32 Weeks

For some reason, I always think of 32 weeks as the beginning of the homestretch, so, fittingly, I've been buckling down more this week. I'm working on cutting down on the extra sugar in my diet, which should be much easier to do now that the holidays are winding down, and I've finally increased my water intake to more of what it should be (still have another 10oz or so to go each day, but it's much better now). I've upped my daily exercise, so on the days I'm not doing yoga or an hour of cleaning (like today), I'm now walking 30 minutes at a brisk pace on the treadmill.

Ryan and I also went through my to-do list and made some adjustments to it and even made some decisions: we now have names picked out (still a secret!), a plan for daycare (same place Josie was at before, assuming they have space), and a plan for new baby's sleeping arrangements (we briefly considered a co-sleeper, but now will be sticking with sidecarring the crib to our bed again) and my "nursing nooks" (a smaller setup in our closet for at least the first few weeks, and a secondary setup in the baby's nursery). We also oxi-cleaned all of Josie's old clothes that were in need of it, and brought down all of the baby stuff from the attic to organize and clean. Josie is now in her full size bed too, so since the bed had been stored in the nursery, that opened up a lot of space in there. We still have to arrange the furniture and closet in the nursery, but we'll tackle that next month.

I'm still sick, but I feel like maybe I'm getting better? My nose is slightly less stuffed up during the day, although it's still been bad enough a couple of nights that I had problems sleeping since I couldn't breathe. The sleeping situation was slightly better this week - I'm still waking up several times a night and not exactly feeling refreshed in the morning, but I feel like I may be moving towards acceptance now: I'm functioning (for the most part), I actually am feeling pretty good (despite being diseased and sleep-deprived), and I'm not quite as frustrated by my inability to sleep as I have been. Also, the new baby keeps me company in the middle of the night, since it likes to give a good, hard kick whenever I shift positions, so that's kind of the bright spot of my multiple wakeups each night :)

New baby added scraping movements to its repertoire this week: I don't know if it's an elbow or a leg moving across my belly, but it's definitely disconcerting. It was kicking so much at work yesterday that I found myself working most of the day with one hand on my belly to better feel the baby kicks :) Ryan's mom and both sisters also got to feel the baby kicking on Christmas, which was fun to be able to share that with them, although Ryan's younger sister's reaction (screaming) was my favorite ;)

     

31 Weeks

Well, after mentioning the lack of hiccups in last week's post, new baby promptly remedied that and got the hiccups :) Just once so far, though.

We're all still sick from last week, although Josie seems to be almost better at least. Ryan and I perhaps are getting a second wave of disease, since while I started feeling better towards the beginning of this week, I now feel even worse. My sore throat is gone, but now our congestion is really quite unpleasant for Ryan and me. And despite many, many strange and intense dreams this week, I actually slept pretty well (read: only one wakeup) one night... and then that all went south again, as I'm now waking up more than ever.

I had an appointment with the midwives this week, with the last of the four midwives who I hadn't met yet - despite her being one of the two most likely to attend our birth (based on location). That went well, with my belly measuring 30cm (as it should), and my blood pressure and baby's heartbeat still doing well, and no edema quite yet. New baby still appears to be posterior (facing my front), which is not great since it can make labor longer/more intense, but hopefully it will turn around on its own sometime in the next few weeks... and if not, I will be trying my best to get it to turn :)

     

30 Weeks

This week has been a very exhausting week. Josie came down with a cold last weekend, which of course meant that Ryan and I are now sick again too. She was not sleeping super great all week and was waking herself up coughing, which meant even more wakeups for me than usual, and then I lost 1-2 hours of sleep a couple nights because we just ended up bringing her back to bed with us since that was the easiest way to get her back to sleep. Which meant she and Ryan got back to sleep just fine, but I have more problems getting back to sleep after 5am (when this kept happening). So even though Josie was behaving herself and didn't kick me in the head at all (which marked the last time she had slept in bed with us, almost a year ago), I just got to lay there the rest of the night and hope that resting would have at least some benefit to me.

