nursery

just realized i haven't put up pictures yet of our awesome nursery! we're pretty excited about how it's coming together so far. :)



































i just put the handles back on the furniture today after spray painting them silver. and that giraffe is in the dryer. once he comes out lookin all shiny and new, i'll hang him up and take a new picture of him and the dresser and add that on here. :)




















and here are some more ballooning belly pictures:




















holy cow! last night was the first night i really felt *HUGE*. i looked at it in the mirror and i thought, wow, that sucker really sticks out there doesn't it? i can't believe we're 3/4s of the way there! it has felt so far like an eternity, and now that i can see the horizon i feel like it's coming so soon! but in reality i guess 25% is still quite a large chunk. but since it's the last 25% i suppose there's really no telling just how quickly it may pass. we just might get caught up in a whirlwind of things to do and places to be and then come out of that tornado with a baby in our arms.

there is a lot ahead of us in the next couple of months. still so many things to get prepared. we had our first hypnobirthing class last wednesday. it was a great experience and made me look forward to the rest of them. it seemed like exactly what i was looking for, and the other people in the class seem very nice. i also have a project i have been putting off for the time when i won't be working anymore. (and unfortunately with the type of job i have that will be a lot sooner than i would like.) jason's mom made each of her three babies an adorable stuffed elephant and i would really love to carry on that tradition. i already have the pattern and the material, now i just need to get to work on it. :) another thing i would really like to do in about a month or so is make a video for samson. i like the idea of writing him a letter that he can read when he gets older, but i feel like a video would capture things so much more accurately. i want a way to commemorate this moment where everything is ahead of us. a way to express all the things i'm wishing for him, all the things i want to be for him, and all the things i want him to be for himself. i feel like it might help me keep the big picture in focus, and if nothing else he'll be able to watch it when he's feeling lost, and it will remind him that we will always be by his side, and that we loved the heck out of him before we even met.

this experience has been nothing but amazing so far, and i'm so excited for all that lies ahead. lately jason and i keep looking at each other and saying, pretty soon there will be a baby right here. we can't help but constantly imagine how whatever meaningless task we're doing at that moment will be completely different in the future, with just the addition of a little bean in our arms. for quite some time now i have had this switch in my thinking--my belly is no longer "my belly"; it's just samson. it no longer belongs to me, and i love that feeling. we also can't stop wondering what he's going to look like. such a mystery! what a moment that will be when we first see his face. i'm really looking forward to this test of strength and courage i have coming. i think i will learn a lot about myself through that experience, and i hope it will have a positive outcome on the way i see myself.

well, thanks for reading my ramblings. i mainly write on here so that i will have something to look back at to relive this, and compare it to things in the future, so it really makes me smile when other people get a kick out of it as well.

the celebration of samson--woot!

so excited! on february 20th we are having a wonderful gathering of family and friends to celebrate samson's impending arrival. :) here are some pictures of the cutie-butt invitations i made:

worry and relief

i suppose i'll just do this chronologically.
for about a week now i have noticed that samson has really taken a liking (or so i thought) to my right side. this probably should have been my first cause for suspicion, but i'm no baby expert, so i just thought he liked it over there. then yesterday when i woke, i realized that he had barely moved all night. nothing to worry about, i told myself, since i had slept through most of the night and therefore had just probably not noticed his kicks. so i rolled over and waited for him to wake and give me some little tickles like he always does. nothing. that's ok, i thought, it's earlier than i usually wake; he's probably just still sleeping. went downstairs and had breakfast. he usually kicks a bit while i eat. nothing. probably just asleep still, i thought. went and took a shower. i usually just get one or two kicks in there, but nothing at all this time. i probably just didn't notice them, right? drove to work. usually plenty of kicks in the car. well i finally get a couple to ease my worries, but he's still not acting himself. while at work i get a few more, but still nowhere near the intensity or frequency with which he usually moves. i come home and tell jason and proceed to worry. he assures me the baby is fine and just slowing down as he grows and takes up more space. maybe he's just tired today? he goes to work and i call my mom. she says it's probably normal, like jason said, but call the midwife to see what she thinks. i do, and she tells me to eat and then go sit and massage my belly to see if i can get him to liven up. so i do, and he does, but the movements are still small and seldom. she says i can come in to check on him if i want. the rest of the evening he still does things to let me know he's ok, but i'm just not convinced. so, this morning, when again he was very quite all night and during breakfast and my shower, i decided to call her and see if we could come in for an ultrasound. good decision!
most of me knew there was nothing to worry about, that he was healthy because there was no reason for him not to be. but a small part of me kept thinking that maybe there was a knot in his cord, or that he had become tangled in it. and this part of me worried enough for 1o people. i couldn't stop thinking about all the what-ifs if this were true. bed rest? an emergency c-section? premature birth? stillbirth?? it was a huge black cloud over my head, an ominous ghost of worry in the back of my mind for a day and a half.
when we finally arrived at betsy's and saw him on the monitor, i breathed a sigh of relief. there he was, cute as ever, healthy. heart beating strong, as always. so we examine him, closely, and notice...he's breach. that little stinker! he's wedged his little tushie into my pelvis, and his legs are jackknifed, both feet up above his head. obviously, this is not ideal, but at this point i just couldn't care less. he's alive and well, and anything else is a mere bump in the road.
so we start discussing what this means. well, firstly, he's a frank breech, the most common type of breech and the easiest to deal with. this means that if we can't turn him around (more on that in a second) a home birth with positive results is still very possible. another type of breech that's very common is the footling breech, where one or both feet come out first. the trouble with this is that the feet can fit through a much smaller opening than the head can, so they may come through before the mother is fully dilated, causing the head, which is much bigger, to get stuck until the mother opens up the rest of the way. with a frank breech, however, the butt is nearly the exact same size as the crown of the head, and would therefore not be able to come out early, having to wait for full dilation. there is still a possibility for a stuck head, (the reason a c-section would be done without discussion in a hospital), but the risk is not nearly as high.
that being said, we still have three months left until he's due, and plenty of time to try every trick in the book (and that's a big book) to get him to turn around. for the next week, until our next scheduled appointment, betsy is having me lie with my hips elevated above my shoulders for 15 minutes at a time, 2-3 times a day. while doing so, i'll massage him and give him some tickles to see if, without gravity pulling him down into my pelvis, he'll wriggle himself out of there and turn himself around. when i see her again, she will try maneuvering him with her hands, while watching him on the ultrasound to make sure she's not harming him. this, she said, could be a challenge, even though she has experience with it, because she can't be too forceful due to the previously discussed low position of my placenta. i have heard of many other procedures to turn breech babies as well, (such as acupuncture, hypnosis, chiropractic maneuvers and even smelling certain essential oils and just doing some positive imagery) but only time will tell if we will need them or not. she also told me something else i could try, which i had not heard of previously, was to get into a warm bath and hold an ice back on my belly where he is. if he's able, he may try to get away from this cold sensation and move to a warmer area. worth a try! already did the elevated hips thing once today. that was interesting. far as i can tell it didn't work that time, but i'll try again before bed tonight.
i am so grateful to have found a midwife with so much experience (she has delivered and assisted with breech births in the past, and her last baby was a breech successfully turned), and so much knowledge. i know that this position is not ideal, but i felt like a completely new person after seeing her today. there may still be things to worry about, but the vast amount of knowledge i gained on the subject today has really put my mind at ease. i have an explanation for the change in movement, i know he's still healthy, and i am armed with knowledge and options of where to go from here with this new diagnosis, and these things have made me feel a thousand percent better. i'm thankful to everyone who tried to ease my worries, but i'm also thankful for my own instincts. i'm glad i paid such close attention to his normal routines, and was therefore able to notice a difference. and i'm glad i listened to my heart when it told me something just wasn't right. no one should ever feel like their worries or concerns are silly or unwarranted. just ask; there's no reason not to. trust yourself, because no one knows you better.

