I'm Learning

I'm learning that tummy time after eating time (even after sufficient burping time), doesn't work out for any involved parties.

"And good morning to you too"

That's one way to force me to mop the floor.

I'm also learning that even if you're just going to the grocery store as your major outing for the day, donning a pair of pearls, some mascara and your fancy jeans will make you feel a whole lot better about yourself...even if you've just been projectile vomited on.

Can't wear make up and do the hair on the same day...nope, not happening.

This kid's going to do great in college, she can puke and rally like a champ!

Comeback delayed

While I was in the later stages of pregnancy, the only thing that would makes me feel better about not being able to run was telling myself that shortly after I had the baby, I would be able to get back out there. I had pretty bad pain in my pelvis (that my doctor assured me was from the weight of the baby pushing on it and after I delivered, it would go away), so the last couple of months I had no desire to run anyway. Walking would leave me really sore at night and even just mundane tasks like putting on my pants hurt - which I was told was normal.

Naturally, the first couple of weeks after Darby was born the last thing I wanted to do was walk, let alone run. But, I started getting the urge around the 3 week mark and started walking, a little at first, building up to long walks, but was still feeling a lot of pain, so didn't push it harder than walking. Fast forward to 8 weeks postpartum and I'm still not running. I'm walking a ton and swimming when I can, but running still eludes me because that pain in my pelvis hasn't gone away. I went to my doctor to see if I had done something to my pelvis...I was honestly thinking I had fractured it, it hurts so badly. She told me that my pubic bones are separated (diastasis symphysis pubis is the medical term), and there's not much you can do for them other than let them fuse back together on their own. For some women it takes 3 months, for some 8. Ughh. Running is my stress reliever, my me time and it's hard to get the same endorphin high from walking.

The good news is, the other day I got on my road bike just to see how it would feel and for some crazy reason, it didn't hurt at all! Something about the impact of running hurts the bones like no other, but sitting on a narrow bike seat didn't at all...bizarre. So, I enlisted my mother in law to watch Darby for a couple of hours and went on a bike ride...the first in a long time! Sure, it's not running, but I covered some ground, sweat like crazy and was breathing like a maniac! (Maybe I was a little too excited to be out again, because I pushed it too hard and ended up throwing up at the half way point...clearly my physical fitness is not where it once was.) I came back a whole new person. So, while I may not get to reclaim my running anytime soon, I can hang out on my trainer all winter and hope that all this time on my bike actually pays off comes tri season.

"It's a good thing I'm so cute and fun to hang out with!"

Photo Dump

Because it's easy and it's pictures that people really want, here are some fun ones from the last few weeks...of course it's pretty Darby heavy!

Hiking with Dad 

Thanksgiving in Utah with my sweet cousins Ciera and Torrey

Naked baby!

Ciena with her baby

Happy Cow-loween!

My little homie

We love bath time!

Since she's a girl, we call her Gnarbs or Gnarby

First flight - heading to Utah

Learning to smile

Hiking in Utah...her favorite way to travel

Living Room hike in SLC

"Z is for Zoe"

Gnarbs' first snow! Don't worry, we weren't out long!

Hunkered down during Hurricane Sandy power outage

Family hike Thanksgiving morning

Daddy/Darby time

Darby planking

Darby headstanding

Darby walking at 7 weeks

Now that we're up at the lake house full time until January (Doug is still commuting into the city most days) I'm excited to spend some quality time with this little munchkin. She's actually not very little...we went to the doctor yesterday for a little cough and she's 12 pounds! She never misses a meal...much like her mom!

Crazy three weeks

Wow, what a whirlwind the last three weeks have been. After Darby was born we jetted up to our house in the Pocono's where we are going to live until January. We got up here late on a Friday night and had a nice, peaceful weekend with Darby. My mom was with us so she went grocery shopping, cooked us a bunch of meals and was super helpful and great to have around. Come Monday morning, that's when things went downhill...

