[week 37]

I'm 37 weeks (ie. full term)! Feels like I've been pregnant for ever. You know, 10 months is a long time to wait for something. At our last OB appointment the midwife said...okay...we'll see you at your appointment next week if you haven't had your baby yet. Um. CRAZY! Matt and I are collecting our last minute questions and birth plan for next week's appointment. Matt has been awesome and has gone to all of the OB appointments with me...it has been fun and so surreal that it will be over soon.

Pregnancy is a trip....right?! I don't even remember looking like this 12 week photo anymore.
Oh, spud.

...so without further ado here is spud's progression from week 12 to 37 weeks.
Music is M.Ward's-Never Had Nobody Like You.



Want to see spud's first movie?!
[a spud movie]

Want to see my weekly posts about pregnancy and my thoughts/symptoms?!
[weeks]

lamaze!

Matt and I went to our first birthing class a few weeks ago... lamaze! Now, ideally I wanted to take a hypnobirthing class but it just didn't work in my schedule. We decided not to cry about it and instead take a lamaze class and supplement it with our hypnobirthing book.

Let me tell you...we learned a lot and maybe more importantly it was fun and encouraging! It was one night and one full day long. It also included a maternity center tour. The instructor was great and super positive. It's just what we needed. Lamaze as it turns out isn't really about breathing anymore. Crazy right?! It's more about positioning, massage (fantastic), and some breathing/relaxation. We learned about the other interventions that may go down....which is great for people to know what could happen. We don't all get to choose our birthing plans 100%, so that was a nice realistic side of a natural birthing class.

What we took away from the class:

- Matt needs to support me with ample amounts of massage....we learned techniques, just grand I tell you.
- I tried some new positions for comfort and helping spud progress in the birthing canal. So helpful! A bit of squatting, birthing ball use, and positioning using matt as support.
- We both understood a little more of what the interventions can be- episiotomy, amniotomy, pitocin, c-section, epidural....not presented in a scary way just potentially necessary, so it was great to get educated on it.
- We did an exercise where we had about 30 flashcards about a birthing plan. One side said something like "amniotomy" and the other said "let water break naturally"...or "midwife/ OB" or "vaginal/c-section." We had to place all the cards face up with what our ideal birthing plan was. Then we had to flip over 7 of them, because realistically everything won't go as planned. Matt and I then decided to pick up all the ones we just didn't really care about when it came right down to it. We were left with 3 face up: "Hospital birth, baby girl, healthy." Birthing plan complete.
- After the class Matt said...Ok, well I'm ready to have a baby! Sweet, me too. Now we just wait for spud to be ready.

(side note...why is blogger f-ing up my paragraph spacing?! I'm really trying hard to not be OCD about this, but come on blogger...anyone else having issues?)

[week 36]

Well....time sure does fly. Yikes. 36 weeks! In the past two weeks I have tried to relax...but it has been busy!

My parents came out to visit and we pulled off some incredible projects. It was awesome to see my parents, and how blown away they were with their daughter being super pregnant. My dad brought out the finished spud box (that's what my dad calls the co-sleeper for our room) ... much more on that later. My mom and I made fitted sheets for the crib and spud box. The roller-curtains were installed in the spud room. Matt and my dad brewed a cora-red ale. Oh, and my mom and I loved the indulgent mani/pedi. It was a blast.

My wonderful girlfriends out here in Idaho threw me a build-a-library baby shower that was perfect. Matt and I haven't been to babys r us... or toys r us... or any r-us, it's not really us. We don't have a registry... we are doing a little more minimal approach of having a child, but we did really want kid books. So we are starting to grow a little spud library, and it's fantastic.

So, I take that back, we kind of have a registry. I made a wish list on amazon for our families to look at. It's super simple and great that it pulls from anything on the internet...like etsy or ikea. We didn't expect to get too many things from our wish list, but it was a great way for us to budget for all of the items we thought we wanted/ needed with an evolving list. Turns out our families rock, and we have been so fortunate to have been gifted most of our wish list items.

....And how am I feeling being 36 weeks and HUGE?!