So I was basically a zombie by Friday, went to bed at 8:30pm (after Josie went to bed two hours early too) and got up at 8:00 this morning. My nose is still completely stuffed up and my throat is sore, but I'm at least awake and (mostly) functioning :) And poor Josie's ear drum ruptured this morning, so I guess that explains why she was so fussy last night before she fell asleep in Ryan's arms at 6:45pm :(

New baby was still moving all over the place this week, and I got caught for the first time at work while I was staring at my belly waiting for the baby to move ;) There have been a few more side-to-side, belly-shaking movements this week, rather than the usual kicking and punching. Still no hiccups yet, though!

We've also been making some progress on our to-do list - I got the paperwork/deposits sorted out for a couple of birth-related things, and we've also been working on names. We're going with the same boy name we decided on when I was pregnant with Josie, and we had a girl name seemingly all picked out but then we started second-guessing it, so we've been poring over girl names again the last couple of weeks. I'm just curious to see if we end up going with the first name we had picked out, since we did almost this exact same thing with Josie too :)

     

November

November proved to be a busy month, with Josie starting at her new preschool, Ryan being gone for a week, various outings, and Thanksgiving.

Josie did really well for her first day at the new preschool, not even caring when I left and jumping right into the activities they were doing. I took that day as one of my required government shutdown-related PTO days, so I picked her up after lunch, and we headed down to the river after her nap for snack time. This is one of her favorite things to do now, as she always asks to go to the river and just wants to cuddle on the bottom step and watch the water (and leaves and fish) go by.

[All ready for her first day at the new preschool]

[Heading out to the river]

After that, we headed over to the mall to try to find some pants for her and try out the mall play area. The play area was a fairly harrowing experience (a kid pulled her off the slide by her leg, then pushed her into another little girl, who accidentally knocked Josie over, making her burst into tears - all within the first five minutes), although she eventually found her little corner to have some fun where she wasn't getting run over every couple of minutes. We struck out on finding any pants for her, but she did get some quality dancing time in at Old Navy.

Things were not so rosy the next week, though. Ryan was in Iceland for work, so my mom stayed with me to help out, but it was still hard with the time change (that Josie actually did very well with, but me, not so much) and Josie realizing Ryan was gone for the first time, on top of the transition to the new preschool. So she asked where daddy was multiple times a day, and while we at least got to video chat with him before she went to bed most nights, it still seemed like his absence affected her more this time than any previous trips.

After the success of the first day, Josie started crying each morning when I dropped her off at preschool, which, since she never did that at her previous daycare, I probably took harder than I should have. She had several very emotional days, and some worsening fits during morning dropoff (including screaming, crying, kicking, throwing herself around, and refusing to be comforted by me or her teacher), but then she started doing a little better towards the end of the week. She was still crying in the mornings, and super, super excited to see me in the evenings and drag me out the door, but she was beginning to play with the other kids more and was less emotional throughout the day.

Once Ryan got back and took over dropoff duties again, she still had a few days of being sad at first, but now apparently runs to her teacher to give her a hug, takes off her jacket right away (which she refused to do the first couple of weeks), and then runs off to play. She is fully participating in the activities throughout the day, and loves music time, outdoor time, lunch time... basically, everything. And her vocabulary has really expanded, her language skills have gotten better, and she sings now. Oh, she sings. She sings all the time, anything seems to set her off into a round of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" or "The Wheels on the Bus", and there are very definite rules to the singing - as in, we're not allowed to just start singing with her, and she will let us know when it's our turn ;)

[Clean up, clean up!]

Josie also had some troubles adjusting to changes to our routine at home too - namely, we're waking up a bit earlier in the mornings to give her breakfast before preschool (she used to eat at her previous daycare instead). So breakfast turned into a battle for maybe the first week or two, until we got a timer to put some parameters around how long the meal would last (she gets less mad at the timer than at us) and we started involving her more in the process. She also now picks whether she wants to have cereal or eggs, and then helps us make it too. She is back to eating all of her food again, although she's still fighting the cleanup and tooth-brushing a bit afterwards, but not nearly what it was.

