Staring at Countdown ticker in Bewilderment....

Uhmm....can you see that?!?! Does that say 98 days left?!?! I feel like Im having a slight panic attack - shouldnt I be nesting or have a nursery ready or Something?! Oh crap. Im usually quite prepared & organized, I swear. I feel like I need a week vacation of laying on a deserted beach because Im way too drained to actually acoomplish anything. My excuse is that the crib wont be in for another month, so why not wait til then to get stuff done?
I really need to schedule a hospital tour too so I can feel more comfortable with all the nonsense that they might impose on me. Ive been keeping up with my reading & our childbirth class is going well, although the teacher is a bit on the long-winded side.
I started my research on vaccinations and found out some utter ridiculousness that left me fuming. Apparently you have no choice in what the doctors want to inject into your child because the school district REQUIRES your child has these vaccinations in order to go to school. And Ill be damned if Im going to pay a ridiculous amount in school taxes and not send my kids to public school. Im still quite pissed & looking into this. Supposedly there is a way around this if I "affiliate" myself with a random religious group that is against vaccinations - so screw you CB school district. Im looking more into this as well. Im okay with some vaccinations, although would prefer if they were more spread out. But some things are just ridiculous - like Hep B - please explain to me why an infant only hours old needs to be vaccinated for this. I have never been vaccinated for Hep B & I tested negative. HEP B is a freakin' STD and the only other risk is from blood transfusions which is minuscule even if she needed a transfusion, which the chance of that is minuscule. So once again please tell me why this is necessary & required to go to school. Its completely eff'd up in my opinion. I am still scarred for life from my infant chicken pox vaccination and don't want to scar my kid & I still got chicken pox (yes vaccines arent really all that effective now, are they?!). Ive also never gotten a flu vaccine in my life & Im still alive and kicking. Needless to say that doctors don't really explain to you that its not just a vaccine they're injecting in your baby, but also aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, etc that are in there to "help" make the vaccine work better. Ohh but I ramble on....
I forgot to take my picture today, so you will have to wait.
Other than that, Im super hungry. Like all the time. I could really eat a cupcake right now...or 9.
I promise to not rant as much tomorrow....

25 Weeks!!

Here's Me:

How far along? 25 weeks

Total weight gain? 10 lbs (gulp) - hitting double digits wasnt quite as bad as I thought....although it still pretty much sucks.

Maternity clothes? Can you tell from the 5 whole outfits I rotate weekly? I can still barely get away with regular tops (like the one in this pic), but they're quickly getting too short. And I'd hate to be that WT girl with her belly hanging out the bottom of her shirt. That is pretty hot though, right?

Stretch marks? not yet

Sleep? Okay. I wake up ALOT during the night. And I feel really tired most of the day.

Movement? Feeling her everyday now but she is relatively calm compared to how much she moved the weekend in Nashville - must've been all that loud music.

Food Craving? ice cream & cheese (apparently she needs more calcium right about now)

Labor signs? the Braxton Hicks contractions started about a week or so ago. They totally freaked me out at first because I didnt know what it was. They're quite creepy imo.

Belly Button? still stretched open & shallower

What I miss? Being able to get out of bed quickly

What I'm looking forward to? Is it bad I cant think of anything right now?

Weekly Wisdom: If your husband never did his homework in school, he probably isnt going to do his childbirth class homework either....

Milestones: We started our bradley childbirth classes.

p.s. Im hungry!

Pregnancy makes you stupid

I never really knew this before. Who tells you these things & why the heck would you believe them?

This may or may not be caused by either your brain shrinking during pregnancy (i have no idea why your brain shrinks, but apparently it takes 6 months after birth to return to its normal size) or the weird influx of hormones. I found research that also suggested hormones during pregnancy sometimes mimic the effects of alzheimers. And yes, I researched this because Im a nerd & I didnt really believe this was a side effect.

So I try to keep it together - I make my lists & write everything down so I dont sound like a total idiot. I may have sometimes put the peanut butter in the fridge with the jelly after making my pb&j and dumb things like that. I sometimes completely forget what I was doing or what I was going to say - but ehh it comes back eventually & only results in a few extra trips to the grocery store.

