27 days to go!

I had my 36 week appointment today and found out some good things! 

1) I am not dialated at all, so baby shouldn't be here until after the move (good news for me).

2) He is about 5 to 5 1/2 pounds right now, so since they gain about a 1/2 pound a week from here on out, he should be 7 to 7 1/2 pounds at birth! I think I can manage that. 

3) I've only gained 4 pounds in the last 3 weeks since I've started watching what I eat more and trying to exercise. 

4) I talked to the financial adviser at the hospital and found out our insurance covers 100% of the delivery (ceserean or vaginal), circumcision, and everything else associated with giving birth, which is a HUGE blessing. 

Overall a pretty good appointment I would say :) I am very happy about it! Also, when the doctor was feeling around to guess his size, he kicked her REALLY hard and it made her jump. Of course I'm used to feeling my little ninja in there, but it was pretty funny. He likes to show off his kicking skills. 

We move a week from today. HALLELUJAH! I don't think I could stand this temporary housing crap anymore. Don't get me wrong, we are very happy we didn't have to pay for a month of rent and got to save up for the baby instead, but it is very small and very humid. I just want to get into our permanent apartment so I don't have to stress about where the baby is born anymore and so I can NEST. 

Where we are moving (Issaquah) is actually where Costco headquarters is so we bought a Costco membership on Saturday and are pretty dang excited about it!

We had the birth center tour on Friday and our tour guide was a crazy old lady so she made it pretty entertaining. She was in her upper 50's and was wearing a short dress that a teenager would wear and when she bent over to show us how the pull-out bed worked for the husbands, I saw her bright neon undies. I was a little disturbed, but it was funny. Anyways, the delivery rooms are awesome, I'm pretty excited to give birth actually just so I can be in the cool rooms haha. 

 Here is a picture of one of the birthing rooms.

 The Hospital bed.

My personal favorite feature, the jacuzzi. 

 

The tour helped calm some of my nerves, so I'm really glad we took it. After the tour we went and got Red Robin and stuffed our faces, it was great.

The countdown begins: 27 days!!

Pregnant scaredy cat

 I had my 35 week checkup today, my weight gain has slowed down a little bit since my doctor told me to count my calories, but still gaining more than I would ideally like to. The baby is measuring right on track and he is head down ready for delivery. His heartbeat is very strong and he is still active as ever. He makes this pregnancy so much easier for me because I already love him so much and I would do anything for him! We are so excited to meet him!

So back to my appointment, everything was going great at the appointment until she told me that I would need to get a pertussis vaccination at the end of the appointment. For those of you that don't know me that well, I have a severe phobia of needles, it's ridiculous. I figured it wouldn't be such a big deal since I've gotten poked many times since I've been pregnant without too much of a problem. This time was a little different. 

The nurse came in to give me my shot and I really wasn't too worried about it. I told her I had a problem with needles so she laid me down to get the shot. She poked me and everything was fine, then I sat up and felt super dizzy all of the sudden. I laid back down and started blacking out and getting super sweaty. Now I don't usually sweat unless I'm working out really hard, but I was SWEATING bad and felt super nauseous. My face was flushed so she went and got me a cold rag for my head and told me to close my eyes and relax, and if I felt like I was going to pass out to yell for her. So I laid there for about 30 minutes before I could finally sit up, I felt like I was going to vomit but luckily I didn't. 

I have no clue why it was so bad this time, but luckily the nurse was super sweet and didn't make me feel stupid for being such a wimp. 

On another note, I felt my first painful Braxton Hicks contractions last night while Blake and I were out for a walk. It scared me to death because I thought I was going into labor since I was getting them about every 7 minutes, but luckily once we got home and sat down they stopped. As long as he doesn't come before we move into our next apartment I'll be happy, just please don't come while we are in this one bedroom apartment! haha I better knock on wood so I don't jinx myself. 

The doctor said I need to have my hospital bag all packed just in case I do go into labor and I need to install the carseat. She said if I do go into labor now since I've 35 weeks, they won't try to stop it so I need to be prepared for anything. She also told me I need to meet with different pediatrician's to find out which one I feel most comfortable with since we will be seeing them for many years to come. It's all becoming very real, very quick. I am anxious and excited, and a little freaked out of my mind haha.

Being a stay at home mom... minus the baby

I'm finding it harder and harder to keep myself busy during the day while Blake is at work. We've never really been apart for longer than a few hours while we were in class so this is a difficult transition. Me being pregnant is probably making it even worse too haha, I know, I'm a big baby!

I've washed all of the baby things and cleaned our temporary apartment a few times. Grocery shopping is pretty exciting... sadly. I have to wait until Blake gets paid to go shopping for more baby things so in a couple weeks I will be able to keep myself more busy, but it's hard to wait!

