2nd trimester comes to an end.

It's so hard to believe that I'm 2/3 of the way done with pregnancy and only 3 months away from meeting our little man!  Thinking back to how I felt during the last few weeks of the first trimester, I thought people were crazy for saying "just wait, in a few weeks you'll feel SO much better".  But they were not crazy!  It was totally true!  These past 13 weeks have been awesome and I've felt mostly great for the majority of the 2nd trimester.  It's so amazing to look at how much I've changed in the past 13 weeks, but even more amazing to me how much he's changed!  He went from being about 3.5 inches and 1.5 ounces to being almost 2 lbs and over a foot long!  The biggest milestone for me in this trimester was beginning to feel him move.  It's the craziest, weirdest, most awesome, perfect feeling.

14 weeks

14 weeks

26 weeks

26 Weeks

26 Weeks

Maxwell's size: Around 14 inches, about 1 2/3 lbs, about as much as a head of lettuce.

How far along: 26 Weeks.

Total weight gain:  18.5 lbs

Sleep: Sleep was pretty uneventful this week, although, I've been getting a lot hotter at night.

Stretch Marks: None.

Food cravings: None.

Food aversions:  None.

Symptoms: Charlie Horses!  I get them a few times a week at night and they hurt SO bad!  Still having awful heartburn, but like I said last week, I'm so used to it at this point I just expect it.  Also, my boobs are still leaking.  

Exercise: I'm thinking about taking this one off of here since I've been so horrible lately!  I didn't do much again this week.  

Movement: Last week was exciting because James got to feel Maxwell move for the first time...and this week we are able to SEE him move!  It's so crazy!  It looks like he's going to jump right out!

Belly Button: Still an innie...barely.  James likes to say that my belly button is dying!

Nursery Update:  Nothing really changed with the nursery this week.  I'm waiting on the foam to come for the cushion I'm making, so I've kinda been putting off doing any more with it til everything else comes in.


It's our last week in the 2nd trimester and it's hard to believe how fast it's gone by!  Next week Maxwell would no longer be considered a micropreemie if he was born and he would have about a 95% chance of survival!

25 Weeks

25 weeks

Maxwell's size: Around 13.5 inches, about 1.5 lbs, about the size of an eggplant

How far along: 25 Weeks.

Total weight gain:  17 lbs.

Sleep: Still getting more and more uncomfortable.  I'm waking up a lot at night to change positions because my back hurts.

Stretch Marks: None.

Food cravings: None.

Food aversions:  None.

Symptoms: I think heartburn is going to be one of those things that I'll have right up until Maxwell is born.  I have it all the time and I'm starting to just get used to it.

Exercise: I didn't do much this week, but the everyday things I do at work are starting to feel more exhausting.  So I'm starting to count those as exercise.  Like being on my feet all day, walking around the store, lifting and moving boxes, etc.

Movement: James felt Maxwell kick for the first time this week from the outside!  I'm so excited for him to finally be able to feel it!

Belly Button: Still an innie...barely. 

Nursery Update:  The glider arrived and we bought a crib mattress.  So now we just have a few more decorating things to do and I still need to sew the bench cushion.  But it's mostly set up.

Why is it that everyone (who isn't a friend of mine) I meet is shocked at the fact that we might only have one baby?  It's not totally decided yet, but we really want to play it by ear and see how this one goes before we decide if we'll have two.  Everyone either tells me "he'll NEED a sibling or he'll be spoiled!" or "but you'll want one of each!".  Okay, first of all, he won't NEED a sibling.  I think that James and I can do a good enough job parenting him that he won't be a spoiled, rotton kid.  I know plenty of people that are only children that are not spoiled and I know plenty of people that have lots of brothers and sister who are spoiled.  Secondly, one of each is not guaranteed!  There is a chance that we could have another boy, and if we do decide to have a second baby at some point, it won't be because we need to have a little girl.  I'm not saying that wouldn't be nice, but I'm not going to have a baby with the purpose of having a specific gender.  We would be happy either way.  I just think it's sad that people look at having only one baby as a negative thing when we see it as doing the responsible thing, wanting to provide as much as we can for our child and make sure that he doesn't get cheated because we really don't have the means to have a second baby.  People just make me wonder sometimes.

My Valentine's Day

It's our Valentine's Day tradition that we don't get each other gifts.  James always gets me flowers and we exchange cards and sometimes he brings me chocolates.  This year I got dove...yum!