I feel good and extremely exhausted with everything. My pelvis feels as though it could rip into two pieces at any moment. I think Cora has dropped a little, for walking is a HUGE feat. But these are good things, all progressing in the right downward trend. She is head-down, which is encouraging too, her little 5 pound self just flops her little bottom side to side in my belly 24-7. The kicking and punching seems to be inwards and targeted at my organs. And at the end of this week spud will be full term!! Yay Spud!

[week 34]

I made it. I made it through my final preceptorship/clinical without having a spud born! Hell yeah. That is a picture of my 34-week-pregnant-body exhausted, but we did it. This is the day I was looking forward to all semester.

And... my parents are coming to visit next week, which will be fantastic. Instead of having my clinical to go to I can just relish in being pregnant with them. We get to do a few spud-room projects, my mom and I can get a pedicure while my dad and matt make a spud-brew-batch to drink when Cora is born. It will be grand.

And... spring is in the air. We are starting to get a few warm days (ie. 50-60 degrees) and birds are chirping like crazy. It's fabulous. I just love it when those first little leaves start to pop on the trees. Soon. Soon Spud will be here. This spring time will be extra fantastic.

music in-utero.

[precious picture from here]

Well... we have been a little cognisant of the fact that little spud hears a muffled version of everything that we hear. Do I want her to hear us potentially yelling? negative tones? ugly music? screaming? Probably not. I want her to hear her dad's voice and my laughter following it. I want her to feel my endorphins pulsating through her tiny little veins and arteries when I speak of her arrival and mention her name. I want her to hear the dogs breathing on my belly and trying to talk to us about wanting bones, car rides, and endless love. I want her to hear only the best of music to start her eclectic open-mindedness now, in utero. I want everything to be cheery in her warm little world. Why not? This world is great. We will make her world great.

I read somewhere about how fetuses start to gain a musical taste in utero. That she doesn't have to come out wanting to hear barney songs... she may want to listen to a little bob dylan and devotchka instead. That would be nice for us. Matt and I have always *loved* andrew bird music. He is fantastic. I made that little spud movie at week 16 to andrew bird's song "You Woke Me Up." We listen to him camping, on road trips, in the house, even walking down the aisle at our wedding (we asked him for a version of our favorite song of his without words... they sent it to us...it was sensational). Anyways, what prompted this post was his newest album that I just can't turn off nor turn down low. This will definitely be playing during my labor. I hope with as many hours as we spend listening to it that she comes into this world wanting andrew-bird-style lullabies. That and being soothed by matt's guitar playing. That would be blissful.

My questions for spudlet...

-Can she hear music when I wear headphones?!
-Can she hear both sides of the conversation on a cell phone?
...Probably not. I like to think she is my little ESP friend. Everything I think, she can feel. But I am sure this is not the case. I've just never had anyone living and thriving in my belly before. It's a pretty grand connection we have, even if she can't read my mind.

a DIY dutch door.

[one dutch door and two goonies]

We have dogs...as I have mentioned before, now 2 big ones. We did the doggy-gate thing for awhile in our house until my legs just didn't want to clear the gate any longer. Something about having a belly and no abdominal muscle tone makes stepping over a gate tricky and rather unsafe. We like to keep the dogs out of our bedroom and now we want them to stay out of spud's room too. I was struggling with the idea of putting a gate up in front of spud's room when I really don't want to be stepping over it holding a precious baby. Yes, a dog-free zone is important but what a nuisance! We have an old house that has super narrow doorways, like 26". The fancy dog gates with the door that opens needs a modern sized doorway that is wide.... not tiny like ours. So, unfortunately those wouldn't work in our house.

[a cute one from pinterest]

So plan B?! Well...I tossed out the idea to matt that what if we made a dutch door? I thought he might laugh at my silliness, but instead he loved the idea. We researched how much a dutch door costs- upwards of $1,000. Ridiculous right, for a door...a nice door but still?! Oh...this is a dutch door, also known as a barn door, stable door, half door (pictured above). They are adorable. So... we thought...hey let's DIY a dutch door! That's perfect!! A little door to open and close with a doorknob when we want to enter spud's room. This will be a door that almost 100% stays closed to keep big dogs out and little Cora in. We can also close the top half when its time to sleep and want to keep the noise out of her room. Perfect.

