Baby Journey -Part 9

Baby Journey -Part 9:  Nesting - Or The Lack Thereof

22 Weeks

This week was Christmas and another sonogram appointment : )  Since we weren’t able to get a specific picture of some part of the baby’s heart that they needed, we got to go in for a new round of pictures.  Last time the ultrasound technician was explaining how the baby was in difficult positions to get all the pictures needed and she kept having me try to adjust to get him to move.  For this next appointment she suggested I come in with a full bladder and having eaten to see if that helped.  So I had to pee the whole time and got to enjoy breakfast tacos on our drive over.  We did get all the pictures needed this time and our baby boy is still looking good and healthy! -And we now have two sonogram confirmations that he is in fact a boy.

22 weeks sonogram - Isn't his little face and profile cute!!

His tiny foot : ) 

This is a crotch view -sorry!  Those are his thighs and the "proof he is a boy" in between.
Also he was sticking his fist down into the picture as well.

Other than the sonogram there isn’t too much to report.  I am feeling him move a lot more often now which is wonderful.  I had my first feeling of getting nervous by it this week though too.  He had started moving around so much for several days in a row it was almost like I felt him constantly (obviously not really, but seriously a TON throughout the whole day). Then I had a stretch of about two days where I only felt one tiny kick or push each day and it got me so nervous!  Why had he suddenly gone from so much crazy movement to almost none again? No worries though, the movement is back again : )  Just yesterday I felt him way low at the bottom of my stomach area and then instantly after he also moved way up high past my belly button which is the highest I’ve felt him yet.  I feel him a lot more often way down low still and also almost always on the right side of my stomach.  I think I’ve literally still only felt any movement a couple times on the left side.

As I’m writing this I feel like it may be way boring to everyone reading!  I’m just blabbing on and on about how he moves around.  I seriously love it though and I hope I never forget how it feels.  Hopefully writing about it will keep the memories one day from fading.

On a different note I do feel like I’ve gotten a lot bigger in the last couple weeks.  All the way up until 18 weeks I had only gained 6 pounds.  Then within a month at this 22 week appointment I had gained 6 more.  So I’m now at plus 12 pounds - half of which I gained just in the last 4 weeks.  My doctor at least says I’m still doing fine and there are no worries with my weight. I’m assuming I won’t continue to gain 6 pounds each month.  Just about every time Cody sees my stomach now he says it looks bigger each day.  He made a comment the other night that “maybe I should start using that lotion stuff again for all the stretching.”  This afternoon I was getting up off our couch and he came over to help as he said “you’re too big to get up all by yourself.”  Guess it’s not just in my head;  it must actually be starting to get more noticeable.  I’m going to take that to mean our boy is well protected in there and growing big and strong.  Bring on the weight.  (We’ll see how I feel about that in a few more months.)

Testing out the Boba wrap I got for Christmas!
 Yes, I tested it out with a bag of sugar : ) 

I am still excited about cloth diapers that I've written about before.
I ordered a couple cheap off-brand ones from eBay to test out.  

We also got our Pack n Play for Christmas!
 I definitely made Cody open it up and do a test set up.

25 Weeks

I haven't written anything lately because I feel like for the past couple weeks all I would have written about was the baby moving which seems like it would get pretty redundant.  He has started to move SO much more in the last few weeks! He has some time each morning and evening when he gets pretty active on a consistent basis - kind of between 8:00-9:30 both am and pm, but I also feel him often throughout each day now.

Just within the week I've started being able to see my belly move sometimes.  It is the neatest thing!  Mostly now when I can see movement it is just like a push upwards kind of making my tummy protrude in a certain spot. However, just a couple times so far I have seem more of a squirmy movement under my skin as well. Just about every evening when I'm home now I love to just lay or sit with my hands on my stomach and lift my shirt a little to see my tummy to wait and feel him move and hope to see the movement as well. I just love it : )

Also this week I have had strangers for the first time comment on my being pregnant.  Obviously lots of family/friends/coworkers say things often, but up until this week I haven't had a complete stranger say anything.  I must have reached a magical size where it is now acceptable and safe for anyone to assume I'm pregnant and to comment because out of nowhere I've now had several people say things this week. Fortunately none of them tried to touch my belly - I am not ready or looking forward to that from strangers especially.