Second Trimester

I can't even believe that it's coming to an end!  Only a week and a half left until I'm in the 3rd trimester.  I feel like the first trimester creeped on right until the end, but this one has flown by!  I can't wait to post my belly pics side by side to see how much has changed in the past couple months.

Should've seen this one coming...second cold sore of this pregnancy.  I feel like I just had one!  It was only 2 1/2 months ago!  Yuck.

24 Weeks

24 Weeks

Maxwell's size: Around 12 inches, about 1.25 lbs, weighing about as much as a grapefruit.

How far along: 24 Weeks.

Total weight gain: 16 lbs, crazy, considering the week I get more exercise is the week I gain a pound and a half.  He must really be getting bigger!  Another fun fact, no matter how big or small your belly is, some people will tell you that you look WAY too small to be almost 6 months along, and some will tell you that you look SOOOO big and there's no way you're not even 6 months.  No one just keeps their mouth shut!  LOL.  And for some of my associates at work that think I'm big already and there's no way that the baby in there is only 1 1/4 lbs?  Yea, well my uterus is the size of a SOCCER BALL at this point!  LOL.  

Sleep: Sleep is getting more uncomfortable, but not unbearable.

Stretch Marks: None.

Food cravings: No cravings, but I've been sick, so I've been eating drinking a lot of soup.

Food aversions:  None.

Symptoms: Still a bit of heartburn.

Exercise: We went on three long walks this week.  Couldn't really do much more than that since I've been sick.  I'm actually surprised I had enough energy for that much.

Movement: Still feeling him move around, but still waiting to feel him on the outside.  He loves to kick me in the bladder!

Belly Button: Still an innie...for now. 

Nursery Update:  We put the crib together and applied the decal to the wall that we ordered online.  We're still waiting for the glider and the fabric for the bench cushion I need to make just came in yesterday.  Other than that, the nursery is pretty much set up other than organizing his clothes and and a few decor touches.  But I think we'll wait on that stuff til after the baby shower.

The things no one warns you about...

• Baby's kick...but they don't always just kick you in the belly.  They also sometimes like to kick you in the lady bits.  Not fun.
• When you are sick while pregnant, there is NOTHING you can take that has 0 chance of harming the baby.  Every single medication out there poses some slight risk to the baby.  Even the medicines that your OB tells you you can take....yea those ones have risks too.
• When you are sick, and you sneeze, you will pee yourself.  And not just a little bit.  A lot.
• Boobs don't just leak after your milk comes in...there's this fun stuff, called colostrum, that can leak as early as 16 weeks in my case.
• That full and lustrous hair that pregnant women are supposed to get?  Yea, apparently not everyone gets that because it's yet to kick in for me.
• No matter how in shape you are, you will feel like a whale when that belly starts to grow.

These are all fun facts of pregnancy that no one warns you about, but in spite of all of this, it's still totally fun and an amazing experience.

Reason # 9,352,741 I know James is going to be an amazing dad...

Some of you know that James and I are crazy cat people and our cats are like children to us.  We have two kittens cats that we adopted within our first month of marriage, Sophie & Smokey.  Smokey has always been significantly bigger and Sophie was the runt of their 4 kitten litter.  She's always had issues with gaining weight, and ever since she was a few months old, she's had issues with vomiting.  We've taken her to multiple veterinarians trying to find out if something is wrong with her and they've all given us the same advice, change her diet.  We've tried cheap dry food, expensive dry food, prescription dry food, all wet food diet, prescription wet food diet, kitten food...you name it, we've tried it.  Nothing has helped.  She still throws up at least once a day, sometimes several times, and she's never weighed more than 5.5 lbs.

The vet we took the cats to when we moved here was the first one to tell us that he believed she may have a real, diagnosable problem.  So, when she continued to get worse after that visit and even lost some weight, we decided to take her back in.  I couldn't go because it's way to stressful for me.  She's AWFUL when she goes to the vet and bites and scratches and growls and they always end up having to gas her to do anything to her.  I can't stand to see her like that.  So, James took her this morning. They did a lot of testing including blood work and x-rays to see what was wrong and the end diagnosis is Feline Irritable Bowel Disease.  Basically, some cats are born with an inability to tolerate any type of grains, and grains are in pretty much EVERY kind of cat food that you can buy in stores.  When they eat them, it irritates their stomach and intestines and everything gets inflamed, causing her to vomit all the time, in turn causing her to not absorb any of the essential nutrients that she needs.  So after multiple tests, she finally has a diagnosis and a plan for treatment.

