18 Weeks

How I am feeling:
Still feel good for the most part! A few headaches here and there but that has been about the worse part so far!

Sleep:
Every day is different.  Not much change with my IT band, but I go for a massage first weekend in August, so hoping she can relieve some of the pain and tightness. Hoping to get on her schedule regularly until baby is born.  She did some amazing things for my quads when I was training for my half marathon, so I am confident she can help relieve some of this pain and tightness in my IT band to help me sleep better.

Cravings:
I still love chicken strips haha Weight gain was a little bit more this week when I checked in with my nutritionist, so am working on eating more veggies to help slow that back down. Overall, she said my food intake is good and she isn't concerned, but of course would like to see me clean up my diet a bit :) I see her again in September, so we will see how much improvement I can make in the next month!

Best Moment of the Week:
We had our 18 week appointment on Monday, I can't believe that marked 3 weeks until we find out what Baby Caswell is! We are getting antsy and excited! Our appointment went well, no concerns from our Doctor, baby's heartbeat initially was 140 but then they squirmed away from the doctor so when she found it again it was 150. I haven't felt much movement yet, sometimes I think I can feel them but I am not 100% sure it is them haha.  She said probably around 20-21 weeks we should feel some definite movement!

This past weekend we spent some time getting some more items done in the Nursery.  I mentioned last post that my friend Cassie and I went to Ikea and I got some shelves to use for books.  On Sunday Tavid got those hung, and they turned out so perfect! I am so glad I choose to go with them vs a bookshelf.  I like how the books are on display, and it just add a different look to the nursery that we both love!  We can't wait to get some more books to put on them, and we love that we could add another shelf above if needed!

We also worked on getting the office cleaned out, which was much needed! We needed to make room to put the baby swing in there to not only store it but so Tavid could use it when he is on daddy duty on his days off when I go back to work. This allows him to play his video games and Baby C can just hang out. That is if they let daddy play his video games ;) we shall see!

I keep waiting for the day that one of our cats makes the swing their new nest haha. For now they just sniff it, but haven't gotten any closer to it.

I also spent some time going through and organizing what baby items we have in their dressers.  I got my inspiration from this post I found on pinterest. Her blog is full of helpful tips, and when I was at Ikea last week i picked up a ton of the drawer organizers. We don't have much to put in the drawers yet, but looking forward to when we get more to use these organizers!

Dresser Organization

I have found a ton of helpful tips on her blog, it is full of information that I hope we will use when Baby C gets here! She also has a ton of stuff on here not related to baby! So worth the read! :)

We are slowly making our way through the nursery, we still need to get a chair, we need to paint the closet and Tavid needs to make a closet organizer, replace the ceiling fan, hang the room darkening shades, and find some decor to hang on the walls! It is really exciting to see the progress and feels good that we have made such progress on it! August is a busy month for us, so we probably wont be getting much  more done until September/October which is why I wanted to get as much as we could done now.

17 Weeks

How I am Feeling:
Still feel good! I can't believe we are just a few weeks away from the half way point and from finding out what we are having!!


Sleep:
Still the same.


Cravings:
Food :) and still chicken strips haha


Best Moment of the Week:On Saturday we went to Rochester with my cousin Tarra to do our baby registries! She is a pro so it was really great to have her there to help us pick the right car seats, and what items we really needed for baby and stuff that was just extra fluff.  We choose to register at Target and Babies R Us, and were done with both registries by 11:30am! Which is amazing, considering our wedding registries took us ALL DAY! haha We are excited to start getting things for Baby C! We have a few things already, but we quickly realized there is some more that we need :)

Saturday night we were heading up to the cities to go to dinner with friends at the Machine Shed! We started this tradition back in January, and decided we wanted to keep going and trying new places! I choose this one, and it as really good! You get a lot of food and it was delicious!

Here's the whole group, we were missing a few though.

On Sunday we were ready to tackle getting some things done in the babies room.  We got a dresser from my cousin Nathan, Tavid has been sanding and is going to repaint, so we wanted to get that done, we needed to go pick up a dresser we had gotten from Ashley furniture and we wanted to get the babies crib put together.  It was a lot to do, but we got it all done and it feels nice to have made some progress on the nursery!