25 week picture

This week at school I was out two days for a training and when I came back my class thought I had maybe had my baby already. Then one of my boys clarified to the class that I couldn't have had my baby because I would have needed at least 3 days for that - not just two.  One of my ESL students wasn't quite understanding that I had NOT had my baby yet, and all morning she kept asking where my baby was and if I had left it at home. I kept pointing at my tummy and saying it was still in my belly and wouldn't be ready until April to be born.

A really sweet moment that I loved this week at school happened with a student I had my first year.  He was/is a super cute and generally sweet kid, but when I had him he was not one of those affectionate students or students who really talked to you or connected. This year everyday he walks home with his younger sister who is now in second grade and she is in my dismissal group.  So each day they have to check out with me before leaving to walk home. Well on Friday I was wearing our school spirit t-shirt, and t-shirts are now quite tight and it kinda looks like i have a bowling ball under my shirt, and this boy comes up to check out with his sister and he kind of pauses, looks at me, and then says "Mrs. Henderson, are you having a baby?" and I answer him yes I am and it's a boy.  And he got this huge smile on his face and exclaimed "Wow, that's awesome, congratulations!" and he hugged me!  And remember this was a non-affectionate kid -which means the whole year I taught him he never hugged me.  It really touched me and was so sweet how he reacted.

On a different note I think I have officially reached a point where I am ready for the "nesting" stage - whatever that exactly means. For a couple weeks now I have been having the thought more and more about wanting to start getting things organized and start the nursery and things like that. I even think I took my "nesting" needs to my car because for the first time in -let's just say a long time, I washed it, cleaned it out, and organized it some. My car hasn't looked this decent in quite a while. (Please don't tell my dad!) But with these feelings I'm starting to get extremely stressed with the whole lack-of-a-nursery and moving situation. I know it can't be helped, it's not ideal, but everything will work out fine in the end. But right now I do not like it. I want to either be setting up a nursery right now here in our duplex or know that we will be moving before the baby comes and I'll be able to set something up in the new house.  I feel like we're not doing anything to get ready for the baby and it's driving me nuts. I had a meltdown on the way to church this morning about it. I thought I could calm down and hold it together as we were driving.  We got there and were walking up and suddenly I had to stop walking and just lost it. Needless to say we turned around and went home. I could probably use some prayers about peace with this transition right now and not knowing if we'll be here in the duplex or a house.  If we most likely will be in the duplex when we have the baby and for the first few months, it will not have a nursery, will be filled with boxes, and well just not what I would have pictured and preferred with the arrival of our first baby. It's really starting to hit me and I need to accept it.

Our wall of baby stuff that has nowhere to go for now.

I'm not actually complaining about all the stuff.  We have already been very blessed by family, friends, and people at our church with tons of hand-me-down clothes and lots of other items as well : )  We are extremely grateful! I have been able to cross off a lot of items from our registries that we have just been given.

Random other notes:

I have now had people comment on the fact that I have started to waddle some. (Thank you Cody and my mom -lol my mom said it very loudly all the way down the bathroom hallway to me at the Cheesecake Factory for my birthday just the other night.)

I must really have gotten noticeably bigger recently and have "popped" some. (Thank you again Cody and also my dad and brother Aaron who said "Whoa!" when he saw me for my birthday -and I guess all the strangers for the first time that commented this week.)

My only current complaint:  back pain!  Oh man.  My back is sometimes super stiff and sore feeling, but that's not even my real complaint. After sitting or laying sometimes when I get up, I have a really intense sharp pain feeling in my thigh and lower back.  I don't know if that's as normal as the soreness or not, but it gets so bad that I limp around and don't even want to walk or put any pressure on my leg/back for several minutes.  It's awful.

Our next appointment is this coming Wednesday on my birthday!  After that I will start going in every 2 weeks.

