36 Week Ultrasound

Going into the ultrasound today I told my mom that the baby would weigh 6lbs. 13 oz. on the dot. I told her to keep that in mind because we were about to find out how much he weighes now. So we go in and the ultrasound starts. The baby looks great. HE IS NO LONGER BREECH!!! Thank god. He is perfectly head down and locked into position. He has a very chubby face. And then came the weight........................doc says 6lbs. 13oz! I dunno how I know these things since I have predicted everything so accurately throughout my pregnancy with Shea but it blows my mind every time still. So I am now predicting he will be born on May 15th. Thats my prediction and I'm sticking to it.

Oh and I almost forgot...I'm 1/2 cm dialated and 60% effaced! This means my cervix has thinned out 60 percent. I have a more detailed ultrasound on Friday with Dr. Visintine which I will get recorded and pictures from. YAY!

We are getting close to that time people! VERY VERY CLOSE!

Baby Shower Gifts!

I have been working non-stop trying to get the baby's room put together and building all the big baby stuff. Everything is still not finished, especially the baby's room (it looks sort of plain right now). But for the most part, I was able to get pictures of most of the stuff. So here is a peek at what we have set up so far...

Here is the Graco play yard. I love this thing but what a pain in the butt to assemble! I built this this morning. It really is nice and the colors are so clean looking!

A picture of the baby swing. This is so cute, I would have picked it out myself. I see Shea spending alot of time in it...

Shea's aunt Angie felt that the baby should have expensive Nike shoes so I made sure to take a picture of them up close. Our baby will be stylin' that's for sure...

So here is some pictures of Shea's room. It's sort of small so it was hard to get a picture of the room as a whole (which is disappointing since its really cute). I tried to lay most of the gifts out to get pictures of everything.

All these clothes are just 1/3 of what we actually have. These are just from the first load I washed.

I still need to pick up some art for the walls, curtains, and I'm moving the lamp, but hopefully you can tell how nice the cherry furniture is. I know we have a queen size bed in there, that's for me mainly when Jay has to work and I need to sleep with the baby alone...

Here is the bouncer, the Snugglenest, and the Ocean Adventure Gym. I didn't assemble the gym because the cats will make it all hairy and nasty before the baby arrrives.

Shea's dresser with our new froggy humidifier, diaper depot, and baby's first football...

The baby crib with the new bedding and my Thomas Kinkade artwork above it. I think I should adjust the painting....

I tried to get a picture of the whole room but I broke the bed as this picture snapped (haha)...

Here is the inside of the crib, I put the bobby, bobby cover, sling, nightlight, switch plate, stuffed animal, diaper stacker, hooded towel set, and pillow in there to try to showcase everything...

And the Shea's bathroom. We just picked up the whale tub, I love it...

Baby Shower Pictures!

Here is a bunch of pictures from the baby shower. Alot of pictures I didn't post because I was in them and I am pretty embarrassed about how swollen my face and body look. So I hope no one thinks I chose specific pictures by what gifts I was opening, it was just sort of random.

Before everyone showed up, I took a picture of Jay goofing around...


Here is a picture of the cherry chip cake Angie's friend made, soooo cute....

Mom took a picture of me by all the gifts....

I love this, Debbie and Angie made me a diaper cake!

Christina, her baby Alice, and my mom...Alice is such a sweetie!

Angie was able to hold Alice. I love this picture...

Our table. Mom, Candice and her brother Josh, Christina and Alice, and me all working coloring baby onesies...

Matt, another Josh, Jay, Jake, and Jordan all playing hacky-sack...

Jake, Matt, Josh, Jay, and Jordan (who you can't see) at their table coloring baby onesies...

Opening the baby swing...

Soft and Fuzzy Pooh collection nightlight and switch cover...

I love this blanket, it matched perfectly with the Pooh bedding we recieved...

Haha Jay's face is classic...

And of course we got some Mets and Giants stuff for the baby....

I know I mentioned this in my last post but I have to say it again. Thank you Debbie and Angela for making the baby shower so nice for me. You guys put alot of effort into making it special and I really appreciate it. We had lots of good food, drinks, and party decorations, as well as gifts. It was a happy day for me. And thank you to everyone who came to the shower. We invited sooo many people and barely anyone showed up, but for the people who did come, you guys are awesome and really good friends to me and Jay. Especially all you guys who came and participated, I love you guys! I know alot of women couldn't make it because they had to work or were going out of town, we missed you being there. And really, thank you to everyone who couldn't make it but still came by to drop their gifts off and say hi or the people who met with Jay after the shower at PT's.

~Post Baby Shower~

Sorry everyone, I know it's been a few days since the baby shower and I haven't updated yet. I have been so exhausted and sore. Jay and I ran errands Sunday morning and then went to the shower Sunday afternoon. Then we had friends over at the apartment that night, then the next morning we were up early shopping for baby stuff and finally a doctors appointment. The doctor's appointment went good, I now start my weekly doctor's visits and next Tuesday I have an ultrasound, some lab work, and they will check me to see if I'm dialating. Totally awesome news!

So we have lots of pictures of the baby shower and I want to take even more pictures of the gifts when I assemble them today or tomorrow. I also want to talk about the baby shower in detail, but not until I have some pictures uploaded. So I will be busy today putting things together and then I'll post something tonight or tomorrow. But I want to give a special thank you to Jay's mom and sister, Debbie and Angie because they are so great and they put so much effort into making the baby shower special for Jay and I. I want to also thank everyone who showed up to the shower and to everyone who couldn't show up but still showed us support. And all the gifts were fantastic. I love you all.

BABY SHOWER

The baby shower is tomorrow! We are so excited! I've been waiting for this day for 8 months and its finally here! YIPPPEEEEEE!

