Sunday, September 11, 2011

Home

It's kind of crazy that I've been gone for six years now, but Phoenix is still 'home'.  I'm not sure if it will always be like that for me.  Kind of makes sense because I've lived kind of nomadically since I left home, never staying in one apartment for very long.  Raleigh, I think, I could definitely call home someday... if we stayed.  But more than likely we won't be, which is sad, because I'm really liking the city, love our ward, and love being close to family.  Although, we do have the potential to stay in Raleigh for 3ish more years; Tucker just needs to decide if he wants to get his PhD.  I'd be fine if he decided that.  I'll be fine if he decides he's done with school, as well.

Anyways.

I'm home in Phoenix till Wednesday.  Been here since this past Tuesday.  I haven't really done much, just mostly hung out at home with my parents and Nettie.  That was kind of the main point in coming anyways, so that they could see her again while she's still smallish.  Jenna was able to come home for the weekend, which was awesome.  It's crazy how much we like each other now, considering all the fighting and disliking we did when we were younger.  I was sad to see her leave tonight; had to concentrate really hard on not crying in the airport (but she failed, both when she got here and when she left).  We must figure out a way to live close to each other someday.

We had a nice day yesterday filled with family.  Got to see my oldest brother and his family (and his kids are so big now it's crazy!), and my Uncle Ron and Aunt Pam.  The day was super fun, and apparently exhausting because I fell asleep at like 7:30.

The home ward was great (as usual), though there are so many people that I don't recognize in it now.  It's kind of strange being a "grown-up" in the ward.  I remember being a kid, watching all the teenagers leave for college, then get married and start coming back to visit with their kids.  Now I'm doing that..... weird.

Nettie has been pretty good on this trip.  Not gonna lie, I was like super stressed to fly with her.  She's normally not a big fan of sitting (while being held) for long periods of time, and that's basically all I can do on the flights.  But we survived.  The first flight people were super helpful.  I was in the last group to board the plane and had a diaper bag and backpack with me plus Nettie, so when I got to my row to sit down, I looked at my seat and then at my bags and must have looked frazzled or something cause a bunch of people sitting near me asked to help me out.  I'm so glad there are decent and nice people in the world.  Couldn't have made this trip without strangers offering assistance along the way.  Also glad that the older lady I sat next to on the flight didn't care when spit up rolled off of me and onto her.  And glad that she and the guy sitting on my other side didn't complain when Nettie pooped with an hour left in the flight (this poop ended up as a blow-out too.... yeah....).  Second flight Nettie just slept the whole time, so it went much more smoothly, all in all, than I pictured it going.  Now we just have to make it home to Raleigh, and I'm sure I'll stress over that trip until it's over.

And tonight I was able to get together with a few of my high school friends (as well as some of their new friends).  It's awesome that no matter how long I'm gone for I can just come back and basically pick up where I left off with them.  Pretty sure I'll be able to call them my friends for my whole life, which is great, cause they're all awesome people.  I wish that I could come home more often to visit, but I'm glad that I can always see them on the few times that I do come home.

But yes.  My trip has been good thus far.  I've been really bad at taking pictures so far, but I always am.  I'll just steal pictures from my mom and Jenna eventually.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

General Updates (because I can't think of a more clever title)

I realized I haven't actually done a post for about a month now, so I figured I'd take advantage of Nettie's vaccine induced exhaustion and write a quick little update for those of you that read this.

I'll start with Nettie since she's the cutest and most interesting of our little Smith clan.  She's 9 weeks old now, which is kind of insane when I stop to think about it.  At the risk of sounding cliche, it feels like we've already had her.  But what a little blessing she is!  She's started "talking" to me sometimes when I talk to her, and she's also smiling on a more consistent basis; though, if she doesn't feel like it, she won't, no matter how long I make ridiculous faces at her.  She also can hold her head up pretty good... well, pretty good in comparison to not at all.  There's still a fair amount of bobble-headedness going on, but she likes to be held up right so she can look around at stuff.

The stats from her appointment yesterday are:
Height: 22"
Weight: Right under 12lbs
Head Circumference: Hmm... I don't actually remember.  We think her head looks huge, but apparently it's right in the same percentile as her height and weight.

And speaking of percentiles, she's basically between the 50th and 75th percentile on everything.  A fairly average baby I guess.  She got three shots and one oral vaccine at the appointment.  Needless to say, she did not like getting jabbed in her thighs, and I don't blame her.  The cute little tears were streaming down her face even before I had a chance to pick her up.  And when Tucker and I took off the bandaids at home later, the painful scream and tears started again, which made me cry (something that I've never done in relation to her).  I just felt so bad that I couldn't make her feel better.  But for the most part, she slept all day yesterday and is now asleep (with a small fever) again this morning.  Poor baby :(  I just kept telling her it was for her own good; hopefully she understands.

I've been cleared to start exercising, which I am itching to start doing.  Why haven't I started already?  Last week was crazy busy, and so far this week, I've felt too bad leaving Nettie alone cause she's feeling pretty crummy from her shots.  Hopefully tomorrow she'll be doing well enough that I can head down to the gym and sign up, cause let's face it, I look pretty gross.  Haven't exactly been the most disciplined person when it comes to eating or exercising since we got married, and it definitely shows.  I want to try to get back to what I weighed in high school... or at least my first year of college.

Also, I started taking birth control pills about a month ago (because that's when I was told to start taking them back while we were still in the hospital), and since that first week, my milk production has gone down.  So far down that we have had to feed Nettie a bottle of formula a couple times a day because I simply don't have anything to give her.  While I'm not opposed to formula, it's kind of frustrating that I'm not able to satisfy my baby's hunger.  I asked her pediatrician about it yesterday, and she said that my pills probably have the wrong mix of hormones in them for a nursing mother.  More than likely I'm going to stop taking them and opt for a more... uh... direct form of birth control and see if that helps with milk production.

Tucker has pretty much finished up his lit review (which is basically 30ish pages of him summarizing stuff that other people have written about similar stuff that he did his research on) and should be starting his thesis soon.  He also needs to get his resume updated so he can start sending it out to companies.  Kind of crazy to think that we're less than five months (potentially) away from having a real job.  Dr. Drake keeps telling Tucker that he should take a job with Glambia, a company in Twin Falls, Idaho........................................................................................ yeah.  Not exactly thrilled with the location, but apparently she thinks they would be a great company to work for and thinks that Tucker would fit into the lab there really well.  Also, the guy that runs the lab is a Bishop, and I'm sure many of the other workers there are Mormon as well, so maybe she just thinks that we need to be surrounded by Mormons, haha, I don't know.  We're not ruling it out as a possibility, but we'd really like to stay on the east coast (could always go work for Campbell's soup in Camden(?), New Jersey: worst city in America 2008!)