Monday - 8:30am a couple of contractors show up at our house and start pounding away on our deck to fix some of our screens. We knew they were supposed to come, but didn't know what time and figured they would come to the door first. Well, the dogs got all up in cahoots, started barking like crazy and then turned and started fighting each other. My mom leapt into action and pulled the dogs apart, but not without getting her hand caught in the middle of it. I was upstairs nursing, so didn't run down, I just heard my mom say "OW" and then heard Doug's reaction when he saw all of the blood. Luckily my mom was super calm and was like "Oh, it's just a mere flesh wound that's bleeding badly."We found an urgent care, so Doug rushed my mom there to get a tetanus shot and to have it looked at and then had to rush home to pick me up for our first pediatric appointment for Darbs. So, my mom hung out at urgent care while Doug's mom came to pick her up so we could make our appt. on time...and this was all before 11am.

Luckily, my mom was okay and was such a good sport about it. The dogs have been behaving better (to each other...they both are so gentle with the baby) and Darby had a great appointment.

Tuesday - Business as usual all day just hanging around the house. That night, Doug was getting his stuff ready to leave for a business trip at 3am the next morning and I was upstairs nursing (see a theme here?) when I started to smell a pretty obvious skunk smell. I yelled down to Doug and my mom and they could smell it too, when I looked out the front door, I saw Zoe sitting on the porch surrounded by a bunch of white foam. I knew right away that Zoe had been sprayed, Doug thought that Zoe was foaming at the mouth because she had rabies (which isn't possible because she is up to date with her shots) and was even more worried about my mom's bite. I found a recipe for getting the smell out of dogs and my mom ran out and grabbed all of the ingredients (FYI - baking soda, dawn dish soap and hydrogen peroxide). While my mom was gone, Zoe was freaked out and ran away. It was pitch black outside and she wouldn't come to any calls so Doug got in the car and drove around for a while trying to find her, to no avail. It was about 30 minutes later that she ran up the driveway and we corralled her and Doug did the duties of bathing her. (My mom volunteered of course, but we didn't think it would be good to get that concoction in her flesh wound.)

Wednesday - Doug left at 3am for his work trip and around 9am I had a minor/major freak out and asked my mom to go home a week earlier than planned. I guess I felt like Doug and I needed some alone time just with Darby and I freaked out that before I knew it, my 3 months of maternity leave would be over and we wouldn't have had enough time together. Once again, my mom was such a good sport. I know it hurt her feelings, but she understood. I remember telling myself to remember this day 30 years down the road when Darby kicks me out of her house.

Friday - My mom's flight was scheduled for Friday evening, but we had horrible thunderstorms, so it was cancelled until Saturday morning. We drove down to our apartment in Jersey City and got to hang out for the night with my uncle, who happened to be in town for a wedding and was crashing at our apartment. Since we were back in the city, Doug and I took the opportunity to meet up with some friends for dinner so that they could meet Darby.

A couple sips of that wine and I passed it along to Doug - whoa, it's been a while!

Saturday - My mom flew out early and we spent a good part of the next day cleaning out our apartment and packing up boxes...did I mention that our lease ended October 31st? Good timing with a new baby.

Sunday - A nice quiet day back in the mountains with our little family.

The next week -

Wednesday - Darby's first event in NYC! She got to meet professional skier Chris Davenport! She also "won" a silent auction prize for us...trip for 2 to Aspen! Hopefully we can find a good babysitter there!

"Oh, you know, just hanging out with a skiing celebrity at 2 weeks old"

Thursday - When we got back up to our house I heard rustling in the fireplace and knew we had another squirrel. I waited it out and finally called a pest control person that night and said he would be over in the morning, so we duct taped the fireplace and put a bunch of heavy things in front of it to seal it off.

Friday - "Batman" arrived bright and early and told us that the squirrel was hiding in the liner of the fireplace and he couldn't get it out, so he set a huge trap and told us to call him when it went off. If the trap didn't work, "the squirrel should die within 2-3 days."

Sunday - Threats of a big hurricane-like storm get serious so I call my dad, who is supposed to fly in Tuesday morning, and tell him to change his flight to later in the week.

Squirrel still in fireplace.

Monday - Winds start kicking up by the afternoon and power goes out at 10pm, just as we were heading to bed. I pulled Darbs into bed with us and we all huddled together to stay warm while we listened to the crazy winds and trees hitting the house.

Squirrel still in fireplace. Gnawing on the metal inside because it is hungry.

Tuesday - Assess the damage from the storm and aside from losing power and having 3 big trees come down in our yard, we lucked out with no major damage. Tonight we slept at our house again and it was definitely cold. I guess Darby is ready to go camping!

