I have to admit that I was a little nervous about the appointment because I wasn’t sure what to expect. It was fine, which is more than I can say for the last two times I was in the office because of complications with my c-section incision (again another story for another time).

The doctor checked out my scar, talked to me about some lady stuff and then said the words I’ve been waiting to hear for what felt like the last nine months, “You are cleared for all physical activity.” I almost shed a tear; I can run again! It was music to my ears!

Obviously I’m not about to go out and run a marathon or anything (yet!), but today I did lace up my running shoes and go for a nice long walk. Only this time my view was a little different when I looked down. Instead of seeing just my feet, I saw a stroller handle too.

Instead of going out by myself or with friends, I was with my daughter.

My daughter. It still brings a smile to my face when I say that.

So even though I’m a few weeks away from strapping on my shoes and going for a run, I’ll get there.

And you know you’ll read all about it.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not even sure how to talk about the amazingness (yes, I’m considering that a word) that has turned our lives upside down, inside out, backwards and forwards all at the same time. The amazingness that brings me to tears, takes my breath away and completely melts my heart. The amazingness that makes me want to be a better person and change the world.

Hello, little one.

She is the amazingness that has squeaked, squealed and smiled (I swear it’s not gas) her way into my heart like I never imagined.

I spent almost nine months wondering and dreaming about what it would be like to meet her, see what she looked like and how I would be as her mother.

I took bets as to when people thought she’d arrive and make a fourth to our family (we can’t leave out Bradley) and if she’d make it before Christmas.

I think we were all surprised when she arrived a week early, on December 15th at 6:08 am after a five hour labor that ended in a c-section because she was breech. Surprise! But that story, my friends, is for another day.

Welcome to the world, Harper Ann.

After my baby shower last weekend we finally decided to go ahead and order the Baby Jogger City Mini with the incredibly generous BRU gift card that my friends gave us. You all know that we’ve gone back and forth trying to decide on a stroller so it was a big moment for us. I swear you’d think this was a HUGE decision instead of just a stroller but we really wanted to make sure that we were making the right choice – and really until she’s here and we are using the stroller who knows if it is really the best choice. However, right now WE LOVE IT!

It arrived only two days after we ordered it and I was lucky enough to greet Mr. UPS man as he delivered it. I put it inside the door since I was talking to my mom on the phone when I realized that Carl had just gotten home from work. It was lovely outside so I chatted with mom for a little while longer and when I came inside just a few minutes later Carl already had the stroller together.

In our excitement we decided to take it outside for a test drive and see how it fit in our CR-V. I’m sure we got a few looks as we walked down the sidewalk, me with my clearly pregnant belly and an empty stroller but I didn’t care.

Check out all of the room we still have back there! I still swear by the folding mechanism – easiest one E-V-E-R and makes me smile each time I fold it up. Yes, I’m a dork and I don’t care

I also went ahead and bought the car seat adaptor and after some minor adjustments and a few swear words later we got everything all hooked up.

We love it!

Harper is the length of a leek!

From babycenter.com:

Your baby has really plumped up. She weighs about 6.8 pounds and she’s over 19 1/2 inches long. She has a firm grasp, which you’ll soon be able to test when you hold her hand for the first time! Her organs have matured and are ready for life outside the womb.

Wondering what color your baby’s eyes will be? You may not be able to tell right away. If she’s born with brown eyes, they’ll likely stay brown. If she’s born with steel gray or dark blue eyes, they may stay gray or blue or turn green, hazel, or brown by the time she’s 9 months old. That’s because a child’s irises (the colored part of the eye) may gain more pigment in the months after she’s born, but they usually won’t get “lighter” or more blue. (Green, hazel, and brown eyes have more pigment than gray or blue eyes.)

This week we had a mad dash to continue getting things ready for Harper. Carl ran what felt like a million errands while I stayed home “resting”. Oh Lord, this was definitely difficult sending him out with my lists of things to buy and look at but he was such a trooper. I know I’ve said before that Carl is such a wonderful man and husband and how thankful I am to have him as a partner, but these last few weeks I know without out a doubt that I am truly blessed.

While Carl was running errands I was at home doing what felt like a million loads of baby clothes and organizing them in drawers and bins, having no idea what was going to fit our little girl once she arrived. So many people told us we wouldn’t need newborn clothes that most of the time babies are too big for them, so I kept that in mind when I organized everything (oh how wrong this would be, but we wouldn’t find that out until next week, lol!).

