Six Months Pregnant

I'm officially in the third trimester!! It feels like I've been pregnant for a long time now, but the fact that I only have three months to get everything done before Ziggy arrives is still a bit daunting.

I've mixed some of the 5 & 6 month experiences in the entry I posted earlier this morning, so this one will likely be a bit shorter. Basically, the sixth month of pregnancy was similar to the fifth month - lots more home organization, stronger kicks on Ziggy's part. One change though, is this past month, I've gotten much better at exercise. Mark and I have resumed our relatively long walks, which have actually gotten easier as I've built back up some strength. In the last couple of weeks, we have walked to the grocery store, library, bank, and my favorite - the Shell station - to buy Hostess cupcakes!! It's probably a good thing that the exercise (well, at least the walking part of the exercise) has come back a little easier, because my sweet tooth is uncontrollable! I crave candy, cookies, chocolate ALL THE TIME! I've always had a sweet tooth, but it subsided quite a bit during the first trimester (Mountain Dews didn't even sound all that good!), but has progressively gotten stronger over the last couple of months. Our order of three boxes of girl scout cookies arrived last Friday night - they were gone by Sunday night. To my credit, Mark did help me out a bit - especially with the peanut butter patties, but I still take most of the credit for polishing off all those cookies. I went in for the glucose screening test yesterday, and am a bit nervous how it will come out, because it's going to take A LOT of willpower to cut out the candy. In fact, when I'm done with this blog, I'm headed to the grocery store to get a mountain dew (don't worry - this is indeed a rare treat - only once a week or so), and stuff to make smores tonight for dinner (and of course, normal groceries too). I feel a bit guilty about eating so much sugar, but in truth, I'm still eating a lot less sweets than I really want to eat - and I'm doing reasonably well balancing this all out with healthy foods, especially eating a lot more fruits & vegetables than I normally do to offset all this sugar consumption.

This past weekend, we put up shelves in one of our guest room closets so that we could clear a bunch of percussion stuff out of the formal dining room so that we can move our study in there - clearing out the small bedroom so we can make it a nursery. So during your next visit, you'll be able to peruse music & percussion accessories from the comfort of your stay in our guest room! :)

Mark studiously reviews some music in front of his closet:

My mom has made an adorable crib set with matching wall quilt, so I'm excited to get the nursery set up and put it all out. We still need to buy a crib & changing table (although we're likely going to buy a dresser, and use a changing pad on top of that instead of buying an actual table), and paint the walls (either a light tan or a bold yellow - haven't decided yet), but as long as we have the nursery ready about a month before Ziggy's scheduled arrival, I'll be comfortable.

WORK:

Now that I'm a little less frantic about the birth experience & having the right doctor, I'm facing the indecision of how long to take off work, and in what capacity to come back. Mark and I had originally decided that we wanted for me to take 3 months off when he's born, and then go back part-time (20-30 hrs per week) after that. We're also shooting for me to have a flexible work schedule, so that we won't have to worry about day care - ie with Mark's schedule, I could still be in the office during work hours 20 hours a week, it would just vary widely, which days/hours I was there from week to week. ExxonMobil's policies support that (in fact, I can take 6 months off (unpaid) and return part-time for up to 2 years), although I'm not sure about the flexible hours part of it, but I'm feeling a little guilty because I just started a new assignment in January, and don't want to be a big hassle. On top of that, my Project Manager is not thrilled about someone coming in to replace me for three months, and so all involved are talking about just leaving my position vacant when I'm gone. That may be feasible, as I think my project won't have too much terribly pressing during that time (reach a project milestone right around my due date), but I also don't want to come back to a pile of work that has to get done done immediately upon my return. Also, now I'm thinking that I may want to actually take the full 6 months off, or at least more than three months, as it's a unique opportunity that I won't have again (or until we have another baby). But I also could go a little crazy being home for that long, and the extra income is always nice! :) It's tough to make this decision when I really don't know what it's going to feel like to be a mom, and how much energy (or interest) I'll have to work. I'll keep you posted.

I'm sure I've left something out, but that's all I can think to write for now. To leave you, here are the six month pictures. Since the five months were actually taken at 5.5 months, there isn't a whole lot different. Just a different shirt, I guess. :)

Five Months Pregnant

Okay, so I'm actually now six months pregnant, but I figured I should try to remember something about the fifth month of pregnancy and keep my blog chronological. One thing is I had a lot more energy (the second trimester IS somewhat magical) - and so Mark and I were busy getting things done/organized - and hence the Blogging got put on the back burner. We finished our laundry room (okay - it's really a laundry closet). You can't really tell from this picture, but we painted the inside a rather bold yellow, replaced the plywood behind the machines that was loosely attached to the brick exterior with insulation and drywall, re-cut a dryer vent in the wall so that the dryer would actually fit all the way in the closet (it used to vent to the attic through the wall), put up two cabinets above the machine, put up a shelf to the left of the washer to hold laundry soap and put up various hooks, etc. to hold brooms, flyswatters,etc. Perhaps that seems a little more impressive now? :)

Along the home improvement lines, we also put up shelves in one closet, transforming it into a linen closet, and put up shelves in another closet to fit more of our "stuff" in there (we also put up shelves in our Guest room closet to hold a bunch of percussion music, accessories, but that will appear in month 6 entry). Here we are busy working (and yes, I helped!)

