Week 30, a pregnancy survey

I just looked back at my last baby post, week 17 and boy, have things changed since then! I have pictures from subsequent weeks but haven't made any additional effort to take just 'bell' pictures. I am now wishing that I would have taken a few more after seeing a few pictures that Ed took of me yesterday at moesgård. I will make no promises as to whether or not I will be able to keep with the weekly thoughts and observations for the the next 8 to 12 weeks but I will certainly try.

This week, baby is the size of a: A head of cabbage
Due date: September 27, 2012
How far along: 30 weeks
Next appointment: This saturday--we need to have our midwife fill out a 'fit to fly' form
Gender: Boy
Total weight gain/loss: unfortunately for my post-delivery me, 20-25 pounds.  It will only go up from there, right? (I am blaming an extreme number of 'cookies-eaten' on this amount..i'm trying to cut back)
Exercise: Yes, I'm Scout's primary walker.  We walk 1.75 miles a day.  Also, I still use the elliptical about 4 times a week.
Stretch marks: Nothing that I didn't have before pregnancy.  I put vitamin E oil on my stomach every day so maybe that is helping.
Swelling: Only 1 day in week 22.  I spent the day in the car on a road trip and then ate an excessive amount of chips when we arrived home.  I may have brought that on myself.
Maternity clothes: Yes, definitely for pants.  I still wear non-maternity shirts on occasion.  Belly band and my pre-pregnancy pants no longer work for me.
Belly button: In
Sleep: It is more difficult to get a full nights sleep, during the night.  I will wake up at 4am and just look at Facebook and the internet for a couple hours and then fall back asleep around the time Ed leaves for work. Then I will sleep another 2 hours or so.
Food cravings/aversions: No current cravings or aversions.  They've all passed for the most part.
Symptoms: Back pain--I have felt like my lower back has needed to be adjusted for the last 10 weeks.  I am not fond of side-sleeping so awake to find myself on my back many nights as well--which doesn't help the back pain.
Movement: yes, I love it!  He definitely is most active in the middle of the night.  In the evenings, I will use a kick-counting app just for fun and he will usually reach his 10 kicks in about 15 minutes.
Labor signs: after doing a bit of google research, I've determined that I definitely have been having a fair number of pain-less Braxton-Hicks contractions.
What I miss: fitting into my clothes (and wondering if I will fit into them again)
What I'm loving: feeling the baby move-definitely an amazing experience that I have been looking forward to for years
What I'm looking forward to: Sleeping on my back
Best moment this week: I finished a piece of art for the babies' room (which didn't help with the back pain)  Also, my mom sent me a box a baby clothes. She had wrapped most of the outfits individually so it was fun to unwrap them...and then wash them with baby detergent.  I love that smell!
Milestones: I have less than 3 months left (unless of course he waits until the last minute to arrive!)
News: I sewed my first curtains ever last week--and lined them.
Goals: Well, the babies' goal better be to put his head down in the next 6 weeks and my goal is to have the "5 S's" memorized  (I'm reading Happiest Baby on the Block)
Weekly wisdom: Don't by sandals that require bending over to buckle.  Who knew it could take 10 minutes to put on shoes!

Moesgård and the Bog Man

The past 2 months have been filled with a series of visitors and travels. While I have had plenty to write about, I was just out of the habit of writing and so my blog has been neglected.   Oh well...I am writing today so at least I will have 1 post for the month of July :)

Ed has been off work this week and it has been nice to just stay home and relax together.  I guess the Danish summer has not been what it supposedly can be because the past few weeks of weather can be described in the following way: dark clouds appear, sudden deluge of rain falls, sun returns long enough to dry the sidewalks before next wave of dark clouds appear.  Good thing I don't mind being out in the rain because Scout and I have been caught in at least 5 downpours this month.  The only unfortunate thing is that my rain jacket is getting a bit difficult to zip...


Yesterday, the weather looked slightly more promising than previous days so we went to the Moesgård Museum near Århus.  The main reason that we wanted to go to this museum in particular was because one of our Danish teachers had brought in a book (in danish, to expand our vocab..) about the 'bog people' of Denmark.  Since we live so close to one of the better-preserved bog people, it was on our list of 'places to visit', so we did.  I felt a bit strange about taking a picture, but someone else didn't so I will share their photos of the Grauballe Man.