When I wasn’t organizing or washing clothes I was working on my pregnancy book, which I still haven’t finished but will soon! I decided to use mypublisher.com and create a book out of all of these “All Things Baby” posts so that I would remember what my pregnancy journey was like. I have no idea if we’ll have more than one child (although if you ask me today I’d say “hell no!”) so I wanted to make sure that Harper knew what it was like to be pregnant with her, not to mention that I’ll enjoy the memories once I’m even farther removed from being pregnant.

This week my hips began to hurt while I was sleeping and I was getting up more and more frequently to go to the bathroom. I also found myself out of breath a lot more and going up and down the stairs in our townhouse was quite a feat!

I also noticed that some new stretch marks on my belly and hips decided to make their appearance in the 11th hour. Lovely. Ah well, they’ll fade over time.

We’re almost there!

How big is baby?

Harper is the length of swiss chard!

From babycenter.com:

Your baby is now considered “full term,” even though your due date is three weeks away. If you go into labor now, his lungs will likely be mature enough to fully adjust to life outside the womb. (Some babies need a bit more time, though. So if you’re planning to have a repeat c-section, for example, your practitioner will schedule it for no earlier than 39 weeks unless there’s a medical reason to intervene earlier.)

Your baby weighs 6 1/3 pounds and measures a bit over 19 inches, head to heel. Many babies have a full head of hair at birth, with locks from 1/2 inch to 1 1/2 inches long. But don’t be surprised if your baby’s hair isn’t the same color as yours. Dark-haired couples are sometimes thrown for a loop when their children come out as blonds or redheads, and fair-haired couples have been surprised by Elvis look-alikes. And then, of course, some babies sport only peach fuzz.

This week brought about a lovely shower thrown by my co-workers. What a blessing they are! Hilary had a cute idea to bring in a little tree and put the presents on there! Such a cute idea for a baby due around Christmas time!

At my doctors appointment this week my blood pressure was crazy high and the doctor recommended that I go on “rest”, which meant that I needed to stay home from work (a full 1.5 weeks before I was expecting to have my last day of work!) and just rest. That meant no errands, nothing. Just resting at home for the next bit until Harper decided to make her appearance. This news was really hard to take. I felt like I still had so much to do before I would feel ready to stop working (I hadn’t even started working on my lesson plans for my maternity leave, let alone plans for the week and a half that I was going to miss before Christmas break!), we still had things to finish up in the nursery, I had things I still needed to get for myself during and after labor! If anything, this week showed me that I am certainly not in control, just a passenger along for the ride. In the grand scheme of things I know that the things that wouldn’t be finished weren’t a big deal and I am blessed with amazing co-workers who were willing to help in any way they could to help me get my school stuff in order. I also have an amazing husband who would spend the next week or so helping me get things ready (or what we thought was ready!) around the house for our baby girl to come home to.

I do think the most exciting part of my doctor’s appointment was when he told me that I was already 1-2 cm dialated and my cervix was thinning! Any pregnant woman knows that while this doesn’t give any indication as to when baby girl would decide to make her appearance (some women are like this for two to three weeks before they deliver), it was exciting to know that my body was at least starting to prepare for Harper’s arrival and doing what it was supposed to, even when my blood pressure wasn’t.

How big is baby?

Harper is the size of a bag of carrots!

Here is what babycenter.com has to say about Harper in week 36:

Your baby is still packing on the pounds — at the rate of about an ounce a day. She now weighs almost 6 pounds and is more than 18 1/2 inches long. She’s shedding most of the downy covering of hair that covered her body as well as the vernix caseosa, the waxy substance that covered and protected her skin during her nine-month amniotic bath. Your baby swallows both of these substances, along with other secretions, resulting in a blackish mixture, called meconium, will form the contents of her first bowel movement.

At the end of this week, your baby will be considered full-term. (Full-term is 37 to 42 weeks; babies born before 37 weeks are pre-term and those born after 42 are post-term.) Most likely she’s in a head-down position. But if she isn’t, your practitioner may suggest scheduling an “external cephalic version” which is a fancy way of saying she’ll try to coax your baby into a head-down position by manipulating her from the outside of your belly.

Woo hoo for almost being full term!

What are we celebrating?

While we were home visiting our family we also took our pictures for our in-laws Christmas cards. This year my mother-in-law decided to head over to the beach for the shots. I have to admit that it was pretty difficult walking on the sand so they got into position and let me come in after everyone was settled. Ironically they loved the last picture that we took, not even on the beach. I think it made a pretty cute card, don’t you think?

Keith was able to use his magical photoshop skills and change the sign but I don’t have a copy of that picture. Oh one day I’ll get a copy of photoshop, too!

