Just don't smother, crush, or maim the baby.

Doug's earnest post about books represents our genuine hopes for beginning our daughter's introduction into the world of literature. Unfortunately, for the first several weeks, Baby's life will consist primarily of sleeping, eating, crying, pooping, barfing, and staring at things. Hopefully, mostly sleeping. Therefore, a more immediate and fundamental goal of ours is simply keeping the baby alive, clean, fed, and in one unbroken piece while she grows and stares at things more. Next comes helping her learn to hold her head up and find things to gnaw on, and eventually, inspiring her to learn to read. And there are so many different ways to accomplish all of these things!

I've mentioned before that Doug's thinking on parenting and mine tend to be complementary. He is more abstract and philosophical and I tend to be more...well, practical. A few weeks ago, I wrote this post about how much exhausting controversy exists within the parenting universe. One hot parenting topic is "Co-sleeping," or "Bed-sharing," a.k.a. keeping the baby in the same bed with mom and dad to sleep and breastfeed; often this approach is juxtaposed with "Cry it Out" or "Sleep Training" methods where the baby lives in another room and the parents try to get the baby to follow schedules and routines dictated by the people who write books.

Right now, as a currently not-too-sleep-deprived-person-who-is-not-yet-a-parent, I tend to fall somewhere in the middle. Partially out of laziness and not wanting to have to get out of bed too much in the middle of the night, and partially because I actually don't think that "sleep training" is appropriate for a newborn. Doug is somewhat ambivalent about this topic at this point, because he is too distracted by thinking about her intellectual development, strategies for eliminating all toxins from her immediate environment (he doesn't actually care about germs; it's the poisonous chemicals that permeate everything that he's obsessed with), and which colleges and grad schools she should apply to. Sigh.

Our bed would likely include more blood and gore...

We didn't mention it in our post about our baby stuff, but we did consider co-sleeping for the first few months of Baby's life with us. Our consideration didn't last long, though, because as soon as we began to consider bed-sharing with an infant, we started noticing how often we crush/whack/elbow each other in the night. Well, I think I was the one who noticed, because Doug is pretty oblivious to the damage he delivers (and receives as I try to reclaim my sliver of bed space) at night. It seems that a necessary component of quality sleep for us includes a lot of thrashing, a good amount of steamrolling, and at least one elbow to the face every so often, for good measure.

Proponents of co-sleeping say that the parental instinct keeps you from crushing your baby, but I'm not so sure about that. We don't leave much space in our queen-sized bed. Also I've never even been good with pets in the bed, and even though I've never breastfed a pet, I think it might turn out to be a similar situation...

This is one way to do it... for small quiet people in large beds.
Which we are not.

By the way, the advantages of co-sleeping seem to be especially strong for fostering a healthy breastfeeding relationship in the beginning while allowing the parents to sleep more because they remain in bed instead of getting up to go into another room to get the hungry baby. They keep the baby beside the mother or between them, or in a co-sleeper that's attached to the bed. Followers of the "Attachment" parenting movement say that bed-sharing also fosters the strongest possible parent/child bonds for future emotional health. There are studies that support co-sleeping, and studies that don't, and whole armies of parents and researchers advocating aggressively for and against it. Here's a link to a helpful pamphlet about co-sleeping, if you're interested.

So this is how we arrived at the solution we did: the convertible bassinet/play-yard for our bedside pictured in this post.. It can serve as the bassinet for the first few months, and then the portable bed/playpen for the next few months until she outgrows it. We definitely don't want to put the baby in another room (and which room...the bathroom? the kitchen?). We want her to be right by my side of the bed so that we (I) can feed and change her with minimum rousing, and go back to sleep. It even has an attached changing table and supply holder!

Right now I'm getting up about 6-8 times a night to pee, with maybe one 3-4 hour stretch of uninterrupted sleep, so she's training me well so far for multiple night feedings. She's also forecast to be a fairly sturdy child, at somewhere between 8-10 lbs with gigantic sasquatch feet, so not breaking her should be fairly easy. We hope.

Our baby has giant feet. Or at least one giant foot. Hopefully they match.

Books. Exclamation Point.

