A Night at the Oscars

Last night Vince & I attended the 5th annual Tinis and Tapas party for the Ellen Hines Smith Girls' Home. The theme was Oscar Night and each station represented an Oscar nominated movie. Vince and I hosted one table and chose the Titanic as our theme. My friends Kaye and LaDonna helped us out by dressing up as Rose and The Unsinkable Molly Brown. They also did most all of the decorations for us and were wonderful workers.

The baby kicked almost the whole night. It was kind of loud from all the people and we stayed active the whole night talking to folks. We definitely had a more fun time hosting a table than we did just hanging out last year. I hope to host a table again next year. I think they're going to stick with a movie theme again. Last year was all James Bond movies & the table hosts did a great job.

It was fun to dress up and go out one more time before the baby is born. The food was great! I drank diet Coke most of the night to help keep me awake, but I actually never felt tired until close to the end of the party around 11pm. We even got to take home a cute Oscar chocolate statue.

Week 37 Ultrasound

I had another great appointment this morning. We started out with the 37 week ultrasound. This should be our last one before the baby is born. He is up to 5 pounds 15 ounces! I couldn't believe he gained that much since 3 weeks ago when he was 4 pounds 10 ounces. He is packing on the weight now. His heart rate was in the 120s as he was snoozing. My amniotic fluid level was over 10 (has to be over 8) and my placenta looked good. I'm not having any contractions. My BP was 126/66 and I gained (or should I say the baby gained) 1 pound since last week. So I'm up to 18 pounds total weight gain.

His head is way down low now so it's hard to get a good picture of him these days. He still had one hand and one foot near his face. He did kick the ultrasound probe real hard one time towards the end. I think he was getting tired of it poking at him.

Here's the latest video.

I go next Friday for my last appointment and to get my admittance papers. Then we check in to the hospital on Friday, March 9 at 5:30am for the induction. Woo hoo!

37 Weeks Today!

I'm officially considered full term now that I'm 37 weeks. That makes me 9 months pregnant. I've actually been feeling really great the last couple of weeks. I'm still not sleeping well, but it's due to acid reflux (which is getting worse every day) and being stuffed up (which is worse as well). If I could breathe without having bile in my throat at night, I'd sleep great. The baby doesn't keep me awake nor does going potty (which I usually do only 1 or 2 times a night). The carpal tunnel in my right wrist is still really bad as well. These are 3 symptoms I'll be glad to get rid of. This week I've also had a very itchy belly (from stretching & growing - I keep putting lotion on it like crazy). My feet actually haven't been swelling as much & the bottoms of them don't hurt like they did in my second trimester. But I do have some blood vessels that have ruptured in them like tiny little bruises. I also have to get up slowly or my left sciatic nerve will spasm. Once I get up & walking, it goes away. It's the first couple steps that get me.

The fun symptoms like the baby moving and having a big belly will be missed. Although, it will be nice to fit in regular clothes & shoes again.

We finished our 2nd of 3 prenatal classes last night. We go one more time next Tuesday night for the full tour. The nurse teaching the classes works in L&D and has for 40 years so she has lots of experience. I was kind of hoping she would provide milkshakes for us each week, but she hasn't so we have to eat really fast when Vince gets home to get there in time for class.

And this last weekend we bought our first piece of furniture to start on remodeling our living room. We went to IKEA & didn't buy anything. It was an interesting store & had some great storage solutions, but nothing really jumped out at us. We stopped at the Rug & Home store in Gaffney on the way home from IKEA & found just what we wanted for our future flat screen TV. It's a nice buffet cabinet with storage and a place for the DVD & cable boxes. It's solid wood (Bella maybe?) from India with some nice carvings on it. I can't wait to see what our room will look like after we re-do it.

More Nursery Pictures

We ordered a teddy bear rug to go in the nursery. It arrived this week. So I retook a lot of the pictures of the nursery. I just like going in there & staring at it. It turned out so great! In fact Vince & I are now ready to redo all of our rooms and bring them up to par.

And my belly shots comparison pictures:

Can you tell that since my last belly shot that the baby has dropped? The first picture is from Feb 4. He dropped around a week and a half ago I think on Wednesday. He's no longer up in my ribs as much & I have more of his weight down low now.

The pic above is Feb 4. The pic below is Feb 17. Not a big difference, but I can tell on the inside.

So now I walk like this more with my hands holding my belly. Some of my maternity pants do a great job of holding up my belly and others not so much. So I'll probably be wearing the good ones over & over for the next 2 weeks and 6 days until the baby is born.

