Oopsy...

I was reading today about how at 30 weeks the baby really responds to light so while lounging on the couch tonight I asked Sean, "Want to try an experiment?"

I then proceeded to turn on my iPhone's flashlight and shined it on my tummy.

Holy moly did baby girl ever respond! She moved so quickly and with such gusto that my entire belly became lopsided! To give you an equivalent visual it was something akin to the response of a person being suddenly awoken from a peaceful nap in a hammock by someone banging a gong beside their ear. Sean yelled "Turn it off!" and "Never do that again!" He definitely did not have to tell me twice.

So there ya go, lesson learned: It is indeed true that 30 week old babies do respond to light in utero.

...Sorry about that baby girl, I promise I'll listen to your daddy and will not bother you again ;)

You Okay In There Little Bean?

Ironic that my last real post was about the size of my belly because shortly after writing about others commenting on the smallness of it, we had an OB appointment where I was measuring the same as I had 3 weeks before... If you haven't ever gone through a pregnancy before then maybe you don't know this but basically very little happens at your frequent check-ups. You pee on a stick (yes, pregnancy involves lots of stick peeing...actually lots of peeing in general), you get weighed, blood pressure checked, your ankles and feet are glanced at, you're asked very generally "how are you feeling," your belly is measured, and out the door you go until your back to do it all again three weeks later.

That is, until one of those things is off. Which for us, was my belly measurement. There I was busy laughing in my head about how absurdly easy it all seems when my thoughts were interrupted by my OB saying, "you're measuring the same as you did last time you were here."
..."is that bad?!" I asked.
"It warrants an ultrasound" is all I could really focus on her saying.

 I mean, she definitely said other things like, "I'm not worried" and "there are a million reasons why this could not be an exact measurement" and she explained that given my height and Sean's height, we were unlikely to have made anything but a small baby (sorry in advance, kid), but all of that didn't really help. Luckily Sean was there so he could remind me of these things as I perseverated on it for the next week and truthfully that is what kept me from completely spiraling into an anxiety worm hole. It also, once again, helped immensely that I am blessed with doctors for siblings who put up with my extremely frequent texts that I send off at random whenever a concern arises, which is often. They are so patient and alway informative and calming, I am so grateful. But despite all of the very logical rationales I was given from various sources, I just could not be convinced that everything was okay.

Yesterday, I finally went for my ultrasound to check on the matter. As the appointment got closer and closer I got crazier and crazier. Theres a lot going on right now so really it could have been that I was anxious about a variety of things but I knew deep down that all of it was stemming from one source only: my worry about the baby. The slightest thing would set me off and I found that I couldn't stop crying. To be fair, I do think that my third trimester has kicked in and that I'm starting to be a hormonal mess again so that definitely contributed to the crying situation. Either way, I was a disaster and I think my mom and Sean had just about enough of me and my insanity by the time Wednesday morning rolled around (sorry mom, in retrospect it was probably a bad time to suddenly be staying with you for several nights in a row!).

Although the technician isn't allowed to give us any results, the doctor told me that unless they make us stay and wait until she can come over and talk to us, we should assume everything was fine. And that is exactly what happened.

So, I feel a bit better but to be honest, now I just have different concerns than I did prior to yesterday. For example, I asked the technician to verify it was a girl and she said "her legs are closed pretty tight but theres nothing that I see that suggests it could be a boy." Now you might have heard that and thought, sounds good - its definitely a girl. Me on the other hand, I start thinking "Are you trying to tell me I'm having a hermaphrodite baby?!" Even just now I said to Sean, "Do you think we should have some boys names ready just in case?" Obviously Sean just shook his head in disbelief that I'm STILL on this and kept his thoughts to himself. Other concerns that I have involve how absolutely squished the baby looked in there. Her feet are jammed into my upper right side, her hands are around the left side of my stomach, and her head is very low down, almost at the top of my right leg (it felt like the technician was doing an ultrasound of my leg when she was trying to get a look at the baby's head). So pretty much she is squished up in a boomerang shape which just cannot be comfortable! Add that to the list of concerns - is my belly squishing the baby??! Do her feet have enough room? Can her brain grow properly if she's jammed into my leg?!

I really have gotten better about handling other stress in my life. Its been three of the most insane weeks and I haven't completely fallen apart but instead have been excited to see where life is taking us - definite progress! Now I'd really like to apply this attitude to growing this baby too. I know that stress is absolutely not good for her so I try to keep that in mind but when has telling yourself how to feel ever helped anyone? If it were that easy, I wouldn't have a job.

