Yes..... 39 Weeks Pregnant

Yes...... 39 weeks pregnant and yes..... still counting...

First I am relieved that baby Joshua did not decide to make his debut on Christmas day / my b/day.... That is such a huge relief. However, here we are today at 39 weeks and still counting.... I know a full term baby goes till 40 weeks but somewhere inside of me I was hoping that he might decide to make an earlier entry into this world. We love him so much already and we are so eager to meet him but then again, we have to wait for him to decide when he would like to join us. Anyway, as of right now, we have fully surrendered to the fact that he will come in his time and not ours. I think this is an amazing lesson for us and I am so proud of myself to getting to this point.

As of right now, my belly is huge and the skin around my belly is fully stretched too. A little while back, baby Joshua changed from feeling like a big watermelon to feeling like a sack of rocks. I can feel his back, knees and feet fairly easily if either of us moves. It is starting to get very uncomfortable in there because some part of his body is stabbing into my right rib. The sporadic pelvic pains and the complete lack of energy are some of the day to day symptoms I am now experiencing.

So we picked up baby Joshua's swing (see photo below) and his essentials. Now it is just a waiting game :( We hope that next weekend will be the big weekend for his debut and we will soon have some good news :)

So, here is this weeks picture.

Thank you for reading and see you all next week....

38 Weeks pregnant and still counting........

If you are still wondering if we are still pregnant, the answer is YES..... 38 weeks pregnant and still counting. I hope we will not be counting for much longer now.

From this experience of being pregnant, I have learnt that the hardest period of pregnancy is undoubtedly the last 4 weeks of pregnancy for a full term of 40 weeks. The lack of comfort is like no other, the anxiety of when the big moment will be is nerve wrecking and restrictive, the questions that run through ones mind regarding their parental capabilities are unending, the fatigue is incomparable, the constant bathroom visits are plain annoying, the list goes on and on....... I guess one has to relearn the boundaries of a lot of virtues that we take for granted.

Gosh, time flies by so fast, Christmas is here!!! It seems like we just celebrated Thanksgiving the other day. This is always a wonderful time of year to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and to enjoy and cherish various family relationships. However, most importantly as Christians, this is also a time to evaluate our relationship with Christ. On the other hand, December 25th is my B/day too..... I guess the fact that I share my birthday with one of the biggest Holidays of the year is in itself an oxymoron, meaning it is a bitter sweet day for me. It would be nice to have just my own day where the loved ones in my life just spare some thoughts JUST FOR ME and for me to just take that day off to reflect on the start of another new year in my life. Being much older now, I am much more rational about the sharing of the day. Right now though I am on pins wondering if baby Joshua might decide to make his debut on this same day....... It is interesting to even just think that there is a slight chance that our baby may share a birthday with me..... that will be a very hard one, trying to share three landmark celebrations in our family all celebrated in one day... Honestly, I hope he waits till after Christmas so we can have a special day JUST FOR HIM....

Enough of my rantings about sharing my B/day, we would like to take this time to wish all our family and friends who live in various continents Happy Holidays!!! We especially want to pass a special Krismasi Njema to our family and friends in Kenya. I really miss you all during this festive season.

So we finally received baby Joshua's travel system. Here is a picture of the travel system. Jonathan put it together and it looks great, thanks Honey! We only have one reservation about this travel system though, it is bulky. Now that everything is about ready for baby Joshua, the reality that he will be here in less than two weeks is really setting in.........

So here is this week's picture. My belly has not really changed much. I think I have reached a plateau in terms of weight gain and belly size for this pregnancy!!

In conclusion, HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!!! and Happy early Birthday to me :) I would much rather celebrate the relationship we have with Jesus Christ than my piling of years lol... :) Stay warm for those celebrating a WHITE Christmas....... and enjoy the sunshine for those who live in the Kenyan savanna and tropics!!

 

Thank you for reading and see you all next week, hopefully with some good news :)

37 weeks...Yes, Officially full term and Married!!

37 Weeks pregnant this weekend, meaning baby Joshua is now clinically considered officially full-term!!! To add icing on the cake, WE ARE MARRIED!!!!!! If you have not heard it already, we would like to share with you the news that, YES WE ARE MARRIED. It really does have a nice ring to it... very sobering and blissful too!!!! I love you honey! Since this is the baby blog I will not go into the details but yes, Thursday was our big day! Thank you to all who have visited with us, called or emailed to wish us well.

