27 Weeks

27 weeks today! 91 days to go.

I'm sitting at the airport waiting for a flight to Phoenix. I'll be back for a week long Phoenix visit to attend my friend's wedding and sister's baby shower. It's looking like my little nephew might be born in the next week. I'm crossing my fingers that I'll get to meet him.

This is the last week of my second trimester. I'm lucky that I've had such an easy time of it so far. Although I'm still sleeping well and able to keep up my exercise routine, I'm starting to feel very pregnant and I have a feeling the next three months will be long and tiring.

I spend several hours this weekend browsing children's books on Amazon and creating a list of ones to add to Eleanor's library. I tried to make sure all of the classics are there, like Winnie the Pooh, Madeline, Eloise, Corduroy, Paddington Bear, Good Dog Carl, a selection of Dr. Seuss, Beatrix Potter, Goodnight Moon, Pat the Bunny, etc. I also stumbled across some titles that I liked when I was a kid but had forgotten about, like Harry the Dirty Dog. I just can’t wait until Eleanor is here and I can I hold her in our rocking chair and read to her.

26 Weeks & First Family Portrait

26 weeks today! 98 days to go - I’m so excited to be into the double digits. It feels like such a big accomplishment.

As of last week, the comments from random strangers have really started rolling in. I’m getting a lot of “How far along? Only 6 months?! You’re huge! Are you having twins?” types of remarks. I know I’m not small for 26 weeks, but I don’t think I’m that huge either. I might have to grunt a little bit when I bend down to pick something up off of the floor, but my belly is still small enough that I forget that it is there from time to time, especially when I’m sitting down. I think that most people who make such comments either have no idea what they are talking about, don’t realize that all pregnant women carry differently, or forget exactly how big they were when they were pregnant themselves. Either way, they don’t really bother me, but it just makes me wonder. Why say anything at all, if it isn’t something positive and encouraging?

Also in the last few weeks Eleanor’s movements have started to really change. Instead of swift kicks and twitches, I’m feel a lot more gentle movements, pressure from where her body is laying, stretching, and pushing. My placenta is right on the back, so I’m able to feel pretty much everything. I’m able to see pretty much everything too. Andrew got a huge kick out of laying in bed and watching my tummy bulge up and down the other night. These new sorts of movements are a lot more frequent than the previous kind and I’m really enjoying them. Constant little reminders that my baby girl in there and doing well.

On Sunday Andrew and I finally found the perfect chair for the nursery. It is modern looking and glides as well as swivels. It is made by the same store, EQ3, that we purchased our couch and armchair from. One of the reasons we love EQ3 is because of their fun upholstery options. We picked out a fabric for the chair that will compliment our living room set and will also look good in our bedroom, so it will definitely have a long life outside of the nursery. The fabric that we liked best, however, did not look good with the lavender palette I had been planning on, so I decided to completely redo everything.

The crib bedding that I love previously only came in two colors, purple and pink, but just in the last month Land of Nod started offering it in two additional colors, light blue and light green. I LOVE the light green, which is sort of a mixture between sage and chartreuse. It will look really cool with the upholstery we picked for the chair, which is a shade called "sour apple." For accent colors we are going to use bright blues, oranges, and reds. Here is my idea sheet for Nursery 2.0:

Also on Sunday we took our first family portrait. I had been wanting to do this since we got our new camera, but we never took the time. Since we were going out I decided to wear a new dress that I bought to wear to my friend Brianna's wedding in a few weeks. Andrew decided that since I looked nice, he would look nice too. I seized the opportunity and snapped this:

25 Weeks

25 weeks today! 15 weeks or 105 days to go.

