30 Weeks Pregnant with #3

This is a long rambling post -- read at your own boredom risk. :)


I’ve been watching spring arrive this year differently than I ever have. After such an incredibly hard winter (inside my body -- the weather wasn’t too terrible for here this year), seeing the snow melt was such a relief --- knowing I was actually getting closer to my due date. And now watching the world come alive -- flowers in the trees and across the street in my neighbor’s lovely yard. And seeing everything all around green-up is so inspirational. I don’t even really have it in me to make deep analogies about it. It just is what it is. New life, and that’s enough. I can’t stop looking at it. I can’t stop being grateful for it. And I am encouraged by it’s presence. And I love knowing I’m getting closer to putting this hard stuff behind me. We are almost to May, and technically I’m due in June -- so 2 months left to get through. It’s nice to be in that time frame finally.

This has been a big week.
It’s been a much less nauseous week, which will explain how I was able to do any of this stuff. But to say I feel good would be a lie. I feel a lot better, which is good.
I still get nauseous, often around the late afternoon or evening. I still have a hard to finding foods I want to eat.

As far as what I’ve been eating over all this pregnancy. Some have asked.
Well, lets be honest. Pure unhealthiness. Not because I want to. Not because I think it’s a good idea. Just because anything that is a good idea is unthinkably nauseating.
Meat is still really hard to eat. I eat it sometimes, because I know I need to get protein and iron, but it’s not enjoyable. And I only do this when it’s not gonna really mess me up physically and emotionally. There are many times where I just can’t even look at it without wanting to cry (because it’s making me sick.)
I have started to tolerate salads, so I eat those sometimes -- crave those sometimes. So that’s kinda a nice thing I have going. But I usually don’t want to round it out with anything (besides salad dressing) like meat, so I know protein isn’t really getting in me enough. But I’m doing what I can.
The most consistent thing I’ve eaten this pregnancy is: my lunch is very very often a super strange pregnancy concoction. An insane burrito, made of a flour tortilla filled with a hot dog and white rice, just covered in pickled jalapeños. I have no idea why. It’s ridiculous.
I also keep eating spicy stuff this pregnancy. This baby will have no chance of getting spiced out at the end -- because they will be so used to spice. (Not that I was able to spice either of my others out anyway.) It’s another paradox -- you would think with being so sick that spicy things would be avoided. But it’s like I must cover everything in some sort of hot sauce, red pepper flakes or jalapeños. I can’t figure it out. Generally I enjoy spicy foods, but this is a new level of it.
Often I have frozen pizza for dinner. This embarrasses me because I know it’s not a good idea, that it is NOT healthy. But by the end of the day I know I need to get some food in me to both stay alive and to somewhat alleviate the nausea, and every other food I consider makes me want to cry. So I put in the frozen pizza and tell myself it has protein in the cheese and toppings.
And while I have tried not to abuse it, ice cream has generally been an actual nausea cure for me. As in if I eat it, I get a break from constant stomach aches. And when you live in actual pain for months on end, getting a physical break from it via ice cream is something I sign up for. Judge if you must -- but I’m not gonna feel bad about it.

I’ve read plenty of stuff online that would tell me I’m causing this cycle of bad eating: bad pregnancy eating causing nausea, causing bad eating causing more nausea.  I’m not ever going to believe that. If that were true, well for one thing I wouldn’t have been able to get rid of my nausea in my other pregnancies. (Because I ate what didn’t make me wanna throw up in those first trimesters as well, but it went away in my second and never came back, so then I ate better.) Also if this theory was true then  when I ate meat and veggies, I could eat more meat and veggies since I was curing myself -- in reality I feel terribly sick after eating those. And if this theory were true, the cure to stomach aches would not be icecream. Those that adhere to this will never believe me because they didn’t get inside my body. I’m sure they would say I didn’t try hard enough. And I’m gonna just have to be ok with that. I’m gonna have to just give myself permission to be different then them. I’m working on avoiding guilt on top of the physical hardship.

I’m just telling you guys all this to be honest, not to get ideas on fixing it. To be really real with you guys, no one is gonna convince me of anything at this point. Cures or causes. If you look at my second pregnancy you can see what level of strength I’m capable of.
     But in the face of this pregnancy, I’ve had to take a new stance on being strong. I’ve had to just come to terms with the fact that if I was able to do that great last time... then this time is actually this freakishly hard. I’m not being wimpy or imagining things. So I just have to roll with how hard this is, just eat what I eat, and say, “Come what may.”
     I hope to try and eat a tiny bit better in a couple more weeks when baby starts to gain a half pound a week (on average) (which kicks in at 33 weeks) to attempt not to have an enormous newborn. But I can’t promise I’ll feel like I can eat much better than I have been. So I’m gonna trust my body won’t make a baby that’s too big to get out.
     I’ve gained about one pound a week this pregnancy -- first trimester included. So if I go to 42 weeks* again this will probably be the pregnancy I gain the most weight for.

