36 weeks: 4 weeks left!

4 weeks left till lana's due date and one week till full term/maternity leave starts. i'm trying my best to enjoy these last few weeks before lana's here, despite the bodily challenges i am constantly faced with. as my mom keeps saying to me, "you think it's hard now? wait till she's out...and then you'll want her to crawl back in." is the "she" in that sentence referring to lana or me? hmph. and i know i've said this before, but sometimes i forget that being pregnant necessarily means that i'll soon become a mom and have a baby to take care of. or maybe it's not that i forgot, but that i never really got it in the first place. maybe it finally sinks in once you're up at 3am trying to shove your boob into a crying baby's mouth. at least that's how i imagine it. but seriously, once lana's born, i (and sh) will never not be a parent again. sheer craziness. i hope God knows what he's doing! haha.

body is heavier, baby is lower. stretching pains have morphed into stinging pains - the lower side of my belly feels like it's sunburnt and it's super sensitive to the touch. i went to the OB yesterday. i have officially broken the 130 pound threshold - i am now 130.8 pounds (but with clothes on!). holy moly. i know i haven't gained much weight but it's still crazy to see numbers on the scale you've never seen before in your life. i have an ultrasound thursday to estimate the weight of the baby (let's keep it low lana!) and from now on, i go to the doctor once a week so she can check on the progress of my dilation.

i have a question for moms - did your own moms (and maybe MILs) impose a lot of restrictions on you when you had the baby? i'm a little tired of hearing all these old wives' tales (mostly from my aunts) about what you can and can't do after having a baby. i'm trying to be open-minded but there's no freakin' way that i am not showering for up to a month afterwards. i've also heard: don't open the fridge, don't drink cold drinks, don't read, don't sit for too long, eat iron-rich foods 3x a day for a month, don't go outside for a month, don't take baby out for several weeks, etc. i'm not saying all of them are crazy, but it's hard to know what is crap and what might have some truth to it. the pediatrician in our childbirth class did say to keep baby away from crowded public places until 6-8 weeks of age, so that i'm ok with. but moms, if you know from personal experience either way, i'd be glad to hear it. and seriously, koreans can't be the only crazy ones when it comes to this stuff right? right? o_O

bump!

35 weeks (+1 day): 5 weeks to go.

i know i'm super antsy for lana to come out, but i am somewhat appeased that i am now close enough to do a countdown - when people ask "when are you due?" or "how far along are you?" it makes me feel better that i can say "i have 5 weeks left" instead of "35 weeks." it doesn't work quite as well when you're like "oh well i have 18 weeks left."

still, with that said, physically everything is getting harder and harder. i feel ginormous, my hips, back, legs and belly ache and pull, i don't sleep as well, i'm constipated, i can't stand or sit for long periods, etc. as mom friends tell me, this is nature's way of making you totally ready for whatever it takes to get the baby out.

i think what's surprised me the most about pregnancy (in terms of the way my body feels) is how much the legs suffer. you always figure that the belly area and torso will have a lot of the burden to bear, but i didn't realize how hard it is on the legs. i keep thinking of those pre-pregnancy days when i could run around and do whatever i felt like without having to consider my body. i had a freakout moment last night - i came home from work, sat down for dinner, and just stayed seated at the dinner table for a couple hours. after dinner, i chatted with my mom and then played blokus with my cousin. my mom kept telling me to stop playing and go lie down on the couch so i finally did. my legs felt funny once i got to the couch so i looked down and holy moly my legs had swelled up like balloons! my right leg was way worse than my left - i couldn't believe it was my own leg. and my toes looked like little sausages. :( i propped my feet up and my mom massaged my legs and feet for a good hour to help the swelling go down. it's much better today but i'm still wary of sitting or standing for too long. pregnancy makes you sympathize with all sorts of ailments out there that you never really thought about - obesity, water retention, shortness of breath, a "bad hip," etc.. i sound like a 70 year old.

overall i don't think i've been too bad with mood swings during the pregnancy. i was super exhausted and thus super irritable during the first trimester, but besides that i don't think i've been crazy pregnant lady. (and i haven't ever made unreasonable requests for the hubs to go out and get [name the sweet] for me in the middle of the night. then again i haven't had any weird cravings at all during the pregnancy.) but. i think the aforementioned physical ailments + the heat + the "just get her out of me!" feeling are contributing to the making of a sort of "preggzilla." i suppose sh could give a more objective view on this matter but you know, no need to bother him. :)

while we're talking about pregnancy, i came across this video and...well, just watch it. it's a clip from the show "i didn't know i was pregnant." it boggles the mind, i tell you.
http://jezebel.com/5821307/there-was-a-baby-in-my-sweatpants

bump!