I can't think of anything else off the top of my head that I'd need to include in this.  It's probably already way longer than most of you will want to read.  My bad.  Oh!  At the beginning of next month I'm going to be flying out to Phoenix for a week long visit which I'm pretty excited about.  Flying with Nettie will be a bit interesting I'm sure, but we'll survive.  Lots of people do it.

And to Lindsey: One way or another I'll be in Phoenix for Christmas this year.  You can count on it.

2 Monday Pictures

August 1, 2011
Nettie got to borrow this new awesome swing from Aunt Katie.  It's pretty much our favorite thing now.


August 8, 2011
The aftermath of the two-month check up.  Shots are hard :(

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Monday Picture

Ok, so this week's picture isn't technically from yesterday (even though I did take some last night), it's from this morning.  I couldn't help but pick this picture, though.  She's so dang cute in it!

July 25, 2011

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Monday Picture(s)

I didn't post a picture last week, but I did take one.  I just never really think about getting onto my blog to do that kind of thing.  But I did think about it this morning, so voila! 

July 11, 2011
Tucker was at a conference the first half of this week so Mommy decided she would sleep in the bed (I've slept on the couch in the front room with Nettie since she was born), and so when I fed Nettie and got up, she stayed asleep and it was super cute.


July 18, 2011
First trip to Walmart = Success!  Also, first ride in our jogging stroller.  She did pretty good.  I think she's a bit on the small side for it still (it's not recommended for use until they're 6 months old... yeeeeaah.), but it was fun to push her around and have everybody smile at her.  And not gonna lie, like 6 people either talked to me and Tucker or made a comment in passing to me about her as we were walking through the store.  Even the general public thinks Nettie is adorable!  Who can blame them though?

Thursday, July 7, 2011

:)

She smiled for reals this morning.  Adorable.  No pictures yet.  Working on it though.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Happy 1 month birthday!

Nettie's a month old today.  Crazy.  That went way too fast.  Or maybe it just seems that way because my days and nights sort of blended together for awhile. 



Anyways, went to the doctor this afternoon (and left right before it started to downpour, thank goodness) and she's doing really well.  Gained a full pound since her last appointment (which was 2 weeks ago) and now weighs in at 9lbs 12oz.  Little chunker.  Although... she still doesn't look all that chubby.  Getting there, just not there yet.  She's also now 21inches long (a gain of 3/4").  Percentile-wise she's right about 50% with everything.  Average baby, yay!

She hasn't quite started smiling yet.  I think she's really close though.  Every now and then she'll get this cute look on her face that's like right on the verge of a smile.  I'm sure when she does smile it'll be adorable though.

Also, Katie let me borrow her Moby wrap this past weekend cause I couldn't figure out my sling.  Holy crap, love this thing!  Used it for the first time a couple days ago and as soon as I had it tied on Nettie was zonked out.  Even as we speak, she's strapped to my chest (sleeping).  Awesome!  I have hands to do things with again.... well.... at least when I'm holding her, that is.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Nettie's Blessing

In church this past Sunday we did Nettie's baby blessing.  It was a super special experience (made better by the fact that she decided to sleep through sacrament meeting) and all the guys in Tucker's family excluding Sam were in the circle, and my parents made the trip back out here so that my dad would be able to participate as well.  Katie (my sister-in-law extraordinaire) was much more clever than me and wrote down the blessing as Tucker was giving it.  I would never have thought to do that, but I'm really glad that she did because this will be something sweet to show Nettie later on in life.

I didn't think to get a group picture of everyone while we were at the church building (mostly because I think everyone was hungry and wanted to get out of there to eat lunch), but we did get some group shots later at Shad and Katie's house, so hopefully Barbi will upload those soon so that I can post them.  I did take some pictures of Nettie in her dress though.  She's swimming in it, but it's really cool cause it was the dress that I was blessed in.  Yeah, that's right; retro.... or vintage.  One or the other.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Miracles

I'm not quite sure where to start this post.  The subject matter for it is fairly emotional not only for me, but for the whole Smith clan.  I guess I'll start by saying that this weekend we blessed Nettie.  All but one of her Smith (and Williams) uncles were here, and both of her Grandpa's were here as well.  It was a truly sweet experience, highlighted by the fact that her Uncle Scott was still here to participate in the event.

Thursday evening, Tucker and I were getting ready to head up to Shad and Katie's house to play some D&D.  Right after 6pm (I think), Tucker got a call from his mom.  I didn't really think about it, or pay much attention to what he was saying on the phone because she calls fairly regularly, and I assumed she was just asking about something for the upcoming weekend when the whole family would be here in Raleigh.  When Tucker got off the phone, he said that Scott had been in an accident (a motorcycle accident) and they couldn't get ahold of Stephanie to let her know.  The hospital chaplain had called Lois instead, hoping that she would be able to reach Stephanie.  All they had told her was that they thought that Scott was ok.  Not the most reassuring statement, as ok could mean a lot of things.

The next few minutes, Tucker tried to get ahold of Stephanie, calling her cell and her work, but couldn't get through.  But shortly after all this trying, he got a call from her instead, asking him to come to the hospital with her.  So of course he said yes.  I called Katie to let her know that if we made it to the game that night, it would be late (seeing as we didn't know how Scott was doing).  Tucker left with Stephanie and promised that he would call soon to let me know what was going on.

About an hour later, Tucker called and told me that Scott was relatively ok.  We found out that his accident had happened while Scott was driving home from a job interview on the 440... that's right, he crashed his motorcycle while driving on the freeway.  So immediately, I thought that he must have been hurt pretty bad, but his list of injuries was a concussion, a broken collarbone, and some road rash on his hands and knees.  Extremely good considering the circumstances.  Tucker stayed at the hospital with Steph until about midnight.

The next day Tucker went to school a little late, explaining to one of his labmates that he had been at the hospital late with his brother.  When he got to school, he explained his injuries to them and then told them where the accident had happened.  More than one of them had driven by (and got caught behind the traffic) of Scott's accident, and they even expressed to Tucker that they were amazed that Scott was even alive from how bad it had looked.

From what we can piece together, Scott somehow lost control of the bike (whether he was hit, or blew a tire, or just lost control isn't really known) and was thrown into the median (just a concrete barrier separating the two sides of the freeway).  His bike hit the median as well, but bounced back out into traffic, where it hit one car, and was then caught under another car.  The bike (supposedly) exploded, and the car that it was trapped under, burned and melted with it.

While this accident was certainly bad and will leave Scott a gimp for a little while, he was extremely lucky.  If Scott had bounced back out into traffic like the bike, he would have been killed.  And really, it's amazing that he wasn't killed or more seriously injured just by being thrown from a bike going 70 mph.  Even more amazing is that Scott was discharged from the hospital the evening after the accident.

Lois joked today that she was happy Scott decided to time his accident with this weekend since they were going to be up here anyways for the blessing.  I think that we all realize just how close we came to loosing Scott, and even though this was a happy weekend, there was a definite feel of gratitude underlying everything.  The family simply would not have been the same without Scott, and I know that Nettie was glad that he was able to be in the circle to help bless her on Sunday.

