Due Date!

Well here we are at 40 weeks and Baby (we're still planning on naming her Eleanor) is still safely in tact! I'm pretty good at being pregnant now so I don't really mind. I'm still really comfortable and everything is going smoothly so I'm in no hurry. I AM really excited to meet my little baby though! I just know it's going to be a lot harder learning how to be a mom than sitting around and waiting. We're just praying that she'll make up her mind to come before I have to be induced.

I've been studying Hypnobabies for the labor and delivery and I'm feeling really good about it! I just listen to tracks for a half hour every day and do my own practice of going into hypnosis and I'm feeling confident about having this baby! I know a lot of people who do Hypnobabies still get an epidural but it's great coping for the whole time before you get the epidural. I feel like when people plan to get an epidural the whole time they don't really have a plan for what happens before the epidural and when they start getting those contractions they panic and cry and just have to suffer through it. With Hypnobabies you focus on staying completely relaxed and calm and that sounds way better to me! After my friend gave me the whole program to borrow I started doing some research on the medical journal websites I used so much while I was in school. They've done studies on people using hypnosis as pain relief and found that it works as well as any other pain killer. In fMRIs of people doing hypnosis they found that there is actually an area in the brain (the thalamus - it acts like grand central station for all signals entering and exiting the brain) that is actually inactive during hypnosis used to block pain. That means that the pain signal (nociception) isn't even getting to your conscious brain. Isn't that awesome!? After I read that I was really excited to train my brain to be that awesome. You can actually use hypnosis to stop pain for anything not just labor! They said that people who used it for migraines were able to stop migraine pain in 15 seconds! I've never had a migraine but I know it can take people out of commission for days! If I were one of those people I'd get to a hypnotherapist ASAP. So anyway, I'm pretty excited to put all my practice into action! I'm hoping to make it all the way without an epidural but I guess we'll see how well my practicing has worked. My friend had a completely pain free delivery! That's pretty uncommon just because people don't practice as much as they should. But even when people do experience pain it's much less than it would be otherwise. I think the best part of it is that it keeps you focused on being relaxed and comfortable and not panicking and making things worse for yourself. Enough of my rant on hypnosis, the point is I would recommend it to anyone having a baby whether you want to be medicated or not!

The nursery is done, the hospital bags are packed, all our major items are purchased! I'm feeling ready to bring home a baby! My mom was going to fly down here from Indiana (where she was going to be helping my sister with her baby) but my sister went 2 weeks early so Mom is home now. I was able to convince her to cancel her flight and drive with the whole family down here so I can see everyone. I'm especially excited to see my nephew, Cole, who just turned a year old on the 12th. I wish I could meet my NEW nephew, Clark (who was born Sept 23) but I'll have to wait until Christmas when we both go back to Washington. It'll be nice to have my mom here to help with things though. This weekend we're trying to clean up what we can so it's ready for visitors but I know it'll be nice to have my mom here to help out with all of that. And cooking! I already don't have energy for cooking. It's a lot more fun when you have money to buy good food to cook. As it is, I'm a pretty big fan of mac n cheese with hot dogs and broccoli in it :)

Moral of the story: everything on our side is ready! Now we're just waiting for Eleanor to be! I'm bad at blogging but we'll get pictures up on facebook as soon as we can and I'll blog it all later :) Wish us luck!

Vacations, Homecomings, and more Pregnancy!

We're back! I still can't believe we survived the summer working in California and living in a hotel! Let's just say I won't be excited for a "night away" at a hotel for a long time! We drove back to Utah August 13 and dropped off some stuff in our house (so nice to be back in Provo and NOT staying in someone else's place) then promptly drove to Washington on the 15th.

We stayed in Pullman (my hometown) for a week and it was a lot of fun to see my family, especially my nephew, Cole, who is HUGE and super cute! My sister threw me a baby shower while I was there and it was a lot of fun! It's always nice to see old friends and remember the old life I had so long ago :) Things are so different now! It was harder to remember I was pregnant while I was there. I feel like when I go home I should be in high school again or something! We got a lot of good stuff at the shower and I'm feeling way more prepared to have this baby! Especially in the clothing department. Somehow I ended up getting a lot of sleepers! They're all different sizes so it spreads out pretty well and they're all really cute too so I'm not complaining! It was just the prevalent gift from that shower. Isn't it funny how those things go in groups? For our wedding we got probably a dozen different sets of towels! We'll see if the trend continues at the next baby shower. Haha.

Anyway, the week there went well and on Saturday August 20th we drove BACK to Provo for the weekend. My parents and sister's family also drove down that weekend on the following Monday we all met up at our family cabin (15 miles out of Kamas, UT) to stay there for the week. It was nice to be there and have a little extra time with family while I wasn't trying to do a ton of projects and get ready for a baby shower :) Relaxing is exactly what the cabin is made for so it was lots of fun. Cole and our dog, Nyx, became good friends but I think Nyx has decided that babies aren't as interesting as she initially thought. That's good news for our baby! She might make it to a year old without getting her face licked off!

