Links to Pictures

Here's a few pictures from our recent activities, as well as links to all the pics! :)

These are two of the pictures we had done recently... Here's a link to the rest of the "teaser" pics we have. When we get ALL the pictures, I'll be sure to post them! :) These pics are from when I was 32 weeks!



My First Baby Shower, hosted by Clare and Shani!
Link 1
Link 2 (has pics from both showers)







Baby Shower #2, hosted by various family members :)!
Link













And, here is the baby's room post shower (and pre-organizing!) We are so blessed!!

Oops, has it been THAT long?

We've been busy, so I guess I better get cracking on telling you all the news in Smithland.

Here are some April Updates: (yes, I looked through my calendar to remember what we had been up to)

• I failed my one hour glucose test :(
• But I passed the 3 hr!
  
• Brian's plant had an "outage" where the plant refuels (this is done every other year). This means that for about a month, Brian worked SOME hours nearly every.single.day. It was a bummer. :( But, it is FINALLY over (they got pretty behind!) and now it is strange to have him home "normal" time everyday! :) I like it though!
• I'm REALLY loving prenatal Yoga. I hope I will get into Yoga post baby as well. :o)

May Updates:

I came down to MD for a visit and my first {baby} shower. It was such an awesome trip! I arrived in Baltimore where Clare and Reese picked me up and we went to go see Clare's wedding dress! SO exciting! We also looked at the Bridesmaid dresses that I can't try on. :o) Clare treated me to a Mom-to-be pedicure which was also awesome!

We spent the next day at the Baltimore Zoo, which I had never been to! They have PENGUINS!! It was so fun! I really can't remember ever going to a zoo that wasn't the National Zoo, so it was fun to see a different set of animals. It was a pretty hot day though! I'm glad it was a relatively small zoo!! They had a baby elephant there who was SO cute!

My shower was the next day, and it was SO great getting to see everyone who came. There was SO much yummy food (and enough cake for Fusionites the next night!). It's smart to have two best friends who love to cook... :o). Clare and Shani did a great job with the shower! Everyone was so generous- Baby Smith is already so loved! My two girlfriends from college stayed after for awhile so we could catch up, which was so nice!!! :)

Post shower, I stayed over at Shani's house and we just relaaaaaaxed. It was SO nice to get to spend some time with her, and great to just sit by the pool after all the running around I had been doing. I wish I had a pool...

Shani then brought me to Fusion, where I hadn't been for sooo long! It was so good to be back there again. I loved hearing Tim speak, and I got to see so many friends! (who, as I mentioned, enjoyed my shower cake leftovers!)

I went from Fusion to Josh and Genelle's to hang out with them and baby E- though E was pretty much asleep the entire time I was there! (which his mama was thankful for I'm sure!) I had to leave eeeeeeeearly the next morning, so I didn't get nearly enough time with my dear friends!

While home, I managed to eat Chick Fil A twice and Ledo's Pizza 3x. (yes, yes, I had a very healthy weekend!). Seriously, Massachusetts needs to get these restaurants in my vicinity STAT. I'm getting hungry just writing about these!!

I feel like this blog is lacking. I used the terms "really fun" and "really nice" an awful lot. But, what can you do? I'm tired and my brain no longer works properly thanks to my insomnia...

I'll add pictures in a separate post later!

Third Trimester! (AAaaaaaaah!)

I've been wracking (racking?) my brain trying to come up with a blog to write. I'm so boring. It will be much easier to come up with things to write about once the baby (hereafter, TB) arrives. I'll have cute pictures and great stories to post. For now, it's just boring ole Brian and I. And most of the "joys" of pregnancy might not be blog friendly content. (heck, my husband doesn't even want to hear a lot of what I have to say about pregnancy!) But I'll give a go at sharing the "G" rated content. :)

When Brian's pager went off @ 2am (don't worry, the plant didn't meltdown), I couldn't get back to sleep and I remembered some other stuff to add to this post. If it is new, it is in blue.