Here is a before and after of the dresser, it turned out great and we are happy with it!

Here is the new dresser we got from Ashley, it is really hard to find plain modern dressers! This one had a design on the top drawers that we removed to make it match the one above.  We figure, once Baby C gets older, if they want the design they can put it back on. :) This is the dresser we will put a changing pad on and use as a changing table.

The beginning of assembling the crib!

And the finished product!

 

We also painted this end table, it used to be black so we painted it green to pull out a color from the quilt on the crib above.  That quilt has been our inspiration for colors for the nursery.

We also had this ruler made by my friend Marne!

We have some touch up painting to do in the nursery, we still want a bookshelf, we need to get a glider for the room, Tavid is going to make a closet organizer and need to find some wall decor but overall we are proud of our progress!

On Friday, my friend Cassie and I headed up to Ikea after work to look for some items.  They are moving this weekend, and she needs some furniture for her middle child's room, as she is loosing her furniture to her baby sister. I also wanted to find some items for the Nursery. It was a successful trip! I picked up some shelves for the nursery, some drawer organizers, some decorative items,  and a shoe organizer for our back door.  It is safe to say, Cassie is hooked and we will probably be going again haha!

16 Weeks

How I am Feeling:
Still feeling good, I haven't had anymore headaches from hell so that's a plus! Hoping that was just a 1 time thing :)

Sleep:
Still the same, some days are good and some days are meh.

Cravings:
Food haha but I have been craving a lot of chicken strips lately, yum!

Best Moment of the Week:
This week was pretty busy! Cassie and I had our garage sale, she is due with her third in September, and they bought a new house so they were purging a lot of items for their move, and we were purging a lot of stuff to make room for all the baby stuff! Overall, the day was really good! We sold a lot of stuff and made a nice chunk of change! The day was hot, but it was worth it to see stuff go! We donated the rest of the stuff to a charity! Bye Bye clutter!

I had monday July 11th off because my friend Marette was home for the week from Phoenix! So we had plans to go to Capella to visit RT and Linds and to head to Augsburg to see Mama B and Shonna.  Unfortunately, RT was out sick so we didn't get to see him, but we got to see everyone else!  It always warms my heart to be back at Augsburg, I have such a special place in my heart for that college and treasure my time there! Sometimes it is hard to believe that it has almost been 10 years since I graduated from there!

Mama B and her girls!

 We couldn't be downtown Minneapolis and not eat The Burger Place! Now, if it had been Wednesday, I would have gone for Allies because they have THE BEST Broccoli Cheese soup! I miss the food options of the skyway a lot! :) 

The girls! It is our tradition to go to Pizza Luce when we get together, and Marette and I always get the Baked Potato Pizza with Ranch, and it was everything I hoped for!

It always warms my heart to spend the day with these ladies! I wish we could do it more, but I always treasure the days that we get to spend with each other!

Friday the 15th was Tavid's Birthday, he didn't want to do much. We have both gotten to the point where it's just another day.  So we had dinner at home.  I gave him a new Vikings Hat and a Sega for his Birthday. I would say, it was a success! :)

15 Weeks

How I am Feeling:
I still feel good, however headaches have been happening more frequently.  My doctor had warned me that they would show up more around these next few weeks, but I wasn't prepare for the monster I had on July 6th. I woke up at 2am with a pounding headache, so I took some tylenol, drank some water and figured it would be gone when I got up for work.  When it wasn't gone when I woke up I figured I just needed to eat, I learned early on that when I didn't eat on a regular basis, then I would get a headache.  I went to work but as the day progressed it got worse and started to move to behind my eyes, so I headed home around noon to try to sleep it off before it got bad.  Unfortunately, it turned into a full blown migraine and I ended up throwing up from it (something I have never had with a migraine). Once I threw up though, all the pressure in my head lessened significantly, and by the next day I felt much better. So far that has been the worst I have had during this pregnancy, I haven't had a headache like that since, and hope I don't.  I do plan to talk to our doctor about it at our 18 week appointment, to see if there are things I need to do to not let them get that bad.  I have read that sometime pregnancy brings on migraines even if you aren't prone to them. So I guess we will just wait and see.  Besides that, I have felt great!