If there is one material thing that will help our girl the most to become a strong, intelligent, compassionate woman, it is books. Sandi and I are in love with our books and some of our best childhood memories came from reading our favorite books and learning more about the world and imagining the fantastic, without the intellectual passivity that television allows. To this end, Sandi and I are planning on constructing a most wonderful library for our child. We could never have too many of the right kinds of books. 

We are not quite sure of the best place to start, but since Baby is a long way from reading herself, we have started with a focus on picture books to look at and fairytales (the original folk versions, not the commercial Disney versions) for us to read to her. Sandi and I plan to start reading extensively to our girl as early as possible, and fairy tales are great in creating little worlds that are fully evocative, imaginative, morally instructive, and illuminating. They are usually short, easy to read, but with a linguistic and conceptual difficulty that will provide years of new learnings with more reading. We have placed some of what especially caught our eye in an Amazon Wish List, but in general, we like the Pantheon Library of Fairytales and Folk Stories for fairy tales and science and and picture story tales for picture books.

And with a large diversity in sources, she can be exposed to different world views and we can avoid the awful sexist dehumanization of females rampant in Disney and other typical portrayals of women in contemporary popular culture. Our daughter will not have instilled in her from birth the idea that she is or should be a princess -- that girls/princesses must be physically attractive, and that they are passive creatures waiting for the sexual salvation of a male figure who values her only for her appearance and very often for her silent obedience. The solution is more fairy tales from more sources, especially those with origins in cultures we respect or trace our roots back to. This includes Celtic, Germanic, Latin American, Indigenous North American, and Japanese. We are particularly excited about the idea of intellectual and cultural diversity and providing her with a very broad worldview. And this keeps things exciting for us too, and gives us plenty of opportunities to grow the trove of stories from which we may draw, hopefully without boredom and with great imagination.

We are also pretty enthusiastic about poetry for a lot of these same literary and empathetic reasons, but we are probably doing okay with poetry for now. We have several shelves of poetry already, including many of the Shel Silverstein books. 

Non-fiction is also important. Since Sandi and I both have pretty deep backgrounds in and love for science, we want to make sure that from an early age she is able to see and explore the natural world. We figured that animals, dinosaurs, and general knowledge would be a good place to start and we found some wonderful books on these topics and have them on our wish list. Of course, these books contain much text and were designed for slightly older children, but the pictures in all of these books are sensational and are wonderful for even the youngest child to begin to explore and learn. And as she ages, she'll find more and more value in them and will hopefully prepare her for a life long passion for exploring and questioning the world around her.

As for actually reading to our infant and toddler daughter, we both love picture books. The picture books we love the most are all unique, and contain a depth and beauty that will hopefully grow with us and with her as we together explore the deeper depths and intricacies of the pictures. Our interest should make repetition less boring for us at least. They also will provide plenty of fodder for constructing together our own stories around the images. Such books will also be more accessible to an early or non-reader who won't be intimidated or thrown off by words when she doesn't want to be but can explore the book independently and at her own pace. There are two authors/illustrators in particular who have caught our eye, Arthur Geisert and Matsumasa Anno. Both are fantastically detailed illustrators and authors of such imagination that all of their books are delightful even to us as adults. They both also have many books that teach letters and numbers, but are educational without being patronizing or overly goofy. We also like the works of Alice Provensen, whose farm books are especially wonderfully and beautifully depict the pastoral landscape that Sandi at least grew up within her childhood.

Board books and other early books will also be necessary. Board books in particular are nice as Baby can play with them from a very early age without ripping pages or destroying them too badly, and have simple illustrations and words she can begin to grasp very soon. However, we do not have any particular preference or opinion about these.

And of course, used books would be most welcome. Any book will become 'used' very fast in our house anyway.

Perhaps you may think that we are over-thinking the topic of books for our daughter, but there is not much else to keep us occupied while we wait for her to arrive. 

On Buying Clothes - Doug's first post!

Our first consignment store haul!

After our last ultrasound, we realized that Baby will not fit into tiny newborn clothes for very long. Near the hospital we found a wonderful consignment store called Chloe's Closet. We went a little crazy and bought a dozen onesies, shirts, dresses etc. But, because it was consignment we paid hardly anything for it at all!