Josie's sleeping situation has been a little odd this month. She's still doing great with not even attempting to get out of bed (although once she dropped her kitty out of the bed, and I watched her on the monitor as she very gingerly got out of bed - keeping one hand on the bed at all times - grabbed her kitty and jumped right back in), but we've had to go in several times to spin her around since she sometimes gets her legs hung up on the bed rail or has her head hanging off the bed... she stays asleep through this, but cries enough in her sleep that it's better for us to just take care of it rather than let her eventually work it out on her own (or fully wake up). She has also had several nights of crying out every hour, and since that tended to happen Monday nights, I'm not sure if preschool was stressing her out or something.

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house again this year, and despite the last-minute stress with Ryan falling ill at the last minute, the food was great and it was so nice to spend time with our families.

[Josie dancing with her cousins]

[The spread]

Josie also helped us prep the meal too, and she was super excited about helping me bake the pumpkin pie (possibly even more excited than she was to eat it!). She also sort of helped Ryan prep the vegetables for the veggie tray the night before, but with a little less success...

We met up with my mom, brother, and sister-in-law at a local park/farm, where Josie had her first carousel ride. She loved it, and even named the horse she had picked out to ride ("Horsie"). She also went on her first wagon ride, which I skipped out on in case it was too bumpy - instead, I headed over to the indoor arena to watch the Quarter Horse show that was going on, but I sadly had just missed the classes I used to show in (and this was actually the last place I ever showed my old mare too, way back in 2001). I suspect we'll be back to this park more often, especially once it's warmer, since there were lots of activities and animals for Josie to see. And we've already been back once, to play on the playground and pick up some of their (free-range) eggs :)

Miscellaneous cuteness:

[Raiding my closet]

 

[We had to take a family picture to send to preschool - this isn't the one we sent, but was still my favorite :)]     

29 Weeks

This week I started getting comments that my belly "popped". I'm not sure if that's the case (especially since I seem to have shrunk in my picture for the week - although I may just have been larger in last week's picture because of Thanksgiving!), but I do definitely feel bigger. I now have to put on my shoes in a lunge since I can't bend over to put them on - it's not just that I'm uncomfortable with my belly in my way, but it almost hurts. Even getting up from sitting is becoming more difficult - although I magically seem to have not lost any agility yet while doing yoga, so maybe it's at least partially mental ;)

Despite the fatigue and illnesses lurking around (I've had a sore throat when I first wake up the last few days, but it hasn't developed into anything more yet), I still feel pretty good. I don't have any of the aches and pains like I did around this time with Josie, nor any edema yet (yay!). I'm even doing fairly well about sleeping on my side now, except for it's on the wrong side (right instead of left), and side sleeping leads to back pain for me (although at least that usually goes away fairly quickly).

I am still waking up multiple times a night, only now sometimes it's for a bathroom break, which is a little more disruptive. I am still having vivid dreams every single night, but they've been a bit darker than normal lately (e.g., teaming up with a former high school classmate to solve a murder at a private/public hybrid high school, helping locate the evidence needed to bring down Walter White (from "Breaking Bad"), which for some reason happened to be at my old trainer's barn in Michigan).

On a happier note, my appointment with the midwives went well this week. We had a wide-ranging discussion to start off the appointment (from Thanksgiving to "Breaking Bad", which may at least be an explanation for what triggered that dream), started working through some birthing logistics, and then checked on the baby. My belly was lopsided when I laid down, which was the first time I've noticed that this pregnancy - new baby is big enough now to make my stomach look weird :) My belly is measuring right on track, my blood pressure and the baby's heartbeat were really good, and new baby is still very active. I've actually been feeling a lot more movement this week, but I think it's still only a fraction of what new baby is actually doing, since the midwife could hear (and see) the baby moving all over as she was trying to get the heartbeat, and yet I only felt a few of the movements.