the third trimester

I had high hopes—too high, apparently—of writing this third trimester blog post while I was still actually in my third trimester of pregnancy. I kept putting it off, but I told myself that I would write it over the weekend that marked the beginning of week 39 so that the details would all be current. As it turned out, I was a little busy coming home from the hospital with a newborn that weekend. And so, here is the wrap-up with slightly less fresh details.

For a little visual reference, we're talking about week 28...

to week 38.

Clearly, I grew a lot. In fact, week 29 was when I started to feel like my belly was getting in the way of things a little. I was still thinking like a skinny girl, trying to squeeze by things, and then I'd end up bumping something with my belly. Somehow, I just never felt as huge as I thought I would. It took more effort to get to my feet from a sitting position as time went on, but I could still see my feet and even reach them to cut my toenails. Walking wasn't even very difficult at the end, although I felt a bit more winded than usual on the walk back to my car from the OB's office that last day.

Likewise, I never felt the need to get one of those huge pregnancy pillows for sleeping. I started wedging a small neck pillow under the side of my belly around week 26 instead. (It was never great as a neck pillow, but I was glad that I had kept it around.) I had some stiffness in my back in the mornings, but it was never enough to warrant big pillows crowding the bed. How do people turn over with those anyway? At the most, I just kept an extra pillow next to the bed to put between my knees occasionally. I didn't usually need it until maybe the last hour or two of sleep in the mornings.

In terms of baby movement, there was no slowing down during the third trimester. He had lots of hiccups, which became more and more obvious on the right side of my belly—where his back was. And there was a lot of foot movement on the left side. Occasionally, a foot would poke straight out towards my side in a way that felt rather unnerving, like I wasn't supposed to be stretched in that direction. Putting my hand there usually helped, since it seemed to provide a bit of support and confine the movement a little. Still, I was glad that most of the jabs were directed outward rather than inward at my organs or my ribs.

Braxton Hicks contractions: I started feeling them in the second trimester, but they continued to be common during the third. They got more and more frequent, and occasionally, they were a little more uncomfortable. Often it just felt like my blood pressure was rising suddenly, and then I'd realize that it was a contraction that was tightening things up. When labor started, I actually thought the contractions were Braxton Hicks for the first few hours. I was so used to those that I really didn't think it was true labor... But that's for a separate blog entry.

Next comes fatigue. Probably because I wasn't working, I didn't really feel a lot of the typical third trimester fatigue. There was a little—I'd sometimes hit a wall around 2 or 3pm and not feel like I wanted to do much. It was nowhere near the fatigue of the first trimester, however. And I actually never took any naps over the course of the pregnancy; I was just a little slower to get out of bed some mornings.

Appetite wasn't a huge issue either. The stereotype is that you'll want to eat everything in sight during the third trimester, but I didn't feel exceptionally starved. That might have had a lot to do with the gestational diabetes diet and its requirements that I eat or snack every 2-3 hours. I was already feeling like I was being told to eat constantly, so I probably didn't have the opportunity to get that hungry.

Finally, we come to my list of things that I do not miss about pregnancy:

1) Gestational Diabetes. The diet actually didn't turn out to be a huge deal; in fact, it probably kept my overall weight gain down and allowed me to lose it much faster afterward. The recommended 30-minute walks were good for keeping me out and about too. What I don't miss is not being able to eat sweet stuff or pasta without feeling like I was cheating. I also don't miss having to set a timer at the start of each meal and then stopping everything an hour later to test my blood sugar. The daily testing and having to keep food logs got a little old.

2) Constant Peeing. I don't miss feeling like I needed to pee literally every time I stood up. (That includes when I stood up from peeing too...) Since the baby was head-down from at least 31 weeks, there was probably increasing pressure on my bladder for quite a while. I would say that I don't miss getting up to go to the bathroom once or twice every night, but I still do that when I get up to feed the baby. At least I know that's just from all the water I've been drinking.

3) Heartburn. It was a problem throughout the pregnancy, but it definitely got worse as the weeks went by. I took Pepcid daily before dinner and Tums a lot the rest of the day, and I still frequently ended up having to take out my retainer and chew another Tums in the middle of the night. In fact, I was still taking Tums while I was in labor. Luckily, I had some in my bag and was allowed to take them. It was amazing when I realized a day or two later—after having the baby—that the heartburn was just... gone. Suddenly, I was drinking all this water (and burping, as one does) and there was no hint of acid reflux.

So it was fun being pregnant for a while, and I will miss feeling the baby's movements. And the uninterrupted sleep... However, I'm enjoying having Evan out where I can see him and of course, being done with the various pregnancy nuisances.

the to-do list

Week 41 was all about checking things off of my pre-baby to-do list. Steve's parents were arriving the next Monday, and while I had no indication of when I would go into labor, Monday was kind of my unofficial deadline for getting stuff done. After that, I told myself that the baby was allowed to come anytime. (I went into labor two days later.)

That weekend, we wrestled with getting the car seat installed in our car. We weren't entirely successful on Saturday, prior to our Macy's trip, but we had better luck on Sunday. That's when we managed to find the other LATCH system attachments in the back seat of the car. (The middle ones were hidden differently than the side ones, making them more difficult to spot.) We went back another day and added a towel underneath the foot of the seat to perfect the leveling, but this shot from Sunday is pretty much how the car seat ended up looking.

281/366 car seat: check

Then on Monday, I decided that the time had finally come to take the official "after" pictures of the nursery. We had finally received all the things I had ordered, and everything was in place. I just had to get out my widest angle lenses and make pretty pictures out of it. I intend to do a full post on the nursery and its inspiration one of these days, but I'm not entirely sure when I'll get around to it.

