Fall Decorations

This year rather than decorating for Fall in September and then putting some Halloween touches in October and Thanksgiving touches in November I just left up my fall decorations for the whole 3 months because baby.

I am about to take them all down to put up at least some of my Christmas decorations so I figured better late than never with the photos.

Nothing was new this year but I enjoyed having the decorations up because due to a cute little baby I have spent a lot of time in my living room this fall giving me plenty of time to admire them!

Fall Bucket List

While I know fall doesn't actually start for a few more weeks and the weather person may not agree it feels like fall around here.  This part weekend was the start of my maternity leave and that is making me feel all the fall vibes because this little girl is going to be a fall baby.

I am trying to keep my expectations for what I will accomplish in fall as low as I can but the one thing I know that is happening is this little miss will finally make her official debut into this world.  She is due in about 3 weeks though I know technically it could be any where from today to about 5 weeks from today.

Everything that absolutely has to be done before her arrival is done so now my do to list is just things I would like to do.  It is a mix of the really important things like get a pedicure and cleaning/organizing around my house.

I always love decorating my house for all the fall holidays and while I may not put up specific Halloween or Thanksgiving decorations I am planning to at least get out some general fall decor in the next few days.

Despite the fact that the little miss will only be about a month old and will likely not be participating in anything Halloween she has 2 costumes whose only purpose is to look cute.  It got her a Belle outfit the last time I was in Disneyland and she also has a little Olaf onesie and hat that are just too cute for words.

Everything else fall I am just trying to take it as it comes because as a first time mom I have no idea what to expect or what I will feel up to.

Life Lately

I have gone on a few trips and done a few things this summer that deserve their own full posts (don't worry those are coming) but I have also done some fun little stuff too! This is all the fun stuff that doesn't quite need its own post.

After she finished law school in May my sister moved back with my parents for a few months to study for and take The Bar. Since she is only an hour away and obviously she can't study all day every day she came up for a Brad Paisley concert in June. Obviously being pregnant I couldn't enjoy a nice cold beer so I settled for a nice cold ice cream taco instead.

At the end of June my husband and I went down to Southern California for my sister-in-laws baby shower and the hotel we stayed at has a pool. I have always been a water baby so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to swim even it it was only for about 45 minutes! I think the baby enjoyed the swim and there will be lots of swimming in her future.

My husband and I have two wedding anniversaries but we tend to celebrate the first one (in November) a little bit more than our Hawaii one but my husband know how much I like celebrating anything for any reason so while I was at breastfeeding class he went out and bought me flowers for our Hawaii anniversary.  Another reason I love him!

One day I decided I really wanted to make some our frozen berries that I picked last year into a milkshake so I went out and bought ice cream for just that purpose. It was soooo good!

I don't have a fully explainable theme for the baby's room but my plan is to put up a mix of Impressionist prints that I have collected from my travel over the years along with a few little Disney prints. One weekend I went through and got out all the possibilities so I could see which ones I wanted to use.  I didn't make all the final decisions but I did decide that as much as I love Van Gough I needed to limit the crazy I put up on her walls!

In years past I have ordered meal prep boxes fairly regularly but this year I have been pregnant all year and my sense of smell and stomach have been super sensitive so we haven't ordered many.  This zucchini and grain bowl is from one of the boxes we did order and we liked it so much I have made it more than once.

Last week my husband's office threw a little shower for us and two other couples in the office that are having babies this summer/fall.  It was our first shower and it was so fun! They gave us a few things off our registry and a gift card. They also made this adorable diaper cake! It was too cute to take apart so it is currently sitting in the baby's room but eventually I will take it apart so we can actually use the diapers (and the cute shoes) for the baby.

On a totally random way to end this random post: I saw this box of Legos at Costco the other day and I just had to take a picture of it to show my husband because the rainbow colors and because it made me so excited to get something like this for our daughter someday.  I know it like 5 years off before she is old enough to play with Legos but it is still something I am looking forward to doing with her (and any other kids we have) though I hear stepping on a Lego is very painful!

Second Half of the Second Trimester

I am solidly in my third trimester now but figured it was time to do a little recap of the second half of my second trimester.  

