2008 in review....

Things done / experienced / accomplished:

• Kissed my wonderful husband on New Year's
• Drove to North Carolina and celebrated my first wedding anniversary
• Started two new jobs that I love
• Planned and participated in my first big charity event
• Celebrated a crazy St Patrick's Day with the closest of friends
• Found out (officially) that I have severe allergies and started treating them
  
• Got back in shape
• Turned 28 in Key West
• Went to my first drag queen show with the aide of many margaritas
• Found out I was pregnant the day after I got home
• Stopped the allergy treatments - and the margaritas...
  
• Started to blog again
  
• Spent the 4th of July with morning sickness
• Heard my baby's heartbeat for the first time
• Readjusted my entire life-view
• Fell even more in love with my husband
• Saw our baby for the first time
  
• Named our daughter
• Showed the line by myself and was praised by the national sales manager
  
• Bought our first house
• Started to accept losing that good shape
  
• Had our first - and hopefully only - brush with cancer
• Paid two mortgages
• Started setting up a nursery
• Realized we're not really dog people
  
• Found hope and joy in financially stressful times
• Made best friends with my husband
• Bought my first pair of maternity jeans
• Drank non-alcoholic wine by the fire in the evenings with my husband, talking about our future
  
• Celebrated our first Thanksgiving and Christmas in our new house
• Will ring in the New Year tonight with friends, a healthy baby in my belly, and the love of my life by my side
  

quick note...

Just a quick note, more for my remembrance than yours. Today is the last day of 31 weeks. We had a doctor's appt. today - we're going to every 2 weeks from this point out! Leta is measuring right at 32 1/2 weeks, and her heart is beating nice and strong, and she's head down! Yay! The doctor said at this point in the pregnancy that shouldn't change either. Double Yay!!

Oh, sweet baby love :)

31 weeks

Hello. I am HUGE.

Holy cow, really. I feel like I've doubled in size in the past 2 weeks. This is the week that I've really started to feel the weight I'm carrying around as well. I've gained about 15 lbs at this point, and it's all pulling on my lower back, which leaves me feeling pretty great by the end of the day. I notice that I'm taking really deep breaths all the time, as if I'm short of breath, and I think that's due to her putting the crunch on my lungs. Also, the days of sitting up nice and straight seem like they're long gone for me. I seem to only be comfortable when I'm leaning back, stretching that tummy out as much as possible.

Christmas was this past week, and it was great, but really, really tiring. We spent Christmas Eve with my in-laws, then Christmas morning at home to ourselves, Christmas afternoon with my parents in, then down to Miami for our annual family Christmas reunion. I'm not sure how we can keep this pace next year with a 10 mo. old. At the same time, everyone will want to see her, and it's the only time each year that all of my extended family comes together. It seems like it might be worth the sacrifice of our sanity for the day.



On another note, I think I'm battling a possible cold. It's going back and forth right now - sometimes it's winning and sometimes I seem to be coming out on top. I've got the classic scratchy throat thing happening, and with only 8 1/2 weeks of this pregnancy left to go (CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT!!??), I'm just praying (begging) that I can stay healthy.

We've got a couple of doctor's appts. this week, including our next ultrasound! I'm so excited. Our last u/s was at 20 weeks, so I can't even begin to imagine how different she'll be at 32! My doctor said we'll have one more after this around week 36 to check her size and weight going into that last little stretch. Time is just flying by at this point.

Much more to come next week, I'm sure :)

30 weeks, continued :)

Merry Christmas, from The Poole's - all 3 of us...




I got to spend some time this week with some of our favorite friends from near and far and will be spending Christmas with both sides of our family. More to come next week...
In the meantime, here's one of me hanging out with some of my favorite fellow preggo's!

30 WEEKS!

LOOK! She's HUGE!

She's 3 lbs and almost 16 inches long and growing, growing, growing!

I'm so excited :)

29 weeks

I've taken to writing these posts in retrospect of the week, meaning in reality, I'm 30 weeks today. I'm really sincerely excited about the big 3-0 (!), and the count-down is really, really on at this point, but I'll try to stick to posting about this past week for now...

Week 29 was another week with not a lot to tell. I do feel like I'm visibly getting larger almost everyday, and I've got an extremely active girl in there :) Leta's movin' and shakin' ALL the time, which scares me a bit for when she's on the the outside. They say that the baby keeps to it's schedule that it kept in the womb, and it seems like little Leta-bug takes very little downtime.

We had our childbirth class this past weekend, and I think it was fully worth doing. We opted for the one-day class, as, with our schedules, it's nearly impossible to coordinate a class that meets more than twice. I don't think we missed out on any crucial info, pushing it all into one day, and it was kind of nice to be around so many other pregnant couples. My other reason for choosing the one-day option was that after reading the description of the classes, it seemed like the several day classes (6 2 hour classes and what have you) were set up that way partially to focus on getting the dad ready for what was going to be happening in the delivery room. TJ has been there and done that and is really the least of my concerns when it comes to that aspect of it all. It's how we both adapt to being parents of a newborn when she comes home that will be more interesting :) It is comforting to know that I'm not going to have to deal with giving birth AND a husband that is squeamish or looking like he's grossed out at the same time. He was able to ask really thoughtful questions (esp. about the pain management aspect, which is what we were really interested in figuring out) when we were in the class, and I walked away feeling ready to go into this with him.