What I find does help me is thinking about what I do know about my baby girl and this pregnancy so far and tracking how things have changed week by week. So I thought it would be a good exercise to write it out in a list here, which will also help with the documentation process - its been so nice to have this blog and emails to family before that to look back on and see just how much things have changed along the way.

So here is the 30 week/7.5 month summary:

- I am now so pregnant that people offer me their seat on the subway. I have decided to milk this thing for all its worth which has led to a false sense of entitlement in general. For example, where there is a line to get into the exiting stairwell of the subway, I push out my belly and push my way through with total disregard for how many people I am cutting in front of. Out of my way people, I'm growing a child, I clearly deserve to get down these stairs before you!

- As I mentioned, I am back to being moody and emotional again. Its a real treat for anyone who gets to spend any amount of time with me. I really, really hate feeling so out of control of my emotions but am trying to use it as an opportunity to gain empathy and understanding for those with mood disorders. Its comforting to know that my instability is (mostly) based on pregnancy hormones, I can't imagine what it would be like if I didn't have that to logically make sense of my craziness.

- I'm slowing down significantly. It took me a good extra 4 minutes to walk home from the subway today (when you're a fast-walker like me - a quality I inherited from my dad - thats a significant amount of time to add to a walk!). But its not just that I'm slowing down in speed, its other things too. I can't do as much as I was doing before, I just get far too exhausted. I need a lot of down time and a lot of sleep. Or maybe I just haven't been able to get either lately and its just the lack of it thats bringing me down. We'll see.

- Baby girl is getting stronger than ever. Sometimes I can feel her little feet and know from touch they are indeed her little feet. It kind of freaks Sean out when I tell him to feel and he touches a legit body part of the baby. Its so very alien-like but I love it anyway. The other day I'm pretty sure she shoved her bum right up to the surface of my belly, it was so cute. She's getting pretty strong so that sometimes when she kicks it actually hurts! The other day I was being assaulted from within while doing an assessment. I must have looked like a crazy person as I kept twitching and getting startled out of nowhere.

- I have Braxton-Hicks contractions all the time and they are getting stronger and more uncomfortable...though I still think they are kind of cool.

- Baby used to move all the time around 10am but now she tends to be quiet in the mornings and pretty active at night. Sometimes its hard to get to sleep because she's fluttering around so much. She's like her mamma, it takes her awhile to settle down but once she's asleep, she likes to sleep in :)

- I can't believe it was only three weeks ago that I was able to sleep on my stomach and didn't require a pillow between my knees and under my belly. Oh how things have changed!

- I need to pee at least hourly. Sigh.

Speaking of which, its time to go do the things I do the most lately: pee and sleep. G'nite!

Missing

Sorry for being MIA lately.

Theres been a lot on my mind and a lot going on. Mostly, its just been a non-stop crazy busy two weeks which hasn't allowed for any amount of time for sitting and writing but also I just wanted to get some things sorted out and clarified before I felt okay about writing about them.

So, if you're out there reading this - I promise I'll be back here very soon (aiming for Thursday at the latest).

It hasn't really been that long that I've been at this but I have to say, even with this short of an absence, I have really missed blogging!

Can't wait to get back into the swing of things.

xo Natalie

28 Weeks / 7 Months

Behold, the 7 month bump:

Excuse the headphones, I was multitasking - taking pics while catching up with Jac ;)

At this point, most people have a comment of some kind to make about the size of my belly. Luckily, its usually been complementary which has definitely been nice. But at this point, and especially after looking at these pictures, I can't help but believe they're all just being polite. Or perhaps many people just assume that 7 months pregnant is supposed to look much bigger than this when in actuality, the huge bowling ball of a belly doesn't truly come on until later on in the process? Or maybe I'm lucky and my little lady is waiting it out before she packs on the pounds and makes her presence undeniably massive. I don't know, these are just but a few of some of my working hypotheses. 

