3rd trimester - 29 weeks

So as soon as I started the third trimester along came third trimester symptoms, heartburn, back pain, foot pain, tiredness, crazy leg cramps, waking up in the middle of the night hungry. Yay! Why can't the whole pregnancy be like the second trimester? Then pregnancy is actually enjoyable, you forget about the yuckiness of the first trimester and your optimistic that the third one will be fine. But even though its starting to get tough and I'm having symptoms I did not have when I was pregnant with Selena (the heartburn) I still think this time it is easier simply because I know what to expect and not stressed worrying about labor, being a mom, or taking care of a newborn. I do enjoy being pregnant, but it is tough.

I passed the gestational diabetes test, which is a relief. I did end up eating a bit of scrambled egg in the morning because I was freaking myself out over fasting that long. And though I didn't feel well by the time I got to my appointment I didn't pass out. :)

The baby is still spinning around and was breech at my last appointment. I've been doing some exercises to encourage the baby to land the right way before he or she runs out of room.

I am going to start my Hypnobabies course next week, which I'm kind of excited about because it is so relaxing and makes me excited for the birth which is getting so close.

My last day of work is tomorrow, for real, so I am excited about having some extra rest/free time. We still need to think of names. We are really procrastinating on that. Selena is still excited. She calls herself big sister and talks about the big baby in mama's big belly all the time.

More Belly Pics

Attempted Potty Training

Selena is doing really well and we are all happy. A couple weeks ago we attempted a solid 3 days to consistent potty training but it didn't work. I thought she was ready as she showed many of the signs to look for: she tells me when she needs a diaper change (both kinds), she sometimes will tell me if she has to poop and actually go on the potty, some nights she wakes up dry, and has been using far fewer diapers during the day. The only thing holding her back was that she still didn't seem to actually recognize when she peed. So I have some online friends who had success with a 3 day potty training method, which basically involves quitting diapers cold turkey day and night, sticking close to your kid for three whole days and rushing them to the potty whenever they start to go, being very positive in praise, and constantly (like every 5-10 minutes all day long) reminding them to tell you when they needed to go. The lady who's method this is also says that 22 months is a great age to do potty training because lots of kids get stubborn the older they get. I thought this would work well for Selena since she had all the signs and rushing her to the potty every time she would pee might clue her in on the feeling. Well after three exhausting days of being housebound and cleaning up lots of messes Selena did not figure it out. She gets all excited if she poops or toots on the toilet, but if I did manage to get her to pee on the toilet she just stares at me and doesn't really seem to understand what I'm excited about. I was kind of bummed as I was hoping to get her out of diapers a few months before the baby arrived, but she isn't ready--oh well. Ironically we never once had an accident at night or during naps. So if I wanted to I could say she is night trained, but not day trained. But we got all the diapers back out that I had washed, neatly folded, and organized. I am still putting her on the potty every morning right when we get up hoping that if we do that enough maybe she'll figure out that she is actually peeing. And if she happens to tell me or if I happen to notice she is going I'll put her on the potty, but for now we will wait till later before we try again.

Other than potty training Selena has been a ton of fun lately. For a couple weeks I was starting to get a little overwhelmed because she was becoming a handful, but I've picked up on how her little toddler brain is working, and now have ways to get her to do what I want and her like it. Mostly I have to keep her super busy with lots of new things, and thus she has become an extreme book worm. We have been going to the library at least once a week, sometimes two or three times to get lots and lots of books. I have been hitting my 50 book checkout limit.

She has also started becoming a puzzle master. She only had a two puzzles, but she started playing with them more, and then started showing more interest with the ones at the library. So I bought around 10-12 used puzzles (from ebay and goodwill) and now she has tons of puzzles and can do the easier ones by herself, but still enjoys doing the harder ones with me or Floyd helping her.

She is talking a ton. She talks in the third person so her grammar isn't perfect, but she definitely is sharing complicated scenarios. A couple months ago she spent the night with my parents and ever since then she decided her nickname was pooh bear. So she is constantly talking about how pooh bear likes to run, or pooh bear's baby needs a bath, and pooh bear's mom and dad are nice. But she will also refer to herself as "Selena", "me", or recently "big sister". If she is helping me do something then she usually is big sister, because big sister's are very helpful (sense any mama brainwashing there). The cutest is when she will randomly say pooh bear is happy. She also has started singing songs and gets lots of the words right. She has also started making up her own songs. The cutest was when she made up a song about her eating cookies "every day" (a favorite phrase of hers).

She also likes to run amok. You think I would have learned with Dyna (the dog), but when they are little and just learning how to run it is so fun to watch them run with complete abandon. But when they get older and faster and they are running somewhere where they aren't supposed to be running and won't come back, it isn't as much fun. When we are at the library she will be sitting with me reading a book and then all of a sudden bolt, giggling in glee. But we've been working on it, and if I remind before we go somewhere that she can only run while holding my hand, if she does start to bolt and I remind her to hold my hand she will sometimes stop and wait. So hopefully we'll get this fixed before baby comes. But it is funny when we are out shopping and she is in the cart and she will say "me run amok, now."