All in all, a very memorable Fourth of July weekend for the Smiths.

Monday Picture

So I realize that I missed doing last week's picture, but Nettie has been sleeping weirdly for about a week now, and so I nap a lot during the day.  Anything that doesn't involve taking care of Nettie or sleeping sort of goes right out the door and I forget.  She's started to sleep a little bit better again, so hopefully this lasts.

Today has been four weeks since Nettie was born.  Crazy!  And she's still alive!  Wahoo! 

I would have taken her picture today in her cute little red outfit for the Fourth, but she spit up all over it.  So here's a slightly less glamorous picture (or two).





This last picture is the one that was taken today before my parents flew home.  They were out here this weekend while we did Nettie's blessing.  I'm really grateful that they were able to be here for such a special day.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Update

So I promise I'm still alive (and so is Nettie), I just haven't been able to think of anything interesting to blog about lately.  Also, the time that I have when I'm not feeding/holding/taking care of Nettie is spent either sleeping or just doing something mindless and lazy (I've watched a ton of Psych in the past couple weeks).

Nettie's blessing is this Sunday and hopefully it will all be ok.  My parents are coming in for the weekend, and Tucker's family will all be here as well (except for Sam).  There was a fairly significant piece of drama that happened last night that I'm sure will alter the "plans" that we had for this weekend with the family, but that's ok.  We're just glad that everyone is ok.  (I'll probably post more on this later, but I'm not sure how private the people involved want it to be).

For now though, enjoy this cute video of Nettie... although, all videos of her are cute. 

Monday, June 20, 2011

Random Video

So this video isn't of anything exciting, but I think it's cute.  It's just of one of the few times that Nettie is awake and not crying or eating during the day.  I also have a couple of her hiccuping, but I haven't uploaded them yet.  Maybe I'll get around to it.

Monday Picture

June 20, 2011

Here's this Monday's picture.  I think from now on I'll try to get her in basically the same pose.  And just for memory's sake: Nettie was not very happy most of today.  Slept for about 6 hours (longest stretch yet), and pooped like a billion times.... literally.  And since Tucker does pretty much all the diaper changes when he's home, he was not very happy.  But I laughed. :)

Thursday, June 16, 2011

A Few Frustrations

I definitely love being a mom, but the past couple days have been really hard.  I came down with some dang head cold thing that Tucker got while we were in the hospital, and so all that I've wanted to do is sleep.  Nettie was cooperating with this desire for about a day, but the past two days or so, she won't sleep anywhere but in my arms or laying on my chest.  This makes sleeping fairly uncomfortable for me because I have to prop myself up and then can't move the entire night either, leading to some annoying back and neck pain the following morning.

On top of all this, Nettie seems to have regressed a little bit with the whole nursing thing.  She'll start rooting around to eat, and then when said nipple (yes, I said nipple) is in her wide open mouth she'll do this bounce off my boob thing with her face and will open and close her mouth, but won't latch on and will then scream because she's not getting anything to eat. 

In the middle of the night when I try to feed her in my sickness and sleep-deprived zombie state, I/we end up soaking just about everything that both of us are wearing, and that's really annoying too, cause then we're both cold and I have to change us, and it makes more laundry, which is hard to do because we don't have a washer and dryer in our apartment, but have to go to the laundry facilities at our complex or lug it all to one of my sister-in-laws homes to use their machines, which I then feel bad about just because.

Hopefully this will only last a couple days and Nettie will go back to being the perfect baby that she was.  And I really, really, really hope she doesn't catch what I have right now......... that would not be fun at all.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

A Picture Every Monday

I can't remember exactly who was telling me about this cute idea, but I liked it a lot and figured I could attempt to do it.  The deal is that you take a picture on the same day every week of your child for a year or however long to show their growth, etc.  Since Nettie was born on a Monday, that's the day that I'll use.

June 6, 2011


June 13, 2011

The picture from yesterday was taken during a photo shoot that my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law were kind enough to give to Tucker and I as a present.  This is the only one that I've seen so far, but I love it!  Soooo cute!

Little Miss Nettie Smith

So I got a surprising 9 hours of sleep last night (total, not in a row) and Nettie is asleep once again.  Figured I'd at least try to start this post.  Kind of hard to believe that we've had Nettie for almost a week now.  She's fit so perfectly into our lives, and to risk sounding cliche, it's like she's was always here.  Anyways... on with the story.

Our induction was scheduled for Sunday (June 5th) at 830pm.  On the instruction sheet that they gave me at my final doctor's appointment, it told us to call the hospital an hour before the set time to make sure that there was a bed available for me.  Neither Tucker or I thought this would be a problem because the two times that we'd been up at the hospital before (once for our tour, the second to be monitored for a little while) it had been fairly slow in the Labor and Delivery area.  We called anyways, and the girl I talked to asked if they could call us back because she needed to find out about availability from someone who was on break when we called.  That was fine with me.


We finished collecting our stuff and headed down to the car at 8 even though we still hadn't been called back.  I decided to call again as I walked to the dumpster to throw away some trash and while Tucker pulled the car around.  I spoke with the person that had been on break and (go figure) they didn't have any room for me.  Talk about a major disappointment.  She said that we would probably have to go in the next morning instead, but asked how late we were willing to go in that night, just in case something opened up.  I told her that it didn't really matter since we had been planning on being up the whole night anyways.

So, we went and got some hamburgers from Burger King (we had already started driving by the time I finished talking with the woman), which we probably wouldn't have normally done, but I hadn't eaten since noon-ish per my instructions, the nurse told me to go ahead and eat since they didn't know when I was going to be called in, and we didn't have any food in our apartment (sort of, nothing to make a meal out of at least).  Back at home, we decided to watch a little tv before I went to bed, but between 930 and 10 the nurse called and asked if we could come in at 1130 that night instead.  Um, duh.

When we got to the hospital, we had to check in at the emergency room because patient registration (where we would have gone during the daytime) was closed for construction.  Checked in, and made our way up to L&D.  When we got to the desk there, a nurse took us back to our room and started to ask all the normal questions.  By the time I had gotten changed and stuff signed it was close to midnight, and they needed to check my 'progress' to see if they would start me on pitocin or a balloon thingy (honestly can't remember the name of it) that they would put in my cervix to help me get started dilating.  I was only about 1cm, which wasn't much of an improvement from when they had checked me on Tuesday.  So in went the balloon.  They said that I should start feeling a little crampy (which I did), and so they would give me a pill to help me sleep.   I agreed to take the pill, thinking it would take like half an hour tops to get the dang thing, but didn't end up getting it until after 230ish am.

The next morning my new nurse woke me up at 6 to take a shower and to check to see if the balloon would come out easily (meaning that I had dilated to at least 3cm).  The balloon definitely came out, and I was between a 3 and a 4, completed effaced.  They got all my IVs started right around 645am and so now all we had to do was wait.

