40 weeks 6 days

I'm starting to feel like a great explorer traveling farther into pregnancy than most have before. It's a whole new adventure being this pregnant.

What used to be my pregnancy email arrived in my email box just now entitled "your one-week-old."

I'm in a really good frame of mind, though. I'm just sitting and waiting and trying to enjoy things I won't have as much time for once the baby comes. Things are definitely gearing up, it will just be a question of when the baby decides to finally make his or her debut.

I will keep you all updated here and try to find something to write every day from now until the baby is born, even if it's a random musing.

I appreciate all your thoughts and prayers. Thanks to those who have refrained from calling. If you do call, I might not answer. I'm simply sitting here gestating in peace.

Everyone Thought You Were A ______

Check out the poll results. It looks like we'll never have to tell the baby that everyone thought they were the opposite sex.

36 votes total:
18 for boy.
18 for girl.

It's a good thing we have so much green!

It makes me wonder what made people vote the way they did. Was it just a feeling you had? Did you have some sort of formula (about how I was carrying, etc.)? Did you vote for what you wanted?

I'm curious. Leave me a comment and let me know.

Sell-by Date

What do you know, the ticker didn't explode. It didn't even stop counting!

I was thinking that maybe my due date was more like a sell by date. There are ton of things you eat well past their sell-by date, even though the date looks like a warning not to.

This metaphor is pretty absurd, so I am going to stop there =).

40 weeks

Today's my due date. Tomorrow I fully expect the bottom ticker to stop counting or maybe explode ... we'll see.

I am doing fine just waiting. I promise to share news when I have it and appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers.

One thing is for certain, one of these days we will have a baby =).

Tickers Reset

The top ticker now represents the amount of time until I'm two weeks late (42 weeks). The bottom ticker represents my due date (40 weeks). The baby will likely be born sometime in between.

Just another attempt to save my sanity in these last few weeks =)

Spellbound Baby is No Easter Egg

We wondered if he or she would be. Of course, with parents as strong-willed (ahem, stubborn) as us, how can we expect this child to appear anytime but when he or she is good and ready.

And so, we wait.

Questions about when the baby will be here have been increasing from family, friends and acquaintances.

I've been oscillating between enjoying the last moments of pregnancy — the beauty of the situation, the wiggles and playing games with the baby's foot — and being frustrated that I'm pretty much a giant egg with legs ...

Statistically, most first babies come a little over a week late. So, statistically I still have three weeks to go.

Everyone Loves an Irish Baby

(Just shy of 38 weeks)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Love,

Brooke, Joe and "the egg"

Pregnancy Portraits

My grandmother was telling me on the phone the other day how important it is to take pictures of myself now, while I am hugely pregnant. "Even if you don't feel like it," she said. She wishes taking pregnancy portraits was as in style when she carried my father and uncle as it is now so that she'd have pictures. It is in that spirit, that we spent part of Saturday taking these.

This was actually my first time taking maternity portraits of any kind. It was fun to work with the space we have and to figure out how to accentuate the great big egg-belly without exposing too much.

A Very Round Birthday

I'm 23 today and 33 and a half weeks pregnant.

If you haven't watched the video on my other blog, you should.

Oh the Adventures You've Had, Baby

Someday I will tell the baby of how this duck tried to attack him or her and then how I made friends with it.





Confused? Read about it on Blog 1.0.

Hilarious

My mom sent me a package with some nice pants and shirts (thanks mom!) and in the bottom of the box was this:

Happy Valentine's Day

Love,

Brooke, Joe and the egg

__________________________________________________________________

We went to dinner tonight and then saw a children's theater production of "Alice Through the Looking Glass" in which I encountered my kindred spirit:



Upon seeing this, Joe looks over at me and says: "Don't sit on any walls."

The Egg

So we've been calling the baby "the egg" for the last few weeks, primarily because my belly has taken on an egg-like shape, but partially because I sometimes joke that I'm going to pass the egg to Joe for a while as penguins do.

The other night I got stuck on my back in bed and realized I felt very much like humpty dumpty — like a big egg with arms and legs that couldn't get up.

Joe rescued me, of course.

