Picture Update.

It's been a while.

Things are humming along here pretty well. I had a checkup on the 16th that Brad came to (he's been skipping most of them since they're about 30 seconds long and pretty uneventful). We had a few questions for Dr. Wolanski about the birthing process, cord blood donation, etc etc. We got to hear our little girl's heartbeat again (there's seriously nothing better!) and Dr. W said I'm measuring great and should expect a regular old 7 lb baby come August. Brad and I both laughed at him when he said that -- we were both over 9 lbs and two of the smallest from our families. 7lb is not likely. I'm going to go ahead and expect at least 9, and be pleasantly surprised if it works out another way :)

I had my baby shower on the 21st! It was absolutely amazing. Corey (and Michelle and the two grandmas) did such an amazing job - I seriously loved it. It was a Velveteen Rabbit themed shower (my favorite childhood book), and the weather held out perfectly so it was in the gardens right off the Lawn at UVA. My friend's daughter, Eloise, helped me open presents (she's so cute!) and we sat around and chatted and ate delicious carrot cake. It was a great day and I felt so loved and supported! We closed off the evening by heading out to a local brewery for dinner, which was a lot of fun.

My friend Caroline took some great pictures at the shower that I'll include below, including the real bunny that crashed the party!

Then this past weekend, I threw a FRIENDS-themed couples bridal shower for my friend Katie, who is getting married at the end of August. Again, we lucked out on weather and had a fantastic day!

Brad painted the nursery (mint green) and I finished my first baby blanket :) Now we're just waiting on the rest of the furniture to come and and getting ready for the little one to arrive!

And now another progression of bump pictures from the last few weeks...

Beachin'

Things have been busy busy in the Costella household!

Memorial Day weekend we skipped out of town and spent three days in the Outer Banks with my family. Brad's parents and his sister were able to come down for the last two days too, so it made for a great long weekend of relaxing and spending time with family.

There were also lots of beach games played by those who were a little more mobile than I am these days.

We came back for a few days of work, and early Friday morning we hit the road again with Rob and Rachel to spend 4 days down in Charleston. We stayed with Brad's grandmother, Kathy, and ate LOTS of delicious food and spent lots of time on the beach. It was a fantastic trip and I wish we were still down there!


Brad and I before dinner one night


Rachel trying to come to grips with the whole lobster on her plate

 
Drinks and views from the oceanside bar


Walking around Charleston with Kathy


Beautiful weather!


"Rainbow Row" along the water


Charleston City Market


HUSK, where we ate twice! 


Rob and Rachel


Brad and I


On the baby-front, things are progressing well. She's moving around constantly, which I still love feeling, and I'm definitely starting to get a good bit bigger. Some days I just feel SO PREGNANT! Either way, I love it. Brad's mom was in town the last two nights, and we ended up buying the crib! That should arrive in a few weeks. We also picked out a glider, which Target is shipping to our local store this week.

This weekend, we'll be cleaning and painting the nursery. We've also got strawberry picking, baseball games, and other errands on the to-do list. Should be a productive few days!

Week 31. Bump pic below!

Today is a good day.

Today has been one of those days where things just go RIGHT.

My workload today has been light, so no stress there. I found out that I passed my 3-hour glucose test (YAY!), so everything is great there. And my very best friend was visiting from Chicago and drove up to have lunch with me and Brad today. We ate some delicious dumplings and caught up in the sunshine walk to the downtown mall, and things are just really really good.

Plus we leave for the beach tonight!

Besides that, not much going on. I'm very much looking forward to relaxing this weekend in the sun and the sand, and look forward to a good recharge down in Corolla.

Yesterday I wore the maternity skirt I made. You can't see any of the wrinkled seams along the back (or the safety pins making it temporarily smaller, to make some room for my growing belly), but overall I think it turned out really well!!

And of course, my "weekly" bump pic!

Well Eff.

I had my monthly checkup this morning. Baby's heartbeat sounds good, and I'm measuring normal, so that's all good and I'm very thankful for that.

I did get the awesome news that I failed my 1 hour glucose screening test that I took on Friday. My number came back at 161 and they like to see it below 140.

