Week 35

  I love that Greg and I are have a baby in the spring!  It feels kind of perfect to be in harmony with nature.

  I think I am pretty much ready to have this baby.  Okay, I'm just ready to be done being pregnant now.  I am excited to meet this boy, and I'm almost at a point where I just don't want to experience any more symptoms of pregnancy.  Sure, I'll take them in stride, but I just want my body to be normal again.  The one thing I have enjoyed throughout this pregnancy is feeling the baby move.  That has to be the best part about being pregnant.  But even then I hate that panicky feeling that I sometimes get when I haven't felt the baby move in a while--which, fortunately, doesn't happen very often.  Sometimes I'll be around Greg when I tell the baby he needs to move for me, and Greg will tease and say, "Your mom always wakes me up, too."  And when the baby pokes back at me really hard, Greg will say that I "deserve" it because I keep 'poking' and rubbing at the baby.  (Greg: "How would you like someone to rub your face all the time?" Proceeds to rub my face.  "Do you like it?" "I mostly rub his backside and his bum since those are the parts that are most accessible since he's head down!")  But it's definitely the worst when I'm alone attempting to feel the baby move, and I am trying to recall the last time I felt the baby move.

  Cravings: I'm not sure.  Cheese?  Peanut butter?  Bananas? All I have wanted is to eat things that I haven't been eating regularly lately, so I've been trying to switch up our menu a bit by incorporating new recipes into our menu.  Greg didn't enjoy tuna casserole as much as I did which has bummed me out.  (But it'll be a recipe I'll keep around for when he goes to conferences, etc.)  I got so tired of pancakes for breakfast that I started eating oatmeal.  Guys...oatmeal...at least I found a decent recipe here which I did change up a bit.  I attempted to make meatball subs on homemade Artisan bread which was good over all, but they turned out like Sloppy Joe's because everything kept falling out!  Kudos to sandwich artists out there.

  We are still stuck on names at this point.  I think we will be those parents who send in the baby's name a few weeks after they are born.  Picking out names when I was 14 years old was so much easier; I mean I came up with like 8 names that I liked--not that I necessarily wanted 8 kids!  Of course, they were either classic, old-fashioned names like Francis or Eleanor or they were non-English names like Nikolai or Natasha. (I had just read War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and my mom had just learned we had Russian ancestors while doing genealogy. OK?)  As a teenager, I loved gleaning from other cultures (and I still love that idea).
   Greg and I had a couple of names in mind, and once we found out the gender of the baby, I told Greg what I thought his name should be, and Greg was on board with my idea.  However, not everyone in our family has the same opinion towards this name which has stressed me out.  I know I can't please everyone, so I just decided names are something we're keeping between ourselves from now on until the paperwork is filled out.  I know that whatever name we end up choosing will be because we, the parents-to-be, like the name and this is our child.  For now Lucky, Chewbacca, and Lehi are the names we are sharing.
 ; )

  On a happier note, the baby's room is coming together slowly.  I kept the same paper decorations I originally had in there because I love how the colors brighten the room.  I love this blue-green chair we found at a garage sale last summer.  The dresser with the blue drawers also fits this room so well!

I just stuffed pretty much everything in the closet!  So two bins full of clothes that don't fit in the dresser, blankets/sleepers, stroller, car seat, bathtub, play mat, and baby carrier.

So many toys!  I don't have bins for them yet, so I just left them on the bouncer chair.  (You can see Greg's red 20-sided die that he had hanging in a rear-view mirror has been demoted to baby toy. Haha! We're raising a nerd...) 

Last of all, a picture of my belly.  I never feel really pregnant until I see the side view of myself in the mirror...     

Hopefully only five more weeks to go! 

Rant: proper terminology

 I find myself frustrated that women don't use the proper terms for their own genitalia.  Va-jay-jay??  Come on.

 The other day, I was reading an article about the five milestones in pregnancy that women don't often speak of.  One of the milestones is the point where you can no longer see your crotch or as the author of the article called it: the 'va-jay-jay'.  I have also noticed lately women using this term or similar terms in articles or blog posts quite a bit, and it bothers me.  First of all, what's wrong with using proper terminology and actually naming your body parts correctly?  Are women that uncomfortable with their bodies that they can't use proper terminology?  Second of all, the external female genitalia is collectively known as the vulva, not the vagina (which I believe the va-jay-jay is the slang for).  I've never been able to see my vagina without using a mirror and even then I can't even see the entirety of it.

 I realize that male and female genitalia have numerous slang terms, but when pointing out our own body parts, shouldn't we use the correct term for it?  Shouldn't we be able to name that particular part correctly, too?



    

33 Weeks

   As much as I have enjoyed being pregnant, I am excited that I am roughly two months away from holding my baby boy in my arms.

  I actually have enjoyed being pregnant.  The pregnancy experience is new to me, of course, and I might discuss the changes to my body like overheating (Greg is not allowed to touch the thermostat any more or close the windows I've opened unless he wants me to yell at him), occasional back pain, how my shirt and non-maternity pants (i.e. sweatpants and pajama pants) don't meet in the front unless I pull up my pants to my belly button, being unable to use my abdominal muscles, and not sleeping well (Hello pelvic bone and tail bone, y'all are my new frienemies as of late. And my middle-of-the-night trips to the bathroom have actually become a ritual.), but overall, I enjoy being pregnant.  These changes are to be expected, right? I will just take them in stride.    

  *As a side note, one thing I've never knew about pregnancy is that your belly button actually can become smaller.  I had heard that innies become outies, but I didn't make the connection that the space of the belly button decreases.  Anyway, I find the new, much smaller belly button size strange.

 **One thing I kept hearing is how the baby will become more active when you lie down.  This isn't necessarily true for me.  I have felt that this baby is more active when I get up and walk around.  For instance, while I was out shopping yesterday, I couldn't help but notice he wouldn't stop wiggling around for quite a while. 

  Cravings: All I want to eat right now is bananas, grapes, apples, strawberries cut up into yogurt, cheese, and tuna casserole with broccoli.  I found an excellent tuna casserole recipe here, and I made it a couple of weeks ago.  I am making it again later this week even though Greg didn't love it as much as I did.  I'll eat pretty much anything, but the listed foods are what I really want right now.  I could go on and on about delicious foods...

  At a prenatal appointment a few weeks ago, I learned that baby boy is head done.  (Huzzah!!  My baby is awesome.)  The more I keep thinking about this, I wonder if he feels like he's doing a head stand or something??  I know that his body is hanging out on my right side, and that I will generally feels lots of kicking and more arm movements on my left side.

  I've recently started looking into Hypnobabies/hypnobirthing...  I know you think I'm a hippy now.  But to be fair, I am just trying to have good experiences with pregnancy and labor.  Is that too much to ask for??  In some ways the book HypnoBirthing: The Mongan Method is a bit weird/strange to me, but I do like some of the relaxation and visualization techniques mentioned.  I know having positive thoughts versus doubts in any situation can make a difference, and I want to be prepared mentally and physically for birth. Hypnobirthing is just a tool to help me prepare mentally.  Ideally, I want to have a natural birth in a hospital and I am hoping for that, but really, I just want to be able to say "whatever happens, happens".  If circumstances change and I need to have help with labor, then I am all up for help.

   Anyway, I hope you enjoyed some of my insights to my pregnancy.