37 Weeks (FULL TERM!)

Well today is week number 37 which is considered full term even though my due date is 21 days away! I am going to get Daddy to coax the baby to come early because we are so anxious to meet the precious little life. He talks to the baby every morning before we get out of bed and usually again in the evening, I know that the baby will have no problem recognizing his voice once he/she is born. Aw, I am so excited. I had another check up yesterday but my Doctor was in surgery and his Nurse was going to just see me but not check me. But since I was expecting to be checked and Tom had come too she sent in the Nurse Practitioner to actually check me. She was really nice but I almost wanted to cry because she was palpating the baby in my belly as I'm laying on my back which already hurts so bad to be in that position when you are so far along. And then with the heartbeat monitor she was pressing that around on my belly to find the heartbeat and make sure she could hear it really clearly. Then she checked me and since she is a woman and is smaller than a man, she REALLY had to check me and at the same time she was pushing on my abdomen from the outside! I WANTED TO CRY! When she left I told Tom I would never ask for that again if it wasn't Dr. Burke. He is amazing when it comes to that just because he is so gentle about it AND quick.
On Tuesday night my sister in law, Carolyn, had planned a girls night/pampering session for me with her and two of my closest friends, Rachelle and Daisy. She made us a really good homemade soup and salad and Rachelle made the best cornbread muffins ever. We just sat at the table talking about baby/children stuff and we were laughing so hard I thought I was going to go into labor then but that would have been just fine according to a dream that Rachelle had about her and Daisy delivering my baby. Daisy was this amazing surgeon in her dream and just unzipped me like a pea pod and delivered the baby who was a boy with dark curly hair and with darker toned skin. And then Carolyn proceeded to inform me that there in a black person way back in Toms family! Oh my, we were all laughing so hard. Then they had brought some gifts for baby too which was really nice because as far as any outfits, we didn't really have anything yet, just some onesies basically. But now we are set for a little while till probably a shower comes along sometime after the baby comes.
Tonight I am going to a breastfeeding class that the hospital offers for free which I am excited about because well ya know when you haven't ever done something before it is nice to know ahead of time what to expect and I really want it to work for us because it is so much healthier for the baby and it is free food for the baby!

36 Weeks & Progressing!

Where has the time gone, pregnancy really does go fast you know. Maybe next week I will be singing a different tune but we are getting close and really the baby could come at any time! Yesterday at my check up, my cervix was checked and I am dilated (the amount that the cervix has opened) to 2 cm out of 10 cm and my effacement (the thinning out of the cervix) is 50% out of 100%! I wasn't really expecting to hear that because not much has been happening so it seems to me. I think Tom and I were both shocked and Dr. Burke said the head was right there and he was pushing on it! He said "You are locked and loaded and ready to go!" And if the baby decides to come he wouldn't stop it at this point. So our job this weekend is to get our hospital bags packed and clean out our cars so we are ready to go at anytime with the car seat and diaper bag. We still need to go get our diaper bag and the things that should go in it for the baby! Dr. Burke said he would just see me next week for my next check up if not before! Yikes!
I could tell the baby had finally dropped this last weekend when I was moving really slow and waddling a lot. I felt like everywhere I went I was the slowest person getting there! Tom was very good about adjusting his pace to walk with me :)
Well since my appointments are now weekly until the baby comes I am going to try to write at least that often with a picture so you can know and see my progress!

Happy Mother's Day!!!

Happy Mother's Day to all those special moms out there like my mom, Carol, Alicia and Carolyn just to name a few special ones around us. It has been a great first Mothers-to-be Day for me. I have the best husband in the world for one thing and the best baby to carry:) But to my surprise my dad actually stopped to visit on his way thru in his semi to Portland. He text me on Friday to let me know he would be this way today and he made it, by the grace of God he made it. See, on his way here in Hardin, MT his fan broke on his radiator which usually results in destroying the radiator but it didn't. God was faithful to answer his prayer and ours as we learned of it for him to make it over the rest of the passes to get here without overheating the engine. The parts to fix it have to be ordered in the morning and should get here Tuesday to fix his truck and get him on his way to deliver his dairy goods to Portland. So anyway, Tom made us three a delicious breakfast, after Tom and I went to church, which was poached eggs over cheese and turkey bacon on an english muffin with strawberries on the side. Then Tom and I enjoyed a YMCA soccer game of our niece Zowee's while my dad hung out with his sis Mary & family. And Tom had a delicious dinner plan as well for today, a rack of pork ribs with a rub & bar-b-cue sauce on it on the grill with asparagus and mashed potatoes. Then he made a wonderful dessert of baked ice cream on angel food with apricot preserves in it and meringue over it. Mmmmm, we were all in gourmet heaven tonight. If anyone wants to come to our house for Mother's Day next year let me know. Well I should go and get back to our special company. Above is a cute picture of Tom and I and the necklace and earrings Tom bought for me for today, pearls and sterling silver.

