My Mom's Experience

So I’ve been asking my mom a lot of questions about her pregnancies to get an idea of what I might expect, because I’ve been told that you have similar pregnancies and labor and delivery experiences as your mother. This is what I’ve learned.

• My mom had all of her children natural, no pain killers. She’s a rockstar, I don’t think I’ll be able to do that. My plan right now is to go as long as I can without anything… But “as long as I can” is very flexible… I mean, I might have one contraction and be like “forget this! Where’s the epidural?!” So yeah, I have a very flexible birth plan to say the least.

• My mom has short labors. I mean, it’s not unusual to be in labor for 16 hours. They say that 12-20 hours is normal for a first time mom. Well, my mom didn’t have anything close to that! When I was asking her about it she told me I was here in an hour after starting labor and the doctor barely got there in time to catch me. My siblings were not as anxious to get to the world as I was, but when she mentioned one of her birthing experiences lasting a long time I asked what that meant, “like 12 hours long?” She said, “oh no! Nothing like that!” So, I guess, I may have a short labor and delivery experience. Which would be nice… Unless I take too long to decide I want an epidural and then it’s too late… That would suck, but I’ll have to deal with that if it comes.

• My mom did not have gestational diabetes. I’m happy about that because you’re more likely to have it if your mom had it, so I’m feeling pretty good about my upcoming glucose tolerance screening.

• My mom got very little stretch marks. She said she only got them at the end of pregnancy, they were mostly just on her hips, and that they weren’t very bad. I’m ok with all of that. 27 weeks and so far so good! I put cocoa butter on my tummy and hips every night right when I get out of the shower, so I’m hoping that will help as well, it is definitely a lot less dry and itchy, so that’s already a benefit… And it smells good too :).

• My mom had most of her children past their due date. No preemies for her! This isn’t my favorite news because surely I’ll be dying to get my little one out by March 22^nd, I can’t imagine having to wait another week or two! From the sound of it I might have to though, and I guess that’s good, I’d rather have a late healthy baby than have her come early when she or I aren’t ready.

• My mom has big babies. I was 8 pounds 6 ounces and my siblings were likewise. I guess they're big, but not too big, at least they weren't like 10 or 12 pounders! Then I would be scared. 

• My mom had cute kids. Lets be honest, we're not a bad looking bunch! Ha ha, just joking. I just know I'm going to have a beautiful little girl though. She's going to have brown eyes and brown hair. I hope she gets David's lips, he has great lips. I guess this one doesn't have so much to do with my mom as it does me and David, but that's ok.

This is me as a baby, pretty cute huh?

27 Weeks and done with school!

Well, I’m 27 weeks pregnant now and loving it! I’m so excited for our little baby girl to come! I know it’s still a while before she gets here, but the second trimester has been awesome and it has allowed me to enjoy being pregnant and look forward to what we have coming. The first trimester… Well, the first 16 weeks or so actually, were really difficult. I was throwing up multiple times a day, I had no appetite, no energy, and I lost about 10 to 15 pounds. I finally got some anti-nausea medicine from my doctor and it saved me! I was actually able to function again, which was good since I started school and work again. I had to take the pills everyday for a long time and then I finally started to feel better and would only take them when I needed them. I still get the occasional fits of nausea, but they are few and far between, which I am very grateful for.

I feel our little girl practicing flips and kicks all the time now, she’s very active, which is fun for me… and sometimes a little weird. Sometimes a thought pops into my head that it feels like I have something living inside my stomach… And then I’m like, “Oh, I do have something living in there!” That’s kind of a weird thought, but it’s awesome… Sometimes it even tickles a little. David has been able to feel her move a lot now, the other night as we were lying in bed before falling asleep he had his hand on my stomach and she was going crazy! I think it was pretty exciting for him because that’s definitely the most he’s ever felt her move.

Other things, I’m pretty much hungry all the time, but I can only snack and eat small portions, if I try to eat a normal sized meal I feel super gross and bloated because there just isn’t a lot of room in there anymore. I’m starting to show pretty good now, at least I think so. David says it still looks like it could be a question of “is she just fat? Or is she pregnant?” Which I guess is true. It depends on the shirt I wear. I always think that people who don’t know I’m pregnant must think I look fat and wonder why I would wear the clothes I wear that accentuate my “fat” tummy, but in reality they probably don’t even notice ha ha, I’m just being paranoid. I’ve been trying to take pictures every week for the last few weeks now that it’s getting more noticeable, so here are the last few:

24 weeks.