Today, according to our Target registry, we are 99 days away from our due date!! Down to double digits! Also I calculated (part of the stress with the whole nesting thing) that IF our baby boy is early around 35-36 weeks, then that is only about 9 weeks away!  -Which definitely does not seem like that far off to be ready.  Hopefully he makes it full term to at least 37, and then I know he could go all the way to 40 or even later (gulp). BUT when I realized that realistically he could be here in less than 10 weeks something hit me and it just does not seem that far away.  99 days.  Whenever it is though it will be amazing to meet our little guy whether we are "ready" or not  : )

Baby Journey -Part 8

Baby Journey -Part 8:  Movement and Growing!

(So this first part was still from week 18 at the end of the week... but it hadn't happened yet before I put up the last post.)

Week 18 -Continued

Last night I felt the baby kick for the first real time!  I have been wondering if I've been feeling something every now and then for the past week or two about, but it was faint and I was never really sure.  Well last night I don't know what else it would have been except the baby!  I was all ready to go to sleep laying in bed.  Lately I've been falling asleep with my hand on my belly just in case I might feel something, and yesterday I did!  Oh man, that first feeling was super strong too!  Not only did I feel it completely for sure but I wondered if our little guy was going to try and burst out.  I couldn't believe how big and strong of a feeling it was.  He must have tried to stick his whole leg out the side of my stomach!  I kept my hand there and then felt another movement and then I yelled for Cody.  He was in the kitchen doing dishes (as the usual these days I was in bed pretty early).  It took a couple yells for him to hear me and come in the room.  I felt the baby move four times before he got there and I was worried it'd be over, but it wasn't.  I showed Cody where to put his hand and told him what all I'd just felt and sure enough Cody felt the baby too about three or four times.  He kept saying "You're not doing that?"  And I responded with something like "No, it's definitely not me.  It's the baby for sure this time."  We were so excited and it was so fun for us to both feel it and be so confident for the first time in what we were feeling. It's been an exciting week!  Finding out the gender, sharing the gender with our families, and now feeling the baby for the first real time : )   Well today is Thanksgiving and I was taking a mini-break from cooking and baking to write this.  Back to the kitchen for a bit more before getting ready to go to the Hendersons for the day.  Tomorrow we go to my parents and all my brothers are in town which is awesome.  Also my brother, Ryan, recently got engaged to a girl named Cassi which is super exciting!  We have only met her a couple times briefly so I'm really looking forward to seeing them tomorrow and hopefully getting to know her a bit better.  It's crazy to think that by the time our baby is born, he will not only have one Aunt Kari but also a brand new Aunt Cassi.  And I'm beyond excited to see my brothers as uncles!  I think they are super cute when they interact with other babies/young kids.  I think they will be great uncles.  Now I do have to get back to the kitchen.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Fun Saturday morning we spent walking around the Pearl Brewery and Farmer's Market.

Thank you to our friends Evie and Cory for a box of baby boy clothes to borrow when he arrives!

Week 19

I LOVE feeling the baby move!  I think that alone has quickly gotten me over and forgetting the fact that I felt so awful for so long.  I still don’t feel him move a lot and not even daily yet, but whenever I do it is just instant joy. I always fall asleep with my hand on my stomach in case I might slightly feel something.  Most of the time the movements are still faint enough that I can feel it more externally than internally.  I guess that will change as he keeps growing and the movements become stronger. Cody loves feeling it too.  Anytime we’re right next to each other and I feel something I show him where to put his hand to feel it.  Almost every single time he feels something he still asks “Are you sure that’s not you? You didn’t just do that?”  Normally I feel him when I’m laying down and towards the evening/night once I’m home on the couch or in bed.  Today was the first time I felt him move while I was out and about during the day : )  Cody and I had gotten breakfast tacos and were driving around looking at possible houses for sale and I felt something and sort of ignored it since I have only felt him at night/while laying so far, but after I felt a second movement I realized it was the little guy : )  It made me instantly happy.

