Pregnancy update: week 31

As most of you know we are currently seeing two health care professionals in regards to our pregnancy. We are seeing a midwife with the intentions of birthing at home but we are also continuing to see the OB that we used with our last child. It was my husband’s stipulation to feel comfortable with me birthing at home and was all around the best choice for us personally. My insurance covers the care under my OB and I have a history of preterm birth/risking out of home birthing so keeping my established physician just made sense. It saves me from frantically trying to find a doctor if I risk out last minute. Anyways, this week we had a check up with both of my caregivers and at my OB appointment we briefly discussed future pregnancies in regards to the Rhogam shot after this birth if our baby if a positive blood type. Yes. That’s right. Rather than discussing birth control like normal people, my husband and I are chatting up baby names for our next kid ha. (We decided on Whimslee ‘Winnie’ Reese and Wilder or Breckin Andrew btw). I was on the fence about doing another immune globulin shot after delivery if it was needed so I wanted my OBs input on that. I had already gotten my midwifes advice but having both of their opinions always makes me feel more secure with my final choice. At each appointment this week we discussed birth plans and schedules for ordering birthing supplies. It’s so incredibly crazy to me that we are realistically nearing show time. I will be 32 weeks on Wednesday which means that in 4 weeks I can birth at home and in 3 weeks I can hospital birth most likely without needing a NICU stay. Not that I WANT him to come early but the fact is that I’ve delivered 3 babies around that gestation so it’s a big possibility that it could happen again and it would in most cases be a successful low risk situation. We could be bringing a baby home in 3 weeks or birthing at home in 4 weeks! I’m so not ready for this journey to end. He just needs to stay put until after Christmas ha. 

We also did an elective 4d ultrasound on Granger this week, just as we did with our other four children. My mom and grandma think that he resembles Hudson but I didn’t really see any of us. He didn’t look familiar to me which makes me even more excited to see his features. I keep dreaming that he has lots of red hair and very pale skin. Either way one thing is certain, he’s chubbyyyyyy already just as i said that he’d be. He weighed 5 lbs even at 30 weeks and 6 days gestation. My fundal height measured 35 cm and my vitals were all perfect, as were his. Amazingly I’ve not gained any weight at all in almost 3 weeks. I’ve completely cut out drinking calories so I really feel like that’s helping me manage my weight in a healthy way. All in all things are going great right now aside from intense spd (pelvic pain) and the few days of preterm labor craziness that we had two weeks ago. We have lots of Halloween festivities this week and our maternity/family/Christmas pictures are this weekend. I have been planning this session for many, many years. I’m so excited about it. 

I’m planning to post part two of my essential oils 101 series by Halloween but if I don’t, I hope that everyone has a wonderful and SAFE Halloween full of fun. 

Essential oils for pregnancy, labor/delivery, and post partum care: part one

Essential oils have played a huge part in all of my pregnancies. Specifically peppermint oil for nausea and migraines but as I’ve learned more about oils I’ve realized just how extensive the options are. Today I’m going to post part 1 of a 3 part series on essential oils specifically in regards to pregnancy, labor/delivery, and post partum support. I’ll be referencing Young Living oils in this post but I’m happy to answer any questions about other brands and alternatives for these recommendations. I joke that I’m an oil hoe and have tried them all ha. I definitely have favorite brands and advice to give on what brands are better quality than others. 

• The resource that I’m referencing is The trenches by Kari Rae Lewis 

Pregnancy:

Emotional support — forgiveness, present time, stress away, peace & calming, and surrender can help with negative emotions. 

Stress relief & relaxation — you can apply stress away multiple times a day or diffuse it. You can diffuse or inhale stress away, frankincense, lavender, gentle baby, or copaiba. You can take an epsom salt bath with lavender or stress away. You can apply valor to your spine to support alignment from physical stressors. 

Sensitive nose — diffuse or inhale purification. 

Hormonal head support — peppermint on temples, deep relief on the base of the skull & back of the neck, frankincense or peppermint on your thumb then pressed to the roof of your mouth. 

Growing belly — apply frankincense and/or gentle baby. You can use rose ointment, kidscent tender tush, or seedlings baby oil as a base for these. 

Stay healthy — diffuse thieves and/or purification. Apply thieves to the bottom of your feet. Apply frankincense to the spine. 

Sore muscles — Apply copaiba and diluted panaway with wintergreen. Use deep relief roll on or stress away on spine. 

Acidic tummy — ingest 2 plus drops or lemon vitality or orange vitality to regulate the acids in your tummy. Drink 1 drop of lemon and/or peppermint in water. Apply digize and/or peppermint to stomach. 

Glowing skin — apply purification as spot treatment or frankincense all over.  

Delivery support — use geranium for elasticity of the perineum. 

Digestion — apply digize and/or peppermint to tummy. Ingest digize vitality, lemon vitality, and/or peppermint vitality. 

Mom brain — brain power applied daily to neck, throat, temples. 

“Not yet, baby” (my most used methods right now) — apply lavender to your belly for relaxing and calming mom. 