What I do know for sure if that other's comments tend to leave me feeling mostly positive with a side of slightly nervous so that I find myself googling "how much weight gain is too little" on one day and "how much weight gain is too much" the next. It doesn't help that as she changes positions, my belly shifts like crazy so that within an hour I can go from a small hill to a gigantic mountain or vice versa. This morning when I got out of bed and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror I almost had a heart attack. I literally yelled out to Sean as I grasped my stomach. He said something to the effect of, "whoa!" with his eyes pretty wide in surprise. I kid you not, it looked like I wasn't even pregnant. While this sent me into a complete panic as I mentally catalogued my sleeping positions throughout the night and whether they could have endangered my baby girl, Sean was more intrigued than worried. In the end it only took about 5 minutes before things returned to normal and I felt her kicking around in there but it was sooooo bizarre. Pregnancy is so weird. 

Anyway, 7 months in things are still going really well. Its definitely getting harder to sleep as of this week - I can no longer sleep on my stomach, I'm too terrified to sleep on my back, and now I have a ton of pain in my right butt and thigh so I'm generally restricted to sleeping exclusively on my left side - but my energy level is still pretty good and on most days I feel pretty normal and like my non-pregnant self. Hormonally, things are getting a bit chaotic again but its different than previously. Whereas in the first trimester I was nothing short of a raging biatch at random moments, this time I'm just so quick to become tearful. The other night I cried during a Huggies commercial simply because it had a newborn baby in it. I don't even think I was aware of the storyline of the commercial, it was literally seeing a tiny baby and thinking about how we'd have one that small too made me sob. 

Another thing thats new is that I feel Braxton-Hicks contractions pretty regularly. I think its partially due to the fact that Vanessa told me when I was having one when we were together in France, which then made me more aware of them when they happened after that. Its pretty strange and cool. They're definitely making my motherly instincts kick up a notch. 

So yeah, thats your week 28 round up. On to the next 12(ish) weeks...At the same time that 3 more months feels like tomorrow, it also feels like a million years away. I wonder how that will change as time passes...we'll see I guess :)

A Look Inside My Insane Brain

I just had this thought that I've had multiple times throughout this pregnancy and felt the need to share...

Today I am 28 weeks, i.e. 7 MONTHS pregnant (documentary bump pics to come). Though my head still isn't quite wrapped around just how pregnant I am - am I seriously in my third trimester?? - my belly is a different story. It is definitely 7 months pregnant, proudly protruding outward and growing by the minute.

But the thing is, just now when catching a glimpse of Mt. Baby Bailey in the bathroom mirror, I still feel like I'm totally faking it. I have to remind myself that real, tangible, living and breathing people have witnessed my growing belly, that I've talked about it (and I actually have to remind myself of specific conversations that day), that I've had a baby shower, that we are starting to put our nursery together, that we have a name picked out, that this is really and truly happening. Its ridiculous. 

Seriously, the inner dialogue in my head goes something like this "Ooof when did you gain so much weight - no brain, thats a baby in there its not just a gut - but its probably mostly excess chocolate and dessert - no brain, baby has only 2.5 more months to go, thus baby is pretty big right now hence the bigness of the belly - I need to stop sticking my belly out so much for effect - no brain, you are standing like a normal person, your belly just IS that way now. 

Is this normal?!?

A Quick Glimpse of Cassis

The older I get, the quicker time passes and I hear it only gets worse each year. Such a shame, especially when it comes to vacations - this one came and went in a flash! 

We spent the week in Cassis, France, a beautiful little town on the Mediterranean. Though we did venture out of town for several roadtrips, Cassis was our home base. And what a lovely home base it was! 

Besides the beauty of it all, it was a town after our own hearts. Case in point: this little shop below where you can see Sean, Vanessa, and Mom excitedly browsing. I mean, a shop devoted to cookies and spreads?! My two most favourite things in life.

By night, the town was lit up beautifully and the streets were always busy with people dining on three-hour long meals or strolling with dogs and ice cream.

And the atmosphere during the Belguim/USA World Cup game was incredible. Nothing like taking in a game like that when out and about in the world. 

But the best part, of course, was time with the family. Especially getting to enjoy one full week with Zac...but that deserves an entire post all on its own, so I'll leave that for next time :)

For now, heres some pics of that fam of mine.

From ??? to !!!

For awhile now, I've been dealing with the uncertainty in my life much differently than I used to. In the past, I would constantly ruminate over trying to figure out every single detail of the uncertain future and fret that it would never work out well. I know, I know - I'm still a bit of a catastrophizer and often jump to the worst conclusion but I really have gotten a lot better. Certainly a lot better when I compare it to all four years at Pace. And I think that largely has to do with 1. the culture of psychology doctoral students and 2. how many different times you have to prove yourself over and over and over again in order to get through each different stage of the program.

