Week 24

I'm only 2 days late with this so that feels like a win! I turned 24 weeks this past Saturday and according to my pastry calculations baby boy is now the size of a demi baguette- excellent! If you're more into the fruits and vegetables comparison then he is about the size of an eggplant. Or my husband's personal favorite...I found that my registry tool offers a size comparison and it shared he is the size of a Mr. Potato Head. No matter which way you look at it though, he's definitely growing! 

At our most recent doctor's appointment which was closer to 23 weeks he was measuring in at around the 56% for growth so right nicely in the middle of things and right on track it seems. It's always so good to get to see him moving and grooving on the ultrasound and hear that little heartbeat. My next appointment, I get to look forward to doing my glucose test (she says sarcastically).  But overall I'm feeling good and baby boy is growing like he should so I really can't complain. 

Symptoms: This past month my symptoms have been pretty consistent with what I shared at 20 weeks but just more. So more aches and pains particularly in my hips/back/sciatic. However, I have started seeing a chiropractor- truthfully something I was a bit skeptical about but honestly it has already made such a difference! So I think I'm officially a believer in chiropractic care, especially if it helps me get some more sleep at night. My other main symptom is acid reflux. For any of you who suffer from this when you are not pregnant I cannot tell you how much sympathy I have for you at this moment. It is just the worst. I am considering buying stock in Tums and probably Pepcid as well. I'm hoping adding the pepcid in will help and I'm trying to pay attention to what I eat to cut back on things that aggravate it but as I told my husband, the other day it seemed to be caused by me drinking water sooo we'll see how it goes! 

Truly overall, pregnancy has been wonderful to me and even though there are definitely some less than pleasant parts to it, I really love being pregnant! 

Cravings: I still have a very serious fruit craving and still really love clementines. So you can imagine my disappointment at the news that apparently citrus fruit aggravates reflux. So I will be attempting to cut back on the clementines and satisfy my fruit cravings with less acidic fruit. But honestly I could eat fruit all day. No other super strong cravings or aversions really, still waiting for the desire to put pickles on my ice cream. I've also been really wanting baked goods lately...maybe satisfying my pregnancy sweet tooth, maybe just wanting to wear fun aprons, who knows? But I've made some date energy balls, birthday cupcakes for hubby and  banana muffins all in the last few weeks. 

Also I just have to mention that this apron belonged to my grandma- she sent it to me recently and I love it! I have several hand me down aprons from her and they're some of my favorites. 

Favorite Moment of Weeks 21-24: I'd have to say our babymoon. It was what I was looking forward to most in my last post and it definitely lived up to my expectations. I wrote a post about it here if you want the details but it was just so sweet to have some time away before we welcome baby and the busy hustle and bustle that I know will begin well before he arrives. 

What I'm Looking Forward to in Weeks 25-28: The first thing that comes to mind is we have our first baby shower scheduled during that time. Some kind and thoughtful friends are hosting a couples shower for us coming up and I'm so excited. It means seeing a lot of people I don't get to see very frequently and I'm very excited to celebrate my boy! The other thing I'm looking forward to is starting to get the nursery in order! We received our crib this week and my in-laws will be in town next week and my husband and father in law are going to set it up. I can't wait to start to see things come together.

Going "Nuts" Over the Hodgepodge

 

1. February 16th is National Almond day...are you a fan? If so what's your favorite food item or recipe that contains almonds? 

I do like almonds and I love almond flavored things. In fact, on valentines day hubby and I ate our wedding cake top tier that was almond cake :) We missed eating it on our anniversary so we figured valentines was a good alternative. 

2. Something you are currently 'nuts' about? 

All things baby. I'm loving being pregnant- even the not so great parts remind of the miracle I get to be a part of. So I spend a lot of times wrapped up in all the baby things- working on a baby registry, reading pregnancy and birth books, practicing some pregnancy mediation, prenatal yoga, brainstorming names-  all the things. 

3. Something currently driving you 'nuts'? 

So if you read my recap of our babymoon to Barbados, you know that we got stuck there an extra day and in order to leave ended up rerouting ourselves to Newark before heading back home. Well with all the changes and cancellations and extra expenses there were no less than a thousand forms for me to fill out to make claims on our travel insurance and with the airlines. And it's been a week and everything is pending and it's all just nuts. 

4. Something you recently bought for 'peanuts'? 

Do we buy anything for "peanuts" these days? Because it sure doesn't feel like it! I guess maybe the yoga/birth ball I bought on amazon the other day- it was on sale so it felt like a win. 

5. Share a favorite quote uttered by any U.S. President ( if you're not an American, a quote made by the leader of your own country). 

"One person can make a difference, and everyone should try." - John F. Kennedy

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

A few random thoughts for the day...

1. I've just read the book "Resistance Women" and while it can feel like a bit of downer it was a really interesting and inspiring read. It's historical fiction but the main characters are real people and the author does a wonderful job of brining you into that time period- the rise of Hitler in Germany. If you're a historical fiction fan- one of my favorite genres- I recommend it for sure!

2.  I visited the chiropractor for the first time in my life yesterday. I was super nervous because I just didn't know what kind of popping and cracking to expect but these pregnancy aches and pains, combined with my already misaligned self (scoliosis, weak shoulder joints) won out and I took my OB up on a referral and it was great! I think it will be really helpful as I move through these later parts of pregnancy. 

