There’s this song I’ve known and loved for like 16 years, called “What’ll She Look Like,” by this band called Stephen Speaks.
and ON THE DAILY, I get that song stuck in my head for very obvious reasons.
Will she be soft, will she be strong Will she be ready to be wrong Will she move too fast or wait too long Will she look me in the eyes What’ll she look like?
every time she gets really bad hiccups or squirms, I think of that song.
Who. the. heck. are. you., baby.?
What color is your hair? (I think blonde because Justen and I both started with light hair that got darker when we got older)
What color are your eyes? (blue like Justen’s?)
Do you have any birth marks? (I have a super weird one)
Is your nose as big as it looked in that one ultrasound? (I really hope not but that’s more for you than me)
It’s bizarre to feel another human being inside of me – someone I don’t know and have never actually met.
I was telling my aunt the other day that this year has ZOOMED by, but August has been the slowest month of my life… oh except September will probably be so much worse.
We had our last appointment with our current midwife. She said everything is great, the baby’s growth ultrasound, the size my uterus was measuring (lol what that’s such a weird sentence), my weight gain, etc. When I told her about my frequent heartburn she smiled and nodded because I guess it’s normal. I’m not a fan of heartburn at all. I’ve never had it until this and it sucks, fyi.
A week behind on this, but somewhere between Week 31 and Week 32, my answer to “how are you feeling?” went from “great, I barely feel pregnant!” to “PREGNANT!!!!” all caps, bold, underline.
My back hurts, the baby kicks me real hard at real random times and takes my breath away (but I’m so grateful to feel her active!) and I am freaking TIRED, you guys.
So tired that last night I FELL ASLEEP during Bachelor in Paradise. I LIVE for that stuff, so the fact that I fell asleep, got up and went into bed (without brushing my teeth btw) and slept until 3:45 am really says how tired I was.
We’re halfway through (!!!) our 4 baby showers and I’m honestly just really honored to have so many people at the ready to love our baby when she gets here.
I’m still on the watermelon italian soda > coffee train, which is weird af and honestly perhaps my dramatic decrease in caffeine is the culprit behind my constant exhaustion, haha.
Pants are completely out of the question at this point, so luckily I have a bunch of t-shirt dresses that are 1. easy and 2. breezy. I caved and bought a pair of brand new maternity shorts at a resale store for $4 and honestly they are the best thing I’ve worn since I discovered I can’t wear pants a few weeks ago.
We did our first load(s) of baby clothes and I wanted to explode into a shower of glitter because they’re all so little and so cute and soon we’ll have someone to put them in.
Apparently, homegirl is as big as the crystal ball from Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Me too, Ron Weasley… me too.
I have no idea how they measure this size. Length? Weight? Please tell me it’s not girth because sign me OUT.
Aside from a wall decal with her name, we’ve pretty much set up her stuff in our room, which I shared here.
This week, I really FELT pregnant. We had plans to hit up a few places one evening, but I couldn’t hang. My body was just miserable and I had to go home. After arriving home, I planned to catch up on The Handmaid’s Tale.. but I ended up sleeping through that.. and then slept an extra TWO HOURS the next morning. and struggled through the rest of the day.
While not the baby’s first experience with live music (when she was past the point of hearing sound, we saw my friends in The BGP and my friend Ernie), Mei-Ling and I went to THE BACKSTREET BOYS and it was SO LOUD. I think it definitely startled her for a little bit. Then she probably realized she was in the same room as greatness and appreciated it. That’s what I’m going with, at least. 🙂
Okay and I’m THAT person… I dug this dress out of the Goodwill Outlet the same day I found my other dress from a few weeks ago. I’m trying really hard not to buy maternity clothes but to instead take advantage of clothes in bigger sizes that I can just list on my Poshmark closet if I don’t need them after the baby gets here.
My appetite is still gone. 2019 has been the year of no appetite. Justen is the one who is eating for 2, because he eats his food and then I give him the rest of my food. I also went an entire day without coffee this week, which Justen pointed out is so weird. I did, however, have an iced chai AND a watermelon italian soda. After realizing how much money I could rack up buying watermelon italian sodas (yo anyone else have pregnancy cravings that have been pretty much exclusively beverages?), I ordered some stuff on Amazon so I could make my own. So that’s going to happen soon.
