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. 🙂

See y’all next week.

Baby Martian // Week 29
Baby Martian // Week 28
Baby Martian // Week 23
Baby Martian // Week 22
Baby Martian // Week 20

It. has. been. a minute. and by minute, I mean like a MONTH!! We were scrambling to get things ready for Nashville, then we were in Nashville, THEN we were catching up from being in Nashville. So we’ve got a lot to catch up on!

please ignore my hair. I slept in braids, and this is a cause/effect demonstration of that. 

During week 24, I had this mild freak-out where I realized I hadn’t felt the baby move in 24 hours. I KNOW that it was before the worry about that period PLUS I have an anterior placenta, but this baby has been so consistent about her movements that I felt like something was just OFF.

We ended up going to labor and delivery where Justen had to answer all the questions for me because I was almost in tears. Turns out I was probably just dehydrated, so that’s cool. Everything was completely fine. One of the nurses welcomed me to being a mom. I told her I wasn’t expecting all this worry to start so soon, haha.

The nurse said that if we were further along, they’d look for a rise in the baby’s heartbeat every so often (IDK you guys I was just so freaked out and then relieved I hardly remember anything) but they wouldn’t look for it because we weren’t far enough along. Then she looked at the fetal heartbeat monitor print out and went “oh! but there it is! You’ve got an overachiever!” which is 100% Justen.

They performed an ultrasound in which they said she was overdramatic because of the way she kept turning her back whenever they tried to snap a picture of her face. That’s 100% me. We saw her practicing her breathing, which was my favorite part.

So yeah. Here’s a picture of our little overdramatic overachiever from that day:

That’s pretty much the biggest event that’s happened while I’ve been quiet.

While in Nashville, I did develop a little melanoma melasma (CORRECTION!) , which are dark spots on your face. They’re around the outside edges of my eyes as you can see in this really flattering picture:

People keep reassuring me that it’s not noticeable and will go away, but I’m honestly not that concerned about it. I’m so grateful that everything has been (relatively) uneventful and low-risk so I’m fine with a surface, cosmetic change. Plus it gives character 😉

A few more uneventful weeks and here we are at Week 28. I can see my stomach move, my hips are starting to hurt a little bit, and I did the biggest, most grown up maternal thing I’ve ever done.

We had to switch insurance. After being without insurance for a month, I bravely went to an all new office and saw an all new person… just for her to tell me she’s leaving in August. Here’s the thing: sometimes you are brave and go places you’ve never gone before and then other times you sit in your car crying for 20 minutes because you’re going to have to keep doing this whole new person thing over and over.

I took my glucose test, which is just a bummer because after not eating for 8 hours, they were 45 minutes late administering the test. I took a TDAP vaccine in my left arm so chose my right arm for the 3 blood draws and when the lady said my arm(s) would probably be sore, I tried to get her to tell me I won’t be able to do dishes. But she wouldn’t say that. The audacity of some people.

This week, we’re putting all the baby’s stuff together. We ordered a crib and changing table… y’all I am dying how cute are they…?

SO ANYWAY, we ordered those and we’ve started brainstorming where to put this baby and this weekend we’re rearranging our room to accommodate our tiny addition. I’m really excited. I decided I’d go ahead and get a head start and do what I can, and this is as far as I got:

I put the changing pad cover on. LOL. I guess maybe the nesting thing is finally starting to kick in since I’ll actually be able to do something, though last weekend we spent half of Saturday cleaning our apartment. I cleaned our diffusers and I went ahead and had a party with my new dymo label maker. Also a year ago if I tried to take a picture and my stomach was photobombing it, I would have been so ashamed and now I’m like “THERE’S AN ACTUAL HUMAN BEING IN THERE WHAT SORCERY IS THIS”

So this is 28 weeks. Homegirl has a high rate of survival should she come early, and that has been the spot I’ve been living for. I know it’s not quite the home stretch, but I (hypothetically) breathe a little easier. Hypothetically because I tried walking to the Farmers Market while on the phone with my dad and he asked what was wrong because I was so out of breath.

What a ride this is, y’all.

Baby Martian // Week 23
Baby Martian // Week 22
Baby Martian // Week 20