Photo shoot pics from 36 and 37 weeks to tide you over...

So I am now 5 days past my due date and still feeling great! I'm getting the impression that all of my family and friends are a lot more worried/ anxious/ impatient than Alex and I are. To help calm you, I'm posting these beautiful/eclectic/amazingly funky shots that were taken by my dear friend Elizabeth Cantrel. Also, a little info: The average gestational period of today's women is 41 weeks and 1 day, so, I am not actually overdue yet in my mind. Babies are just fine even past two weeks :) So relax and enjoy the pictures :)

All our love,

M&A

36 Weeks-Purple Dress

37 Weeks- In the Garden

 

Wow, how time flies... (38 weeks)

Hey there lovely, loyal blog followers :)
The past 11 weeks since my last entry have FLOWN by...quick update:
The baby showers (yes two, one in Crozet, VA and one in Mathews, VA) were amazing, see pics below
Little Bean is head down and in launch position
All is well at home and at work
We are getting very excited and the realness is setting in for both of us
The nursery is 99% finished

Baby Shower pics!

A great time was had by all who attended :) The food was amazing and the company even more so. As you can see by my shawl, it was an unseasonably cold and rainy day, but we definitely made the most of it!

Belly Casting (#2) Pics!

I have a few pics that I wanted to share from our second belly casting session, I will post some more amazing ones from the third and final one as soon as I get them back, but check these out for now :)

CAUTION: Partial and alluded nudity!!!

Peace and love to all as we get closer to meeting our little bean...I will be more vigalent about getting pictures up, I promise :)

Love,

M

Just a few pics (27 weeks)

Hey there!
I am feeling great, especially with the weather behaving the way it has been. The gorgeous temperatures and daffodils all over the place have gotten me energized and wanting to spend more time outside. Hence the following belly pics :)

 25 Weeks - Outside the Healthy Birth, Healthy Baby Fair in Charlottesville, VA

26 Weeks - Enjoying a mug of tea in the beautiful sunshine at the house on a Sunday morning

 27 Weeks - These pics were taken today! What good puppies :) They don't stray far from me anymore :)

We are soon heading off to another Brio Birth class where we will be doing mock-labor exercises tonight. I hope to be going to my first Birth Circle meeting with my new friend Megan Bloom tomorrow, that should be a good time :) That's all for now, thanks for checking in!

-M

Man! Did I just swallow a melon of some sort? (24 weeks)

Hello Bean Followers!

It sure has been a while (7 weeks to be exact) since I have written an update. 

Let's see...in the past seven weeks, I have:

• Visited our wonderful midwives two times
• Been to 3 Brio Birth classes (or has it been 4?)
• Gone through 48 hours of an "out both ends" kind of stomach bug
• Gone to see Railroad Earth in Charlottesville (see pics)
• Felt the baby kick (a lot)
• Spent a wonderful Valentine's Day with my hubby, Momma and Dan at the Melting Pot (see pics)
• Had a cold that put me out of commission for 4 days
• Watched my grandfather turn 97 (see pics)
• Learned to sleep in a different position (again)
• and watched my belly go from "Can you tell I'm pregnant?" to "When are you due?"

February 12, 2011 Railroad Earth at the Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville, VA

Okay, so, the Railroad Earth Concert was my surprise V-day gift from Alex. Right before the show was to start, they started playing some of the band's music over the speakers. Almost immediately, the bean started bumping around for the first time. I grabbed Alex's hand, shoved it down my pants and said,"Can you FEEL that!?" It took a few minutes but he finally got one good kick to the palm. The WHOLE rest of the night, this little bean was jivin' and bumpin', jumpin' and movin'! I guess Bean really enjoyed it's first concert, I know I sure did :)

  

FYI, I ganked this pic from a website, we didn't bring the camera! 

 

This is the sticker that I got from the show for my car.

Valentine's Day at the Melting Pot in Downtown Charlottesville, VA

 It took some major finagling, but we got a reservation for four at 5:45! What a great night, oh, except that I had a terrible cold coming on. I didn't know how bad it was going to be until we got home. I had to call out sick for the next TWO days. That never happens, people. Anyway, the food was great (until I couldn't taste anymore), the atmosphere was lovely and the company was tops! 

 Our landlord, Heidi, stopped by just in time to get some pictures of us kids before we left for prom, oh, I mean dinner :)

Pop-Pop's 97th Birthday-February 21st, 2011

Pop-Pop's birthday weekend was a blast except the cold that I was just getting over, Alex was now in the trows of. Poor guy, never have I seen him with such a horrible man-cold :( None the less, we had a great time and spent many hours just soaking in my Pop-Pop's 97-year-old humor, music and general awesomeness. Alex made amazing shrimp scampi and brussel sprouts with garlic bread and my Aunt Becky made a really good chocolate banana cream pie, just like Pop asked for :) Dinner was delicious and then we played Catch Phrase, which was a riot! What a great weekend :)

 

 Well, that's all I've got for now, I am planning a photo shoot at the end of the month with a friend, hopefully we can make it happen :) Thanks for checking in!

~M

Changes all around for the New Year! (17 Weeks)

Hello All!
It has been a little while and we are due for another update! I can feel the changes happening in my body every day. I've started getting "butterflies" in my belly whenever the bean does a somersault and the weight in my abdomen is becoming increasingly noticeable. I wanted to wait and make sure all that was going to change did and all was good and settled before I wrote about it :)

The biggest change?
Our Midwife, Holly, was experiencing some unforeseen circumstances and called to tell us she was on her way back to TEXAS the day before our next appointment. Alex and I were stressed out for about five minutes and then called the midwifery that we had been hearing about since we signed up with Holly. Mountain View Midwives is run by Brynne Potter and Deren Bader and have recently added a third midwife, Debbie Wong, to their growing practice. They are all super qualified and amazingly beautiful human beings. We fell in love at our first meeting with them last week.

The next semi-big change:
Remember those Bradley Classes we were going to start taking? Well, at our first meeting, our new teacher, Jenny McManus, told the group of us that she had just written in her letter of resignation to the Bradley Method people...but not all was lost, just a small shift. As it turns out, a group of Bradley teachers got fed up with the lack of desire that the Bradley folk had for updating their research, workbooks and general information for the students and branched off to start a new and improved method called Brio Birth. This is not a radical change from the old teachings, the basis is still the same, they just brought it into the 21st century, which I am thrilled about! Who wants to learn with outdated research and workbooks? Not me!

Other Changes:
Our minds are transforming from thinking that I am pregnant to thinking about having a baby, having a human growing inside :) This trasition really took place for me when Brynne showed us a life-size picture of how big our little bean has grown so far, at 16 weeks. We had no idea that it could be so big, so fast! This picture doesn't do the situation justice because you all have no reference to go from but to me, it looked like the baby was about 8-9 inches long...that's huge!

We got to find the heartbeat again (what a relief after having to wait three more weeks, a total 7, since Holly backed out). Brynne explained that the bliping sounds every so often was the doppler picking up on the baby moving. It made the noise so often, I asked her what was going on in there and she said,"The Bean is swimming." Hilarious! She gets us :)

I am excited to say that my nausea is 99% gone and I don't fit in my jeans anymore! Sweats for now, until I am big enough to fit in the maternity clothes that I bought (thanks for the gift card MarMar!)

AND...PRENATAL YOGA!!!

My friend Nancy and I have started going to prenatal yoga together, which is so great! The classes are taught by a dear friend of mine, Ursula Goadhouse.

That's everything for now! Thanks for checking in! 

Love and peace to all of you in this, the most exciting of New Years!