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. :)