Not a huge deal, but it means I need to take the three hour test on Wednesday. I have to fast from midnight-on and be at the outpatient center by 7am. Oh joy.

I was panicking/upset/freaking out when I first got the news that I failed (despite the doc being unconcerned and telling me that there are lots of false positives). I know that gestational diabetes is easily controlled with diet and medication, and that it's nothing I did that could cause it - it's hormonal imbalances - but still. It's frustrating and annoying. I did some reading and found out that only 1:3 people that fail the one hour test actually fail the three hour test, so there's still hope that we're good. And it's definitely good that we caught it if GD is going to be an issue!

I'm just grumpy because I don't want to have to meticulously watch my diet like I probably should...

Back to the beach on Friday! I can't wait!!

I'm still here!

Oh man oh man have I been slacking on this blog thing. I'm 27 weeks along at this point and time is flying!

Yeah. It's been a month since my last post. Things have happened, I guess, though it doesn't really feel like it. I am so blessed and so lucky, but everything has been going really smoothly throughout this whole pregnancy! Yes I get crazy and hormonal sometimes (especially when trying to figure out what the heck we're going to do when I have to go back to work... fighting for part time while maintaining a PTO package is a pain in the ass!), but overall it's been easy breezy and I'm kinda loving being pregnant. 

I have been very forgetful and do/say some pretty stupid things. I've got an excuse, so that's nice, but it's like my brain just isn't processing things sometimes! Eh. That's other people's problems.

Besides that, I haven't had any physical issues - some cramping and possible contractions here and there - and a few mental breakdowns over weight gain (I'm up ~17 lbs right now, which is okay, but it's just frightening to see these numbers on the scale that I've never seen before!). I've got the glucose test on Friday, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything is healthy there.

Let's see if I can't just start from where I left off with the life updates and walk my way through to try and catch this blog up on all the highlights.

Last time I wrote, I had just gotten back from Salt Lake City. That next weekend I drove to Richmond to have dinner with my very best friend, visiting from Chicago, which was so much fun. I miss being able to hang out with her more often!!!

Later that week, I went to see STOMP at JPJ with another girlfriend. It was very cool, but did get a little repetitive after a while. 

We spent Easter weekend in Chesapeake with Brad's family. It was a great weekend full of relaxing, yoga-offs between Brad and his sister, and shopping with my her and my mother-in-law. We are so lucky to have such a great supportive family!!

The following weekend I babysat for some friends and then on Saturday had a girls day in Richmond with an amazing group of girls from church. We spent the day shopping at Short Pump, ate some delicious sushi at Sticky Rice, and finished the night off by seeing Wicked on (off) Broadway! The show was incredible, and it was a great day with great friends!

I've finally finished up exams for the semester (totally rocked them too!), so Brad and I celebrated by hitting a Lord Huron concert in Richmond (before it got rained out) and continuing on to the beach to spend Mothers Day with my parents. Brad has a sprained ankle (that we thought was a broken fibula), so he took it easy at the house, but the weather was gorgeous. We were able to grab dinner with his parents on the way back to Charlottesville on Sunday too. It was a much-needed recharging weekend, and has me super excited for a long weekend at the beach over Memorial Day with my family in two weeks!

We started our prenatal class on Monday. There are about 7 or 8 other couples in the class with us, and everyone seems really nice. Brad didn't find the first class very useful, but I definitely learned a few things that will be pretty crucial once labor rolls around. My goal is to keep moving and help the baby along as much as possible. Contractions don't sound fun, but I'm excited to get there!

So that's all the big stuff that's been going on lately. My sister has promised in her own special way to keep me from being the crazy, overprotective mom that I see around me constantly. I know that our kid is going to make mistakes and I have to let that happen, but I'm already so worried about her - I don't know that I can. This was my sister's response to that. Ha!

And finally, I haven't been the best about taking bump pictures every week, but thankfully I've been better at that than blogging. So here are a few that I've taken since my last post. Yeah... I'm the worst!

She's moving around constantly, which I love. She also moves around a LOT for Brad, which just melts my heart. She loves him so much already! I am so excited to meet this little girl.