Pressure

Parenting is kind of like living in a pressure cooker or under a microscope or as part of an olympic competition. There's just a lot of pressure and a lot of competition. From the get-go. From the first day of pregnancy you start thinking about those pregnant women that run marathons at 36 weeks along. You start thinking about those women that just "glow" and love every second of being pregnant. About half-way through the pregnancy you start analyzing how much weight you've gained and wondering how that compares to your friends and coworkers that have had babies. If you're like me, you start out the pregnancy really gung-ho--this time you're going to eat really healthy, cut out all the junk, cut out caffeine, exercise and stay in good shape the entire time. And then you reach about 6 weeks and start feeling miserable. And suddenly, you really could care less if you ever see another vegetable and those perky pregnant women on the workout DVDs make you want to go crawl in bed and pull the blanket over your head.

Add in the hormones. It's just a mess. You wind up feeling like a massive failure before you even hold the kid in your arms. I'm having a little failure pity party today. Tomorrow will be better.

Note to self

Prenatal workouts are a lot harder when you haven't worked out in 3 months and you're 6.5 months pregnant than they are when you are in good shape and only 3.5 months pregnant.

Things I will miss

With 11 weeks to go in what will very likely be the last pregnancy I will ever experience...a few things that I will miss:

Feeling him move inside of me.
Having him all to myself.
The anticipation of wondering what he will be like.
Having a conversation topic with complete strangers.
Baby hiccups.
Not feeling guilty when we stop for ice cream.
Emails comparing my baby's size to random vegetables.
Seeing him on ultrasounds.
Hearing his heartbeat.

Forrest

I have a son named Forrest.

I so love his name. It's everything that I wanted in a name for my child. It's not high in popularity. I don't know anyone with the name. It's easy to spell. It's easy to pronounce. It goes well with Heidi. It just feels like the name to me.

We didn't share Heidi's name until after she was born, but I'm finding it is fun this time around being able to share when asked. Especially because we're getting such great reactions. Though it honestly wouldn't matter to me, I love it so much.

Who's more excited?

We decided on a name!

There are lots of arguments that people use for not finding out baby's gender, but for me, I just love knowing because you get to figure out what THE name is before baby is born. It's so much easier for me to feel bonded to my baby when I can kind of picture him and even better when I start thinking of him as his name. It wasn't a huge secret that I was hoping for a girl this time around, but now I'm just so excited about my boy and I'm so in love with him (and with his name)!

We decided for sure a few days ago and I've waited to reveal the final name until the name letters that I ordered came. They came today while I was at work, but I have to have Josh's help to hang up the pegboard that they'll go on, so I'm still waiting. After the pegboard is up (with the baskets and decorations on it), I'm just waiting for one print and then his room will be totally ready.

The big question is, who's more excited? Me--to reveal his name? Or all the people that I've been teasing about it that are waiting for the pictures. It's just another plus to me of finding out the gender. I got to have a super-fun day of telling friends and family that he was a boy (and all the anticipation of doing it), now I get to have another fun time revealing his name, and come April will get to share all the rest of the details :)

Guess it's all the perspective

I went back to work today after the 11-day Christmas break. I was feeling really good about myself, knew I'd only gained a pound or two in a couple of weeks and actually feeling small now that I'm 6 months along (which seems like an okay time period to actually be BIG). Then I got to work. Not 1, Not 2, Not 3, but 4 different coworkers made comments about how much I've grown over break and how I've really "popped." Seriously, kids, I popped like 3 months ago, now it's just baby growing in there. Then a kindergartener confirmed my coworkers' thoughts by saying "you're going to have a baby soon!" And she looked properly shocked when I told her I still had 3 more months.

Luckily, Josh was smart enough to agree with me when I told him I was feeling small and like I hadn't grown that much recently. I'm just going to pretend my coworkers haven't been paying attention for the last few months and expected to see a big belly when I came back.