Being full term, I am also officially "extremely uncomfortable." I have taken to sleeping on the couch which offers comfort like a recliner... way much more comfortable than the good old regular bed. Some people keep asking if I am uncomfortable and tired of being pregnant... the answer is YES. Even though labor could be two or three weeks away, I feel like things are heading in that direction. I feel a lot more pressure in my back and pelvis, yes a lot more pelvic sharp pain than the last couple of weeks. The Braxton Hicks are getting more and more frequent too and more unpleasant. I have been blessed to keep the stretch marks away so far, I pray this trend continues. I especially hope they continue to stay away for the whole pregnancy term... Besides having sharp cramps and a lot more Braxton Hicks, which are also becoming more intense there is no other early labor signs..... If you asked me, I would love for Baby Joshua to join us before Christmas or new year... but hey, it is not up to me to decide lol!

Now that we are safely into the 37th week, baby Joshua is theoretically ready to live in the real world without much complications. His lungs should be mature and ready to start breathing air without any aid being offered by hospital equipment. Now all we can do is wait until he decides to join us and make our family complete. According to most experts, baby Joshua is now about the size of a watermelon, one of my most favorite fruit during my pregnancy... I thought I would dramatize it a little with this picture often used by most baby websites to show the development of a baby at the 9 month of pregnancy......

I just got done with work on Friday, but I am onto doing my school finals next week and finishing my research for org research methods. Besides the fact that I have all these work to do plus regular household chores... and yes, getting my hospital bag ready,...I don't feel well enough or rather I do not have enough energy or motivation to do much, so I feel like I am just sitting around and procrastinating....not good.... Anyway, as far as this pregnancy goes, I'm ready (as ready as possible) to move on to the next phase, but again I have to remind myself it's not up to me.

Some quick statistics to share with you all, in the last weeks of pregnancy, the placenta changes to allow larger molecules to pass through. This means the baby starts getting maternal antibodies, giving the baby temporary immunity to diseases that the mother is immune to, in preparation for life outside the womb.  Lungs and other organs continue to mature. Hormonal changes in both the baby and the mother are working together to start labor. The baby is putting on about half a pound a week these days.....

So here is this weeks picture. Yes, I know.... the adding of pounds is unforgiving........ well, lets hope that my body will work with me to lose these pounds after baby Joshua is born.... Looks like the baby has dropped for sure :)

Thank you for reading and see you all next week!

Baby Shower....yay!

First, I would like to apologize to all of you that follow up with our progress on the blog for not posting our pregnancy progress of week 35. So much has been going on, I just got overwhelmed by school, work, and just being pregnant :( 

So we had our Baby Shower this past weekend. Jonathan's mother, together with family threw it for us and it was great! We were surrounded by family and friends. We played games, ate great food and we were graciously blessed with many presents for Baby Joshua. We feel so blessed to have so many people that love us and we know baby Joshua does feel blessed to be loved by so many already!!!! Thanks again to mom Debbie for hosting the shower and everyone who came and shared in baby Joshua's first shower!! We feel loved and blessed to have such wonderful people in our lives! I will post pictures from the shower at a later date.......

So here we are today less than one month before the arrival of baby Joshua. Today marks exactly 27 days before the arrival of our bundle of joy. I am both anxious and nervous about the days getting closer. Mostly I am happy that I will be relieved of all these discomforts that I am currently experiencing...

Of late I have been thinking more and more about labor.... just listening to people that are more than willing to share both their horror and wonderful stories about labor can be scary and comforting respectively. For me, I am decided on using an epidural. I do not think this will be a time to proof my heroics on withstanding pain. I know my pain tolerance is next to zero.

The other night I was sitting and thinking, I just couldn't put my mind around how truly miraculous being pregnant is. I kept thinking about how no matter what, your body knows how to grow this child, how in 9 months, the baby will come, whether you are ready or not and most amazingly that it takes 1 egg and 1 sperm of miniscule size, to create a human being. If this doesn't make you realize how amazing God is, I don't know what will.

Well, anyways, I'm getting larger by the day, and it's getting harder to get comfortable especially when rolling over in bed.... or sitting on the couch to watch TV. Here is this week's picture. 36 weeks and counting............... I just realized I had a picture taken during by niece Jill's birthday at about week 15 or 16. I thought it would be fun to compare it with this week's picture.

So here I am at about week 15 or 16.

And here I am at week 36.

Thank you for reading and see you all next week!