The baby is spoiled already!

Last weekend we had our baby shower. There was a huge turnout! Around 40 people showed up...the majority of which was family. We had a lot of out-of-towners, including my mom from Cali and Evans's sis Luisa from NYC. It was great seeing everyone and I had an awesome time. The hostesses went all out and the party was beautiful. The theme was "garden party" and it was co-ed. There was a big spread of food, adorable decorations and a beautiful cake.

My friend Rachel brought a homemade pinata, which she calls a pregnata, shaped like a pregnant lady!! It was hilarious/awesome/amazing.

From Baby Shower

The pregnata was definitely one of the highlights of the party. The size of the belly was oddly very similar to mine!

The cake was delicious too. The flavor was coconut lime and it was decorated to go with the whole theme of the party.

From Baby Shower

Our little boy scored a bunch of loot. He is all set and has everything he needs and then some. We are very appreciative of everyone's generosity!

After the shower, my mom hung around for a few days and painted a mural on the nursery wall. It came out awesome! It is exactly what I wanted and she did a great job.

From Nursery Mural

From Nursery Mural

We just have to put up a shelf and we are done with the nursery! Once the nursery is complete, all I gotta do is wait for baby to make his grand entrance! Only 4 1/2 more weeks left till my due date. During that time I plan on doing lots of relaxing and swimming in the pool Evans bought me. It is above ground, 15 feet in diameter and 3.5 feet deep. Pool partayyy!!

Never thought I'd say this, but nesting is a legit thing.

I always thought nesting, along with most other pregnancy symptoms, was made up and not a real thing. I thought maybe it was kind of psychosomatic, and that the desire that everyone say they have is really just excitement for the baby. Well, I have come to learn that this assumption is not true. It boggles my mind.

Here I am, living day to day with a lot of pain and exhaustion, and yet somehow my motivation to clean, organize and fix things around the house is extremely strong. I mean I can barely walk, get in/out of bed, get off of a chair without someone's help from all the pelvic pain I'm having. Yet, I'm somehow able to bear through the pain and tiredness to launder all of the sheets from our bed, launder sheets from guest bed, launder pillow cases on our sofa, organize the linen shelf, clean the dishes, reseal the grout in our shower, go grocery shopping, and put together my birthing bag in one day.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME!?! Now I'm hobbling around in MORE pain. Not to mention I did prenatal yoga this morning because I've been feeling so out of shape. I haven't exercised in a month because of all the pain I've been having and now all the sudden I have this strong urge to exercise AND clean/organize/fix things. The weird thing is I have no motivation/desire to do anything other than the things that involve my surroundings. Other tasks or things to do just stress me out and I cannot even think about doing them. But, for some reason all this "nesting" is relaxing to me and it makes me feel extremely happy! I am sooooo eager to clean the ENTIRE HOUSE and I mean scrub-the-floors-clean. I so badly want to wash all of the baby clothes but I'm holding back as much as possible because our baby shower is this weekend.

However, I need to take it down 1000 notches because seriously my body cannot handle it. I'm so exhausted from not being able to sleep at night. My lower back is killing me, my feet are killing me, I can hardly move my own legs. You should see me walking...I am SO SLOW. I waddle like a penguin. I feel like a granny!

Luckily, I have such an amazing husband who is gladly tackling all of the things on our to-do list that I cannot physically do myself (which is almost everything). I call it his honey-do list. He calls it his Slave Logbook. :) He has done two pages worth of tasks I wrote down for him involving the house and cars. He never complains and he has even picked up daily house chores like washing dishes and laundry when I am too exhausted to do it. He has taken over for me on all the favors asked of us from others in order to triage any potential stress away from me (I am normally happy to do favors for others but my growing belly/baby is hindering my ability to do them). He does all this on top of working full time and supporting us financially. I am very grateful for him and love him so so much! He is going to be a GREAT dad.

Trying to relax...

I'm finding that little things are stressing me out lately and I need to get the stress to stop!

Last weekend Evans and I went to Houston to visit family. We stayed in a poolside room (free upgrade!) at the Four Seasons and hung out with friends and family the whole weekend. It was originally going to be our babymoon, but since we ended up socializing the whole time there was not much time for us to spend on our own. For those who don't know what a babymoon is, its like a honeymoon, but for before you have your baby.

Unfortunately, the weekend was not all fun and games. I got really stressed out on that Saturday due to the whole planning nature of the trip and trying to make sure we did the things we wanted to do in addition to spending time with our peeps. While we were at the museum I kept getting waves of nausea and dizziness. Evans put two and two together and thought I may be having painless Braxton Hicks contractions. We realized that this was in fact the case. I had to hop from one bench to another while Evans looked at the exhibits. The contractions were coming too close together. We decided to leave and on our way back to the hotel the contractions were getting painful. I ended up having mildly painful contractions for about 5 hours. They were pretty frequent too, to the point where I should have gone to the hospital but I REALLY did not want to be in a hospital in Houston. I rested at our hotel, drank lots of water, and ate some food and eventually they went away.

I called the birthing center the following Monday and explained what happened. They believe the contractions were stress related and told me to practice relaxation techniques and eat lots of protein (since I was still feeling tired and lightheaded when I stood for more than 10 minutes). I followed their advice and did my best to relax this week. I haven't had anymore contractions since Sunday and I'm not feeling lightheaded anymore, just very tired when I walk around or do anything physical. I think I can attribute that to just being pregnant, but I feel like an old lady!! I walk like one too!!

Today we had our prenatal appointment and birthing class and yet another scary thing. My blood pressure was pretty high at 140/86. I was instructed to purchase a home blood pressure monitor, along with some relaxing herbs, magnesium and calcium supplements. I now need to monitor my blood pressure every day for the next three days and report to them what it is. It was lower when I got home, so I think I just react very strongly to any sort of stressful situation, no matter how mild it is. So now my goal is to try to relax as much as possible. Stress has caused me to have high blood pressure and contractions. The baby needs to cook at least a month longer, so I have to take relaxation very seriously. I'm going to practice meditating, doing yoga, and anything else I can think of to release any stress. I can't do anything that isn't considered relaxing, and I'm going to stay at home as much as possible since that's the place I'm most comfy.

On the plus side, baby is doing really great as far as they can tell and everytime they measure me I'm told he is measuring really good, even a bit ahead of where he is supposed to be. Good baby! I have also had two friends who had babies in the last week and I'm very excited for them! It's made me realize my time is coming soon!!