Another tradition that we have during Thanksgiving weekend is to go pick out our Christmas tree with Carl’s family. We were able to find this lovely semi-Charlie Brown tree for only $25! Score! The only rule that I had for our tree this year was that it had to be taller than me

Keith and Amy celebrated a new tradition as it was their first year getting a tree together. Yay!

We left on Saturday morning to finish up our final Thanksgiving weekend tradition, decorating our tree and watching the Florida v. Florida State game. I wish I could say that it was a good game, but both teams played horribly. I’m sad that we still have the Florida State flag hanging outside of our house for another year, but hopefully Florida will get their act together next year!

How big is baby?

Harper is the size of a honeydew melon! From babycenter.com:

Your baby doesn’t have much room to maneuver now that he’s over 18 inches long and tips the scales at 5 1/4 pounds. Because it’s so snug in your womb, he isn’t likely to be doing somersaults anymore, but the number of times he kicks should remain about the same. His kidneys are fully developed now, and his liver can process some waste products. Most of his basic physical development is now complete — he’ll spend the next few weeks putting on weight.

What are we celebrating?

This week we celebrated Thanksgiving with our family. It was so nice to be home and visit with everyone.

My mom actually just had surgery a few days before Thanksgiving so I was thankful that we were able to go home so we could take care of her a bit. I wasn’t all that much help, being a giant whale!, but I was there for company which is sometimes just what someone needs when they are recovering.

This week we also celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary but would you believe it, I didn’t take a single picture! I swear sometimes I take pictures of silly things and then completely forget the important ones! Ah well, I’ll learn

Harper is the size of a cantaloupe!

Here is Babycenter.com’s words of wisdom for this week:

Your baby now weighs about 4 3/4 pounds and is almost 18 inches long. Her fat layers — which will help regulate her body temperature once she’s born — are filling her out, making her rounder. Her skin is also smoother than ever. Her central nervous system is maturing and her lungs are continuing to mature as well. If you’ve been nervous about preterm labor you’ll be happy to know that babies born between 34 and 37 weeks who have no other health problems generally do fine. They may need a short stay in the neonatal nursery and may have a few short-term health issues, but in the long run, they usually do as well as full-term babies.

This is crazy to me as I was only 6 pounds 8 ounces and 19 inches when I was born!

How am I feeling?

Tired! While I’m sleeping pretty well I’m still waking up really tired lately. I don’t know if it’s the time change or what but even on the weekends I’m waking up around 6:30am and can’t fall back to sleep. Last night I woke up around 2:30am and decided to sleep in Harper’s room. Carl woke up and joined me and eventually Bradley came in too. It was quite a crowded bed but it was neat to have our little family all together in Harper’s room.

Yesterday I had a doctor’s appointment and I have to admit that it had me a little freaked out. The nurse was concerned by the swelling in my feet/ankles/legs and the weight gain that I had since my last visit four weeks ago, where they had me up 12 pounds per their scale! She started throwing around the term “pre-eclampsia” and I was totally freaking out. I also got the surprise that I was going to have my Group B Strep test – so it really wasn’t my favorite doctor’s visit. I expressed my concern about the “pre-eclampsia” to the doctor and he checked me out and said that he wasn’t concerned about it and that it was only the combo of blood pressure (which was fine), swelling (which was a little more than he’d like to see but nothing that wouldn’t have been explained by the fact that I stand about 80-90% of the day) and protein in the urine (which I had none of) that should be cause for worry. I also discussed some other things that I had been experiencing (which are a little more than I’d like to share with the entire internet) and felt much better after talking with him.

After my appointment I called my mom in tears about the whole situation. I’m so thankful that she was able to talk me off the ledge and help me gain perspective on everything. She encouraged me to weigh myself when I got home to see what was going on and sure enough I was actually 3-4 pounds heavier than the day before, which could certainly be explained by water retention. Sure, I’ve talked about cleaning up my diet but at this point I just want to know what is going on in my body and whether or not its me indulging in a little too many sweets one week or just retaining water.

Weight stuff is always difficult to deal with so I’ve decided to look at it from a more scientific perspective rather than a “I don’t want to gain xxx pounds” just so I can say that I only gained xxx pounds while I was pregnant. Pregnancy isn’t a competition so I need to stop thinking about it like one.

How am I changing?

I should have mentioned this in my last few posts, but I’ve started snoring much more now! I even wake myself up! I think it happens when I end up on my back, which is the most comfortable position for me to sleep in. Yes, I know I’m not “supposed” to sleep on my back and while I have mixed views about how it actually affects blood flow to Harper and my legs, I firmly believe that my body’s internal system would wake me up (and maybe it does…) long before anything serious would happen. Okay, off my soapbox now

I’ve also been developing small bouts of heartburn. Nothing like what other pregnant women suffer from but every once in a while I’ll also wake up with the tingly sensation. When I do feel kinda urpy during the day I just pop a piece of gum and feel much better. I swear gum is like a miracle drug for me during pregnancy!