The other day Cody and I were talking about random baby/how our lives will soon change type stuff and he asked “So you’re really ready to have a baby in your arms?” (Or something close to that.) And he went to a small basket where we are keeping random baby stuff from our families so far and he brought over a cute little onesie.  He sort of laid it across my arms and I almost instantly teared up and started crying.  (Happy cry.) Cody thought it was super sweet and cute.  Part of me just wanted to keep holding the onesie and part of me felt silly and crazy and emotional. I guess that goes with the territory right now.

Also this week I had my kids in class comment for the first time about my belly.  (I told them I was pregnant at 16 weeks.)  I was walking around the room while they were working and one of my girls stuck out her arm and pointed straight at my stomach and said “Mrs. Henderson, your belly is starting to get big!  You know -from the baby.”  Later that day during after school tutoring, I often sit on the carpet with the kids in a circle.  Well I was trying to sit down with them and I guess it looked like I was having some trouble, because one of my boys goes “Mrs. Henderson maybe you should sit in a chair.  I think you’re squishing your baby.” So I did because he was right, a chair was much more comfortable.

And of course I have already gotten the dreaded question “Where do babies come from?” -Except this boy in my class specifically asked “How does the baby come out of your body?” And I froze for a second - just long enough for another student to solve the mystery by answering him very matter-of-factly “It comes from the mom’s belly of course.”  I laughed and quickly tried to distract the conversation by starting our calendar time.

My Cody and our Callie lounging around.

Half way at 20 weeks!!

20 week half way belly pic!

Week 21

My absolute new favorite thing in the world is feeling our little boy move inside me.  I seriously cannot express all the emotions I get when I feel him moving around.  I'm feeling him more often now - not all the time but occasionally throughout the day.  I still feel him the most at night when I'm laying down, but I'm enjoying feeling him more and more just as I'm doing whatever during the day.  I cannot help myself but to want to just stop whatever I'm doing and put my hand on my belly and focus on the feeling.  Once I feel him one time I just want it to keep happening over and over.  It's amazing and I love it so much.  It already makes me sad in a way knowing that I won't always be able to feel him like this.  Can I somehow have him in my arms come April and still feel little sweet movements in me?  I guess there is a solution to that dilemma... feeling new little arms and legs moving around : )   But that is getting WAY crazy ahead of ourselves! We're still growing the first guy.

Last week was the halfway point which blows my mind.  It is exciting and a little scary to think we're half way there.  Part of me feels ready and anxious like I just want to hurry up and meet him and hold him, and another part of me is quietly thinking "Oh my gosh... we're about to have a baby... what on earth do we do to "prepare" to be parents?!" Because really Cody and I are openly and honestly clueless!  We've accepted this will be a learn-on-the-job type situation for a lot of things and that as long as we don't drop him on his head, most mistakes we make will be okay in the end.  Fortunately we do have several friends either with new little babies in their lives right now or are pregnant and due a bit before us.  So we can watch from the outside and gather information as others go through each phase before us.  Sounds like a plan to me.  It'll be our turn before we know it.

Christmas get together with our church small group.

We love our friends : )

21 Week Picture

Baby Journey -Part 7 & Thanksgiving

Baby Journey -Part 7:  Finally Cheery! & Thanksgiving : ) 

15-16 Weeks

I finally feel like I can say I feel better! Hallelujah! Most of the time I am feeling more like myself and overall okay.  My stomach is way better -almost all the time, not always.  I have more energy and don't feel like I have to come home from work and just nap, although I am still going to bed extremely early on a nightly basis. At this point I'm assuming the early bedtime will be a constant throughout the pregnancy.  I just cannot seem to stop yawning once it reaches 8:00.  Cody and I went to a Spurs game (thank you Sue and Steve!) this past week and while I LOVE the Spurs and really enjoyed the game, it just about killed me lol.  Mainly it was just so difficult because it was a weeknight.  I think a weekend game would be much easier to handle since I could sleep in the next day.

