Baby Update

We recently had another ultrasound and got to see the baby doing some really cool tricks, like blinking and sticking out her tongue. She weighed in at four lbs. two oz., and they said she'll probably weigh a little over eight pounds at her due date. It's crazy to think that something that big is in there and that she's going to double in weight in the next couple of months! (Does that mean my tummy is going to get double the size it is now, too?! Every week I think that it can't possibly get any bigger than it already is, but it manages to keep expanding!)

We're having a bit of an issue with the placenta, which is why I keep having ultrasounds to get it monitored, because it's attached low instead of high in the uterus. Fortunately, it's not low enough to be placenta previa, but it is low enough to cause potential problems during labor and delivery. It's not at the point where the doctor thinks a c-section should be planned, but it does put us at a higher risk for one if it moves lower or if it becomes detached. I REALLY want to do a natural birth, and we have put a lot of time into preparing for one, so it's a little tough for me to be accepting of the possibility of c-section. Obviously, the most important thing is to get the baby out safe and sound, so I'm trying to look at the bright sides to a c-section... especially since the baby turned from the head-first position she's been in since the week 20 ultrasound, to a breech position yesterday. I know she still has plenty of time to turn back to the head-first position, and that the doctor can try to fix it if she doesn't do it herself, but I was really sad most of today thinking that a c-section seems to becoming more and more of a possibility. Not to mention that I'm way more uncomfortable since she turned because her kicks are capable of delivering a lot of pain when they hit things like my bladder and cervix, which were only receiving mild punches before now. I just didn't know how good I had it while she was head-down!

On a brighter note, one thing that has made me really happy lately is seeing how excited Stephen is getting about the baby's impending arrival. Last week we had our childcare class, and I was so proud of him for practicing changing a diaper, giving a bath, swaddling, and holding a baby. The man sitting next to him is expecting twin boys and refused to practice any of the baby care stuff! I feel so sorry for his wife! I think these classes have really helped us both to feel more confident about taking care of a baby. A couple of days after the class, our friends Judd and Rachel came to stay with us for a couple of nights with their adorable eight-month old daughter, Camila, and it was really nice for us to spend time with another baby before having one of our own. Stephen did such a good job with her, too. He played guitar for her and had fun helping her try to walk. He's going to be such a good father!

Our Beautiful Baby Shower

This weekend we had an awesome baby shower in Alabama and got so many wonderful things for our little girl!



We feel so blessed to truly be "showered" with gifts for our baby! Stephen's Blazer was so full of presents on the way home that we couldn't even see out the back window!



We had some delicious food, including lovely petit fours, vegetable and fruit trays and dips, cheese cubes, crackers, chicken salad hors d'oeuvres, cookies, and of course nuts. And a wonderful apple punch with a floating ice ring made out of apple slices!






These are the FABULOUS hostesses who made everything possible!

My wonderful friend and baby shower expert Jenny!



Lauren and Jan, dear friends of me and my mom since she and I moved to Alabama 15 years ago.



And the grandmothers-to-be!



I'm especially grateful to my mom for letting us have the shower at her house!



I am also really proud of my hubby for coming (after only a moderate amount of prodding from me) and being the photographer and talking to all the guests. All the women were really sweet to him and wanted to know about his job and life in Athens, so luckily he didn't get scarred by the enormous amounts of estrogen combined with all the pink!



Thirty people came to our shower, including many family friends and women from Stephen's family. We really feel loved! None of the women in my own family live east of the Mississippi River, so we are truly grateful for all of these wonderful ladies who have been like family to us for many years.









We can't wait for our little girl to get here, she has lots of lovely things to wear and play with now!

Stephen's New Band!

Yep, we have only lived here for six months and Stephen already has a new band put together. He's been working on this one ever since our first week in Athens, when a guitarist named Robin answered an ad Stephen put on craigslist, and they've been playing together ever since. Stephen and Robin have been through a couple of bassists and drummers that didn't quite work, but now they've found an awesome rhythm section that seem perfect-- I think this band is complete! Yesterday I went to a practice for the first time since the new members joined, and they sounded great. I'm really excited for Stephen! He has more than 10 original finished songs now, and his new band members are really interested in them. In fact, they haven't worked up a single cover song yet, they have just been focusing on Stephen's originals. I hear these pieces from their conception, when they are just a few chords and words put together, and it's always really fun to see how they evolve once drums, bass, and guitars are fused together. I can't wait to see what the new band does with them! Athens is supposed to be a great town for music, so we'll see what happens there. And if anything does happen, hopefully it won't be too hard to convince the grandparents to come out and babysit so we can make this thing work...



The drummer is hidden behind a support beam, and the bassist didn't make it into the frame... (Sorry for the crappy angle, I was sitting in the one available chair and was not about to get my pregnant butt up to take better pictures!) But are you seeing all this awesome equipment?! We're finding that one of the advantages of getting older is that people finally have money to spend on their music equipment. These boys can make some real music with all this great equipment! All the guys in the band are thirty-somethings (except Stephen) and that is an advantage too. They are all married with young children of their own (this means no practices that go late into the night! Yay!), with nine-to-five jobs and college degrees, and are mature, dependable, stable people (a very nice change from some of the younger musicians Stephen has played with!).