~34 Weeks~

I almost don't even want to show these pictures but I guess I will since I've been doing the photo thing my whole pregnancy, so here goes...

34 Weeks + 1 Day

I have lots of stretch marks now, but I hear they fade quite a bit after a while so that's good news. I figured I would get them eventually since my mom had them. And I needed to grow pretty large since I'm carrying the next big NFL star so I can live with them knowing that. =)

For comparison here is some pictures from earlier months up until now...

6 weeks...

12 weeks...

20 weeks...

24 weeks...

26 weeks...

29 weeks...

32 weeks...

and 34 weeks...

*Update* Baby Shower

So I found out today that Jay can be a total idiot. He told everyone to avoid using our baby registry to buy baby shower gifts because he thought that I would find out what people were buying when I checked the website online. AND he said if it were up to him everyone would just buy us gifts from MLB.com and that would make him happy. So people have been buying gifts based on what Jay wants...ughhh.

SO...I am pretty irritated now by that since the registry is sooooo important since I put alot of things on there that I think we will need like the boppy, thermometer, first aid kit, tub, bottle warmer, bottle steam sterilizer, baby care timer, etc.

If you are planning on going to the baby shower and plan on getting something, please, please, please use the Babiesrus registry. Its under Natasha Gerken or Jason Gerken. Don't listen to Jay because Jay is a man and doesn't know any better. Thank you.

Baby Name

It looks like we have a baby name that we are actually sticking to this time. Yesterday I just got fed up with calling the baby "Baby". I felt like I was talking to a baby I don't even know or something. So I called Jay and told him that he could name the baby as long as I get to name our next boy, if we have another boy in the future. I really just wanted Jay to feel involved in some part of this pregnancy since I get to have all the experiences and he doesn't. So Jay wants to name the baby Shea John Gerken. Shea is Irish and means "hawk-like". Some other meanings I found were "majestic", "admirable", "graceful", "free", and "courageous". It's also the name of the Mets old stadium, Shea Stadium.

This is what Jay wrote on his blog:

"With just under two months to go before the arrival of my little dude we have decided on a name...

Shea John Gerken

Shea is an Irish name and means: Hawk-like or majestic; an Irish family name and the name of New York's Shea Stadium.

Everyone knows I'm a huge Mets fan and not the avid watcher of birds so you can guess how the name came to be.

You can check out this link for more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shea_Stadium

John is both of our grandfather's names so it just felt like it would be a nice fit for the middle name.

And Gerken is my last name...pretty easy decision on that!"

So that's that for now!

~32 week photos~

Sorry I haven't posted anything sooner...sorry Bree...=) I've been wanting to wait on the pictures until I grew a bit bigger. So this is from today 4/1/09

Complete with a funky belly button and stretch marks! YAY! In case anyone is wondering why my belly button has a red spot...its from when I had a belly button piercing when I was a teenager. I guess the scar tissue turns red when its stretched like that.

So I am getting pretty excited about the baby shower in a little over two weeks! I'll be even more excited that I'll be 34 weeks and a couple days at that point. Then shortly after that I have my 36 week ultrasound on May 1st. I am super thrilled to say the baby has had excellent movement. He is a little ninja in my belly. He spends alot of time now lying on his side which is better than him being breech all the time. I think he might have completely turned upside-down at some point because I start feeling lots of pressure with the weight change. I really dont want the doctors to perform an external version to turn him so hopefully in four weeks he will be where he needs to be locked into position.

In the meantime, Jay and I have been keeping busy. We are going to start getting the apartment baby proofed and replacing old stuff with new stuff. I was able to get Jay out of the house yesterday in order to go see the Titanic exhibit and the Bodies exibit at the Luxor. Jay had free tickets from his job (which would have cost close to $90-100 for the both of us). We saw titanic first and it was a trip! It was very emotionally overwhelming and realistic. Jay really enjoyed it alot. We then saw Bodies which is filled with real human remains that have been processed with polymer to preserve them. They had entire bodies, bones, random organs, etc. It was interesting but its pretty creepy too. They had facts on the wall and one of them said women who eat lots of garlic have babies that breastfeed better...so at least I learned something new. Jay and I were going to skip the room which contained embryos and fetuses but then I decided to go in at the last minute. Jay hated that room. It was interesting though to see real preserved embryos throughout every stage of pregnancy and then the actually larger fetuses. I was actually blown away by it all until I saw a baby in a tube that is my babies age right now, and then I got freaked out. I thought it was bad ju-ju for me to be in there any longer.

So after that kind of excitement, we needed somewhere to relax so we headed over to Shark Reef. I had only been to see the top of the shark tank so this time I was able to walk through the whole thing. I know I will be bringing the baby back there all the time. When we were in the touch pool room with the sting rays, I wanted so badly just to touch one but I couldn't manuever my big self through the people so I quietly sat at the other end of the pool and observed. The sting rays were a good 15-20 feet away being idle and so I was shocked when out of nowhere an ivory colored sting ray bee-lined it right for me and sort of stopped so I could reach him. As soon as I touched him a few times he went back to the other end of the pool. I don't know why but this made my day feel great.

I hope Jay and I can have many days like that with the baby. I love those type of outings, too bad the best places to go are on the strip. Being pregnant down on the strip is way stressful but its fun once you are doing something indoors.

So I hope everyone is getting excited about the baby coming soon! I know the baby's grandmas can't wait. My mom already has plans to kidnap the baby from me and take him to lunch so she can pretend he is hers. Hahaha. I'm starting to get a little frightened of the whole labor thing so it will be great to have our moms there guiding me through it all.

Well, expect updates at 34 weeks for pictures and 34 weeks and four days since that the day of the baby shower. I'll try to get as many pictures as I can and when the baby's nursery is set up, we'll get pictures of that too. Oh and the baby is still nameless but we are working this out. =)