This past week I bought my first pair of maternity jeans.  I have bought a couple other random maternity items so far but this was the first thing I felt like I REALLY needed and started to wear them immediately.  My jeans had been killing me. I had been using the Belly Band things for several weeks now and while I could still wear my jeans with the band, they were SO uncomfortable.  After eating I would literally try to hold out my jeans so they weren't smashing my stomach.  I looked at a couple places for the maternity jeans and as my usual problem, most of them were all way, way too long. I finally went to an actual maternity store (should of just gone there in the first place) and found some jeans that I love that were a petite size and therefore don't drag on the floor!  I thought it was kinda funny because before I bought any maternity clothes I had NO clue what it meant for pants to be "maternity" except I figured bigger.  I have a friend who is also currently pregnant and ahead of me who showed me some maternity pants she had.  I thought the stretchy band was so hilarious!  I then started to learn the different styles of maternity wear that some things have the stretchy band bellow your belly and some styles are a stretchy fabric that goes all the way up covering your whole stomach.  I definitely in my head thought -about the stomach covering one, "That is ridiculous. Who would want to wear something that looks like that?  And how would that even be comfortable?"  And well guess what, the two main maternity items I have that I now wear (the jeans I just got this week and also a pair of black tights/leggings I got about a week ago) are the style that go up all the way covering my belly!  Serves me right for judging them before I ever tried them.  I do still think they look ridiculous though.  I definitely made Cody laugh when I showed him the leggings for the first time and then when I saw my family for dinner the first day I wore my maternity jeans, I flashed my mom the top stomach part.  What can I say?  Somehow they really were comfy and I liked them.

So excited to have comfortable pants again!

This past week I've also been enjoying starting our baby registries.  At first it was completely overwhelming (and still is when I think about all the stuff babies apparently need).  I mean, not only do you have to know what items you need, but then each item itself has numerous brands and styles and other choices.  You can't just register for a bottle.  What type of bottle? What brand/size? What about a crib?  Which crib is the best, or considered safe, but also not crazy expensive?  I still am not totally sure what all a crib even needs!  I've gotten the (by "gotten" I mean registered for) crib itself, the mattress, a mattress cover/pad, and a sheet.  Is that it?  I don't know.  Guess we'll figure it out soon enough.  I am having fun with the registries : )  Hopefully I'm choosing smart stuff!

18 Weeks

Today is our 18 week ultrasound where we get to find out the gender!  It's actually in about an hour.  I'm taking a quick break from getting dressed and ready to write.  I'm officially going on record saying I am really nervous for this appointment.  Yesterday I had a couple really strong sharp pain feelings -very different than any pain feelings I've had yet.  It was only a couple times and they quickly went away but they were so strong and just different than everything else I've felt.  Additionally I think I've gotten slightly nervous before each of our appointments worrying that they'd say something is wrong.  That combined with the pain from yesterday, I'm extra nervous.  I honestly don't think I have a real reason to be though.  I think everything is okay and I'm just slightly freaking out for no real reason.  Aside from that, we are of course extremely excited to get to find out if we're having a baby girl or baby boy today!! Somewhere along the way I convinced myself it's a boy.  Cody remains neutral.  I think I started thinking it might be a boy at first because it seemed like we knew tons of people with girls -so I figured someone has to have some boys to balance it out.  Then Cody and I agreed on a boy name that I love!  And we still have zero girl names we agree on.  So those two things combined somehow slowly convinced me it's a boy.  Cody's worried that I'll get upset and disappointed if we find out it's a girl today.  

Other notes quick:  I finally finished (at least all the big/essential items I know of for now) our baby registries at Babies R Us and Target.  It might be a tad early to get those out of the way but I had so much fun looking items up, reading reviews, and picking out exactly what items we'd like. The registries and cloth diapers were the first things I got genuinely excited about during the pregnancy.  (How sad is that though?)  I felt so awful for so long I really had trouble being very excited.  The first thing that did get me excited and reading a lot about it was cloth diapers.  Now oh my goodness.  If you had asked me about considering cloth diapers even 1 day before I was pregnant, I would have said you are crazy absolutely not for me.  Haha.  I started reading about it and it was amazingly the first thing I started planning and learning about and getting excited about.  Diapers!  How silly.  But so that's the plan -cloth diapers, and hopefully we're not making a huge mistake lol.  And as I already said working on the baby registries was the second thing to really get me looking forward to everything.  Cody hated it but I loved it.  The first day we went to set up the registry at Babies R Us after doing the paperwork once we finally started walking around with the scanner, we were only about 5 minutes in when Cody very bluntly said "We need to leave now. This is overwhelming.  Let's go."  So we did (-I did) the rest online slowly over a couple weeks.

