Last Post Before Baby!

Wow, so much has happened and I have been sooo bad about recording it! I better do it now before baby comes because I'm sure I'll be falling behind way worse once she arrives!
So my last post was on New Year's Day and our focus ever since has been on getting last minute details ready for baby! I'm down to my weekly appointments now so it's nice to know we're getting close but also frustrating and I'm trying to be patient when it feels like I'm not progressing quickly.
The first weekend of January, we had our childbirth prep class and tour of McKay Dee, which definitely made me feel more prepared and Brian kept talking about how much he learned. The instructor had the "empathy belly" for all the husbands to try on and it was pretty funny. I'll have to include a photo of that!

The second weekend, Aneisa took our maternity photos at Big Cottonwood Canyon and I love them!! I will definitely include those as well! She always does such an amazing job and I'm so lucky to have such a talented friend!!
However, that Sunday we had a bump in the road we didn't anticipate. On Saturday night after the photo shoot, I started feeling sick. My lungs felt super congested and I had a little bit of a fever and sore throat. The next morning I woke up feeling like death so Brian took me to the Syracuse Instacare and what a waste of time that was! The doctor there was terrible. He ran a rapid flu test on me and proceeded to "diagnose" me without doing a dang thing. He told me I had the same thing as everyone else but that since I got the flu shot since I'm pregnant, my test would come back negative and there was nothing he was going to do for me. He wouldn't prescribe me the only thing I can take pregnant, Tamaflu, because he was "looking out for my wallet." At 6 am the next morning, I was in the emergency room with a fever of 102.1. Because my fever was so high, it was causing baby's heart rate to spike and by 11 AM I was admitted to the hospital overnight so they could monitor her. It took over 12 hours for them to get my fever under control and by that point I was so dehydrated they were pumping liter after liter into me via IV. Not a fun time. On top of that, I wasn't allowed to go back to work until the following Monday because I was highly contagious. Normally I'm the type to clean and organize the entire house when I'm stuck at home too long, but this week I was so exhausted all week all I did was sleep and lay on the couch.
When I went in for my weekly appointment that Friday, I was still so dehydrated I spent another couple hours at the doctor's where they gave me two more liters via IV. Not ideal.

I was able to go back to work the following week luckily and since then my days have consisted of working, relaxing at home, finishing the nursery, washing baby clothes and organizing, and waiting for her to show up! My cute young women from church and fellow YW leaders threw me a surprise baby shower the last week of January and that was so fun!

Baby updates.... January 6 was 34 weeks and baby was the size of a pineapple... 35 weeks made her a canary melon, whatever the heck that is and it was also another Friday the 13th (which we love and are lucky for us since we were married on a Friday the 13th). I don't remember what creative fruit or melon they gave for 36 weeks... 37 she was a winter melon (also what is that...?) and this week at 38 she's the size of Swiss chard.
Honestly I think all these fruits and veggies are lies. For a few weeks I was still having issues with my sciatic nerve but now everything else hurts so much I don't even notice it! I feel like a beached whale all the time, my stomach suffocates me when I sit down, I can't even accidentally roll onto my back in my sleep anymore because it's too painful, and my hips ache when I sleep on one side for too long, so I basically toss and turn constantly now and neither Brian or I get any sleep. The whole "sleep before baby comes" advice is total crap because it's impossible.

At my 36 week appointment I was 1/2 cm dilated and 60% effaced, and I told myself I wasn't going to have them check me anymore because it's a no win situation. However, after having terrible cramps and abdominal pain all week, at my 38 week appointment they asked to check me and I let them.... 100% effaced but still only dilated 1/2 cm. Of course I left disappointed like I knew I would because I wasn't any farther dilated, but even if they had said I was I would have had false hope expecting her to be coming any minute.

I went back to work today and the pain and cramps keep getting worse. I know at this point there's nothing I can do but wait, but it would sure be great if this baby would be an overachiever like her mom and show up a few weeks early!! I'll include pictures here, cross your fingers that baby will makes her arrival soon!!! :)

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Kissing 2016 Goodbye

As I sit here in my pajamas watching Brian play on his new Xbox One, I'm thinking about how awesome 2016 was. So many people have had negative experiences this year, and while not every day was a walk in the park for us, we've had it pretty darn easy and we've been blessed in so many ways. Last night we rang in the New Year at our house with great friends, great food, and hilarious games. Brian and I woke up early this morning, went to church (hallelujah we have 9 am church this year), got to attend the farewell of one of my young women before she heads to the Florida Tallahassee Mission, took a nap, and now I'm writing this. It's been a pleasant and relaxing day, and what I hope to be a sign that 2017 will be the same way. I feel guilty that I don't always wake up thinking about all the ways I have been blessed. I would like to say I would make it a New Years Resolution but no one ever keeps those, so I think I will skip that plan and just try to be more grateful for what I have.

