Last belly shot!

It's pretty painful for me to post this, because I'm not proud of this picture. But when your (new) sister-in-law demands another look at your belly, I guess you oblige.

It's not so much embarrassment over the belly - it's weight gain with a purpose and completely reversible. I'm hating my hair! It looks funny today, but with the few times that Chris sees me with non-grungy clothes (pj's) on lately, we had to take advantage and take the shot. I'm growing out my hair, so I can pull it up and have an easier time with juggling a newborn. But my hair is so thick that when it gets long, it gets lumpy. I'm almost due for a thinning-out, and it's quite lumpy today. Oh well.

Yay!

So much for not celebrating today! Chris brought me home flowers and is busy grilling me dinner right now -- steaks! I've craved beef a lot this pregnancy.

Happy 2nd Anniversary to Us!

Since it's the last week of the semester (and one of my last weeks working for a while), we decided a week-night celebration might be too stressful. So we're going to have dinner on Friday here in town, while enjoying the First Friday (like gallery-hop) festivities.

Week 38

Week 38 - 2 weeks to go (give or take...). I guess I should really say that I have 0-4 weeks to go, because that's the real timeline that we're looking at. I've decided that next Sunday seems like an excellent day to go into labor, but we'll have to see if Bambino agrees.

Nothing too exciting planned for the week, just still trying to wrap up loose ends in various parts of my life: work, home, etc. We head back to the OB on Thursday.

Shower pictures

So... the shower pictures are few, because the flash wasn't on and all but two were very blurry. Oops! :)

But here's a group shot of my friends, mom, grandmother and I:

And here's a shot I took later of all the lovely gifts! Bambino got lots of great stuff, as well as some money/gift cards to finish out our registry at Babies-R-Us. This baby is already quite spoiled!

Baby Chat

We had our very informative hospital tour last night. At one point, the nurse told us that the father should go over to the bassinet, while they are cleaning bambino up and checking her over, because his voice will soothe her as one she recognizes. Chris got all freaked out by that, because he hasn't really gone out of his way to make his presence known, other than nightly "good night"s and occasional commentary about the fun they will have together this summer, and such. He said he was too embarrassed, because he didn't know what to say.

So last night, I gave him some prompts. I recommended starting with his 3 favorite things about that day. And here they are, in order of greatness: (1) Seeing her on the growth ultrasound that morning, (2) Riding the Vespa to work and back, (3) Montreal advancing to the second round of the Stanley Cup. That broke the seal of talking to baby, let me tell you! About 20 minutes later, I had to cut him off, so I could go to bed :)

Update

We went to the OB today for an ultrasound. As it turns out, Bambino is not as big as expected. She's healthy and at a good weight, however. The ultrasound estimated her to be 6 lbs, 7 ounces, with an expected birth weight of just over 7 pounds. She's at around the 35th percentile for her gestational age, which is good (they like 35-65). She does have long legs though, which explains a lot!

Bambino is still head-down facing to my left. Her head is right up against my bladder (no kidding!), and not any closer to getting ready for delivery than she was last week. Her spine is on my right side and her hands close to her head. She appeared to be sucking her thumb or hand at one point. My belly is the most hard at the top, about 2-3 inches above my belly button, and we found the reason. There, on my right side is her bottom and on my left side are her legs, with her two feet pressed up against my belly. So that's what was sticking out at 3am last night!!

Dr. V says that we'll definitely be seeing her next week, and then hopefully the baby will have made some progress by then. That's fine with me! I made a deal with Bambino that involves no birth until at least May 1st. :)

Week 37 - Full Term!!

Month 9! This month (weeks 37-delivery), baby is a watermelon! [no kidding!] During this month, our little girl could range from 18.9 to 20.9 inches long, and from 6.2 pounds to 9.2 pounds.

Mommy and baby are doing well. The whole family is off to the OB tomorrow to check in!

We had our last baby shower this past Saturday. I will try to post pictures soon!

Busy week!

We headed down to the hospital twice this week.

First time, it was because I was not feeling well on Monday, and my OB's nurse wanted me to go get checked out. Fortunately, the baby was not in distress, just mommy was in distress! Bambino's still sealed up tight in there and had a happy heartbeat. I think I'm just in that last-month slump when the baby is already pretty big and everything is affected. For the first time, I was able to say that I'm really ready to have her come out into the world!

Second time, we went down to go to our baby care class. I don't know that they shared too much that we didn't already know, but it was fun to practice.

We have our hospital tour on Monday [though we had to do a "trial run" on that this past Monday], which is pretty much the end of our baby prep. Then, we'll relax some and get ready for her arrival!

Week 36

Last week of Month 8! Next Sunday, I will be 9 months pregnant and Bambino will be "full-term". Wow.

This is pretty much the last of our "big" weeks. We're taking a baby care class on Thursday. Yeah, I know, Chris and I should have the basic knowledge of caring for an infant at this point, but the class was cheap and it didn't seem like it could hurt to have a bit more knowledge. I'm skittish about super teeny-tiny babies (they seem so breakable!), so this should help my confidence some.