25 weeks. 
(Note to self: That pattern makes me look huge. Good to know for future reference.)

26 weeks.

I can’t believe that I start my third trimester in a week! That’s so crazy! We’re planning on doing a birthing class in January, which will be good. They offer one at my OBGYN’s office, so that’ll be nice. We’ve also talked about maybe taking one with Maile and Michael, my best friend and her husband, who are due with a baby boy the day before us! So that would be fun, but we have different doctors and aren’t delivering at the same hospital, so I don’t know. The one they offer at my OB’s office is taught by one of the labor and delivery nurses at the hospital I’ll be delivering at, which I feel would be more beneficial to me, so I’m leaning more toward that one for now.

I was able to finish up school and pass all of my classes! I got pretty decent grades too… Which was my goal, I wasn’t too worried about getting all A’s this semester. I pretty much just wanted to pass. This is my last semester of school for a while. I “graduated” with my associate’s degree in “pre-professional” which is basically like pre-nursing or pre-dental. Now that I have my associates, I can transfer later to another school wherever we will be living, which will be nice. I’ll be stopping with school now because we are having our baby in March! I’ll keep working up until a few weeks before we have the baby, but after we have our little girl I’ll be able to stay home and take care of her, which I’m very grateful for.

David and I are both SO happy to be done with this semester of school! It’s been quite a doosy! We were both so busy it felt like we never got to see each other, and when we did we were so tired we could hardly enjoy it! But now we are enjoying life, catching up on sleep, and looking forward to the Christmas break! I’m still working this week, but we are headed down to Hurricane on Friday afternoon where we’ll be staying for almost two full weeks! We’re both excited to see both of our families, because conveniently they will both be down there only about 20 minutes apart from each other.

This next semester will be a lot better for both of us, I’ll be working about 32 hours a week until the beginning of March, no school, and David will be in school and working, but his classes this semester will be much easier than they have been in the past. Rather than taking all Mechanical Engineering classes like he has been, the majority of his credits will be in generals! That will make his last semester a little less difficult and busy which will be great in preparing and having a baby! He normally TAs for a math class for work, but this next semester he will be able to work as a research assistant instead, which will also be better, and might even pay a little more. This will make for a good last semester for David before he graduates. David has been turning in his applications for graduate school. He’s already applied to the University of Texas – Austin, and to Cornell University in upstate New York. He has two more schools to apply to, Purdue University in Indiana, and BYU. We are hopeful to hear back from all the schools and know where we will be going before March, but we’ll just have to wait and see!

Two Years Ago

It was two years ago today that I met my wonderful husband David. Yes I remember the day that we first met! We met the week before Thanksgiving at a church activity. Friendship night is what they called it. I didn’t really want to go that night, but I decided to go anyway, knowing that I would at least know one person because my roommate Shelley was already there. So I walked over only to find that my roommate was not there anymore and I now didn’t know anyone. I sat down on the couch feeling a little awkward, but I didn’t have too much time to feel awkward before the boy sitting next to me turned to me and said hi. Well, we ended up talking the whole time, probably about an hour and a half. I had a good time and I thought that he was one of the nicest people I had ever met. Eventually I decided that I should probably be heading home, so I left to walk home and as I walked I heard someone coming up behind me and saw that it was David. It turned out that we lived in the same apartment complex and that his apartment was just down the stairs and around the corner from mine, which turned out to be very convenient in the coming months as we started dating seriously. At first I was a little hesitant to get serious with David, not because he wasn’t funny and great and smart and sweet and fun, but just because I was scared. I had dated a lot of really dumb guys in the past that didn’t treat me so well. David was so different than anyone I had dated, which turned out to be exactly what I needed! I know I didn’t make it easy for David when we were dating, but he was great and I’m glad he stuck around. Once I finally got over all of my reservations everything became so wonderful. I fell in love with David quickly once I let myself. I knew that I was supposed to marry him before I even knew that I loved him, don’t ask me how that works. Either way, we got engaged on the 26^th of March and were married 5 ½ months later in the Salt Lake Temple. Now, two years later, we’re happily married, expecting our first baby and looking forward to a long future together. Two years ago who would have know that when we met on a couch in a stranger’s house that this is where we would be now? I sure didn’t know then, but I’m glad I’m where I am now. I love you David! You’ve been my best two years.

