baby update: 38 weeks.

How far along:  38 weeks (...and 2 days)

How big is the baby: Baby Simon is the size of a pumpkin. By both our midwives guesstimates (which I don't trust either), he is right around 8 lbs now and will make a delivery of somewhere around 9.3 lbs. He is also all limbs, so we will have a tall boy (Zag basketball, anyone?)

Total weight gain/loss: Holding steady.

Maternity clothes: I am still wearing a mix of maternity clothes and non-maternity clothes. This weekend with the labor day sales I went out and bought myself new, non-maternity clothes that I will be so excited to put on in a few weeks!

Stretch marks: I have finally hit the mark where I am getting a few stretch marks on the underside of my belly but Jim, the most caring husband, ordered me Frank (www.frankbody.com) so I can start getting rid of them now.

Sleep: 4:15 seems to be my new wake up time. I still get in a solid 6 hours but that seems to be as much as my body wants to give into. A friend sent me a Snoogle maternity pillow so my sleep is A LOT more comfortable (Jim may be jealous of it).

Exercise: I've been able to walk more (accidentally up the side of a mountain this weekend) and did some Pilates. 

Best moment last week: My friend, Hope, and I have pretty much gone through our whole pregnancy together, asking questions to each other and comparing notes. She has been one huge, fabulous support system for me. Last week she had her little baby boy, Maxwell. I seriously felt like I just had a kiddo, too! I am so over the moon happy for her and her husband.

My best personal moment last week? I don't think there are huge moments that stick out. I think that I just love when it's the end of the night and we're watching Grey's before bed and Jim has his hand on my belly and Baby Simon is kicking away (he loves to move between 8-9pm). Or I love when Jim calls midday and asks how I am AND how "our boy" is. It's beautiful how love starts before you ever meet your little one face-to-face.

Also, my midwife forced me to have a conversation with my mother about how her labors were. I would never ask my mom these kind of questions because I'm a pretty tight lipped person when it comes to anything too personal or health-related. It was interesting to know that all her kiddos labors were about 11 hours long, they never dropped before she gave birth, and I was a chunker at 9 lbs 6 oz (aka baby Simon will be big). It was good to give me some perspective on what to expect!

Movement: He's slowed down over the weekend but when he's moving in there it is much stronger than it has been. Just praying for the day he moves away from my ribs.

Food cravings/aversions: I was craving sweets for a very, VERY long time. Berries and fruit (and chocolate) by the handfuls but now it seems like I am craving salty foods, specifically chips. Thankfully we don't keep snack foods in our house and we will not be starting now so I just ignore those cravings.

Other symptoms: I get sick to my stomach often at night but since it's night, I roll over and ignore it. By the morning usually it has passed and if not then I generally just sleep a little longer until it does.

Gender: Baby boy… although we talk about what if it's a girl. This child will have no name and all boys clothes (okay, well her name would be Rudy in my head, I would just have to guilt Jim into it.) We have had 4 confirmations on it being a boy so I'm sure we're good here. I guess when you have nothing else to worry about these are the silly things that creep in.

Labor signs:  I've got a whole lot of nothing. This kiddo needs to make an appearance for Aunt Harper and my parents aka he has until the 19. I'm not anxious in the least for him to get here which is good because my midwives make it sound like he will be baking past his due date, for sure.

Belly button: Still not an outie…but not really an innie.

Weddings rings: Now that the weather has cooled, my rings are just fine.

What I miss: Running. Laying on my stomach. And for some reason this week I really want a beer. I walked by a brewery the other day and it smelled so, so good. Funny thing is I RARELY drink a beer.

What I am looking forward to: I am looking forward to the baby being here and family visiting. I keep putting off a few small things that need to get done before baby comes because I'm nervous that if I complete the whole list then maybe I will get impatient but the bags are packed and the car seat is in and those are the most important things.

Weekly Wisdom:  Build a support system of moms or moms-to-be to ask the "embarrassing" questions to. I am a very private person so it has been really important to me to have a few girlfriends who I can ask the questions I would never dream of asking ANYONE out loud. I think that this is a key not just in these pregnancy situations but in life in general.

baby update: 36 weeks.