Photo note: You probably can’t even tell -- but I couldn’t find my normal black photo dress today -- this one looks slightly different in person (fun one-side-only ruche over part of the belly) but in the picture looks about the same. I was too lazy to find my normal one. Also I was too tired to put on make up or try to smile. I almost did the phone over face photo -- but well here ya go.

(Pregnancy #1 I gained 41 pounds. Pregnancy #2 I gained 32 pounds.) In those pregnancies I seemed to throw on a good 5 or 6 pounds really quickly at the end, like during one week at the end there, no matter what I was doing, which got me to those totals. So well see what happens this time.
Thankfully I’m not starting this pregnancy at the same weight I did the first. So I should have couple less pounds to drag around at the end, I hope.
*BUT remember I’d love it if you could pray this baby comes at 38 weeks. I know every momma ever, would rather have baby come out a bit early than late. But this momma is just really asking for those prayers on it. This pregnancy has been wearing me out through the entire ride. And I feel like having already done two 42 week long pregnancies is enough for me. 38 weeks could average us out a bit on the pregnancy time-line board.
I just keep telling myself,  "I lost the weight before, I’ll do it again."
I also keep telling myself that even with the weight difference, both of those times I had lost the pregnancy weight by 5 months out. It might take me longer this time because, well life…I’m older and I have more kids = less time. But the idea that it happened at the same time both postpartums, gives me some confidence that it’s doable, even if this pregnancy isn’t going according to my healthy ideals.

Honestly, I’m really not looking forward to losing the baby weight all over again. It’s so much work. And just thinking about it makes me tired. But I’m trying to prep my mind for a happy postpartum. I think after this pregnancy, I will be so happy to not be pregnant, and so proud of myself for making it through this extreme challenge that I will be really happy with my body. Clearly I might feel differently when flooded by that hormonal shift, but for now, I can imagine being the most gentle with myself and the most kind to myself, after this pregnancy. I’m kinda preemptively envisioning my smooshy body and being proud of it and just dressing it without shame. I kinda feel like once this baby comes out, I’d gladly wear the fitted pregnancy shirts and dresses as like a “Heck yeah I just totally lived to tell about it, check it (the left over belly) out. I’m wearing this with no shame as a medal of honor. I’ve never worked that hard in my life. I’m so happy to have made it through." (I hope I actually feel that way later.) (If I don’t wear the fitted shirts, I still hope I feel that strength.)


Anyway, lets move on to some happy stuff from this week.

I got an enormous amount done on the house this week! I think it’s a lot to have gotten done, even if I wasn't pregnant. But it’s a freakish amount to have gotten done after being so immobilized for so long.
(I don’t think I took many in-progress pictures because I was just full steam ahead.)

My mom came over at the end of the week and while she was here we knocked out pretty much all the painting I needed to finish here!
Night one, after the girls were in bed we painted the cooking part of the kitchen. (Dogwood Blossom --White-ish. To match the eating part of the kitchen.)
The walls in there were kinda crazy again. If you recall, the last time I painted in there the wallpaper glue (which I tried diligently to wash off) made the paint glob up really bad. (It got better after the first coat dried.) But even this time, the paint acted differently than normal. It kinda globed up a bit, and it looked really uneven on the wall until it dried. So it wasn’t the most fun room to paint. But it’s painted now. And I’m loving it.
It’s not a major shift in color from the green-gray it was to the cream-white it is. But I just find it much more appealing. I’ll be leaving it this way for a LONG time.*

(The rest of the kitchen is too messy for photos -- And I’m too tired to bother today.)

Flash back fun:

*If I haven’t mentioned it on the blog -- our goal for the kitchen is to eventually take that wall out which is separating the eating space from the cooking space. And initially I thought we would do that right away. But turns out, the rest of the house kept us pretty busy. :) And at this point I’m ready for a major break from renovating. So I’m thinking once the kids are in highschool we will be ready to do a major kitchen over haul. (Take the wall down, change out the flooring, since it doesn’t match from room to room, new cabinets etc.) So for the time being I’m planning out ways to rock what we got. I’m not in a big hurry on most of it. Like I’m imagining painting the cabinets when baby is one year old or so. We’ll see.

After we got the kitchen painted, I moved into painting the hallway upstairs while my mom played with the girls. I got one coat on. And technically I still need to do a second. But wow does it look good -- not haunted anymore.