Quick recap on December... For months and months, my stepmom and I had a plan for me to fly back to Maryland to surprise my dad for his birthday. It was a special one (but I'll forgo giving away his age here) and I bought my plane tickets back in August. We successfully pulled it off and my dad had no suspicions! I flew home December 1 and got to stay through the weekend before heading home Sunday. Mary picked me up at the airport, we did some shopping, and then she dropped me off at the restaurant and I hid at the bar until they were seated and I made my appearance. Not only did I have some time to finish last minute Christmas shopping and not have to lug it all with me at Christmas, but I also got to spend a day with my mom. Maybe it's the pregnancy hormones or maybe it's me getting older and finally starting to appreciate my parents a fraction of the amount they deserve, but this trip and Christmas time I was a wreck leaving the east coast. It's never bothered me this much before being so far from family, but maybe that's what it took for me to finally appreciate how blessed I am to have the wonderful parents and family I have. They are such a wonderful support system to Brian and I and I don't know where we would be without them!

Anyway, off topic. The next weekend we had our ward Christmas breakfast and I had the opportunity to go through the Ogden temple with one of my young women (mentioned previously, and our 2nd counselor in YW with me's daughter) before she heads off on her mission. I'm grateful to all the friends we've made over the last year in our ward, especially my fellow young women leaders. They are such a support and inspiration to me and they teach me so much. It was a great time to go through the temple and focus on Jesus' life during this holiday season.

On the 14th we had our last baby appointment. Baby girl is measuring where she should be, she constantly kicks and wiggles, and she likes to play chicken (as I call it, if she knows someone's hand is on my belly, she immediately stops moving). This week I was having spontaneous fevers again and the doctor had me monitoring it closely. They ran scans and tests and everything came back normal, so we're not sure what was happening. I'm trying not to be a paranoid first time mom and overall I've been blessed with a super mild pregnancy and not many issues. Ever since I've been feeling fine, but I have my next appointment this week so it'll be nice to have a follow up and make sure everything is still good!

The Saturday before Christmas Eve we had the annual Baldwin family Christmas party, and they decided to have it at the Syracuse Rush Aquatic Center again. No swimming for me this year, we didn't need the children calling out the beached whale! But it was nice to see everyone and celebrate the season nonetheless.

The week before Christmas was SUPER busy and somehow I managed not to lose it or forget to do anything important. Brian's big surprise this year came from his amazing friends. 4 of them wanted to team up with me and pitch in to get him an Xbox One. He's literally been bugging me to get one since before we got married (he tried putting it on our wedding registry...). So on Monday the 19th, I planned a big enchilada dinner and had all his friends randomly show up and surprise him. I don't think I've ever seen him so excited and it was nice he had a few days to play before we left on our trip!

Tuesday I had mutual for young women's and Wednesday Brian had ward mission visits, but Thursday we got to celebrate Christmas with a Kirk and Lindy. We went out to dinner and then exchanged presents at our house! We flew out on Friday afternoon back to the east coast and had a smooth flight. We even arrived half an hour early! Spending Christmas at home was so great and my grandma from Florida came into town at my dad's for the week so we got to see them and lots of family! After half the Christmas day in Maryland we packed up and headed to my mom and stepdad's in West Virginia. We were there until the 28th and flew back to Utah on the 29th. While in WV, my mom threw me a baby shower with friends and family from back home and it was amazing! Baby B is beyond spoiled and between the shower and Christmas, we came home with twice as many bags and suitcases as we left with. (*Side note: thank gosh we flew Southwest or our baggage alone would have cost us $200).

Baby Updates:

That Christmas trip marked our last trip pre-baby! The day after we got home marked 33 weeks and baby has grown to the size of a honeydew melon (Brian's favorite). She kicks and wiggles all the time and I can tell she's running out of room because my stomach is constantly moving now and you can see it 24/7 through my clothes. She's most active when I lay down flat at night, but luckily I haven't had too much trouble sleeping yet. People have started asking more and more when I'm due.. You know when a random person at the grocery store has the courage to ask I must look like I'm getting close to popping. My feet are always swollen now and I feel like I rotate between 3 pairs of shoes... All my cute winter boots are mocking me from my closet because I can't fit them on my feet. My back hurts constantly now, so much so that I think I've stopped noticing it because it's just the norm.