On Sunday we had our first official meeting with our doula. Maybe it’s my past as a very dedicated student or maybe it’s just my personality, but I’m a planner and a studier. Eleanor’s birth might be 15 weeks away, but I’ve already begun serious preparation, including reading, practicing breathing methods, and doing exercises to strengthen the muscles I will use to deliver her. I finished reading Pregnancy, Childbirth & the Newborn (Penny Simkin) a few weeks ago (I would highly recommend this book, by the way, especially for someone who would plans on reading only one childbirth preparation book) and it has a very detailed birth plan worksheet that is a sort of checklist to help you make sure you’ve thought about everything and have some clear preferences lined up. I spent an afternoon typing up the entire list and providing my answers with some helpful input from Andrew. The entire worksheet ended up being six pages long! Don’t worry, the six page worksheet won’t be what we take with us to the hospital; we will refine it down to one clear page. Along with the worksheet, I made a short bullet list of the most important things that we would like to convey to the hospital staff.

So I had all of this stuff printed out and ready to hand over to the doula. I figured I would either come off as really committed and prepared, or totally anal, opinionated, and maybe a tiny bit crazy. She went over everything, all seven pages, very carefully and provided a lot of useful feedback about the hospital’s policies and her experiences attending other births there. Luckily she didn’t think I’m anal or crazy and she praised us for seeming so calm and well studied. We won’t meet with her again until after our childbirth classes in late April, then we will practice some labor positions and coping strategies together. Until then I’m going to keep up my reading and mental preparations. I'm currently working on Birthing From Within (Pam England) and will move on to The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth (Henci Goer). Trust me, you don't want to see how long my Amazon Wish List is right now.

On Monday Andrew turned 29. We celebrated over the weekend with a little dinner and some frostingless cake (he just doesn't like it that sweet). He always told me that he wanted to have children before the age of 30, so I'm happy to report that the goal has been met.

Aside from Andrew's birthday and the leftover cake, the highlight of my week so far has been the purchase of this little dress:

I found out about this brand, Right Bank Babies, a few days ago. I gushed to my friend Morgan about how cute these clothes are (we share an affinity for children's clothes with an Anthropologie aesthetic) and fell absolutely in love with this reversible dress, but it was pretty expensive. This morning the brand was featured on one of the sale sites that I subscribe to, The Mini Social, and there was the dress at half price. I snagged it in a 12m. It will be perfect for next summer. Isn't it lovely when things work out like that?

24 Weeks & 3D Ultrasound

24 weeks today! Only 112 days left to go.

On Saturday we went to San Francisco to have a 3D ultrasound done. They are a bit expensive, so I was nervous going in that we would pay a bunch of money and Eleanor would end up being a bad position or something like that. Despite my worries, it was a great experience. She was facing just the right way and was awake and active the entire time.

I had been feeling nervous about her gender since the tech at our last ultrasound was hesitant to declare her a girl, saying only that she "looks" like a girl, so one of the reasons I wanted to get this 3D ultrasound was for a little more certainty in that area. As we were going back to the room for the scan, the tech asked us if we knew the gender. We said, "It's a girl." He laughed and said, "Well, we'll see about that." He explained that more errors tend to be made with girls, hence his skepticism. He was not helping my anxiety! But luckily the second he turned the ultrasound on he happened to be in the right place and said, "She is 300% a girl!" Yay! No more doubt about it. We definitely have a little girl on the way. 300% Eleanor.

The entire scan went really well. The tech told us that she looks like she is going to be tall and has very long limbs, toes, and fingers. She is currently hanging out head down and he thinks that her length will prevent her from turning breech. I hope he's right! He could already make out some hair, particularly her eyebrows, which he said is unusual for a baby her age, so there is a pretty good chance she could come out with a nice head of hair.

For about 40 minutes we got to watch in amazement as Eleanor sucked on her fingers, hiccuped, opened and closed her mouth, and moved around. The tech was able to get some really good pictures of her face with her tiny developing features. We might be bias, but we think she is already pretty beautiful. Here are a few of my favorites:

Sweet little face!

Looking for a thumb to suck on, perhaps?

Her fingers made it to her mouth! And there is one of her long feet.

Pretty profile with a cute little nose.

She looks so comfortable and calm.

