The Shopoff Showoff

I cannot believe that our due date is 10 days away! I absolutely love being pregnant, and I really have very few complaints even now as it is almost 100 degrees outside and I'm carrying around 30 extra pounds. How blessed I have been! Here are the latest photos:

34 weeks!

36 weeks!

38 weeks!

The time has arrived for the big nursery reveal! Thanks to my wonderful family for all of the help with painting, refinishing the dresser, more painting, and decorating. It feels so wonderful to have it finished, and I know that Baby Shop will love it. Now we are just waiting for him/her to make his/her arrival! Here are the photos:

I know that the next two pictures look almost identical...
but this is what it will look like if it is Hudson's room.

And this is what it will look like if it's Berklee's room.

Figured I'd upload my belly pics so you can watch the baby bump grow...enjoy!

26 weeks!

28 weeks!

30 weeks!

32 weeks!

We had a sonogram this week at about 22 1/2 weeks...it was great to see Baby Shop and how he/she is developing. I'm so glad that he/she was not showing off too much, and we were able to keep our secret a secret. I know everybody thinks I'm crazy but we are so excited about waiting to find out if our little one is a boy or girl, and I know it will be worth it when July arrives and he/she makes an appearance!

Baby Shop is measuring right at about where is expected. His/her legs are measuring slightly ahead the rest of him/her, but I guess it could just be that long legs are in the genes. :c) It was amazing to watch the movement in the sonogram...the tongue sticking in and out, the chambers of the heart beating, the baby kicking and wiggling in response to pressure from the ultrasound machine. I don't know how anybody can watch something like that and not believe in a miracle-creating God!

Since my last post about the pregnancy, Baby Shop has become very active. I will feel movement quite a bit throughout the day, but more when I'm sitting or lying down where I can really pay attention to it. Patrick has been able to even feel a few little kicks on my belly over the past two weeks. It's quite an amazing thing! What's not amazing is the rib pain I have started to have as they are spreading to create room. I'm thinking it's time for some prenatal yoga and a chiropractor visit. Thankfully, I know that I have a baby on the way and it makes all of this worth it! Here are some photos of our little one...

Alright...it's been a while since I posted, so I wanted to update you on the baby bump. Here's what's going on...

18 weeks!

20 weeks -- halfway there!

22 weeks!

Patrick and I are just thrilled that we will be having a baby join our family in July! It's hard to believe that there is a teensy-tiny human being inside me right now. This week at 16 weeks, he/she is the size of an avocado but has eye lashes, eye color, fingernails, taste buds, and hair. I mean...it's a complete person in there, just a very very small one.

I'm going to do my best in the coming months and years to keep this blog updated. I think it'll be a lot easier when I have an adorable little one to post stories and pics about. I want to use this to track all of the fun little things that happen as our little one grows.

So, I'm going to go back in time here and track my pregnancy thus far. We found out we were pregnant on November 15th. I woke up for a bathroom break at 2:30 that morning and suspecting that I might be pregnant, decided to take a test. It was positive! I couldn't believe it so I rubbed my eyes a few times and decided to take another test just to be sure and once again, it was positive. My family was in town for a family photo shoot, but I didn't want to tell them until I'd gotten a chance to tell Patrick and have a sonogram. So...what's a girl to do when she finds out she's pregnant at 2:30 a.m.? Go back to bed! haha Surprisingly, I was so incredibly tired during early pregnancy that I really did to back to sleep without ever waking my sweet hubby. When my family left later in the day, I sent Patrick an e-card with a picture of the positive test in it. He couldn't believe it...we were both thrilled! And this began the long period of keeping a secret when all we wanted to do was tell everybody we knew!

I had a doctor's appointment a week or so later to confirm pregnancy and set up a sonogram. My doctor decided to do an early ultrasound to make sure we had an accurate due date, so we set that up for the next Wednesday, December 2nd. It was so incredible for Patrick and I to see our little embryo complete with a strong heartbeat beating at 142 bpm. I was 5 weeks, 5 days pregnant.

