Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from the Graves Family!

Justin has successfully finished the first semester of his MSW. I have passed my psychology licensure exam. Our house is decorated for the holidays, and the most important things on my "must be done pre-baby" list have been crossed off. So much to be greatful for!

We hope that all of our family and friends are also enjoying a wonderful holiday season.

Finally: What is missing from these pictures?

Oh! The Baby is what is missing....

Some new pics

Here is a picture of "the belly" at 32 weeks:

And some pictures from my shower:

The bear crocheted by Grandma Mitchell.

Future Grandma, Mommy, and Aunt
As you can see from the background of this picture, he is a very blessed baby.

As of right now, I am at 35 weeks - about 4 to 5 weeks from estimated delivery date! It is finally starting to feel real. Next week we will graduate from our birthing class, and I am getting anxious about having things done, like the car seat installation. Also, I have "hit the wall." I didn't realize this last month would be so tiring and uncomfortable. He seems to have gotten in the habit of "snuggling" right up under my ribs or crashing straight down onto my bladder. Luckily that is preparing me for childbirth, since I am now beginning to look forward to it as a way to get my body back rather than something scary or painful.

Entering the last month of pregnancy as the same time as Advent has been very helpful for me. I am trying to concentrate on "expectant waiting and preparation" and not get too anxious about the details, knowing that those will all get taken care of, or weren't that important to begin with.

I certainly have a new appreciation of the Nativity story and how brave Mary was to travel to Nazereth, away from her family. I am glad Joseph was there for her, just as I am glad to count on having Justin with me!

First Halloween Costume

I think we won the prize for youngest trick-or-treater this Halloween.

Here he is at 30 weeks gestation, already a very cute pumpkin.

Or if you want to see how his Mommy is progressing:

And I am even bigger now...

We've got under two months left, and heading into the home stretch. We have started our birth classes, and my baby shower is this weekend. I sometimes look down at my growing belly and think "Wait, I'm not ready for this!" It's a little late now! Most days, we are both really excited about the prospects of being parents.

The news from the doctors continues to be good. At the last visit with the perinatologist, he told me that all of the complications he was concerned about would have emerged by now. In fact, he called the baby's heart "beautiful" and wanted pictures of it to show med students. I'm so proud!

Mom - 30 years, Baby - 25 weeks

There is no hidding this bump any more! But you know, turning 30 didn't seem like that big of a deal now that I am going to be a Mom. I also don't notice the emerging grey hair now that my mind focuses on not much more than eating and organizing the house.

I have had plenty to do in that respect, although the house is finally getting back together post-floor refinishing. The new finish really makes everything we have look so much nicer. (see previous posts for the before picture)

The nursery is also beginning to come together. My mom is making curtains, so I'll post more pictures once there is more decorating done.

Some good news

Since my last post, we have had two doctor's appointments, one with our ob/gyn and one with a Fetal Medicine specialist. We were very impressed by the knowledge and clinical skills of both - a good feeling since we are putting such an important thing in their hands! Both doctors gave us good news, the baby is growing well and overall seems to be healthy. Today at the Fetal Medicine appointment, we got even better news - the baby has not developed the heart condition we were concerned about. At this stage in the pregnancy, if he was going to have the heart condition, we more than likely would have seen it today. There are some other risks associated with my auto-immune disease, so I will have several more appointments with the specialist. However, most of those complications are either unlikely with my medical history or the baby would out grow them within several months of birth.

In less important news, we finally got to move back into our house this weekend. Having the floors redone took three weeks instead of one, but the results are well worth it. Thanks to some help from my parents, most of our furniture and belongings are back in place. Just in time, since we are leaving Friday for Justin's brother's wedding! We also made some progress on the nursery - bought a crib and painted the room a beautiful periwinkle blue. I'll post pictures of everything when our lives are a bit more settled down.

All in all, things are going better than we could have hoped.

Non-baby news

In case you wanted to know what it looked like to have all your belongings moved into a big pile in the kitchen....

We were lucky enough to discover after we bought our house that underneath the ugly, stained, dog pee and stale smoke smelling carpet were hardwood floors. Unfortunately they looked like this:



So, now that we have saved up some money and before we fill the house with baby things, we are having them refinished. And we are splurging to get the extra hard, long lasting, basketball court finish, so we never have to go through this again!