There is one other symptom that I just noticed but I think I’ll spare you the details of that. Simply recording it for my own records. Moving on…

Who are we celebrating?

Kristin!

We met downtown to celebrate her birthday and had a great time. Hilary even brought Piper, who was certainly the hit of the evening.

What are we doing?

We had my good friend Ashley take some maternity pictures on Sunday! I’ve gotten a sneak peak of a few and she got some really great shots! I can’t wait to see the finished product! Love you, Ash!

What are we buying?

This week we ordered our stroller using the GC that the girls gave me at my shower. I’m still in awe of their generosity and am so thankful for such amazing friends! We finally decided to go ahead and get the Baby Jogger City Mini and it arrived just two days after we ordered it. More details coming in another post.

We also went to BRU and looked at baby carriers. We’re going back and forth between the ErgoBaby Performance, Baby Bjorn baby carrier active and a Beco (which comes recommended from Hilary but we haven’t tried it on yet). I know there is a website that allows a 14 day trial for up to three carriers but I’m not sure if we should wait until Harper is here to try them or if we should go ahead and do the trial now. Logically it would make more sense to wait until she is here so we can actually try them out with her but I’d like to be able to wear her when we get home from the hospital. Maybe that’s a job that I can delegate to someone? Any feedback/advice would be greatly appreciated!

Which classes are we taking?

CPR!

At first I was really nervous about taking the CPR class but the instructor made us all feel very comfortable. While I don’t have a little card certifying me in CPR I do feel like I understand the process enough to be able to help if an infant/child/adult needs it. Fingers crossed that I never need to use it!

Unfortunately Friday night I got a call from Hilary who was having the shower at her house saying that she, along with Piper and Mr. Republican, had the flu!  Poor things!  It’s been a few years since I’d had it, knock on wood, and can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for all three of them to be sick, especially little Piper who is only six months old!

Luckily Kristin came to the rescue and offered up her house for the shower.  We split up the list of people who were attending and made some phone calls letting everyone know that the location had been changed.  While I know that Hilary was upset that she had to cancel, Kristin (and Ashley, Rachel and Betsy) rallied to make the shower just beautiful.

I am continually in awe of the amazing friends that I have been blessed with.  From the wonderful women I’ve met through Carl’s job and college friends to the amazing women that I work with I have never felt so loved and supported.  They are truly like a second family to me and I can’t wait for them to meet Harper – and I know they can’t wait to meet her either!

Ashley played photographer, capturing beautiful pictures of the shower since my mom and mother-in-law weren’t able to make it.  We certainly felt their spirit, though!

Thank you!

Harper is the size of a pineapple!

Here’s what Babycenter.com has to say about our little girl this week:

This week your baby weighs a little over 4 pounds and has passed the 17-inch mark. He’s rapidly losing that wrinkled, alien look and his skeleton is hardening. The bones in his skull aren’t fused together, which allows them to move and slightly overlap, thus making it easier for him to fit through the birth canal. (The pressure on the head during birth is so intense that many babies are born with a conehead-like appearance.) These bones don’t entirely fuse until early adulthood, so they can grow as his brain and other tissue expands during infancy and childhood.

How am I feeling?

This week I was feeling really good! Still slowing down and by the end of the day, but I know working too many hours aren’t helping. It doesn’t help when the principal once again calls me out in a meeting. Nice.

I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to get used to balancing work and motherhood once Harper is here. I have a feeling that once she is here I will work much more efficiently or have to do more work at home rather than at school.

What am I eating?

My relationship with food still ebbs and flows. I have days where I eat really well and days where I can’t keep my hand out of the bag of Baked Lays, having a second serving of something yummy Carl has made for dinner or for having a rootbeer float at a meeting. Ah well.

I do still love fruit and hummus. Never thought I’d say that, lol.

How am I changing?

There are just little things that sneak up and remind me that I’m eight months pregnant, like not being able to easily tie my sneakers or zip up a sweater.

My friend Katie was in town and we were heading out for dinner when I went to grab this sweater/vest and started to zip it up only to realize that I couldn’t even bring one side of the zipper close to the other!

What are we celebrating?

Harper! This week I had my second baby shower, thrown by my friends. It was such an amazing morning! I am continually amazed at how many people love Harper as much as we do already. A separate post about is coming up!