prenatal classes

On Wednesday night Ross and I signed up for 2 prenatal classes and a tour of the birthing center at Methodist hospital where I will give birth to our little man.  We talked with my OB at our last visit and asked when the best time was to take prenatal classes.  She suggested we take them in the low 30 weeks so that we don’t go to early that we forget everything we learned and we don’t go too late that Baby J is already here.  So, we scheduled our classes for mid-April.  The first class we will be taking is an all day labor and delivery class, preparing us for what is ahead.  We know that not all deliveries are the same, so even though we are taking this class we are still ready for whatever comes our way.  This class will hopefully lend us a couple of pointers and at least help us to feel somewhat prepared as we go into this world of the unknown.

The other class we signed up for is a Baby Care Basics class, which will teach us the basics of caring for our new-born infant.  We figured this could be a beneficial class for us as first time parents and will hopefully answer some questions we might have about caring for our new-born.  This is just a 2 hour evening class so really will just be an overview.  But we are still looking forward to hopefully learning a few important tips on caring for Baby J when he arrives.  We know a lot of things will just need to be learned as we go, but some preparation can’t hurt!

Lastly we scheduled a tour of the birthing center at Methodist where we will have Baby J.  We had heard of other friends who had received a tour of the hospital where they would be giving birth to give them an idea of where they would need to go when they arrive, where to park, what the rooms look like, etc.  We scheduled this for the first weekend in May- so Baby J better not come too early (I wouldn’t be opposed to him coming a couple of days early) so we can get this tour in before he arrives!

After we scheduled all of our appointments, we went to another website that I have been referring to a lot during my pregnancy, www.babycenter.com.  Here Ross noticed an animated video of a labor and delivery and thought it would be interesting to watch.  I had been avoiding these videos purposely, but thought it I could handle watching it with someone by my side.  So we clicked play and watched the 3 minute animated video of a baby being born.  When the video was done, my encouraging and ever optimistic husband looked over at me and said “well, that didn’t look so bad”.  Bless his heart, I turned and looked at him and said “WHAT?!?!  Did you not just watch the same video as me?!?!?!”  We both started to laugh and Ross agreed I was right- it did look a tad painful!  But I know, without a doubt, regardless of how our labor plays out, Ross is going to be an amazing partner and keep me completely grounded when I start freaking out!  If his encouragement and optimism get me through this, I will take it…along with a ton of prayers!

We have really been blessed on this journey so far.  We pray that God continues to watch over our son as he grows and matures.

A little bit of prayer needed for our friends… 

If you would, please take a moment to send up a prayer for our friends Tony and Dalia.  Their daughter Talita Skye was born on February 16th, 3 months and 8 days early.  She is doing well and God has His hand over her and she continues to make good progress.  You can visit their CaringBridge site here: www.caringbridge.org/visit/baurichter.  Please keep them in your prayers.  Talita is a fighter, I can tell!

weekend at the cabin

This last weekend Ross and I spent some quality time with my parents at their cabin in northern WI.  They bought their cabin several years ago and between my dads handy work and the help of a builder they have put on an addition and made several remodel updates.  Their cabin is one of the coziest places I know and we always enjoy our time away from the “big city” up in the north woods of Wisconsin.  There wasn’t much to do outside on a cold winter weekend, but we all enjoyed a lot of relaxation and time of visiting.  Ross and I always try to make it up there at least once during the winter because the beauty of the north woods covered in a blanket of white snow is like a glimpse of heaven.

While we were there, my mom and I were able to make a trip over to visit my grandma and grandpa- they live only an hour from my parents’ cabin.  We visited with my grandma first and I bonded with her adorable little dog Max (he is a chihuahua and dachshund mix).  We then headed over to the nursing home to visit my grandpa.  He was in great spirits and we enjoyed our quick visit with him.

We also enjoyed going out to eat at a wonderful Italian restaurant, playing games, enjoying a treat at the coffee shop, a movie and several fires in the fire-place.  There is nothing like wrapping up in a warm blanket and enjoying the warmth of a wood burning fire.  We also enjoyed some time reading and talking about Baby J and his upcoming arrival.  I think my parents are just a little excited to meet him!  We had a wonderful weekend with my parents- it is always hard to leave.  But we always know we have a north woods escape with our names on it!

My mom snapped a picture of me on Saturday and I happened to be 24 weeks, so I thought I would share!

 

23 weeks – 5 months!

I am 23 weeks!  5 months!  I can’t believe it!  These last 5 months have gone by so quickly I can’t imagine how quickly the last 4 months will go.  Ross and I are so excited to meet our little boy, but also starting to feel the nerves of becoming new parents!  How do we do this?  When do we feed him?  When do we give him a bath?  Do we just let him cry?  So many things to learn!  I think the best advice we have been given by two different friends that are parents, is to take the advice you want to take and ignore the advice you want to ignore!  I think that is brilliant.  Everyone has great advice to share and we certainly will take some and use it, but in other situations, we know we will just have to learn on our own.