The incredible thing about this guy is that he didn't die 500 years or even 1000 years ago... he died 300 years before Christ...He was killed (note the large neck wound in the top left picture) and thrown almost immediately in the bog.   He was so well preserved that archaeologists were even able identify and study his final meal (and it was on display at the museum..tasty) as well as determine he didn't do hard labor with his hands because they were smooth and unscarred (also his feet were quite nice :)

When I was laying in bed last night, i was thinking about the bog man... not necessarily just him but more about history.  I've grown up reading and studying the Old Testament, which is essentially Jewish history before and leading up to Christ.  All the while, it never occurred to me (before yesterday) that I am a descendant of someone, somewhere during this time period as well.  I am not Jewish, so who were 'my' people and what were they doing 300 years before Christ?  Were they eating grain porridge and sacrificing people to the bogs? The life expectancy of a woman was 40 years of age for this time period in Northern Europe...So that would make me a modern day 60 year old at the age of 27 during the same time period?!  I have always enjoyed history, but history from so long ago is difficult for me to wrap my brain around.

Aside from that, the rest of museum consists of various buildings scattered through the forest.  The rain held off long enough for us to walk on the trails for a bit before heading home.  It was a beautiful area--while the museum cost 60dkk to enter, the park and forrest were free so I am sure we will definitely return, if not to see the bog man, then to visit these goats :)

Bell Photo of the week - Week 17

This is the first week where I have really felt like I am getting bigger in a short amount of time.  Along with having an itchy stomach quite often, I've been awakened by  round ligament pain which is, I'm assuming, from sleeping on my side with nothing under my stomach. I still have not definitely felt the baby move so I guess I will just have to keep waiting for that to happen.  I decided that showing only the profile only tells half the story, so I've included a second picture that definitely shows the growing bell. 

Before moving to Denmark, my friend Rachael came to Texas for one last weekend together before I left.  While we were in the Gap, I was looking at the sale clothes, but was soon informed by a saleswoman that I was actually looking at maternity sale.  After my initial embarrassment, I realized that all of the shirts were less than 5 dollars.  "What a great deal" I thought to myself. I had already heard about the clothing prices here so I decided that I would spend a few dollars and buy some maternity shirts in advance.  While I have not yet been wearing them, I will add that I have tried them all at least once...with a lumpy sweatshirt baby.  Special is the only word that comes to mind...One can't be taught such great poses such is this one:

It's a....

Boy!  The night before the ultrasound, I was worried that the baby would be sleeping and the midwife wouldn't be able to get a good look at his/her gender.  The next morning I was drinking lots of water and orange juice in hopes of getting lots of movement. Within the first minute she asked me "So, what do you think you are having?"   Well, even I could see it was boy so I guess I had nothing to be worried about!  We posted the actual ultrasound on Facebook and several of our friends mentioned how he was quite the exhibitionist! My dad's view was that he was probably sitting modestly and that the midwife was just a voyeur! I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion! Anyway, Ed and I are really excited about the yet unnamed gentleman joining our family.  I am the oldest and grew up always wanting an older brother so I secretly hoped it was a boy...but if it would have been a girl, I obviously would have been really happy about that...I mean, have you seen baby girl clothes??  And, not only that but mothers and daughters always have at least one thing in common--they are both girls!   Speaking of clothes, I ordered my first baby item ever when the gender was still a mystery.  Before I was pregnant, we'd refer to our future unborn children as 'cubs', as in bear cubs. Well, this little number was on sale at Old Navy and I guess if we would have had a girl, she would have been wearing it with a skirt and blue bow!

Novice Sushi Maker

Since being taken over by an unborn human that has demanding taste in food, I have regularly craved rice and vegetables.  Normally vegetarian stir-fry is good enough but in the last couple weeks, I have been craving sushi-not the raw fish kind, just california and vegetarian rolls.  I don't know how this escaped my knowledge, but there are several sushi restaurants in town.  I didn't know this though until after we went to Hamburg, where I requested that we eat at a restaurant with sushi.  Having sushi once seemed to make the craving worse!  So the night of our second ultrasound, where we learned we were having a.....baby, well, let's just say we were celebrating so we went to Bar Sushi in downtown Kolding for dinner.  It was great, but really really expensive. (not that that was surprising- most dining-out meals are expensive here)  In Destin, we went to a place where one roll cost between $6-8 dollars.  Here, one vegetarian roll was 80 DKK- USD equivalent of $14.  I won't go into more of the prices but will just say that I was inspired to make my own sushi since I was still craving it but not prepared to shell out $30 for 2 rolls. 