I have my final baby shower on Saturday - the one rescheduled from "blizzard weekend". I've been "nesting" for a couple of weeks now, trying to get all the little details in the nursery taken care of. It will be nice to share my efforts with my guests. I started packing a hospital bag for myself and for Bambino. It only freaked me out a little bit! :)

Starting next week, we slow down a bit and will try to be more focused on getting the house ready for the baby - setting up things and installing the car seat base. We also want to take advantage of our pretty house by spending some time outdoors, planting and mulching. The jury is still out as to whether we're doing a vegetable garden this summer, but we know we want to plant some annuals out front and fix up the lawn a bit. Chris can just plop me out front with some flowers and a spade and I'll go to town, leaving the heavy work for him.

It's April 11th?!

Eek, that means just a month to go!

I had a good appointment at the OB yesterday. She did a lovely check of bambino's progress, and said that she's still sealed up tight in there! Still head-down, but not really getting into position yet. So that's good news. My belly is measuring a bit ahead, so they will be doing an ultrasound on the 21st to see how big bambino is getting (how much of this is baby, amniotic fluid, or just too many cupcakes). I'm not in favor of an induction, so I don't know what the news would make me re-consider on the matter. Perhaps it would just make me prepare me for the inevitable. Either way, we get to see her again!

Tomorrow I'm heading down to the Outlets to meet my mom for an afternoon of lunch and shopping. I can't imagine that I'll get much, but maybe there will be some baby steals that I just can't pass up.

Week 35

Week 35 and everything is still going well.

I will be sure to update everyone on Thursday, because (I think...) that's the day that my OB starts making those checks that tell us if the baby is making any more movement towards coming early. I'm not thinking she is, but you never know, right?? I have felt over the past couple days some increased pressure lower than normal, but I don't think she's "dropped" into the lower position yet. She's still head-down, as evidenced by the location of the hiccups (low) and the kicks (high).

We have another ultrasound scheduled for April 21st, because our OB wants to check her size. As of week 28, she was estimated to be around 7lbs at birth, and I'm hoping that number stays true. Too big is no fun, but you want them to be a healthy weight for a lot of reasons -- of decent importance is because there's a correlation between size and how soon they sleep through the night. :)

Yesterday was a fantastic day in our household - the "no work zone". We slept in a bit and then had a big breakfast of eggs, toast, turkey bacon and strawberries. Then we went to a local garden center to discuss the possibility of putting in a veggie/herb garden in our backyard, and to the grocery store to pick out some food for our picnic. I got the picnic ready while Chris went for a Vespa ride. We drove over to a park along the Scioto river and had a lunch of turkey pastrami (Chris), chicken salad (me), bread and olive oil and tomatos (harkening back to our days in Italy), carrots and zucchini, and strawberries. Next, we went to Babies-R-Us and picked up another thing off our registry with a coupon I'd been hoarding that expires soon. Then, we had our childbirth class down by campus. We closed out the day with dinner at one of our favorite Italian restaurants - Cafe Bella. It's such a tiny place that they recognized us, which is weird because we've only gone twice in the past 6 months (both times with an Entertainment Book coupon - haha, we really need to go sometime without a coupon to deserve our "regular" status). The entire day was very relaxing, and very necessary for two almost-parents.

Childbirth Class

We took the "Childbirth with Epidural" class today. I wasn't fully committed to an epidural (and am still not), but personally wanted to take a shorter class (4 hrs), because I don't want to get too anxious about the birthing process.

I thought this class was great and perfect for us. It went through all the steps of the laboring process, like how to get labor to progress at home, when to go to the hospital, and how to keep it progressing once you get there. Even if it's progressing slowly, progress helps to decrease the need for a c-section or other measures that we'd prefer to avoid.

I really think she explained everything to us in such a way that it didn't assume that we'd all get epidurals, but if we did, here's the facts that you'd want to know. It also explained some more stuff about epi's that helped Chris and I formulate a plan on the matter [did you know that there is more than one type of epi??].

I was really surprised by Chris - how interested he was in everything and how much he got out of it. Between that, and the fact that he's interrogated several young parents lately, I think he's finally ready for this! There's been a major transition in preparedness and confidence over the last week or so. Now I just need my transition to occur - Haha!!

End of week update

Chris and I decided that a trip down to Cincinnati might be more exhausting than beneficial, so we've amended our plan. Tomorrow (Saturday) is going to be "work-free day" in our household. We've decided to sleep in, have a big breakfast, and then just spend some quality time together, free of class preparation or other work responsibilities for either of us. We're going to check out how the weather will be, but some initial thoughts were to go on a picnic, do some baby shopping at Babies-R-Us, dinner out down in Columbus, and then of course we have our Childbirth class from 3-7pm. This seemed like a more relaxing alternative and definitely cheaper than a trip to IKEA and the outlets! :)

Other news flashes:
--I've started to really be able to identify Braxton-Hicks contractions, but I don't get them too often.
--My innie belly button is officially an outtie. **Correction: it's just more frequently an outtie than an innie. Picture a turkey timer, it pops out when the bird is fully cooked. Well if I'm laying down, it's usually an innie. But as soon as I stand or eat a meal, it pops out due to the pressure on the inside.
--The spring has caused me to be unable to tolerate any warmth whatsoever. I guess bambino is an internal heater, because I've been wearing short sleeves and no jacket for two weeks (in 40-degree weather even).
--Bambino gets the hiccups.... on at least a daily basis.