No… I hadn’t planned to post a picture of myself 29 weeks pregnant in a bikini.

But since I already had it on to go for a swim downstairs I thought I would go for it and I figured my hair and makeup would be a mess after my swim.  I do have to toot my own horn a bit though because I think I look pretty good for being over 7 months pregnant in a bikini.

Moving on…

For months my sister has been telling me how great swimming is when you are pregnant, and after saying I would do it for months I finally went swimming tonight and I realized what I have been missing.  It was wonderful just floating around the pool that was the perfect temperature.  I plan to do this atleast 3 times a week, if not every night after work.  It is a great way to relax after a long day of working, or at least part of a day working hard.

As my belly is expanding, baby girl is growing more every week:  She has reached 3 pounds and 17 inches long which means she is very close to her length at birth.  Baby girl will be double if not triple the weight she is now by birth.  The weight baby girl is gaining now is coming from the fat that is accumulating under the skin.  The kicks and rolls that I am feeling now are going to become less noticeable as she gets bigger and I will begin to feel jabs and pokes from her elbows and knees.

Pregnancy Highlights:

Overall it isn’t too bad considering I am getting non-fat decaf lattes and getting a walk while I am at it, the problem is that I find myself coming back to my air conditioned office to lounge in my comfy office chair and look at Etsy while drinking my latte.  Not quite conducive to working.

In an effort to continue being employed until I start my mat leave I am trying to minimize these coffee etsy breaks to only a few times a week, otherwise I would get no work done.

Baby girl we have made it to the third trimester!!  I get so excited every day that we are getting that much closer to having you here.  The time continues to fly by and I know that these last 12 weeks are going to be over before we know it.  It all became even more real yesterday when the midwife was telling Sean and I the signs of early labour and the fact that I am having braxton hicks contractors already.

Wow, can I really be at the point where we start talking about labour and delivery.  I have no fears at all about labour and delivery, I feel completely at peace with the decisions that Sean and I have made and I feel that the more relaxed I am about it the easier the process is going to be for Sean and I.  I think I am just surprised that we are getting to that point, it is no longer something that is in the distant future that we will have to think about at some point.  With all of that said this trimester is the most exciting because in the end we get our baby girl.

As I mentioned back at the end of my first trimester I have been comparing this pregnancy with our typically monthly drive from Seattle to Vancouver.  For the many years I have been making this drive and I have always broken the trip up into thirds so I saw it as only fitting that I use it as a way to follow the progression of my pregnancy.  Any long journey whether it is a drive from Seattle to Vancouver or a pregnancy is that much easier when you can break it up into managable parts, and for me it has always been thirds.

We have made it through the traffic and congestion of the first trimester and the rolling hills and beautiful scenery of the second trimester to arrive in a place that is very special to Sean and I, Bellingham.  Bellingham is the place that a year and a half ago we became a family and it is now the place we leave from to finish this journey which will result in the welcoming of our baby girl in Vancouver.  I am so ready to be in Vancouver!!

Baby girl has reached 2 1/2 pounds, 16 inches long and her new skill this week is blinking.  This new skill goes along with the coughing, sucking and hiccuping that she already does.  Although her lungs won’t be fully formed for at least another 9 weeks she is still taking her practice breaths.

Pregnancy Highlights:

If for some reason my iron levels drop much more there is a chance that we will not be able to have a home birth like we are hoping for.  Which is all the motivation I need to go get my iron pills tomorrow and start working on building up those iron reserves.  The good part about all of this is that it would explain why I have been so tired lately.  It felt like a for the last few weeks I just couldn’t seem to get enough sleep.  Hopefully with the addition of some iron I will start to have a bit more energy.

Now onto the good news, I passed my diabetes screening with flying colours.  I am right in the normal range which means I can keep doing what I am doing because it seems to be working great.  Although I figured I was fine, I begin to get a little worried yesterday as I was shoveling jelly belly’s into my mouth that maybe I might not pass.  Thankfully the fact that I am generally very healthy and don’t eat sweets all the time means that I don’t have to worry about diabetes during this pregnancy.

It was also exciting to hear that we are to the point in the pregnancy when we get to see the midwife every 3 weeks instead of every 5.  This means I get to hear baby girls strong heart beat much more often now.  But this also means we are getting that much closer to baby girl being here, only 12 weeks to go!

As I am perusing the shelves for some wine I notice people looking at me.  They all basically followed the same routine, first they look at belly, then the bottle of wine and back to my face before looking away really quick.  It was very clear from a few of the people that they really thought I was going to go home and drink the wine.

It took everything I had to not start laughing at people’s reaction, it was as if they couldn’t imagine another reason why I might be going to the liquor store beside buying alcohol for myself.  As I was checking out the cashier was really nice and didn’t even look at my belly like I was a crazy drunk pregnant woman.  She must be accustomed to pregnant women buying alcohol

The best part was when I left the store, carrying my bottle of wine because I didn’t want to waste a bag and a random man stopped me.  He started the conversation by asking how I was doing in the heat, innocent enough, so we chatted about the heat and he gave me some tips on ways to cool down based on pressure points.  It was at this point he told me that I shouldn’t drink the wine I had just purchased.  You could tell he had the best intentions when telling me which is why it didn’t bother me in the slightest, I just responded by saying “it is actually for cooking.”  There was a girl sitting a few seats down from him and she look appalled that he had just told me not to drink while pregnant.

All in all it was a really funny experience and I imagine will happen again over the next 3 months.