Before paint (after wallpaper removal)

After

The impact of it seems small from the entryway because the tall walls and stairs are still scary.

(The strange electrical cord going up there and the floor lamp up there will be explained later in this entry -- Blake’s working on the bathroom light.)

But when you are just walking the hallway up there -- so much nicer.

I’ve stared at those scary, messy, haunted-house walls for so long long that I’m still in total denial that this isn’t actually all a dream -- that those walls really are painted.

A few days after my mom left I mustered up some more strength to paint the living room. I painted most of it Sunday night after the girls were in bed. Till I ran out of paint at midnight. 

Do I look good, or do I look good?

Monday the girls and I ran to Lowes to get more. (Valspar’s Swiss Coffee white.) And when we got home Ruby took a nap and Jasmine worked on this really cute book idea she came up with all on her own  --the life cycle of a butterfly -- we printed out pictures of each stage, she colored and cut it out and glued it into a paint color sample booklet we took home from Lowes. I was quite impressed with her initiative and creativity. So she did that while I put on a second coat of paint. After they went to bed, I went back and did the edges.

Speaking of that butterfly book.

I know I blogged before about us starting home school. And some people have been asking me how that’s been going. In short -- it’s not. We've gotten through about 3 units so far (which equals 3 weeks, but we did that spread out.) Which is Nothing since we started in January. But I’ve just been too out of it to try. I figure it’s not a big deal she’s not even 5 yet, we get to it after baby comes. (I know, then we will have a new set of reasons to put it off -- but at least I won’t feel like death then. I’m pretty sure newborns feel like a walk in the park compared to this pregnancy.) Sometimes we read books. Right now we are in the middle of “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.”(She loves it.) But Jasmine is a very self motivated learner. So she’s been keeping herself busy with learning to write her name and her sister’s name just because she wants to. And doing workbooks because she wants to. And projects galore. Like her butterfly book, because she wants to. She’s also picking up math skills like crazy (I’m giving that to Peg+Cat, not me) but she’s seriously like shocking me with her math statements she makes randomly. So I guess for now we are unschooling. It seems to be working for all of us for now. I’ll happily role with it.

Anyway -- back to the fact that I painted the living room (while Jasmine unschooled herself. lol) :
I’m LOVING the room white. (Which is kinda killing me because I feel like, “Man how easy would it have been to start with with white? What was I thinking doing anything else?!?”) But the room feels so much nicer. 

Flash back fun:

Ok not a huge impact in (iphone) photos between the purple gray and the Swiss Coffee -- but in person -- glorious!

Bigger and cleaner and so much more appealing and welcoming. It looks great with the floors. It looks great with the paino. 

It looks great with the fireplace. I’m so into it.

(I plan to spray paint our fireplace cover black soon.)

I’m so into it I’m starting to wonder why I didn’t paint EVERYTHING in the whole house white. But I keep telling myself that wouldn’t have been as great to me in reality. I think I just love second guessing myself as a whole.

I need to go back and caulk our baseboards (I started but ran out.) And the baseboards were painted before they were installed, but they need to be touched up after being nailed in.

Also remember that some day we want to add woodwork to the walls and paint that white. So more awesomeness to come in this room….someday.

Next up, try to get myself to Ikea for living room furniture.

Anyway, after finishing painting the living room last night, I could barely function today. Like my eyes wouldn’t open without having a hideous death grimace due to the fact that not a single cell in my body was ready to get out of bed (for about a week.) I’m kinda back to queasy today. And my belly feels like it weighs about 50 pounds and sorta just feels like a nonstop contraction when I get up. (I don’t think it’s really a contraction -- just super exhausted weirdness. My third trimester body is needing a major break right now. I took a pay day advance on my energy levels to get this stuff done. I need a break to even things out again.

I think I pressed so hard because I was worried I wouldn’t have it in me later, as I get bigger, to finish these rooms. And my nesting wasn’t about to hear of that. I had to push hard when I had the chance, to make sure these things were done. And now I will rest a bit.

There are plenty of other projects I can do before baby comes.

Actually we are mid switching out our bathroom light fixture in our bathtub-main-bathroom. (Getting rid of the Hollywood light strip that came with the house.)