And we are so very happy to have used clothes. Because our little girl is going to grow so fast, any one thing will fit her for an excruciatingly short amount of time and it is silly to invest so much for such little brief periods. And in this way, we can help ease the consumption of resources that we all contribute to as well as reduce waste when we eventually discard outgrown clothing by selling it back to the consignment store.

Furthermore, there is a significant health advantage to used clothing. Cotton especially is quite difficult to grow commercially and consequently many many harmful chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides, are used in the production of cloth as well as inks and dyes for the final garment. All of this makes new conventional clothing less than ideal and require several washings to make them safe. So used clothes are perfect, as they have already been purged of most of what could cause the most harm to little sensitive skin.

So our recommendation for anybody who'd ever want to buy us clothes for Baby would be to do what we did. We would much prefer used clothes to new ones. There are wonderful consignment stores in most metropolitan areas, and many quite upscale and trendy, without being pretentious or expensive. And go crazy!  The return is much greater so you'd be able to help us more. And there is so much cute stuff out there!

UPDATE: With subsequent consignment store visits, we went slightly overboard with the 3-6 month range, so we are probably good with that size. We'll next need clothes at the 6-9 month size, which is probably the clothes that she'll wear this fall. We are expecting a pretty big baby.

32 Week Ultrasound!

Today was such an exciting day! We had a growth ultrasound to measure Baby and see that she's developing as she should. Many women don't necessarily get ultrasounds in the third trimester, but since Sandi's under supervision by the gestational diabetes clinic, even though her sugars have been consistently in healthy ranges it's standard to measure the baby's growth rate in the third trimester to make sure she doesn't get "too big." 

Her foot is 7 cm long! That's 2.75 inches!!

As it turns out, and not at all unexpectedly for us, we have a fairly sizable bun in the oven. Sandi was 8 lbs 10 oz at birth and 19", and Doug was 9 lbs and 21", and neither of us are small-framed adults (Sandi is 5'9" and Doug is 6'2"). We've been anticipating an 8-9 lb baby all pregnancy. Well, it looks like we're on track for that, because Baby is currently estimated at about 5 1/2 lbs with 8 weeks left until "full term" at 40 weeks. The margin of error is about a pound each way. So, if she gains the normal 1/2 lb each week, we could end up with an 8 1/2-10 1/2 lb little chunk!

This is somewhat concerning to the medical profession, because the statistical "normal" for babies is 7.5 lbs at birth, and babies who are larger than that can have issues traversing the birth canal in normal women. If our daughter's current estimated weight is accurate, and she gains the normal 1/2 lb per week, she could reach 7.5 lbs by 36 weeks, with 4 more weeks to go! But we're not particularly worried because her size is measuring in the 87th percentile for her age, and we are also at the upper-end of normal for our heights (~95th percentile) and healthy weight ranges compared to statistical averages, so Baby generally seems to match us. The doctor said that she's proportionate, i.e. her belly, head, and femur size are all in similar size ranges, statistically, which means that she's not "fat," yet. Sandi also feels like right now she has plenty more room for Baby to grow. Sandi's belly button is still a (very shallow) "innie" (many women's are poking out by now), she doesn't have heartburn or get feet in her ribs yet, and there are no stretch marks yet.... Let's pray that continues to be true.

That said, the medical industry can also get trigger-happy about things like early induction and C-Sections when babies start deviating from the statistical averages, especially when gestational diabetes is involved, so we're prepared to refuse some recommendations that may be made to us in the future based strictly on numbers. Sandi has begun a "birth plan," which is a written and thought-out document to describe how we'd like our birth to go. We're open to the possibility that things could go wrong, but we'd rather give them a chance to go right than jump into slicing Sandi's belly open, which is the way too many U.S. births go these days. Fortunately our hospital, UCSF, is also known to be more open-minded about mothers who refuse common "standard of care" based interventions, while also offering a very good level of emergency/intensive care, so we're hopeful that everything will go smoothly one way or the other.

We also interviewed our first Doula candidate this afternoon. A Doula can help make the labor and delivery process more comfortable for the couple, as well as help to advocate and remind the couple of the decisions they made about the birth during the heat of the moments when hospital staff just want to do the routine process but we already know that we want something different. 

