Georgiana Kaylee Herrick

She's here. She's perfect. I'm still processing what that means, but in the meantime, we are so completely in love. 

Georgiana Kaylee Herrick

Sep. 27th, 2012

8:29 pm

7 lb 3 oz

18 1/2 inches

Still here

41 weeks and still pregnant. We suspected this baby was going to be late and it's a little bit nice to be right, though I'd really rather just have a baby soon. I've made a little bit of progress and everything is still good - she's moving a lot, has a good heart rate, fluid levels are fine - and since I don't want to be induced if I can possibly help it, we're just going to keep waiting until she is ready. But I have a feeling it'll be this week; she's going to be a September baby for sure. 

In the meantime, I finally re-finished the edges of the quilt I made for her that ended up in one of our magazines because we were short a few projects. Here's the quilt and the published pictures:

Hopefully my next post will include pictures of a baby!

Dear Baby Girl,

Today was your official due date but in spite of all your pushing and stretching, you weren't quite ready to come out. I know you're squished in there - I can feel it! - and I promise there's more room for you to stretch on the outside. But you take your time; I want you to be as ready as you can be before you make your debut. It's a bigger world out here, and it'll be completely overwhelming at first, but I promise, it's beautiful. The mountains are dotted with red leaves and the blue sky is absolutely luscious. There is so much beauty here, so much love and happiness and delight. Don't wait too long to start this adventure with your daddy and me, okay? We love you so much and we can't wait to meet you!

Love, Mama

Maternity Photo Shoot

My sister is absolutely an artist - these turned out so well! 39 1/2 weeks pregnant and I'm still feeling (and hopefully looking) good!

Craziest. Week. Ever.

Life didn't slow down this week, not even a little bit. It was the craziest week. It started out busy (see previous post about nesting) and then Tim got a really nasty virus that pretty much laid him out for two days. (He slept for about 12 hours two nights in a row - he never does that!) I did not get sick, thankfully, but having a sick husband and a crazy nesting instinct is no fun when you can't move furniture by yourself.

Then we had my weekly appointment with the midwives and I was measuring small so they sent us to do a nonstress test and get an ultrasound to make sure everything was okay. We were pretty sure things were fine and my belly was measuring small because the baby dropped, but we weren't going to say no to an ultrasound! I did kinda freak out a little after that appointment, but to help me feel better, Tim took me shopping and we got a few last things for the baby and then we finished getting our room set up. Tim's so good to me. :) The nonstress test and ultrasound were totally fine - the baby's just low and measuring about a week behind her due date which is exactly what we were told at the 20 week ultrasound. So nothing to worry about there. (As a side note, we got a few pics from the ultrasound and we got to see the baby's face! And she has cute little chubby cheeks already - it's kind of adorable.)

Then the night after the ultrasound, we discovered that the pipe from the washing machine to the drain was broken when I did an extra-large load of laundry and all the water from that load flooded our furnace room, entryway, bathroom, part of the kitchen, and then soaked through the furnace room wall to get the carpet in our hallway wet. Yeah. That happened. There was enough water in the bathroom that I had to sweep it out into the garage before I could soak it up with towels. There wasn't a lot of damage, just stuff to clean up, but we were very worried about the walls and carpet mildewing or molding. My awesome brother-in-law Jase does construction so we listened when he told us to pull up the carpet in the hallway to get the pad dry underneath. The pipe got fixed the very next day and the pad and carpet are mostly dry now, but the dry wall in the furnace room will probably have to be replaced which means things are still in a state of semi-disarray. Just what we wanted to deal with right before having a baby, right?

Luckily, my mom had already volunteered to come down and help me do some deep cleaning on Saturday, so she helped us get the kitchen and bathroom to rights, among other things. My parents are so awesome - it was such a huge relief to have them over!

We also went and toured the birthing center at Orem Community Hospital this week and mostly pre-registered. My insurance is still in the process of switching over to COBRA so we only got half of it done and we're now impatiently waiting for my new insurance card so we can finish. 

And then to finish the week, Sunday was our ward's Primary program, which went really well, but was exhausting. I am really, really glad I could be there for it and I kept telling people it was the last thing on my list so I was free to have a baby now. I'm thinking I should probably try to recover from this last week first, but I'm 39 weeks and in spite of the pulled up carpet and dry wall needing to be replace, I'm ready to have a baby!

My favorite part of the week was definitely finishing our room. Everything is so clean and nested! (And yes, we do sleep with two different blankets right now - makes it much easier for each of us to regulate the temperature throughout the night.)

And here's what our hallway looks like - pulled back carpet, industrial fan, and lamp because the light fixture is broken. Good times.

Nesting

So nesting is a real thing. We hit September (literally) and my inner alarm clock went off. All summer I've been mentally counting down to now, saying that once we made it to September, this baby could come anytime. That really hit me this weekend, and so I've been on a sort of nesting frenzy. At least, that's where I assume the bursts of energy are coming from. Rearranging furniture, cleaning, making lists - I just feel like I'm running out of time. And I guess I am - this little girl is due in two weeks! I started out the summer with a very long list of stuff I wanted to get done around the house, and after I got really stressed out about not being able to fit it all in, I started making cuts. I realized that I could have a baby even if the spare room closet was not cleaned out or if my car was not vacuumed. I eventually a made a must-do list and now I'm even starting to cross things off of that. I mean, there are some things that can only happen before the baby is born - there's no point in touring the hospital afterward - but other things can wait if they have to. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway, and I think it's working. 

To cut to the chase: 38 weeks and I'm nesting. Lots of contractions but nothing super strong or long. Lots of things to get done at work but I'm on track to finish it all this week. Lots of things to get ready around the house but with Tim's help, I think I'll get it all done. A few things left to do before I'll feel ready to have a baby. We're days, not weeks, away from meeting our little girl and underneath the stress, I'm so excited!