Life Updates

I

Thanks all for the prayers for our baby. I had our follow up ultrasound on Tuesday and baby's enlarged kidney has gotten only slightly worse. Everything else looked great. Apparently it's very common to have an enlarged kidney show up in an ultrasound (something like 1 in 50 pregnancies, from what I've read) and usually it turns out to be nothing. We'll follow up with a pediatric urologist after the baby is born.

II

Recently, many friends and family members have been commenting about how I must be a few weeks from my due date/due any time now. Ha ha ha. I'm only 32 weeks today, so apparently this doesn't just feel like an extremely long pregnancy to me but to everyone else as well. Still two full months to go, most likely.

III

As for what strangers think, I get a pretty even mix of "I can't believe you're that far along already, you look tiny!" and "Oh my, you're huge already! How can you have two more months?" Which I find kind of hilarious, because I've often gotten those same comments within five minutes of each other so it's can't be chalked up to what I'm wearing that day. What drastically different perceptions people have of what pregnant women are "supposed" to look like at each stage in pregnancy! For the record, I don't think I look "tiny" (I'm short, so that's pretty much impossible in pregnancy - baby can only go out) but I am much smaller than I was with Lucia at this point. And I recently looked at pictures of me at 41 weeks with Lucia and believe me, it can get much, much bigger than this.

You be the judge. This is after Mass last Sunday - 31 weeks.

IV

I loved all the comments and suggestions on my baby name consultation over at Sancta Nomina (and the Facebook post where I shared it). We have two middle names that are front runners (including one Kate suggested) and two others that are wildcards (including one that wasn't mentioned in the consultation but one reader suggested in the comments on the Facebook post!) and I think we're just going to wait until the baby is born to decide. If we have a boy, we won't need to worry about it. If we have a girl, it will be fun to save a little bit of the baby naming until the last minute since we've had our boy name chosen before Lucia was even born and our girl's name chosen for at least three or so years. I love thinking and talking about baby names so having some kind of dilemma is fun for me.

V

I have a list of things to do before the baby is born. Not much baby related items on it, more of stuff that I figure is easier to do without a newborn to care for. Things like repaint my "sewing table" (it's an old vanity), and recover the stool. Finish (and basically start!) Lucia's baby book. I'm also going to be helping my family go through my grandparents' storage unit and hopefully have a garage sale. And I want to finish knitting a blanket for my niece and then knit one for the baby, along with two hats - one pink and one blue - to bring to the birth center. We're waiting to put up the crib and install the car seat, pack the diaper bag, etc. until October, which still seems so far away.

VI

Lucia is such a fun age right now. (For reference, she'll be four in December.) I'm fairly certain I've said that about every age and stage so far - and I don't really think I could pick a favorite age - but she says and does such sweet, hilarious, and oddball things that our days together are always interesting. Her favorite thing to do right now is play "mommy and little girl" (or boy when played with daddy) and her ideas of what moms say and do are so, so funny. I get to be the little girl and she always calls me "little girl" despite me trying to explain that mothers usually call their children by a name. "Little girl, it's time to go to school." "Don't forget your lunchbox, little girl!" I'm fairly certain that her parenting doesn't resemble mine at all, so I'm not sure exactly where she gets her ideas from, but it's very fun(ny) to watch her be a mom. It also makes me super excited to see her interact with the baby since she seems to have some odd ideas of how to care for babies too.

VII

It's been a little quiet around the blog and facebook page. Not on purpose, but I haven't had much to say. All is going well and the further along I get, the more it feels like a "normal" pregnancy. My midwife appointments are every other week now and I'm starting to think about the labor and birth. I still have a very hard time envisioning an actual baby in a few months time, but that doesn't seem to be out of the ordinary for any pregnant woman, regardless of whether she's had past losses or not. A new human being added to this world, to our family is a really hard concept to grasp.

And...it's pretty amazing that I was able to come up with seven things to talk about so let's join Kelly, shall we?