Is It Nap Time?

So as I hit the home stretch , as every pregnancy web site calls it, I am having two very distinct emotions. I definitely feel like "okay let's do this already " and I also feel a sense of peace about the craziness that will be my life once the baby comes. I have truly experienced every emotion I can think of in the last 7 months. I have spent a lot of time being scared of what the birth will bring and being terrified that I won't be able to cut it as a mom. At this point I am willing to concede that I won't do everything right and that is ok. I have enough humility to ask for help. I am not ashamed to say I can't do this alone and I will ask whoever is there for whatever help I think they can offer. My days of prideful independence are over. I think that peace settling in has led to the other emotion of "lets get the show on the road." If I am feeling that way as I approach week 30 I can only imagine how I will feel at week 38.

The other things I am feeling are raging heartburn, overwhelming tiredness and the constant desire to pee. I go to the bathroom every hour all night long. Each time I get up to use the bathroom I eat two more TUMS. I believe that all of this contributes to the tiredness I feel. I am so tired right now as I type this that I can hardly keep my eyes open. I have to figure out some way to combat all of this because I can't concentrate and work is the longest 8 hours of life each day. I live for getting in the car to go home because that means I am that much closer to going to sleep.

I am thinking this is just another phase that I will settle in to but I sure hope the settling happens soon.

I Hope the Test is Take Home

So tonight I have breastfeeding class. Jeff was supposed to go with me but instead he is down in New Orleans doing something with the Best Damn Sports Show Period. I am guessing he won't be missing much but I can definitely fill him in. I believe this is our last class in the whole child bearing department, at least for now. I am not sure exactly what we will cover but if I knew there was a class offered on the subject and I didn't take it I would be busy wondering what I had missed. I am so anal like that.

We finally got the carpet down in the baby's room. It took the carpet guys all of 45 minutes to rip up the old and put down the new. Once they were done I decided I would move the crib, which Jeff has assembled in the living room since we knew the carpet was being changed, in to the nursery. It didn't fit through the door. Because I am a stubborn old goat I even tried taking the mattress out and turning the dang thing on its side. That didn't work either. When Jeff arrived home I was in a state of complete frustration. I informed him he would have to take it apart and then reassemble it in the room. He began frantically trying to get it through the door - unsuccessfully might I add. I barked at him about something and left for a seminar at church. I find it is always a good idea to yell at your husband in the most un-Christianlike way possible before heading out to God's house. I called to apologize on my way to the class and told him I would help him take it apart later. Well I called when I was on my way home and he had no luck and had decided against starting to disassemble it in favor of watching the Cardinals game. (I didn't love that answer but now I was leaving God's house and really had NO excuse for being un-Christianlike.) Thank goodness because when I got home not only was the crib in the nursery, Jeff had put all of the bedding on it as well. Turns out he popped our new windows out of the frame (they are apparently meant to do that) and shoved the crib in from the outside through the window. Our neighbors must think we are nuts. I am pretty sure they are right.

Baby Uggs

My friends Chrissy and Susan came to visit me on Friday. (They are the animal trainers I used to work with and they really came to visit my dog but I am lucky they like me too.) They brought me a basketful of baby goodies. The most ridiculously adorable thing in the basket were the itty bitty Ugg boots. I am thinking I will make Emmy wear them in the summer with a mini skirt and tank top but then she might be confused with Mischa Barton. They are so cute I want to eat them.

It was a relatively peaceful weekend with a couple of hours of work thrown in. Things were fairly PC (pregnancy crazies) free. I did yell at Jeff at one point for being so uncompassionate as to take up two thirds of the couch which only left me with one third of the couch. He looked at me like I was on crack and scooted over. God bless him!

We finished painting the nursery this weekend. It is a bit messy but I conceded that Emmy will never know. As for the rest of you who may visit my house you are not allowed to think or say anything snotty about the paint job in the baby's room. See, that should take care of any of my perfectionist issues/insecurities. We will get the new carpet this week and hopefully get the furniture set up by the weekend. That means we should have everything in place by October which makes me happy.

I am getting to the point now where I want to get the show on the road. For those of us who had a long engagement it sort of feels like that. The whole bloody wedding was planned by July and still I had two months of waiting with serious anticipation/anxiety. That is about where I am at with the baby factor. I am officially nine weeks away from what they consider full term which is sort of weird and sort of exciting.

Maybe the Donuts Were a Bad Idea

Do you all remember when I was rattling on about how I wish I had a belly and I looked pregnant and what not? Well, the belly has arrived. Yea, I kind of like it. What I don't like is the fact that it brought along its good friends right and left thigh. They decided they needed extra company and brought their cousin gigantic butt! I knew things were not fitting as pleasantly as they used to but when you put on maternity clothes it is tough to tell where they don't fit, you just know they don't.

Today I went to the doctor and she promptly informed me I had gained nine pounds. Now, I was dressing with intention on all of my doctors visits, i.e. wearing lightweight clothing, no accessories and shoes that could be slipped off so as not to add a single additional ounce to my charted weight. Today is a bit on the breezy side so I had on jeans/t-shirt/sweatshirt. To top it all off I was wearing a headband - that is at least an extra .5 ounces! The doctor mentioned that I still have weight to gain as we hit the home stretch and that I should try to watch my eating and exercising habits. I wondered if she meant watching the three chocolate chip cookies go in to my mouth or if she meant watching myself lick the glaze from the Krispy Kremes off of my fingers. I have had the worst sweet tooth this month so I am trying to cut back on that and hopefully next time I go in I will only have gained a few pounds. Maybe I will just wear my bathing suit to the doctors office, that is bound to buy me at least two pounds.