We'll post more about all that soon. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy these images of her face as much as we do! There's a real live baby in there!

Sleepy baby with pouty lips

Looks like she has a black eye... she moved right as this pic was taken.

Her lips are open and it looks like she's blowing bubbles!

Baby stuff...so much stuff.

The countdown is officially on. With (hopefully) less than 10 weeks to go, we're accumulating the absolute necessities for Baby's first few months. And by absolute necessities, we mean the bare minimum. Which is still a LOT of stuff!

One of the first questions everyone asks us is "what are you doing for the nursery?" Well... there can be no nursery. At least not until our lease is up in October and we move to a larger apartment.

Because this is where we live, as currently furnished:

It's a snug little nest, right? (note: this version is much neater/cleaner than reality.)

Any "extra" floor space you think you see is an illusion. But let's be honest, at 782 square feet, we already have more private space for us and our newborn than the majority of expectant parents on the planet. And even by spoiled first-world standards, it probably won't really be that much of an issue, since Sandi plans to breastfeed, which will be easier if Baby lives in our room with us.

Our plan is seriously going against the grain of American consumerism in many ways. Amazon, Babies R' Us, and the internet in general really want us to spend a lot of money on a lot of stuff,most of it made of cheap plastic and fabrics covered in toxins. They have lists of huge items "recommended" for new parents. But we don't have space, we'd rather save the money for a down payment on a house, and generally we want to be as minimalist as possible.

A major concern (especially for Doug, for some reason) is that so many of the items for babies are drenched in flame retardants, which are very toxic and emit fumes forever. Flame retardants are actually required by a U.S. regulation due to the large number of deaths from mainly cigarette-related fires. We don't want baby to burn up, but we also don't want to expose her to any more toxins than absolutely necessary.

Ingenuity washable all-in-one play-yard!

So after much research (mostly by Doug), we purchased a  washable, convertible, portable bassinet/co-sleeper/play-yard/changing table to tuck next to Sandi's side of the bed for night sleep and feedings. Thank you to Sandi's parents for offering to sponsor the bassinet/play-yard purchase! We appreciate it so much! We also got a baby swing for the living room area, since all of the nieces and nephews loved their swings and would play/sleep happily there when not being held. We already have a soft, tie-on sling carrier for "wearing" the baby around the house, which is a great supplement to carrying her in our arms to comfort her. We'll probably also buy an "Ergobaby" sling for longer outside excursions.


And that's about it.

Ingenuity washable multi-direction swing!

We'll also need a car seat, and since we already bought the breast pump and bottles, that should be the only other "big-ticket" baby item we'll need for the first few months. Except, of course, for diapers. Doug has found a local cloth diaper service that seems like a good balance between cost, convenience, and keeping poopy diapers out of landfills.

Hopefully by the time we need anything else substantial, we'll have moved to a larger place. Doug's new commute is more than an hour each way, so we'll likely move down into the peninsula to split the distance and get a larger space.

People who follow certain schools of parenting would strongly object to our choice not to use a "real" crib, which is "safer." But let's be real here. There's absolutely no space for a "real" crib. We won't even need an electronic/video baby monitor, because at no time will Baby be more than 20-30 feet away from us.  We won't need a high chair for months, if ever. She won't even need actual toys until Christmastime, which is...um...perfect!

Our lease is up in October, which is probably perfect timing.

In other ways, we've fallen into the modern "progressive" parent trap of wanting as much of our stuff as possible to be organic, non-toxic, and earth-friendly. So here's the list of what we've purchased or been given so far:

Washable play-yard (Ingenuity)
Ingenuity washable swing (Ingenuity)
Soft organic cotton tie-on sling (Stochen Wiege)
Organic lambskin (Child Organics)
Portable organic changing pad (Gift!!) ("Patemm")
Breast pump (Medela)
Glass baby bottles (Born Free)
Bottle warmer (Kiinde Kozii)
Organic nursing pillow (Blessed Nest)
Organic swaddling blankets (Bambino Land)
Burp cloths (Gifts!)
Several baby outfits (Gifts!)
Medical/first aid toolkit (Gift!)
Baby's first books (Gifts!)

