38 Weeks & Still Hangin' On!

Wow, the day (my 20 week check-up) Dr. Gass told me that my daughter only has 2 blood vessels running through her umbilical cord instead of the usual two and that she may not be full-term, we had NO idea that we would make it to 38 weeks! As soon as he told us that, I just had all these images running through my head of us having to deliver during the 2nd trimester and of Mallory being hooked up to all the machines in the NICU for months with us just being able to visit her but not bring her home from the hospital with us. I immediately thought the worse, but also knew that God would protect my sweet baby and me and that I just needed to TRUST HIM! Well, here we are now 18 weeks later with my baby girl still in my tummy waiting patiently to come out on her scheduled birth day! I will be 38 weeks, 6 days the day of my c-section; Thursday, February 10th. I cannot believe I have gone this long!

We have had at least 3 "scares" of thinking it was time to throw our bags in the car and get to the hospital to have this baby, but they've ended up being nothing. One of those was last night when I woke up at 2 am completely nauseous and barely even able to sit up. I have read that nausea is one of the signs that labor is coming on. Also, I could not feel her move for several hours and was so worried. I wanted to get up and get ready to go to the hospital just to make sure everything was okay, but I was too sick to even do that. So, I just laid back down and prayed that everything was okay. I drank some orange juice and felt a couple of movements from her, but still not as many as I would have liked. Marc just reassured me by saying that she was probably sleeping and giving me a break! Today I haven't felt her move much either, but as I am sitting here typing this, she has been moving a lot more. She's such a stinker, scaring me like this!

Anyway, so here I am sitting up at 1:58 am updating my blog and cleaning house just trying to do as much as I can to feel "ready" for Mallory to get here! I wanted to do a much better job this pregnancy keeping my blog updated, but it just hasn't happened. So I'm trying to do several posts tonight to get a little caught up because I know that once she is here I definitely won't be blogging much. We'll see! Tomorrow, well, actually later today, my parents are coming up with their bags all packed, ready to stay at our house until we come home from the hospital. My mom is going to go with me tomorrow afternoon to the hospital for me to go ahead and get registered and have some bloodwork done, while my dad stays at the house and keeps Mason. I also hope to finally get that pedicure I've been dreaming of for a month now! I want me some pretty toes during that c-section. Ha! :) Like I'll even be thinking about those toes! And we need to Marc's & Mason's haircut tomorrow. AND move baby girl's crib into her room AND I need to sit down and journal about my pregnancy (thank you) AND rest AND take a shower AND put the hospital bags & car seat in the car, AND, the list goes on and on and on!

Oh, this is just sooo interesting knowing the date I'm having me a baby! I kinda liked it much better with Mason when my water just randomly broke and I went into labor and didn't really have a chance to get anxious or nervous. My bags have been packed for weeks and I know there's just nothing really to be 100% "ready" to become parents all over again, but still, I'm a nervous wreck thinking about Thursday morning!

A side note: a woman at Gattliland tonight asked me if I was pregnant with TWINS!!!! ha!!! :) I told her, "No, just one baby girl and she'll be here on Thursday!" Hilarious! I also told her I would have loved to have twins this time, though!

So, here I am at 38 weeks:

Getting Ready for Baby Sister

We have been soooo busy these last few weeks getting ready for Mallory's arrival! It seems like we waited until after the holidays to do all the main stuff because we were so busy then and I was in the midst of my bedrest trying to take it extra slow. With Mason, his nursery was completely ready by 36 weeks or so, but this time around that's when I pretty much STARTED getting everything ready! It's okay though because since this c-section is scheduled, it seems that I am more anxious for the day and feel like I have to be extra prepared since I know when the day is. So, I've just been waiting and waiting and counting down the days to February 10th. Getting Mallory's nursery ready has given me something to keep my mind off the c-section and something to kinda help these final weeks fly by. Since I have been on bed rest and haven't been feeling very well, we have definitely needed the help from the grandparents when it comes to getting our house/furniture organized, and help from friends to keep Mason for me on the days I need to rest. We have learned these past 9months that it definitely "takes a village"!

Since learning how to sew just before Mason's 1st birthday, I said that I wanted to make the crib bedding for the next baby. I knew this would be a HUGE project, but I wanted to make it extra special and I was determined to give up on that goal! But, being on bed rest made it so difficult to reach that goal. I was determined, though, and finally got around to making it during my 35th week of pregnancy. I had been researching the fabric for months until finally deciding on those "perfect" fabrics. What a hard decision that was! :) I worked hard at it and got the bumpers done in less than a week. I'm so proud of them! I made the curtains last week out of this beautiful ivory rosette silk taffeta fabric that I ordered off Fabric.com. They're just so girly and "shabby chic" and exactly what I had in mind. I'm going to make the crib skirt out of the same fabric. I've been puting off the crib skirt until after the crib arrived so that I could know exact measurements, so that'll be something I work on in a few weeks after recovery from surgery and after some adjustment of having another baby in the house! :) I also want to make a sweet blanket to match the bedding.

