Reed Baby Blog

Cory and I had a busy Saturday last weekend, as we decided to paint Carter’s room.  Of course, the plan was to go to Home Depot first thing in the morning and get started early, but an after-breakfast nap took priority for me.  We ended up starting the actual painting about 6:00, but were comfortably finished and in bed by midnight.  We started with plain white walls and are pleased with the way the Oxford blue looks.  The furniture, which is being borrowed from Luke, also looks great against the blue.  The final product will come later, as a wonderful friend of Janie’s is going to be painting a mural along one of the walls.  Since the theme is frogs, I think the plan is to do some sort of pond mural on one wall and some additional lily pads along the others.  We can’t wait! 

I’m officially on the every two week schedule at the OB. However, things have been looking great. Carter is a little over 3 1/2 pounds and is measuring about a week and a half early. He is sooo active, enough so that I briefly had a thought about whether you could start your kid on Ritalin while still in the womb. Although, he tends to be shy when other people try to feel him moving. He’s great with Cory, but it took three attempts for my mom to feel him, and he has yet to cooperate with Janie. Mom says he’s stubborn like me, but I think he’s just shy.

We had a little bit of a scare yesterday afternoon, as I started having some cramping (perhaps contractions). I called the doctor and was told to drink lots of water, lay on my left side, take 2 Tylenol, time the cramps, and call back in an hour if they weren’t gone. After about 45 minutes of cramping every 2 minutes, they subsided. Once the cramping was gone, I was just sore…like someone had kicked me in the belly. Wonder who would have done that? We took it easy the rest of the day, and all is well this morning. Getting plenty of rest this weekend is probably a good thing, since the showers and childbirth classes will consume the next three weekends. I guess I really am going to have a baby!!!

I absolutely cannot wait until Carter gets here, if for no other reason than so that my butt will finally stop hurting!  This sciatic nerve thing stinks.   

Other than this, things are progressing nicely. My belly is measuring right where it needs to be and no news is good news on the glucose tolerance test. Thank goodness only one of us in the family has the “betes”.  I have another doctor’s appointment on Friday, which will also come with a Rhogam shot, since it’s likely that Carter and I have different blood types.   This appointment comes only two weeks after the last, so I hope that doesn’t mean we’re already on the two week schedule.  It’s scary to think that we may be that close!  I’m also increasingly getting larger cankles, so Dr. Harris wants to keep a close eye on them.  Although, my blood pressure and weight gain thus far have been great. 

Carter is becoming more active by the day, and has learned that if he plays the bongos while I am trying to eat a healthy dinner, I might just give up and eventually resort to ice-cream!   He already has me playing right into his little hands.  He and I will have it all to ourselves next week, as Cory travels back to B-more for work.  Thank goodness…this also means we have the bed to ourselves.  After 9 years of sharing a bed, sleeping alone in bed looks more and more enticing to me, especially as I grow! Not that I don’t really love my baby’s daddy, but at this point, I’ll take all the extra room I can get.

How much am I willing to pay to make sure I don’t look like a knocked-up baby mama? Obviously not much, because I bought a new wedding ring for $5.34 last week. My once long, delicate skinny fingers have become little snausages…so much so that my wedding ring doesn’t fit anymore. Lucky for me, Baylor was having a jewelry sale in the lobby and I found this little number.

Carter and I have felt very crowded this week. I constantly feel like I just finished Thanksgiving dinner. On top of that, I’ve got this little creature doing jumping jacks inside. Plus, my left butt cheek has been asleep for the last…I don’t know, month?!? I think we both feel some relief when we’re in the pool. Will it still be warm enough to swim in November? Or, will Cory love me enough to heat the pool in November? The women that have been pregnant 14 times and claim they were the happiest when they were pregnant need to have their heads examined. As much as we’re not prepared yet for Carter to be here, I’m soooo ready for his arrival. Both because I’m excited to see and meet him and because I’m ready to no longer be pregnant.

Let’s see, what’s changed this week? Oh yeah, I no longer have inside ankles!

This is what was going through my head when my prenatal yoga instructor asked what was new since we last met. I discovered this saddening revelation when I got home from work last Friday. I looked at my feet and noticed something was missing. That’s right, it was my cute little ankle bone that I’ve seen every day of my life to this point. Now, looking at the inside of my legs, there’s no difference between my calves and my ankles. Cankles. Thanks, Julie Croom, for the correct terminology. Let’s just hope that I don’t have thankles by the time this is over.

Maybe I should start shopping for baby tights, because Carter has become quite the uterine acrobat. He generally is very active right after breakfast, around 3:00 PM, and again at night before I go to bed. However, he’s definitely our kid because there are no early morning stunts. He likes to sleep in like his mama.

We spent three grueling exciting, but tiring hours registering at BabiesRUs on Sunday. Who knew there were so many kinds of bottles, pacifiers, swings, strollers, play yards…the list goes on and on. So Cory is starting to understand nipple confusion a little more after looking at the dozens of nipple/bottle combinations. He said that he isn’t quite as creeped out by that store as he used to be, but he still walked around with a confused and slightly terrified look on his face the entire time. However, the second hour, I think I had the same expression. At least shooting bar codes with the scanner gun was fun. Maybe I’m being too negative, because it wasn’t all that bad for us. And the grandmothers had a blast. We could barely pull them away from the store or convince them to let things get registered instead of buying them right then. Plus, we settled on a theme for the nursery and found a lot of cute things for Carter.

