Week 27

The 3^rd Trimester has finally arrived!  Woohoo Week 27!  I’m officially 2/3 of the way done and I really don’t feel prepared most of the time and at the same time I just want it to be February so we can meet the baby boy and I can go back to feeling normal.  Now, I know most pregnancy books and websites claim that the 3^rd trimester starts on Week 28, but they obviously can’t count.  Since I don’t plan on being pregnant for 42 weeks, I’ll use math and divide a standard pregnancy (40 weeks) in 3 which gives us 13 weeks and 2 days.  That equals to the 3^rd trimester starting on Week 26 and 4 days, but to make our lives easier we’ll just round to Week 27!

I did my glucose test to test for Gestational Diabetes.  Ugh!  So the drink isn’t too bad at first.  It tastes like flat, warm Orange Crush.  The problem is that you’re drinking a whole bottle of the stuff and by the end you’re not thirsty anymore and it’s so sweet that it burns the back of your throat.  You also have to drink it in 5 minutes.  So I waited for an hour and then had a blood draw because in this country they still haven’t caught on the fact that you can test blood sugar levels with a finger prick.  Also, my doctor is test happy and decided that since I was having blood taken that she’d also do a full CBC panel.  That would be 3 large vials of blood and the nurse really hurt me when she put the needle in which sucked.  So what this tells me is that there’s no way in hell that I’m doing the 3 hour test if I fail this one.  They can just treat me as if I have GD because I’m not getting 4 blood draws in a 3 hour period.  Nope!  Not happening! 

I’m going to IKEA on Wednesday and I hope to pick up the dresser for baby boy.  They still don’t have the crib in stock, but I’m hoping that changes when they open the big store in 3 weeks.  At least we’ll have the dresser and we can set that up and start filling it up too.  I need to keep looking for monkey decals, but they’re so expensive on etsy that I’m scared to keep looking. 

Dre also wants us to start packing a hospital bag just in case.  I told him that most people usually do this around 35 weeks, but I guess he wants to be ready.  I don’t even know where to start with the hospital bag.  I know people say clothes and toiletries for you, hubby, and baby.  The problem is that I don’t have any nursing stuff yet which is what I think I’d be packing and I wear my yoga pants so I don’t want to pack them in a bag in and not wear them for the next 13 weeks.  My friend also just told me to make sure to bring wipes to the hospital because they don’t have any.  WTF?  What kind of hospital that delivers babies doesn’t have diapers and wipes on hand.  So weird!  Anyways, I think I’ll try to start packing a bag and add stuff as I think of it.

Week 26

Week 27

My average weight this week is 169.3 lbs which is a .6 lb loss.  That’s right I seem to have lost a little bit of weight.  I didn’t really do anything differently, but all week I was about a pound lighter.  It’s weird, but my weight seems to have bounced back this week.  My total weight gain so far has been 16.3 lbs in 27 weeks.  This seems to be pretty good and I think that I’ll end up gaining around 30 lbs this pregnancy which is totally normal.  This is with eating a lot of extra crap I don’t need.  Yes, I do make sure to eat enough veggies to get all my mineral goals, but I do make cake and cookies and eat them.  Also, I’m not very active since it’s gotten a lot colder outside and it gets dark really early now.  Most of the exercise I get comes in the form of walking around stores while shopping. 

Heartburn and acid reflux come and go, but they have definitely not been as bad for the last week or so.  I’m still having a lot of problem with indigestion and I think that I need to increase my fiber intake to help flush my system out faster.  It’s not that easy to do during the week, but I’ll try anyways. 

I’ve had a couple of BH this week.  Very mild and I think it was just because I wasn’t drinking enough water or I was getting run down.  I still only have one stretch mark, but Dre pointed out brown spots by my nipples to other day.  They’re definitely not stretch marks, but they kind of look like sun spots except that the sun never touches that area of my boobs.  Weird!  I’m hoping that it goes away after baby is born. 

Sciatic nerve pain or whatever it is likes to come and go.  I think this might be a problem until I deliver.  There’s not much that seems to help.  The chiropractor gave me stretches to help it since my back isn’t cooperating when he tries to adjust that side.  They’re a lot like the stretches that my yoga instructor gave me to help with the leg cramps.  Now, I just need to remember to do every day.

I’m really looking forward to my baby shower this Saturday.  When SIL and I picked the date, it seemed so far away and now it’s in 5 days!  Time flies!  I can’t wait to see everyone and I hope they all have a good time.  I know I will because SIL has put an insane amount of thought and time into all the food, planning, games, decoration, and prizes.  I’ll post pictures next week!  So excited!  I can’t wait!