But poor Blake -- of course the task is harder than it should have been. They installed it so the electrical box off center of anything. So he’s moving the electrical box and stuff’s been in the way, or things haven’t fit where they should, bla bla bla. So the bathroom’s been a mess for a couple days instead of a couple hours. (Isn’t that always the way?) So once that get’s fixed, I’ll mud the wall and hide the old hole, and paint it all goodbye. So that’s next on the list.
     I’m really excited about the new light because Blake was good enough to install a light dimmer switch in there, per my request. I’m a nightly bath-taker. It helps me relax from the day and get ready to sleep. So I’m excited that I’ll now have the option to take a bath with low-lighting. (I sound like a drama queen bath diva. But I don’t care. It’s gonna be awesome.) I’m hoping the light fixture looks ok. I gave a $5 thrift store light a makeover -- all said and done it came to about $20. So not like super duper cheap -- but cheaper than most new lights. And of course I can always sell it off and get a new one later if I’m not feeling it. (I’ll show you it once it’s up.) I know I’ll like it more than the hollywood light strip! That’s for sure.

Blake’s also been going through the last of our old gross outlets and putting in fresh white ones. I’m such a sucker for details like this. They just make everything amazing in my world.

Yes, for some reason these were in upsidedown!

(I guess technically there is no right direction to install these --

 but don’t tell me that. We all know there is a right way.)

So yeah, after that stuff but before baby comes, that I need to do some major organizing.
And on the house fixing: we still need to tackle the flooring in our upstairs bathrooms. Our sunroom needs help. Our entryway needs HELP.
Also I have tons of furniture I want to makeover.
So I’m not done with the house. But as far as it being a house -- like a real house without terror inducing walls -- I think I’ve crossed the line into “yay this is a house” this week! (Just don’t look up into the entryway when you walk in.) And that is awesome. I feel like my nesting hormones can sigh a deep sigh of relief.



Anyway, life events:
One more thing I did this week was Friday night while my mom was here Blake and I went to  an awards banquet at the university for Blake’s work. I haven’t been out at night in a long time. I thankfully did not feel queasy for this event. But what’s funny is, after having been sick for this long, I feel like I suddenly showed up third-trimester-pregnant without knowing it. I’ve been so busy feeling awful that I hardly knew it was because I was pregnant. So having missed a second trimester, I just feel really thrown off. I felt really conspicuous in that environment of either college students (getting awards) or professors and staff. I felt very clearly out of my league there. Not like I felt bad about it -- but I was just really really aware of it. I felt like my belly could do nothing but garner attention in this environment. (Very much the only baby-belly around.) And I also felt very aware of how I couldn’t just slip through the crowds of people making it hard to walk around -- I needed to plan my route so I could move without knocking into everyone.
I also felt really silly while trying to make conversation that night I because I became VERY aware of how little I’ve been around people these last nearly 8 months. It was really hard for me to focus on anything besides my body. Every time I was almost focused on what someone was saying, the baby would kick me and divert my attention. Or I’d have a contraction. (Those were my first real noticeable contracts of this pregnancy --so they totally took my attention. I think I had two or three that night.) Or I’d be thinking “Wow if I was at home right now I’d be in a really crazy hands and knees position -- NOT sitting in this chair. Wow can’t I just go animalistic and just do whatever I want instead of be socially correct -- this body doesn’t like these rules.” Or I’d realize I was incredibly thirsty. Or I’d be mentally guarding my bladder from baby bonks while it was hoping I’d take a 7th trip to the bathroom.
I had no idea if I was making crazy faces through our conversations as all these things distracted me from what was going on.
Essentially I feel very, very out of place around civilized people right now. I just kinda wanted to sign up for “bard yard” and have everyone be ok with that. Which I found interesting -- since perhaps in my first two pregnancies I spent my time fighting that thought and insisting “no I’m a normal person. I ‘m not changed by this.” Where as this third time around, I’m ready to ship myself off as “pregnant werido on the farm, crawling around on the ground.” I’m super impressed by women who work while pregnant. It’s not as easy as they make it look.


And in baby news.
Baby feels head down still to me. Not that I’m a pro. But I do feel rather confident in stuff this time around.
Baby is getting strong.
Ruby felt the baby move for the first time this week. (Jasmine has been more patient in waiting for it, so she’s been feeling the baby for a while now.) It was funny when Ruby felt it, she immediately yelled loudly, “He’s kickin!!” (Pronouns aren’t our strong point yet, she insists baby is a girl.) And then didn’t want to address the subject at all anymore. No matter what I said about the baby, she just kept on changing the subject to something else. So I’m not sure what she thought about the experience. It sorta seemed to overwhelm her.


I’ve been thinking about this baby’s personality -- movement wise. And so far I’d label them as mellow. They don’t seem to have a set pattern to when they are active. But when they are moving it’s not crazy, just kinda pushing out a bit. Only rarely do they seem to really give a swift kick. So lets be honest -- I’m hoping that means mellow calmness outside the womb -- and lots of sleep. Time will tell. We will see!