We have to feed her NOTHING but a prescription wet food from the vet that has nothing but meat in it, venison to be exact, she has to take multiple supplements to get her the nutrition she's been lacking until her bowels aren't inflamed anymore, and she has to go in every 2 weeks for steroid shots to help the inflammation go down.  Thankfully, the vet says that we should really start to see an improvement and she should start to put on weight and he thinks she's going to be just fine.

The thing that really got to me, was the fact upon arriving home from the vet I asked James how much her visit today had cost...his reply?  "It doesn't matter, she's going to get better."  Then I swiped the bill and found out that he had spent over $650 on this one vet visit and didn't even blink an eye.  All he wants is for her to get better and be healthy.  I could have cried.  I know he cares about her just as much as I do, but that really made me feel good about what kind of father he's going to be.  If he has the capacity to care this much out our kitties, I can only imagine how much he's going to love our son.

Sleeping off all the drugs...poor baby.

Nursery Update #5

So upon ordering our crib, James and I thought that it was going to be the hardest part of setting up the nursery because everyone always talks about what a pain in the ass building the crib is.  Yea, not so.  See we also decided that Maxwell's room needed some kind of wall art, and we thought that a decal would be cool.  That thing was the biggest PAIN IN THE ASS to put up!  First of all, it came in 4 different sections and it does NOT peel easily from the backing as the instructions would have you believe.  All in all, it looks awesome and I'm so glad we did it.  But how funny is this?  We're putting this thing up and about 3/4 of the way through James stops and goes "You know this thing is not salvageable and we're going not going to be able to pack it when we move right?".  Haha.  Clearly, I know that, but I just thought it was hilarious that he was already thinking to the pain in the ass it would be to take this thing off the wall and then re-apply to our next place.  LOL.

Decal from 3rd Ave Shore on Etsy

Maxwell's First Gifts

Homemade blanket from his Auntie Amanda and various other goodies she sent him.

Onesie that James and I bought him from Koasty Kids

23 Weeks

Maxwell's size: Around 11 inches, over 1 lb, about the size of a pomegranate.

How far along: 23 Weeks.

Total weight gain: 14.5 lbs

Sleep: Still having trouble with sleep, especially if James works really late.  It helps me to go to sleep when he's here.

Stretch Marks: None.

Food cravings: Still wanting more sugary stuff, but I'm still limiting what I'll allow myself to have.  Gotta keep my blood sugar in check so that I can pass my glucose test in a few weeks.

Food aversions:  None.

Symptoms: Still a bit of heartburn.

Exercise: Lifted a lot of (not heavy) stuff at work this week.  I'm trying to keep active by cleaning and doing laundry and things like that because I'm too tired to really work out.

Movement: Still moving quite a bit, and he's kicked me pretty good a few times, but I'm still waiting to be able to feel him from the outside.

Belly Button: Still an innie...for now. 

Nursery Update:  The crib arrived on Friday (that's it in the corner of the picture) and we're still waiting on the glider.  We bought a palm tree decal to put up on the wall and I have plans to sew a cushion cover for a bench that we have so that he'll have a little window seat.

22 Week Ultrasound

We got to have an extra ultrasound today.  When we went for our 20 week anatomy scan, the ultrasound tech expressed some concern that she couldn't see Maxwell's stomach.  So she had the doctor come in and take a look and she was unable to locate it as well.  She told us that we shouldn't worry, that it was most likely due to him just having emptied his bladder, but just to be sure she wanted to see us back in 2 weeks.  So of course I've been a little on edge the past 2 weeks, but I did a pretty good job trying not to think about it because she said the chance of him having a problem like his esophagus not connecting to his stomach or him not having a stomach was VERY rare.  Thankfully, we were reassured today that he in fact does have a stomach and it was full today.  So everything is normal and progressing as it should be!

Mr. Maxwell

Pregnancy insomnia has set in...

So here I am at midnight writing my birth plan.  This is the first draft.  If any of you have suggestions (especially you Tracie) feel free to comment!  Open the image in a new tab or window to make it bigger.