About to leave for our 18 week appointment.

Waiting at the OBGYN office - so excited!

We are home from our appointment and dinner.  The news is official - we're having a boy!! Cody's already decided on a Spurs and Aggie theme : )  Although really we want to keep things neutral and are thinking grey with some color for a nursery eventually and the "boy" decorations will be small things that can move to a different room later on.  I'm kind of leaning toward the grey/yellow colors but who knows.  We won't be setting up a nursery for a while anyway since we're going to wait until we move over the summer, which will be about two months after the baby is born.  I bet that'll be a fun time... anyone volunteering to help us pack and move while we have a newborn??

It's a boy!!!

Cody and I have a boy name picked out : )  I fell in love with this name early on and it slowly grew on Cody and now he loves it too.  I guess you never know; there might be a slightly chance at some point or during labor we change our minds -that can't be predicted.  Right now we are pretty set on our name.  I'd love to share but I'm not sure we're ready for it to be public knowledge, and even though we do love it we don't want to say we're set on it since we can't predict what we'll think in a few months.  Except for the fact that we already told our families (sort of on accident) we really wanted to keep it a secret until the birth.  So for now it'll stay offline.  We'll see how long that lasts.

Last night I felt the baby kick for the first real time!  I have been wondering if I've been feeling something every now and then for the past week or two, but it was faint and I was never really sure.  Well last night I don't know what else it would have been except the baby!  I was all ready to go to sleep laying in bed.  Lately I've been falling asleep with my hand on my belly just in case I might feel something, and yesterday I did!  Oh man, that first feeling was super strong too!  Not only did I feel it completely for sure but I wondered if our little guy was going to try and burst out.  I couldn't believe how big and strong of a feeling it was.  He must have tried to stick his whole leg out the side of my stomach!  I kept my hand there and then felt another movement and then I yelled for Cody.  He was in the kitchen doing dishes (as the usual these days I was in bed pretty early).  It took a couple yells for him to hear me and come in the room.  I felt the baby move four times before he got there and I was worried it'd be over, but it wasn't.  I showed Cody where to put his hand and told him what all I'd just felt and sure enough Cody felt the baby too about three or four times.  He kept saying "You're not doing that?"  And I responded with something like "No, it's definitely not me.  It's the baby for sure this time."  We were so excited and it was so fun for us to both feel it and be so confident for the first time in what we were feeling. It's been an exciting Thanksgiving week!  Finding out the gender, sharing the gender with our families, and now feeling the baby for the first real time : )   Well today is officially Thanksgiving and I was taking a mini-break from cooking and baking to write this.  Back to the kitchen for a bit more before getting ready to go to the Hendersons for the day.  Tomorrow we go to my parents and all my brothers are in town which is awesome.  Also my brother, Ryan, recently got engaged to a girl named Cassi which is super exciting!  We have only met her a couple times briefly so I'm really looking forward to seeing them tomorrow and hopefully getting to know her a bit better.  It's crazy to think that by the time our baby is born, he will not only have one Aunt Kari but also a brand new Aunt Cassi.  And I'm beyond excited to see my brothers as uncles!  I think they are super cute when they interact with other babies/young kids.  I think they will be great uncles.  Now I do have to get back to the kitchen.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Take 1

Grandpa looking at our 18 week sonogram pictures.

My Loves is so handsome : )

Nice picture...

...the faces before and after nice pictures.

 Thanksgiving Take 2

On our way to Thanksgiving at my parents!

Ryan with his fiancee, Cassi.

I always love seeing Sean and Aaron - hardly "little" brothers anymore.