282/366 into the nursery

Tuesday was a baking day. I made two loaves of pumpkin chocolate chip bread from the Baked cookbook. With the gestational diabetes, I was trying to avoid eating a lot of baked goods, but nothing was stopping me from freezing them for post-baby! This way, I knew I'd have my tasty fall treats on standby when I was allowed to have them again.

283/366 pumpkin loaves

The next night, Steve and I decided to go out to dinner at Contigo for the last time before the baby came. We got our usual selection of tapas (pictured below) and some other small plates. We also got to say hi to Brett (the chef), as well as Elan and Tilden (his wife and their 1-year old daughter) who stopped by briefly. It was a good last night out.

284/366 last meal

I had taken note of a jewelry store display featuring owls on the way to Contigo on Wednesday night, so I decided to go to Noe Valley again on Thursday to take some pictures of it. I needed to go to a Walgreens anyway, and the Noe Valley one gave me a better walk than the store closer to us. It seems like I also might have stopped at Whole Foods on that trip and bought some snacks to pack for the hospital, but those walks were frequent enough that they all tend to blend together a bit now.

285/366 owl tree

I did a few more detail shots of the nursery on Friday, since I noticed that I didn't have many from Monday that weren't wide angle. One of the pictures I wanted to take was of the Sharon Montrose animal prints above the shelves. After all, the baby deer picture was one of the first things I picked out for the nursery.

286/366 animal prints

On Saturday, Carmen and Elsa came up for another little photo shoot in the baby's room. Carmen wanted to take some pictures of Elsa with me and my belly, and since that ended up being my last weekend of being pregnant, the timing was perfect. It was challenging to wrangle Elsa for the pictures, though. Her usual interest in my belly button didn't last very long, so we had to put stickers over it to hold her attention. We eventually managed to get a few cute shots, and I took the below picture of Carmen and Elsa during a break in the action.

287/366 nose kiss

And so ended my last full week of pregnancy. In the next installment: a wrap-up of the third trimester.

that's for babies...

Well, I guess I didn't quite catch up with the blog posts before the baby came. Evan was born on Thursday, October 18, and now I'm having to catch up on a whole lot of photo editing in addition to the blog posts. So. On we go.

All but one of my pictures for week 40 of the 365 project featured baby stuff. That was either because a lot was happening in the nursery or because I was most interested in spending time in there. Sunday was the last day in September, and I had Steve anchor the changing table (to the dresser) and dresser (to the wall) that afternoon. Since our diaper caddy, diapers, wet wipes, wet wipe dispenser, hand sanitizer, and burp cloths had all arrived too, that area was finally ready for the baby. The only additions we've made since this picture was taken have been a waterproof pad (piddle pad) laid on top of the changing pad and a box of Kleenex behind the wipe dispenser. Having had a week now to use this area, it seems like a good set-up! The piddle pads might actually win for MVP here... They've caught a lot of spit-up, a little pee, and even some poo, and I've only had to wash the changing pad cover once.

274/366 ready for change

October began that Monday, so I had to find another background for a calendar shot. Sticking with the nursery theme, I used the baby blanket that Kim had sent to us as my background and just laid it over the little footstool in the nursery. I was pretty sure that the baby would be born that month, so it fit the baby theme that way.

275/366 october

I decided on Tuesday that it was time to start the baby laundry. At first, I was only going to wash the newborn and 0-3 month clothes, but then I decided to just do it all. That took quite a while, since I was trying not to mix up my already sorted sizes too much or shrink anything in the dryer. So my plan to take a picture of the full drawer of clean clothes didn't quite work out before the light was gone for the day. Instead, I took a picture of the first load, washed and folded in the laundry basket and sitting on the floor in the nursery.

276/366 cutest laundry day ever

I took the drawer picture the next day instead, which is when I finished the rest of the laundry. I also had my weekly OB appointment that afternoon. At 36.5 weeks, I was 1cm dilated and about 75% effaced, but I still had two weeks before I went into labor.

277/366 fully stocked

I really didn't have any ideas for Thursday's picture, since I was probably too focused on getting other stuff done. I don't even really remember what all I was doing that day, except waiting for a package and maybe trying to catch up on some scrapbooking. (I'm past our honeymoon now! Only four years behind again...) I decided to shoot a picture that I had tried a couple weeks before but hadn't posted: the crib corner, reflected and framed in one of the mirrors above the dresser. My previous version had had the crib, decal, bunting, and mobile; but there was no sheet on the crib or blanket hanging over the side. At this point, I was waiting for a few last things to arrive for other spots in the nursery, so I was holding off on taking the official "after" shots. This corner of the nursery, however, was pretty much done.

278/366 sneak peek

One of the things for which I had been waiting arrived on Friday: the iPod dock. This is the glorified white noise machine for the nursey, which we're using with my old, neglected 4th generation iPod. It's nice to have the option of listening to music or podcasts in addition to the white noise. And actually, we've only used it for music so far. The baby is still young enough that he can sleep through most anything, so we'll probably wait until sound is an issue before we use it for white noise.

279/366 high tech

On Saturday, I wanted to get a couple pieces of nightwear for nursing at the Macy's downtown, so Steve and I also stopped by Tout Sweet, Yigit Pura's new patisserie inside the store. (He was the winner of Top Chef: Just Desserts.) I got the 5th Element: vanilla genoise, raspberry cream, oolong tea infused white chocolate mousse, fresh raspberries, and white chocolate. It was sweet, but I liked the various flavors and textures together. Steve's Florence Verrine—citrus-vanilla scented panna cotta with a "Negroni" gelee—was also quite good.

280/366 5th element

And that's the end of that week, along with the last bit of September, so here's the mosaic: