I hate fake-outs.

I woke up this morning at 6:21 to a contraction. A real one. Not Braxton Hicks. (I can kind of see why people say they feel like menstrual cramps, but also...not really.)

And then...nothing.

Except like, 5 Braxton Hicks. And a lot of that "I'm about to have a big cramp" sensation, but no more contractions.

Dang it, body, why you gotta do me like that?!? I told DH we are doing a lot of walking tonight, even if it's still muggy and gross like it was last night. I want little dude OUT and if walking will help, then I'll walk all the way to the dang hospital. Only 45 miles or so...totally doable. ;) We also need to work on Little Boy's room. It's so close to being done, but still so far, and I'm starting to feel like I could just pull my hair out when I walk in that room. I just want it DONE. Which reminds me, I need to finish packing my hospital bag. Man, prepping for a baby is a lot of work.

In other news, DH is sending me to get one last pedicure tomorrow. I'm excited! This will be my third pedicure ever and the last one was faaaantastic. The only downside? I have to shave my legs for this. Ahh, the burden of luxury. Haha.

And on a really sucky note, one of my friends found out she was pregnant a few days ago. Unfortunately, her betas didn't double in 48 hours, and actually dropped by 1. So it doesn't look like this little one will be staying. I know they are heartbroken...this baby was conceived without fertility drugs, which they thought was impossible for them. (They have triplets from previous fertility treatments; she has PCOS and was so excited to have gotten pregnant on her own.) I know how painful a loss is, but I can't understand what it's like to have the IF stuff in the mix, so please pray for them that they can get through this. Miscarriage just sucks. No one should ever have to go through that.

Rawwwr.

Translation: stay out of my way today.

I am in the worst mood EVER, and I don't even know why. I feel tired and grumpy and extremely irritable. I think it's a combination of many things: hormones, discomfort, and things not going as planned. Let's start with this weekend, shall we?

Our plan was to finish painting Little Boy's dresser this weekend, let it sit for a couple days, and then load it up with all his clothes and whatnot. Hah. We used a paint sprayer and air compressor, and apparently the compressor wasn't quite strong enough because the paint flow was a little flaky. (At least the paint color is gorgeous, though.) After all of it was dry, we discovered that it chips off EXTREMELY easy...what the heck? We primed, sanded, and painted two coats, and yet I can scratch paint off with my finger nail. So all that hard work was pretty useless. I told DH that if we can find some kind of low-VOC varnish to topcoat it with, I can do that myself while he's at work. I'm just grumpy that it needs more work at all...we have put SO many hours into that stupid freaking dresser and I feel like it'll never be done.

I'm also sick of waiting for my midwife's office to get back to me and let me know what the crud is going on with my ultrasounds. I was told that if little boy got up to the 11th percentile, we'd be in the clear. At my last growth scan, they told me that he was at the 15th percentile and that there was "no medical reason" to continue the ultrasounds. I got a call on Friday saying that they were sorry I had missed my appointment, so I asked what appointment and the scheduler said, "Oh, you had an ultrasound on the 21st that you didn't show up for." ...I did? No one ever told me I had another ultrasound. In fact, they told me the exact opposite. So I'm still waiting to find out WHY I'm being scheduled for more ultrasounds, because at this point all I know is that they want me to have at least one BPP a week for the next four weeks. Did I mention that I'm due in 4 weeks? Again...rawr.

I am not having a good day.

Clearly, I have no willpower.

When fall comes around (or even just moderately cooler summer weather), I cannot resist the urge to bake. Anything with pumpkin in it makes me ridiculously happy. My Pumpkin Spice candle from Yankee Candle company has already clocked a good 8 hours of burn time in the last couple weeks just because it lets me feel like I'm baking something delicious, without the temptation to consume the calories.

So today, while DH sanded the primer on the dresser drawers for baby boy's room, I baked. I couldn't help myself. I know I'm up 30lbs this pregnancy. I know I need to be careful about my sugar intake. I know carbs aren't all that good for me. But sometimes, I just don't care. And baking is one of those times. I wanted to bake bread, but I wanted pumpkin...so I made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip bread. It smelled like autumnal heaven in my house while it baked, and was equally delicious once it came out of the loaf pans and was cool enough to eat.

I got the recipe here. I will definitely be making the bread again at some point, but I'll probably half the amount of nutmeg that the recipe calls for. It's good, but I haven't used much nutmeg before so the flavor for me is almost a little overwhelming.

I am really hoping that this coming weekend will be the end of our baby room preparations. The dresser and drawers are all primed and sanded...all we have left to do is paint the thing. We have a spray gun and are going to borrow an air compressor so hopefully, the painting will go by really quickly. I'm so impatient to just get it in the room and get all his teensy little clothing into it. We've got all his laundry done and folded and sorted by size, and now we're just...waiting. I still need to pack my hospital bag, but that feels a little too "real" and I just can't bring myself to do it.