The most annoying things has been burning myself in the kitchen. Not sure if its the stupidness or Im just really hungry, but the other day resulted in my second bad, blistering burn to the hand. I was just trying to make a new recipe for S'more bars (yummy, right?):

These are super easy to make, but include bringing chocolate and a few other ingrediants to a boil on the stove & then pouring the hot chocolate mixture over golden grahams in a bowl. So as I began to pour the boiling hot chocolate over the golden grahams - I think to myself 'hmm I should spread these out in the bowl to get better chocolate coverage'. So I reach my hand into the bowl to move the golden grahams WHILE the other hand continues to pour the chocolate. In my head, Im pretty sure I told my other hand to stop pouring the chocolate. But alas, I pour burning hot chocolate on my fingers! OWWWW. So then I calmly have to set the hot pot down and run to the sink to get the chocolate off my hand. Yahh that really freakin hurt. Then I had to quickly return to pouring the chocolate before it cooled because I couldnt possibly ruin my bars. I am a dedicated baker. Then I had to mix in the marshmallows all while my hand is pulsating & burning. But I got those bars done & proceeded to be in pain for the next day. Here's a shot of one of the burn blisters 2 days later:

Yea that hurt, but the s'mores bars were yummy. Ryan had the nerve to tell me there should be more marshmallows in them. Which truly there should be, but had my fingers not been burning like hell, I might've added more.

24 Weeks - Happy Viability Day!!

So supposedly at 24 weeks the baby is potentially viable if delivered - so we will be thankful for that but hope she stays in there for atleast another 3 months!


I didnt take a picture this morning, but here is one from our weekend away & I felt like I got a lot bigger.

The scale & I were actually friends this morning & I didnt gain any weight this past week even with us travelling! So I havent crossed into double digits yet - which reminds me, Im staaarving!
Ryan was trying to convince me that I was eating a ton - and by a ton, he means I actually finished my sandwich and didnt share it with him. It was a small sandwich, I swear!
Other than that we had a fabulous weekend even though I was exhausted most of the time, but Im glad we went.
There is definately no hiding my belly at this point & I actually started getting stares (while at honky tonks a little late) and comments from strangers.
I'm starting to feel like we have a lot to get done in the next three months & we better get crackin' if this baby doesnt want to sleep in a drawer after she's born!
Ryan has still not come up with a name....please feel free to harass him about it.

Oh we also started our first childbirth class last night. It was a bit of a blur since we headed there last night straight from the airport & were both really tired. Alot of the info I already knew since I read a lot of books (Im a nerd) and the exercises they taught us I was already doing in prenatal yoga. The teacher seemed really nice though so it should be fun.

Now I really need to find something for lunch or Im going to eat my arm off.....

23 Weeks (+1 day)

So I'm pretty positive I offically "popped" sometime in the last week.

Look at that big belly! It happend over like 3 days last week & was kind of crazy. My belly button is also getting all stretched out & a lot shallower.
Baby is about the size of a small doll -- almost a foot in length and about 1.5 lbs in weight.

How far along? 23 weeks + 1 day
Total weight gain? 9 lbs - Im really dreading the whole double digit weight gain thing & I know its coming this week especially with us going on vacation.....
Maternity clothes? Pretty much - I can still get away with regular dresses & tops if they're long enough.
Stretch marks? not yet
Sleep? Good when I can get it.
Movement? Feel her moving just about every day now -- usually at night when Im watching tv before bed. She'll actually move my whole belly & you can see it. Sometimes she curls up on one side & sticks her butt out or something and I poke at her. Its creepy & awesome at the same time.
Food Craving? mostly ice ceam (maybe because its hot?)
Labor signs? no thankfully
Belly Button? my belly button is getting really creepy. Its all stretched open and getting pulled out & it hurts if you poke it.
What I miss? Having a choice in clothes to wear
What I'm looking forward to? Our trip to NOLA & Nashville this week - but Im quite scared of getting cankles on the plane ride!
Weekly Wisdom: A bouncer wont really throw a pregnant woman out of a bar because he is too afraid to put his hands on you.
Milestones: We are supposed to start our bradley labor classes this coming Sunday!

I'm becoming a Mama....

So today Im headed to the grocery store & DQ just happens to be in the same shopping center, but all the way at the other end. So I decided to park at the grocery store & walk down to the DQ and back (you should be proud of me, right?!). I NEEDED a twist in a cone of course. Anyways, I order my twist and the young (cough, cough) hoe tells me its $2.01!!! What?!
So my immediate response (before I can think of what Im saying) was: "What?! When I was a kid a small twist in a cone was .96 cents! That hoe looked at me like I was nuts and I forked over my money.
Am I really that old or is this some thing that just happens when you become a mom...... (atleast I didnt claim I had to walk 10 miles uphill in the snow to get to the DQ!)

By the way - I think I have officially "popped" some time in the last couple days. My bump is quite rotund and along with it came the back pain. Yipee.


p.s. that ice cream cone was totally worth my 2 bucks