How far along: 36 weeks

How big is the baby: P is the size of a large Cantaloupe, or around 6 pounds. 

Total weight gain/loss: I am officially up 28 pounds. I can still see my toes and miraculous can still shave my legs and paint my toe nails. Both exciting feats when I look down at the big bump that stands between me and my toes. 

Maternity clothes: Even some of my maternity clothes are having trouble covering the bump at this point. I have to say the most frustrating thing about my pregnancy is getting dressed. I don't have a lot to choose from and I definitely don't have anything that makes me feel "beautiful", mostly just like a whale. I have shed many tears over this. 

Stretch marks: Nope! And I still have an innie belly button--I was very freaked out about getting an outie from the beginning. 

Sleep: I had been sleeping 9 hours a night without interruption but the last few days I've only slept about 6. So although I don't have insomnia, I feel like I am not sleeping in as long of stretches. 

Excercise: Well...this one time last week I got off the couch. That's honestly what it feels like but I can barely make it from the bed to the bathroom my muscles are in so much pain so no, nothing more than maybe walking around the neighborhood at night. I know I'm going to be thankful for this Relaxin at some point but it's not right now. 

Best moment last week: I have an amazing support system of girlfriends who are were there to answer all my questions as the last week was a semi-tough one. Tomorrow starts a new week and so I'm going to hit the reset and just do as much as I can when I feel like I can. I go to the midwife on Tuesday and can't wait to hear the little ones heart beat, hopefully for one of the last times while he is still baking. 

Movement: We had good news at our last midwife appointment that baby P has moved into the position that he needs to be. Mostly I'm still feeling his movements through his hips that are going into my ribs, a few kicks on the opposite side and when his arms or head move at all, it feels like he is poking my bladder with his elbow. The sharp pains to the bladder are not my favorite but good to know he's there. 

Food cravings/aversions: m&ms--we keep a bag in the fridge now. also, cannellini beans and Campbell's tomato soup. 

Other symptoms: My whole lower body from my belly button to mid-thigh is in pain pretty much always. It's worst when I've been sitting or sleeping. It's very difficult to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The occasional heartburn, headache and nausea. Yay. 

Gender: Boy

Labor signs:  My body is definitely in beast mode preparing. I have left out lots of unlady-like details for your reading pleasure. I find even with Jim I am very vague about what "sick" and "pain" entails. I am very 1950s when it comes to sharing anything physical or medical, I have to keep a little mystery, right? 

Belly button: Innie! 

Weddings rings: Still fitting besides on days when it's 100+. 

What I miss: Laying on my stomach to read. Running. Champagne. Cigars (it is sweet that Jim "sneaks" his cigars while he does yard work so I don't have to feel like I'm missing out). 

What I am looking forward to: hearing his little heartbeat this week and him arriving soon. P arriving means my family will soon arrive as well!

Weekly Wisdom:  Mila Kunis did a skit a while back on the Jimmy Kimmel show where she went off on the phrase "we are pregnant" and how the guy is most definitely pregnant. I say this all the time to Jim. The truth is, I had 34 weeks of the most wonderful, easy, carefree pregnancy all for it to come to a screeching halt this week. It has been a difficult week where anything that can make me uncomfortable medically has happened. On top of it, I am just an emotional wreck every time I have to look in the mirror and get dressed knowing that I look blah and that I'm almost back up to my pre-workout weight. 

My point being, yes, Jim is not going through all these physical and mental changes but he is the one who makes dinner and does the dishes when I can imagine making it through the day, he picks up my mid-day phone calls and talks me down when I'm crying on the couch over basically nothing, he's the one who tucks me into bed for a nap or encourages me to just stop what I'm doing and take a bubble bath, he's the one who has to feel helpless when I can't seem to find any relief from pain. 

Sure, "we" aren't technically pregnant, but we're absolutely in this together. I think sometimes I forget to say that outloud and to thank him and I think all baby's fathers deserve at least that much, because I assume it can't be easy. So thank you, Simon. 

be curious, not judgmental.

"Be curious, not judgmental." -Walt Whitman

I remember a conversation between my sister and several of my close friends. The conversation was over a round of G&T's at a bar that hasn't existed in several years. My friends were curious about Sex between Lesbians and exactly how it "worked". None of us had experienced an open dialogue on the topic in our small hometowns (and this was still years before Cosmo would do an awful job of explaining it). 