third trimester!

so it's been three months since i updated this thing. we'll just blame that on the holidays...
a lot has happened since then, i suppose, but i guess it's mostly just the same old, same old. he's growin, i'm growin, he's kickin, i'm gettin kicked. everything's still going very well. i had some pretty gnarly indigestion for a few days in december, but then it was gone. the gym, however, is getting much more difficult. since my resting heart rate keeps climbing with his growth, there is less and less i can do at the gym that keeps me below 140 bpm, and there are some days when it gets me really down. i couldn't figure out why it was upsetting me so much at first; i knew all along a day would come when i'd have to tone it way down and probably change my entire routine. at first i thought i was just bothered by how much sooner it had come than i had expected. then i realized that it was bringing on a sort of mini identity crisis. working out at the gym, lifting weights more specifically, which i've been doing for 8 years now, is a very large part of how i identify myself. it's a large piece of the sarah puzzle and to suddenly have to throw it out, not knowing when i'd be able to get it back, was crushing for me. and realizing how alone i was, that i had no one with a similar routine to get advice from, caused a little breakdown. but after talking to jason about it, looking at some bodybuilding websites, and thinking it through, i realized that the best thing for me to do is not to stop it completely. i may have to keep modifying and modifying until there's hardly anything recognizable left from before, but as long as i'm doing what feels familiar to me, and what's safe, i think we'll both be better off. so, i bought a pregnancy workout dvd made by a very fit, very pregnant lady, (who used to be in cirque du soleil) and i'm really looking forward to trying it out. it hasn't come yet, but today i went back to the gym and did a lot of the exercises i'm used to, just modified so i could sit or take it slower somehow. and it was great! my heart rate monitor rarely beeped, and i even did a complete lower body workout, (which i have been neglecting for months now), without it beeping once. i think the closer i stick to my old routine (safely, of course), the happier and healthier we both will be before, during, and after labor.

so enough of that. onto the the fun stuff. :) the holidays really got me mixed up, and once they were over, i realized we only had THREE MONTHS LEFT!! crazy! what a shock that was. so now i'm in full-blown baby mode, trying to get things done before we run out of time. we haven't finished painting his furniture, haven't even started painting the nursery, haven't finished the gift registry, haven't solidified a date for the baby shower, or made invitations or plans of any sort for it, and *gasp* still have not even signed up for or even settled on a birthing class. not good. i feel very prepared knowledge-wise, thanks to ina may gaskin's "guide to childbirth" (best book EVER!!), but i definitely would like some practice with relaxation techniques. so i have some reading to do on which class to take, and then hopefully we can start those soon. the 18th is our last monthly checkup, then it's every 2 weeks. wow. the last 2 checkups we had, everything was awesome. no ultrasound pictures, but i don't feel as much anymore like i need those, since he moves around so much every day. i feel like that's his way of telling me he's doing fine. for almost a week now, i have noticed a new development--he loves to be on my right side, all bunched up. he still kicks me all over the place, but whenever i feel a big hard mass, it's always on the right. and last night he just stayed there for a good hour while i just rubbed his back...or butt, or whatever that was. i can't wait till he's finally here, when i can really get to know him. it will be so amazing to see his personality develop day by day, week by week. i'll learn what he loves and what makes him cranky, and we'll come to know each other so well. i'm really looking forward to this new world, where everything i do has a greater purpose. there will be so many challenges, and so many rewards, and everything will have a meaning that wasn't there before. for someone who thinks of going to the park as an adventure, i feel like i've just bought a one-way ticket to another galaxy.