This morning I started stirring around 5 and just couldn’t get comfy in the bed. My gigantic amount of pillows are becoming more bothersome than helpful in these last few weeks of pregnancy… somehow they have a love/hate relationship with my every growing belly! Plus they are just so darn hot!!!!!! My mother always told us the infamous stories of “well, when I was pregnant with you…” and one of them was about when she was pregnant with Johnny, my brother, who was born Feb.15, she would wake up in them middle of the night so hot that she would go and stand on the porch in her nightgown. No robe, just gown. Well, even as how cold blooded I usually am, at 5:45 this morning, guess where I was… standing on our little balcony in my short-sleeved night gown. Ahhhh… it felt so good! I really think if I could have brought a mattress, blanket, and my 5 pillows outside, I would sleep like a baby. But, that is too much work to do! 🙂 So as you can see, I am wide awake and it is 6:30 AM!

This week has been good. I am getting to know more and more people. I’ve met a precious girl that is a kindred spirit, and I know that there are many other friends waiting to be made. These next two weeks are pretty busy for us, so I’m very excited about that. The second weekend in February, Nancy and her roomies are coming to visit! At that point, I will be considered “full term” which means if I go into labor, they won’t do anything to stop it! AND THAT IS IN THREE WEEKS!!! YAY! I’m not setting my heart on it, but I think it would be quite cool if Harper decided to make her debut while her Aunt Nancy was in town! But if not, I will patiently wait for her to come out. 🙂

If she decides to stay put at least until her due date, we have some other dear friends, Ed and Sheree, who will be coming up the weekend before her due date to give us some great distractions from what will seem like the longest week as we wait for her to arrive.

That is all that I can think of to update you on for now. My tummy is growling, so I think I may go fix myself some breakfast. I will come back and update later if I can think of anything I’ve left out… Have a great weekend!

So, today was an interesting day. Yesterday, I started having bad stomach cramps and other symptoms I will spare you… They had been continuing on through today and got pretty bad this afternoon, so after talking to my mom and Chris, I decided to call the dr to see what was going on. Well, after talking to the nurse and dr on-call, they wanted me to come to the hospital. :-O

Chris and I checked in to Baptist Hospital,and they took me back to triage and hooked me up to all these machines to monitor me and Harper. I had to pee in a cup and have my blood pressure checked every 15 minutes for an hour. We got to hear her heartbeat for about an hour – that sound never gets old! All turned out to be fine… I have a stomach bug, and just have to wait it out. Drs don’t mess around when you are pregnant!

We are now tucked away at home… waiting out my stomach pain, and hoping it goes away soon as we watch movies.

Two pieces of good news that encouraged me today are…
*My nurse that took me back to the triage room told me that my dr,Dr.Schlechter,is her dr and many of the drs on staff at the hospital – which is wonderful news! That means she is a great dr!

My triage nurse told me it was very good news that this is just a bug and that all is well with my pregnancy because 33 weeks is still early to deliver. While this is true and sounds like a no-brainer to the average joe, when you have been pregnant for 33 weeks… it feels like you could give birth any day (and sometimes pray that you will)… just so you can hold your baby! However, her comment gave me that extra boost to get through this last leg of my pregnancy… only a month and a half left! I can do it!

If you read this soon, please pray that I will be feeling better soon!

Thank you!

How far along? 32 weeks and 5 days

Total weight gain: ummm do I really have to say??? 38 lbs! Good grief… I still have 8 weeks to go! Yikes!

Maternity clothes? all the time! I can still wear a few pre-preggy shirts as undershirts, but they ride up on the belly after about 30 minutes!

Stretch marks? On my hips now, but none on the tummy! My hips have been killing me lately, so I’m sure they are stretching and getting ready for birth!

Sleep: hmmm, good nights and bad nights. I went through a while where my acid reflux was so bad I couldn’t sleep. I felt like I was sipping Mylanta every 2 hours! Then that went away. Now my hips hurt if I lay on one side too long. My hands always fall asleep. Last night was weird b/c I think Harper turned head down finally. My guess is that she had been transverse b/c she was always kicking me on my left side. Well, that was NOT fun when she turned. I was in a lot of pain, and had to get on all fours so she could make the turn. But now, hopefully she will stay head down. We will find out the last week in January when we go and get our last ultrasound to see her position and her estimated weight.

Best moment this week: shopping with mom and getting her baby furniture. Also, having Chris feel her go crazy at night. She usually quiets down when he puts his hand on my tummy, but last night it was like she was trying to bust out to get to us! It was so funny!

Movement: Like crazy! She gets the hiccups usually between 8-10pm. So that is guaranteed time for others to feel her move! The Taylor girls got to feel her move around Christmas and were amazed!

Food cravings: ice cream and frozen peaches

Gender: Still a girl as far as we know. Hopefully that will be confirmed. If “She” happens to turn out to be a “he”… all I have to say is… I hope “He” likes pink! 😉

Labor Signs: Quite a few Braxton Hicks.