Right around week 20 I went in for my anatomy scan. Other than the first couple of appointments at this point I had gone to the prenatal appointments by myself but this one my husband came along.  We obviously already knew the gender but it was still so fun to get to see lots of different angles of our little girl and try to see if we could tell who she looked like. This was the first ultrasound that she actually looked like a baby!

Right after I hit 20 weeks I hopped on a plane and flew to the east coast to see one sister graduate from med school and then the other one graduate from law school.  They graduated 9 days apart in 2 different east coast states so I just stayed on the east coast rather than fly there and back twice. On the flights I just made sure I drank lots of water and got up to walk frequently but I really didn't have any problems with the flights.  More details on the whole trip in a later post!

After I got back from my trip I just kind of laid low for the next few weeks. I did lots of product research and worked on figuring out what to put on our baby registry. I was still sleeping pretty well at this point and only getting up once in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I was going to the gym 3 or 4 days a week but sometime around the end of May I stopped using the water rower and started using the strider instead. 

I had another doctor appointment at 24 weeks and again took my husband with me. He di dn't really need to be there for any reason other than I wanted him to meet my OBGYN since the appointments he had been to had all been at the IVF clinic instead of with my regular doctor. Everything was looking good and the baby and I were checked out all good. At this appointment the doctor put in the order for me to go and take my glucose test sometime before my 28 week appointment. I went that weekend to just get it over with.  It was still orange and nasty but this time it didn't make me feel horrible for the rest of the day so that was an improvement. I got the results a few days later and I passed with flying colors so no gestational diabetes for me.

Somewhere around 25 or 26 weeks my husband and I flew to New York City to attend a wedding in Brooklyn.  Due to all of our other travel commitments this summer we didn't really have time to go on a relaxing babymoon so we decided to kind of make this trip our babymoon. Again more on this trip in a separate post. We took a red-eye flight and again I made sure to get up and walk often and while I was definitely not comfortable I was okay on the flight.  The flight back was less fun because due to the heat and all the walking my feet were already kind of swollen so flying just made them even more swollen.  I wore compression socks but I don't know if they actually did any good.

Somewhere right around the end of the second trimester I started to worry about outgrowing some of my maternity clothes. Not in the belly but in the chest! I was up to either a 36G or 34H and I still had 2 or 3 months to go. I got some hand me down maternity clothes from someone at work and the main reason some of them didn't fit me was because of the chest. 

Near the end of the second trimester some nights I was still waking up once a night to go to the bathroom and others I would wake up twice. The most annoying part of that was if I woke up a second time it was always like an hour before I would have to get up anyway!

Overall I am definitely having a smooth pregnancy and I am very thankful for that!

Some 4th of July Decorations!

We have been gone for the last couple weekends so I got my 4th of July decorations up just in time for July this year.

Nothing new this year but I did put out some little red white and blue star lights that I got on sale at then end of last 4th of July season.  I didn't realize they needed batteries and I didn't have any so they are just decorative shapes instead of lights... oh well!

After the 4th of July is over there really aren't any holidays/seasons to decorate for until Fall so I am going to put up something more generic because come Fall I am not sure how high decorating for holidays is going to be on my priority list with a newborn.  This may be my last season I decorate for for a while!

Disneyland in the Second Trimester

Right as I entered my second trimester I took a long weekend trip to Disneyland. My annual pass expired in November last year but I decided to take one more trip to Disneyland to celebrate my pregnancy.  I thought this would be my last Disney trip for at least a year or two but there is actually a chance I am going again this summer. More on that later if it happens.

Even though I know I will get her this pin again the first time I take her to Disneyland after she is born I still wanted to get a pin to wear on my belly.  The pin lasted about half an hour because it was awkward when I sat down and I was just scared of it coming undone and poking me in the stomach. Cute idea that just didn't work out very well

I knew this trip was going to be a little different because I couldn't ride all the rides and had to account for some extra tiredness.  Each stage of pregnancy comes with their own special circumstances but by this point the constant nausea had gone away and I only got nauseous if I let my self get hungry so there was lots of snacking. My food aversions were much better than they were even a couple of weeks before my trip but I still was mostly wanting carbs, fruits and veggies and not too much meat.

