Heavy. I feel this in so many ways. I don’t remember exactly how I felt this time last pregnancy. There’s a term I heard called “motherhood amnesia” that (conveniently) makes you forget the pain and stress that comes with pregnancy, labor and delivery, and the first few months after birth that we like to call the “fourth trimester”.

There’s so much I do remember about the first time around, but a lot my brain has chosen to forget when it comes to the nitty and gritty of the transitional period before pregnancy comes to a close. It’s hard to describe the feeling of wanting to do so many things (nesting, they call it) yet also wanting to just lay down all the time.

I don’t remember being this drained, but I do remember telling people during my last month of pregnancy six years ago that I would be so glad when I no longer had to share my body. I also remember the days after birth and feeling so happy to have pregnancy be over even though I was limping around in pretty bad pain because of the birthing process and having no clue what I was doing as a first time mom.

It’s kind of hard to share things like this because I am truly grateful and because so many women never get to experience carrying life in their womb. I am sensitive to that, and I also try to be really careful about not making pregnancy seem like the end all be all to womanhood. There are so many more women talking these days about how hard their pregnancy was and sharing that one kid was all they could really handle. I even had to brace myself when me and my husband decided to try to conceive because I knew I could very well have another pretty hard pregnancy.

Fortunately the nausea, aches and pains, fatigue, stress, and sleepless nights haven’t led to anything drastic like hospitalization or bedrest so I do count my blessings. It’s such a privilege to be responsible for another life and to have a naturally conceived child without the expenses of fertility doctors or the cost of invasive medical treatments.

All this to say: whatever you’re going through, God will give you the strength to manage it and to keep pushing forward. Some of His blessings for you might not be simple to get or easy to maintain but they are worth it nonetheless.

On another note, let’s pretend I didn’t skip a whole month between pregnancy updates. I really thought I’d keep up with posting every two weeks, but after getting out of whack with timing from going out of town, I’ve been thrown off. But, here I am and not much has honestly changed in the last month with my pregnancy. All things are looking good for me and baby and there are no signs of problems or emergencies. Here’s a photo from my last appointment. Little guy is huge!

It’s getting a little harder to do anything, but especially bending down is almost impossible. Lol. My daughter was kind enough to help me with filing my toe nails because the belly is large and in charge.

She is such the helper. I love talking to her about her new role as a big sister and she’s really excited. However, she does expect to pretty much be taking care of him by herself. When we talk about helping, she has a long list of how she’s going to feed him, change his diaper, change his clothes, sleep with him, carry him around, etc. I dunno what she thinks our role is as parents, but I think it’s adorable that the thought of doing everything for her little brother is something to be excited about and not a burden. We’ll see how the actual transition goes though. Haha.

With about four weeks left, there were definitely some things put on the back-burner in preparing for our son’s arrival. I have FINALLY created a registry after putting it off for so long. Between all the daily to-dos and getting into a solid routine of homeschooling Petra as a first grader, I finally had the mental energy to scan a bunch of baby products for the most important things. We might add more items in the future if something comes up that we didn’t think of yet.

You can click on this link to go directly to our Amazon baby registry page. If that’s not working for some reason, you can look up baby registries and search our name. That’ll be how you get to our list.

This is the form that will come up when you search for baby registries. I input the info you’ll need to fill it in with:

Here is what our page looks like when you click on it:

This isn’t to tell you to get us something. Please don’t feel obligated! We just want to give an opportunity to those who do desire to gift us with an item for our son. Thank you so much in advanced for even wanting to be a part of this huge life changing event.

I’ll get to those stats now:

Age and size of baby:

36 weeks old, 19 inches long, 6 lbs in weight.

Cravings:

I’m still a huge fan of Topo Chico. I actually got another brand of sparkling water to try it out and it threw me off how much I hated it. I think Topo Chico has the type of carbonation that literally burns your throat and for some reason I like that. Lol. I have to be a little more careful with spicy or acidic foods these days or I’ll have some discomfort with heartburn when it’s time to go to sleep.

Morning sickness:

My morning sickness isn’t too bad as long as I eat pretty soon after waking up. I get motion sick in the car a little more now, so we’re not taking long drives anywhere. Fortunately, we don’t really have to leave the house that often. That’s also a good thing because the weather has been really hot for the most part lately and that makes me nauseous and also swell up in my hands and feet.

Stretch marks:

No stretch marks. I doubt I’ll get any at this point. Like I mentioned before, stretch marks are usually genetic. If your mom had them, most likely you will as well. I’m told my mom didn’t have any with her three pregnancies aside from a little bit around her navel.

Crazy hormones:

I’ve been pretty emotional. Like I could cry at any point even if nothing is wrong. I think part of that is the mountain of things I need to do that’s always in the back of my head, but I try to take on one day at a time and not get wrapped up in things I can’t control.

Sleeping habits:

My hips have been kind of out of control with pain, but I discovered a way to position my pillows at night to alleviate a lot of that. I’m sooo glad I did because limping around all day is not cute at all. I imagine it’s going to be harder to fall asleep as I get closer to my due date because you just never know when labor is going to start, so that’ll effect how much sleep I’ll be getting as well.

So, that’s that for now.  Be blessed and take time to make your dreams into your reality.

-Kytia L’amour