We have several Target gift cards to spend which were gifts from Sandi's Jobe cousins and aunt & Uncle. (Thank you!!)

Doug is also researching car seat options, books, clothing, and other things we may need. But this should take care of most of the absolute necessities. We hope.

So there you go. That is how we're doing with baby stuff, so far. Phew!

Fun with baby photos ~ 30 weeks!

Today is the 30-week mark! That means that I have 10 weeks until my due date, and 8-12 weeks for a "normal term" delivery! Wow. 

Baby is still chugging along in there, getting heavier and longer and more active. She's been lying transverse (sideways) during the day lately. Since I'm sitting at my desk at work most of the day, that means she's sort of sitting in my lap because of the way my belly pooches over now. This is a blessing, because it also means that she can't really get to my bladder. And as we all know from my previous posts, leaving the bladder alone is a gift to Mommy. 

She definitely still has lots of room, even though I'm measuring normal belly-wise. I have such a long waist that she's not even close to my ribs yet, which is apparently another blessing because it's probably why I don't have heartburn or rib pain. This could all change soon, though, because she'll double in weight during these last two months. Her arms and legs are long and strong enough now that I can feel hands and feet and knees and elbows sliding along my belly wall as she moves and stretches and tries to turn. She spins around so much that I worry she'll get the cord wrapped around herself. 

I'm scheduled for a "growth ultrasound" in two weeks! It will be nice to get another little window into her world. 

I love to think about what she's going to look like. I also used to love thinking about this when my sisters were pregnant with their kids. There are so many possibilities! I like to look at photos of Doug and me when we were little kids and wonder how this little girl will combine our features, and our family's features. She's almost guaranteed to be tall and strong and athletic based on our builds, but I wonder how our characteristics will combine to make her uniquely her, while still being ours.

Doug was born with dark sparse hair in a bald-old-man pattern that turned almost white-blonde as a toddler and then slowly got darker as he got older until it's almost black today. His eyes are a lovely shade of blue-green, and his beard is a mix of red, blonde, and dark brown; his skin has very few moles or freckles and he tans very easily. 

I was born almost bald with light brown/dark blonde hair that slowly got darker as I grew up. It grows out of my head as dark as Doug's but it gets lighter very easily with reddish and blonde highlights. My eyes are muddy brownish-greenish-grayish, which I've been told is "Welsh brown," and I have very fair skin that freckles very easily and can get moderately tan. My mom had auburn hair and freckly skin, too so there's maybe even a chance that we could have a redhead!

Boring. And Blessing.

I need to whine. I've been feeling so bored lately...but no, it's actually me. I am boring.

(Aside: when I was a little girl, I would sometimes visit my Uncle Neil on his farm in Hickman County, TN. If he heard me say I was bored, I'd be put to work weeding the garden or picking up sticks or something. So it's very difficult for me to admit that I'm bored. Uncle Neil, if you're reading this, it's getting difficult for me to bend over. Please don't make me weed anything. Love you.)

This time last year we had so many things happening, I can't even understand how we survived, much less accomplished it all and got where we are today. So many blessings! So much work! And now I am boring myself to death. I don't even have a hobby! And I'm afraid to start one, or to get involved with a non-profit or anything new and productive, because let's face it, in 2 months I'll have to stop it because my "hobby" will be parenting the squirmy thing currently residing in my belly. In fact, the only thing that's keeping me consistently entertained these days is reading "Mommy blogs" and product reviews and trying to envision the utter chaos that our lives will be in 60 days or so.

Doug is less boring, because he has his fancy camera to play with, his company just got acquired by a much larger and more exciting company, and he generally has more adventurous energy than slug-worm here. I'm jealous.

China!

Last May, I had just put my house in Nashville on the market, having spent all April on house-getting-ready-projects in between travel for work; I had just returned from a trip to China with my business school class; I was in the midst of several huge final grad school projects; I was in full end-of-year swing with my fund-raising job and commuting for 2 hours a day; I was getting fitted for my wedding dress; and I was somehow also running 20-30 miles a week and sleeping from time to time. Doug had just finished grad school and moved to SF, and he was doing most of the wedding-moon planning, thank God.