We found a couple of distressed, antique furniture that I LOVED on Craig's List, so we quickly picked them up back in November and had them at our house ready to go. It was nice not having to order them and then wait for months for them to get here. I'll show better pictures of our Craig's List dresser & vanity later! I ordered the crib back in October from JC Penney expecting it to arrive by December, but to make a long story short, it didn't arrive until February 1st. Thank you. And that was even sooner than they said! So, it's been kind of hard to complete the nursery and all the sewing I wanted to do for it without having the crib. Ever since it came, I have been in full force trying to get everything finished. It's such a relief that most of the nursery will end up being done before she gets here! Even if it is the night before! Ha! :) Tomorrow when my parents arrive, we will move the crib into the nursery, throw that mattress & bedding on it, and hang this sweet plaque on the wall above it. Just in the nick of time for Mallory to be here! :)

Mason has been such a good boy while Mommy has been doing all these preparations. He has been so patient and has really entertained himself when I've been sewing and doing other things. He's been such a good big helper when it's come to getting all his newborn items ready for babys sister to use. It's just been so sweet watching him figure it all out and have this discussions with me about everything. I really think he's understanding what is going on and hopefully won't be too overwhelmed on Thursday when he meets Mallory for the first time, and especially when we come home from the hospital with her. We have talked to him about Mallory Jane from the second we found out we were pregnant because we wanted to give him lots of time to try and understand everything. Plus, he's almost 3 years old so I think he's at that age where it all does kinda make sense and he's excited to be a "big helper" once baby sister gets here.

I'll tell y'all more about the nursery and show pictures of the "completed" look after we come home from the hospital with Mallory. It's not ready yet anyway and I don't want to rush in this post and explain the theme, cuz I wanted to focus more on the other preparations and Mason helping with everything. :)

Here are some pics in random order of us getting everything ready!

We had to do some switching around with rooms... Our extra bedroom was our guest room/playroom/sewing room. So, all that had to go to make room for Mallory! Thankfully we have a pretty good sized formal dining room so we just took the dining room table out of there to make room for Mason's toys & my sewing stuff.

Here are Papa Jack & Mason busy carrying Mason's toys into his "new" playroom. Mason thought he was big stuff helping out and felt so important to have a new playroom!

Ta da! The new playroom! We'll still have our piano, china cabinet, fancy paintings & curtains in there, so it'll be an interesting mix of a room, but for now I really don't feel like re-decorating the whole room. So it'll just be kinda random for now! Well, probably the whole rest of the time we live in this house. Ha!

The big "reveal" to Mason!
He had to check and make sure the plastic bins were all organized to his liking... Thank you. Grandy, Paw T, and Papa did a great job getting his new playroom ready!
He got over the big change right away as soon as he started playing with his train table! Now that the toys are cleared out, time to move the dresser & vanity into Mallory's room! They had been sitting out in our garage for weeks, so I was so glad to finally get them into the house.

Connie (Marc's mom) directing the furniture movers... Ha! :)

Putting the drawers into the dresser

MaMaw came up the day the furniture was being moved in so that she could help take care of Mason. He was soooo excited to play with his great-grandmother and to get to take a nap on her lap!

Time to bust the bassinet out of the attic and get it all washed up and ready for Baby Mallory! She will sleep in this in our room the first couple of months since her room is so far from ours. Mason was sooooo excited to help me put this thang together! He wanted to do ALL of it!

He was so cute... he brought his little chair over and set it all up so that he could get a closer look! I can see him looking over at his baby sister now when she is sleeping soundly in there! :)
Fluffing up the bedding
He especially loved hanging up the mobile
And of course Mason has needed to "listen" to Mallory's heartbeat along the way, just like he sees them do at my doctor's appointments! He loves playing "doctor"!
I just think these pictures are some of the sweetest thangs I've ever seen!!! Definitely some we'll bust out and show Mason & Mallory years from now!

Getting the car seat ready... Can't believe Mason actually fit in this 2 1/2 years ago!! He was in for 14 months since he was so small at first and only in the 3rd percentile, but now he is a big boy and even bigger than a lot of the 3 year olds he hangs out with!

Everyone's warning me that Mason's gonna look even BIGGER & OLDER once we put sweet little Mallory in this on Sunday!

Oh, very carefully making sure the seatbelt is installed properly! He wants his baby sister to be extra safe!

Nope, sweet boy, not quite gonna fit!! :)

Whoo!!! Just going back and re-reading all this is making me exhausted!! So, as you can see, our entire family has been very busy getting ready for this little girl, especially the proud big brother! You can tell she is already extra special and SO loved!! Can't believe we are going to meet her in LESS THAN TWO DAYS!!! This is sooo surreal!