3. And speaking of pregnancy- tomorrow we go for our next OB appointment. These days are always my favorite! I don't think anything super exciting is to be expected at this appointment, just a quick checkup. But that always comes with a glimpse of our little guy and a listen to the heartbeat so it's sure to be the highlight of my week :) 

Babymooning and Besties

I didn't intend to take a 2 week blog break but between being gone for over a week (a couple days longer than we intended- stay tuned for that story) and then I felt like I needed a week to recover so here we are over 2 weeks later but I'm back! 

You may remember that back in June of 2021 hubby and I took our delayed honeymoon to a Sandals resort and had the best time. While there we booked another trip to a different Sandals resort and we had our best friends book at the same time so we could take this next trip all together. These are the friends that introduced us- if you're unfamiliar with that story my best friend from teaching is married to hubby's best friend from college which is truly just a match made in "couple friend" heaven. So at the time we booked the trip for the following June- a year after our initial trip. Seemed like a good timeline at that point. But surprise- baby boy is due the week we were scheduled to travel. So change of plans, we all decided to move the trip up several months and so the "Dream Team" headed off to Barbados the first week of February. 

Getting ready to go was a bit of a nightmare with all of the requirements to travel and finding the right test, in the right time frame, getting everything approved and printed and ready to go. Travel during the time of covid is not quite as relaxing as one would like. But we made it and once you're there and your test has been approved and your heading out of the airport you breathe this huge sigh of relief and relaxation. 

I 10/10 recommend traveling with your best friends- we had the best time! We didn't venture off the resort at all just with the time we had and the restrictions to what we could do but we still loved every minute of beach and pool time combined with the unlimited food (eating ice cream every day? yes please) and drinks- for those of us that were not growing a baby. 

We had rooms that were just a couple doors apart from one another and they were "swim-up" rooms. So basically there is like a river that runs in front of all these rooms so we could swim between our rooms and most evenings were spent on one of our porches relaxing and laughing in our pool. The porches are also equipped with a "tranquility soaking tub" something that I am certain is meant for one or two people at most but also something that when you put 4 grown adults in at once, gets a lot of looks from the people strolling past.

One of the highlights of the trip was a girls morning trip to the spa for a massage! There is nothing I love more than a spa day of any kind and since I haven't had a massage since becoming pregnant, this prenatal massage was quite possibly the best massage experience ever. The massage therapist told me I should probably get regular massages during pregnancy since I also have scoliosis. You don't have to tell me twice...we'll see if I can get hubby on board with that suggestion! 

The weather was spectacular while we were there with only one day of morning rain before it cleared up for the rest of the day. To kill time and wait out the rain however we went bowling at their lovers lane bowling alley and the guys played several very intense rounds of ping pong so it definitely didn't dampen our day! 

Two members of our party opted to go for a quick paddleboard session that last full day of our trip and when I tell you that the water was ROUGH I mean it. There was a lot of fighting the waves to stay on the board, and there was definitely some laughter from the two of us watching on the beach, We ended our trip, or so we thought, with a dinner at the chophouse which was fabulous and ended up turning in pretty early that night everyone feeling sleepy and overly full from 5 days of indulgence. And then things started to go awry. 

We were scheduled to depart on Saturday but not until later in the day meaning we could enjoy a leisurely breakfast and even hang out at the beach some before lunch and leaving. However, as we were waiting on our breakfast to arrive at the table a multitude of dings could be heard- all of us receiving a notification simultaneously. And as we checked our respective devices we shared a combined "oh no" as we discovered our direct flight home that afternoon had been cancelled. And an even further grown when we began frantically looking for other options and found we would be rebooked on a flight that didn't leave until the following day, had a connection and wouldn't get us to our destination until 12:40am MONDAY. Yes...two days after we were due to be home. I should also mention, that our "destination" was nobody's actual destination as both couples would have to drive home from there- them 2 hours and us 5. But with no other real options we let the airline rebook us and decided to make the best of it. Oh and the covid test we had to take to come home would no longer be valid because it would have "expired" so we'd need a new one of those. Delightful. 

But once you decide that's the plan you can reset and enjoy the day. We did our retest for the flight home, changed out of travel clothes back into bathing suits, hit the pool and had a really lovely "bonus day" complete with a delicious dinner at one of the restaurants we hadn't made it to yet. Again, we opted for an early night since it had been a crazy day and the following was bound to be just as crazy. But when hubby woke up in the night and checked his phone around 3:30am he made the unfortunate discovery that our Sunday flight was also cancelled. And again they wanted to rebook us the following day- now not getting us home until Tuesday. So we had a powwow about what to do at 4am- a fun time for all. We had two guys who needed to get back to work, a momma missing her babies at home, and an anxious pregnant woman beginning to feel like we might have to live here now. So the decision was made to just get back to the U.S. however possible and go from there. 

Our plan that we settle on will sound counter intuitve but being back in American meant we could quit covid testing, and if worse came to worse we could always drive home. So we booked a direct flight out of Barbados to...Newark. Yep. We wanted to go to Charlotte but Newkark was going to have to do. With a follow up flight to Charlotte the next morning, allowing us to get to our actual home by Monday late afternoon. I cannot explain the frustration and exhaustion that accompanies those last 3 days of the trip nor can I express how grateful I am to have a husband who takes charge and figures things out, who drives 5 hours home after endless hours of travel when I could barely keep my eyes open. 

But we will not be letting the chaos of those last few days dampen our joy...even with the mess it was still a blast and we are ready to do it again next year!