When we got home from our trip and I started organizing, I realized just how many things I don't have done. I've kept telling myself I had so much time and I made some excuses based on the fact I knew we would be having another baby shower at Christmas, but now I have no excuses and I've basically spent the last 3 days in the nursery. I would say the nesting phase is finally hitting but anyone who knows me knows it's just the planner in me coming out. Brian has been such a good sport about it though. He spent two hours in Target with me yesterday letting me be indecisive, is always ready to hang or change anything, and is always upbeat, happy, and excited. He's going to be such a great dad!

Because I'm the OCD person that I am, I'm not posting any nursery pictures until it's done, but I will include some of the Christmas and baby shower photos I have! When I get more of the decorations and all the cute stuff my mom made, I'll have to try and remember to add those too!

One last note: because I love the idea of goals and projects with every new year, I did set a goal to be better financially in 2017. Even with Brian in school, with as hard as he works we make a pretty great living for ourselves as young as we are. But there's always room to be better. Brian is a much more frugal and money conscientious person than I am, and it's no secret I'm the big spender in the family. With the baby coming this year and all the other big life plans we have, I've been doing a lot of reading (and Pinteresting) about budgeting. We came across an app called GoodBudget which allows you to have one username that everyone can sign into, you create your envelopes with a certain amount of money for each category, and you just add your spending to it every time you make a purchase. It is by far the easiest, most user-friendly, and detailed app I've come across. It's already helped us to see where all our money is going and adjust our spending (we spend way more in groceries and gas than I thought). If anyone is interested in managing your money better, I highly recommend this app!

I know the next month and a half is going to fly by and baby will be here and we are so excited!! 2017 is going to be the best one yet for sure. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and wonderful New Year with family and friends!

*Future best friends*

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Normal Life These Days & Baby: Weeks 16 & 17

Week 16: Baby is the size of an avocado!

Baby news... This week has been interesting. I have a day where I feel wonderful and then the next I'm totally exhausted. The nausea hasn't been bad at all and I'm able to eat more, even though my diet cannot be considered healthy in any way. I've decided I don't care how much weight I gain for this pregnancy and I'll take it as it comes. The first one is a learning process anyway, right?

I forgot to take a picture this week because on Sundays (when I usually take photos because I'm actually dressed up and looking semi-professional for church) I was dying and exhausted and didn't make it out of bed until 4 pm. Probably because I attempted to do too many things the following day. But I was highly pleased with our Labor Day weekend project of painting cabinets! Originally we were just going to do the kitchen cabinets but then I convinced Brian to do the bathroom cabinets as well, since the project wasn't as time consuming as we originally feared. 

I did so much research trying to decide what the best way to paint them would be.. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with the cabinets, in fact they were in almost perfect condition, but the problem was the color. When we bought our house and ripped out the disgusting carpet and linoleum in the downstairs and replaced it with our beautiful dark hardwood flooring,the contrast between the light oak cabinets and the dark floors drove me insane... because I'm OCD like that.

I covered for a co-worker and worked all day Saturday, so when I got off work on the 3rd, Brian and I met at Home Depot and got the supplies and our paint selection! I had looked at so many different options for milk paint vs. sanding and painting vs. deglossing and painting, etc. After talking with a guy about what he's seen work best for people, we opted for the deglossing and painting, which worked out amazingly! Because you're supposed to paint within a certain number of hours after stripping the cabinets, we wound up taking all the cabinet doors off, stripping the base and fronts and backs of cabinets, and painting everything with once coat Saturday night. We got everything finished up on Monday (Labor Day), including both bathroom cabinets which took probably 20 minutes each total. I am SO happy with how they turned out! I'll have to post before and after photos here.. 

Week 17: Baby is the size of a turnip! (Which what size is that really? Turnips are all shapes and sizes.... but whatever)

This week has been so much better. I've still been tired, but it's been more manageable. I taught Young Women's on Sunday and we had a birthday party for Grandpa Daylong on Monday. AND I remembered to take a picture. Saturday I even got a little motivation to do some crafting for Halloween and I re-potted some festive autumn mums to decorate the porch. I cannot wait until it starts getting cold and I can decorate for fall and Halloween! I am soooo excited for colder weather, probably because being pregnant and sick during the summer was a terrible idea. Never again if I have control over it.

Let's see what else has been going on... Brian is back in school finally starting his last year. So that also means he's back to working 2 jobs: his internship and the insurance office. It's nice that they wanted to keep him on at his internship and he actually added another position with them in their finance department on top of the contracts work he already does. Brian being Brian is still determined to work full-time with them on top of school and doing the health insurance for the office, so he puts in 12-13 hour days in SLC on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Sometimes it's rough not seeing him as much but I work late on Wednesdays anyway so it's manageable. 