Shortly after moving in here we went out to Ikea and got some large bookcases that would give us places for books and all the other odds and ends we could fit into nice looking baskets.  The problem is that I can be a bit lazy so when I wanted to put something away I didn’t always find an appropriate home I would just put it on one of the shelves.  That snowballed out of control and I had a real disorganized mess on my hands.

The task of getting these bookshelves organized is something I have been wanting to do for months but never got around to it.  Because we will not have a proper nursery for baby girl we needed to find a place for all of her things, and the second bookshelf seemed like the perfect place.  So this morning I got into crazy organizing mode and decided today was the day to tackle this project.

I wish I would have taken some before pictures so you could truly appreciate how far these bookcases have come, but for now I will show you the finished product.

It is crazy to think that everything that is currently on these shelves was split between both bookcases.  There are still some odds and ends in the second shelf that I haven’t quite decided where they will go but we will have at least 3 full rows for baby girls things.  I am going to be getting some cute baskets to hold socks, diapers, clothes and all the other things babies come with.

I can’t even explain how happy I am to have this project done, I have been feeling anxious and overwhelmed at the idea of actually organizing.  Now I am happy to look at the bookcases and see organization again and to know that it is one more thing off of my To Do list of things before baby girls gets here.

I have to say that my favourite part about getting all organized was looking at the little collection of clothes we have.  Honestly is there anything cuter than a newborn baby girl onesie, I think not :)

We have arrived at the last week of my second trimester and that much closer to baby girl being here.  With 13 weeks until she is due there are so many odds and ends I would like to get done, the best part is that very few of them are necessities, so if they don’t happen it isn’t the end of the world.

Having never really felt fatigue during the first trimester, I have been surprised to be tired more often lately.   The funny part about this whole fatigue thing is that even as I sit here after having slept for 10 hours last night, I am still a little sleepy.  Even though I do enjoy my sleep it is exciting for me when I have a ‘symptom’ of pregnancy.

Thanks to the heat and my recent plane ride, I have started retaining water again and now have lovely cankles by the end of each day.  Since I wear flip flops at work every day I hadn’t really noticed much had changed other than the disappearance of my ankles, that was until I went to put on proper shoes.  I slipped on a pair of loafers and was surprised to find that my left foot was really tight in the shoe.  I am just going to hope that my godzirra sized feet (as Sean so aptly named them) don’t turn out to be bigger once the swelling goes down.  In the scheme of things that could happen in pregnancy I continue to be lucky, I can live with swollen feet and ankles.

One more thing before I move onto baby girls update for the week…I ABSOLUTELY LOVE BEING PREGNANT!!  I have enjoyed everything for the last 27 weeks and although I am out of my mind excited for baby girl to get here, I am going to be sad when this pregnancy is over.  I can see how people end up with 10 + kids, you just don’t want to stop it is so great (no worries we will not be having 10 kids).

Baby girl has graduated to a new way of measuring her length, instead of measuring from crown to rump we are now measuring her from head to toe.  She is now 15 inches long and weighs more than 2 pounds and will continue to pack on the pounds, like her mom for the next 13 weeks.

Baby girl has more taste buds now than she will at birth which gives her the ability to taste differences in the amniotic fluid when I eat different things.  Thanks to all of these taste buds she might even start reacting to certain foods such as hiccuping when I eat spicy things, just like her dad does when he eats spicy food.

Pregnancy Highlights:

Now that summer weather has finally arrived on the west coast I feel like we are that much closer to meeting our baby girl.  Only 3 months to go!!  I am still feeling great and am just so thankful that I have made it this far feeling so good, I can only hope that the third trimester, that I start in 2 weeks, goes just as well as the first two.

Sean has been teasing me that the baby is just going to fall out.  I even had a dream the other day where I woke up to go to the bathroom and the baby was crowning and Sean had to deliver her.  Now I don’t think that is going to happen but it might be nice if we found a happy medium between that and laboring all day.

Today was the big day for the gestational diabetes screening and I wasn’t really sure how it was going to go.  Thankfully my sister told me it tastes like orange soda so I had something good to look forward to.  When the tech cracked open the bottle and told me I had 5 minutes to drink it I assured her I would be done in a minute because it actually tasted quite good.

So there I was waiting out my hour with my feet up and Harry to keep me company, Harry Potter that is.  I figured that some might say it is a bit obsessive to read the Twilight series for a 4th time so I decided to start the Harry Potter series again.  I read them years ago so it will be fun to read the series over.  Thanks to Harry the wait was over before I knew it and it was time for my blood work.  All in all it was a great way to spend part of my evening.

Baby girl is really growing this week by putting on another 1/2 pound to bring her up to 2 pounds and just over 9 inches long.  She is going to continue to put on about 1/2 a pound a week for the rest of the pregnancy but hopefully doesn’t get as big as Sean who was over 9 pounds when he was born.  I am hoping for more of the 7 pound range.

This week baby girls eye’s are beginning to open so that combined with her developed sense of hearing she may become more active when there is a bright light or loud sound.  I love watching her move around in my belly so if that increases I will be a happy camper.

Pregnancy Highlights:

I was surprised to see this on my website today saying that we have less than 100 days until baby girl is here.  You may notice a trend in recent posts about me being surprised at how much time is left.  Whether it is 99 days, 14 weeks or 3 1/2 months I am still surprised every day when I really think about how soon it is until baby girl is here.  Even sooner when you realize that she is full term in 11 weeks.

I am just so excited for her to be here!