The Waiting Place

The final countdown has begun. Today marks 38 weeks, and the baby has been considered "full-term" since last week. We're no longer checking Denise's many symptoms against the list of "Signs of Preterm Labor." Denise is still having her many symptoms, of course, ("My toes feel all tingly! I think the baby is coming!") it's just that at this phase of the game, there is no preterm labor. Only labor. The paradigm has shifted.

The doctor informed us that due dates are actually plus or minus about two weeks. My response to this fact was, "Holy crap! We could have this baby tomorrow!" Denise's thoughts were more to the tune of, "Holy crap! This could take four more weeks!"

As far as I can tell, Denise's biggest fear continues to be that she will go into labor and somehow not realize it. Given the limited experience I have with the birthing process, this does not seem a very likely scenario to me. I've heard women talk about labor, and I've never heard anyone say, "It was so easy, I barely noticed it at all!" A somewhat different theme usually emerges.

Denise is now done with work, and she spends the bulk of her time in the bath tub eating muffins. Feeling hungry? Sleepy? Happy? Sad? Anxious? Take a bath and have a muffin. In fact, have two muffins.

The strangest part for me is having all this built-up anticipation without a definite end date. It's like waiting for Christmas, only you're not really sure what day Christmas is going to be. Also, you're pretty sure that "Christmas" is going to entail changing diapers in the middle of the night.

Merry Christmas, and please have a muffin.

A Woman After My Own Heart

This week's episode of "Adventures of Living with a Pregnant Woman," features a true culinary delight. Behold, and let your taste buds be tantalized:

Bacon Pesto!

mmmmmmm.........

35 Weeks!

I definitely feel pregnant!!! Wow, what a change in the last couple of weeks. A couple weeks ago I was thinking, "wow, I feel great! The last couple months aren't so bad." Then last week I started to change my tune. Not that the last month and a bit is bad....just feeling like we're getting toward the end. Thankfully this summer hasn't been unbearably hot. We've only had a few weeks when I've felt too hot to live! :) I can feel the baby getting more and more squished in by tight belly. He has a harder time moving around now, but it's fun to see and feel him try. He's still pretty active and has the hiccups all the time! I think he has moved south in preparation for coming out and meeting us. Jarrett and I took a birthing class in July and I've read pretty much everything I can get my hands on! Now we just have to wait and see how everything will go for us. I know it will be different than anything I could imagine, but at least I feel prepared enough to just relax and let God handle what's to come!

Everything has been going really well. Baby and I are healthy, I haven't really swelled up much, and I have been surrounded by amazingly supportive (and giving!) friends and family. This past weekend was the baby shower, and we had so much fun! Thank you to all who were able to come and to those who sent their love in the mail (sorry if I forgot to let any of you know it was happening, this was not intentional!). God has blessed us with so much!!!!! Jarrett and I are looking forward to figuring how to use all these new, and not so new, gadgets!

I am planning on next week being my last week of work so I can start working on getting the baby room all organized (more nesting!). :) I am getting more and more excited to meet our little boy! I can't wait until you all can meet him too!

Here are a couple of pictures of the shower:

Nesting

It's 6 p.m. on Tuesday night.

I wonder what 33-weeks-pregnant Denise is up to right now?

She's contact papering the dresser drawers, of course!

What do you do on Tuesday night?

31 Weeks

Only 9 weeks to go! Denise went to the doctor yesterday, and everything is as it should be.

Beans would like to know why Denise gets all the extra rations.

Glucose

Praise God! I have normal glucose levels! No special diet for Denise!

28 Weeks

I had my 28 weeks visit last Friday. We hit the first snag in the pregnancy. I failed the glucose test! :( Tomorrow morning I will go in to have a 3 hr glucose tolerance test done. They said that most people pass this test, so I hope it goes well. The glucose test is to check for gestational diabetes. The doctor said that there is nothing I can do to prevent it by what I eat, but that it is a product of some of the hormones during pregnancy. If it turns out that I fail the second test, they will probably have me on a special diet. Yikes! Hopefully I will know more on Wednesday.

Other than that everything else is looking good still! :) We had a very tiring weekend of moving. We moved two houses over to a bigger 3 bedroom duplex, instead of our 2 bedroom. We are still working on things this week, cleaning, moving a few more small things....etc. It will be great to have the extra bedroom. We can have an official baby room and a room for visitors to stay in (as long as you don't mind spending the night with all my art stuff and Jarrett's gun case!). The move has been good for my nesting instinct because I've been able to cross off lots of the deep cleaning things on my "pre-baby to do list". I am excited to start setting up the baby room. It will be so nice to have a place to put all the stuff we will be accumulating!

I'll keep you posted on the results of my test!

Love,
Denise

27 Weeks

Denise is getting bigger and Beans is getting crazier every week.

Belly Pics

26 Weeks

Check me out!
I'm huge!

First Post

It didn't take us very long to figure out that we are going to be really bad at sending out all the photos, videos, and updates pertaining to this awesome kid that we're about to have.  Thus, we started this blog so that we can be really bad at those things equally for everybody.

This is the place to come for all your Chaney Kid needs.  Updates will probably be more frequent once the kid is, you know, born and all.

There's a slick little box on the right side of the page that allows you to be automatically notified by e-mail every time this page is updated.  Try it.  

-Jarrett, Denise, Beans, and Tadpole