I look down and I don't feel all that huge. But then I look at the recent pictures of myself and I'm like, WHOA. Who's that?! And really, the baby is only about 2-3lbs... why am I so huge? (I know, I know, fluid, placenta, etc.) I never really expected to NOT be huge. It is still just weird seeing your body change like that...seemingly overnight!

I LOVE love LOVE feeling TB move. It is so weird, but awesome. It can still be hard for other people to feel her sometimes, but Brian has gotten to feel her quite a bit now. She is stubborn (this is a bad sign), b/c some how she seems to know when someone else puts their hand on my belly-- then she stops kicking! (this reminds me of an episode of Friends every time she does it...). She also is a snuggle bug. During both my ultrasounds the tech had a difficult time getting the measurements needed b/c the baby was curled up in some way. I can also FEEL her wasting space in my enormous abdomen. She gets all tucked up in my right side. The left side is just all fluid- it's crazy that you can FEEL the difference in my belly where she is and where she isn't! I think I'm going to really miss feeling her move once she's on the outside! (Or, I'll be so tired from having a newborn I won't even notice!)

I'm surprised at my lack of documentation around this pregnancy. I thought I'd be making Brian whip out the camera every chance he got to take a picture of my emerging belly. I've been very forgetful, and so my belly pictures are sporadic at best. Now that there is more rapid change, perhaps i'll be more on top of it. Here's a slideshow of Ultrasounds and the belly pictures I DO have...

Funny Story: On April Fool's Day, I got Brian and my parents to believe that the baby was really a boy! I was so proud of myself. Especially since my Mom has always gotten me on April Fools Day. When I was a kid, she would call over to my dad's house reeeeeeeeeally early in the AM and tell me school was canceled or my stepdad won the lottery... and I always believed her b/c it was so early!! But, now I am sort of paranoid that TB really COULD be a boy, and I've jinxed it now...now, no one will believe me! LOL.

I'm in the third trimester now, which is crazy. This is the trimester you deliver in! Whoa. There will be a BABY soon. Holy heck, what did we get ourselves into?! And there is still so much to do! I'm getting a little anxious, even though I KNOW we have time to do everything... I'm still going to be uneasy till it is all done, i think!

27/28 week appointment- I had my glucose test this week (testing for Gestational Diabetes). I still don't know the results, even though my office said they had them, they had to be reviewed by my midwife. I had to drink this really sweet drink on an empty stomach, and for the first time my entire pregnancy, I almost threw up! I was so glad when I got to eat! In between drinking the drink and having my blood drawn, I had my appointment with my midwife. My mom had oh-so-kindly pointed out that she thought i looked bigger than 27 weeks. Well, I'm happy to report my weight gain is on the low (but healthy) end, and my belly measured right on track! Woohoo!

Non-pregnancy related updates...

My Dad and stepmom came to visit (we forgot to take pictures, of course!), which was lots of fun! It was too short, but i'm so glad they came. In preparation for their visit I did a massive overhaul cleaning which was long overdue. (I'm a baaaaaaaad housewife, especially in winter). We'd also been meaning to paint our bathroom, and their visit gave us the much needed motivation to do so. But before we painted, we decided, why not change the light fixture, and get rid of the mirror?! Unfortunately, I did forget to take before pictures, but I do have some pic's of our "renovation". It looks 100x better! I'm so happy! (The trim still needs paint...We'll get around to it...someday...) It was QUITE the ordeal, but we got it all done!

We then had a really nice time with my mom's family on Easter (again, no pictures)... We did our usual thing of eating and playing games. Our time there reinforced my thinking that we will never get cable. Brian enjoyed the access to ESPN a little too much! He was watching GOLF. I can get on board with watching most sports...but GOLF? Anyway, it made me realize that would be all.we.would.watch if we had cable. So, I'm glad we've got nothing for now! :) I think that's about all for the updates! :)

Real Post Later...

But for now, check this out:

V-Day (plus one)

I intended to write this post on the actual V-day, but I was busy turning my house upside down yesterday to clean it... So I'm a day late. (hence the plus one).