But things started to improve when I matched for internship. Given the dismal stats that 25% of applicants don't match, it was the first time I figured that I must have been doing something right up until that point if THAT worked out. And then I fell head over heels in love with my job, proof that everything worked out just as it should and I had matched at just the right spot for me. So when it came time to think about whats next in life, I started to have a bit more confidence that everything would be okay, even if I didn't overthink every single tiny, unpredictable detail. A great place to be given that unpredictable seems to be the motto of our life in the last 8-12 months!

It has been a roller coaster and I think I've done a relatively good job at going along for the ride. At the very least, a good job compared to old Natalie of 2013 and prior. When I first found out I was pregnant, we had absolutely no idea where or when Sean would find a job and if the career he wanted was even a real possibility, we hadn't slept a single night in our new house and were still living at my parents, and I had not even a clue as to what I might do for work once my job ended at the end of August, one month before the baby was due (as calculated using the roughest of date estimates entered into a babycenter.com online calculator, the first of many many many weird pregnancy and baby related google searches). But instead of obsess over it as I would in the past, I just threw my hands in the air and said meh, what will be will be.

Honestly, this likely wasn't a chosen approach but the only approach . Everything in our lives was a giant question mark and all we could do was keep truckin along, filling in gaps as we went, slowly, slowly, little by little. Just as one piece would fall into place, something new would happen and we’d find ourselves with no less questions than before, just new questions. Our attempt at a “plan” would be altered, we’d discuss and discuss, then ultimately come to the conclusion, “we still have way too much to figure out before we can have it all figured out.” Sort of scary when the “things to figure out” included if Sean could get the job he wanted, if I could get a job after my current one finishes, where these jobs might be located and how we might get there given our one car situation, how much we could afford in life, what our childcare plan would be, when it would need to be implemented, etc etc not to mention we were also weeding through the many questions all soon-to-be parents tackle too:  how do you know how much to feed a baby, when do you feed the baby, do they need to be bathed every day, how do you keep a child alive when we can barely do an adequate job of that for ourseleves??? Did I mention that these are a sampling of only the most current questions? It seemed like every sentence in my life finished with a high pitched note at the end, my face contorted into a puzzled expression, and a shrug of my shoulders.

And then this past week happened. Within a span of 48 hours both Sean and I could at least finally answer one gigantic question each (waterfalling into answers to subsequent questions too).  After a dedicated search, months of perseverance, and giving up a guaranteed but less-than-ideal job, Sean was offered a great, great, great, amazing job and is now officially able to start on his dream career. I could not be more proud of him. I always knew he would get to this point eventually but I’m thrilled he can now rest easy knowing that too and will get to be what he really wants to be when he grows up. But nothing in life comes easy and we both know that this dream also comes with looooooong hours at work and years of paying his dues… especially intimidating when only one day earlier I too was offered a job, essentially altering our situation from two parents at a home with a baby to two parents working full-time…(MUCH more on that to come, I promise I'll throw some France pictures in there when I do get to that, just to make it more interesting).

What made this even sweeter (if that’s even possible) is that the final email exchanges and phone calls that solidified both of our positions took place literally on the way to the airport where we departed for our family vacation. I've never felt so relaxed and content as we watched the Toronto skyline disappear beneath us. 

Of course, several days later, I now have a new crop of questions and worries floating around in my head, keeping me up at night but I’m trying my hardest to hold on that Friday feeling and remember that my laid back approach still managed to lead to success. What I want to always remind myself of (and pretty much the reason for writing about this at all) is that everything turned out okay because, as Sean reminds me often, we're constantly working at making everything okay all along the way, whether we worry, fret, and ruminate about it or not. By just doing what we do, working hard day by day, and NOT over thinking things, planning ahead when we really can't anyway, and just letting things fall as they may, we were rewarded with pieces to the puzzle that was (is) our life. I want to be like that as a parent and teach that to my daughter too. I don't want her to be a worrier and constantly riddled with anxiety, its debilitating and miserable and in the end, I've realized, its pointless. I don't want her to go through 30 years of her life before coming to that conclusion herself. So I'm taking it as my responsibility as her mother to know this myself, believe it, and change for good. 

Much still may be a mystery but that’s okay. That’s what makes it interesting. 

...Right? ...Remind me I said all of this in oh, probably like 2 hours.