37 weeks

WHAT A WEEK! This has been an incredibly long and emotional week. A week ago Jose went away for the night for work. That evening I got two text messages within seconds of each other. One was from a dear friend saying they feared her babies heart had stopped beating (she was pregnant) and the other from a family member saying that Jose's aunt was in her final days battling cancer. Within a half hour of that news, I was called to pray for young boy we love who had smashed his hand in the car door (only when the news came to me, I heard that he had "mangled" his hand). Later I got a call that the high school youth pastors had been in a car accident (they were fine). Throw in the mix that the next day Jose's nephew had possible appendicitis and had to go to the ER (make it even more exciting, they were babysitting Aubri at the time and she had to stay with my mom at her work at the doctors office). We lost Jose's aunt, and the following day a sweet baby girl was birthed and is dancing in heaven. Jose and I took turns crying over the past few days.

Over the weekend, my amazing church family threw me a beautiful baby shower. It was so awesome to see different ladies who stepped up to help decorate and cook. It was sweet and special, but it was hard to not be mindful of missing my friend who was at home mourning the loss of her baby. Even still, I felt so blessed by the love everyone has for baby Ezra and feel so much more prepared for him coming!

I hate to admit it, but I turned to chocolate a lot more this week than I should have. The scale at the doctors office reflected my poor eating habits as I added 2 more pounds to the total in one week. I also got some bad news at the appointment that I have Group Beta Strep- a common bacteria that is oftentimes present in healthy people. It isn't dangerous or a big deal to most, but it changes a lot of what I have planned out for our labor. The first major bummer is I have to take at least 2 doses of antibiotics in labor before the baby is born. They are 4 hours apart, so in order to have time to administer it I have to get to the hospital at least 5 hours before Ezra is born, and the doctor wants me to come in at the first sign of labor. Since I only labored 7 hours at the hospital with Aubri, I planned on even less this time, and as a good Bradley student I intended to do the laboring at home. My midwife had told me I could leave the hospital in 12 hours, but now the minimum stay is 24 hours!! And as most people know, the reason I first became interested in natural childbirth was to avoid the dreaded needle. I didn't even have an IV with Aubri, but this time I get IV antibiotics, and then they leave the little saline lock in my hand in between doses!! I really am nervous for having to look at that thing in my hand.

This update is really turning into a bummer of a post. An update on Aubri will change that! Our little girl is something else. She has such an imagination. She is constantly "pretending". She always wants us to order pretend food for her to make, and told me yesterday she had a restaurant called "Panda Bear like Panda express." She wanted me to give her noodles to cook with, but instead she grabbed a box of goldfish crackers and insisted it was noodles. When she spilled them on the floor she would not respond to me asking to pick up the fishes until I called them noodles.

She is also very into pretend driving. I am constantly finding corners of the rooms piled with blankets, pillows and toys that she calls her cars. She gets under the blankets and starts driving most of the time to her great-grandparents or to Nana and Papa's house. This morning I was making her bed, and started picking up the teddy bears and pillows on the floor. She immediately started crying that I "broke the car!"

Yesterday I was having a conversation with my parents and she kept interrupting for my attention. I told her to hold on, and she said "Mom I need something!" I hadn't hear her say this so I stopped and asked her what she needed. She said " I need money." I told her I didn't have any and she said she wanted pretend money. After I pretended to give her money she happily went on her way!

Aubri has also decided it is fun to take off her clothes. Lately she strips her clothes off and sits herself on the toilet- can't really complain much about that one! But she also had a day where despite the house being chilly, she kept taking her shirt off. She kept saying she had a baby in her belly too and wanted to see him kick. She made it clear that she was "pweetening" that there was a baby. Silly girl!

She knows the baby is coming soon because we are putting the final touches on the room, packing his diaper bag, and getting ready for him. She keeps asking to hear the story of what will happen when it is time for mommy to push him out. It is so surreal that the day may be here in a week!

One final update- I'm typing my first post on our new Mac! No more dinosaur computer that takes 20 minutes to upload pictures too! Jose really wanted a mac, but I was nervous of the cost and learning how to use it. I gave in and got to admit I'm loving it! Only thing is I can't figure out how to drag things to the right spot!