I have felt like I have been sleeping better these last couple weeks, but still certainly have nights where I don’t feel like I slept a single bit.  The blessing though is that I still feel like I have energy during the day, so I don’t feel worn out and can still function quite well during my day.  I have started feeling him move much more consistently, but Ross has still not been able to feel him move.  Every time he starts moving around at home I have Ross put is hand on my belly, but then he seems to stop moving- what a little stinker!  I am hoping soon Ross will get to feel him moving around- I think it will make it much more real for him.  I have also started getting a lot of cramping in my calves during the night.  I read in several books that it is common to start getting leg cramps.  It isn’t every night, but I certainly have had several nights where I wake up from a dead sleep holding my calf- not fun!

We have another doctors appointment this week, which just consists of weighing in, listening to the heart beat and making sure everything is going as it should.  My last appointment four weeks ago I had been up about 5 or 6 pounds and was told to keep gaining.  It’s not every day your doctor tells you to gain weight!  So I have been working on it.  We will see where I am at on Thursday.  We also will be getting our nursery set in the next couple of weeks and I look forward to getting that set up and getting his room all put together.  I will feel much more organized after that is done!

We are looking into a few classes to take before Baby J arrives and hope to have those scheduled soon.  I think we will take one class on labor and delivery and one class on basic parenting skills for your new-born.  We are hopeful they will be helpful and just share a little more insight into this whole parenthood thing!

It feels good to be another week along and we are more anxious with each day to meet our little boy.

maternity pants

I just have to put this out there…maternity pants are the best invention ever known to man kind.  God knew what He was doing the day He gave someone the idea to create maternity pants for the ever-growing mother and baby!

At the beginning of my pregnancy I felt like I was growing pretty slowly and was fairly small.  I thought that due to this I might be able to get away without maternity pants and just use my belly band for the whole pregnancy.  For those of you not familiar with it, a belly band as my husband explains it is like a “tube top for your pants”.  And really, it sort of is.  With a belly band, the idea is you can where your regular, non-maternity pants during your pregnancy and unbutton and unzip them as you go, but the belly band will keep them from falling down.  I thought I had it made, I was going to where this belly band the entire pregnancy and not have to buy maternity pants…boy was I wrong!  By week 15 I already was wearing some of my work pants completely unzipped and the “tube top for my pants” wasn’t exactly the most comfortable and didn’t always make me feel like my pants were going to stay in place the entire day.

So, this weekend I gave in and bought my first few pairs of maternity pants and oh my goodness I didn’t know what I had been missing!  I no longer looked at it as giving in, but realized I didn’t know what I had been missing out on all this time!  Why hadn’t I bought maternity pants sooner…even when I wasn’t pregnant for those days I ate too much!  My eyes have been opened to a whole new world of comfort and style.  No longer do I have to worry about if my pants are going to button or zip- they don’t even have buttons or zippers on them!  No longer do I have to wonder if my pants will fall down in the middle of the day, they are snug as a bug in a rug around my ever-expanding belly.  Maternity pants are down right heavenly.  

I will be forever grateful to the man or woman who decided one day to make pants for pregnant women.  You forever are on my list of people I greatly admire.

20 weeks

I am 20 weeks today!  That means that I am half way there, and if Baby J decided to bless us with his presence a couple weeks early I could be over half way there- that is crazy!  I also thought that at 20 weeks that would mean I was 5 months, but according to all the books I have been reading 23 weeks is actually the 5 month marker.  So I have a couple more weeks to go.

As I write this I can feel him moving ever so slightly!  Just this week I started feeling movements that were more than just flutters.  I told Ross, I picture Baby J doing flips in there and every time he comes around he brushes against my tummy.  It is not consistent movement yet and I haven’t noticed any pattern of what makes him move.  Right now, I just think whenever he feels like moving, he does.

Lately, I have started having my first major food craving, oranges.  But not the big oranges, I actually am craving the small cuties that you can buy in bulk.  They are absolutely delicious!  I bring about 4 to work every day and they easily don’t last past lunch.  I figure I need the vitamin C, so they are probably good for me.  Ross teased me when we bought them because usually I will take a liking to a certain food and it lasts all of 4 minutes and then I don’t want it any more.  He assumed it would be the same with the cuties, but it has been a whole week and I am still loving them!  I also have started sleeping with a body pillow.  I haven’t been sleeping well since about week 12 and I typically am an amazing sleeper!  A girlfriend of mine gave me her body pillow she used during her pregnancy and I tried it a couple of weeks back and wasn’t sure if I liked it.  So I took a couple of weeks off from it and now it is back in bed with us.  The other night I slept soundly all the way until 4am- that is a huge accomplishment and I think I owe it all to my body pillow.  Unfortunately, it does take up quite a bit of space in our bed, but Ross has been very gracious and doesn’t complain too much about how little room he has to sleep now!