My oldest sister, Annie, was able to fly in for a couple days on Friday and Saturday. The picture is of her and me showing off the baby bellies! The weird thing is, the whole time she was there I kept thinking how much bigger she was than me until we took this picture. I guess I just don't feel that pregnant when I look down or in the mirror. But man! In pictures I look huge! In the picture she is at 34 weeks and I'm at 32. I can't believe we're going to be having babies so soon! I hope our baby likes playing with both her boy cousins! She'll have enough girls on Vince's side of the family, she can handle some boys from mine :) We did a lot of fun shopping at Deseret Book and Seagull Book for baby board books and things like that. I wanted to buy everything! I only bought a couple but Mom and Dad were nice enough to get us some "Christmas presents" and fund a lot of the reading I'll be doing for my baby :) But then Annie left and the cabin week was over.

Well, we're back for realsies this time! Most of my family is back in Washington and we're in our apartment. It was my first day really feeling like a stay at home wife (/mom-to-be) even though I have been retired for two weeks now. Good thing I had a lot to do! Luckily, my little brother, Adam, is staying with us for the week before he returns to BYU Idaho on Monday so he could help me with some heavy lifting. We had bags and bags of food left over from the cabin trip, all the boxes we had dropped off from previous weekends at home, lots of garbage to clean up, and some basic cleaning to do. I tackled the downstairs today to try to make it livable, which meant moving a lot of things upstairs and into closets and just trying to get things out of the way :)

I also bought a rocking chair that I found on KSL! It was $22 (I gave them $25 because it was totally worth it) and I'm really excited! We'll have to post pictures later, but we're going to be refinishing it and a dresser to put in the nursery. I can't wait! But the nursery is the next big project. Bleh. It still has stacks and stacks of our things in boxes and bins that I have to go through. A lot of it will stay in boxes since we'll be moving in December or February so we probably won't need a lot of it. Hopefully by the end of the week we'll have everything in place and be nearly ready for the baby to move in! I still can't believe it!

The last big event was getting our last snow cones of the summer (unless we can find some late-closing booths around town). We'll miss you, Snow Cones. You've been good to us.

Vince is in his second week of school now and we'll finally start being able to settle in a normal schedule. I'm looking forward to that. And also seeing some friends once we get things into better order around here! Buckle up stay-at-home-mom friends! We'll be seeing a lot of each other if I have anything to do with it! I can't wait to be one of you!

It's a GIRL!! Now what?

We're having a girl!! We're very excited and already went shopping for her! I had Vince pick out her first outfit so he could get excited about the whole girl thing. (He still liked the boy clothes better.) He picked a really good one. It's white with 3 light blue bows across the waist (empire waist) and light blue flowers stitched along the bottom. I'll have to post a picture later but we left it in our car in Utah for storage. It's an 18 month size dress so she won't be wearing it for awhile. My parents also contributed a trip to Kid to Kid where a bought a BUNCH of cute stuff! I know I'll get a ton of clothes for baby showers and stuff but I just couldn't help myself! Clothes are the most exciting part of having a girl so I had to live it up!


I can't tell in this picture if she actually has a dog face or if the angle is just weird and it looks like her nose and mouth stick out a lot. I'm sure she'll be cute when she comes out though (well, a couple hours later maybe).

I love her chubby little legs! They said she's a little light but still within the normal range. I don't mind if she stays skinny until she comes out, then we'll make her nice and chubby! With my genes she won't be able to avoid it :)

I love this picture of her cute little feet! I've been feeling them move around in there more and more! Last Saturday while we were at the cabin even Vince got to feel them! I was lying down and felt her move from the outside (first time ever)! So I called Vince over in the off chance that he would feel her too. I wasn't expecting much though. He came over and pressed his head to my belly right under my belly button and it only took a few seconds until I felt her squirm and saw Vince's head move! He looked up and said, "did you do that?" I said no. He pressed his head down again and the same thing happened twice more! I asked him if he was moving his ear or something and he said no. That was her! She kicked harder than she ever has and it was just for her daddy! She's a daddy's-girl already. I know she's going to adore him and vice versa!

She really looks like Donkey Kong in this picture but it's supposed to be of her arms which you can see above her head. I really can't tell what the rest of it is anymore. It made more sense during the ultrasound.