Indoor camping with my Gnarbs

Squirrel still in fireplace. It's definitely been longer than 2-3 days. It would be awfully nice to build a fire since we have no heat, but if we open the doors, the squirrel will jump out.

Wednesday - We are still without power. Squirrel is not affected by the storm...seems to be thriving.

Doug has a board meeting in the city on Thursday and had a hotel room reserved, so back to the city for us for some heat and a shower!

Thursday - My dad flies in and meets us at the hotel and we wander around the city looking at all of the damage. The dangling crane was pretty crazy in person!

Get back to the house, squirrel is waiting around to greet my dad. Dad decides that he is going to get the squirrel out...tomorrow.

Too cold to stay in our house, we get a room at a local lodge...ahh, heat, showers, warm breakfast.

Friday - Darbs and I hang out in the warm lodge, the boys go cut down trees and stuff.

Power finally comes on late Friday night, so we got to go home!

Squirrel still hanging out...tomorrow it's coming out for sure.

Saturday - Dad and Doug get bold and decide to get the squirrel out, with their bare (heavily gloved) hands. Well, Doug held the boxes around the fireplace so the stupid thing didn't jump out while my dad grabbed it with his gloves and a towel and took it outside. Apparently it got up and started limping off...hooray! Unfortunately, while Doug was cleaning out the fireplace after our week long guest, he opened the flue and a dead squirrel fell down and then he heard another live one in the lining of our fireplace - drat!

Monday - Leave for our apartment in Jersey City to finally move out.

Phew, needless to say, the baby has been the easiest part of the last few weeks!

Darby Harris Jamison

Induction Day!

11 days after my due date I was scheduled for an induction to get this baby out of me. We went into the hospital at 6:30am on 10/10/12 and the induction started at 7am with a Cytotec pill placed right near my cervix in hopes that it would dissolve and help to dilate me. At that point I was only dilated 2cm, so they were going to come back in and check me after 4 hours. 4 hours later they came in and I was still a 2, so they decided the next course of action was to insert two Foley balloons, one inserted directly into my uterus and one into my vagina. Both were then inflated to 5cm with water. The balloons are supposed to "mechanically"open the cervix to at least 5cm and when the cervix hits that point, the balloons are supposed to fall out. Holy hell..."mechanically" opening your cervix is not pleasant. What also wasn't pleasant was that the doctor started a pitocin drip at the same time to get things moving even quicker. So, that is when the pain really started and didn't stop. My contractions were every 2 minutes for 1 minute at a time and then got closer together giving me no time to recover from the first one. What amazed me were the noises I used to get me through...I moo'd like a cow, screamed like a baby and grunted like a pig for about 6 hours until the doctor came back to try to get the balloons out and check my progress. After tugging a bunch of times and deciding that the balloons weren't going to come out on their own, the doctor drained the water out of them and tugged them out. After the balloons came out, I was dilated to a 6, but after 14 hours of labor, I called it quits with the pain and screamed for an epidural. I had hoped to be able to deliver naturally, but after all of the interventions that had already happened, I just wanted some relief and hopefully save some energy for pushing. After my epidural, Doug and I were able to take a "nap" for a few hours and my mom escaped to a hotel for a few hours to rest. I couldn't believe the relief I got from the epidural. I was watching my contractions on the monitor and could only feel a tiny bit of pressure. People are onto something with that magical drug! The doc came in around 4am to check me and I was at 9.5cm! She told me to call my mom and have her come in and that we were going to start pushing in about an hour. A little before 5am, I was starting to feel the urge to push, so we started the process a little early. Luckily, my mom snuck in just as we started pushing, so she was able to be there for the birth. It was so surreal just jumping right in and starting to push. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, but it didn't take long to get the hang of it and push like hell every couple of minutes. In what felt like the greatest athletic feat of my life (my lungs were still sore 6 days later from pushing so hard) a little over an hour later I was handed a perfect little GIRL!!

Little Darby is so perfect...I've seen better days

We were pretty convinced I was having a boy, so when they said girl, we were so surprised. There was meconium coming out of me before the baby came out, so they handed her to me for a quick second and then they took her away to drain her lungs out. I was so delirious and exhausted that I could barely keep my eyes open while nurses rushed around with tubes to suction the gunk out of her lungs. It didn't take them too long to finish all of that and then they handed her back to me so we could check her out. I was in total disbelief that this little thing with eyelashes and fingernails had just come out of me...crazy!!