34 weeks: are we there yet?

ok. 6 weeks to go. six! one two three four five six! i don't think i can last...! just when i think i can't get any bigger, i do. just when i feel like i can't become less mobile or more uncomfortable, i do. it's kind of unbelievable, how my body tops itself every week. i mean, i have a few more blog entries to go before lana's out. what else can i write about? it'll be a lot of different ways of saying "i want her out!" o_O

in other news, my nightly ritual goes something like this: i go up to the bedroom and just collapse on the bed in a random position. but then when i want to actually go to sleep, i look at the less than two feet i have to move over and it looks miles away. it really feels impossible. i say to sh, "i have to go...there" and point to my side of the bed. so then sh performs a variety of strategic moves to scooch me over to where i want to go. then it's another few moves to get me in sleeping position - on my side cuddled up with my body pillow. then i wake up in the middle of the night to pee (now a nightly occurrence) so then it's more moves to get me out of bed, and then back into bed. o_O in my mind i've analogized my lack of mobility to wearing one of those inflatable sumo suits. you know how funny it looks when people get knocked over in those suits and then roll back and forth but can't get back up on their feet? that's exactly how it feels.

i went to the OB yesterday. i now weigh 128 pounds (i had some stomach issues recently so i only gained one pound in two weeks - which means the weight gain is pretty much all lana). my OB is pretty sure the butt's up top, which is a good thing. she's in ready position. people have been telling me that it looks like my belly is starting to drop, which is also a good thing. despite the fact that i feel huge and everything aches, i try to move around a lot because walking moves the baby down. baby down = closer to baby out.

we had our first of two childbirth classes this past weekend. the nurse who leads it is a good teacher. and it's easier to watch someone 'show&tell' the labor and delivery process rather than read it in a book. we went through the stages of labor, practiced breathing, watched a video and also got a tour of the hospital. one of the awesome perks of delivering in nj (read: not nyc) is that all the rooms are private, and there's a couch in each room for the dad to sleep on if he wants to stay overnight. the facilities look amazing since the hospital was renovated not that long ago. we stopped by the nursery which got me super excited because we saw several cute little newborns in there. you forget how little they are when they first come out! i think it made everything more real, to see those newborns in person.

as for the nursery, jeanne came over to help prime and paint the dresser on saturday (she will work for food) - one more coat of paint, some new knobs and it'll be ready to go. i just hope the finished product looks ok and not too...homemade. i also finished the crib mobile, so we just need to figure out how to hang it from the ceiling (so it doesn't end up falling on lana). daddy's done painting the nursery walls too, so we're making progress. i'll post pics once everything's done. the piece that i hope pulls the whole nursery together is this really cute rug i scored for 1/3 price on hautelook. i can't wait for it to come.

bump! (my "waist" now measures 40.5 inches. holy. beached. whale.)

33 weeks (+ 2 days): daddy post

Hi guys, it's me, SH. After the craziness of the fourth of July weekend (we grilled 3 times over a 4-day span), I decided to give mommy a break. So as you can read from the title, we are less than 2 months away from Lana's arrival. Mommy's doing great, although she is getting to the point where sleeping is starting to get a bit difficult and moving around is becoming more and more cumbersome. So your prayers would be appreciated. We're really grateful that she's able to start her maternity leave 2 weeks before her due date. We know that most women don't get that, so we are definitely blessed. Praise God!

As I said in my last post, I had mentioned that we would tell you Lana's Korean name. For those of you who don't know, traditionally in Korea, the naming of a child goes to her paternal grandfather. So once we told my parents that we were expecting, I know my dad probably went to work immediately. :)

Funny side-story about that...
Since my dad is a believer, I knew that his first choice would be to either pick a name out of the Bible or a name that has some Christian meaning rather than use traditional Korean names (not that there's anything wrong with that). So naturally he started by thumbing through the bible. One day when we met up with my parents (while he was still pondering different names), he tells us that for some reason only the female names kept jumping out at him. The guy names didn't even catch his eye. Therefore, he told us that he suspects that our baby was gonna be a girl. Keep in mind that this was weeks before we had our ultrasound to find out the sex and sure enough, when the time came, it was a girl! There's a whole other story about how my parents and I all thought that it was gonna be a girl and Carol thought the baby was gonna be a boy, I think Carol mentioned that in a previous post. :)

So after lots of prayer and thought on his part, he came up with the name of his first granddaughter: "HaYoung."

Her name is a combination of the Korean words for "God" and "glory/glorify"... to be a little more specific, he derived it from the Korean translation of the first question/answer of the Westminster Catechism.

<little bit of reformed doctrine>
Q. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
</little bit of reformed doctrine>

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Hmmm, I actually wanted to write a little bit about living in our new place in Jersey as well as my thoughts on becoming a dad and maybe respond a little on Carol's previous post about how I'm already whipped for Lana. :) But, this post is already getting way too long. Maybe next time...

Good night!
-SH


bump!