Around 1130am, they came to check me again and decided to break my water.  In doing this, we found out that little Nettie had already pooped for the first time because there was some staining to the fluid.  The only difference this really made was that they would have to check her briefly before allowing me to hold her right after she was born.  No big deal.  Up until this point though, I hadn't been uncomfortable or feeling any sort of pain, like, at all.  I remember thinking how easy being in labor was.  Little did I know that as soon as my water was broken, things would change.  I started to actually feel the contractions, and to me it seemed like they were coming like 3 minutes apart (I never actually timed them out though).  My parents and Jenna had arrived at the hospital by this point too, and whenever I started to have a contraction, my dad would let me squeeze his hand.  I went like this for about 15 minutes before I decided to call the nurse back in to tell her to start getting me ready to have an epidural.

So they started me on another bag of fluids that I had to drain before they would even call the doctor down.  They finally called him down around 1pm and by 105pm they had the IV in my back and the medicine going.  Ah, sweet relief!  I felt great again.  I dozed off and on for awhile (pretty sure that my family left to go do something else when they came to do the epidural), and they didn't really feel the need to check my progress for a few hours.  Around 440pm, though, the nurse came in and told me that she was going to turn the pitocin off because Nettie's heartbeat was starting to look a little bit questionable.  Nothing to worry about, but it was starting to look like it could become irregular.  They also gave me an oxygen mask to wear to see if that helped at all.

While the nurse was in the room turning off the one IV, I mentioned to her that I would sometimes feel pressure like I had to go to the bathroom.  So she called a doctor in to check me (and like 5 people came along, apparently they had all been at a delivery next door and decided to come; a couple of them were 'student' doctors though, so they were just observing).  They checked me, and lo and behold, I was completely dilated!  They had me try pushing a couple times (which I don't know if I was doing right cause all I could really feel was that pressure), and then they decided to let me sit for about another half hour before doing more pushing so that I didn't have to push for like an hour and so that Nettie could descend a little more on her own. 

I didn't really care that I would have to wait a little bit longer, but it was exciting that stuff was actually going to start happening soon.  My Dad left the room and we waited for about 15 minutes before I decided that the pressure (which was starting to strengthen and was really hard to ignore) was great enough that I had to call the nurse back in.  I definitely felt the need to push now.  So she sat down on the bed with me around 520pm, I'm sure thinking that we would probably be pushing for awhile because she didn't bother to call the doctor yet.

We started pushing.  It took me a couple of contractions to figure out exactly what to do because of the epidural, but about fifteen minutes later, the nurse got up to call the doctor.  We kept pushing, and I could definitely feel something coming out of me.  In just a few more pushes, Nettie's head was about half way out of me and my nurse told me not to push anymore.  I remember thinking that she was ridiculously stupid.  How the heck was I supposed to hold off on pushing when the baby was basically coming out of me on my own?  I kept telling her, "I need to push, I can't stop, I need to push," but she kind of ignored me.  I really couldn't stop myself from pushing though; it was physically impossible.

The doctor arrived just in time to wash her hands real quick and watch as Nettie came out into the nurse's hands (way to go, Doc) at 538pm.  Tucker cut the cord (I think), they checked her out, and then I was holding her.  My perfect, sweet, little baby.  She was here, and I couldn't have cared less that they were starting to stitch me up (I had a 3rd degree perennial tear because Nettie came so quickly).


In total, I pushed for about 20 minutes.  Apparently that's quick.  I'm just pro at pushing I guess, haha!  Both Jenna and my mom were able to be in the room with us as well when Nettie was born, which I think is kind special.

Now as far as naming her goes.... During the time that my family had been gone that afternoon, Tucker and I looked at the list of names that we liked and narrowed it down to three.  My favorite: Eleanor Janet.  Tucker's favorite: Emmeline Lynette.  And then a completely out of the blue name that we hadn't really discussed before: Lynette Meryl.  Tucker suggested it, saying that he thought it would make a pretty first name as well as a pretty middle name.  I actually kind of like it.  We both agree that if that name was used, we would not be calling her Lynn for short.  And we decided to pair Meryl with it (my little sister's middle name) because unfortunately, Lynette Janet didn't quite flow well enough for us.  At this point, we didn't decide for sure on a name because we both still wanted to see her first.  But I think that my mind was sort of already set on Lynette, and as soon as she came out, I was certain that that was her name.

Little Nettie weighed 8lbs 2oz and was 20 1/4 inches long.  When she popped out of me, she inhaled quicker than the nurse could suction out her mouth and nose (remember the meconium staining in my water), but she was screaming so well right after they checked her that they weren't concerned about that at all.

We got the chance to try breastfeeding while they were stitching me up, and Nettie latched on perfectly (and has ever since).  About an hour or so (I think, not really sure) after Nettie was born, my family all got to come back to the room to see her.  Lois and Stephanie had arrived as well and were able to see her.  When they came in, I asked if Tucker had told them her name yet (because he had been the one to go out and get them).  He hadn't.  So I told them, and immediately started to cry when I said her middle name and looked at Jenna (I'm kind of a softy).  I'm pretty sure that we caught Lois off guard with our name choice though (Lynette is her middle name), and the next morning when she came to visit I remember her asking if we like Meryl Lynette better, haha!  Lynette is definitely her name though.

The rest of the hospital stay was pretty easy though.  I was never really in any pain or discomfort from my stitches (still aren't actually), and so I never had to take anything stronger than Ibuprofen.  Poor Tucker though, due to lack of sleep the first couple nights that we were in the hospital, started to feel really crappy and got a sinus infection sort of thing.  Because of this, and the fact that Nettie did not like sleeping in the little tub they had in our room for her, I got a total of about 6 hours of sleep for the 3 nights/days that we were there.  Though, that hasn't really bothered me much either.

Also, holy crap, I am a milk making machine!  I know this is gross/tmi, but the second that I take my bra off to nurse or take a shower, I'm seriously dripping all over everything.  Kind of annoying.  But I shouldn't complain really, because Nettie has already passed her birth weight, and according to the lactation consult I talked to this morning, she's done it a week faster than most solely breastfed babies.  Go us!

Mostly she's just the best baby in the world.  She's adorable, and she sleeps really really good.  Lately (meaning the past two days) she's gone for 4-5 hour stretches before waking up, which is very nice for me and Tucker because we both seem to have gotten a head cold.  We also got some newborn pictures taken of Nettie (courtesy of my mother-in-law and two awesome sisters-in-law), so hopefully those will get edited soon so that I can show them off to everyone :).

But yeah.  Be jealous of my uber cute baby :D

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The Final Countdown

Well, my due date has come and gone (the 29th), which sucks, but I was prepared for that possibility.  My parents and little sister were all here in town this weekend and it was really, really good to spend some time with them since it's been about a year since I've seen them.  They left Monday morning to drive up to see my older brother Jeff and his wife Rachel for a couple days in Rochester, and then sometime during the week they'll head down to New Jersey to see my older brother Mike and his wife and daughter (who is about 6 months older than Baby).  They'll be back down here in Raleigh though at the end of this weekend to spend just about a week with Tucker and I and little Baby, who will for sure be making her appearance by Sunday night or early Monday morning.