Proud papa:)

 After hanging out for a few hours in the delivery room, we were escorted up to our "recovery room" a few floors up. The recovery room was about 6 ft x 6 ft. and my section was cordoned off with a shower curtain to separate me from my roommate. Ughh...downside of delivering in NYC, no space. We didn't have a window and we had no room to move around the room. There wasn't even space for Doug to stay the night, so he got a hotel room around the corner while I hung out in the depressing hospital with my little peanut. I kept her with me in the room that night and we got about an hour of sleep between all of the nurses coming in and out and with my loud roommate, her husband and their baby that had taken up residence next door (err, next shower curtain over) and talked on their cell phones non-stop. The next morning I found the first nurse I saw and asked if we could leave that day. After getting approval from my doctor and the pediatrician, they allowed us to be discharged since everyone was healthy...I guess it didn't hurt that 8 other babies had been born overnight and now needed a place to go...baby factory I tell you.

Grandma Stacey, aka Gracie, got to see the whole thing go down!

Aunt Whit was there too (obviously she will be the one to teach Darbs about fashion)!

Now we're settled into our little house in the Pocono Mountains where we're surrounded by trees, quiet streets and wildlife (including the squirrel currently stuck in our fireplace and the skunk that just sprayed the dog). I'll be better about updating more frequently - it turns out I kind of like holding this little bambino a lot, so it takes up a lot of my time!

Waiting...

I guess Mr. Petty said it best - "The waiting is the hardest part." It's October 5th and there is still no Gnar baby. My due date has long past come and gone and there are no signs of this baby coming on it's own. As my stomach gets lower and more stretched out by the day, my irritability goes up infinitely.

On Wednesday morning I woke up at 3am with contractions 4 min. apart that lasted for 1 min...just what they tell you they should be when you're going into labor. So, we waited it out at home, walked around the neighborhood and then around 9am we headed into my doctor's office to get checked out before heading to the hospital. When we got to the office, my doctor hooked me up to some monitors and then checked me...I was 1cm dilated, the same that I have been for the past 3 weeks. She told me that it could be the start of labor, but that it could be 8 hours, 12 hours or another week before anything happened. Walking out of that office felt like the ultimate walk of shame.

So, since nothing is happening naturally, we have set October 10th as the date I'll be induced. Yes, there's a chance that this baby could come on it's own before then - and "statistically speaking, it should," but I'm not holding my breath. In fact, I will be pleasantly surprised if it does because now I've got it in my head that on 10/11/12 we will have a baby, but not before that.

It's been great having wise friends to keep this all in perspective and I know that in a few months I won't even remember this waiting period, but since I'm already on maternity leave and don't have a ton going on, it's on my mind all the time. Luckily for the dogs, it means lots of long walks in the park during the day!

Hopefully the next time I post, it will have a picture of the smushy-faced Gnar baby...which hopefully is still the size of a normal baby and not a Jessica Simpson sized toddler by then:)

Subway baby

Having a baby in NYC has more variables than I could have ever imagined. The other night we found out that the UN is in session and since it's a few blocks from the hospital we're delivering at means that traffic in the area is horrible. Doug decided that if I went into labor we would just schlep our bags onto the subway and avoid the traffic mess. Then my mom could drive the car in in the middle of the night and avoid the traffic. As bad as sitting in traffic in labor in a car sounds, sitting on a smelly subway in labor sounds about 5 times worse. I guess people probably do it all the time, but wow, I hope that's not how it goes down for us.

Baby names

We've majorly procrastinated on coming up with our final list of baby names. I've had a running list for years of our favorite boy, girl and dog names, but it was about 30 deep for each category, so last weekend we finally narrowed it down to our top 3-5 for boys and girls (there are no new dogs in our future). I must say that we had a much easier time with our girl names, we both tended to like them a lot better than any of the boy names we had. We are going to wait and share the final decision until the baby comes because we really feel like we have to see the little thing before giving it a name for life, but here's one thing I can share.