Baby is the size of an eggplant…AGAIN!  I think this is the last eggplant week.  I hope so because I’m starting to get sick of seeing that eggplant on my ticker.  Baby is now about 2 lbs!

Cake is the Best Thing Ever!

Had a movie day today with the girls.  I haven't done that in a really long time.  It was really nice.  I did get a little tired during the second movie.  I find that I get more tired more easily again. 
We watched Beastly and Burlesque.  I really liked Beastly.  It's modern take on Beauty and the Beast and I really like some of the imagery of that movie.  The tattoos that are on the main character and the witch are amazing.  Burlesque had some really good singing and dancing.  Of course, Christina Aguilera is the main character in that movie and she has quite the voice.   Overall, I quite enjoyed both movies.

I baked a banana cake on Friday night and iced it.  I decided to make a layer cake with it.  I blame my pregnancy cravings and hormones.  I brought it the movie day and we ate more than half of it!  Crazy, but it's so good!

Not the best picture, but this banana cake is soooo good!

Some of the other girls brought veggies which were an excellent choice, but I love to bring sweets when I go to places like that.  I've always been better at baking than cooking anyways.

I think I'm going to attempt to make a Maple Pudding Chomeur.  It's a traditional Quebec French Canadian dessert which my parents made all the time when I was a kid.  I think I'll attempt it in the next couple of weeks.

Three Wishes

It's Remembrance Day today in Canada (Veteran's Day for the Americans). 

It also happens to be 11-11-11.  It's one of the last years that the we'll have the "lucky" days.  Because of this, I want to wish for three things...

I wish for war to be over.  For the sons, daughter, brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers who go out to fight for our country and liberty to come back safe, alive, and whole.  I pray for the veterans who have given so much of themselves to make sure that we can have the liberty to make the choices that we make.

I wish for a healthy baby and for an easy delivery without complications or trauma.  I pray that when baby boy is ready to come out that he lets me know.  So many of the people I communicate with every day are having preterm labour or have delivered their babies.  I pray that I recognize the signs that indicate that I should go to the hospital if they do happen before my due date arrives.

I wish for my family to be healthy, happy, and safe.  What more is there to say?  Family is what connects us and is, in my opinion, one of the most important things in our lives.  Family doesn't always have to be flesh and blood, but can be those individuals that we invite into our hearts and treat like family.

Those are my wishes this year.

Lazy Sundays that Turn into Busy Sundays Sometime Hold the Best Moments

Sunday, Dre and I decided to just do our own thing and slowly wander through the day.

We got up and had grapefruit for breakfast (and other stuff of course).  I know, I know.  What the hell do you care about my breakfast eating habits.  Well, peeling the freaking things only took me half an hour.  I love grapefruit, but for the amount of work that's required to eat one I'm not sure that I'll eat them too often.  Of course, since I'm writing about them right now I suddenly have this extreme craving FOR GRAPEFRUIT RIGHT NOW!  It's a problem since I'm sitting at my desk at work on a very boring conference call.

After that, we decided to actually go to church.  Now, we regularly go to church, but since our church conveniently streams the services online every Sunday it doesn't help our lazy asses from getting off the couch and actually going there.  I think we need to get better at actually going since it's a huge church and meeting other people over there is not the easiest thing.  I want my kids to grow up in a church where they feel comfortable and have lots of friends which I something I missed out on.  My parents were constantly changing churches for one reason or another.  It made it difficult to make friends with people who had been attending the same church for their entire lives and had a lot of history together. 

Then, Dre took me out for brunch at Cora's.  He's so sweet!  I usually suggest everything that we do or whine about cooking and then suggest takeout or a restaurant.  I had this awesome egg sandwich wrapped in a crepe.  I even peeled away some of the crepe and dipped it in maple syrup...so yummy!  Since almost every plate at Cora's comes with a mountain of fruit, I also ordered their divine English Cream to dip my fruit.  Dre had a huge crepe filled with sliced bananas and Nutella topped with whipped cream.  He promptly went into a sugar coma after consuming 98% of it.  I'm not usually a huge fan of bananas, but I ate a ton of his bananas.  I guess that the baby is going to take after his dad there because Dre eats a banana a day.