30 weeks at the Georgia State Botanical Gardens, a real Athens gem we discovered this weekend. I can't wait to see how beautiful it will be in the spring and summer, when we can take baby pictures there!

29 Weeks (Explosion Part 2)

Mom, her boyfriend John, and my brother Lloyd came out to visit us in Athens for the first time this weekend. The weather was beautiful and we got to show them a lot of the fun sights around town, like our favorite park and the gorgeous antebellum homes. But they got most excited when a gigantic "Girls Gone Wild" bus pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant where we were eating supper and a couple of girls hopped out with shorts that looked more like undies. This warranted all the cameras to come out (my family has never spent much time in a big college town before). Shortly after that, we took the fam walking through the downtown district, where a drunk guy on the street had fun messing with Lloyd. Lloyd apparently had "tourist" written on his forehead, and has not yet honed the skill of avoiding creeps on the street by ignoring their advances and continuing to walk. It was quite a lot of excitement for our small-town company to undertake in one night!



The baby has been moving a LOT lately and has been getting the hiccups often. On my last ultrasound, she was already head-down, and it always reassures me to feel those little rhythmic hiccups coming from my lower abdomen, indicating that her head is still in the right place and will hopefully stay that way until she makes her exit! Now that I know which way her body is turned, it's fun to make guesses about whether she's kicking or punching whenever she starts to move. Sometimes I swear I can feel a foot poking out of my stomach, and it's really cool trying to detect the shape of her foot through my skin. All of this intense movement can make it tough to sleep at night and sometimes makes it kind of hard to focus on my daily activities because I become so focused on the sensations I'm feeling instead. It's definitely the most awesome thing to ever happen in my body!

I think our little girl is going to have a sweet tooth like her mama, because baked goods have become my biggest weakness in pregnancy. You know how most grocery stores have their bakery tucked away into a hidden corner? My grocery store has strategically designed the flow of the store so that you HAVE to walk between tables of Danish pastries, doughnuts, cakes, and frosted cookies to get from the produce section to the refrigerated section. It's a fatal situation for a pregnant woman with a hound dog's sense of smell! I have to force myself to go out of the way and avoid the whole disastrous set-up by doubling back through the produce. But last week I made the mistake of going to the store alone, and succumbed to a box of six GINORMOUS cheese danishes. (Somehow I am less tempted to buy bad stuff when Stephen is with me... I guess he's an accountability partner of sorts because I want to be a stronger person when he is around.) I wanted those danishes so badly that I squatted ALL the way down to find the freshest ones from the very bottom shelf (this is a big sacrifice since it's so much work to get back up!). Unfortunately, Stephen does not have a weakness for cheese danishes, so I was forced to eat the whole box by myself within two days-- you know, before they lost their freshness. Then my mom brought me a box of Girl Scout Thin Mints, my very favorite cookie from my days of Girl Scouting, and I ate the whole box (minus the one cookie that Stephen wanted), by myself within 24 hours... and paid for all the calories by gaining three pounds in one week.

The maternity jeans that have been so good to me ever since week 13 decided this week that they no longer like my hips. I don't know what my hips did to make the jeans so spiteful, but it's now a full-scale war to get the elastic waistband up over my butt. They just don't want to be friends anymore! Since I cannot live without jeans for two to three more months, I've had to order another pair that will hopefully get me through to the end. I had to pull out the measuring tape to figure out what size to order, and thought I'd take all my measurements just for the heck of it. This is when I discovered that my hips, which have always been a stubborn two sizes ahead of the rest of my body, are still determined to keep up their position at the top (a full inch ahead of my preggo belly). They just hate giving up their spot of honor-- and I just hope they decide to give up on this race soon. They have my full permission to make a big comeback in the delivery room, but they really need to quit trying to keep up with my belly for the time being!

28 Weeks

We got several inches of snow in Athens this weekend. We loved watching the snow fall, it was mesmerizing and beautiful! This is the most snow I've seen this far south since the Blizzard of '93 (or was it '94?). It's surreal to see a Winter Wonderland in our yard!



Our little girl has been getting lots of love lately! We got this surprise in the mail from Sonya: a sweet, soft baby blanket she sewed herself (complete with a "Nana Ing" sewn signature!).



And Stephen's parents brought us four adorable baby outfits when they came to visit last weekend! (I promise I will quit posting pictures of every outfit we get! But do you see that denim skirt with little flowers embroidered into it? It's so cute!) This brings our grand total up to nine outfits... we're making progress!



Stephen and I had a sweet last Valentine's Day together before baby makes three. It would have been nice to go to a romantic gourmet restaurant for our last holiday, but I thought about how that one meal could buy the infant car seat we need, or three huge boxes of diapers, or one-third of a crib, so there was no nice restaurant this year. But we did have a good time making a "gourmet" meal at home, and it was actually really fun to make stuffed manicotti together. (Stuffing the shells is definitely a two person job!) I made a feta and kalamati salad to go with it while Stephen prepared some delicious bread from the bakery. And I made one of the only desserts Stephen really loves, cream cheese pound cake with blueberry topping, to finish things off. It was really, really nice to make a special meal at home together =)

Second Trimester Top Ten

I'm kind of sad to say good-bye to the second trimester, because it has been such a nice time (and a million times better than the first tri!). But getting into the third trimester gets us closer to finally meeting our daughter!