As we were talking about our boy names I thought that maybe we should think of some of our favorite ski runs, hikes, bike trails, etc that we had done and loved as possible middle name options. We went through a bunch of our favorite resorts, to no avail, and ended up studying the trail map of Silverton Mtn. The trail names at Silverton are ridiculous and totally thrown out by a bunch of ski bums with a crude sense of humor. Rope Dee Dope, Fat Guy, Vodka Shots, Hell's Gate, Witch's Tit, Concussion Woods, etc. Obviously, not great names for a child. I was reading all of these off, laughing hysterically the whole time and when I threw out Gnar Couloir Doug stopped me in my tracks and declared that Gnar would be the perfect middle name for a boy. "What a strong name! He's never going to get beat up with that kind of name. And if he's a red head, he needs a strong name." Well, he went on like this all weekend and he was totally serious. After you say it a bunch of times, I guess it sounds like any other name, but it's still hard for me to agree to naming our kid something short for "gnarly." Either way, I played into Doug's excitement and made a couple of onesies for our little bruiser because even if the name doesn't make it onto the birth certificate, it will surely be a nickname.

I suck at crafting and realized that the "E" was upside down and backwards after I ironed it on.

Crafting take 2.

So, either start crossing your fingers and toes that we have a girl and we can avoid this naming issue all together, or don't be surprised when you see the birth announcement and Gnar is part of his name.

Pregnancy Pros & Cons

As I'm nearing the end (hopefully sooner rather than later), I've put together my list of pros & cons of pregnancy, perhaps I'll look back at this list next time we're thinking about taking the plunge.

PRO'S

- Not having to zip and button pants. This isn't a huge inconvenience in everyday life, but it's pretty great (and fast) to not have to do it. I will definitely miss this feature of maternity pants when I can finally fit into my normal jeans.

- Feeling the baby move around is awesome. This is something I will miss. It's such an intimate thing between just you and the baby that no one else is really aware of. It's like carrying a little buddy around all the time.

- People are so much more likely to talk to me now, I guess pregnant women are much more approachable. People come up to me all the time and ask about the baby, what I'm having (and 100% of them tell me I'm having a boy) and how I'm feeling.

- I actually think the bump is really cool and really bizarre...I've totally worked it as my summer accessory.

- I've never been more comfortable strutting around in a bikini on a beach as I am now.

- I don't feel bad about going to bed at 8:30pm.


CON'S

- I must smell or taste different because Ciena dog hovers over me and licks me to death anytime she sees exposed skin. Lately she has taken to humping me too, which is so weird because she's never done that kind of thing. Ewww.

- It kind of sucks when you outgrow your maternity clothes. You thought you felt big before...

- Hormones.

- Obviously not running these last couple of months have been a mood killer. I used to watch other runners and be super jealous, now I look at them and can't believe I ever did that. Running was my stress reliever, my mind clearer, my me time and I've had a hard time finding something to deal with the stress quite like it. Crying has seemed to be the go to, but it's not the same as a good hard sweat session.

- I miss a nice glass of red wine every once in a while (see above...it's a good stress reliever.)

- Filling out a disability form for being pregnant. It was pretty funny that the form asked how and where this "accident" occurred...umm, standing up in the Burger King bathroom? Seriously people...I'm not disabled, I'm pregnant.

- The bathroom is my second home.

- The random aches and pains that I've had and I'm sure are different than anyone else has experienced and the doctor tells me it's just par for the course and not unusual at all. Damn, some of that stuff hurts!

- 9 months (10 actually) is a really long time. It makes me wonder if women just forget how long it is and that's how they have more than one kid.


I'm sure in a few weeks I'll be able to add "labor" to the con's list and cute little smushy faced baby to the pro's list!

Kauai

Doug's parents will be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in December, so to mark this golden year, they wanted to take the family to Hawaii. This trip has been years in the making and since Doug and I were the only ones who have been before, we got to do a majority of the planning. We've been to Kauai two other times and are in love with the island, so we didn't even question going somewhere else. I was in charge of finding a house on the beach that would be big enough for 12 of us to live comfortably for a week and while it may not have been the most modern of houses (think lots of wicker furniture), the location was awesome and the space was just what we needed.

Our beach rental

Because of the 6 hour time change, we were all up super early on the first morning, so I recruited my 2 nieces and their dad Derek to go for a walk down the beach. We found all sorts of treasures - shells, coral, sea glass and coconuts.

"I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts, deedileedee"

As we got to the bend where we said we would turn around, Derek, who was walking ahead of us meandering girls, came back and said "listen girls, I just want to warn you that up ahead is a sea animal that is not doing so well. Prepare yourself because it's pretty sad." So, we walked up and saw some sort of seal who had beached itself.  