That's right, the induction is scheduled.  Sunday June 5th I'm set to go in at 830pm to be induced if I haven't gone in to labor before then.  I had a doctor's appointment this morning to get "checked", and not gonna lie, it was majorly uncomfortable and even just a tad painful.  We found out that I'm basically not dilated at all, but I am 75% effaced (which I'm still not completely sure what that means even after my sis-in-law Katie explained it to me) so that's apparently good.

Now while I'm ok with waiting till Sunday for things to get rolling, I'd much rather have something happen earlier than that, so Thursday night when Tucker and I head up to Durham to play D&D Katie (my sister-in-law) is going to have a delicious (ha!) caster oil milkshake waiting for me.  Yum yum.... haha!  While I'm sure this will be gross, I'm totally fine with trying it just to see if it jump starts labor for me, cause that'd be nice.  Yeah.  And if nothing happens after drinking it, then oh well.  It doesn't hurt to try!

So anyways, that's about it I guess.  We're pretty much just killing time now and twiddling our fingers.  Hopefully the song "The Final Countdown" doesn't stay stuck in my head all week, cause it's been playing in my head all morning so far.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Playing the waiting game

Pretty dang bored at the moment.

No baby yet.  Nothing really going on either. 

Our sister-in-law Stephanie got to town last weekend and has been staying with us while she looks for an apartment.  Not gonna lie, I'm glad it's her and not us that has to look for an apartment; super stressful.  She did find one that she really likes that's only about 5ish minutes away from us (and in our ward, woot!) that we're hopeful about.  If they aren't approved for it, I think we'll all be really surprised seeing as Tucker's parents are co-signing with them.

It's strange to think that we're down into single digit days for the arrival of little Baby.  Even stranger sometimes to think that the little alien moving around inside of me is actually going to have a face soon... and not be in me anymore.  I think I'll be glad to "have my body back" to myself again.  I'm sick of sleeping on my sides, and not being able to get up off the couch, and not being able to bend over. 

Next week Jenna gets here on Wednesday which should be super fun since I haven't seen her in like a year.  My parents won't get here until Saturday.  And hopefully Baby will decide to make her entrance at a convenient time for everyone (and not late either).

So that's it for now.  When stuff starts to happen, I'm hoping that we'll be able to keep everyone posted through facebook and what not. 

Saturday, May 7, 2011

A lovely Saturday

Yesterday while I was waiting for our laundry to finish up in the dryers I drove around our neighborhood a little bit to figure out exactly where the parks were near us (so that I can go there in a couple months with Baby and take walks).  I decided that instead of doing basically nothing today (Saturday), I would bribe Tucker to go on a walk with me at a trail near our apartment by first going on a picnic.  Now, for most people, a picnic is probably not really much of a bribe, but to Tucker, picnic = KFC.  I guess that's the only time that he ever really had it as a kid--and as an adult, as well, I suppose. 

Back before we were married, we tried to have a KFC picnic once at Rock Canyon Park (I think that's what it's called... the park behind the Provo Temple), but it was totally crashed by bees, and I'm pretty sure I made Tucker pack everything up and we ate at his apartment.  Bee free's the way to be!

Anywho, the weather was perfect, the area was beautiful, and there weren't any bees!  Most excellent picnic.  I even remembered to take some pictures while we were there.

The delicious spread.

The colossal 'jug' of lemonade.

Aw, so cute!

Yeah.........

And I thought the lemonade container was colossal, haha!

Our picnic spot.  See?!  Totally beautiful.

Apparently I was wrong

If you'll think back a few posts, I related my story of the tornado that went through Raleigh.  I mentioned that while Tucker and I were hiding out in our hallway I took a few pictures but deleted them because they were gross looking.  Remember?  Yeah, found out that that's not entirely true just a few minutes ago while I was uploading some other pictures.  They are definitely gross looking (at least the portion of the pictures that is me are), but what the heck, I'll post them anyway.

 Notice the grossness.... please disregard.

 The little radio that was our lifeline to the outside world.

There ya have it.  Just thought I'd share.

Friday, May 6, 2011

What's in a name?

Picking the name that a person is going to be called the rest of their life is just kind of a daunting task.  I can understand how some people pick their child's name before they're born because they like a name (or whatever), and I've got a list of names that I like, but every time I think I'm getting closer to pinning down one that I like "the best" I completely change my mind.

What if I get sick of the name a few years down the road?  It's happened before with me.  There were names that I absolutely loved in high school and was positive that I would someday use for my children, but I can't stand them now.  Also, what if the name we chose isn't easy to scold with, or call from across the house, or some such thing?  Seriously stressful.

I'm posting about this because my little name poll has closed, and the obvious winner was 'Charlotte'.  But I can already tell you we don't know if this will be her name.  We're not even sure anymore if we're going to use the names that were on our original "short list".  So there.

We just can't bring ourselves to name little Baby before we meet her.  After all, she has to look like a Charlotte, or an Emmeline, or whatever, if we're going to name her that and we have yet to see her.  Maybe we'll just use the nickname my parents have given her--Roscoe.

Very frustrating.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Bored again

I don't know about the rest of you bloggers out there, but I kind of really enjoy playing with how my blog looks (even though I don't post all that often) and seem to be changing it constantly.  My apologies.  It entertains me when I have nothing else to do. 

Also, I'm noticing lately that I'm short of breath, like, all the time.  I've also found that I hold my breath, thus making my shortness of breath problem even more annoying.  Huzzah for having a person inside of you squishing your lungs!

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Holy Moley it's May

It's kind of hard to believe that after all the waiting and daydreaming, May has finally arrived.  I know this probably sounds fairly stupid, but I still don't think it's fully hit me exactly how drastically my life will be changing in a few short weeks.  It's still hard to believe that there's actually a baby inside of me right now even though she moves all the time to make her presence known.  What if I'm not ready for this?

Ha.  Funny that after 9 months of feeling confident that I could totally handle whatever was coming my way with this I'm finally starting to have worries and doubts.  It's only natural though, I suppose.  Still... I'm nervous. 

People have asked me throughout the whole pregnancy if I was worried about labor and such, and honestly, I really wasn't.  I've known for quite some time that I was going to be getting an epidural.  I have no false ideas about me being a pansy when it comes to pain.  Certainly if it came down to it, I would have little Baby naturally if I needed to, but I really don't want to. :)  But now that I could potentially go into labor any day, I'm feeling anxious about the pain that I'm going to experience before I get the blessed relief of an epidural.  Not only that, but I'm really, really worried about the pain/uncomfortableness that will come after baby is born. 

I know I'll survive it all though, and it's going to be one of the best experiences of my life.  And I'm super grateful that I'll have more than one sister-in-law close by to help me out or give me advice if I need it. 