Yesterday was the day i've been looking forward to my entire pregnancy. Viability day. Some of you may know this, some of you may not, but there has to be a cut off point where NICU doctor's say, "Your baby is just too little, we can't do anything". Even though she only weighs approximately 1.5-2.2lbs, Baby S is now past that stage. Viability day was yesterday, @ 24 weeks (according to the doctor's due date).

It's really strange to think that if something had happened on Monday, they wouldn't have tried to save her (@ most hospitals). But Thursday comes, and BAM. We're "viable".

Now, we'd prefer if if she cooks another 16 weeks! Every week past this week is more weight for her to gain, more for her lungs (and other systems) to develop. Survival rate @ 24 weeks still isn't great... but it really wasn't all that long ago that people were losing babies @ 30 weeks! The technology that God has blessed us with is truly amazing.

I probably looked forward to this day more than the average pregnant person (and honestly, I held my breath till this day for my sister-in-law's pregnancy, as well as some of my good friends). I attribute this to being a labor and delivery nurse. I've seen too much for my own good. I won't go into gory detail, but i was working on a night when we had a patient come in and deliver @ 22 weeks. While there was no way that baby would have lived (even with medical technology as good as it is), he DID live for several hours. And he was a baby. Not a fetus. It was truly one of the worst days of my life. His face and tiny body are etched in my memory. I am so thankful to God that we've made it this far! Praise Jesus!

Another was when I delivered a lady whose baby had died in utero, 2 weeks before christmas. She was 38 weeks pregnant. There was nothing wrong with her beautiful baby girl...sometimes these things happen... I'm terrified of it happening to me! I often find myself remembering this delivery, which was heartwrenching. (Again I won't go into the details). I have to remind myself, that throughout my daughter's life (whoa, that's weird to be typing... I'm used to BEING a daughter, not HAVING one!), that God is in control. He isn't in MORE control now b/c she is inside me. He will be in JUST as much control when I'm parenting her. When I make mistakes, He is still in the SAME amount of control. We can rely on Him. For everything. He is there with her now, and He will be always. (Just as He is for me). When I remember to remind myself of this, I have so much more peace, and less worry. Thank you Jesus for your goodness, your love, your everlasting peace!

Update to Baby S movements...

There has been a new movement instilled in me this week (week 24 of pregnancy).

Slithery-Roo

This is sort of a combination of the "Twitch" and the "Jab", except for that instead of the movement seeming to be directed out (away from my insides) the slithery-roo's defining characteristic is that it is directed more towards my internal organs. While I still LOVE feeling her move, these movements are giving me the heebie-jeebies. It feels SO weird, like she is touching stuff that isn't meant to be touched!! I felt a little "rolling" this AM so I was hoping the slithery-roo was over and she had moved enough that it would be back to "normal". But alas, she is still doing the slithery-roo jig on my bladder, intestines and various other organs. Still isn't a painful movement, just incredibly weird!

:)

Movements of Baby S

I've been thinking about all the different movements that this lil one makes. This is probably NOT interesting to anyone besides me, but since I will one day feel nostalgic for pregnancy (supposedly) I figured I should type out these musings.

"The Twitch"

Ever have a random twitch in your thigh muscle? That is what this movement feels like. This is currently her most common movement. It is sort of fluttery, and this is what i feel, I'd say 80% of the time.

"The Roll"

@ least, that's what I assume this feeling is. Sometimes I will get this slow, hardening sensation (but i know it isn't a contraction b/c of the location) and then I will feel the "twitch" movement afterwards. I think she is rolling side to side or top to bottom when i feel this. This is currently the most rare movement.

"The Jab"

This is MUCH stronger than the "twitch". The Jab is much more likely to be felt by outside observers (so far, outside of myself of course, only B has experienced feeling any movements by baby S). In fact, there have been a few "Jab's" that were so strong they startled me! While I have been feeling the Jab for awhile now, it has been mainly fairly low. But in the last few days I've been feeling many more Jabs in my mid abdomen... so I think she has moved around some. I have a feeling as she gets bigger and the space around her gets smaller that the "Jab" will become the most frequent (and painful!) movement. But for now, this is about 15-20% of Baby S's movements.

Of course all of these movements have much more detailed subcategories, but I am not yet observant enough to define them. :)