Well... We're Having a Baby!

Well, I guess it’s about time we tell people… We’re going to have a baby! I’m now just over 20 weeks along! I can’t believe I’m already halfway through my pregnancy! I’m in my second trimester and boy am I glad of it because the first trimester was pretty rough! I lost about 10 pounds, had no energy, pretty much just felt crappy all the time, and I threw up in some pretty awkward places…. So now that I’m in my second trimester, I have been feeling quite a bit better. Nausea is mostly gone, except for the occasional wave if I smell something nasty or wait too long to eat or something. I've got a little tummy showing and I can feel the baby move! David finally was able to feel the baby too a few days ago, so that was cool. I kept having him try to feel my tummy when the baby was kicking particularly hard, but he couldn't feel it. So I’m glad he was able to finally feel it too, he was excited.

We were lucky enough to get an ultrasound at my very first doctor’s appointment! I was 9 weeks and 6 days, which they were able to confirm by measuring our little baby, so now we know that my due date is March 22, 2012. I was so surprised to see how much our little baby was moving around during the ultrasound, I didn't expect that at all. But as we watched our little baby, it was kicking around and waving it’s tiny arms all over the place, it was so amazing!

Even though we have a picture and got to see our little one and hear it’s heartbeat, it still sometimes doesn't feel real. I mean, I know that I’m pregnant, but it doesn't seem real that there’s really a little baby that David and I created growing inside me. It’s a miracle and we’re both so happy! It definitely feels a little more real now that I can feel our little baby move and I have a little tummy to show for it. I really can’t believe that I’m halfway done with my pregnancy already!

After our first ultrasound, we anxiously awaited our second ultrasound, where we would be able to find out what whether we are having a boy or a girl! We both were having dreams about it, and we both had dreams about boys and girls, so we didn't know what was going to happen! Ever since I got pregnant though, I've felt like we were going to have a girl… And call it mother’s intuition, because I was right! We had our ultrasound on Friday, November 2nd and we are indeed having a little girl! We’re very excited.

The ultrasound was fun, I had a perma-grin the whole time and I kept asking questions, I’m sure I was annoying the ultrasound tech, but I don’t even care. We got to see our little girl and how much she’s grown since our first ultrasound over 10 weeks ago. She has adorable little feet and a cute round tummy. The ultrasound tech gave us a picture of our baby’s face, which basically just looks like a skull, but our baby girl actually looks kind of like a vampire in the picture… Which is awesome! It makes me smile every time I look at it. She is perfectly healthy and measured exactly with our same due date of March 22, 2013.

Here’s a link to a video about what will be happening with our baby in the next several weeks until we hit the third trimester at 28 weeks.

http://www.babycenter.com/2_inside-pregnancy-weeks-21-to-27_10312242.bc

We have a lot of changes to look forward to in the next year of our lives. I will be getting my Associates Degree in December and then taking a break from school for a while, I’ll still work until  a little bit before the baby is born though. David will be graduating in April with his Bachelors, he’ll get a summer internship and then we’ll head off to who knows where for Grad school in August. But the biggest and most exciting change will obviously be our addition to the family, our little baby girl. I love her already and I can’t wait to meet her. 

Escape to warmer weather

So, we were able to go down to Southern Utah this past weekend! It was super fun! We went with two of David’s mechanical engineering buddies from school, Tyler and Zach, their wives Lacey and Tara and Tara and Zach’s baby Porter. We had a ton of fun! I hadn't even met any of them before, so I thought it might be a little awkward, but it wasn't at all! It was way fun and it didn't seem like we had just met at all, but like we’d been friends for a long time already. We drove down on Friday night and got to David’s parent’s house around 10:30, so we all got settled in and then played some games together. On Saturday we drove up to Kolob Canyon and did a super easy hike and enjoyed the pretty scenery, the perfect weather and the good company. After the hike my mama made us an awesome lunch, so we went into Hurricane and ate lunch and then everyone went shooting. I stayed home with my mom and I watched Porter, Tara and Zach’s baby, while they all went shooting. After that we headed back to New Harmony and made a big spaghetti dinner and played games the rest of the night. Sunday we watched Newsies before church. We went to Sacrament Meeting and to our good luck it happened to be the week of the primary program! So it was super fun to see all the little kids singing. We headed back home again and just hung around the rest of the day, watched another movie and then got all ready to leave. We headed out around 5:30 or so and got home around 9. It was a super fun weekend, but I’m definitely tired from all the stuff we did. Especially because I'm extra tired these days, and I usually go to bed around 10:30 or 11, and all weekend we didn't get to bed until 1 or 2 in the morning! But it was totally worth it! I’m pretty well caught up on sleep now, so it’s all good. 