I turned away from this conversation quickly to find some of our guy friends at the pool table. It wasn't because I wasn't interested, or because one of my siblings was about to talk about their sex life (my family is more than open with our personal lives), but rather because I had chosen to judge the topic before it even began. 

You see, I was raised in a church where judgment came before love. A church where prayer chains were nothing more than gossip circles. A church where we were taught "hate the sin and not the sinner" but were not taught how such a concept could actually be walked out in real life. I spent years turning away from conversations because I knew the only additions I would have were eye rolls or sighs of disgust. Faith to me was a relationship. A relationship that had an awful lot of "do nots" but a God who was their to catch you when you accidentally committed one of these "do nots". 

There is a point, usually in our late teens are early twenties where we lose the faith of a child and start to search all over again. I didn't want my faith to just be something I had because I was taught to. Several years later, I had a renewed faith. It had the same basis as the one in the church where I was raised but with the simple realization that I believe in a God whose name is Love. This single realization opened my eyes to the fact that if I judge than I cannot love.  One of my favorite quotes is by Francis Chan. He says "do you know that nothing you do in this life will ever matter, unless it is about loving God and loving the people he made?" This had become the model of my relationship with Christ and with the world as His light. That does not mean that overnight my Conservative social views evaporated.

The night gay marriage was passed in New York State I was out with a group of my sister's friends while she was out of town. I'm not sure why I found myself out with this particular group. I can't say that I was close to any of them. There was an excited energy that flowed through the group and instantly a feeling of celebration and camaraderie in the whole building. Even in 2011, long after I had changed my views of God in my life, I still couldn't process gay marriage as a victory. I didn't understand how that could possibly contribute to restoring positive values in our country. What I did understand at that moment is the massive significance that it held for my sister and many of her LGBT friends. But what exactly was that significance? 

What a law leaves out is the emotion of a situation. What a law can't change is people's perspective. What a law can't wash out is a stigma. What a law can't take away is my mother's grimace when she sees my sister kiss a girl. What a law can't stop is hate preaching in churches. What a law can't do is make it any easier for a person to "come out" to their loved ones. What a law can't do is teach parents to not pass on prejudice to their children. It's a start. It's a vague shadow of equality. At the end of the day, this law means nothing, if people aren't willing to put aside their judgements in order to stand besides someone they love who decides they will marry their partner? Can you realize that it is possible to keep your morals, your faith, in tact while continuing to support someone in love? 

When we make judgments without making an attempt to understand the person on the other side of any discussion, we lose the ability to love. We lose the ability to have compassion. Without love and compassion, at least in my life, it is impossible to find true joy. Opinions, Ideas, Differences--they are what make the world so beautifully and wonderfully interesting. I will never take my eyes from the morals and beliefs that I have, and I wouldn't expect someone on the other side of a debate to magically change theirs, but maybe I can help them love a little more and judge a little less. 

In each of us there should be a blaze of love and curiosity. 

In each of us there should be a spark of understanding.

If not, I'm afraid we may just be burning in a fire of ignorance and intolerance.

baby update: 31 weeks.

Pre-Pregnancy 

   (Well, technically a few weeks post pregnant)

                                                            31 weeks

How far along: 31 weeks

How big is the baby: P is the size of a pineapple. We had 3D sonograms done 2 weeks ago and he was almost 3 pounds.

Total weight gain/loss: I am officially up 25 pounds. A friend told me that my weight is distributed amazingly…or as me and Jim say my thighs and butt are stealing some weight from my baby bump.

I have finally let go of really caring about this weight gain number because I've lost it all once, I can do it again. I've perfected what makes my body it's absolute best--will I love cutting out carbs again? No, but I know I can and that I loved it when I did it for almost a year prior.

Maternity clothes: I’m still avoiding this besides in pants and even then I have some pairs that aren't. I'll give in to the maternity clothes some day but right now just wearing a size up when I can (Lululemon and Pierce Apparel have been the most comfortable Godsend.)

Stretch marks: Nope! Thank God for slow and steady weight gain.