I guess what it comes down to is: we're ready for you Baby.

Bring it on!

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Baby Registry

For those of you that care, here's a link to our baby registry: Baby Girl Smith  or if that doesn't work, the registry number is 46776611 on the Babies R Us website.

I'll be posting a note of facebook too.  Only 6 more weeks till she's here !!! :D

Crazy Ridiculous Storm

Yeah, the title pretty much sums it up.

The storm only last about 20 minutes total, or at least that's how long it took to move through Raleigh.  But I tell you what, it was insane.

We were out and about starting at about noon.  First stop was Babies R Us to do our registry (again), and this wasn't too bad.  Tucker seemed to really enjoy looking at all the baby girl clothes, which is both funny and cute.  He even said that doing the registry made him more excited (this would be one of the very few times that he has vocalized this).  After the registry, we headed across Capital Blvd. to a used book store just to look around.  I don't know what it is about used book stores, but we love them.  After hanging around there for a little while, we decided we would go get some lunch, and conveniently, there was a Golden Corral right next door.  Happy day!

It was when we left that we noticed how windy it was.  We knew that there was supposed to be a storm today, so I turned on the radio when we got into the car and one of the local news stations had 'taken over' the music station.  When we started listening to it, they were listing counties that were currently under a tornado watch.  This didn't mean much to either of us, because unless we're looking at a map, we don't know where anything is in relation to Raleigh.  Anyways, we got home and got on the internet to try and look at what was going on (we lost our free cable this week sadly).  This was when the power started to flicker on and off.  Not a good sign.  Not super concerning, but not a good sign.

It was kind of annoying though, because we were now cut off from any updated information about the storm.  I made a comment about how it would be nice to have a normal radio right now so that we could at least hear updates.  This was when Tucker remembered the 72-hour emergency kit that his parents had given us for Christmas one year.  He was pretty sure that it had a hand-crank powered radio in it.  So I dug around for a little while in the closet and found the kit, and sure enough, there was a radio in it.  Woohoo!

Tucker cranked it up and we started listening to the storm updates.  The weather guys were saying that there was now a tornado warning for Wake county (our county).  Everything that they were saying was about a tornado that was on the ground and moving north-east; towards us.  This is when I started to get a little nervous.  They kept talking about how people near downtown Raleigh needed to get to a safe place immediately because they were in the track of the tornado.  We live only a few miles from downtown.  Yeah.  So we decided that we would head over to the Target near out house because it would be safer than our second story apartment.  I put a few things together in my backpack (72 hour kit, phone charger, 2 water bottles, our important documents folder (thanks for that idea Mom), and a couple jackets).

By the time we had this stuff together and had both gone to the bathroom, the rain was coming down in buckets and the wind was ridiculously strong.  We decided it wouldn't be any safer for us to head out now than it would be to just hunker down at home, so we moved to our little hallway and closed all the doors leading into it.  I'm sure it would have been quite funny to see, but at the time, with the news casters being all negative and stuff, it was kind of scary.  I took a couple pictures of us sitting there in the dark, but they turned out horrible, so they've been deleted.

Anyways, they started to report damage throughout downtown and moving our direction.  They started to mention streets that were only about a mile away from us, but from everything they were saying, we decided that the real danger was off to our east, if only just barely.  A few minutes passed and the radio reported that the tornado was now up in the area that we had been in for our outing earlier (yikes), so we came out of our hiding place.  The rain was still coming down, but the wind had died down a little bit.

In the end, our power was off for about 3 hours, and when we could get back onto the internet, we looked up the news website to look at pictures of what had happened.  Yeah, it was pretty bad.  If you care to look, the website is wral.com.  There was some pretty serious damage.  Not sure if anyone was hurt or killed, I couldn't find anything that talked about that EDIT :: Just checked the website this morning.  There are 10 confirmed deaths, but as many as 24 could be dead.  Very grateful that this missed us., but regardless, it was a crazy-ridiculous storm.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Time seems to have slowed a bit

I don't know what it is, but the last couple weeks have definitely seemed longer to me.  Ok, that's not entirely true, I do have some idea of why this is, but it sucks.  I'm way more uncomfortable than I ever was before; sleeping is kind of a struggle when it comes to finding a nice position.  And yes, I'm well aware of the fact that it will get worse. 

My urge to "nest" seems to have kicked in a bit.  I've really been wanting to get things organized and put together for when Baby gets here, and today I was all motivated and got most of her room put together.  We still don't have everything that we need yet, but we've got tons of clothes (courtesy of a lady from my mother-in-laws ward and from my sister-in-law Barbi, haven't bought a single piece) and most of the essentials.  Here's a couple pictures of the room in case you didn't notice them on facebook.



Not gonna lie, I'm getting really antsy.  I keep telling Tucker that we need to get everything done soon just in case she comes early and he chuckles at me.  Sure the odds of her coming early aren't super high, but it does happen; maybe I'll get lucky :)  Y'all should keep your fingers crossed for me.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Not much to report

Doctor's appointment this week was kind of just a weigh in.   Nothing they needed to test, just wanted to measure and make sure I didn't have any questions.  Although, on my way out, they asked me if I could speak with someone from UNC really fast, which was fine with me. 

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it in previous posts, but the clinic that I go to is run by the county health department and I'm fairly positive that the only people that go there are people who are on medicaid like me.  So kind of a lot of mexicans and african americans; I'm usually the only white person in the waiting room whenever I have an appointment.  This clinic is also a teaching clinic, connected with the med/PA schools here in Raleigh (basically UNC and Duke (I think)), and the hospital that we will be delivering at is a teaching hospital, so I've seen quite a few students in my appointments, which doesn't bother me in the slightest; gotta learn somewhere.

Anyways, back to my appointment.  I went to talk with the lady from UNC and she just wanted to know if I was willing to take part in a study they were doing on depression connected to hormones (or something like that) for women shortly before birth and shortly after.  This is totally fine with me, mostly because I'll be getting $200 out of it, but also because I don't have to travel anywhere for this study (they'll come to our apartment), and all they want from me is blood and pee--two things I have plenty of right now.  The only slight inconvenience going along with this is that I'll have to collect pee samples (sorry if that's gross for me to be talking about) for a 24 hour period.  They gave me this totally awesome (yeah, right) kit for collecting samples which has to be kept chilled; for this they told me I could keep it either in the fridge (which is really gross) or in a tub of ice I can keep in the bathtub (definitely going this way).  But yeah, $200 is totally worth this.  Also, sorry again if this was gross or TMI.

Let's see, what else...

I attempted to set up a registry at Babies R Us this week as well.  And I say attempted because they seem to have screwed something up on their end after I scanned everything, so, lucky me, I get to go back to the store to do it all over again.  Awesome.

