Laughing with Sarah

Over the weekend, we attended the Prepared Childbirth class at the hospital where I will be delivering. Crazy crazy crazy to be at that milestone. To be fair, we attended the August session because the next session is November 23, the day before my due date. Not so useful at that point. :) It was a long morning. Some of the material I knew already (I've actually watched plenty of birth videos, so that session wasn't new news, and the information about the stages of labor wasn't much more in-depth than the book that they gave me to read at my first OB appointment way back in March). Some of the material was fun (sitting on exercise balls and learning relaxation techniques!). And really, the most useful information was some of the logistical stuff. Showing and passing around various items that we might encounter during our hospital time so that we wouldn't be surprised, giving more direct information about when to call the doctor, when to arrive at the hospital, and wha

There are always plenty of things to be anxious about while you are pregnant. It's just the way of things. Even for the most normal pregnancies, there will always be anxiety. Have I gained enough weight? Have I gained too much? How do I know the baby is there before I'm showing and before I can hear the heartbeat? Am I going to get bad morning sickness? Will my ankles puff up to gigantic proportions in the third trimester? What will labor and delivery be like? Will I be a good mother? I am pretty sure that there is not one woman out there who, while pregnant, didn't encounter a little bit of anxiety about something, anything, at some point. But I have to be honest here. When you've lost pregnancies, anxiety stops being something normal, small, or usual. In the early weeks of this pregnancy, I was one constant ball of anxiety. Both of my losses were early and unavoidable. And so I counted every week. Six weeks put me farther along than either of my previous losses.

Ever since I started taking belly pictures at 20 weeks, I've been using them as an excuse to check in around here more. Last week, however, we were traveling, so while I got my picture in, I am finally getting around to writing something here! Last week was week 25. One week past viability, one week closer to the end of summer, one week forward, marching along toward showers and due dates and Christmas plans. We were in New Jersey all last week, making a friend's wedding an excuse to spend a while week with Matt's family. Upon arrival in New Jersey, I promptly cut my hair, something I've been meaning to do for a long long while. I've been growing it out to donate it, but then things like new jobs and moving got in the way, so it took a vacation to New Jersey for me to finally chop it. I couldn't be happier! The next day was the wedding. It was the first wedding in a long while that I simply attended. Between sisters getting married and being a pastor,

Today I am 24 weeks 3 days. And so here we are. The next magic milestone. 24 weeks... viability . Meaning that, theoretically, hedgehog could now survive out of my body. The regular pregnant lady in my brain sees this viability milestone as just a really wacky thing to process. How crazy is it that I've now carried a creature inside of me that could live apart from me?? Like...this hedgehog is actually a living, breathing person, and not just an alien swimming around inside of me. But viability means much much more to the rest of my brain and heart - the rest of me who knows infertility and loss and all the needle pricks of IVF. To one who has struggled mightily to get pregnant, and who has struggle yet more mightily to stay pregnant, viability sounds like gold. I cannot believe that I'd ever be in this position. Not just to have gotten this far in a pregnancy, not just to have started assuming that there will, indeed, be a baby at the end, but to be in a next place of s

Right. After so much shopping and registering, and after standing mid-nursery the other night with Matt, imagining furniture in the room and pictures on the wall, I got curious. I started wondering if any of our decorating ideas for the room actually go together. And I couldn't help myself. I dusted off my Polyvore account and had a little fun... A Nursery Fit for a Hedgehog by mabills   on  Polyvore Everything here we either own or we have registered for. The only un-vetted item is the birdcage (by un-vetted, I mean that I haven't talked to Matt about it...I'm pretty sure he won't like it, but maybe if he sees it with everything else it'll be ok?). I really didn't mean to get all decorating-crazy with the nursery, and I don't think I have. It's a big room. We've already painted it a shade of light aqua similar to the paint stripe down the side of the picture. We have the owl prints. We have the chair. We have the dresser. We have the h

Not much new to share here. Hedgehog has been grooving out in my belly more often, and with more gusto. Strong enough flailing that I was even able to have Matt feel it. He called Hedgehog our "little soccer player." Registry is in full swing. I've poured over hundreds of items, read tons of reviews, put things on lists, taken things off lists, organized and re-organized priorities, tried to nail down furniture wants and needs, and beaten my head against my desk while trying to find the right curtains for the room - curtains, of all things! But we're nearing the end. We're probably done. Except that I can't ever leave well-enough alone, so I'll keep tweaking and tweaking, I'm sure. Feeling big today all over. Belly, hips, rear end, everything. Except that when I compare today's picture to last week's picture, or even two weeks ago, I'm not sure that I really look much different. 23 weeks 4 days. In my summertime uniform: stretchy sk