The Third Trimester- Yeah! :)

We've entered into the third trimester and we are thankful for how well the pregnancy is continuing to go! We also made our first 2 purchases for the baby:) Above you can see a couple of toy/blanket bins I found on our trip to IKEA last Saturday. The dark brown and blue match the baby bedding we finally settled on. The blue blanket is a gift from my Mom, which she made herself. It smells like her, too, which I love! The outside of the bins match a baby crib color that we are considering. We know we want to do the room in blues and browns, so these were an exciting find for me.
We also purchased a baby stroller set! Here we call it a kocarek (ko-char-ek). I don't know how to adequately describe what these things really are here, but they are something like small cars:) They have awesome shock systems underneath with the wheels, the wheels alone are strong and more like tires, and all of the gear that comes with them for winter weather is intimidating. Our baby will be born during the winter, so I've had fun playing with it all and figuring out how everything works and zips and folds... The far left piece is the car seat which also pops on to the stroller and can be used when the baby is first born. The middle piece is usually for babies older than one month here and used mostly in winter and spring. It's heavily lined inside for warmth and comfort and zips up almost completely with the outer lining. It's also used on the stroller. The third piece is for babies after they've learned to sit up safely and are older. It folds down into a flat bed or sits up straight. I love the underneath storage as well, because you use it here as your shopping cart when you walk to the grocery store with your kid and then have to walk home with all of the groceries stored somewhere. Wow, that's a lot of detail about a stroller:) I guess you can tell I'm excited about it.
Here is a belly shot for the beginning of the 28th week. This shirt always makes me look a little lower and smaller than I think I really look. I changed shirts further below and you can see what a difference that makes.


We had our doctor's appointment today. Everything went really well. I found out that I passed all of the blood glucose testing. No pregnancy-induced diabetes, yeah! I'm very thankful for that blessing. My exam went well, no problems there. The ultrasound was awesome, but did not make for a good picture so, we didn't get one this time. This kid really wants to keep us guessing as to what he'll really look like when he comes out:) I guess he knows his parents really like surprises and don't mind waiting. He's measuring well and weighing in at 2 lbs 6 oz. His heartrate was good/normal. He was playing with his eyes and nose the whole time so we never saw a clear profile shot of him. We saw lots of hand movement and fingers opening and closing on the nose and eye area. His head was down, which is great, and his feet were definitely kicking up in the rib area:) It was awesome to see him playing in there. His movements are really visible on the outside now, as well. They have been for some time in the form of sharp, sudden pokes and kicks here and there, but now they look alien-like as you watch him move across the belly. I love watching it!

Many of my pregnant friends here tease me that he already keeps my schedule. Usually he kicks a lot during the day and moves around as I work. Usually, when I lay down to sleep, he stops (or has already stopped by then) and appears to be asleep during the night with me. I know I'm lucky in this way. I don't usually feel him move again until I wake up in the morning and then he wakes up and begins moving a lot with me. Well, last night was a different story for the first time. I woke up around 5 to use the restroom and I guess he thought that meant it was time to get up. I could hardly sleep after that for all the moving and kicking he was doing:) I hope that's not going to be a new pattern- yet. I know it's coming when he's born, but I like being able to sleep well right now!:)

We go for our next appointment at the end of September. I'll be 31-32 weeks then. I'll begin, at the next visit, to have routine external monitoring of the baby's heartbeat and movement over a 20-30 minute period. I also hope to tour our local hospital in the next couple of weeks to see exactly where we will go and what their rules/procedures are like here. I look forward to that as well!

Thanks for all of your prayers! We're very thankful to God for another great check-up!