Me, David, Zach, baby Porter, Tara, Tyler, and Lacey.

Such a pretty view.

All of us (minus Porter who was already in the car)  in front of the house before heading out.

We are Practically Professionals at car buying now

So, remember how David and I got a new car over the summer? Well, we were able to drive it for about a month before it got totaled. Yeah, not really the ideal situation for us… It was pretty inconvenient actually. I was driving home from work one day and some 21 year old kid smashed through a red light into me. Thank goodness no one was hurt, but come on, he could not have been paying attention at all because it was 12:30 in the afternoon, perfectly sunny, and the light had been green for me for several seconds already. Anyway, it smashed up our car pretty good and as we predicted, it was totaled.

I had several witnesses that were kind enough to stick around and fill out police reports stating what happened. The kid got a citation and I had to get a ride home with the tow truck guy. It took 8 days for his insurance to get us a rental car, so that was super annoying, but we are blessed enough to have people who were able and willing to let us borrow a car so that we could get to work and school. They didn't even have anyone look at our car for like 10 days after the accident and then we found out the next day that it was indeed totaled. Luckily for us, they actually offered us more money for our car then we actually paid! We were able to talk them into letting us keep the rental car for more than the original 3 days that they were going to give us, they added an extra week onto the end since they didn't give us one for the first week after the accident. Well, long story short, we got another new car! We hardly had any time to look at cars, so we test drove 2 different cars and bought the second one. We feel really good about it, it’s been about a week since we got it and we both really like it so far. We decided on a Ford Focus, it’s a 2003 that only has 53,000 miles on it! It’s been really well taken care of and I think it’ll be a really good car for us that’ll last a long time. Yay for new cars! Now here’s to hoping we won’t have to buy another one in the near future!

I'll put up a picture of our new car later.

Vegetable Quiche

Ok, so I have such a good quiche recipe, I love it! It’s just a vegetable quiche, but it has such a good flavor and it’s totally good for you! I don’t know if the rest of the women’s husbands in the world are like this, but when David found out there was no meat in this recipe and it was a vegetable quiche, he sighed and didn’t sound very excited. But let me tell you that he loved it! Trust me, it’s good.

I didn’t take any pictures of it because I didn’t think about putting it in my blog until after the fact, but I will make it again soon and be sure to take pictures this time. It’s really easy and you can be creative and put whatever you want in it! So here it is:

Vegetable Quiche

6 eggs, beaten

1 cup milk

1 cup grated cheese

1 cup cooked vegetables (I used a bunch, I put in broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, green peppers, tomatoes, and onion, it was super good)

salt and pepper (I also put a little it of garlic salt or whatever else I thought sounded good in it)

Grease a pie plate or pan; sprinkle vegetables and cheese over the bottom, beat together the remaining ingredients and pour over vegetables. Bake at 350' for 35 minutes; knife inserted in center should come out clean (mine was moist though from all the juices from the vegetables). Let it sit for about 5 minutes before cutting. 

David and I like ours with sour cream and we dip it in, it's really good and adds a little bit of a creamy flavor. That's it! Super easy, delicious, and healthy! 

Life goes on

Ok well, it’s been like 2 months since I’ve written anything in my blog so I guess I better start updating. It seems so weird to be updating things from July still when we are almost done with September now because it feels like forever ago, but I better do it anyway. I probably won’t be super detailed on the old stuff though.