Other than puzzles and books she still loves going to toddler gym, she likes jumping, running in circles, helping mom cook (especially stirring), taking care of her baby (her baby goes everywhere), taking baths (even ones without any water), numbers, letters, watching Elmo and Abby on Sesame Street, ice cream, cookies, band-aids (she read Doctor Dan the Bandage man one too many times and now goes through about 5 band-aids a day), and snuggling with her mama. :)

Sew your own soft structured carrier

So in my last post about sewing baby carriers I mentioned that I was sewing a new one from this free SSC pattern. It was a gift for a friend, but it seemed to work pretty good. I think it will be great for back carries, but I'm not sure if I made
the strap buckle be able to slide up high enough to allow someone to buckle it in the back (for a front carry) without help. The darts in the seat are great, and are a big improvement over the dartless seat I made with my own pattern. I didn't make a sleeping hood, but probably should have. I didn't really know what they were for, but then realized they are to prop the head and avoid head flop. (See picture.)

I only tried a front carry with my friend's super cute 5 month old and I didn't use the strap buckle (I hadn't attached it yet). I did put Selena in a back carry for a

short period of time, but I'm pregnant so my belly was kind of in the way. The shoulder straps and waist band were also too big for me (but I am pretty small). I am making another one for another friend, but will soon make one for me for the new baby, but I will narrow the straps towards the end and may angle them a little bit more up (instead of out). I will also make a smaller waist band, more the size of the one I made with my my own pattern.

I also am unsure about the use of the camping mat for the waist band. In the first one I made I just used high density foam that you can get at Joanns. This seems more comfy for front carries, especially if you need to sit down, but for back carries the thicker foam seems a lot more substantial and supportive. I will make one with the camping mat for me since I already have one with the thinner foam.

Just to note it costs me around $15-$25 to make one of these (depends on the fabric) compared to the $100-$150 it costs to buy a similar one.

Sorry the pictures are kind of lame, but I was in a hurry and then I gave it away.

26 weeks pregnant

Just a little bit more than 3 months to go and I am still feeling good. It has officially become difficult to tie my shoes. I'm still about a month bigger than I was with Selena and am worried that I'll be tipping over at the end. :) Selena has started calling me "big mama" and she told me that I was "so big".

For me, my Sleep Number Bed and my knee chair have been the best products ever. We got the sleep number bed when I was 6 months pregnant with Selena and I didn't really have any trouble sleeping while pregnant with her. If my hips started hurting a bit I just went to a softer number and the pain disappeared. When

I'm not pregnant I'm not quite as big a fan because it does seem to deflate some in the middle of the night, but now that I'm pregnant again I am super satisfied. I slept with Selena on her bed/mattress on the floor (attempting potty training) a few nights ago and pretty much did not get any sleep.

The knee chair is awesome because it allows you to sit in a way (knees below hips) that promotes optimal fetal positioning which can make labor faster and easier, it helps avoid back pain, and helps avoid feeling like you are squishing the baby. I used one at work when I was pregnant with Selena and loved it. I was having bad back pain that disappeared right when I started using it, and my labor with her was fast and relatively easy. So I had to buy one for this pregnancy. Now that I am getting bigger I am going to have to start bringing it downstairs to watch TV and then back upstairs to work. Sitting on the couch is starting to be really uncomfortable.

At my previous prenatal appointment my urine had traces of protein in it, so my midwife sent it to the lab to be tested and it came back saying I had a urinary tract infection due to Group D Strep (not Group B which is common). Which was really weird and not very common. My midwife said I could try a natural remedy called D-Mannose powder or I could go and get some antibiotics from the doctor. I decided to try the D-Mannose powder and watch for symptoms and if I got any to go and get the antibiotics, and then get tested again in two weeks to see if it went away. I wanted to avoid antibiotics because taking drugs is always a little worrisome when pregnant. So I took the powder 3 to 4 times a day for 3 days and then once a day since then and I got tested and everything came back clean. So yay for me. The D-Mannose powder is a concentration of sugar found in cranberries and is supposed to grab the bacteria and flush it out, and it seemed to work.

I'm also scheduled to take the dreaded gestational diabetes glucose test next time. But she gave me very specific instructions on how to take the test to provide the greatest accuracy. With Selena I failed and it stressed me out and taking the 3 hr test was not any fun because it required fasting from 10pm till 1pm the next day and getting my arm stuck 8 times, but I did pass. She told me to fast starting at 10pm the night before the test and to eat none or very little bread, rice, or potatoes that day. She said that she has experimented telling women to fast for just a few hours before, but they ended up with a lot more false positives when they did that. I still wonder if maybe eating some eggs and cheese would be ok in the morning since those don't affect your blood sugar at all, but I'm not going to try it. I still don't want to fast, and I don't want to drink a bunch of sugar, but I guess I'll go along with it.

Once again I can say I think my midwife is the greatest because she gave me a successful and safer alternative than antibiotics, and gave me detailed info on how to make the GD test more accurate. Licensed midwives are illegal in lots of states (I am so thankful Washington isn't one of them), but honestly I feel that if anything were to go wrong with my pregnancy she would be more likely to catch it and make sure it really is a problem than if I were seeing a doctor, OB, or nurse midwife. She gives me so much more info than any of the providers I saw when pregnant with Selena and even though I am well read regarding pregnancy she tells me things I haven't heard. My appointments are an hour long so we really get to talk and I might mention something that would alert her, that in a 10 minute appointment I wouldn't have said. Also she only does 3 births a month so her patient load is a lot less than most other providers, so she has the time to continue to educate herself, and spend more time with her clients. So there is my plug for licensed midwives. :)