Andi’s exciting life.

Holy crap. I’m in the third trimester. We are having a baby. Soon. He’s moving around like crazy right now just to remind me of that fact. He feels so big now when he moves, like a real baby.

This past weekend I went to visit my sister and her family in Atlanta, which was a nice trip. She has four kids ages 7, 4, 2, and 9 months. What a handful! They are all very cute, but it is a lot of work and commotion with four. It made me a little nervous about having one of my own, but at the same time I figured having one would seem like a cinch after seeing what it’s like to have four.

While I was there my sister took me shopping to an outlet mall. I found some really cute things for great deals. I’m buying clothes in bigger sizes (6-12 months) at this point. She also gave me some really cute clothes and toys as gifts. My suitcase barely zipped when I packed to come home!

It’s great to be back home. I was a little nervous to fly, and I don’t like being away from Matt. I’m very glad I went and got to see my sister though, and it’s hard to believe that will probably be the last trip I take before becoming a mother!

180 days down, 100 to go! Tomorrow I will be in the double digits on the number of days until my due date, just over three more months. I am getting so excited and can’t wait to meet our baby. (It would be nice if his arrival wasn’t going to be quite so painful, but I know it will be worth it.) We were so proactive on getting the nursery ready that it’s already done. Now I can just focus on reading up on labor and delivery, breastfeeding, and newborn care. It will be nice to be able to relax during the third trimester as I get bigger and more uncomfortable. For now I still feel terrific though, which I am very grateful for!

Our glider is here! Our friend James was nice enough to take me in his truck today to pick it up, and then Matt and I unpacked it after he got home. I really love it. It’s pretty small, which is good because the room couldn’t hold anything much bigger. I was worried about the color, but I think the shade of yellow is perfect. The fabric is very soft, and the seat is super comfortable. I’m looking forward to spending hours in it with the baby.

I used my nice sewing machine and rudimentary sewing skills to make something for the nursery this past weekend. After finding I was not satisfied with any of my choices of ready-made changing pad covers, I decide to make my own. I found tons of great fabrics in fleece and flannel to use. I bought two printed flannels that I thought were really cute. The first one I made was using this frog print that says “Little Prince.” I thought it was extremely cute in the store, but Matt thinks it is really ugly. So, he has deemed “Little Prince” as the backup cover. The other one is a jungle/safari print that has colors and a theme that go with the nursery. This was the second one I made, so it is higher quality sewing and Matt likes it better. Anyway, you can check out the photos below of the covers in action and close ups of the fabric.

As I am writing this, I have headphones pressed against my belly playing The White Stripes for the baby. This is the first time I have tried this, after hearing someone on a pregnancy podcast (Pregtastic) mention that she started doing this for her baby. It was easy to choose what I wanted to be my baby’s first music to hear. I mean, why not get him started early with loving The White Stripes, right? At first he didn’t seem to be responding much, but he has been moving around like crazy since the second song or so. Who knows if that means he likes it and is mentally stimulated or if he is moving around trying to get away from the terrifying noise. Let’s hope it’s the former. I like to think he is rocking out in there.

This was a pretty fun week. Matt’s parents came to town this past weekend, and it was good to see them. We took them to Muir Woods and Sonoma and around to a few different restaurants and neighborhoods in San Francisco. They are very excited about being grandparents, and it was nice to be able to see them while I was pregnant. We all had a good time, but Matt and I were exhausted by Sunday night.

On another note, I have been reading and hearing more and more about ways we can communicate with our baby in utero and how dads should be talking to the baby in the belly to make them familiar with their voice. Apparently, we should be singing songs and reading stories and stuff like that to the baby as a fetus. Well, we haven’t done that. I think Matt feels silly about it and I guess maybe I do too because I don’t do it either. The baby can’t help but learn my voice though because he is living inside my body.

Today I was thinking about all this and decided to sing songs to the baby while I was taking a shower. I remembered a song that I always thought I could sing to our future child as a lullaby and started singing that. Now, for the most part I have been pretty emotionally stable so far in this pregnancy, but this was definitely an exception: I barely got into the song before I started sobbing. I guess either realizing that I finally was singing the song to my baby for the first time or imagining holding him and singing it to him was too much for me because I was crying so hard I couldn’t sing at all. Hopefully I can get past that and actually sing the song to him in the future to make it comforting and familiar and not “the song that makes mommy a basketcase.”

Let’s see what else happened this week. Oh, I now have a spot on my belly a few inches above my navel that kind of goes to sleep on and off. It gets tingly and numb at random times, and it just started Sunday. I called the advice nurse about it, and she said it is pretty common in pregnancy. She said that as the uterus is growing it is pressing on a nerve which causes the sensation. She says it’s not a problem and that it might last my whole pregnancy. If that’s the worst thing I have to deal with I’m in good shape. It doesn’t hurt or anything; it’s just a little weird.

Other than that, the baby’s movements have gotten even bigger and I can see my belly move around like crazy now when he is really active. I’ll try to get it on video soon and post it here. I’m still loving it and get a little excited every time I feel him moving even though I feel him all throughout the day now. It just never gets old!