Sleep: I have had a few days this week where my sleep was try disrupted but I don't feel like I normal would when I can't sleep. Instead I am wide awake at 3 am reading and full of energy, then after about twenty minutes I drift back off. 

Exercise: Last week I couldn't get enough of the gym. This week it's been a little more difficult waking up early to get there before Jim leaves for work but I've done yoga or pilates every day. 

Best moment last week: Being done with work and taking it slow. I'm so thankful I had two weeks to pack up the house because rather than being overwhelmed I just did an hour or two a day.

Movement: P is facing towards my spine and breech at the moment so I feel lots of movement where his head and arms are but no kicks that I feel. Jim feels a lot of movement that feel like kicks in the early morning--I call it Daddy and P time because I'm still sleeping away.

Food cravings/aversions: I have no real cravings or aversions. I wanted gummy bears the other night…much less satisfying in my stomach than in my head.

Other symptoms: I think we've finally hit the emotional part. I'm not a very emotional person so the fact that I've cried this week is odd especially since it was over the fact that I couldn't find the perfect muslin swaddle. 

Gender: Boy

Labor signs:  None. It was a good time at the Doctors yesterday being quizzed on what to do encase they pop-up. Everyone can just pray with me that the next 12 days are uneventful baby days and beautiful adventure days.

Belly button: Still avoiding the outie. Thank. God.

Weddings rings: Now that it's not as hot and humid on they slide on just fine. I only wear one of my three rings when I workout because I'm scared they'll swell on.

What I miss: Brie, Cigars, RUNNING, and getting a massage where they can actually apply pressure to my lower back.

What I am looking forward to: I cannot wait to get to Spokane and set up the nursery. We have already found the furniture we like but are waiting to order it until we get there. I know in reality I have plenty of time but feel rushed.

Weekly Wisdom:  I think I've finally realized you really have to give your body what it wants. Some days I crave working out and then other days I feel like sleeping in until 9:30. I've been stubborn about slowing down but I think I've finally given in to the fact that some days I can bike 10 miles and other days the coffee shop is the furthest walk I'm taking.

how to change negative self-talk.

Our worst enemies don't talk about us the way we talk to ourselves. You know, that inner dialogue which constantly seems to be going on in our head. It feeds on putting us down and strengthening our insecurities and doubts. They say that when you're in a toxic relationship it is a helpful exercise to write down the mean things you say to each other. Until you really see it on paper you don't realize just how mean-spirited some of the things you say to one another are. But what about doing this for the things that we say to ourselves?

I think we would find that the thing we would never say to our best friend if she asked us how she looked in this dress, or if she asked about a situation at work, is exactly the thing that we are saying to ourselves. I had a friend recently who was seeing a boy for several months and when he decided to cut it off he said simply that the reason was because "he didn't like her". This sounded so awful to me. Where was the sugar-coating that we put on these types of emotional situations. Who was he to not even take her feelings and self-esteem into account? Yet, how many times have you found yourself in the midst of a crowd, looking and comparing yourself to someone else and said the exact same harsh thing about "not liking" something about yourself? If we realized the power that this little voice in our heads had over us, we would realize how important it is to stop negative self-talk. Our brains are wired to see and think about negatives before positives (come on, people, you've seen your Facebook feeds). Our job is to rewire our brain to talk to and think about ourselves in a more positive way.

What makes it even more difficult to leave these voices behind is the information that is directed at women these days seems determined to make us feel that our lives are somehow lacking. We are constantly made to feel that we should be prettier, thinner, sexier, more successful, make more money, be better moms, better wives, better lovers... Though often wrapped in a "You go, girl!" message, the subtext is clear: We should feel bad because we have fallen short in so many ways from some imagined ideal - we have tummies, not abs; we are not trying hard enough because we are not occupying a corner office. I read a stack of women's health magazines each month and what I've found is there is a fine line between stories having an inspiring tone and having a judgmental tone. Sometimes I walk away thinking that I learned some new tips and other times I feel like I'm a bad person if I don't follow those tips because they are so simple. The phrase that gets me in any article, usually about a celebrity, is "having it all". Are you lacking because you don't have the exact same 4-unit family, fanatical stability, rock hard abs, and Gucci-filled closet as the person next door? Have we not passed by the age of keeping up with the Joneses?