Tucker and I also made it to our first childbirth class on Tuesday night, and it was a lot better than I thought it would be, surprisingly.  As with any class that I've ever taken, people insisted on asking stupid questions or the same question someone else asked five minutes earlier in a different way, but it was still interesting to hear everything.  While we will go to all the classes (unless our car breaks down again), we're mostly looking forward to the class where they'll take us to the hospital and give us a tour of everything so we'll know where to go when the time comes.

D&D again tonight.  Woohoo!  Super excited.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Birthdays and Car Trouble

Things I consider accomplishments right now:
- I pee less than 3 times during the night.
- I eat a meal without ending up with something dribbled on my stomach.
- I don't fall asleep until 9pm.
- I can bend over to pick something up.
- I actually do my hair and/or makeup (though this one has always been something I struggled with).

That's all that I can think of right now.  I'm sure as these last 8 weeks tick down I'll come up with more to add to the list, but for now (seeing as I just woke up) it's good enough.

This past week was our birthdays (mine was the 25th and Tucker's was the 30th).  They were alright I guess... or well, mine was pretty good.  We had some pizza and wings for dinner, and both my parents and Jenna got "presents" for me.  My parents got me one of those edible arrangements, which was absolutely delicious.  And Jenna decided that I needed more food and ordered me some fancy cupcakes from a little shop near campus.  And here, I'll even post pictures (look at me feeling slightly motivated).




Tucker's birthday was...... not quite normal.  The day before his birthday was packed full.  We both had to be at campus at 8am; me for work, Tucker to get ready for his committee meeting later that day.  Tucker mentioned that he was starting to feel a little sick when we got to school.  There wasn't much of anything that we could do for him then though, because I had to work until noon and he would be busy until 5.  On top of working for both of us that day, we had our first 'childbirth' class that night from 6-8.  So super packed full day.

When I got off at noon, I went and did a little bit of shopping for the lab because the next day (Tucker's birthday) they would be having paninis for lab lunch.  It was about 1:30 when I was finally heading home.  When I turned on the car, the heat gauge thingy automatically went all the way up to the top like the car was over heating.  It kind of confused me, so I turned of the car and let it sit for a second, then turned it back on and it was normal.  So I drove home.  I didn't want to tell Tucker about this yet because I knew it would stress him out and he wouldn't be able to focus on his committee meeting (which is a fairly big deal).  So I stayed home for a few hours, then on my way to pick him up, the temperature gauge shot up to the top again.  Luckily I was only about a minute from the school, so I turned the heater on full blast, rolled down the windows and drove the rest of the way to school.

I guess I should mention that about a month ago, we had the same problem with the car 'over heating' and had it in to be looked at.  They told us that the problem was a cracked cap on the radiator (or at least I think that's what it was) and it only cost us $20 to fix.  When Tucker came out and got in the car, I finally told him what the car was doing (and he was really appreciative that I hadn't told him before because he would have been worrying all through his meeting; I know him so well), so we decided rather than have the car towed like we did last time this happened, we would just drive it to the shop we had gone to before because it wasn't that far away from campus.  We dropped the car off, and then were trying to get ahold of the rental car agency so that we would have a way to get home and then back down to the shop to get the car the next day when it was fixed, but no one was answering.  So on a whim, we decided to try riding the bus home.  Tucker used to ride the bus all the time when we lived at our old place, but he hadn't yet tried it at our new apartment.  Yay for adventures!  However, he called one of his friends while we were on the first bus back up to campus and asked him for a ride home.  Needless to say, we didn't make it to our first childbirth class.

Tucker's birthday dawned and he was feeling more sick than the previous day, and it was rainy outside, and he was going to have to ride the bus to school if he wanted to go, so he decided to just take the day off and stay home (yay!).  I made him breakfast in bed and we kind of just took the rest of the day easy.  Around mid-day the car place called and told us the news.  Basically they were needing to replace some stuff to do with the cooling system and also a couple things dealing with the oil were leaking and needed to be replaced (obviously I don't remember exactly what the stuff was, I don't pay much attention to car stuff).  It was going to be a grand total of about $550 to fix everything.  Um... ouch.  But we told them to go ahead and fix everything, they said the car would be ready by the end of the day.

Now normally, it wouldn't be a super big deal to get to this place in a short amount of time... but we didn't have access to a car and Tucker didn't want to impose on his friend again for a ride.  So we decided that when the time came for us to pick up the car, we would just take a taxi (wahoo!  never ridden in a taxi before).  This was more stressful than I initially thought it would be because they didn't call us to tell us the car was done till about 50 mins before the place was supposed to close.  We called the cab place to ask for a taxi and were told that it would be about 15 minutes till they could get someone to us.  This was still ok; plenty of time to get to the shop.  Wrong.

The cab didn't get to our apartment until 20 minutes before the shop was supposed to close.  It was going to take us about 20 minutes to get there.  And that's if the traffic stays good (we have to take the freeway).  Luckily, we arrived a few minutes before they closed.  I got the special job of paying the taxi guy, which we didn't think was going to be a big deal cause their website said that they took credit cards.  When I asked the guy if this was true, he shook his head no.  Awesome.  Normally we would have been screwed, but I just happened to have about $40 in cash on me, which, really, is amazing that I did, cause neither of us ever carry cash.  I was that day, however, because I had been planning on going to get our registration renewed that week and needed cash to do that.  So, we were able to pay the taxi guy.

We paid for the car stuff and then decided to go to a chinese buffet place for Tucker's birthday dinner.  Normally this would be ok with me, but I was starting to get a headache, and for some reason I was feeling kind of nauseous, but I didn't want to ruin one good thing that Tucker would have on his birthday, so I didn't say anything and we went.  I ended up eating a cup of soup, 2 mini-sugar-covered biscuits, and a couple slices of fruit.  But Tucker enjoyed it, and that was all that mattered that day.  I feel really bad that his day wasn't all that great, but we get to play D&D this week and I also got him a D&D book for his birthday, so hopefully this will make up for the crappy day at least a little bit.

So long as we don't have any more problems with our car overheating, I think we'll be happy.  It's just kind of annoying.

Have a doctor's appointment this coming Monday (32 weeks along!!!) so I'll try and get an update posted here sometime next week. 

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

28 Week Update

So I had a doctor's appointment on Monday and everything's still looking good.  Had a blood sugar test and (go me) I don't have pregnancy diabetes or whatever it's called.  Yesterday I had a second ultrasound appointment so that they could get a closer look at Baby's heart.  They had told me from the beginning they would want to do this just to make sure that everything was looking ok because my older brother Jeff had a heart defect when he was born that had to be operated on, but it doesn't look like anything that we'll have to worry about (at least with this baby). 

But yeah, short post today because I'm ridiculously tired, just wanted to get an update out there and let you all know that I haven't forgotten about my blog.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Productiveness

Well, I've had a couple of productive days this week (productive for me, at least). I finished our taxes, made a card and necklace for my mother-in-law for her birthday, and kept things in our apartment fairly neat. There's been other minor stuff thrown in there as well, but those are the major things that have happened. Tomorrow should be a full day too, as Lois (my mother-in-law) will be coming to town tomorrow and she's bringing us some baby stuff from a lady in her ward (yay for getting hand-me-downs of sorts).