Now that it’s August, our due date is NEXT MONTH. This may very well be our last month of a party of two. I have loved the past almost two years of just being Justen and Stephanie Martian, so I’m nervous to lose that but also excited to meet our new family member. I hope she’s cool.
When we first found out we were pregnant, we were living in a cute little studio apartment across the hall. It was one of the many reasons I walked out of the bathroom with my pee stick and said “I don’t know how to feel,” on repeat while Justen hugged me and I cried.
Before I took the test, I prayed “God, whatever is your will.” Standing in that tiny one room living space seemed so much smaller thinking about where to put another human being and their things.
Four days later, we found out we could move back into our one bedroom mansion. We walked into our bedroom and I remember thinking “we have all this space for a baby!” For the past few months we’ve been looking at the empty space on the other side of our room and thinking about how someone else would live there by the end of the year. and then we found out that person will be a baby girl. and then we got her furniture and stuff.
Every so often I get overwhelmed that in a few months there will LITERALLY BE ANOTHER HUMAN BEING living with us – even more overwhelming to think that right now she is living INSIDE OF MY BODY. Next level sci fi crap right there.
After a really struggly first few months of pregnancy, waking up and seeing the crib and all the baby things makes me really excited to meet her.
This is the view when you walk into our bedroom. The IKEA bag really gives it a nice pop of color, don’t you think? Insert the biggest eyeroll here. We had originally thought about getting white furniture and then suddenly I realized how sterile the whole room would look if that was the case.
Also you may be wondering why we put the crib in front of our (bathroom/closet/etc) door, but that door just goes out to the hallway of our apartment building.
I KNOW IT’S NOT SAFE TO KEEP STUFFED ANIMALS AND BLANKETS IN THE CRIB WHEN THE BABY IS BORN THANK YOU.
We’ve been stocking up on diapers and wipes (from Goodwill!) for months. Not to be all braggy, but one day I had this EPIC day of brand new baby stuff at Goodwill… I got 3 boxes of Honest diapers for $9.99 each. They’re $27.99 a box, so I basically got 3 for 1. I’ve also been acquiring those little gold polka dot bins (brand new!!) from Goodwill for 1/2 the price as they are at Target.
We ordered a wall decal of her name to put here. I realized it’s going to be tiny so we’re trying to see if we can cancel and order it in a bigger size. pro-tip: measure things. We’re not being super secretive about her name, we’ve told our family and some friends but listen… MULTIPLE people have already guessed her name so whatever, I guess I’m predictable.
We actually bought those gold wall dots when Toys R Us was going out of business and it turns out they came in handy 🙂
Here’s our one main storage for her stuff. We’ll probably end up rearranging where we keep things once we have our showers, but for now I just like taking out the baby clothes and looking at them and re folding them. It’s so pathetic, but welcome to where I’m at in life these days.
Last December I begged Justen to let me buy that little elephant diffuser and he kept asking why we needed ANOTHER diffuser. A month later we found out we were pregnant so YOU KNOW I ordered it right away before it sold out.
Also. Last year I was at the bins and I found this brand new Beauty and the Beast jewelry box in the shape of The Wardrobe. I thought I’d put it back but when I unloaded my cart discovered it was still there. I don’t plan on this baby wearing jewelry any time soon but one day. and then that picture of us on the day we found out we’re having a girl. You can’t tell but Justen’s eyes are closed, but it was the only one I could find and I thought that if I didn’t start putting pictures in the Kate Spade frames I’ve started hoarding, Justen would make me donate them.
This is the view from my side of the bed. We’ll probably end up switching sides when the baby gets here, but until then.. here’s where my family sleeps. We have a beautiful rocking chair that Justen’s parents got us, but we realized there’s no way it would fit in this room so we moved it to the living room.
I’ve been meaning to do a full “apartment tour” post on my blog, but nothing’s really motivated me to get my camera out and snap some pictures like slapping a bunch of gold polka dots on the wall (where I can reach).
Scale of 1-10 how bad do you think these pictures will make my mom cry? She’s really excited for the baby to get here 🙂
OK the original plan was to take pictures in the SAME OUTFIT, in the SAME PLACE… but then last week I was too lazy and this week I thought, “well if I already wore a different outfit once…” AND our ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD is blocked off because of Camas Days happening this weekend! It’s like an annual block party. Vendors, food trucks (I’ve got my eye on the shave ice truck bc 80+ degree weather), there are two parades… it’s awesome. But I thought.. let’s go take a picture downstairs because we’ll NEVER be able to get a picture in the street with no cars!