It took me twenty-five years to learn to redirect my negative self-talk. It was not a magical transformation and I am certainly nowhere near perfect with it. I don't think it had anything to do with maturity or reading posts like this that made me more aware of the issue at hand. It was a process of forgetting about people's expectations of what I should do and start doing things that I truly loved and boasted my self-confidence. I direct a lot of my positive self-talk from my head to social media and that isn't to boost my ego but because I truly am proud of myself and my accomplishments. I spew them out in hope that someone else will realize that they can feel confident if they are doing something they love, not just fitness wise, but in their careers, their spare time, and with their families. When you find a passion that day in and day out satisfies you, that is when the switch in your head will be flipped from the negative to positive.

The most important thing we can do is decide how we define success. It will be different for each of us, according to our own values and goals (and not those imposed upon us by society). My two "big" goals that I have before I turn 30 are to start a modest vegetable farm with a little roadside stand and to run my first ultramarathon. I'm sure to most people those are beautiful ambitions but will never get me wealth, fortunes or fame. I decided long ago that those three things don't interest me and neither does the fleeting idea of happiness, but rather, I'm looking for fulfillment so that I can be the best version of me and by extension be in a position to help others. When you can identify your main values and motives, you can start to teach your inner voice to talk positively about where you are on your own ladder of success.

So I suggest, you start today by sending yourself a positive inner massage, or mantra. It is the truest sentence you will tell yourself and one that you can tell yourself every day when a negative thought pops into your head. I have several but a big one has always been, "I don't want to live a life, I want to live an adventure." As I watch friends go to school to be doctors and lawyers or others excel in their positions at work, it's my reminder that I'm a nanny because I want to go home and not think about work or constantly be checking my phone for work e-mails. It's my reminder as friends invest in homes, that I am not in that boat because I don't want to be tied down to one place right now. So for whatever situation it is that you hear that little voice filling your head with negativity, find your own message to slowly change that voice. And whatever you do don't let your constant critic get in the way of pursuing your version of success.

a public love letter.

I've always believed that I was one of those people whose life was just harder than other people's. While I watched everyone else check things off their to-do lists of success I was struggling with what seemed like every detail of my fairly simple life. I always felt like there was no path of least resistance designed for me and it was really a matter of just getting through most days with any will to make forward motion. I think that in some ways it was true that I was making my life difficult until I found you.

It was hard for me not to be self-conscious until I found myself in a park with you, throwing water balloons around and smiling for what felt like the first time in ages. It was hard for me to give a description of who I was to someone new without feeling like I had something that I had to be ashamed of because of all I hadn't accomplished. But then you asked, I answered and I felt like my path had led me right where I was supposed to be.

It was hard for me to not dive in and get ahead of myself then you flew across the country and left me for months. It's hard for me to be patient but rather than feeling like you had left me, I patiently waited. I looked forward to pay phone calls where I understood every third word the way most people look forward to dates and first kisses. I think we had fit more into the three weeks before you left than any normal couple would fit into the two months that you were gone. It was hard to be away from you when I should have just been getting to know you--but I liked that the distance meant we had to get to know each other above all the glam and glitz of trying to impress each other with a shell of who we really were. We had to learn to communicate and talk about only those things which were substantial in the few words that we had over the phone or on a piece of paper.

It was hard for me to start anything and feel like it's actually on a clean slate. I held on to memories and hurts like as though they were the present moment. I felt like one of those cheap dollar store chalkboards that never actually erases completely. The ones that you always see the answer of the student who used it in the class before you. What you taught me is that it's okay to have all those marks but that we can make them a part of a bigger, beautiful picture. With you it was easy to see that they were just the faint outline of the life that I was meant to live.

It was hard for me to get attached to people. I thought that needing someone meant that every moment of every day your heart would beat only for them. And although there are moments that I could burst with happiness and love just from your smile across the room, I've learned needing someone meant so much more. It's having a rock. It's having someone who can joke away your crazy and offers a hand when they see you fall. It's being equals and starting where the other one ends. It means having someone who is home. Sure that means that sometimes life is the mundane that I've been running from but you, you've shown me the beauty in the most ordinary moments. You taught me that the most important part of needing someone is being needed in return.