Wedding!

I had a summer filled with change and excitement ahead of me, followed by married life filled with adventure in a new city.

And now, I am boring.


I did buy some knitting supplies and make a couple of adorable fuzzy newborn hats, but that doesn't really count, I don't think.

OK, whining over. After wallowing in the worst first-world variety of self-pity, I realize that I'm actually really thankful that so much of my life changed so much in the last year. I feel like it's made the upcoming changes less intimidating. After all, I've already uprooted myself from a comfortable life and home and job, worked harder than I ever imagined in grad school for the last 2 years, married my very bestest friend, and gotten us generally established in a new city. We don't feel fully at home, yet, which is probably good because right now we have very few commitments to distract us from being parents.

Yes, we are blessed. Blessed with boring.

I can't wait to meet the next little blessing in my life.

Squirmy wormy and the best massage EVER ~ 29 1/2 weeks

Today baby is trying out a new way of moving. Instead of bouncing and kicking suddenly, she is squirming almost constantly. She was laying sideways for most of the weekend, which gave me blessed relief from constant bathroom trips since we were out and about most of the weekend. Today she seems to be laying kind of diagonally across my belly with her limbs toward my belly button side. I can feel her little feet and hands and knees and elbows moving and pressing and wiggling constantly. I guess she's getting plenty of food and oxygen, because she has plenty of energy! I wish she'd leave some for me...

Speaking of energy, I ordered some maternity active-wear from a company called Ocean Lily, and it came last Saturday! My non-maternity running/yoga pants and tops just don't fit well anymore, which has made being active uncomfortable. I LOVE my new clothes! I got two tank tops, a long-sleeved top, a pair of yoga pants, and a pair of maternity bike/running shorts. Here's a photo of me wearing the long-sleeved top and pants, holding a watermelon outside of our neighborhood Whole Foods:

Last week I had a doctor's appointment, which went just fine. Baby's heart rate, my blood pressure, and my tummy size are all normal. I'm still trying to watch my weight gain: I'm holding steady right at 25 lbs but I have 10 weeks of baby growth to go, so I expect I'll hit 30 or maybe more.

I also had my first prenatal massage last week. It was AMAZING. I think it was the best massage I've ever had. I used to get massages fairly regularly, especially when I was running and training for the marathon. My hips and legs get very tight, especially my piriformis muscles. I haven't had a massage since November, and I've been feeling progressively tighter and achey in my hips and lower back, especially after long walks. Although Doug is perfectly willing to mash away on my bottom and hips, he's just not very skilled at actually locating the right muscles, so I finally caved and looked for prenatal massage providers in my area. I found a local place with great Yelp ratings and booked an appointment. Holy OMG.

The main difference with prenatal massage vs. "regular" is that you can't lay on your belly, because, well, obviously your humongous baby belly is in the way. So you lie on your side with a body pillow between your legs and supporting your belly. This can be an awkward angle for the therapist to access your back muscles, but apparently it puts you in a perfect position for butt-and-hip access, which is exactly what I wanted. And wow, was it the best massage ever.

To get deep down into your gluteal muscles where the piriformis muscle hides, and all of those other tricky little hip muscles, the therapist usually uses his/her elbow and thumbs and knuckles and works relatively hard to manipulate the tissue. Mine actually got up on the table with me and got her elbow into all of the tight fascia around my hipbones and femur heads. She had perfect control of the pressure she used, and she even did strength tests to figure out where I needed to be released, and it worked! It was heavenly. My legs and hips felt incredible all weekend. I can't wait to go back, which I probably will in about a month.

And in a month, I'll be about a month away from delivering this little squirmy worm! I can't believe it.

Third trimester begins ~ 28 weeks

This little girl hiccups a lot! Once or twice a day for 10 minutes or more isn't unusual at all. I hope that means that she'll be a really strong breather!  I can also tell what position she's in based on where the hiccups are located in my belly. This morning they're toward the top right of my belly button, so I know she's head-up and slightly tilted to the right. Usually they're down lower in my belly, because she really likes to be head-down. Which is a preference I hope she keeps!