It is so incredible to have this preview of our baby. I already feel like I have her features memorized. It is so astonishing to look at the pictures and know that she is inside me right now, to know that those are the exact feet that are kicking me and that is the face that I will spend so many hours kissing.

Here is a slideshow with all of the images from the scan. They can be viewed individually on my flickr.


Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

We also got a DVD with video from the scan. It 20 minutes long and I don't imagine many of you will want to sit through the entire thing, but I uploaded it anyway. The highlights are around 1:40 (sucking on her fingers), 7:00 (kicking, opening and closing her mouth, opening and closing her hands), 12:50 (twisting around).

Eleanor in 3D from Callai Nagle on Vimeo.

23 Weeks

23 weeks now! Not a lot has changed since last week, with the exception of my belly button. The top part has started to stick out. I'm guessing the rest will follow quickly.

Eleanor is now about the size of a large ripe mango (over 11 inches long), which also happens to be one of my favorite foods.

I'm really grateful for how easy I've had it so far. No real aches or pains to speak of yet. I can sleep easily and comfortably. I'm still able to keep up my daily exercise (although I have to go a bit more slowly). So far so good!

Our collection of baby clothes continues to grow. I had a little online shopping spree recently and these lovely things arrived at my door this week:

I'm ready for May to get here!

22 Weeks

22 weeks today! I’m fighting a cold and its zapping up all of my energy, but otherwise I couldn’t be better.

Little Eleanor weighs 1 whole pound now, which seems like such an accomplishment considering she started out as a tiny little poppy seed sized embryo. I’m constantly amazed when I think about how she once was nothing, then was a tiny speck of something, now is a healthy fetus that kicks and pokes, and soon will be a full fledged baby.

Last weekend Andrew and I took a walk around the lake that is just a few blocks away from our apartment and took some pictures. It's a really beautiful area and I walk its paths 5-6 days a week. The lake is home to lots of pretty birds like herons, egrets, cormorants, pelicans, coots, and tons of geese. There is a small amusement park called Children's Fairyland there along with several playgrounds. You can also rent all sorts of boats, everything from paddle boats to kayaks to gondolas, and take them out for a little cruise. It will be a really fun place to take the baby. The pictures are kind of small on this blog, but they can also be viewed on my Flickr page.

21 Weeks

21 weeks along as of today. Andrew and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary on New Year's Eve by staying in, ordering Chinese delivery, forcing ourselves to stay up all the way until midnight, and then laughing at our neighbor yelling "Screw you, 2010!" into the night.

On Monday our crib, mattress, and dresser arrived. Andrew got home from work around 6 and we spent a solid 5 hours putting it all together and moving it around to figure out the best arrangement. The nursery is a pretty small space, and we wanted to find a way to make it feel as spacious as possible but still be able to keep our small sofa in the room because it makes an excellent guest bed. After fussing with it for a while, I think we came up with something that works pretty well. Of course the room is so small that I couldn't really get a picture of it all, but I think from these photos you can get a pretty good idea of how it is laid out.

We are going to put a rocking chair in the corner by the window.


This is our old sofa that we will brighten up with a few colorful pillows the little white table is detachable and will probably go down to the garage. We're going to put a changing pad on top of the dresser. Supplies can be stored in the cupboard compartment, and if needed we have an unused wall shelf we can hang above it.


I love our crib. It's rather compact and reminds me of Frank Lloyd Wright and Stickley Brother's arts and crafts era furniture.

It's all rather plain and bare for the moment. Taking these pictures made me realize just how much work we have yet to do to turn this empty room into a cozy, baby-friendly place. The only furniture item we still need to purchase is a rocking chair. We might also get a small bookshelf of some sort. As far as the decorating goes, I made this idea sheet utilizing the palette we are going to use.


Along with my regular clothed belly pictures I decided this week to snap a few of my bare skinned belly. Luckily no stretch marks yet, and my belly button is still an innie, although I think its days are numbered.


On a final note, I added two links to the right side of the page under the "About Me" section, one that lists the places where we are registered, and one about cloth diapering.