Mothership Confessional

Week 25 We have a house in Georgia!! This is such a relief! We were able to snag a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house just a few miles outside of post! I have always loved a home with stairs, in fact, all of our rentals have had them! This house is a 1-story, and I'm really  looking forward to not having to navigate stairs after Liam is born! It will be so nice just to walk down the hallway and not have to carry things up and down. Although, stairs gives me exercise, which I think really contributed to my rapid baby weight loss after Ava was born! The house does have a split floor plan so our bedroom is on the other side of the house from the other 3, so I guess I'll get my exercise during those middle-of-the-night feedings with Liam! I am really curious to see how the cats will handle having to "coexist" with Duke on one level. They currently hang out upstairs for the majority of the day, and only wander down when Ava is asleep because the baby gate is open on the stair...

Week 21: Guys, I'm real  tired. Being pregnant with a toddler to care for is no joke! I'm thankful Ava can navigate the stairs by herself (I hold her hands on the way down) because carrying her up and down is seriously tough! I'm always winded when trying to read her a book right after we get upstairs! Daddy has taken over bath time so I don't have to do that, thankfully! I've been having some round ligament discomfort as of late. Those are the ligaments that kinda hold all your organs in your belly in place, and they get stretched during pregnancy. I didn't really notice it too much with Ava, but I think I feel it on days when I'm trying to do too much. I walked 3 miles the other day, and when I got out of the car, I didn't know if my legs would support me as I took a few steps. My pelvic bone hurts!! My pregnant body is obviously doing what it is supposed to by widening my hips, but my goodness it really hurt! Just an achy feeling that I'm fe...

Week 16 It's amazing to me how my love for this little baby seems to have multiplied in the last week. I love that we know he's a boy. I love that we know his name! We didn't have any ideas for names for a second child, unlike Ava, whose name we had picked out literally years  before she was even born! We stumbled across the name Liam, and we had been trying to find names to go with Alexander, which we agreed that we liked as a middle name. Once the gender-determining ultrasound was done, we spent the rest of the day calling him "Liam Alexander" and seeing how we liked it. By the end of the day, it was clear to us that should be his name! I've been more certain of the movements of little Liam! He was really  active during the ultrasound but I can't feel all those little wiggles yet! But I can feel little twitches when he moves his limbs and changes in pressure in my belly when he moves his whole body - mostly in the area where his head is on my right ...

Its funny how differently I feel with this second pregnancy. Not necessarily physically, but emotionally. With Ava, I truly felt happy and thrilled  and  ecstatic pretty much every single day of pregnancy, even despite the first trimester sickness and third trimester hugeness. It was my first time experiencing pregnancy after trying for 4 long years. I was enjoying every moment of it. I wasn't taking any day for granted and I honestly felt like I was glowing every day. I also had nothing better to do than to sit and daydream, plan and organize for little girl's arrival. This time around, the pregnancy itself was a complete surprise. I mean, we weren't preventing pregnancy so obviously we knew it could happen, but seeing how we didn't get Ava without medical intervention made us have our guards down a little. I still feel the timing for a second pregnancy couldn't have been better. I have absolutely zero regrets or hesitations about being pregnant again. ...

I've decided weekly updates will be kind of boring this time around, so I'll just type a little each week and then publish when I hit some sort of landmark. So this post is Week 13 - Week 15: The BIG Reveal! 13 Weeks It's so odd to me how relaxed I feel so far during this pregnancy. There is definitely a difference in being a "first-time mom", well, first-time pregnant , and the second time around! I don't spend hardly any time googling or obsessing over descriptions of what baby is doing in there each week or reading scary books about delivery. I'm not worried about what the nursery will look like, but that's probably because 1) we don't know the gender yet, and 2) we will be moving once during this pregnancy and then again shortly after baby is born.  Yikes. I'm not looking forward to that move next year, because I'll hardly have made it past my 6 week healing time. (all the more reason to move forward with a c-section so ...

12 weeks... DONE!! We are 1/3 of the way to meeting our baby!! And we finally got to see little baby and we got an official due date! The ultrasound image was of a 9 1/2 weeker, so there wasn't much to see! Still a "little gummy bear" as the doctor called it! And I am due February 27th!  I was able to ask some questions about my delivery options. I will only have one more appointment with this doctor (if we are even here that long) so she gave me her opinion, but said my next doctor might have something different to say. She recommended letting myself go into labor, and have a c-section scheduled for a week or two past my due date in case labor did not happen. She said it is rare that they advise anyone against laboring, so it would be okay for me to do as well. Of course, this all depends on how baby is presenting; Ava was transverse or breech the whole time until the doctor did an external version to move her. I still feel a little reluctant to labor bec...

I am not an expert on pregnancy. I have not even finished my first one, but I thought I would share some products and ideas that helped me make the most of this time with my little one growing inside, the same little one who is responsible for some less-than-desirable symptoms! 1. Ginger Ale, Sprite, and Water These three are your friends from the very beginning. The ginger from the Ginger Ale is helpful for nausea and most general tummy issues, while the bubbles from the Ginger Ale and Sprite can have the same soothing affect. Switch over to drinking water as soon as your upset tummy will allow - both these carbonated beverages have lots of sugar in them, which can be counterproductive for your health in the long run! Water is  extremely  important in all stages of pregnancy for the health of you and your baby, so you may as well get used to drinking a ton of it. Sometimes water can be the cure-all for whatever is ailing you - hydrating is key. How to Help Yo...