My doctor's appointment went well this week, it had been about 8 weeks since I had been to the doctor because of graduation and vacationing in Kansas for a couple weeks so I was worried I would have some sort of problems but everything is good! The only thing I am concerned about is the fact that I have already gained about 35 pounds and have the appetite of a teenage boy! Still waiting for the whole "your stomach will be so squished from the baby you will have to eat like a bird" thing to take effect... haha. My doctor isn't concerned about it since I started out pretty thin, but goodness knows I am concerned! I'm worried I'm going to be stuck with all this weight after he is born and not be able to fit into any of my pants! But mainly I'm worried because my doctor said the more weight I gain, the bigger my baby will get! Ummm yeah probably not the best thing to tell a girl who is already freaking out about labor haha but it's definitely motivated me to start watching what I eat more. If you have any advice I would love to hear it :)

I started doing prenatal yoga to help with my confidence issues since I'm not feeling all that attractive at this point. My main issue is that my face is so swollen, and I can't hide my face lol. I know I'm complaining a lot but I figure if you don't want to hear my complaining you don't have to read :)

Good news is that Brayden is healthy as ever and still kicking the crap out of my belly! I love how active he is, I already think he is the most adorable little boy ever. I've also heard he's supposed to slow down his movements around now but that's definitely not happening haha at least not yet. I'm glad that he moves so much though because then I know he's okay, and as a first time mom I'm always paranoid.

Blake LOVES his job and everyone that he works with. He is in charge of deploying updates for SharePoint and hiring contracted workers in their department. Pretty crazy that he will be hiring people! His boss sees a lot of potential in him and is impressed with his work so far :) I'm so glad that he loves his job!

Let me know if you have any suggestions for good books to read! I'm starting Pride and Prejudice today but I'm going to want more books on the list to read after!

Beginning Chapter 2

So I said I wouldn't start a blog... and then my husband went to work full time and before the baby comes I basically have nothing to do so I figured I would blab on about everything that's going on in my life and whoever wants to read it can! Haha.

We moved to Redmond a week ago today and we love it! It's just outside of Seattle and really close to Bellevue, which is also a pretty big city. We moved here because Blake got a job with Microsoft on the SharePoint team (if you know what that is) and we decided it was way too good of an offer to turn down. We are incredibly blessed to be able to live in such a great area with a great job and a sweet baby on the way, things just have seemed to stack up in our favor lately and we are very grateful. I'm sure that challenges will come soon with the baby, but for now everything is going pretty perfectly :)

Majority of last week we spent looking for an apartment, which was quite the task! The cost of living in Washington is VERY high, especially coming from Rexburg, Idaho haha. We ended up finding a perfect apartment complex located literally across the street from where I will be delivering our little boy and having all my appointments before he comes! So I figure if I go into labor while Blake is at work I can walk over if I had to, which gives me peace of mind.

 Here is what our apartment complex looks like, you can see my hospital at the very back.

 Our kitchen will look identical to this one, with different decorations :)

 This is a picture of the model, so none of these decorations will come with this apartment but we have the exact same floorplan as the model. The angle of this picture makes it look pretty crowded but it's pretty spacious :)

 This is a picture of the indoor hot tub mainly with the pool in the back.

 Half court basketball, Blake is pretty excited about this.

 Here's a picture of the indoor pool, which I am VERY excited to use! 

We are in Microsoft corporate housing for the first month, but after that we are going to be moving here into their 3 bedroom floor-plan, I can hardly wait! It's just shy of 1400 square feet and has a nice balcony and full sized laundry room so we don't have to do our laundry in our kitchen anymore! Haha! These apartments are located in the Highlands, where there are lots of other Mormons and Microsoft workers. We will be moving in most likely on the 3rd of September, so I will be full term, but luckily Microsoft is moving us into our apartment which makes it a lot easier. I'm sure I will be spending most of my days before the baby comes unpacking things out of boxes and organizing, which I am perfectly fine with!

Today is Blake's first day of work and I went to visit him during his lunch break on the Microsoft campus, it was so cool! They had tons of different places you could eat at in the food court and stores you could shop at. Also, wherever you go there are huge refrigerators full of free drinks, basically any drink you could imagine! They have random Xbox and Kinect stations set up so you can play games during your break. It's like a techie's dream come true, Blake had a huge grin on his face the whole time I was there haha. He is enjoying himself so far :)

Pregnancy Update: I will be 34 weeks tomorrow, crazy that it's only 3 more weeks until I am full term! I felt like it would never come haha! I am feeling pretty good and huge, like really huge. I have had a problem with water weight, my mom had the same problem, but I'm getting bigger than I normally would and there's not much I can do about it. Since I've had this water weight issue, my swelling has been worse than the average pregnancy also, especially in my legs, feet, arms and face. It stinks because usually pregnant women don't feel super attractive anyways, but the swelling is just making it worse :-/ that's my only real complaint though. Other than the swelling I feel pretty darn good! Definitely excited for our little guy to be born though :) 

Well, that's about it for now! Let's see if I can actually keep up with blogging!