Top 10

Dear Elliot,
Instead of the usual boring weekly update, I thought I'd write up a quick list--my top 10 favorite things of this last week. So here we go!

1. The Snoogle. When my total lack of sleeping at night finally got to the point where I just couldn't function last weekend, I decided I was just going to have to suck it up and spend the ridiculous $64.95 on this pregnancy pillow everyone was raving about. But before heading to Babies R Us, I decided to check Craigslist, and sure enough, someone was selling the pillow, used once and still in the package, for $30! This may be the best 30 bucks I have ever spent in my life. Waking up feeling sort of awake and dare I say... refreshed?? What a strange and wonderful concept!

Okay so it takes up half the bed--totally worth it!

Doubles as the perfect dog bed :)

They have no clue this thing wasn't purchased especially for them

2. Queen Helene Cocoa Butter Creme. Oddly enough, I have my dad and his butt to thank for this amazing discovery (this might be one of the weirder sentences I've ever typed!). My Dad is super into biking, and he was told that this lotion is the best stuff out there for soothing the chafed butt you get from riding around on a hard bike seat all day. Anyway, turns out it also works amazingly well for soothing stretched out and itchy pregnant bellies. It's a mixture of cocoa butter and pure lanolin (the stuff nipple cream is made out of), and it just feels so, so nice on your skin. And the best part? A big tub of it only costs like $4! I did have to break my vows and go to Walmart to buy it (they didn't have it at Target), but it was totally worth it. It seems like anytime they can slap the word 'pregnancy' onto a product, it all of a sudden costs like six times as much, but I have used the 'pregnancy' and 'stretch mark creams' and they don't compare to the Queen! 

3. Getting organized. Dad and I spent a good chunk of this weekend organizing our living room and basement. My big project (because I could work on it basically sitting down!) was to figure out what to do with all our DVDs. We have a lot of movies, and somehow, they have managed to creep into every nook and cranny of our house. Seriously, we had DVD cases (and discs with no cases) coming out of our ears! So I gathered them all together and turned this big, messy pile...

...into this super compact little cubby:

We got rid of all the cases (some tossed, some put down in the basement on storage shelves), organized them by genre, and completely filled up this 362-disc case. The movies we never watch, we packed up and put in storage, to either sell (if we ever have a garage sale), or donate eventually.

Dad also organized his ever-growing record collection that was all over the floor, and I am super happy with how much less cluttered the entertainment area looks in general:

We still want to get rid of that tall bookshelf and do something different with the books, but at least its clean for now :)

4. Baths (not pictured). This one is pretty self-explanatory, but I've gotten into the habit of taking a nice warm bubble bath everyday (sometimes twice a day!), and it has been doing wonders for my achey body. I know my days of having this luxury are numbered, so I am soaking it up (yep, pun intended) while I still can!

5. Hard-boiled eggs. In my Hypnobabies classes, we've been talking a lot about nutrition, and specifically the importance of protein during pregnancy; we even had to track our protein intake in a daily nutrition log for awhile. Anyway, one suggestion for getting more protein was to eat more eggs, but during pregnancy, I can't stand them! Then I remembered how much I love hard-boiled eggs around Easter time, and decided to give that a try. YUM! I've been eating two of them every morning with breakfast. So good for you, and so cheap!

6. Finding a Doula (not pictured). I met with the most amazing Doula last week (for almost three hours!), and I am so, so excited that she will be supporting me (and Dad) during your birth. She lost a son in the second trimester herself, and her passion is working with women who have had past pregnancy losses and other traumatic experiences. We just clicked really well. I am really set on wanting a natural birth, and I think having this type of support will make it more likely to happen. For so long your birth has seemed like such a distant, almost abstract thing. It feels both really, really good to begin thinking and talking about it more. This is really going to happen!

7. Bras that fit. I have been shoving my poor girls into bras that are way too small for quite some time, and I figured I should probably start stocking up on some nursing bras since I will need those once you get here anyway. So Dad and I went to the Mall of America, where they have this huge new maternity store called Destination Maternity. From what I can tell, its like a mix of Motherhood Maternity, Pea in a Pod, and a couple other stores, all rolled into one. They had a 'nursing event' going on, where their bras were on sale and buy three get one free. Normal stores like Target or Kohls don't carry my size, so this seemed like my best bet. Anyway, after getting measured by a sweet young girl who had absolutely no idea what she was doing (she told me I was a 34C...yeah, I was busting out of my DD bra at that very moment!), I was able to find four comfy nursing bras that actually fit. I feel like I can finally breathe again! 

8. Your kung foo skills (not pictured, unfortunately!) In the last week or so, your movements have gotten so much more intense. Whenever I'm laying down, you like to stretch your legs and poke your feet super hard into my side. Each time you do this, you can literally see my skin just bulging out of place. It's the weirdest, coolest, most hard to explain feeling in the world. The other night you let your Dad feel it for awhile and it was one of the happiest 10 minutes of my life. He was just in awe and was like, 'holy crap! Kid's trying to escape!' 

9. Craigslist. So not only did I get the Snoogle pillow for a great deal on Craigslist, we also scored an Arms Reach Co-sleeper this weekend (in great condition for $50 instead of $150 retail!). I've always loved Craigslist (seriously, our computers, cameras, half our furniture, and even one of our dogs is from CL), but it is just the best for baby stuff. 

The Arms Reach is basically a basinet that attaches to our bed so I can feed you (and keep an eye on you!) much easier at night for the first few months

10. Things to look forward to. One of the things that has kept me sane during this pregnancy (so far) is having little milestones to look forward to every week or so. It was way too overwhelming to think as far ahead as delivery, or even the third trimester early on, so I'd just focus on making it to the next 'big thing,' whether that was my next ultrasound, the start of a new trimester, etc. Well all of a sudden, I have a lot of 'big things' to look forward to. My Cook family baby shower is this weekend, which for so long felt like something I would never make it to. Then next week, when I am 32 weeks, I start weekly NSTs (non stress tests) and BPPs (biophysical profiles) at my OBs office, along with weekly Doppler Flow Studies (to monitor cord blood flow) at the Perinatal clinic. So many times my doctor has said, once you get to 32 weeks...' and now that point is almost here. Then it's just five more weeks until I hit fullterm, and then, then it's the moment I've been waiting for all my life, really: delivery. It's all so exciting, scary, amazing, and overwhelming, all rolled into one. 

Keep on growing, baby boy. I love you, I love you, I love you.

XOXO,

Mom