I've also been really into the idea of having a pet turtle one day. Maybe it's because I feel a kinship with creatures that get stuck on their back ...

These are some pictures from 32 weeks.



See the egg shape?

Why, Aren't You Just a Ball of Sunshine, Pregnancy Email

Update: Upon receiving an email from them this morning with the topic "can working moms have happy babies?" I promptly unsubscribed to their services. No more iVillage for me.

I've been receiving a pregnancy progress email throughout much of the pregnancy. It's been fun to read about how the baby is developing and what changes to expect in myself. It's also made me happy not to have had a lot of the side effects they detail.

A few weeks ago I decided to double my efforts and sign up for a new one at iVillage.com, despite knowing that that website is extremely commercial and generally loosey-goosey with their advice.

This week I received this cheerful message in my inbox:

31 weeks:

"At this point you may be quite eager for your pregnancy to end and your baby to be born. Aches and pains, along with feelings of anxiety, may be on the rise. Your body might be weighing you down, and weird stuff (like false contractions and vaginal secretions) is starting to pop up. The final weeks may begin to drag, but you're very near the finish line now."

Um ... Thanks iVillage.

Although I am getting more uncomfortable, it's definitely not as bad as they make it sound. I can't wait to see what they come up with next month ...

Spellbound Baby Sneak Preview

We finally obtained copies from the ultrasound I had while I was in the hospital, which was done at just shy of 12 weeks. Here they are:

You can see the umbilical cord in these first two.






And a little spine in this one:



Arms:



And legs:

Ow ... I'm Getting Kicked ...

Spellbound baby was having a disco dance party yesterday and it was, for the first time, actually a little painful.

At the risk of having someone who's been pregnant before laugh at me, I must admit, I didn't really believe that baby kicks could make you sore. But I do now.

In a way it's nice because it's just another marker of how big and strong the baby is getting.

It's begining to look a lot like baby …

… everywhere you look around here. Jody and Toby were kind enough to ask the Hinkle family to lend us the bassinet pictured here. Something like 9 kids in total have used it, including my niece and nephews Ali, Matt and Joe.


(29.5 weeks)

Joe also bought Spellbound baby a cute turtle that plays Calypso music and the board book Goodnight Gorilla, which we've been reading to the little one. As you can see above, our little one is getting big — 14-15 inches and somewhere around 3 pounds. It's hard to believe there is 14 inches of baby within me.

Right now the bassinet has been sitting in our living room. Tonight Joe looked at it and said it makes him wonder, "where's the baby."

Music

I've said from the beginning that I think this baby might be a musician like his or her grandfather and great-grandfather. For whatever reason music has been more pronounced to me while pregnant.

I'm amazed at the way an album or song can remind you exactly of a time and place, or even, collective state of mind. Ani Difranco's Reprieve album reminds me of the campaign so vividly that I have actually refrained from listening to the album much since so that I can preserve that connotation for a time when I am able to write down a few reflections about the experience.

I wonder what songs will bring back what it feels like now to be so close to this baby, yet so curious about and unknowing of who he or she is. It's bound to be Andrew Bird songs and maybe a little Zeppelin.

Regular Jeans

When I went to post this picture on the other blog I said to Joe, "Am I actually wearing my regular jeans?"


Photo by Nikki

Until a few months ago the concept of "regular jeans" was foreign to me. Pants and shirts were pants and shirts. As my wardrobe shrinks and I expand, I'm almost fascinated by what I look like here, just three months ago. It's not something that bothers me, but it is, simply, fascinating.

To put you in the same mindset I'm in, take a look at this diagram of pregnancy at 28 weeks:



As I said to Joe last night, "I'm an ecosystem."

She wore a ...

.. not so itsy-bitsy bikini (for obvious reasons =).



We found an awesome maternity store out west in Worthington, MN. Though it's late in the game (I'm 27.5 weeks here, or just under 7 months) I've been wanting to swim, so I picked up this swim suit at the store.

More belly below:



Joe and I have been watching my belly button to see what happens. He thinks it will pop out. I'm not so sure. So far, it's kind of just become oblong. Only time will tell ...