The Goods

1. Feeling our baby moving inside me-- it's one of the highlights of my day. (I'll admit there are some moments when I don't enjoy being a human punching bag, but for the most part, it's great =)
2. Watching Stephen become more and more excited about having a baby and seeing him adjust to becoming a more "parental" person. I love the sporadic moments when Stephen leans over to rub or kiss my growing belly.
3. Finding out we are having a little girl!
4. When strangers in public get excited about my pregnancy. It's amazing how a round belly can make people smile. (The most touching instance was when a homeless woman asked me for a stamp at the post office, then her face lit up when she started asking me about the baby.)
5. The fun (and challenge) of picking out a name for our daughter together. (Yes, we do have some names in mind, but aren't ready to make an announcement... so if you know what our ideas are, stay mum for now, please!)
6. Making preparations for our baby girl. (Collecting baby girl clothes has turned out to be just as much fun as everyone told me it would be.)
7. It's been awesome to NOT have that monthly visitor and all the things that go along with it.
8. Not having to worry about getting pregnant!
9. I would be lying if I didn't mention that it's nice to have larger kahunas for a few months. (But when I think about the long-term effects of pregnancy on them, well, I know it's all downhill from here...)
10. My hair is growing at the speed of lightening... And while the hair on my head is breaking growing records, the rate of hair growth on my legs has slowed down to a snail's pace. Weird, but awesome, especially since shaving my legs is becoming more and more difficult to do!

The Not-so-Goods

1. The stresses of preparing for a baby. (How are we ever going to be able to afford all those adorable things she needs? What on earth are we going to do when she starts crying? What if I have problems with breastfeeding? How long will it take us to adjust to having a baby to take care of? How will we find time to get some R&R together?) Not to mention the anxiety of thinking about the impending moment when the baby has to squeeze out of my body...
2. The things people say about my growing belly that make me feel bad, even when they are well-intended. (Those of you who have been pregnant before know what I'm talking about!)
3. Sciatic pains-- there's nothing like an ache in your butt and legs to keep you awake at night. Sometimes I get so sore that I feel like I've run a marathon. And you know I've come nowhere even CLOSE to running, much less a marathon...
4. Indigestion (I am SO tired of burping like a man! How do guys live with this for their whole lives?! And heartburn... yuck!!)
5. Pregnancy fog-- I swear my brain is only functioning at 50%. I walk into doors. I forget to do things even when they are written on both my calendar and my to-do list. I burned my hands on three separate occasions while cooking last week...
6. Infections. Need I say more?
7. Still missing those deli sandwiches! I already know what I want to eat first thing after the baby is born (Italian BMT from Subway, please). Also missing my occasional glass of wine. (Sparkling grape juice just doesn't do the trick!)
8. Dry itchy skin, especially on my stretched-out belly (I might as well buy some stock in the Lubriderm company).
9. Nosebleeds, and of course gum bleeds (sounds like fun, eh?)
10. Bad circulation (I can't feel my fingers!)

Busy, Busy, Busy

27 Weeks


My due date is less than three months away now and my to-do list is a mile long! We're trying to accomplish a ton of stuff before I get super-huge, super-uncomfortable, and super-tired, and also before Stephen's job gets super-hectic as the semester progresses.

My latest challenge has been trying to sift through all the baby stuff we need to start stocking up on soon. It's overwhelming and I feel totally lost in all the baby products! Many, many, MANY thanks to my fellow mommies Jenny, Amber, and Kristina, who have given me awesome suggestions and advice about what we will actually need. You guys are the best!!!

Stephen and I are taking classes once a week through February and March, and they have actually been pretty fun so far. Right now we're doing the childbirth classes, which have been extremely helpful already. I can't wait to take the rest of our classes, they make me feel so much better prepared and calm about everything that's about to happen.

We're also having company for the first time since we moved here. This weekend Stephen's parents made the five hour drive to visit us and we showed them where the hospital is. It's weird to think that the next time they'll be here to visit, we'll have a baby! My mom and her boyfriend are coming next weekend, and I'll be showing her where everything is in our kitchen, etc., since she's planning to come out and help us for several days after the baby is born.

We've also been busy trying to make room for the baby. It's amazing how much junk we've accumulated over the years! We've already made several trips to the Goodwill dropoff, I'm packing up the things we won't be needing anytime soon, and trying to make things as streamlined as possible around here so it will be easier for us when we're adjusting to having a baby around.

The most important thing that's been going on to prepare for the baby lately is that I've finally been exercising! Remember how I was having a hard time moving around a few weeks ago? I've been doing a lot of prenatal yoga, and it has helped tremendously. I'm already more mobile, more energetic, and have better balance and stamina and more strength. I'm feeling soooo much better now!