I always love tea at the Disneyland Hotel so I booked that for one of the days I was there as a good way to take a break in the middle of the day and rest in the air conditioning. The food was delicious as always and it was a good break in my day.  

Another good break in the middle of the day is sitting in the Carthay Circle Lounge.  Normally I stop in there for a break and have a snack and a cocktail or two but obviously that later part was out for this trip. One day I tried there non-alcoholic wine soda and it was a fail.  It just tasted like grape juice and not even very good grape juice.

After the grape juice incident I learned my lesson and just asked the bar tenders to make me something yummy and non-alcoholic. I took a break there on two different days and had multiple delicious mock-tails. One was sort of like a mojito and one had grapefruit juice.  The Food and Wine Festival was going on while I was there and they had this non-alcoholic watermelon drink that was so refreshing and just fantastic.  I may have had that one more than once it was so good.

While I couldn't ride anything with the word mountain in it or basically any of the "thrill rides" there were still plenty of rides I could ride.  I love Fantasyland so I was perfectly happy taking the time to ride all of the rides there as well as multiple trips on Buzz Lightyear and Midway Mania. I also enjoyed going to the Animation Academy and seeing shows.

I was a little bit concerned about nausea and rides but actually there was only one ride that bothered me. Surprisingly it wasn't the tea cups! Totally fine on the tea cups but nauseas if I rode sideways on the Disneyland Railroad.  Some of the railway cars have passengers face sideways and some have them face forward. I quickly learned I needed to only ride on the ones that faced forward.

Even though I couldn't ride most of the "E-Ticket" rides I still decided to get MaxPass to take advantage of not having to walk extra to get Fastpasses to the ones that I could ride.  The Fastpass rides that I could ride at 14 weeks pregnant were Buzz Lightyear, Roger Rabbit, Haunted Mansion and Small World in Disneyland and Midway Mania and Soarn' Around the World in California Adventure. There are 17 rides with Fastpass and I could ride 6 of them plus MaxPass includes PhotoPass so it was worth it for me for the convenience factor and because I planned to take full advantage of getting photos taken.

One day while I was there my sister-in-law, who is also pregnant, was able to come so we took full advantage of the photographers to document the first time these cousins met and their first trip to Disneyland!

This bench will always hold a special place in my heart and on this trip to celebrate being in my second trimester of pregnancy it felt appropriate to take a picture of it. After our first round of IVF before we began our second round I took a trip to Disneyland to relax and get away. I was having lunch/cocktails in Carthay Circle Lounge and my phone rang.  It was the doctor calling to say they had the PGS test results for the one embryo that had made it to day 5 had been biopsied for testing. We were told it took about 2 weeks for the test results so I wasn't expecting the call for at least another 3 or 4 days but I answered the call and came out to this bench to take it because the reception is in the lounge is notoriously bad. The doctor told me that the embryo passed all the test and was healthy and viable. After I hung up with the doctor I sat there and called my husband crying from happiness that we had an embryo to implant. I was in the happiest place on earth and I was just so happy and hopeful sitting there. 

Overall I had a wonderful time in Disneyland and would recommend going in the beginning of the second trimester as long as most of your morning/all day sickness has passed.  I came in with realistic expectations of what I could and couldn't do and made sure I planned plenty of time to rest in my day.  I could have gone back to take a rest at the hotel but I decided to just rest in the park. I knew I wouldn't make it late into the evening so I had in my head that I would just try to make the fireworks one night and not worry about trying to see any of the nighttime shows. My sister-in-law and I wanted to try and see Fantasmic the day she was there but neither one of us made it that late so we just called it a casualty of pregnancy. As long as someone is willing to have reasonable expectations and listen to their body I think a Disneyland trip is totally doable.

The first half of the Second Trimester

As I am nearing the end-ish of the second trimester I wanted to go back and look at the first half of the trimester.  From the time I was 10 weeks along and decided to take weekly pictures all the way through week 13 and the end of the first trimester I was good about remembering to take weekly photos but I managed to miss week 14 and 15.