35 weeks down...35 days to go. Here's my bump picture; I haven't posted one in a few weeks.

One happy momma!

This pregnancy has been full of fun little ups and downs, but I am so excited that it looks like things are going to be more "up" from here on out!

For the last three weeks, I've been going for weekly biophysical profiles for our little guy. (BPPs are ultrasounds that look at things like movement, breathing practice, etc.) He was measuring in the 8th percentile, and they were worried that he may be experiencing some form of growth restriction. They gave him until the 14th (yesterday) to get up to the 11th percentile, or else I'd be switched from my midwife to a high-risk OB and probably be induced between 37-39 weeks.

I was a little anxious going into the ultrasound, which I'm guessing isn't all that surprising. I could tell my belly felt a tiny bit bigger, but was it enough? Was he going to hit the 11th percentile? As someone who is desperately wanting as natural of a birth as possible, the idea of induction was terrifying to me. I had the best ultrasound tech named Monica, who really helped put me at ease. (My mom also got to go with me...her first time seeing Wee Laddie since he was about 7 weeks along! Quite the change since then, haha.) Monica took all the measurements, and reassured me that things like fluid levels and all that jazz looked good. Our final percentile? 15th!!!! We are now out of the "worry zone" and back up into normal numbers. Still small, but totally healthy. I am beyond thrilled!

The best part of the ultrasound was toward the end when we noticed his eyes moving a little. (Which, to be honest, looks a little weird!) We were all laughing at how funny it looked when I realized he seemed like he was responding a little more to my voice. So I started talking to him. His eyes immediately looked up towards my voice and he started blinking and really seemed like he was paying attention. Even the tech thought it was really cool! Little guy knows his momma already. :)

In other baby-related news, DH and I have my maternity photo shoot this weekend. My mom got me an awesome maxi dress from Old Navy that actually fits. I'm only about 5'1", so normally anything that's meant to be long is comically oversized on me, but this actually hits at the perfect length. I can't wait! DH and I have never had professional pictures done, so I'm looking forward to having some frame-worthy shots to put up in our house. Also on the agenda this weekend is painting baby boy's dresser so that we can finally get all his clothing and stuff put away in his room. I am so ready for that part...it feels like we're rapidly running out of time, and I want to just be DONE with the nursery.

Hope my slew of dedicated readers are all doing well. All five of you. ;)

Ugly dumplings and baby stuff.

I never really cooked or baked growing up, but once I got married and DH and I moved to France, I really started to love experimenting in the kitchen. (Not a big fan of the cleaning afterwards, but you take the bad with the good.)

Now, DH is not an adventurous eater. I normally tease him about being picky, but he really has expanded his tastes drastically since we got married three years ago. (I like to think my nagging had something to do with that.) He's still a meat and taters kind of guy, but he'll eat onions, some veggies (if they're cooked right), non soy-sauce based Asian food, and a handful of other stuff. Along with his willingness to try more foods comes the opportunity for me to COOK more foods. On tonight's menu? Brown rice and stir fried veggies, with homemade beef dumplings.

I do not make pretty dumplings. Don't judge me.

I honestly have no idea how these are going to turn out, and they may really be awful, but they at least look semi-nice, right? I made the peanut butter cookies on the bottom when DH got turned down for a promotion a couple weeks ago. I am firmly of the opinion that sadness deserves delicious dessert.

On another note, our crib should be here by the end of the week! So excited! It wasn't supposed to be back in stock until August 31st but ended up being restocked early. I'm ready to have our little guy's room done and ready for him. I'm feeling incredibly unprepared, especially with the knowledge that he could be here in as little as four weeks. (I think I just threw up a little when I typed that last sentence.)

Our next biophysical profile is tomorrow, and the growth scan is next Tuesday. DH is coming to the growth scan with me, for which I am very thankful. If we get bad news, I'm going to want him with me to keep me from bawling the rest of the day. We just need our little boy to have grown from the 8th percentile up to the 11th, and then we'll be home free. But if he's not up to where they want, I'll be labelled high-risk, have to go in twice a week for non-stress tests and BPPs, and I'll be induced somewhere between 37 and 39 weeks. Considering that I am all crunchy granola and wanted to go totally natural, that is way, way disappointing. But mostly, I just want our kiddo to be ok.

How are things in your world? Everyone good? Anyone reading this? I think I hear crickets chirping...

The long, hot weekend.

It's southern KY in May, which means the humidity and heat are through the roof. Thank goodness for good air conditioning. Despite having grown up in the Mid-south, I have never gotten used to the mugginess. But, I love the South anyhow and I plan to stay here for as long as I can...it ain't perfect, but it's home!