I easily found all the necessary supplies in the Asian aisle at the grocery store.  I'm not sure how much the mat, nori, etc set me back but I would guess it was probably the equivalent of 1 additional meal for myself at Bar Sushi.  I watched several videos before deciding to use this website as my instruction.  I also documented my attempt at sushi-making through a few pictures so I will include those in this post for humor more than information. 

I started by rinsing the sushi rice (not sure what kind of rice this is but it says 'Sushi Rice' on the bag so I will stick with that) for about 10 minutes.  This may have been overkill but I can say that after soaking and boiling the rice, it was sticky--which is believe is fairly important factor in sushi-making. 

While the rice was cooling, I wrapped my mat in cling-wrap because I was going to be making 'inside-out' rolls and it was recommended to do this in order to keep the rice from sticking to the mat. 

After the rice cooled, I divided my sheet of Nori in half and put the shiny down on the mat (so the rough side was facing me)

This would be the rough side of the Nori

I dipped my hands in water (to prevent the rice from sticking) and then formed a ball of rice and placed it in the center of sheet.

 

I dipped my hands in the water again and attempted to spread the rice out to the edges of the sheet.  In retrospect, I think I did not spread the rice thin enough because my sushi rolls seemed very rice-y and were difficult to roll--maybe because of the excessive rice. 

I flipped the sheet over so the rice was facing down and begin adding my filling.  I did make and use my own spicy mayo--though I don't know that it was terribly necessary since I end up putting a lot of wasabi and ginger on my rolls--but it did taste good on the few rolls that I ate without wasabi. 

The next picture would be of the attempted roll but I had my hands full trying to shove the cucumber, avocado and carrot into a tiny cylinder... Something wasn't quite right with my final product. Sauce and vegetables were squirting out the sizes, the nori sheet was visible at the seem, as well as some additional escaped avocado.  It was pretty ugly.

But, I wasn't going to give up so I ended up making 4 rolls in total for the practice, and because I had bowl full of rice.  My final roll looked like slightly improved..though I'm pretty sure I've never seen a green stain on the rice in a restaurant.

The final step was cutting the them.  One of Ed's friends told him that he puts his sushi in a freezer for a bit to harden them up before cutting. I tried that but was probably too impatient because they were not very firm when I did cut them.  They certainly aren't winning any beauty contest anytime soon.  I suppose I could have trimmed the loose carrot when I was slicing them.

Looking down reveals a few more flaws...too much rice,  seriously misshapen rolls,  (though this partially from when I sliced them--it was sort of like slicing a warm loaf of bread-no matter how gently and quickly you attempt to saw through the top crust, it seems that the rest of the loaf manages to be crushed in the process)  oh and how about the guy in the upper right hand corner- his filling seems to be spilling out of the top of his friend to the left.
 

 

And with the wasabi and ginger.  Those could be twin names to someone into quirky baby names now that I see them together in print :)  

So, for my first time, I think I did alright. They were edible, tasted good, were semi-healthy (I don't think mayo screams healthy which is why I added that semi to the front of healthy :) and didn't cost more than going out to dinner.  I'm going to call this attempt at sushi-making a success!