Not quite a week 14 bump picture but I did go to Disneyland at around 14 weeks pregnant and have tons of photos from that trip.  I have a post all about my thoughts and experiences about going to Disneyland in the early second trimester coming soon.

During the first trimester the only actual maternity clothes I bought were workout leggings because my regular high waisted ones got uncomfortable really quickly.  Actually the first new piece of clothing I had to purchase was a larger bra almost immediately and my chest hasn't stopped growing since.  I went from a 32DDD to a 34DDD within a few weeks of being pregnant and by the time my mom and I went shopping for maternity clothes around week 15 it was already time to size up in bras again...My actual bra size was at 34G at that point but I opted to get a 36DDD and just wear it on the tightest hook to give myself the option to wear the bra looser if I wanted to or if my rib cage spread. Spoiler: I am still wearing a 36 on the tightest hook so my ribcage hasn't spread but my chest continues to grow and by the time I am about 21 weeks I am wearing a 36G.

From the start of the second trimester through about week 16 or 17 I didn't feel like my bump was growing that much because I had kind of gone from puggy to small bump at that point.  Between IVF residual puffiness and the fact that I have pretty much no torso I got the original bump pretty quickly because she had nowhere to go but outwards. 

I went for a checkup around 16 weeks and while I didn't get to see the baby on an ultrasound at this appointment I did get to hear her heartbeat.  Everything was good with her and I had to have some blood drawn for my second trimester tests.  They tested for spina bifida and something else that I can't remember but all the tests came back negative and I continued to have a normal healthy pregnancy.

Somewhere around week 18 I started to notice my bump growing again and I started feeling "pregnant". Around this time I started to not be able to sleep on my back when normally I go back and forth between my side and my back. I could still lay on my back for periods of time but after about 10 or 15 minutes on my back it was time to move! I also started using an extra pillow to help support my torso but in all reality at this point it was supporting my chest as much as it was supporting my belly.

By the time I got to the second trimeter pretty much all my nausea was gone but the smell of curry and chicken were still not appetizing.  I could eat chicken as long as it didn't smell like chicken so if it was cold or covered in some sort of sauce it was fine.

Despite my exhaustion during the first trimester I tried really hard to make it to the gym at least twice a week especially once I was cleared to go back to full workouts around week 10 or 11.  During the second trimester as the exhaustion had lessoned I made it to the gym between 3 and 4 times a week which is what I was doing prior to IVF and pregnancy. I don't do any of the full abs and I do go slower on the treadmill but for the most part at least at the beginning of the 2nd trimester I was able to do most things without too many modifications.  Getting into the later part of the second trimester that was a different story...

Once I am in my third trimester I will come back with all my thoughts on the later half of the second trimester.

Gender Reveal

We have known the gender of our little baby since very early on but decided to wait until I was out of the first trimester to tell anyone.  Part of the reasoning was that I wanted to make sure everything was all good with the pregnancy and part of it was that because we had so many people invested and supporting us during IVF that we told a lot of people about the pregnancy very early so I wanted to have something to reveal at a more traditional time.

While a lot of people knew we were pregnant I didn't actually post anything on social media until the gender reveal. When I was 10 or 11 weeks pregnant I decided that I would use shoes for our official social media gender/pregnancy. As I have mentioned before I have fairly small feet so I thought it would be cute to buy the baby and I matching little shoes.  I am all about glitter and love Sam Edelman flats so the shoes I picked were perfect.

My original plan was to have a little gender reveal party at our house the weekend after I was 12 weeks pregnant but pretty much everyone we wanted to invite was busy that weekend and couldn't come.  I was going to Disneyland the next weekend (more on pregnant at Disneyland to come) and a couple of my cute shirts were gender specific so I didn't want to postpone the reveal. We ended up driving down to my parents house and my aunt and uncle came over too.  I bought some silly string and we went out in my parents driveway to reveal. We linked my sisters in via FaceTime and sprayed away! My dad took a video of the reveal, my uncle was holding the phone for the FaceTime and the rest of us were spraying silly string so this aftermath picture is the only one I have.

It's a GIRL!!