I have decided that my dreams of wearing my normal jeans all the way through this pregnancy may not be a realistic dream and I may venture out in the next couple of weeks to check out more maternity clothes.  I have had several of my friends suggest different stores that sell maternity clothes at decent prices (most times I have found it is hard to find maternity clothes on sale!).  We will see what I find in my upcoming adventures.

I have had several of my female friends encourage me to really enjoy my pregnancy.  To enjoy all the things that come along with growing this tiny human being.  So, I am taking that to heart and really focusing on being pregnant and enjoying the entire adventure as the Lord prepares my little son for this world.

drum roll please!

Today was the big day!  Ross and I woke up bright an early this morning to head to our doctor’s appointment to find out if we were having a little boy or a little girl.  We got there about 20 minutes early because we were so excited, but it was nice and quiet at the clinic so we got to chat and dream about what we thought our baby was going to be.  Ross was still thinking girl and I was still thinking boy.  We finally decided on our bet- whoever guessed right got to pick the next movie we watch.  A pretty simple bet, but a big deal in our relationship!

So, who was right?!  Well, I will tell you, the next movie we are going to watch is a chick flick…have you figured it out yet??  Yes, I was right!  We are having a baby BOY!!!!  We are so excited and can’t wait to meet our little boy.  In looking at the ultrasound, our ultrasound tech said she was 99.9% sure that we were having a boy and I must say, it was pretty unmistakable!  After we told her we wanted to know the gender, we found that out right away.  She then proceeded to show us tons of pictures of our baby boy.  His head, face, arms, hands, feet, back, spine, stomach, brain, kidney’s, heart- it was amazing!  And he was moving around like crazy!!  I still can’t really feel his movements, just little flutters every once in a while, so I couldn’t believe how much he was moving around.  At one point, our tech was trying to capture pictures of his heart and he kept sticking his face into the picture- he just wanted us to see his beautiful little face!  Our tech said I was right on schedule at 19 weeks and 2 days, so the due date is still June 2nd!

Knowing the gender makes things even more real than they were before.  We can’t wait to meet our new little baby boy.  We aren’t sharing a name yet, so in the meantime we will continue to refer to him as Baby J, but now I can picture a little boy every time I say that name!

What a blessing.

boy or girl?

I have had four dreams so far about the gender of our baby.  Two of the dreams Baby J has been a boy and two of the dreams Baby J has been a girl…not very helpful.  But next Monday, Ross and I are hopeful that Baby J will reveal his or her “goods” so we will know if we are having a little boy or a little girl!

People have asked me if I have a gut feeling as to what we are having.  From the very beginning I have said boy.  I don’t really know why, I just have this feeling.  At first I think it was because we had decided on a boy name and couldn’t come up with anything for a girl.  But now we have a great girl name picked out too and I am still leaning towards boy.  I don’t know if Ross has any strong feelings either way, but he said tonight he is willing to say girl just so we can bet something on it.  We still haven’t decided what we are betting.

We are so excited to finally know (and are praying that Baby J cooperates!).  I told Ross that I will love having a conversation about our little one without having to refer to him/her as “it”.  We don’t plan to reveal the name until he/she is here, so for now he/she will remain Baby J, but I am looking for to no longer having to write he/she when I am talking about him/her!  So here’s to hoping Baby J cooperates and by late Monday morning we should know!

Anyone want to share their guesses or intuition?  Boy or girl?

merry christmas

The Jahnke Family

Okay, I realize it is the first of the year and I am writing about Christmas- but I am just getting the chance now to sit down and write about our Christmas activities!  I highlighted in my last post our time spent with Ross’ family the weekend before Christmas.  We are so blessed to be able to celebrate Christmas with both of our families and enjoyed our time with Ross’ siblings and parents.  Next Christmas at our celebration with the Jahnke’s we will have added a babe to the mix and Ross’ sister Kate will be a newlywed!  I am so excited for what this next year will bring our way.

