Head Down!

There’s a girl about my age whose pregnancy I’ve been following since I started working at the credit union. I saw her when she started showing, and almost weekly up until the week she delivered her baby girl Gemma a few months back. Watching the real-life progression she’s made has been awesome and it’s neat to see someone who’s in a very similar situation to mine. It’s been really helpful tracking her progress and the realities of this whole ball of wax viewed against our (sometimes unrealistic) expectations. Today she came in looking beautiful and skinny, and she had two helpful hints:

-“I would have done more to prepare.” I have a huge list for my 2-3 weeks off work pre-baby. There are so many projects to finish, meals to make, books to read. Sometimes it feels like the day before school starts: everything has to be in perfect order to get a nice start on this whole endeavor. Sometimes I feel like I’m being a bit anal, but even coming from new mommies, it’s good to know that doing as much as I can when I can is imperative.

-“I thought I’d be able to get things done when she sleeps.” I’m in the same school, but deep down I know she’s right. Everyone has the hope of being the perfect housewife – not only raising a happy and healthy baby but also of keeping an impeccable home. It all seems fine and well to want to do things while the baby naps, but in reality, they often don’t nap for long enough to even start to embark on a small project. She advised to not get frustrated, but rather to love and enjoy the time that you do get with baby.

Helpful advice from another first-time mom!

Also quite exciting today: we saw the baby! My mum-in-law and I got a 35 week ultrasound to confirm the position of the baby. As I thought, she’s head down and quite beautiful in my opinion. While we didn’t get measurements, she looked normal, healthy, and is swimming in an appropriate amount of fluids. Basically she’s the one who’s ready to go and I’m the one who’s not overly ready yet. But it was fantastic to see her and made me feel so proud and ecstatic that we’ve made such a lovely thing and are getting to close to finally meeting her!