Ok, so the last thing that I mentioned was how much I wanted to go to the beach. Well, we did! One Saturday we drove to Annapolis and went to the beach. It was really fun, we found a spot that was not very crowded at all and we went swimming in the water and played in the sand. Unfortunately it took us a while to realize that the reason it wasn’t very crowded around us is because we were in the non-swimming area because of jellyfish. Yes, and too bad we found out the hard way when David got stung on his ankle. So we moved down where all the rest of the people were and I swear there were more jellyfish there because we saw a bunch of teenagers scooping them out of the water using a Frisbee. So after that we were pretty much too paranoid to get in the water anymore and we were done with our beach day. 

We drove into Annapolis, which is a charming and adorable little city by the way, and we went in search of the 6 pound milkshake place that David had seen once on Man Vs. Food. We found it! It’s a little place called Chick and Ruth’s. We saw plenty of 6 pound milkshake remains, but decided against getting one ourselves since it was just the two of us and I knew that I wouldn’t help very much, so we just got a "small" milkshake (which was still huge) and some food. The milkshake was delicious and the food was great, they had the best homemade pickles I’ve ever had! So, in short, I got my beach day and we topped it off with some great food! It was cool because just a few months before we dipped our feet in the Pacific Ocean at Alki Beach in Seattle and then we went swimming in the Atlantic Ocean just a few short months later! We really did go coast to coast!

We sold our car in Gaithersburg before we headed home to Utah! I know it was quite a risk to take to buy a new car in Utah in the hopes of selling our old one in the few short weeks before we left, but we did it! It all worked out. We didn’t make as much money on our car as we were hoping, but who ever really does? We were just glad to be rid of it.

So instead of driving home, we got plane tickets to Vegas and flew back across the country.  My family picked us up at the airport there and then we made a 3 hour drive to Big Bear Lake, California. We had an amazing vacation there with my family. It felt so nice to be with them again. I hadn’t seen any of them for about 6 months and I had missed them. David and I had so much fun! We were able to relax, hang out and joke around with my family, we went to gelato a few times, we went shopping, boating, on an alpine slide and a water slide, we went mini-golfing, bowling, to the zoo, on walks by the lake, and hot tubbing… Basically we had a lot of fun! And I got to be with my family, so that was awesome. We also celebrated our one year anniversary while we were there. I can’t believe it’s been a whole year! It’s been such a great year, I married my best friend and I love spending all my time with him.

After the week in California, we drove back to Utah and spent a few days in Southern Utah at my parent’s house. While we were there we mostly just hung out with my nephews and family some more. David went dove hunting with my dad and he had fun, although he felt pretty bad killing the doves. I went through all my old boxes that were still in the garage and got rid of most of it and decided what I wanted to keep. Finally we drove up to Provo and moved into our new apartment… Well, after we got there and found out that we were locked out and waited for about an hour. Either way, we got into our apartment and now we love it! It’s about twice as big as our old apartment and it’s awesome! We have a dishwasher, we have our own sinks in the bathroom, and we have a whole second bedroom to put whatever we want in. We have more than enough room for all of our things, so we are sure enjoying the space.

We both have started school and work again and it’s crazy how busy we are. I’m working at Tristar again as the receptionist and going to school full time and David is working as a math TA and a research assistant and is also in school full time. David will be graduating in April and I will graduate in December, so that’s something to look forward to. Right now David is getting ready to take the GRE and apply for Grad school. There are several places that he wants to apply, but we haven’t narrowed it down yet, he has until December to apply, so we have some time.

David and I both had our birthdays this month, so we’ve been celebrating those too, David got me some slipcovers for our couches and some new pillows and we love them! I have been wanting these since we first got married and now we finally have them and David loves them just as much as I do, they greatly improve the look of our apartment. We celebrated my birthday with Maile and Michael and it was super fun, we went to Texas Road House and had an awesome dinner and then went back to our apartment to watch Harry Potter and then got ice cream at SubZero, yum. It was a super fun night. We have yet to get David a birthday present because I’m a bad wife, and also because I’m letting him pick his own present and he hasn’t found one in our price range yet, so I’m not that bad of a wife! We’ll get him something soon when he finds the right thing. Oh, I did make him bacon though, so I did good there. We celebrated with David’s family for his birthday, they took us out to JCW’s and then we went and walked around Thanksgiving Point, after that we got cheesecake and went home to relax and eat it, we watched “Clue” and then David and I went home to go to sleep, it was a good day. Anyway, now we’re pretty much caught up!