The weekend of Christmas we were able to spend about 5 days with my family in Wisconsin.  Even though we didn’t have the whitest of Christmas’, we were grateful for the dry roads and snowless sky as we drove the 4 1/2 hours to my parents house.  Wisconsin did get a small dusting of snow on Friday and Saturday so we in fact did have a white Christmas (with a few blades of grass poking through).  We were also able to spend time with my brother, sister-in-law and adorable niece Grace!  Grace just turned one on December 7th and she brings so much joy and entertainment to our family!  She was up and walking around holding furniture and fingers, any only a couple days after we were back in MN she started walking on her own!!  We spent time relaxing with my parents and watching TONS of Christmas movies.  Unfortunately Ross got a bad sinus/chest cold and was feeling pretty miserable most of the weekend.  He was so kind and tried to keep his germs to himself, and I think he was pretty successful!

The Radix Family

On Christmas day my grandma and aunt and uncle drove down to our house for further celebration.  We had an enjoyable time and Grace had a great time with a new audience showing off all her faces!  I am telling you, Baby J is going to have some major competition!  We enjoyed a couple more days with my parents after Christmas and drove back to MN on Tuesday, again with dry roads and snowless skies.  We had a very enjoyable Christmas with my family as well.

As we welcome in 2012 I think about how blessed we are to have the families we do and I look forward to how we will grow and change in the coming year.  My prayer is that we continue to trust in God’s wisdom and guidance through this new year and look forward to things He is bringing to us.  Merry Christmas everyone and Happy New Year!

16 weeks

As of Saturday I am 16 weeks!  I have now finished my fourth month and will start the journey into month 5.  The second trimester has definitely proven to be much more enjoyable (and bearable) than the first trimester.  I no longer have any nausea and the food aversion that I had been experience has lessened.  I still have quite a bit of food aversion where nothing sounds good, but yet I feel so hungry.  I have compared it best to feeling like a teenage boy going through a growth spurt.  I am hungry ALL.THE.TIME.  So, being hungry all the time and no food sounding good sometimes causes a problem.  I have been sticking to fruit and protein bars and the occasional chicken mcnuggets and fries (and a chocolate shake) from McDonald’s!

According to our pregnancy books and my weekly pregnancy e-mail update, Baby J is approximately 4 1/2 inches long and weighs 3 1/2 ounces.  Such a wee little babe right now.  The books also say it is between weeks 16 and 18 that I will start to feel Baby J moving around.  I have told Ross that I am almost positive I have felt a few flutters in the last week right around my belly button area, so I am going to believe that I am feeling our little one moving around.  The other option is that it is just gas….

Ross has been an amazing support and I never expected anything less.  I think my absolute favorite phrase to hear from him when we are talking to people is “I knew I wanted to be a dad, but I never knew how much I wanted to be until we found out we were pregnant”.  If that doesn’t make you feel good, I don’t know what does.  He endlessly suggests food ideas when I am starving but nothing sounds good.  He puts up with my weird emotions and rubs my back when I need it.  I couldn’t make it through this without him and I couldn’t imagine a better partner to walk through this next phase of life!

Baby J got to celebrate his/her first Christmas this weekend with Ross’ family.  His brother and his brother’s girlfriend flew in from Seattle this weekend and along with Ross’ sister and her fiance and Ross’ parents we celebrated Christmas with the Jahnke family.  We got a couple of baby items, but I am hesitant to mention them as they were a putrid purple and gold color and had a viking logo on them!!  Yes, Baby J is now set with Viking pacifiers, booties and a bib.  I believe our child is going to be very confused as his/her two family’s adorn him/her with purple and gold and green and gold!  We enjoyed a wonderful weekend with the Jahnke’s and traveled down to Austin, MN on Sunday to celebrate with the extended family.  It is hard to believe at this time next year Baby J will be here with us celebrating Christmas in person!!

I posted a picture at the top of my growing baby belly.  So far it isn’t super noticeable, but I have also read in the next few weeks Baby J will go through a growth spurt, so my belly could go through some extensive growing these next couple of weeks!  I’ll keep you posted as we grow!

heartbeat

I never thought the sound of a heartbeat could be so amazing, but today Ross and I heard our baby’s heartbeat for the first time!  I am pretty sure my own heart stopped when I heard it beating.  It was beating nice and strong and nice and fast.  The doctor used this tiny little tool that looked like a microphone to pick up the sound of the beating heart.  It took her a couple seconds to find the heart which makes me think Baby J was moving around just a little!  I still can’t feel any movement, but I like to think he/she is moving around.

Up until this point I have been telling Ross I don’t really “feel” pregnant.  Besides morning sickness, being extremely exhausted and feeling a little chubby around the mid-section it doesn’t always seem like I am pregnant, but after today, hearing that little heart beating inside me things felt real!

We also had an opportunity to just talk with our doctor and ask her questions.  She is so great and very willing to listen and answer our questions in detail.  We feel very blessed with her as our doctor.  Our hope is that she is on call the day we go into labor!  It was a great appointment all around and added another level of excitement.

I’ll post belly pictures soon!  Nothing too exciting to look at quite yet .