The reality is that in 3-8 weeks our baby girl will be here! I'm having alot of anxiety about the timing of her arrival and school. As of right now, I'm planning on being at my community site for my master's project the first four weeks of October (as long as the site agrees which I still don't know). If baby arrives on time, this will be perfect. If she arrives early, I will have alot of scrambling to do afterwards to reschedule and get my time in. Not to mention the work in my other classes and having to leave my new baby multiple times for hours at a time to visit the site and attend classes. I just want true maternity leave where I have no concerns but the baby for a few weeks. I just want to hold her, hug and kiss her, and take care of all her needs, and figure out the whole breastfeeding, diapering, and sleeping schedule! I guess this is what happens when you give birth in the middle of the last academic semester of grad school! I just have to trust God's perfect timing and that he gave us this baby at this time for a reason. He is good and just and has a purpose. I could use prayers though to help me remember to trust his timing.
I'm just saddened already by how fast the time is going to go by and about potentially missing out during this important time of having a new baby. I'm so thankful to trust my husband to be supportive and to take care of the baby as good as I can. I know some people don't trust their husbands with newborns, but I totally do. My classes end the third week of December, which puts us at the week of Christmas. We're hoping to travel to Michigan because there are so many wonderful family and friends that we want to meet our baby! However, we will have to make the best decision for our family. Driving to Michigan with a newborn with feeding and diapering schedules, exhausted parents, and only for a three day visit just sounds like a debacle. If we do go to Michigan for Christmas, we'll get back and I'll only have a few days before I start my internship full time (the first week of January). I am so blessed though that my mother in law plans on coming to visit and to stay during the first week or two of my internship. That will definitely ease my concerns; to be able to start my internship and know that my baby is at home with someone completely trustworthy and that loves her.
I'm sorry for the depressing post, I'm just utterly overwhelmed at how busy November and December will be. I've wanted a baby for so long and I knew it would be difficult with still being in school. However, there are alot of things with our master's project that we are just finding out that are much more involved than originally thought. And like I said, I really want to go to MI for Christmas, but I don't want it to be an extremely rushed and stressful experience right after finishing a stressful time at school and then following it up with a stressful time of starting a new internship and transitioning baby to daycare. Oh man, I thought that writing about it would help me organize my thoughts and put things in perspective...time to move on to a new subject....just help remind me to breathe and pray!
The baby's room is coming along well! Its not complete yet, but I think within the next few weeks we will have it complete and I'll have pictures to post. Baby is moving and shifting all over the place and now it is painful in my ribs and upper back. I think that working helps as I'm moving alot and it keeps my body flexible. I haven't had near the amount of back pain that I've heard of other pregnant women having. However, when I work with the little kids its alot more difficult to move around and bend. Crawling, squatting, chasing, and carrying kids are all becoming more difficult. My last day at work is October 12th and I just hope I stay as capable up until then, as I am now.
Here is a picture from tonight at 33 weeks and 4 days
A big thank you to Emily for letting me borrow some cute maternity clothes!
I have a few other pictures from past weeks but they are on my camera which is currently MIA lol. We will find it eventually I'm sure....
I'm so excited to take our newborn care and breastfeeding class in the next two weeks! As for actual childbirth classes, we decided to just watch classes online and reserve a few DVDs from the library. I'm also looking into hiring a doula. My only reservation about a doula is that its one more person in the hospital room, and I'm a pretty private person. Who knows though, maybe it will be well worth it to get over some of my modesty if they can help during difficult times.
