30 Weeks!

I have made it 30 weeks in my pregnancy and I'm very thankful! So far so good. Last week my parents were in town and they were able to come with us to our ultrasound appointment to see the little guy. That's right, little GUY. It was so precious! We were really thinking we had a baby named Grace in there, so to find out we were having a boy was quite a shock. But, after packing up the girl clothes, I am now super thankful and excited for our baby boy. I can't believe that in 10 weeks we are going to be parents. I can hardly wait!

Pregnancy is going just fine. I had my blood work done last week and my iron levels are a bit low and my sugar was a bit high. Now I'm sitting in the hospital waiting room doing my 3 hour glucose test to be sure that I don't have gestational diabetes. I've been having braxton hicks contractions since about 18 weeks and in the past 3 weeks they have gotten super painful when I am at work or on my feet for too long. My midwife wants to do a couple tests to be sure that labor is progressing at all and that the contractions aren't doing anything. In the meantime, it is SUPER hard to work while I'm having them. I only have one month more of work so I'm very thankful for that and praying for grace to get through the shifts that I do have. It's hard work waiting tables when your pregnant! I think there should be an automatic 20% tip for all pregnant waitresses. In other pregnant news, we met with a doula a couple weeks ago and we are decided that we are going to hire her! I'm really excited. She is really sweet. Her name is Jenna and she spent two years in the Peace Corps in Africa assisting a midwife in delivering babies. Because she is not DONA certified yet she is giving us an amazing deal on her services and she will use our birth as one of her required 3 births to become certified. I'm really set on having a natural birth and I know it's going to be a lot of hard work so I'm glad that Chris and I will have the help we need to get through it.

Our baby room is coming along nicely. My parents helped me set up a guest bed, clean out the closet, and set up the crib. The Mumma's are letting us use an adorable bassinet that the girls slept in. Mike and Debbie repainted and reupholstered a glider chair and hopefully we will be able to get that in the room soon too. Chris and Dad built some shelves in our small storage area and I had Dad help me use the scrap wood to make some decorations for the room. We painted lots of birdies for the room! When spring first sprung in Jackson Chris and I bought a bunch of bird seed and we would sit by the window in that room and watch all the cool birds hang out on our lawn. We would pull out the computer and try to find the names of the different birds. It inspired me to do a bit of a bird theme in the baby's room.

I started reading Baby Wise last week. I have always heard mixed reviews about this book because of a lot of drama that happened with "Ezzo Kids" years and years ago at GCC. I wasn't thinking I would read it because of all that I had heard about it, but Sera Mumma encouraged me that it would be really helpful in understanding how to set up a schedule if that's what we decided to do. I must say, I really love it. I don't want to be dogmatic about anything here because I know that we need to be super flexible with our plans for baby, but I have been so informed and encouraged by this book! He seems to be really flexible with feeding and sleeping, but still structured enough that there is some sort of schedule set up. What I had always heard is that the whole point is so that baby is not running the house, but in reading the book I don't think that's his point at all. His point is that you would have a healthy baby who is getting full meals and plenty of sleep. I love the idea of a baby of 10-12 weeks sleeping through the night too. But again, I want to be really flexible. We might meet the little guy and then throw all those plans out the window.

I feel really blessed that I get to have three baby showers in the next month! My mom and Debbie are putting one together for me in CA on August 21st. This one will be mostly for stuff off of my registry at BabiesRUs. The girls at church are having a cloth diaper shower for me the next weekend. We are going with FuzziBun diapers... the best in my opinion. And my sweet friends at work are going to have a "White Trash Baby Shower" for Chris and I. I'm not entirely sure what to expect, but I am excited that they would want to bless us in that way. Also, they love theme parties so it's just as fun for them. Apparently they are going to get a root beer keg and we will be eating things like tater tots and pigs in a blanket at Erica's trailer in town. Sounds like a blast!