Earlier, I had suggested going to visit the CHEO Dream Home.  Our local children's hospital puts on a lottery every year to raise funds for the hospital and the grand prize is a million dollar home built on a 2 acre lot.   IF you win the grand prize you get the house, maid service for a year, a car, and a truckload of money.  I really, really, really want to win this house every year!  So Dre and I buy tickets for it every year.  We're not very lucky because so far the only thing either one of us has won is a pair of binoculars.  The only problem is that if I did win the grand prize we'd have to move to the complete other end of town which would be really far away from everyone we know.  I think I would be able to deal with that though since I'd be living in a palace...did I mention that they give you all the furniture that is presently showcased in the house.  People, that includes about 8 flat screen televisions!  The draw is sometime in December of early January...we'll see if we won anything then.

I, also, love going through these house because (with the exception of last year's house which was horrid) they're usually designed to perfection. 

After all of that, we got back home and crashed.  Overall, we had a really great weekend just relaxing and doing the stuff that interested us.  I want to really enjoy these types of weekend because I don't think we have too many of those left.  I have a feeling that trying to do all those things with a newborn would be almost impossible.

So now I'm hoping that this coming long weekend is going to be equally awesome, but seeing as we have some not so fun stuff happening I think it might be one of those weekends that you wish just went by faster.

Warm bed, kisses, and yoga. That's my evening tonight. I'm all nice and relaxed now that I stretched all the muscles in my body in yoga class.

I wanted to come up with an awesome blog post tonight, but I got side tracked by FB and forum drama. So I'll say goodnight and tomorrow I'll come up with something withy to say or post about.

For now, I'll leave you with Pregnancy Rule #83839 - doing yoga while weighing 20 lbs more than before does not make you look or feel graceful. Good thing it helps me sleep like a baby.

Goodnight all!

Week 26

Week 26.  Time flies!

Halloween was last Monday.  I thought that Dre and I could have a nice meal and then give out some candy to the cute kiddies while eating my weight in chocolate.

WRONG!

The hordes of children descended on our house.  By 6:45 Dre and I, started giving out 3 pieces of candy instead of 5 because there were so many kids.  By 7pm, I was contemplating dashing to the store to get some more candy, but I’d have to dodge the hordes of crazy, sugar rushed kiddies to get there.  By 7:45pm, we got our last trick or treater and we were down to about 10 little chocolate bars.  It was a harrowing experience!  Last year, I stocked enough candy to feed a small army.  I had enough candy for 200+ kids and we barely had 25 ring our door bell.  When it was time to stock up on candy this year, I only bought 3 bags of candy thinking I’d have plenty.  That was our Halloween horror tale this year.  Next year, I’m stocking up on candy so that I don’t have to give my favourite chocolate bars to the kids.

Today, I’ve been searching through Etsy trying to find cute decals of monkeys in trees.  There are so many, but a lot of them are really girly because the tree has flowers in it even if the flowers are blue.  So annoying!  Also, they’re freaking expensive.  I’m talking $165 for a full size tree decal with leaves and some monkeys.  Did they make the damn thing out of gold or something?  I have to go check one of our local stores that carries artsy stuff to see if they have some decals I can use; otherwise, I’ll be spending a fortune on cutsie wall decals.  It’ll totally be worth it though.



Week 25



Week 26

I spent all week at the same exact weight.  170 lbs.  I gained 2 lbs between last Saturday and Sunday and stayed there all week.  It’s the first week that this has happened.  This week my average weight is 169.9 lbs.  That’s a 2 lbs gain for this week making my total weight gain for this pregnancy 16.9 lbs at 26 weeks!  I think I’m on track to gain 30 lbs this pregnancy.  I still think that pictures make me look like a blimp.  Every time I see one that Dre insists on taking of me I go, “Who the hell is making me look so bloated?  OMG!  I look like that.”  I must a reverse anorexic or something.  You know when an anorexic person looks in the mirror and all we see are toothpick bones and they stand there pinching imaginary rolls of fat.  Well, I’m the opposite.  I stand there and think, “170 pounds really doesn’t look that bad on me.  Yes, there’s my stupid double chin making an appearance, but it’s not as prominent as I would have thought.  I look pretty skinny for a pregnant girl.”  So, I’ll keep choosing to see myself as this skinny, pregnant girl because it’s better for my self-esteem. 

This is what Dre tell me yesterday, “I love the baby.  I love the wifey.  Together you’re all one big package.”  While kissing my stomach then gesturing towards me.  Good thing that comments like that don’t give me a complex or anything.  Funny husband!

Dre came home the other day and told me that one of his co-workers told him not to skip the maternity pictures because I’d regret it later on.  The problem with those is that right now I’m living in denial land and refuse to look at pictures of myself.  Also, since my wedding photographer decided that selling houses was a much better career than creating magic with Photoshop, I’d have to hunt for a new photographer for these.  Blah!  It only took me 2 months, hundreds of websites, and 4 appointments to find this photographer.  I’m not sure I can do it again for maternity/baby pictures.  I guess I should add this to my list of things to do/find.