Belly Button in or out? depends on where she is positioned. If her back is against my belly button, it is flat. But if she isn’t then it is just really shallow.

Wedding rings on or off? They’ve been long gone, but I did get some pretty rings at Walmart for $8 that will do until my hands go back down!!! 😀

What I miss: wearing my regular cute clothes! Getting dressed for church is the most challenging!

What I am looking forward to: The first contraction!

Weekly Wisdom: Enjoy the quiet evenings, sleeping in late, and boredom that comes with waiting. I will be kissing these days goodbye very soon!

Milestones:
Going to our childbirth classes and getting an idea of what to expect! Very helpful!

Meeting our new dr up here in TN! Love her! She is cute and feisty yet very comforting! I think she will be a perfect fit!

Knowing I only have about 7 weeks left to be this close to Harper! Then the “type” of closeness will change, but these precious days are almost over.

Some pics of Harper’s new furniture! Sorry the quality of the pics isn’t so great… cell phone camera. 🙂

My Gigantic Belly at 32 weeks!

since I’ve posted here. I had all intentions of keeping up with this weekly, but as you can see it didn’t happen. I’ll try to catch up on all thats happened over the last month.

We have gotten settled in our cozy little apartment which we now call home. It is very comforting, and I like that it is a tiny space. It makes it much easier to “nest” in! All of our boxes have gotten unpacked, and Harper’s stuff is mostly set up. I will try to post some pics later. There still is laundry to be done for her, but that will happen over the next month or so. I also need to pack my bags for labor and delivery and my hospital stay. More to come on this topic in a little bit… I’m getting ahead of myself.

We moved in on the 6th and for the next few days we unpacked and drove around the area. We’ve been looking at houses on our own, and we are waiting for our house to sell back in Georgia. We really hope it sells soon. Please pray that it does.

Christmas was fun here as we celebrated it as The Blanton family. We had a few parties we attended and got to meet some great people! I was able to travel home for the weekend b/f Christmas to go to a couple of Nancy’s bridal showers. I was so glad to be able to celebrate those with her since I won’t be able to come home until the wedding in June. I can’t believe my baby sister is getting married!

We went to our first Christmas Eve service which was beautiful! I had great intentions of preparing a traditional dinner for us, but neither my cravings or my energy allowed for that, so we ate BBQ Chicken pizza and salad – haha! Maybe that will become our new Christmas Eve tradition. We’ll see… After the service, we drove around to look at Christmas lights on some of the biggest homes I’ve ever seen here in Brentwood! It was beautiful and very festive! We woke up Christmas morning and I made us sausage balls and Cinnamon rolls. We opened presents together and called family. The associate pastor of our church and his wife invited us to eat Christmas lunch with them. It was a wonderful time, and we felt so welcomed in their home. The rest of the day was spent with a nap and being perfectly lazy!

Chris’ mom, dad, and sister came up the day after Christmas. We went to Opryland to see the Christmas lights and had a great time showing them around Nashville. It was weird to tell them goodbye because the next time we will see them, Harper will be here!

The week between Christmas and New Years was filled with time together and enjoying our new home. Very peaceful and relaxing. New Year’s Eve was fun as we brought in 2008 – the year our little girl will be born in- with the Taylor family. One thing that was quite weird was watching the east coast bring in the New Year’s an hour before we brought in the New Year!

New Year’s week began with us celebrating by going to Cracker Barrel to get some good country cookin’ and black-eyed peas. Chris played his PS3 and I don’t remember what I did. 🙂 My mom flew in on Wednesday and we had so much fun getting ready for Harper! Chris was away at a prayer retreat, so it was just us girls. We shopped and unpacked all the boxes we had brought up of Harper’s stuff. We realized there was NO ROOM for all of her things, so we bought some furniture for her future nursery/room that will last us a long time!

I’ve decided to change the nursery idea I wanted to go with in the first place. I’m going to make her nursery more of a shabby chic country theme. Not country bumpkin, but classic country. With different color furniture, frills, etc. I picture pale yellow walls with rustic looking picture frames, black and white or sepia photos, dried flowers, and comfort. I think it will be a look we can play with and add to much more than the pottery barn room I had originally pictured. Plus it won’t be nearly as expensive!

This past weekend Chris and I took our Childbirth class, and let me tell you that is no joke! It really kind of scared me. I’m glad I took this class because it made me realize that birth is a very long process. Even though you may think this is stupid, these Baby Story shows kind of trick you into thinking that birth is a quick process that is accompanied by a crescendo of violins playing in the back ground the second you birth your child into the world. Uh uh! Birth is long, hard work that I’ve got to surrender to. My body knows what it is doing and is designed to do this. I plan on getting an epidural, but I fully know that it may not take all my pain away. I still have much more to process on this.

Now that I’ve written a novel on our lives, (thank you for reading if you made it to this point), I’m going to update on my survey… Stay tuned as I will make this another post. 🙂