We have lofty plans for the weekend...and I say "lofty" because it'll be kind of crazy if we actually get it all done. We're finally going to get working on Wee Laddie's room! We've partially sanded some drawers from some of his furniture, but absolutely nothing else has been done to get ready for him other than getting a registry partially done. My mom is coming up tomorrow morning and we'll haul some of the furniture outside and sand the heck out of it. (It's BIG furniture with a lot of curves and rounded edges, so it's kind of a pain in the butt to sand.) I wish we could go ahead and paint everything, but I don't want to paint until I have his bedding so that I can get the colors to coordinate. We do have one piece of furniture that we can go ahead and get done - a little end table that I'll paint red and stencil the Rebel symbol from Star Wars on top. I am so excited to just get his room done and ready for him.

Wee Laddie still doesn't have a name. DH and I MAY have one picked out but we're not 100% sure yet. I still just don't feel comfortable telling the world until after he's born...I have this big fear that I'll commit to a name and then look at him and say, "Oh, he doesn't look like a _______." It just seems like such a huge job to pick a name for a new little person who has never existed before. I don't want to get it "wrong".

Bump time! 23 weeks as of Wednesday...only a few more days til viability!

Good news, everyone!

Fifty internet points if you read the title in Professor Farnsworth's voice.

The good news is that, Friday, our genetic counselor finally called. The test results show that baby boy is chromosomally normal! There's technically a 1% chance that the test could be wrong, but based on all the things we know at this point, I feel pretty secure in trusting those results. When I got off the phone with her, I just stood and cried with pure relief and joy. It feels SO good knowing that, no matter what sort of issues may arise someday, we won't be dealing with chromosomal abnormalities that will prevent him from functioning normally.

Baby has been extremely active lately. He's been kicking and punching around so much in the last couple days, which I kind of enjoy. It's awesome having the reassurance that he's ok in there. On Sunday, DH woke me up from my nap and laid his head on my belly. Baby boy kicked him right in the head! It was kind of cute. :)

I'm up about 12 lbs and it's starting to freak me out. I've always struggled with body image issues and it's hard for me to gain weight without panicking. I know that it's what Wee Laddie needs, though, so I'm going to just try to cut back on the sweets and unhealthy snacks so that I know my weight gain is not from being a pig. (I always liked sugar before pregnancy, but oh man. I could go through a tub of ice cream and a six-pack of soda a day if I didn't stop myself.) I also don't want to deal with gestational diabetes. They won't be testing me for that for another four or five weeks, so I need to keep myself in check.

We're sorta kinda starting on his nursery. Sorta. I started sanding down a little side table today that we're going to use in his room. DH had the idea that we should stencil the Rebel symbol on the top since it's a Star Wars room, which is an awesome idea. Love being married to a fellow nerd!

Bump picture from 22 weeks, which was last Wednesday. I'll hit 23 tomorrow, which means I'm about 8 days away from V-day! Yeah!

And so begins the momentous task...

...of registering for baby stuff.

Ack. How is it already time for this?!? I swear, I just found out I was pregnant a few weeks ago, right? What? It was five months yesterday? Wait, that means he'll be here in...*counts on fingers, blood drains from face*...oh my gosh. In four months.

I am seriously behind on this "preparing for baby" stuff. We've done approximately one thing to get ready for him: nothing. Big, fat, nothing. Well, ok, we've partially sanded some furniture that we're going to repaint. But that's it, and it's nowhere NEAR being done. I think all along, I've had this sense of, "Oh, it's fine, we have plenty of time before he gets here." But then suddenly, his arrival is only 4 months away, and we still have EVERYTHING to do. And I may or may not be freaking out really badly.

Our plan is that we're going to bust it in gear on Memorial Day weekend and just get it all done. Finish sanding the furniture, hopefully get it painted (so thankful that FIL has a paint sprayer we're borrowing, because it will be so much faster), get the nursery arranged how we want it, put up the decorations we have so far, and then just sit back and wait. We're probably going to order the crib in the next couple weeks, too, so at least we've chosen one and know it's for sure the one we want. And this weekend, while we're up visiting MIL, we're going to go register for baby stuff. Honestly, I have no stinkin' clue what we need. I always think of the big things and forget small stuff like diaper cream and wash rags. So I'm basically just going to slowly walk through every blessed isle of the store and ask myself, "Do I need this? Do I need this?" It was hard doing a wedding registry because we couldn't even think of enough stuff to register for, and we ended up going back to add onto it because people bought almost all of our stuff and they were running out of stuff to get us. (I was given FOUR wedding showers. Four. No wonder we ran out of stuff!) I'm being given two baby showers, so hopefully it won't be a problem this time.

And in case everyone is wondering (since everyone in real life seems to be wondering), no, Wee Laddie does not have a name yet. And we probably won't name him until he's born. I'm afraid to give him a name and then him come out and just not seem to match his name. And also, DH is super non-committal about deciding on anything right now. He thinks we should wait for the name to "come to us"...I laughed. Sure, DH, we'll do that. Or maybe not.

Time for the obligatory belleh picture. This was taken Wednesday at 21 weeks. Still no stretch marks, and I'm feeling pretty good most of the time! Let's hope both those things are true in the next few weeks!