Today was the gestational diabetes test. Basically you drink this sickeningly sweet kool-aid, wait an hour get some blood drawn and wait for them to tell you if you have any issues. Overall it wasn't bad but that sugary sweet stuff had to account for at least a pound of water weight, damn them!

Three is No Longer My Lucky Number

So ever since I made the varsity cheerleading squad my sophomore year of high school wearing the number three, I have adopted it as my "lucky number." Because I believe things happen because of God and not because of luck this is sort of a silly thing but none the less I like the number three and anything divisible by three. I am beginning to rethink that.

I have hit the third trimester. I am not sure when exactly it starts because you are actually supposed to be pregnant for 40 weeks which if you do the math is ten months. The three trimesters of three months each is yet another scam perpetrated by the man. The biggest change I have noticed is my emotions. They are a disaster. I feel at times like I am completely unraveling. The slightest affront sends me in to tears. Sometimes I want to cry and have absolutely no reason to do so. Anything that even remotely reminds me of my mom sends me in to a tailspin. I am not angry at all or even testy, I am just so darn sad. It isn't all the time, but it washes over me periodically like a wave. Someone else from my childbirth class was saying her emotional crazies have gotten worse the closer she gets to delivery. I am hoping mine doesn't get a whole lot worse or people will think I am crazy. There is no current scientific proof that I am not, but I would hate for everyone to think I am nuts!

So Much to Tell

It seems like an eternity since I have posted anything so forgive me in advance for the length of this post.

Las Vegas was great. It was the perfect mix of doing nothing and doing stuff. We laid by the pool, my $16 Target maternity swimsuit did me well. Funny story... The very first day we got there I changed and then I went to find a place to put all of our stuff. I found a nice quiet spot next to a group of older couples and settled in. Now I had two motives for sitting near the older couple - one they looked about like I did in a swimsuit, two they were not smoking like chimneys like the younger couples gathered around the pool. I was pleased with my location. Then all of the sudden here comes this Nicki Hilton look-alike who plops down in the chair in front of me. I thought seriously out of the 480 chairs around this pool you had to sit next to me. She pulls off her clothes to reveal this perfect black bikini. Envy begins to course through my bloated veins. Finally after having been hit on by the world's least attractive guy she decides to move somewhere else and I thought thank goodness for small miracles. : )

We enjoyed some good food and some good shows and still managed to get lots of sleep which was really nice. We got back at 2:00 am Thursday morning. We slept in on Thursday and then had our second ultrasound. The great news is they didn't see the cyst in Emmy's little head this time. It appears as though she is progressing normally and everything looks good. God is so good. Thanks to all of my friends and family that prayed for us.

Thursday afternoon since I was already feeling guilty about not getting anything done we went and bought baby furniture. Once again the incredible growing Camry managed to fit three large boxes containing a crib and dresser/changer combo unit. That car never ceases to amaze me.

Saturday was our first childbirth class. WOW! It was a little bit crazy. We watched a video on labor and delivery and I nearly had a panic attack. I thought how will I ever be able to do this? How will I do this without my mom? Then I got so sad and then I tried not to cry which only made the panicky feelings worse. It was pretty bad for about twenty minutes. Then I got over it and things started to get better. I learned a lot about the whole birthing process that I did not know before. I had seen the movies and shoot I watched Rachel have a baby on Friends so I figured that was pretty much how it is. FYI - that is not accurate. I know you all aren't surprised, but I was a little taken aback. By the time class was over I felt a whole lot more prepared for what is to come.

We moved all of the furniture out of the baby's room and decided we needed to get new carpet so we did that. Hopefully it will be installed in the next few weeks. We started painting the room. By we, I mean Jeff. It was very hard for me to have no control over the painting process because Jeff does not share in my meticulous nature so he does things a bit different than I would but God love him he is working hard on it. It got the second coat this weekend and the trim painting should be finished by next weekend.

Saturday of this weekend was the second childbirth class. It was actually worse than the first. The first one was sort of here's what you can expect during childbirth and the second one was here is everything that could go wrong - vacuums, forceps and c-sections oh my! I am no longer scared of the pain now I want to just try to stick out the pain as long as I can because once you get the epidural you are confined to bed and it begins to up the need for interventional measures and c-sections. There is nothing wrong with a c-section, everyone in my family has had one except my cousin Julie, the recovery time is just longer which stinks. It isn't like you don't have enough to do without trying to recover from surgery on top of everything. I think poor Jeff was more freaked out than I was because he is scared something will happen to me. He is a very good man and practiced rubbing my back and breathing with me this weekend.

Other than all of that not much is going on. I have started to be able to see the baby kick on the outside which is funny, it looks like there is an alien in my belly. I am starting to feel really full and fat and slightly uncomfortable. I am sure that only gets worse but I am not complaining, simply commenting. I actually sort of like being pregnant aside from the morning sickness, heart burn and constipation. (Have I mentioned the constipation, Lord help me!)

Okay I am done for today...