She's also started to stttretttch a lot, which is fine unless she's stretching into my bladder. Which is typical. My poor bladder is taking more punishment than any other part of me, and has been for the entire pregnancy. I can't wait to get back to normal, with <6 trips per night to the bathroom. In searching for releif, I've found that many advice sites tell pregnant women to do kegel exercises to tighten the pelvic floor to limit "leakage"...but that's not my problem at all. It's just the constant pain when her head slips down into my pelvis, or her feet decide to do a little stomping, and sometimes I'll feel her hands fluttering and then puuussshh out, right on my bladder. It's not fun.

Second Trimester Recap
Several of the "mommy bloggers" have answered little questionairres throughout their pregnancy. I thought that would be fun to do today, since I just finished my second trimester. So here you go.

Daddy likes to feel Baby moving!

Her size: Up to 2.5 lbs and 16" long!

My size: There's definitely a basketball's worth of room for my baby, though I have a large frame I don't think it looks horrifying, yet. My belly is rock-hard when I'm standing up, and squishy when I sit or lay down. I can feel baby's bottom, back, or head from the outside depending on how she's positioned, and she's strong enough to rock my belly when she moves. But we can't see any distinguishable limbs because I have a nice thick padding on my belly.

Belly Button: Still an "innie," though it's gotten much shallower than before.

Stretch marks: None so far... I don't use anything special to prevent them but I've always lotioned up really well after every shower. I use an organic cocoa/shea butter blend which might be helping.

Total weight gain: I'm still right at 25 lbs. and I need to stay there. But the burrito I just ate might tip the scale a little...

Sleep: I'm sleeping fine, and other than frequent trips to the bathroom, any issues I have can't really be attributed to baby. I fall right back to sleep after I do my business. The last few nights have been warmer than usual, though, which makes my sleep lighter and less restful. Fortunately I've never been a belly-sleeper and I've always preferred my left side, so that makes things easier. Doug likes to snuggle up behind me in a spooning position with his left arm under my head and his other hand on my belly, which melts my heart.

I've had a lot of very vivid dreams, but I usually do have vivid dreams so I'm not sure that the pregnancy is an influence... I have had a few about the baby, but I can't really remember what they are. Except one where Doug morphed back into a high school or college version of himself and didn't care at all about helping out with the baby, which was infuriating until I awoke to him snuggling up to me.

Maternity clothes: When I visited TN in March, my mom took me shopping for some clothes which have become my core wardrobe staples (thanks Mom!), along with several old non-maternity dresses which still fit just fine, especially belted above my belly. I wear the same things every week, and I'm SO reluctant to buy more since I'll only need them for another 2.5 months or so... I did just order some nursing bras and workout clothes from Boob Design and Ocean Lily. They were expensive but hopefully worth it.

At the GG Botanical Garden

Food cravings: I haven't had any bad cravings during the whole pregnancy, other than a general craving to eat whatever I want as I did before I was pregnant and pre-gestational-diabetic. I could eat whatever I wanted mainly because I could easily run it all off. I'm also really missing a nice glass of wine or a good craft beer from time to time when I just want to relax and enjoy an evening or a weekend afternoon.

Food aversions: Seaweed salad, or anything too fishy-smelling. I'm also not a huge fan of curry, which I didn't mind so much before I was pregnant.

General Symptoms: I feel occasional Braxton-Hicks contractions, especially after I've been walking for > an hour, or climb a hill or stairs. I had a shooting pain in my right hip for a few weeks that has finally gone away. I am so blessed not to have heartburn or constipation or varicose veins or swelling like so many women do, but my bladder pain makes up for most of that relief, I dare say. I've gotten light-headed and nauseous a few times in the mornings recently but nothing I can't handle if I lay back down for a few minutes.

What I'm looking forward to: Meeting our daughter and getting on with this whole parenting thing! Also going for a 5-mile run without feeling like I will perish; sharing a bottle of wine and soft non-pasteurized stinky cheeses with my husband; eating basically whatever I want to; not testing my blood sugars after every single meal and obsessing about my fasting level in the morning; having my bladder back to myself, and wearing any of the clothes in my closet that I so choose.