For other non-baby news, Justin started his Master's in Social Work degree this week. For years, I swore I would never date anyone in the mental health field because I didn't want to be married to someone who did the same thing I did. Its amazing all the ways God finds to laugh at your plans...

The "bump" emerges

I am now almost at the half way point, 19 weeks. For those of you who don't speak "pregnancy weeks," and I didn't until I got pregnant, the average pregnancy lasts 40 weeks. Any pregnancy that goes to 38 weeks is considered full term. Since each "month" lasts 4.3 weeks, being at 19 weeks means that I am in my 5th month. I have gotten to the point that regular clothes just aren't very comfortable any more, even though I can fit into some of my looser shirts. Wearing maternity clothes certainly makes me feel more pregnant.




The baby is now about 6 inches long and 8 oz. His muscles and nervous system are developed to the point where he can make coordinated movements. I sure can feel him too! Instead of the vague gurgling I got just a couple of weeks ago, now it feels like swipes and punches. He sure likes to let me know when I have slouched over at the waist too long (punch, kick "Mommy, you are squashing me!") and he seems to really enjoy sugary foods.

I have already noticed an interesting parenting difference between Justin and I. I remember learning in one of my Developmental Psychology classes that there are significant differences in "play" behaviors between parents of different genders - Mom's do more relational and nurturing play (i.e., feeding the dolly) and Dad's do more gross motor play (i.e., rough housing). With the baby, I like to just sit quietly and rest my hand on my belly, thinking about him growing and talking to him in my head. Justin likes to poke at or massage my belly, verbally and playfully teasing the baby, trying to get a rise out of him. Funny how these things play out!

Still growing strong...

We had a second ultrasound today. Justin thinks the two ultrasounds are because we are being scammed by the doctor's office. I think we had an overzealous midwife, who didn't double check her advice.

The purpose of this ultrasound was to also get a fetal echocardiogram. Even though my health has been great and I am really in ideal condition (for me) to have a baby, my funky immune system might still effect the baby. Basically, I have several auto-antibodies (my perfectionistic tendencies - my body couldn't stop with just attacking viruses, it also ended up attacking me)! One of those anti-bodies is associated with a 10% risk of fetal heart block - an electrical heart problem that would cause the baby to need a pacemaker and other precautions would also have to be taken including closer monitoring and a likely c-section.

I was actually looking forward to finding out today how the baby's heart was doing. I think I will feel better knowing what we are facing. Turns out that at 16 weeks, the baby's heart is just too small for an ECG. Makes sense, but I wish we could have been scheduled appropriately. We've been rescheduled for early September.

The good news is that the baby keeps growing well, and it was pretty amazing to see how much he has developed in just the last two weeks. This was also a higher resolution ultrasound, so we got to see details, like the cerebellum and the four chambers of the heart, we couldn't see last time. We got a second good view of the "boy parts," no vagueness there! So far he is a healthy and (I like to think) happy little boy.

It's a boy!

Justin and I are very excited to announce that we are expecting a son, due to arrive sometime around the new year. So far, everything has been going smoothly, and Mom and baby are both doing fine. We had our first ultrasound a couple of days ago, and as far as we could tell all the important parts were there - head, spine, heart, fingers, and legs.

My only complaint so far is that I have felt stuck at the stage where it looks like I need to do crunches rather than have any kind of "cute" pregnancy belly. My co-workers (and their 10 pregnancies total) all roll their eyes when I complain about this and tell me that the weight will come quickly enough and then I will wish it hadn't.

The plan is that Justin will be the primary childcare provider, so he has been reading all of the baby books given to us by friends. By the time the baby comes, he will be in the position of telling me all about the proper to hold, feed, and diaper a baby! He is also about to start full-tilt into our long list of "projects that need to be done pre-baby" like refinishing the floors and painting rooms. We love our new house, but it has needed a lot of TLC.

In other news for this summer, we also took a quick and busy trip to Kansas for my doctoral graduation, a wedding, an ordination, and a family visit.

Overall, we have to say that we feel very grateful for all of the blessings in our lives and look forward to continuing to share them with all our friends and family through this blog.