It was hard for me to think that two people could be together without changing for each other. I was always scared of the change and not holding on to the parts of me that I loved. What I've realized is that people shouldn't change FOR each other or as I had come to believe that you both with change but in the same direction. What I learned with you is that each individual changes and when you love that person you support those changes. I don't always see my reflection in you but I see someone who understands and embraces who I was and even more so embraces who I want to be. By understanding each others goals, we've learned how easy it is to appreciate the changes each of us has made over the years and will continue to make.

It was hard for me to ever imagine that I would get married (again). With you the image of a house in the woods laying out on a blanket with a dog and some messy kids having a picnic looked right in my head. It was the picture of the calm in the midst of the storm that is life. I know that whether in person or through e-mail, phone call or text, you would always produce that calm in me. The calm that will get us through the ups and downs of a life that is lived fully.

Mostly, it has always been hard for me to deal with difficulties. I always believed that struggles were something to be kept to yourself with and dealt with in the quiet. Life has decided to hand us plenty of bumps in the road but I'm no longer scared how hard life is. I'm no longer scared of a goal being too big or a problem being too stressful because I know that I have someone next to me to share the burden. Together, we will always find a way to make things just a little bit easier.

week 24: pregnancy and body image.

I always feel bad talking about my pregnancy because I so easily wander to the negatives rather than the positives. So I will start out by saying I have thus far been blessed with the easiest pregnancy ever. I've never thrown up, I have huge stores of energy, I can still work out and I can stay out until at least 12:30 if I really mentally prepare for it. I have wanted to be pregnant more than most things in my life and I am so thankful and blessed to have such an easy go of it when we started trying. I thankfully have a partner who wants to be involved. He reads pregnancy books, gives me a massage every night, and kisses my belly every time he leaves a room we're in. So then what do I have to be negative about, right?  I know this is naive because clearly we have all seen pregnant women before but I did not expect to feel the way I do about my body. Jim often asks me "what did you think was going to happen?" He is right. But the changes happening to my body, and the body of all pregnant women, is a little more than not fitting into my skinny jeans.

As my body has slipped from a place that I am proud of to the place where I'm now back to buying size 12 jeans and XL shirts in order to stay out of maternity clothes, my mind can't exactly wrap itself around what is happening. I know it's more important to be healthy than it is to worry about the weight gain but let's be honest, fitness is a numbers game. Think about it--even when we're not talking about the number on the scale or a pair of pants we are tracking how fast our mile is or how many pounds our deadlift. I don't need numbers to show me my changing body but I haven't come to the place where I find these changes beautiful. I see them as completely utilitarian.

It's hard to explain to anyone, including mothers who love their pregnant body, why it's so bothersome to wake up in the morning and find a shirt that fit in the last wash cycle no longer does. People always talk about the glow and the great boobs.  My boobs have decided to stay the same while my ass seems to be receiving more of the curve than my stomach. The only glow I have is the one that last the four hours after a facial and don't even get me started on the craziness that is my curly hair. I have spent the last 18 months losing all my curve and now they are showing back up but now in unpredictable ways. When I'm eating unhealthy and not working out I know what to expect but letting go of control and surrendering to whatever unpredictable changes occur is one of the most difficult struggles I've ever gone through.

Maybe the problem is that over the last 18 months I have invested too much of my identity in fitness and nutrition. When my body tells me now that I have to spend the extra half an hour in bed rather than going for a morning jog, I find my heart breaking slightly. (On the opposite side, after not eating carbs for almost a year, when my body is begging for pasta, I probably give in a little too easily.) I will be running my first 5k with this little guy next month and I might find that key for me. To get back to some sense of normal physical activity beyond a few miles on the treadmill to give me a taste of the runners high I so love to hate. To train for a goal, no matter how short.

I have no answers on how to change my mental attitude. I can tell myself I am growing a human, that it's not about me, or to just to get over myself but I haven't been able to cross that mental plane yet. I'm not sure that I will get there during what is perhaps my one and only pregnancy but I'm okay with being  one of those woman who just didn't love my pregnant body. If I have one positive thing to say about my pregnant body, it will be the most amazing little guy that I will get at the end of it.