Every week I try to organize the garage and spare bedroom more and more so we can combine the office stuff into that room when we start planning the nursery! Our crib came in the mail and I've ordered the glider, so I'm getting so excited, but I haven't actually cleared out what will be the nursery... I'll start adding photos once that happens.

In even more exciting news.... WE FOUND OUT BABY'S GENDER!

On Wednesday, I had a GREAT day. First I had a dentist appointment and was told I still don't have a cavity, which I'm extremely proud of ;)

But then we had our baby appointment! At first, our doctor wasn't going to do an ultrasound, for the first time since we've started going there. but I had to know.... especially since we had a family BBQ planned for Friday! So we were able to hang out for an additional 20 minutes after our appointment and find out! I'm not going to lie, it was stressful planning the gender reveal party!

First, we waited until Wednesday to buy all the food in case we didn't find out and had to change the date of the party. I work Wednesdays and Thursdays evening shifts, so I was up early every morning and up late every evening making food and getting ready.

Luckily I have the best mother-in-law and best friend who did SO MUCH to set up for the party and have all the props. Sabra made the cutest bows and mustaches on pins so everyone could "wear their guess," we had a photo booth, paint balloon popping (with blue and pink paint), and then the big reveal! We put confetti in black polka dot balloons and let them go and people shot them with BB guns! Which then led to blowing up multiple balloons and letting everyone shoot them with the guns.

We will be revealing on social media tomorrow Baby B's gender, so stay tuned!

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Baby Baldwin: Weeks 14 & 15

 

Week 14

Baby is the size of a LEMON!

 

This week was eventful! We had a family reunion for Brian's mom's side of the family and we all went camping up at Memorial Park from Thursday-Saturday.

Camping this time was much more enjoyable than Girl's Camp and Moab! Maybe because our campsite was shady with the river flowing past it, and we spent all day on Friday at Pineview in the water, but it was much more relaxing and I definitely felt less nauseous... except for Friday afternoon when I got a little overheated. Overall, I think the weekend was good, but apparently my stomach isn't a fan of the canyon roads anymore because on our way home, Brian had to pull over a block from our house because I couldn't wait to throw up my lunch. Oh well, it was a valiant attempt.

I can't believe in just a few short weeks we'll be finding out if this baby is a boy or girl!

I think that's what we're most excited about. It's so funny to listen to Brian talk about girl's names he likes because he's so critical of them. But then again so am I, so I have no room to talk! :)

I'm still exhausted all the time and there's been many nights where I just come home and fall asleep by 5:30 and sleep until the next morning... Poor Brian.

I'm excited to have more strength and energy!

 

Week 15

 

Baby is the size of a NAVEL ORANGE!

I was so proud of myself this weekend because I regained some of my former social life and actually made it a whole Saturday without a nap, AND I went to Maegan's baby shower and Jordan's bridal shower.... IN THE SAME DAY! (It's the little things once you're preggo!)

It's official. Florida has been canned. But in the long run it was probably a blessing in disguise because I was able to put all the money towards our flights home for Christmas, ultimately saving us a lot of money on travel this year.

*Side note: Southwest Airlines is the best. No change or cancellation fees, even their cheap flights can be cancelled and the funds used for future travel, and they're usually the cheapest and you don't have to pay for baggage. Can you tell I'm partial? ;) *

So, now our flights for Christmas are taken care of and I am definitely less of a worrywart!

This week I've been feeling a lot better. I'm still really tired but not to the extent that I was between weeks 10-13. I've minimized the throwing up to a couple times a week instead of a few times a day, and I'm looking at the light at the end of the tunnel!

I've officially started my Baby List registry because not having things more organized has been driving me nuts, and I have almost all the nursery furniture picked out!

I feel like we have so much going on and so many things in the works but nothing else is concrete yet, so I don't want to spill any of it!

We're still looking forward to finding out Baby Baldwin's gender the most, and we've started planning the gender reveal party :) Many thanks to Sabra and Lindy who I know will do all the work and make it incredible, even if it is supposed to be a casual BBQ haha.

I think that's all the updates I have... if I'm forgetting things I'll blame pregnancy.

The photo above was taken on Sunday, August 28. If I take the weekly pictures on Sundays, I'm already dressed up and forget less often. But after Brian took this photo I remember thinking "OH MY GOSH I DEFINITELY LOOK PREGNANT NOW!'

Luckily, (or unluckily?) as of yesterday I've only gained 1 lb. since my 12 week baby appointment.

I'll just keep reminding myself of that! 

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