Last night Tucker started throwing up... a lot. Poor guy barely ever gets sick, and the time that he does it's the stomach flu. There's not much I can really do to take care of him, but I got up with him pretty much every hour last night when he was throwing up. And thinking about it this morning, I decided that the schedule we kept last night will probably be similar to what it will be like once Baby comes, at least for me. I'm surprisingly not tired today, but that might still change. Hopefully I won't catch what Tucker's got.

My parents also told us this week that they'll buy a carseat for us. This is really awesome of them cause now I don't really think we'll have any large purchases to make. Originally we were just going to use the carseat that our nephew Finn has been using (cause he'll be upgrading soon), but as I thought about it more, I realized we would just have to buy a carseat sometime towards the end of this year anyways since we'll probably be moving away from NC and I'm pretty sure Katie would want her carseat back for their next kid, whenever they have their next. So I was just going to buy one, but now I don't have to. Yay! We still might need to buy a crib, but that's still up in the air kind of. Anyways, this is the carseat that me and my mom picked out:
I'm a big fan of "gender neutral" things, at least when it comes to carseats/strollers/etc so that we can reuse stuff for future little Smiths.

But yeah, I think that's it for this post. Can't really think of anything else to add right now. Maybe I'll post some pics of what Lois brings us tomorrow later this week.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Finally...

We finally got a letter from Medicaid yesterday telling us that we are approved for pregnancy coverage!! Best news I've had in a really long time. It's definitely lifted a major weight and so now I can move on to worrying about much more minor things. But yeah, after one rejection, one fairly major breakdown on my part, reapplying, and a lot of nervous waiting, we found out everything will be taken care of and Baby will be (pretty much) paid for... at least until she gets here that is.

Monday, February 7, 2011

24 Weeks

Had a doctor's appointment today, and everything's looking good. Only new development is my back hurting fairly constantly. Showers and baths seem to be helping with that though, so I'm dealing with it I guess.

This is me at 24 weeks. I've decided I have a huge butt.


This is Annabelle, who is the baby doll that I had when I was a baby. Found her the other day, and now she's going to be Baby's baby doll. I'm kind of excited about this.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Oh yeah....

Before I forget about this...

The other night when Tucker and I were going to Shad and Katie's (Tucker's bro and his wife) house for D&D, Tucker said, "You can't be almost six months pregnant right now. The baby is due at the end of May and that's four months away, not three."

Apparently Tucker didn't know that a pregnancy is actually 40 weeks long. I thought that was just common knowledge. Am I wrong?

17 Weeks and Counting

So I've decided that the baby moving recently mostly feels like a muscle twitch. I'm sure that will change as she gets bigger, but for now, the bumps and nudges aren't super strong. Although... the other night when we were going to bed, Baby was moving up a storm, so I pressed Tucker's hand on my stomach to see if he could feel anything, and he felt her move!! It was pretty cool.

I'm right about 23 and a half weeks now. Still not looking nearly as pregnant as I would like. Seems like all the pictures I see of friends or friends of friends (cause I'm a major facebook stalker) have the moms with cute bellies like weeks ahead of me. Guess I just have nice deep hips that the baby likes to sit back in. Tucker thinks I'm crazy that I want to be bigger than I am right now, because it probably means I won't be ridiculously huge towards the end. I just want it to be obvious that I'm pregnant and not just super chubby or something.

Next doctor's appointment is on Feb. 7th, so next week. Not really sure what's going to happen at that one, but I'm just glad I didn't have to wait for like a billion weeks again in between check-ups. Probably in the beginning of March I'll have to have a Level 2 ultrasound. Not entirely sure what that means, but I was told that because my brother was born with a "hole" in his heart, they wanted to check the baby's heart to make sure everything was ok. Also, they told me my placenta was low, but that wasn't really anything to be worried about because the placenta moves around (?), but they wanted to check on that again to be safe I guess.

People keep asking if we have a name picked out for the baby yet, and the answer is both yes and no. We've had names that we've liked since before we got married (yeah, we jumped the gun a little, but whatevs). Before I had the names all paired up with middle names too, but I'm changing my mind on that because I have a certain middle name I want to use pretty much regardless of which first name we pick (Janet, after my mom). But yeah, we've decided that we aren't going to pick a name for the baby until she's actually here and we've met her. And because I'm sure at least someone will want to know what the contenders are, here ya go: Charlotte, Emmeline, and Abigail. Those are our favorites. If we pick Emmeline (Emme) or Abigail, her middle name will be Janet, but if we pick Charlotte (might go by Lotte, haven't decided yet), I'm pretty sure her middle name will be DeRue (after my mom's mom). My mother-in-law loves that combo, by the way, and she's told me that she already calls the baby Charlotte, hahaha! So she's definitely rooting for that name I guess.

Ok, so this next part might be a bit TMI, but I've definitely accepted that I'm pregnant now. Obviously because I can feel the baby moving, but also because I have the urge to pee, like, all the freaking time, including when I don't actually have to go. It's kind of annoying, and yet, funny at the same time, because anytime I leave the house, I make sure I go, and then no matter how long I'm gone, by the time I get home and get into our apartment I feel like I'm going to explode, haha! Yeah... I'm sure most of you didn't really want or care to know that, but hey, my blog, I get to share what I want.

Monday, January 10, 2011

It's a..........

GIRL!!!!!! Ten points for me, I was right! Super excited, due date is May 29th so I guessed right on that as well. There's a picture from the ultrasound up on facebook that I don't really feel like posting here right now cause it's uncomfortable using the laptop in the car and I want to get off soon. But yes, a girl. :)

And to be honest Lindsey, your comment on my last post made me worry it was going to be a boy and I was going to be disappointed, haha, I'm dumb. Oh well.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Yay for Stealing Wifi

This post is being written from my car in a parking lot at NC State while I wait for Tucker to get done with work. I'm only writing it here cause we don't have internet right now at our new apartment, which sucks majorly by the way.

Just thought I'd let you all know that I'm still planning on blogging, but I've been fairly busy/pre-occupied with stuff for the past month or so. It happens. We are all moved into our new apartment though and really loving it. It's a million times better than our old apartment (mostly because we don't have little bugs crawling all over everything), and once I get internet working in our apartment I'll put up some pictures of it.

Also, I've got a doctors appointment on Monday. This one should be more exciting than just getting blood drawn. I'm really really really really hoping that we can get an ultrasound while we're there, not only because I want them to measure the baby to find out if my guess of a due date is accurate, but I'll also be "20 weeks" (again, could be wrong about that, I'm just guessing) and that means we can find out what we're having!!!!!!!! Yeah, we're finding out. Can't remember if I put that decision up here or not. Cross your fingers for me that it's a girl, cause that's what I want; a boy would be super too, but I really want a girl.

Anyways, that's it for now.