Week 36 Appointment

Today I had my 36 week appointment. My BP was 104/60. My protein looked great. And I didn't gain any weight since last week so I'm still at 17 pounds total weight gain.

They hooked me up to the NST (non stress test) machine again. This time they had me do it for 45 minutes because the baby kept moving so much. They had to move the heart rate monitor on my stomach. No contractions. Baby is kicking well. They even put this little taser thing that buzzed my tummy to make him jump and he did. He was wide awake the whole time. His heart rate was 140 - 150 (compared to him sleeping some last time with it being 120 - 130).

My Strep B bacteria test came back negative so all looks good. They gave me a copy of my records so far in case I need them earlier than the March 9 induction date. I would take these to the hospital with me if for some reason I go early.

This week I took the few duplicate items we received from our baby showers & exchanged them for our baby monitor & thermometer. I had 20% off coupons as well as some gift cards as well so it worked out great. I think we are all set now for the baby!

Valentine's Night

I surprised Vince for Valentine's night by taking him to my work. We have a guest house that has an executive chef and full dining staff that is probably rated better than any restaurant in all of Spartanburg. My friend LaDonna and her main man, Jorge joined us. We were allowed to go to dinner due to our hard work on the United Way & March of Dimes campaign this past year. It was on the house, which is even better.

When we first arrived, we relaxed in the sitting area of the library. It was very cozy. They brought us appetizers of quesadillas, deviled eggs, and fried oysters.

Then we moved to the dining table and started our main meal. We had a great salad, potato & leek soup, and a bread plate that had crackers and cheese sticks on it with butter. I devoured all of this. Then they brought out our filet mignon and au gratin potatoes. That was the best steak I think I've ever eaten. It was sooo good.

Then I just kept eating and ate dessert as well. I have stuck to my diabetic diet really well, but this was not the night for a diet. The dessert was a layered chocolate mouse with a sponge cake, cocoa pebbles cereal, and chocolate wafer. It was really really good.

I cleaned every plate I had for each course and probably could have eaten it all over again. This baby is a bottomless pit these days. He's definitely using more calories during these last few weeks.

After dinner we toured the rest of the main building & got a picture.

Vince brought me the two dozen roses that are so pretty! He finds the prettiest flowers each year. I gave him a knife he had been wanting.

I love my wonderful baby daddy! Vince is the best husband ever. We had a lovely Valentine's Day.

Baby Nursery

After unpacking all our great gifts from our baby shower, Vince & I attacked the nursery & got so much of it set up. He finished building shelves in the baby's closet on Saturday. We're going to paint them later, but for now, we went ahead & started loading things into the newly renovated closet.

Once he outgrows the 0 - 3 month size, his closet will be 2/3 empty. He has a ton of that size clothing. After putting everything away in the closet, we washed the new bedding set & got the room set up.

The view from the doorway.

The crib with his bedding.

The view standing in front of the closet. The little dresser was Vince's grandad's dresser.

The changing table. We put his name in large white wooden letters above the changing table on the wall. We'll be revealing his name soon (about 3 weeks 5 days)!

His cute lamp.

His piggy bank from Billy & Eddie. It came from Tiffany's.

After about 4 loads of baby laundry, we have most everything sorted and put away. We have his hospital bag packed & ready to go. The cradle is in our bedroom for when we first get home. He'll be moving to his nursery soon after he gets home, but for the first little bit, he'll be in our room with us. His room is done in neutral colors so if we have more children, it can be for a boy or a girl. We love how it turned out & the fact that we blended it with our current color scheme that was already in the room.

Baby Shower 3

Vince & I had the most awesome baby shower on Saturday at our house. My friends, Kaye, LaDonna, and Savannah were the hostesses and provided all the food & cleaned up all the dishes afterwards.

It was so nice having so many friends and family come visit us. We got to speak with everyone and have great food at the same time. We had brunch food & everything was diabetic friendly, even the punch and cupcakes! I did make the cake topper, but that was the only thing I made (& yes, I wanted to).

LaDonna put on our cute corsages that were little cupcakes with baby boy ribbon.

We got so many great gifts and advice from everyone. We even had a mini concert from Elise & Kaleigh. They sang a couple of songs for us & did it beautifully.

Savannah made us a diaper cake and cupcake socks centerpiece. It was so cute!

We enjoyed opening all the gifts.

We had a fun time opening all the boxes and taking off all the tags of all our wonderful gifts.

We are so blessed to have so many wonderful people in our lives. I hope to get out the thank you notes this week as we have so much to be thankful for.