Ms. Monk Seal

Anna, our little nature girl, knew right away that it was a monk seal because of it's whiskers, it's wrinkled neck and it's split tail...duh. But both of the girls (and me, just a little quieter) were telling Derek we had to do something to help get this seal back in the water if it had a chance of survival. Derek was trying to be so brave, but really had no idea what to do, so he and I decided we were going to shovel a path in the sand and then somehow roll it back into the water. Just before we started digging our trench, we saw a guy on his porch just behind us. Derek motioned to this guy to see if he could help us (meanwhile, it's only 6:30am and this guy is just enjoying the sunrise and his morning coffee on his deck). The nice guy walked down and we told him our plan and he just laughed. He told us that it was in fact a monk seal and that they are an endangered species. After eating, they find a nice quiet beach to hang out on for 12-18 hours while they digest their food before heading back out into the ocean. He also told us that if you get too close, or heaven forbid touch them it screws up their metabolisms and digestion and can be very harmful to them. Whoops...close call. We hung out and watched the seal do nothing for a few minutes and then headed back home with our story to tell the rest of the gang. During breakfast that morning I saw that there was a sheet of rules on the fridge and there was a bold rule at the bottom saying "Stay away from Monk Seals. If you are caught getting closer than 50 feet to a monk seal, it can be up to a $25,000 fine and manhandling the animal (ie, rolling it back to the ocean) could result in jail time." Now that would have been a good way to start the family vacation. 

This post is going to get ridiculous, so I'm going to move to a picture heavy 2nd half.

Full rainbow behind our house

We were non-stop all week - paddleboarding, snorkeling, hiking, swimming, surfing - you name it, we did it. Well, I obviously didn't surf because I couldn't figure out how to paddle the board out on my back and then get up on a wave, but the kids all did and had a blast. I was amazed at how much I was able to do...it might not have been graceful or pretty (hello bikini at 33 weeks!) but I did it. Every night I was so tired and so sore, that I would watch the Olympics and fall asleep on the couch by 8:30. 

One day, most of our group hiked the Kalalau Trail, 2 miles into an awesome beach and then 2 miles out. These mountains are pretty steep, so it was more like 1 mile up and then one mile down, swim in the ocean and then 1 mile up, 1 mile down. On our first trip to Kauai, Doug and I got a permit and hiked the whole trail, which is 11 miles into a secluded beach and then we camped for a few days before hiking back out. It was so great to go back and be on the trail, the views are amazing all along the way. 

Hiking the Kalalau Trail

Another day, we drove to the west side of the island to check out the Napali Coast and Waimea Canyon, both unbelievable vistas on Kauai.

Napali Coast

Waimea Canyon

Doug "surfing" in a wave on the paddleboard

Since Doug's parents were so generous with this trip, we figured we would suprise them by having a fully catered anniversary dinner at our place. Through a work contact, I found a local caterer who worked with me for months putting this dinner together. It all went off without a hitch (well, besides the kitchen sink and dishwasher breaking right before they started cooking) and was a very welcome surprise for Doug's parents.

Family picture - pre surprise dinner

Doug the belly sherpa

After 10 days of living the Hawaiian dream, it was actually nice to get home, see the dogs and start hunkering down to get ready for our new little buddy. I was kind of nervous about the flight home because I was sure I had jiggled something loose while body surfing and hiking and that the baby was going to come on the plane, but we made it home all in tact and the family is still speaking to each other...I'd call that success!

Evolution

I was going through my phone the other day and saw a bunch of photos I shot of my growing belly over the past 6 months and I thought it would be fun to do an evolution of the bump photo montage. The funniest thing about all of the pictures is that I felt like my belly was huge in each one of them...haha, little did I know. I'm sure I'll look back in a couple months and laugh at where I am now.

7 weeks (I can't remember even having a flat stomach anymore)

13 weeks ("Check me out...I'm huge!)

16 weeks ("Why aren't people giving up their seat on the subway for me?")

19 weeks (A tad more legit)

26 weeks (Basketball status)

27.5 weeks (Trying on a new dress helps with the frumpy feelings)

37 weeks...whoa, now that's the real deal

I'll add to this post as I go along, because it's so funny to look back and see my changing self. It's also funny to remember my frame of mind during each phase.