Some of my favorite things

I love seeing the little touches that point to a baby arriving soon!  

Newborn diapers are so tiny!

All washed and ready for the babe

Is it possible to have too many pilot caps?  I hope not cause I'd like some more of their colors!!  

My kids.  I love watching them discover their personalities and imagination!  When all 3 of them start playing together, Jadon leads the "pretend this" and the girls follow.  They play house, store, church, explorers, family and so many more!  

"Mom, we're wilderness explorers."

Getting her babies ready for their car ride

I love the bond these two have!

Gah!  This girl and her sweet personality!  I love her easy smile and her heart already to follow me around and help me with anything she can!  

Getting back into routine

We're finally all on the mend and hopefully will stay healthy!  For the past 4 weeks we have battled some cold or stomach virus...constantly.  My nose is just beginning to not be stuffy 24/7!  But with all the sickness that has circulated our home, our routine and discipline has flown out the window it seems.  When children have fevers and just want to be held...that's what I did.  Forget the housework, forget the whining, I mean, with a 102* fever you'd expect some whining right?  I did.  So we'd snuggle.  And have lots of screen time.  If Mama wasn't feeling well, there were lots of shows watched and not many chores done.
Now we're back to the grind and I'm finding just how much work we have to do to catch up with the attitudes around here!  Chores were done today and attitudes were constantly being adjusted...mine included ;)

Baby plans are coming together!  It's still crazy to me that my due date is in a short 16 days.  16 days!  Soon we will find out if this babe is a boy or a girl.  Any last minute guesses on gender or day the baby will be born?!

Jarrod should be done traveling until May.  He's been gone a lot for little trips to Montreal or Germany.  I'm thankful he has such a good job and is a valuable employee to them, but I'm so happy he'll be home for a little while!

Baby Prep and Thoughts

Today marks 37 weeks of pregnancy for me.  Now, I'm starting all the prep that comes with a new baby arriving!  Washing the carseat cover, washing baby clothes, lining up someone to watch the kids, talking over birth plans with Jarrod...and everything else that we need to do before the baby arrives!

For the first 35 weeks I had an overwhelming fear of labor.  Any time I thought of Azelia's labor (34 hours which does include early labor, but labor that I couldn't sleep through) I would panic.  The sense of "I know I may have to do that again but....I can't do that again" would rise up again and again.  I would break down crying just thinking of trying to handle another long labor and handle it well.  For the last hour of Azelia's I felt like I couldn't breathe.  Feeling like that and then trying to push a baby out is so difficult.  It's suffocating.  Just like the fear that would envelope me when I thought about labor.  I asked some people to pray for me, as I didn't want to walk into labor fearful, panicked and stressing out about it.

When we visited Potsdam, Liz and I were able to have some great conversations about labor, birth, stressors, and things like that.  I had bought Ina May's book on childbirth and read through it.  After talking with Liz it all the sudden hit me.  While the early labor part lasted for a long time and was exhausting, I think there were some things that stressed me out and possibly made labor slow down.  But- once active labor hit, it was faster than Kyla's.  I looked up some stats between their labors....
For Kyla, from 4cm to 8cm, it took me 6 hours.  From 8cm to 10cm, it took me 5 hours with only 3 pushes for her.
For Azelia, from 4cm to 8cm, it took me 5 hours.  From 8cm to 10cm, it took me 1 hour (!) with 20 minutes of pushing after that.
I never realized that for Azelia, it did end up progressing quickly once active labor hit.  I just would think of the overall exhaustion of the 34 hours which does have an impact on me being able to deliver the baby well and labor well...but not being aware of how quick everything went after active labor started!  It took away some of the panic for this babe!

Since discovering that and thinking through how differently I labored for the girls, and why I think I had a better labor for Kyla, I've had a better mindset towards labor and more of a "I can do this!" feeling on it.  I don't feel panicked anymore when I think of this baby's labor.  I don't sit here taking in deep breaths feeling overwhelmed by the memories of Azelia's labor.

Jesus brought peace. 

I still would appreciate prayers for continued peace and an easy/quick labor!  

My little boy is SO excited about the new baby!  He's been planning how he'll hold the baby and if it's a boy how one day they'll play ball together and he'll let his brother win <3

Kyla is practicing her singing because she is looking forward to singing to her sister (she insists the baby is a girl!) and in particular, she wants to sing Silent Night as that is her favorite song!

Azelia makes me laugh with her excitement about the baby.  She is super sweet and will say "morning baby" to the baby but will make me laugh as she proceeds to blow raspberries on my belly because she thinks the farting sound is hilarious...and it is!

As for Jarrod and I...it's starting to really hit us that in 3 weeks we'll have another child to raise up.  It's been surreal up till now, but now it's becoming a reality!  We're excited to have our baby!