Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope everyone had a great Christmas, we sure did! We really enjoyed the opportunity to see our family and celebrate Christs birth. I have also really enjoyed Jake being on break from both school and work, we've had a lot of opportunities to just relax and spend some quality time together. I am now 31 weeks pregnant, 8 months. I can't believe how quickly time flies! Miss Ilyana is now about 16 inches and 3.3 pounds. I also noticed the other day that she is starting to 'drop', which has helped a little with breathing issues (but has made the bathroom my new best friend). I have been experiencing braxton hicks contractions more often and some of them have started to become a bit painful, but it's all good practice for her birthday. Although not nearly as bad as the first trimester, I have been struggling with some nausea again. I bought some 'sea bands' the other day to try out (they work through acupressure to relieve nausea), and they seem to do a pretty decent job. I mentioned last week that I haven't been sleeping well and was going to try out lavender oil. I am happy to report that the lavender seems to work! I have been sleeping so much better!
Don't forget to cast your vote on when Miss Ilyana will arrive!

Information about Ilyana:
EDD: February 27th (63 days)

How mom's feeling: Pretty good, just slightly uncomfortable. Excited for the faithwalkers conference this week!

How dad's feeling: Pumped for faithwalkers this week!

Ilyana's arrival date contest!

I'm excited to announce that we're going to be having a little contest to guess when Miss Ilyana is going to arrive! Here are the rules:
1. Everyone will get 1 guess.
2. Each guess must contain her birth date, time, weight, and height.
3. Guessing will stay open until January 31st at midnight (unless she comes before that of course!).
4. To guess you must comment on this blog post.
5. After she is born, whoever has the closest guess will get first dibs on holding her for 1 month!

May the odds be ever in your favor!

Note: a few people have had issues commenting while using their phone. Jake suggested clicking 'preview' before clicking 'publish'. I hope this solves it!

Fantastic Friday

Today has been a fantastic Friday (who doesn't love a good alliteration) to mark the beginning of 30 weeks! We are 3/4 of the way done with pregnancy. Miss Ilyana is about 3 pounds and 15.7 inches. The doctor said she is measuring perfectly and we should have a small (in a normal way) baby. I've noticed over the past week or so that her movements have been a lot less jerky and more of a fluid motion. She also seems to be claiming her space, the other night I was resting my arm on my stomach and she kept kicking it away like "hey! I wanted my foot there! Move it!". She does the same thing when I lay on the side she was laying on or when Jake rests his arm on my stomach. She definitely makes us laugh!
This morning we received some spectacular news! First, Jake received his official job offer from Rockwell and it was even better than we had hoped for! He has since accepted that offer and will officially be a full time Rockwell employee as soon as he graduates in May! The other fantastic news we received this morning came in the form of a picture:

They've broke ground on our house! Woohoo! We're so excited about everything finally being set into motion. Today has been a great day and God is SO good!

Also, the contest I mentioned last week will be up within the hour, stay tuned!

Information about Ilyana:

EDD: Feb. 27th (70 days)

How mom's feeling: still not sleeping well, however I'm going to be trying some lavender essential oils tonight, I'll update how that goes next week!

How dad's feeling: Ecstatic about everything that is going on!

Our little butternut squash

Let me apologize for the late post this week! I was intending to write it this weekend but never got around to it. I'm sorry! We are now finishing up week 29 of pregnancy! I wanted to give a big thank you to my mom and grandma who hosted my baby shower 2 Sundays ago! It was for my family and my parents friends (I'm excited to be having another one with Jakes family and our church family in January!), and it was a lot of fun! They did a great job hosting, there were some very funny games, and lots of very delicious food! Thank you to everyone who came to celebrate our sweet little girl and thank you for all the gifts that we received! I'll put a couple of pictures from the event at the end of this post. Little miss Ilyana is now 15.3 inches and weighs about 2.5 pounds, about the size of a butternut squash. She's been very active this week, I've even seen a few limbs sticking out of my stomach (It kind of freaks me out a little)! She also has been getting the hiccups a lot, which is really cute. It's so much fun to watch my stomach moving around with her! I've been trying to get a video but she seems to be camera shy. This past week, I've been fighting off a bit of a cold as well as feeling sick. I'm not sure if it's a stomach bug, hormones, or a friend mentioned it could be acid reflex (which seems most likely since I feel the most sick after eating a lot). Whatever it is, I'm really thankful that I'm able to stay home and just take it easy. I've also been struggling to sleep lately. It's difficult to find a position that is comfortable and allows me to breathe. But I'm not here to complain, I really am so thankful that we are pregnant.

Quick side-bar, there will be a small contest on the blog sometime in the coming week, so keep your eyes peeled for that! :D

Information about Ilyana:

EDD: Feb. 27th (73 days)

How mom's feeling: Feeling the effects of the 3rd trimester. Falling more in love with this little girl every day :)

How dad's feeling: Incredibly excited to be done with finals so he can start focusing more on the baby.

  

Needles and nesting

28 weeks was brought in by my least favorite OB appointment so far. As much as I dislike doctors, I generally look forward to my appointments. I love my doctor, Dr. Driscoll, and as a task oriented person, each appointment is like one checkpoint closer to our due date. This appointment, however, included the glucose test (testing for gestational diabetes) and receiving the TDaP (tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis) vaccine. The glucose test consists of drinking an extremely sugary drink, fasting for an hour, and then getting your blood taken. I had heard terrible reviews of this drink so I was really dreading it, however I didn't think it was as horrible as others have said. Don't get me wrong, it definitely wasn't pleasant, and it made me feel a bit nauseous, but it was manageable. I chose the lemon-lime flavor (the other option was orange) and thought it tasted similar to yellow Gatorade, except ten times more sugary. After finishing the drink, I then had my usual appointment. I knew there were going to be a lot of needles at this appointment so I had Jake come with me, I'm so glad I did because he was finally able to hear Ilyana's heartbeat! Everything is looking and measuring perfectly. At the end of my appointment came the shot, I really hate shots, but Jake held my hand and I got through it (it's definitely sore today though!). Next we went back down to the lab and they took my blood. With my blood work they were testing for two things, gestational diabetes (which was negative, praise God!) and anemia, which is really common at this point in pregnancy. I was slightly anemic (normal iron levels are between 12-15 and mine were at 11.2), but since I was so close to normal I won't need to do anything extra besides trying to incorporate more foods in my diet that are high in iron. I now get to start having appointments every 2 weeks until I'm 36 weeks, at which point I'll have appointments every week until Ilyana is born. We're getting closer!
This week I've started nesting. Our house has been getting super clean, organized, and ready for baby. But hopefully she'll wait just a couple more months before making her grand entrance! I called Jake at work the other day to ask him a question and he apparently was concerned that I was calling to tell him I was in labor! Don't worry Jake, she's still in there kicking away!

Information about Ilyana:
EDD: Feb. 27 (83 days)

How mom's doing: Good! I only had to get up to pee twice last night! Haha!

How dad's doing: Ready for this semester of school to be done.