was a boy, loud and clear. The tech hadn't even gotten to the gender determination yet, but we were flashed and it was completely obvious. It was a very vivid dream too, so now I'm wavering big time. I wonder if it meant anything....it had to, right? :-) Justin's still pretty certain its a girl. We'll find out soon!