If you want to see what we registered, you can check it out here.

Okay, so I broke down and bought a Mom-mobile.  It’s sporty, luxurious, and yet still a station wagon.  We had yet another good experience at Boardwalk Volkswagen and came away with a really cool Passat wagon. I have officially passed into the Mom-realm. 

We had our first appointment last Thursday with Dr. Harris, my old OB/GYN who will be delivering Carter when the time comes.  All looks well, and I am measuring about 23 cm, which is right on target for being 22 weeks.  I see him again in 4 weeks and get to do the wonderful glucose tolerance test, which requires me to drink that yucky stuff.  It’s in the fridge now, so just cross your fingers that no one (Dave) drinks it thinking it’s Gatorade! 

So, we’re finally here.  I don’t know why in the world I thought it would be a good idea to wait until Carter is here to move.  This officially kicked our butts!  I know the worst part was when Janie fell down the stairs and broke 3 ribs, but there were several instances that almost rivaled that as worst moment of the move.  Maybe the 10 minutes of what I was afraid were contractions…maybe the movers being 2 hours late and 3 times as expensive as thought…maybe hitting a jeep with the moving truck as we left our street in Baltimore…maybe the hotel window with the bullet hole…or maybe discovering that our Trek bicycles were stolen somewhere along the way.  Any of those were enough for me to stress out.  Just imagine what it would have been like for all of that to happen, and for there to be a baby involved!

So, enough complaining!  We’re home and couldn’t be happier!!!  I always knew that Janie had absolutely wonderful taste, but this house is amazing.  We have all of our stuff in the house and are slowly unpacking.  Maybe we’ll get it all done before Carter gets here.  :) 

Things are getting back to normal.  Cory is settling into his stressful commute and working environment:  downstairs overlooking the pool.  I also started back doing PRN (temp) work at Baylor in Dallas this week.  We never thought we would have missed our Texas life so much. 

We made it into Christiansburg, VA late last night, or early this morning.  Yesterday’s load and drive were quite tough, but we made it.  Read all about the experience over on Blogimore.com..

More updates to come. 

By the time we get moved to Texas, Lo will have travelled through 16 different states!!!   I (and Lo) have been able to enjoy a wonderful week in Maine, many day trips around Maryland, a week on the beach in Rhode Island, and then all the states we will pass through on the way back home to Texas.  Being on the East Coast has been great, since it puts us in such close proximity to many neat places.  One thing we will miss about Baltimore is how close it is to everything else.  Here is a picture that we took on Tuesday on Block Island, RI.  It was absolutely beautiful! 

We had a busy week when Lo and I got back from Maine, but it quickly turned sour.  I got the stomach bug that’s been going around Friday morning.  This is the sickest I’ve been since I was a kid.  I made Cory leave work early to come and take care of me.  He earned his keep.Cory’s dad and little brother arrived from Arkansas on Saturday afternoon.  Unfortunately they had to entertain themselves for two days because Cory got the stomach bug on Sunday morning.  We were all feeling a little bit better by Tuesday, so we were still able to have a good visit with Bart and Will.We have a few very exciting weeks ahead of us as we try to get everything ready for the move.  That’s right,  we’ve decided to move back sooner rather than later.  The plan is to load up our furniture in Baltimore on Monday, June 30th.  We should arrive at our new home in Allen on Thursday July 3rd.  Moving home before Lo joins us should help us to be more settled, and will ultimately save money.  Party at our house on July 4th!!!!   Strong back and arms and willingness to help unload required for admission.

Well the adventure continues.  Yesterday, I went to both a maternity store and spent an hour at BabiesRUs without a single episode of freaking out.  I’m most impressed with my performance at BabiesRUs.  It can be a frightening, creepy place to the uninitiated.  We examined strollers, play yards, high chairs and cribs in great detail.  Who knew such things would ever grab so much of my attention? So as Lisa mentioned, we’ve both had dreams about Lo in the last couple of days.  Mine came last night – I’m sure the BabiesRUs experience had something to do with it.  In the dream, it seemed like it was our first night home with Lo.  This was odd because she (yes she for me too) appeared to be about three or four months old.  She was right beside the bed, just next to me.  She wasn’t in a bassinet, but what appeared to be a car seat resting on a stool.  She didn’t sleep at all during the night, just stared at us with big, blue eyes.  At one point, we decided that she must be hungry because she had grabbed the jar of peanut butter sitting next to her and proceeded to chew on it.  The fact that it was peanut butter made me a bit proud, because PB is my main weakness.  That and Michael Bolton.  Again, we are going to be great parents. This was a funny dream.  However, I did wake up feeling extremely anxious to meet Lo.  We still have several months to go, kid, but I can’t wait to see you and hold you.