See that door on the left, kind of in the middle of the picture? That goes to our apartment. We literally live in the cutest area in the world. That would be a movie theater on one side and an antique store on the other. Imma let you finish but we hit the jackpot.
On to the baby things.
We had an anatomy scan with our new care providers. They said her head is really low (which explains why I am literally saying “oh man, my cervix” on the daily). She weighs like 2.15 pounds and is in the 65th percentile (I’ve been dying for a percentile number because the other numbers mean nothing to me).
The ultrasound tech confirmed (again) that she’s a girl (y’all I’d be fine with a boy but not as a last minute surprise) but was struggling to get some measurements. The most no nonsense doctor came in and asked if he’d told me that she looks at every baby in addition to just looking at the charts. I said no, and she said that she’d see if the baby would cooperate more with her than she had with the guy.
Y’all she was so no-nonsense with her little wand thing that it took my breath away. Like bam bam bam, really hard on my stomach and straight to the point. She said “yep, she’s cooperating,” and I thought “I’d do whatever this lady says too, she is not messing around.” I figured I’d ask her if I could bring the baby in to her in like 13 years to see if she’d cooperate with her if she wasn’t listening to me and the doctor leaned in and said “absolutely not. I have a 14 year old girl and I’m only doing this once.”
Our midwife said that the baby is great, the fluid is great, the size of my uterus (lol what is life) is great. I’m taking every other day pills for very mild anemia, but that’s it.
We’re finishing up our little nursery area, but here’s what it looked like before we added some bins and a rug (and we’ve got gold polka dots and a decal of her name for the wall).
I’ll take more and better pictures when it’s a little more finished, but that’s her half of our room. It’s not much but we don’t need much and we’ll make it work 🙂 PS WE WILL NOT BE KEEPING STUFFED ANIMALS IN HER CRIB I KNOW IT’S DANGEROUS. Just covering my bases. 🙂
Next week, our countdown to due date is in the SINGLE DIGITS. What the crap. I remember finding out we were pregnant and wondering what it would feel like to be DOUBLE DIGITS WEEKS PREGNANT, and now here we are kind of nearing the home stretch.
We’ve got a crib.
We’ve got a changing table.
We’ve got a car seat.
We’ve got a stroller.
We’ve got a couple hundred diapers and wipes.
Homegirl could come and while we (emotionally) would not be ready (will we EVER?) we would be tangibly ready.
Last week they finally fixed our ceiling and our baby furniture came in the mail so while Justen was out for the evening, I got the crib and changing table all set up. We have to order a rug and some wall decor, so I’m going to wait to share pictures until then. But y’all, waking up and seeing the furniture for another human being is insane. Like we’re about to share a room with another human being who is currently chillin’ in my body. IT IS SO WEIRD.
Changed up the outfit because I was wayyyyy too lazy and it was too hot and I didn’t want to change. Also, I dug that dress out of the Goodwill Outlet and I’m pretty proud of it. Actually on that day, I found quite a few dresses and tops to wear and accommodate my growing stomach.
I’ve been reading this book Justen bought me while I was in Nashville. It’s actually been REALLY HELPFUL. I never realized that being pregnant was such an emotional roller coaster. As I read, I have to share parts with Justen that are SO RELEVANT to my experience.
This is random, but I discovered the number I weighed at my first prenatal appointment. I thought I’d re-gained all the weight I lost, but I’m still down 5 pounds from where I started.. which is weird because my stomach is getting bigger. I’m guessing it’s the combination of growing a human (that has to burn a lot of calories, right?) AND my loss of appetite (which is still happening!).
ALSO: Last week my blog post said that I had a bit of melanoma, but what I meant was MELASMA. My computer corrected it, and I was called out on it a few times. I’m grateful it’s not melanoma!
I live in the Pacific Northwest, where I love to drink coffee and adventure. I blog because I think life matters too much to let it go by without noticing
We ordered a wall decal of her name to put here. I realized it’s going to be tiny so we’re trying to see if we can cancel and order it in a bigger size. pro-tip: measure things. We’re not being super secretive about her name, we’ve told our family and some friends but listen… MULTIPLE people have already guessed her name so whatever, I guess I’m predictable.
