Showers #3 and #4

On February 11th, I was blessed with two more lovely showers - one from my fabulous students and their parents, and the other one was a surprise shower given by my amazing co-workers!

Baby Girl Yasay is definitely showered with lots of love!



Opening gifts from my awesome second-graders.



Enjoying the tasty treats!



I sure am going to miss these guys...

Pregnancy Pics

Even though I feel like a giant cow these days (the fact that my doctor and Justin practically banned me from doing a 5K earlier this month didn't help matters!), I'll suck it up and show you some of the latest pregnancy pictures:



35 Weeks Pregnant at Bonefish Grill for Valentine's Day. (We never celebrated this holiday before, but we figured it was our last shot to do so before kids got in the way!)




Same night - 35 Weeks, but a profile shot taken in the bathroom.




36 Weeks taken in our new nursery. More pictures of the nursery to come soon!

Even though I'm still within the "normal" weight gain range, boy, am I ready to lose this baby weight!!!

Gotta Start Planning Ahead....

After I posted the previous entry, I did want to add that there is one way that I'm learning that my life will change: I'm going to have to learn to do more advanced planning when it comes to doing things that I normally would do on a whim.

For instance, a few weeks ago I decided that it would be super fun if Justin and I went to see Cirque du Soleil in June for our 2-year anniversary. It only dawned on me 'til after I had started searching for tickets that, wait a minute, Baby Yasay will be here, and she'll need a baby-sitter. (Luckily when I called my mother a few moments later, she was tickled at the thought of taking care of her granddaughter.)

Then today I saw a Groupon for decently priced Preds club-level tickets and was about to pounce on them until it dawned on me that the date of the game was for a week after Baby arrives. When I called Justin to see if he thought going to the game was do-able, he laughed so loud that I almost hung up on him.

It'll be tough adjusting to the fact that Date Nights are going to have to be slightly more spaced out and planned in advance, but I also know that the sacrifice is worth it. It'll just be one of those adjustments that I'm going to have to learn to make....

And, honestly, it is nice to know that Lolo and Lola are close by and are willing to babysit when needed! That will definitely help out...a lot!

It can't be THAT difficult....right?

Yesterday, Justin and I went to yet another class at Baptist to further ensure that we're doing all we can to be adequately prepared for Baby Girl Y.

One of the things that our instructor told us was that for the first six weeks post-delivery, the mother only has two jobs: to recover and to feed the baby. She made us repeat that mantra outloud to her several times. Apparently, the husband/support person is supposed to take care of the rest, and a dirty house is totally acceptable, and blah, blah, blah....

Okay, so maybe this is me just being a totally naive first-time mom, but really? For six weeks that's all I get to do? I just can't imagine that the recovery and feeding process is all that difficult and time-consuming. I also can't see myself letting go and putting Justin in charge of keeping the house in order....yikes.

Another bit of advice that has been given to me by several people is this: sleep when the baby is sleeping. This doesn't make much sense to me at all, either. Again, when in the world will anything get accomplished since whenever the baby will be awake, I'm obviously going to have to attend to her?

I dunno. I'm sure all of you who've had young children are all laughing at my gullible and innocent view of how little my life will change in two (yes, TWO!!!) weeks...but honestly, it can't be THAT difficult....right?

4 1/2 Weeks Left...

In 4 1/2 weeks, Baby Girl Y will make her appearance into the world. While being "ready" is very questionable, I am going to be quite excited to be able to walk normally, tie my shoes, and put on normal clothes again.

While I've had a relatively easy pregnancy, things are starting to take its toll now that the due date is rapidly approaching. I went on a four mile walk with my parents last weekend, and my dad (a 65 year old smoker) ended up passing me by quite a distance. Not to mention the fact that it took my lower back four days to recover from the excursion. This, especially, has been rough on me since I love to run and stay active (it's still hard for me to believe that I ran two half-marathons last year when I can barely walk these days!). I'm kind of in denial about it, though, seeing as I signed up to walk (waddle?) in a 5K this weekend....

I can't wait to look like this again:

Taken at 6 weeks pregnant.

Instead of this:

Taken at 32 1/2 weeks pregnant.

Our Second Shower!

A few weeks ago, Baby Girl Yasay had her second shower thrown by our family friends. Whoa - was it a festive occasion! There was a ginormous amount of food, tons of fun games, and Baby Girl Y was most definitely showered with lots of adorable baby goodies.

Here are some pictures to enjoy:

Blessing the food with the grandparents-to-be.

Just a sampling of the guests.

Picture with the proud lola-to-be.

A guessing game - exactly how many squares of toilet paper will it take to cover my Baby Belly?

Make a diaper out of toilet paper game.

Draw Baby Yasay without looking!

Taken after the guys had a drinking-out-of-the-bottle contest.

Justin wore the wrong shirt for this game....

Having a good 'ole time by everyone :-)

Newborn Care Classes

Justin and I admit to know very little about children under the age of 5, much less newborns freshly exposed to the world.

Being a person who likes to know exactly what I'm getting myself into, I have been doing nonstop research about pregnancy and babies since July. I've gotten tons of literature on the topics, subscribed to several magazines, and have done countless browsing on legit (and somewhat questionably legit) websites on the 'net.

That's just a sampling of the books I've been reading.

Anyway, in addition to all of this research, Justin and I attended two classes at two different local hospitals to fully ensure that we'll be prepared come March 9th. We attended a "What to Expect from a C-Section Delivery/Bringing Home the Baby" class at Baptist (which included a tour of the hospital where we'll be delivering!) as well as a Newborn Care class at Vanderbilt.

Let me tell you, I think we both left the classes- not feeling better about caring for our own newborn, but feeling even more overwhelmed by our lack of knowledge. I think Justin was especially worried when I tried to put a shirt on a baby doll and did it upside-down and backwards. Poor Justin is also pretty terrified of giving the baby a bath and made sure that we read the poster that was hanging on the wall several times so that it'll be ingrained in his memory. He's also a little more nervous than me (and I'm pretty terrified) about this whole breastfeeding thing - how it works exactly and what his job is supposed to be during the whole thing. Oh, and when he tried on the empathy belly he really was sympathetic to the cause!

Yikes. What in the world did we sign up for come March 9th?!?

C-Section Officially Scheduled!

We got a call from the doctor's office that our scheduled c-section is officially on the books for Wednesday, March 9th at 7:30 am!

The Good Doc is confident that we made the right decision based on my family history, the fact that my pelvis is also small, and my baby is not. She's also pretty confident that Baby Girl Yasay won't come any earlier than March 9th, so we're good to go!

I have to be at the hospital at 5:30am that day to get ready for the surgery. The Good Doc said that visitors (aside from Justin) won't be able to see me or the baby until around 11am or noon, but when I told my mom that she didn't have to come until then she informed me that she and my dad would be there waiting anyway. I suppose the grandparents are just as excited (or arguably more so) as we are about everything!

Being a planner, it's nice to know that everything's all set. I'm especially thrilled with Baby Girl's birthday: March 9, 2011 or 3-9-11...what a perfect tribute to Justin's mom who passed away over four years ago on 9-11.

All right, March 9th...we're waiting in eager anticipation for you!