So we were both thinking that she was going to be a boy and it's taken some adjustment for me to accept that she's a girl. It's bad. I'm a little jealous of everyone on facebook announcing boys or even just those people who guessed right. I know it's a not a big deal but I just really wanted to be right. And it seemed like having a boy would be perfect. Vince's side has 8 girls and 2 boys so it would have evened out that side of the family a little bit. My sister is pregnant with a boy and my other sister has an almost 9 month old boy and I thought it would be great to have those 3 little boys running around. We even had a great name for a boy that I was totally in love with and was ready to start calling him out loud. But it's a girl. All my plans are thrown off. I don't love any girl names. I was even planning a pretty neutral nursery but now I'm realizing it's too boyish so I need to girl it up a little. The first night we knew, I had a little break down and started crying and realized I'm terrified of girls; not babies, but anything older than that, yeah! Teenagers are especially bad. Girls always hate their moms. I think it's more rare to have a good relationship with your mom than not. I don't want her to hate me. So now I need to poll all my friends who like their moms and figure out how they did it! I'm sure it will turn out fine and Vince told me all about why I'd be a good mom (he's such a good husband). That's the other thing; I'm already planning on her liking Vince more than me. It's just what happens. Maybe my hormones are getting away from me. Or maybe it's the disappointment of being wrong. But I'm having a little bit of a hard time.

But then I tell myself that baby girls are so cute! I can't wait to teach her how to draw and read and write and gospel stuff and everything I've learned as a girl. I know there will be so many good times ahead and can't get weighed down with everything I'm worried about. I want to be happy and excited about having my only first baby ever so why ruin it for myself?? So yes! I'm very excited to be having a girl! She was a miracle and I know she will continue to be a huge blessing to me and our family. (Any mom advice is still welcome! Thanks anybody who has anything to say!)

Pregnant and Ecstatic!

I will be 15 weeks pregnant tomorrow. Things are going great! My pants are less comfortable. Everything is right on track! I haven't suffered from nausea or morning sickness which has been a huge blessing! Literally. When I was first pregnant I was sick and had a slight fever and it made me nervous so I had Vince give me a blessing. It was a beautiful blessing and in it I was promised that my pregnancy would be relatively painless in recompense for the pains I went through waiting to be able to get pregnant.

I have really learned a lot during this year and half that we've been trying to get pregnant. For one, God has to try us and WANTS to try us to make us stronger. But while we are being tried he doesn't turn his head and let us deal with it. He is with us the whole time if we will let him be. He knows our pain and our suffering and when the trial is done he is so happy to bless us! Our family has been blessed so much! Vince has an intership and possible job offer with a great firm that will be perfect for us. I was able to get pregnant despite the doctors saying that we would have to use invitro fertilization or at least chlomid, but we did it all by ourselves (and Heavenly Father, of course, the best fertility treatment around!) This summer I was even able to get a job at Vince's office which will be perfect for us! We found a great family to rent our apartment for the summer. Vince's parents are willing to take Nyx while we're out here. I haven't been sick at all during pregnancy!! Everything has just lined up perfectly! We have just been blessed so so so much I can't be grateful enough! I almost feel in debt now for how much we've received. Let me also just say that the scriptures have been a huge help. I remember a saying I heard while in Young Women that said we would all be tried like Abraham if we wanted to receive all the blessings Abraham received. During that trying time waiting to get pregnant, I realized I wasn't being tried like Abraham, but I WAS being tried the exact same way Abraham's wife Sarah was tried. (I just hoped it wouldn't take as long to get pregnant as it took Sarah!) Well it worked! After knowing I had PCOS (ovarian cysts) and wasn't ovulating and Vince's stats were such that he probably wouldn't be able to get me pregnant anyway, all our hopes were shot. The only thing we could have hope for was the power of God and that's exactly what it took.


Anyway, the first doctor's appointment was so exciting! But I was really nervous too! Sometimes I was scared that I wanted to be pregnant so bad my body was producing some symptoms of pregnancy without anything being there (dang CSI for putting ideas like that in my head)! It was such a relief to see our little baby actually inside of me thanks to the ultrasound! What did people do without technology?! I try not to be emotional in doctors' offices (I've done it too many times) so I tried really hard not to cry, but I did a little bit anyway. It was just so amazing! We got to see my baby move and squirm and we saw all the bones and little organs. It looked great!

By the way, I'm trying really hard not to say "he" and "his." We both thought we'd have a girl first especially with Vince's family's record (we have 8 nieces and just 2 nephews) but once I got pregnant we both felt like it's a boy. I asked Vince once, "What if we're just completely wrong and it's a girl?" Vince's response was, "if the church is true we're having a boy!" I don't think having a girl would shake his testimony but he just has a really strong feeling that it's a boy and I'm ok with that :) I really wouldn't mind having a girl though, they have cuter clothes and accessories! Which makes boys a lot cheaper! Haha.

Well, tomorrow my baby will be 13 weeks old (15 weeks pregnant, but that includes a week of period and a week until you ovulate) and will be about 4 inches long and 2.5 ounces. That's about the size of an apple! Think of me when you eat any apples this week!