On the big "pain-management" front, we've settled on our decision to go with an epidural for the delivery and nothing else. There are other iv drugs available, etc, but we only feel comfortable with the epidural. There seem to be side effects for the baby with the other options and we're not comfortable with those. I am going to attempt to fully get into the midst of active labor before we start the epidural, just to make sure it doesn't slow down the process of early labor, and we think we're going to try to stay home for the whole early labor portion if at all possible. We'll see how this all goes once there. :) All told, the baby will be born because of me or despite me and my efforts!

I'm in this weird space in the pregnancy right now where I alternate between freaking out that the baby will be here so soon and we're not ready and desperately wanting her here now. I'm still leaning toward the "not ready" part more, and I keep trying to reinforce to myself that we have time. 10 weeks or a bit less of time really. Time. But, the planner in me looks at all the t's yet to be crossed and i's yet to be dotted and hopes that we're preparing as well as we should be. ugh.

In other news, baby shower invites have gone out and rsvp's have started coming in. The shower's Jan 11th at my mother-in-law's house, and I just can't wait to see all of my closest girlfriends together again. I had the feeling that it would never happen again after the wedding, and I guess I just wasn't thinking far enough in advance to this circumstance :) Leta will have the most wonderful women in her life and she doesn't even know it!

We're quickly approaching Christmas - the last Christmas of our lives without a child. Everything is about to change so drastically. It's crazy. A good thing, but incomprehensible fully till experienced at best.

On to the 30's!

28 weeks

This has been a busy week for both me and Leta. She's growing by leaps and bounds at this point, and all of that growth is absolutely draining me of energy. I'm so sluggish (welcome back first trimester), I can't even begin to explain. My tummy's getting bigger and bigger at this point too, and she moves constantly. It now feels like massage rollers from the inside out and I can feel distinct little baby parts. It's pretty cool.

I had the infamous glucose test this week. I had to fast for 12 hours and then drink this orange flavored drink, which really wasn't too bad. I was expecting it to be much worse than it turned out to be. I had 4 viles of blood drawn and I get my results tomorrow, supposedly. The doctor checked Leta out and said she seems to be head down already. Hopefully he's right. She's still got lots of time to move if she needs to, but I'd rather have one less thing to worry about. Her heart is healthy and strong and she's measuring just right. I've managed to gain some weight this past month as well, so he was really happy about that. I've put on 13 lbs total so far, and I'm pretty happy with the slow and steady weight gain. People can finally tell that I'm pregnant now, which has made me feel a bit better. I don't feel like I look like a stumpy fat girl walking around anymore.

TJ and I have our childbirth class on Saturday, which should be interesting. I've been reading my breast feeding book in the meantime, trying to prepare for what that will entail. I'm definitely game, and I hope it goes well. The invitations for the baby shower have gone out, so I'm told :) My lovely lady friends have been fast at work planning everything and I'm pretty excited to see what they've come up with. Soon soon!

We still like to party...

Oh, Leta, your mom and dad are such dorks...



But, we have a lot of fun! Last night, despite feeling extremely exhausted, I dragged myself to a friend's b-day moustache party with TJ - and am I glad I did! We had so much fun, and I actually stayed out after midnight which is something of a bygone era at this point. I was about this close to staying home and having TJ go solo when I realized that in 3 months, the ability for the two of us to run out for a few hours to a party downtown will be a joke. I chomped on an apple, put on some mascara and donned a lovely "movie-star" moustache (that's what the packaging called it). We had a blast.

Of course, not one to leave my daughter out of the mix, I made sure Leta had some moustache fun too. God I wish that we hadn't already had our Christmas cards made...

27 weeks

She broke me. It's over. This child has gotten so flippin' big over the past week, that I absolutely crumbled and succumbed to the one thing I've been DREADING. I bought - - - (dramatic pause -maybe dramatic music as well), maternity jeans. Freaking stretchy pants. UGH!!!!!!! I can still fit into 2 pairs of my pants - one delightfully shown in the pictures from week 26 and one pair of jeans. The jeans fit because they are so low rise - however, the downside is that they are so low rise that I spend most of the day trying to pull them up so as to not torture others with the sight of my pregnant lady butt crack. These particular jeans are also too long. So long that I can't wear shoes in the chilly weather we've been having, and, in addition, not nice enough to wear "out" - that is if we make it "out". So, long story short, TJ and I found ourselves in a maternity store (yes, my husband is that great that he went with me!), and I tried on said maternity jeans, and was so overcome with how freaking comfortable they were, I bought them immediately.

People, I have maternity wear.

I will say that I made it to the 7 month mark without the need, and - technically- I can still wear my regular clothes. But, it is what it is.

In other news, here is a picture of me REALLY enjoying 1 of the Non-Alcoholic St. Pauli Girl's in my very special coozy that my hubby bought me. We spent all day Sunday watching football, and I got to have a "beer" with TJ while we relaxed after the craziness of Thanksgiving.