Wow! How is it already February 5? I had so many posts I wanted to do, but have had no time to sit and type them. So, this is kind of going to be a condensed version of them all!
I had to change doctor's because the OB that owns the practice I was going to decided she didn't want to have a midwife anymore. I really want a midwife. So, I looked around and I think I have ended up in a better practice at a hospital that is much more natural birth friendly.
We are going to the new place tomorrow for our anatomy scan tomorrow! We still plan to not find out what we are having, but I can't wait to see our little baby again. One of my friends at church is also pregnant and she had her anatomy scan a few weeks ago. She has a lot of experience having babies, so this was not her first rodeo. She said that it's cool if the baby kicks you while they do the scan because you can see them kicking and feel them kicking. I hope we get some fun stuff like that!
We are in our Bradley Childbirthing class. We will finish kind of early, but the instructor said that if we want to re-take some of the classes in their next session, we can. We had to take it so early because the next one won't end until a couple of weeks after our due date. This class really prepares you for a natural childbirth and teaches a lot of exercises to prepare for childbirth and gives you a lot of pushing positions to try out. I am glad we are taking our class early so that I have lots of time to practice these things. I would really like to have a completely natural childbirth with no needles, no nothing. The hospital we are going to will allow that as long as there are no needs like Group B Strep or any other risks. I figure doing everything I can to avoid tearing is a huge part of my "no needles" strategy since stitches require needles. (shiver).
My reading list is pretty extensive. I feel like there is so much to read! One of my close girlfriends recommended that I focus on having the baby and taking care of the baby for the first month. I was kind of thinking that, but still felt like we should at least have researched a parenting style and have some sort of general plan. I had read
Ina May's Guide to Childbirth. This was an excellent book that I highly recommend. I am so glad that it was recommended to me by more than one person. My husband is reading
Husband Coached Childbirth and I think it is helping him a lot. I have borrowed a few books from a friend from church and will probably buy a couple of them, but I just perused them. They are
The Attachment Parenting Book and
The Complete Book of Christian Parenting and Child Care. Those are both by Dr. Sears. I am not sure if we'll do 100% Attachment Parenting, but we will probably do some version of it. I am in the middle of reading (all the way through)
Womanly Art of Breastfeeding and intend to read all the way through
Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way. I was also given
The Baby Book, which I understand reads kind of like an encyclopedia and you can just read the section that is the age your baby is approaching, so I will read the first little bit of it before the baby comes. So, it sounds like a lot, but I am really only going to have read all the way through 3 books by the time the baby's here. I know that a lot of being a mother will come very naturally, but I don't think it hurts to do some studying ahead of time.
We are rearranging our house to make room for this new little one. I have probably mentioned that in a previous post. We had a lot of furniture in our house, mainly because my grandmother was one to want us to take everything she owned. So, we both took some, but as I had more room, I got more. So, I gave one piece to my sister that I didn't really need and another piece to my cousin that I also didn't need. The piece we gave my cousin was a nice sofa table that was in our foyer. We replaced it with a bookcase that my husband and his dad made shortly before we got married. We got rid of the mattress and boxsprings that was on our old full size bed and put the frame and headboard up in our bonus room. In order to do that, we had to clean out our bonus room. We took an entire pickup truck full of stuff to our local goodwill. We could probably go through there one more time and get rid of more stuff, but for now, the bed fits. On a gross aside, when my husband drug the mattress and box springs out to the curb for trash pickup (he had to call for a special truck), within less than 5 minutes the mattress was gone along with an old Christmas tree we couldn't give to goodwill. That mattress was about 16 years old. Plus, what if we had bed bugs? Ick. Oh well. Not my problem.
We have our guest bedroom all cleaned out except for the boxes of stuff we had to take off of our big bookcase, and those will have to be moved out for us to paint. I've emptied off the cubby-style bookcase in our office/craft room and put away all my other craft stuff including my sewing machine. We are mostly done cleaning off the desk in there. We have this weekend to get everything cleaned off, clean off the baseboards and anything else that needs to be cleaned, and repair any holes in the drywall. Next weekend, we have friends coming over to paint. The next weekend, we have my sister and brother-in-law coming over and my BIL is going to put up our wall decal that is a tree.
This is what it looks like, except our owl is sunflower yellow and the two little birds are blue. So cute! We are painting the walls in there a similar color. We had to move out of the office because it is going to be the nursery and the guest room will be no more as we are moving the office/craft room to the front room which used to be the guest room. We had a red accent wall in there, which I just don't want in our office, so we are painting that one a light green color. We have our colors picked out, we just need to go buy all the supplies.
We have three groups of people planning showers for us! I still can't believe I am pregnant and people are planning baby showers for us! We are having a church shower, a shower for my family, and a shower for my husband's family. We are so blessed to have so many people that want to do this for us.
We are still praying for our little one every day. I so want to meet this little baby and get to snuggle with him or her. I pray daily that God will keep our baby healthy and allow us the opportunity to raise this baby to seek Him and to put His glory above all other things.
If you are still with me, I am impressed. Thanks for stopping by! Until next time...