Sleep:
Still decent, some days are better then others.  My left IT band has been bothering me for a few weeks, and when I sleep on that side my leg feels like it is going numb, and it is a feeling I don't care for.  I have been using KT tape (which I used to use a lot when I ran) and that has been helping a lot with this situation.  I also am hoping to get in for a few massages to help loosen up that band. I guess it is common in pregnancy, and my doctor said unfortunately, it will get worse before it gets better. I am grateful the KT tape has been helping, otherwise I would be miserable sleeping.

Cravings:
Food and lots of it :)

Best Moment of the Week:
It was the fourth of July weekend, so on Saturday we headed over to Tavid's mom for the Francis BBQ, it was relaxing and really nice to see everyone, as it had been a while. On Sunday we layed low and home and just enjoyed not having to do much.  Monday was the 4th of July, and we headed to the Gaul picnic over the lunch hour, and then that was the extent of our 4th of July, Tavid choose to switch with someone to work Tuesday July 5th so that he could have Saturday the 9th off, so we choose not to go to the fireworks.  I have Tuesday the 5th off and I spent the day going through things for my Garage Sale with Cassie the next weekend.  I ended up pairing down our entire storage room by half! It is crazy how much stuff I was able to get rid of for the sale, it made room so that when we went through the closet of the babies room, we had somewhere to put that stuff.

14 weeks

How I am Feeling:
After our Maryland adventure, I was exhausted and ended up using the weekend to try to catch up on sleep! I also ended up coming down with a cold which always affects my Asthma. I was hopeful that it wasn't going to move into my chest, but on Sunday it did so I had to resort to my Asthma Action Plan and begin a steroid to get past it.  Thankfully, on Monday June 27th was our 14 week appointment, so I could talk to our doctor about it and make sure everything was going well.  When we had meet with her at our 9 week appointment, she had given me a prescription for prednisone to use if I had a flare up, so I knew it was safe but still just wanted to make sure.  Other then this, I have been feeling well, hopeful the fatigue is exiting soon!

Sleep:
With not getting much sleep on our airport adventure, I was exhausted! I slept a lot for the next few days after we got home, and on the weekend I took quite a few naps. I feel being sick also wasn't helping with that. I feel like I am sleeping much better now that we are home, but still not 100%, having to find a comfortable spot is getting tough.

Cravings:
Just food in general :)

Best Moment of the Week:
This week is pretty uneventful for us, however we did have our 14 week appointment and we go to hear baby heartbeat.  It was beating strong at 155! Doctor wasn't too concerned with my flare up, however she did say that if the prednisone wasn't helping to send her a message so we could look at some other options. 

I also met with my nutritionist.  Since they only want me to gain a maximum of 15lbs, I choose to keep meeting with my nutritionist on a regular basis throughout my pregnancy to keep on top of my weight.  At my appointment we looked at weight gain, and as of that day I have only gained 4lbs, which was really surprising and exciting to hear! I feel like I have gained so much more, so it was nice to see the weight comparison and that I am right on track.  We also adjusted my macro-nutrients.  I told her that I felt hungry constantly in the morning, but once I had lunch I didn't get the constant hunger.  After looking at my tracking on MyFitnessPal, we decided that I needed to add more protein to my breakfast, so hopefully with adjusting that I can help keep my hunger at bay.  I learned early in my pregnancy, that being hungry for too long brews a headache, so I have been trying to stay on top of my hunger. So hopefully, spreading out my protein more will really help! She also wants me to start to build activity back into my routine. Tavid and I are hoping to be able to bike or walk on the weekends, to help me get back into that routine. The nutritionist has really been a valuable experience through my pregnancy, and I am so glad I choose to keep meeting with her.

This weekend we will be getting ready for our garage sale with are having with my Friend Cassie which is the weekend of the 9th, and of course celebrating the 4th of July.  We are both looking forward to a weekend of not having a ton to do, so we can get our life back in order!