Peace & calming diffused or applied to moms chest. 

Note: use peppermint with caution if you plan to breastfeed. It’s been known to decrease milk supply. Most women don’t notice this issue when applying it to the bottoms of their feet though. It has also been used to help baby turn inside the womb so if you don’t want baby to turn, avoid applying it to your tummy. Digize and panaway contain small amounts of peppermint so keep that in mind. 

Again, if you have any questions at all or simply just want to chat all thing EO, I’m your girl and happy to help. 

What’s in my diaper bag + a quick 30 week pregnancy update

As a mom of soon to be five, the contents of my diaper bag for a newborn has changed over time. I used to over pack dramatically which isn’t always a bad thing but for the most part it was NOT convenient. It made the bag heavier and the more stuff that was in my bag, the harder that it was to find things quickly no matter how organized the bag was. Now I stick to my ‘musts’ and for us, these are those items:

Travel sized grooming/care kit! Mini baby soap, lotion, diaper rash cream, nail clippers, gripe water, ect. I keep those things in an easy to access Harry Potter pouch. Personally we love Dr. Bronner’s unscented Baby soap, babyganics, mama earth, or young living seedling. 

Diaper and wipes! I cloth diaper for the most part but with newborns sometimes even ‘newborn sized’ cloth diapers do not fit well so I am packing both disposables and cloth. We love thirsties, g diapers, bum genius, happy flute, Alva Baby, and rumparooz for cloth and bambo nature or target brand for disposables. Bambo is absorbent, eco friendly/biodegradable, and natural based. Target brand is unscented and unbleached. Pampers also makes a pure line now that I’ve used as a back up since the other two brands aren’t able to be purchased locally for us. I’m not a fan of Hello Bello or the Honest company. I personally think that they aren’t good quality (I tried them with my youngest and they either turned soggy super fast or leaked immediately). I also think that their holistic ways are a marketing ploy to make them more money. I just have a hard time supporting either company. In fact, some of the honest company’s products do contain chemicals and have been recalled multiple times. They are green washed. For wipes I stick to water wipes or 7th generation. 

Sleepers/outfits: With Granger being due in December I packed several sleepers and cozy outfits. L’oved Baby, Kate Quinn, Mac & Moon, Carter’s, H & M, ect are my personal favorite places to shop for baby clothes. Comfort is key when you have a newborn and in winter due/born baby cases, warmth is also a must. 

Jacket! He can’t wear it in his car seat for safety reasons so I packed it instead. I melted over this cute Carter’s crochet coat and it was super inexpensive. 

Hats! Again, warmth and comfort so we went with cozy beanie type of hats. I got the hospital style hat on Etsy but he also has a cute Carhart beanie that Brian got him and a Slouch Wear pom hat that hasn’t arrived yet.

His coming home outfit: I ordered this from a sweet friend that owns Mama’s Wildflower Designs. You can find her on Facebook. It’s super soft waffle knit and jersey knit combo.

Socks, booties, & mitten! I got the socks and mittens at Walmart and Target. I got his Goumi booties online. I love this company because 10% of the proceeds go to help sex trafficking victims. I’m going to order a few more colors and sizes once I know how they fit. They are super soft and will be super warm added over socks. Perfect for cold weather. 

Burp rags & Bibs! I loooove the brand Copper Pearl and Keababies so some of these are from thoses places but I also got some stuff from a shop on Amazon called Parker Baby Co.

Nursing/car seat/cart cover! Another Copper Pearl purchase. I keep a cover over the car seat too but like having a back up just in case we aren’t near his car seat when he gets hungry. 

Baby wearing wrap! The light blue one is Keababies brand but my other personal favorites are Solly Baby and Boba. 

Not pictured:

a custom blanket that I ordered on Etsy. It will be apart of his birth announcement so I don’t want to share it now though. It’s so beautiful and perfect. It was one of those things that when I saw it I knew that it was a must! I’m also not showing some of the outfits that I packed so that a few special photos of baby aren’t in items that I’ve already shared with you guys. 

Swaddle blankets! I love the brand Aden & Anais. They recently released a Harry Potter line but my best friend told me not to buy the swaddle set of 3 so I listened ha. She’s gifting them to us so that will complete our diaper bag contents. 

Note that this bag was packed with a possible hospital transfer in mind but it is mostly just the typical contents for a infant’s diaper bag, period. For our home birth i want all of his items that I will need right away or that i want for Certain pictures to be in one easy to access spot. 

A Quick 30 week update: After my positive post about home birth and a smooth pregnancy, the devil in typical devil fashion began to attack us. I ended up at the hospital for preterm labor, clotty bleeding, dilation, and decreased fetal movement. After some testing, medication, and precautions we got everything under control. I’m dilated to a ‘stretchy 2’ which caused the bleeding/bloody show. I still contract regularly but they are not in a pattern and at this point haven’t dilated me any further. We aren’t sure why Granger’s activity has dropped so much but the stress tests and monitoring keeps coming back well. He has heart rate fluctuations twice in 20 minutes as he should. He responds to being buzzed at. He moves when we push on him. He’s just not as peppy as he has been. My fluid levels look good. Placenta placement is great. He’s measuring 3 weeks ahead via ultrasound and fundal height. My midwife told me a few days ago that as long as I carry him full term, even if I have multiple preterm scares, i can still deliver at home. Granted everything else is low risk, of course. It’s hard to believe that as long as I make it 6 more weeks, i can realistically have my dream birth. Three of my children were born in 4-5 weeks from this gestation which is overwhelming if i let myself think about it. No matter when he comes, we are getting close to meeting him and that blows my mind. It’s going by so dang fast. 