With it being December, we decided to wait until Christmas when we would be able to see our families in person to tell them our exciting news. This was incredibly hard! It was well worth the wait when we saw their faces after they opened their "gift"...a wrapped picture frame with a sonogram picture in it. All of our family members were just thrilled! It will be the third grandchild for Patrick's parents and the first for my parents. It will be the 1st great-grandchild for my dad's parents and the ninth(yes, ninth) great-grandchild for my mom's parents! What a great family this baby will be surrounded by! It was nice to have the secret out so we could finally tell all of our friends. Here's a picture of the gift...

During the first trimester, I was...STARVING! I mean...I can't believe how much food I could put away in a day and still find myself hungry. I was eating every two hours even through lots of nausea. As long as I ate before getting out of bed, and ate before I felt hungry, I kept myself from becoming good friends with the toilet. :c) I was also extremely, extremely tired. I'm used to being "tired"(especially after a week with 22 active 1st graders) and I enjoy naps more than most. However, usually I can "fight through" my exhaustion when I have things that simply must be done. This was not the case during the first few weeks of pregnancy. I was so exhausted that I would just lie on the couch from the time I got home until I went to bed. Dinner was often whatever could be made quickly and easily or whatever Patrick could pick up or make. Completing grad school assignments was a chore, because all I wanted to do was sleep. Thankfully, I will be done with my last class in a few short months.

During this time, I found myself unable to eat several things: eggs, chicken that I made at home(I could eat grilled chicken or chicken nuggets out, but something about the smell of it cooking in the house would send me over the edge), and sweets(which is terribly sad during Thanksgiving and Christmas). Pretty much any strong smell made me feel sick...these could be bad smells(trash) or good smells(Bath & Body Works), but if it was strong, it was going to make my stomach turn.

I also found myself having a few cravings during this time: chocolate milk, Taco Bell(I know...yuck!), yogurt, pizza, and pickles. I had chocolate milk at least once a day for about a month. I'm still eating pickles constantly in the second trimester, but that is really the only craving that has stuck around.

One day when I was a little more than 11 weeks pregnant, I woke up and realized that I hadn't woken up starving in the middle of the night. I went throughout the day without ever feeling nauseous and for the first time in weeks, I didn't need a nap when I got home. I thought..."Man, I hope this lasts!" Sure enough, that was the beginning of what everybody says is the best part of pregnancy...the time around the 2nd trimester when you start to feel less tired and nauseous. Later on, my midwife confirmed that women often experience this shift around 11 1/2 weeks...that's right when it happened for me.

In early January, Patrick and I decided to tour a few birth centers. Both Allen Birth Center and the Birth and Women's Center in Dallas were simply amazing! I knew that I wanted to deliver in one of these places. For me, it's a personal decision based on the fact that I believe God created women for bringing babies into the world. As long as I am not high-risk and I have a healthy pregnancy, I see no reason to deliver in a hospital where there are such restrictions and birth is so medicalized. At a birth center, I'll be able to walk around, eat, and get into showers or baths to help with the pain. I know that this environment will support me as I give birth naturally without medications. So, I am now settled in with the midwives, Carol and Cheri, at the Birth and Women's Center in Dallas. It is about 2 blocks from Baylor Dallas so I have a great hospital for backup if I need it. I feel very much at peace and I know I'm where God wants me to be.

We have decided not to find out if we are having a boy or a girl, so we will be very surprised when July comes around! I am very excited about waiting because I think it's going to make the birth day very fun! We will probably do lime green and brown in the nursery and then add hot pink if it's a girl. We're still deciding though...will post pics when we get it started.

So, I am 16 weeks pregnant now. I only have a few complaints about this stage of pregnancy. Mostly, I am tired of the sinus problems I have due to the fact that I am making more mucus than like 5 people should all together. As soon as I get it cleared up, it turns into a nasty cough. Hopefully it will go away soon, but I've heard that it could last for the rest of the pregnancy, so we'll see. My only other complaint is the fact that I lack a "pregnancy glow"...unless you call an oily acne-covered face that looks like that of a high schooler a "glow". The hormones have sent my face into chaos, so hopefully that will clear up soon and I'll be able to truly glow.

Here are the two baby bump pics that I have so far, along with my toilet paper square measurements. This was an idea I saw on my pregnancy message board and I am tracking my belly growth with toilet paper squares each week.

13 weeks - end of first trimester
8 toilet paper squares around the belly

16 weeks
Almost 9 toilet paper squares around the belly