34 Weeks Today

Well today is the beginning of week 34 and my weekly email from Baby Center is telling me the that the baby is around 4 3/4 lbs. and about the size of an average cantaloupe! I think the baby is bigger, cuz my belly sure looks and feels bigger than that. I had another check up yesterday and all is good, babies heart sounded good and the doc said I looked good. He said that at my next visit (in 2 weeks) he would be checking my cervix! Yikes that means we are getting close! We still have to get the babies room ready, although when I was working on Saturday Tom did put the crib together! It has been sitting in the box in our hallway since it came and I came home from work and the box was gone and the babies room door was shut so I knew something was up! He put it all together, we just need to get all the boxes of "stuff" out of there. We got one of those 4 in 1 cribs that was rated well by consumer reports and I will have to take a picture of it when it is all complete with a mattress and bedding stuff. It is not only a crib, but a also a toddler bed, daybed and full size bed when converted. So it should last us a while til we need to use the crib again for the next baby Lord willing.
Today is National Day of Prayer and our church had a good time of prayer and worship tonight that we participated in after work and then they had a chili dinner afterwords. It was good to pray over the different things we were led through, our families & marriages, our schools, our church and our government. It was good to be reminded that when we participate in prayer we are showing our trust in God for those things. Even if it seems they are beyond help from our perspective, they are not out of Gods grasp or control.

Tom's Birthday

Today is my favorite mans birthday! It is his tradition to take the day off of work and do something special to celebrate the day and he asked me to join him and I was able to thankfully. We snuggled in bed til about 9 am this morning catching up on some much needed rest. Then we got up and I made him breakfast, german pancakes for us, and we watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie while we enjoyed our pancakes. Tom had wanted to go to Seeley Lake today but we were not sure that is what we wanted to do after just going up there (50 miles) on Saturday evening. But Tom explained to me that he wanted to go there to have lunch and get coffee at a nice shop up there where he actually wanted to buy me a necklace & earrings for Mother's Day! He is so thoughtful, how many people want to buy other people stuff on their own birthday? I said as long as we made some stops on the way home to stretch our legs I thought I would be fine. So we headed out only after we made an "emergency stop" at the grocery store so that I could get him a hot cocoa from Starbucks, his favorite hot cocoa. I slept on the way up to Seeley and then we finally found a spot to eat that was still open (town of about 2600) and then made our way to the shop and we found a very pretty set that was made by a local person there and she is actually a client at the vet clinic and I didn't know she made jewelry. After spending a good amount of time there we headed home, we still wanted to try to see Toms brother and wife and kids before his special day was over. We stopped on the way home at a lake Tom usually fishes in the early morning when we are on Spring Retreat. Nice pretty little lake, Harpers Lake, pictured above.
When we got to town Tom wanted to do a little grocery shopping for his brothers family to bless them with since they have many food allergies and some things they are limited to are very expensive. We came home and I started working on a homemade apple pie for Tom (his favorite pie) and Kevin and Carolyn and the girls came to visit us since they were in town for other stuff and we got to visit a little and then give them the groceries, I think they were surprised.
It has been a wonderful day and what a blessing to be able to spend it in a special way together with our lil muffin we are eagerly awaiting.

Catch Up

So our retreat went well a couple weekends ago, there were times (mostly at night) when I thought to myself "What have I done to myself?!" Our speaker that the youth pastor brought in was from Denver, CO, and was very good. I thought that God used him to speak very well into the students lives right where their hearts are at for the Lord. He shared about how people are in one of three places in their lives, either "in the ditch" where you don't know who God is personally, or you are "in the middle of the road" where you know God but you haven't fully decided to give everything over to Him and with some things in your life you live the way the world does but you follow God in other areas of your life or you are "on the narrow path" where you are completely sold out for the Lord and you want Him to have everything in your life. He challenged the students in each session with them to be on the narrow path and he even had brought each of them a gift from CO, an "invisible" tent (Exodus 33) to help encourage them in pursueing that narrow path. But at night for me was the difficult thing, my mattress was okay, better than I think the bunk mattress would have been but I had 5 girls in my cabin and a couple of them would keep me up til about 1 am each night! Since I had to do potty breaks in the night, I kept our wood stove stoked and we were warm and toasty!!!!
This last weekend we were pretty busy, I had to work Saturday, we went up after work to Rainy Lake, past Seeley Lake, to visit some friends who were camping up there and Tom and our friend Tim went fishing while Pam and I played cribbage and caught up with each other. Their limit on the cutthroat trout was 3 each and they caught about 25 in their 2 hour outing. Mmmmm more fish for our freezer. I love it and so does lil muffin. Then yesterday we were babysitting my good friends kiddos for her after church til about 7pm. So I was very tired needless to say and had a meltdown last night just crying because I was so tired and thought that would make me feel better. But it is nice to catch up with friends and to be able to bless others even if it stretches you to the max at times. And I discovered yet again how great Tom is, when I am the weak one of the two of us, he steps up and does great even with 4 little munchkins.
Well I should go, I need to work on some stuff for tomorrow, it is a very special day tomorrow, my husband will be 39 years young!