The heartburn is behaving most of the time.  Of course, the only time it acts up now is when my Zantac prescription is not accessible.  I need to start carrying that stuff in my purse.  I did have peanut butter this week and it was heavenly.  So good!  Dre had to steal the jar away from me so I didn’t eat it all.  He even took a picture of me eating from the jar and giving him the side-eye.  He thinks it’s absolutely hilarious.

No BH this week, but with so many girls from my Feb. 2012 mom group on The Bump and FB group being admitted to the L&D because of contractions, pre-term labour, or other symptoms it makes me extra paranoid about every little thing now.  I’m also winning the war against stretch marks for now.  I still have the one lonely one on my boob and it’s going to stay that way. 

According to a lot of online articles, I’m not actually suffering from sciatic nerve pain but an unstable pelvis or something like that.  I think I’m actually suffering from both.  I’ve had sciatic nerve pain my whole life and that fun stuff has suddenly reappeared in my life along with the new pain in my bum when I walk a lot (as in more than the 10 feet required to get my Ben & Jerry’s).  I think the new pain might be this pelvis thing.  

I’m really looking forward to having Friday off this week.  It’s Remembrance Day (Veterans Day for the US) and since I work for the Federal Government that is a Federal holiday!  Yeah!  The only downside is that since that’s the last day of my 26^th week I have to go do my stupid gestational diabetes test.  Ugh!  I’m so not excited about that.  Doctor told me to do it between Week 24-26.  I like to leave thing till the last minute.

Baby is the size of an eggplant or a cucumber depending on which website/book you read.  He’s getting pretty big.  I can tell because his movements and karate kicks are getting much stronger.  Also, he still definitely loves to bounce up and down on my bladder.

Weekend Stuff

The weekends always seem to fly by!

Since the weekend is the only time that I seem to sleep well, I'm really sad whenever Sunday night rolls around and I realize that I'll have to get up at 6am tomorrow while it's pitch black outside.  Although now that we've gone through another time change (I really, really, really hate time change.), it might actually be light outside by the time I leave the house in the morning.  When you drive to work, it doesn't really matter if it's light or not, but when you wait for a bus on the side of the road every morning it matters.  It matters because cars can't see you very well.  This doesn't usually make me feel safe at all.  Thankfully, once December 21st, the winter solstice, is passed the days will start to get longer and somewhere in January it's no longer going to be dark once I leave for work.

Anyways, the weekend I hit up the annual toy sale we have here.  A friend of mine wanted to go and asked if I wanted to tag along.  I didn't think I'd really find anything I needed there since my two nephews have decided that what they want for Christmas is a laptop or an iPod Touch.  Have I mentioned that they're 8 and 5?  So I have no idea what to buy them for Christmas, but it definitely won't be a laptop.  My nieces on the other hand are 16 and 9.  The 16 year old obviously no longer wants toys and since she's a girl I generally just ask her what she wants to give her gift cards.  The younger one lives in Australia and since mailing stuff to Australia takes about 2 months when it's larger than a letter I no longer send her actual presents.  So, I was surprised when I ended up finding all these great baby books in French and English for the baby.  Dre and I love reading and it's a passion that we hope to pass on to our kids.  I love movies and television, but I think that the written word is the ultimate way to convey a story.  There are so many details in a book that you can never get from a movie or TV. 

These were insanely cheap because it was the toy sale. 
Love it that 12 baby books cost less than $20.

When I got back home, I had these good intentions to have lunch and then go out for some errands.  Instead I fell asleep for 2 hours!  I guess what they say about the crazy sleepiness coming back in the 3rd trimester is true.  I'm not quite in the 3rd trimester yet, but I'm definitely more tired than I was a month ago.  We did make it to the store to pick up some stuff for dinner and to check out some video cameras.  The sales person at Future Shop basically told us that if we were looking at the Flip HD Camcorder or the Sony Bloggie Touch Camcorder that we'd basically have the same video quality from recording on our iPhones.  She recommended we go with an actual video camera.  I'm not sure I want to spend $300-$400 on a camera that I'm not sure we really need.  I think we'll look at them when we go visit my aunt in the States.  Electronics tend to be much cheaper over there.

This was what we got done on Saturday.  It was a good Saturday.  Sunday we did a ton of stuff, but I'll have to talk about that later.  My computer is dying over here so I need to go.