Saturday, July 19, 2014

30 Weeks

This has pretty much been my pregnancy style for the hot St. Louis summer. Maxi dress + the same sleeveless denim cardigan. All. Summer. Long. I was kind of dreading being in my third trimester in the summer heat but it hasn't actually been too bad. I like that it allows me to dress in clothes that show off my pregnancy a bit more. When I was pregnant with Rhett in the cold Michigan winter, I was pretty covered up with bulky sweaters and coats.

Anyway...this pregnancy is trucking right along. It's kind of amazing how opposite these pregnancies have treated me. Physically, I'm a lot more exhausted this time around. My hips and thighs are usually pretty sore by the end of the day. I've had restless legs keeping me up at night and just generally feel pretty huge, all the time. But emotionally, it's been a lot easier this time around. I felt wholly unprepared for a baby when I was pregnant with Rhett and as my due date approached, I just felt like it was almost exam day for a test I'd surely fail. That all sounds dramatic, but really. This time I've been very happy and excited to meet our little one! Also, I think I look about a hundred times better this time around, which is much more fun.

I've been getting a bit paranoid about the possibility of a reoccurrence of IUGR, so I asked my doctor if we could do a growth ultrasound. I'll go in this week and see if Poppy is on track. Then I'll just have one more appointment before our move down to Florida! I've got about two months until her birthday and we can't wait!

Friday, July 4, 2014

Preparing for Poppy

snuggling up to some third trimester belly
A pretty common question I've being getting lately is "Is Rhett ready to be a big brother? Does he understand what's going on?". The short answer to the latter is no. He doesn't really seem to have a handle on "what's going on" and we haven't really been pushing much to explain it to him. We keep meaning to buy him a baby doll and do that whole thing, but we haven't really gotten around to it. Mostly, I just figure that it's not really something that's possible to prepare for and he'll figure it out when the time comes. He understands that we call my belly "Poppy" now and he's been very nurturing to it. I doubt he knows that there's a person in there (heck, that's kind of a weird concept for me to wrap my head around). But if we say "Rhett give Poppy a kiss", he's very willing to snuggle up to my pregnant belly and offer kisses. 

Is he ready to be a big brother? On that front, I'm not sure. He's a pretty nurturing person. He loves children. We try to point out babies and big brothers whenever we can. He's seen both Josh and I with little babies and he doesn't turn into Mr. Hyde with jealousy. He's been fairly independent and flexible throughout his little life and I think he'll do ok. I don't want to be naive about it, but I think he'll like having another person in our family. I'm more worried about my recovery from the repeat C-section. He likes to snuggle on my lap, wrestle and climb all over me. We've been working on curbing it, but I enjoy it so it's been kind of back and forth. 

The running joke is that he thinks he's getting a puppy this Fall (cause "Puppy" and "Poppy" are pretty similar). He's been really into dogs lately, so hopefully he won't be too disappointed when we bring home a sister instead of a furry friend!