The final product:

Health:

I had a little scare regarding my health - but it turns out me & Ziggaroni are okay. I've had weird, and sometimes very pronounced, pains under my ribcage on the right side for the past few months. I have seen just the Nurse Practitioner for the last two months because my doctor was on maternity leave, and she isn't the world's greatest listener, so she sort of blew me off. When I finally told my doctor about it again, she said it could be my gall bladder, so had me give some blood to check enzyme levels and scheduled an ultrasound of my gall bladder. I went online to read about gallbladder issues, and I had a few of the symptoms! It made me really mad that the NP kept blowing me off. Anyways, the ultrasound was fine, but my blood tests came back with high enzyme levels, so she had me take the test again, and they went even higher. I guess she was getting a bit concerned (although she didn't let me on until after everything was back to normal), but I guessed something wasn't right when her office called, and asked if I could come back the same day to have my blood pressure checked and give more blood. Everything was back down to normal, and she doesn't know why it was high, but thought it may be some sort of viral thing that resolved itself. The good part is I got to see Ziggy again, since she ordered a growth ultrasound to be sure he was okay. He is, and is currently 65% weight for his age. A big boy! Hopefully he doesn't get too much higher on the percentile ranking before I have to push him out. :) It was neat to see him again, since he looks a lot less like Skeletor and a lot more like a baby. I could see his lips, his nostrils, fingers, etc. I could even see him blink his eyes! And it was cool, because I would be able to feel him move, and see what that movement actually was on the screen. Speaking of which, I don't know that I have mentioned that I can feel him move now (called "quickening"), but I can. Unfortunately, I don't really remember exactly when it started. It was hard in the beginning to differentiate him moving from my stomach growling, or just other normal intestinal movement. But he's really strong now (esp in 6 months) - and it's fun to feel him party inside of me. Mark can feel him now too - actually, it wasn't long after I was confident that it was really him moving and not just my digestive system that Mark could also feel him move when he put his hand on my belly. In fact, the two of them had some "alone" time the other night while I was sleeping. Mark put his arm around me, and felt Ziggy kick. He says he kicked for sometime, and Mark enjoyed getting to enjoy this by himself while I slept, since I get to enjoy Ziggy by myself for quite some time. I thought that was rather cute.

Birthing:

Wow, some hard decisions to make came this month as we started to think about our birth plan. A friend of ours used Bradley, and it sounded promising after a discussion with her and her husband. It's basically the "new Lamaze" if you want to have a natural childbirth - but focuses much more on deep relaxation rather than breathing to get through the labor contractions. It's also called Husband-coached childbirth, since the dad has a lot of duties in helping the mom relax, etc. I think Mark likes that part of it, so that he'll be busy too, and not just feel helpless standing there watching. We're actually signed up for a class (8 weeks, 3 hours each Sunday night) which starts tomorrow. The hard part for us is deciding if we have the right doctor. We actually really like my doctor, and I trust her quite a bit, but she's not this big hippie, natural-birth doctor. From our conversations, it seems she uses interventions only as appropriate (ie not routine), so I'm comfortable with that. It's just sort of hard reading all the Bradley stuff and not getting freaked out that my doctor may make an episiotomy or recommend inducing, or things like that, and it not actually be necessary. Of course anyone who has enough passion to write a book about natural childbirth is likely to be a bit extremist (doctors are evil - don't let them steal your childbirth experience!), so I struggle a bit to balance out what I actually think about the natural method. Basically, I just really want to avoid a C-section, and at least trying for a natural birth seems to be a good way to go to achieve that. But I also don't like how the extremist mindset makes you feel like a failure if you choose an epidural, or God-forbid end up with a c-section. A doctor-friend of mine pointed out that while, yes, our bodies are designed to be able to handle childbirth without intervention, women died a lot during birth before modern medicine, so interventions are sometimes necessary. Sigh. After our appointment yesterday, Mark and I think we're going to stick with our doctor, but I'm still a little nervous that this Bradley class is going to make me paranoid that she's going to intervene when it's not really necessary. So any of you thinking about having a baby anytime soon - I recommend figuring out what kind of birth you want to have, THEN choosing your doctor.

The interesting thing about birth is that I'm not as nervous now as I thought I would be. I'm actually excited to go through the experience, and a bit eager to meet this little guy whose bouncing around inside of me. That being said, I'm also enjoying lots of sleep (usually around 9 hours or so a night), organizing our house and still maintaining control of my life.

And finally, here are the 5-month pictures (except these are really the 5 1/2 month pictures, since our camera broke):