Most productive week ever

Holy get crap done week. Seriously! We got so much done recently around our house. I am 100% done buying things for the baby and aside from a new mattress and installing his dresser knobs, his nursery is complete. I am proud to say that I made all of his wall decor, free hand painted his mural, refinished his dresser (it was dark cherry), made his bedding (not pictured until we get the therapeutic mattress in), and made his mobile. Also the deer head on the wall was my first ever harvest. His room was a huge labor of love from me. I’ll do a separate nursery tour post with all of the details of where I got things/how I made them once the mattress is here. 

We put up the indoor Christmas decor. 

We finished the barn stalls for our show cattle and farm dogs. We also started on the new chicken pen. Unfortunately my doodles are chicken slayers so having free range birds has repeatedly proven to be fatal and the pen that we’ve been using is too small for what I’m wanting long term so we are doing a huge walk in pen with a coop in it for the chickens, turkeys, ducks, rabbits, and goats to live in together that the dogs can not get into. 

It makes us so excited and happy to work on/grow our farm. We particularly take pride in it because we built it from the ground up. It didn’t have electric or water here. It was timber for the most part with a little pasture. We’ve created it all. That’s a humbling and fulfilling thing. We talk about it a lot. We both simply just love our homestead soooo much. 

Tomorrow I’m going on my monthly Sam’s club run in Springdale with my mom and grandma and while we are out I’m going to purchase new living room furniture. You know that you’re an adult when furniture shopping makes you happy ha. I feel the stress of baby’s due date nearing lift off of me more each day. Especially with us getting so much done. My check list is literally down to finishing my Christmas shopping and Brian finishing the chicken coop.  

That. Is. It. 

And it’s barely mid October. If I wasn’t pregnant, I’d be celebrating with a glass of wine right now. 

I hope that you all had a productive week and enjoyable weekend. If you’ve been putting off loads of ‘to do’s’ I feel you. Trust me. But you’ll feel a million times better if you just suck it up and get it done. 

Pregnancy update: week 28

H e l l o o o o 3rd trimester. I can’t believe that I’m saying that. It’s starting to feel so real (and nerve wracking) that we will soon be welcoming another baby into our family. Our pregnancy is seriously flying by but I’m soaking it up big time. We originally swore that this was our last baby buuuuuut you know how that goes ha. I wouldn’t be shocked if we get pregnant again soon after Granger is born. As of right now we aren’t planning to do any strict birth control methods on either end. We oddly don’t feel that pressure/desire anymore to not have another baby. For whatever reason we just both mutually feel relaxed about things either way. With that being said, our plans or intentions don’t matter. When it comes to pregnancy you never know if it’ll be your last. It’s one of those things that’s completely out of our control so with every pregnancy I am always mindful of that fact so I cherish each pregnancy as if it is my last. 

As we have approached the last trimester I’ve been knocking out a ton of things, with the help of my mom. She has gotten Granger so much stuff. We are super blessed to have parents that are just as excited about Baby #5 as they were for Baby #1. Halloween costumes for all 6 of us, the car seat, the swing, play pen, all of the typical baby necessities, maternity pictures/Christmas outfits, packed diaper bag, ect are officially covered. Literally all I have left to do to prepare for him is to finish his nursery bedding and to pack our back up hospital bags. I’ve also gotten about a third of the Christmas gift shopping done and come this weekend I’ll most likely have the house ready for Christmas too. I feel rushed to tackle that task because pregnancy hit me even harder recently. Everything that I do takes a toll on me and hurts. 

Current symptoms:

Today we had a midwife appointment in Tulsa, the first of bi weekly appointments. Unreal that we’ve hit that stage but Eilee and I enjoy those days out. Target, Starbucks, the mall, restaurants, hobby lobby, visiting my best friend, and all of the other things that t town has to offer. 

I’ve gained 21 lbs (😳) and my fundal height measures 3 weeks ahead. Blood pressure and heart tones were perfect. I’m starting to swell all over though which makes me grateful that I scheduled our maternity pictures sooner than I typically do. I still crave ice non stop. I have developed carpal tunnel in my hands and have major hip/back pain. I also just started experiencing pelvic pressure in a big way. Sometimes the baby is so low that i feel like i need to walk with my legs shut. Nesting has slacked off but that’s probably because I’ve gotten so much done already. Plus I just hurt all over. Other than those things, not much has changed. We are loving the experience of baby kicks and flips. The kids are old enough now to really embrace my pregnancy and that alone has been my favorite thing. We are all so excited.