Irony

The end of March seemed downright Spring-like here. It was sunny and each day seemed warmer than the previous.  Since the weather was getting better and the days longer, Ed constructed a fenced-in area for Scout around a small section of the yard off our backdoor. Because Scout was going out, we started going out as well and sitting on the patio while Scout was patrolling the border.  We eventually decided that it would be really nice to actually have a place to sit (aside from the ground) and maybe have a place to eat few meals in the summer. And thus the hunt for the perfect outdoor table ensued.  After literally visiting every single store in the Kolding that had any type of outdoor furniture, we picked a table.  The table was reasonably priced but none of the reasonably priced chairs looked right sitting next to the table. (trouble with dining chairs seems to be a re-occuring theme for us)  But, like the last time we had a table but no chairs, I didn't worry about it. I figured the chairs would find us.  Ed picked up the boxed and disassembled table on a Friday afternoon. We were going to Ikea the next morning to buy a mattress for the baby's future sleeping cage so we figured we'd check out their outdoor chairs while we were at it.   Saturday morning rolls around.  I crawl out of bed expecting to see another sunny, blue sky day...but no.  It was sleet-snowing (a wintery mix if you want to be technical about it) Yes!  More sleet and a touch of snow!!  On the day that we were going to set up our new table, a table purchased with sitting in the outdoors in mind! Well, I wasn't going to let that put my Ikea trip on hold so we set off despite the gray skies and rain (it changed to just rain after awhile).  We ended up finding chairs and shoving four of them in the back seat of the mouse car (yes, that alone is a miracle-I should have taken a picture of that! I should mention they were already assembled--I wasn't shoving boxes in the car, it was a stack of chairs)  Somewhere between the morning winter-fest and our return from Ikea, the weather went back to being spring-like! Ed set up the table, I attached the feet to the bottoms of chair legs and now the outdoor dining set is complete and ready for warmer weather!

See Scout. He loves his new space and has managed to not destroy anything yet.

So, the shortened version of the post: The morning we chose to assemble outdoor furniture was the same morning the last unexpected wintery weather arrived.  Irony.

First true pregnancy post

I'm definitely not one who has many pictures of myself in a swimsuit on Facebook or anywhere on the internet for that matter, but I've decided that I am going to document the ''bell's'' growth sans any covering because 1) at this point, one would be hard-pressed to see any change in size with a shirt on 2) there's a human growing under the skin! It's pretty awesome.  3) If in the end, I do end up having stretch marks, dark lines etc, I think I should remember that! Now I have decided to leave off my head though for a number of reasons: my stool stacked with 12 books to add additional height to the camera is tall enough.  I'm not going to make the stack of books 20 tall to document my face, my face that is not benefiting from that 'pregnancy glow' So, without further delay...The Bell 

14 weeks, 2 days

16 weeks, 2 days

Some people have all the skills when posing for their self taken belly photos.  I seemed to have missed out on that skill so I'm sure there will be plenty more awkward arm poses to come and maybe a few non-self-taken pictures will eventually make their way to the blog, though I don't seem to be any more skilled in posing in that department either! 

and this was actually on 15 weeks and 2 days-i wasn't home to take the picture in my usual spot. 

 As far as how the rest of the pregnancy is going and has gone, I am happy to report that what everyone says about the 2nd trimester being the best trimester is true.  My night nausea is gone, I'm not eating every five minutes and I can still sleep comfortably. (not that that was an issue in the first trimester, but I am a dedicated back sleeper.  I'm trying to transition to sleeping on my side but I always seem to wake up on my back) I even think that my wild hormonal mood swings are maybe less wild but Ed would be the one to ask about that since he was the unfortunate recipient of my highs and lows.  The waistbands of my pants were uncomfortably tight fairly early--around 9 weeks so I bought a belly band to extend the life of my non-pregnancy pants.  While I was initially excited that it worked, I quickly discovered that the 2 bottoms that attach the band to jeans are a bit inconvenient for someone who is now making frequent trips to the bathroom.  My thoughtful friend sent me a pair of maternity pants from Ross and I bit the bullet ordered a couple pairs from Old Navy and the Gap. And there are always leggings.  If only pajama pants were acceptable clothing for public outings...

We had our 2nd ultrasound after Easter.  It was neat to how different the baby was from weeks 11 to 16.  The spinal cord and ribs were clearly visible.  The baby was hiccuping and swallowing. The brains 2 halves were there and the arms and legs were looking much more human-like.  Oh, and the gender is now known....!   I think I will just have to wait and share in a different post though :)   

We've have actually purchased furniture for the babies room--a crib and a large, 16- cubed bookshelf from Ikea that will act as both a closet and a bookshelf (and will probably store many other baby-related items since there is no closet in the room). We're are using an already owned desk for the changing table and are still looking for a rocking chair. After we find that, we will just need all the many baby items that are necessary in order to take care of a baby.  It is actually a little bit overwhelming to think about it all!   

Well, I think that is about enough pregnancy talk for a post! Hope you're all enjoying the spring weather wherever you are!