[completed dutch door!]

Our steps to a DIY door...

1. We didn't want to cut the door in half that is already existing to Cora's room. We are renting our house, and it's just not nice to start cutting things in half that aren't yours.

[the old, very nice looking singular door]

2. Get an incredibly helpful dad to help with motivating to start a project and help with the logistics of completing a dutch door project. So, Matt and his dad went to a second-hand-construction store to find an old door that would kind-of fit in our doorway.

[matt, his dad, and even colby trying to help]

3. It took about 2 days for them to make the door fit. That was shocking. But nothing in our house is level or straight. Not the ground, not to ceiling and definitely not the doorway.

4. Two additional hinges were chiseled and attached to the door and frame. This is so that each 1/2 of the door has 2 hinges to swing on.

5. Once the door was custom fit to the doorway and hinges placed they measured a nice 1/2 way point to cut the door in half. The door was cut in half and then fine-tuned to fit yet again in the doorway now that the load was hanging differently on the 4 hinges.

[in progress]

6. The pre-existing old fashioned doorknob was placed on the door again.

7. Matt added a strip on wood to the top and bottom edge of the door interfacing. This made the door look nice, a little more of a finished look. It also made the door feel a little stronger and more durable. He also filled in that awful hole you see above where the preexisting door latch was.

[the strip being screwed in]

[ready to be painted]

8. We painted the door tailor's chalk white- the same color as the trim in the room.

9. This is an extra step that most people would want to make... add a latch to connect the top and bottom parts of the doors into one door. This would be helpful when trying to close the door in its entirety. We are skipping this step for now because we don't see ourselves shutting the top half of the door that often, and can't decide on a nice latch to connect the two. So, we will address this step in about 6 months when we need it.

10. Marvel over the 1/2 door invention, and love it.....DIY dutch door complete!

[week 33]

Ahhh... week 33.  This week (actually right this second) matt and I are in a lamaze class. Lets all hope I am gaining the courage to do this naturally. As you all may know I have been on a Labor and Delivery Unit doing my last clinical rotation as a nursing student. Let me tell you this has been unbelievable and eye opening. I have been doing two night shifts a week, and I feel like a real nurse... it's phenomenal.

A few things I have learned from fellow pregnant ladies aka-my laboring patients-

• birthing is tough. there is no way around it. baby must come out.
• an epidural looks like a dream, I was hoping this wouldn't be the case...but come on. Its crazy to think you elect to have a baby naturally... all of the pain. Women are amazing.
• knowing how to read fetal monitoring/contractions will freak the hell of me when I deliver. 
• I now know too much to be clueless 
• when baby doesn't line up perfectly it makes delivering about 500 times worse, as though that even possible.
• screaming women have every right to be in pain...they are giving birth to a child. Nothing compares. 
• C-sections look like an easier route, but just don't look behind the blue curtain. It's a massive abdominal surgery that you're awake for. It's no wonder these ladies are sore afterwards.
• Vacuum assisted babies are sometimes a necessary means to an end. All the goofy swelling goes down within 24 hours and they have infant beanies for a reason.
• some women are so pleasant during contractions to their husbands, it's unbelievable... I just hope I am one of them.
• IVs, fetal monitoring, oxygen- they all have a purpose when shit hits the fan.
• A 9 pound baby is HUGE...actually quite a difference from a 6 pounder. I was 11 pounds when I was born, and I believe my sister was too... al' natural. HOLY COW. Go mom.
• A baby being born is phenomenal. Period. Taking its first breath of fresh air... welcomed into the world. I love it. I'm hooked. I can't wait for my turn.

My walk away message from my clinical so far-

I want a healthy baby. That's my birthing plan. Whatever is necessary I will trust my midwife/nurse/OB/anesthetist to do what they feel is safe. 

next month...

So... FYI...we are having a baby next month.

NEXT MONTH!!! Ahhh!!!

That's all.

Best news ever for this first week of March 2012 in our little house.