Sugar, weight gain and braxton hicks

Today I had my gestational diabetes test. For those of you who do not know what this entails, basically I have to drink 10 ounces of a glucose mixture and then get my blood checked after an hour. I should get a call tomorrow with the results. My glucose happened to be orange flavored and tasted a bit like Orange Crush with about 10 cups of sugar added. Now anyone that knows me knows that I can handle sweet: chocolate, cakes, candy...there haven't been many things that have been too much to handle. Let me tell you, I found out that after today I think I have had enough sugar for the rest of the week and I probably will not be able to drink orange flavored anything for a long time to come. Let's hope my results come back clean so I don't have to do it all over again!

I have also now gained a total of 14 pounds. That's right on track so far and I'm expected to gain probably another 8 to 10 before this whole thing is over. Since I gained 5 pounds this last month I have now passed up Chris in his sympathy weight gain. He has held at 10 pounds. Which brings me to the question: is this sympathy weight really attributed to this pregnancy or has his diet and activity level just adjusted as mine has? Are there any scientific studies that link it to hormones and is this pregnancy really wreaking havoc on my husbands body as well as my own? Hmmm...

Also worth mentioning are these weird contraction-like sensations I have been having. Apparently they are called braxton hicks contractions and are pretty much like labor contractions except so far they haven't been painful and don't affect the cervix. Just leaves me a little sore after a while. That, combined with my growing back aches, may unfortunatly leave me with the possibility of having to cut my working hours down yet again. Cross your fingers that I can stay on my feet for the next 10 to 12 weeks until this baby comes.

As for that nursery I keep mentioning, it is painted! But yet still not finished. Chris and I still have a chair rail to put up and then wait for our furniture to arrive. By next week we should have a picture. At least one of an empty room. There's no word (yet) of when our furniture should be here but hopefully in the next two to three weeks.

Stay tuned.

Salt Lake Shower Yields Gifts, Cornhole and Good Hygiene

Chris and I attended our first baby shower. Yep, now everything is starting to seem more and more real. We are really having a baby and now our house is starting to show it. For my birthday back in August Chris bought us tickets to SLC to visit my family before we hit the no travel zone (aka the third trimester). While we were there my mom and sister-in-law, Amanda, threw us a baby shower. It was a lot of fun. Because we wanted to see as many people as possible while we were there the baby shower was co-ed (much to the "delight" of Chris).

We played two different shower games. The first was for all the men who attended (all 8 of them). They had to drink beer from a sippy cup and the first to finish was the winner. Needless to say it was fun to watch.  Take a look for yourself, below. My mom's friend and co-worker Karl won with my uncle Dan coming in a close second.
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After the beer drinking, the second and final game was for couples. We all had to dance with our significant other, with an egg held between our foreheads.  The last couple left dancing without dropping their egg wins.  Chris and I made it to the final two before we dropped our egg.  Oh, so close!
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However, our spirits weren't dampened by the loss.  Rather, we felt blessed when we opened lots of loot in the form of great new clothes for our little guy and a few gift cards as well. Chris' mom even made the trip and got us our car seat. She's doing her part to make sure her grandchild will travel safely, and in style! It was really fun to have her there.

Before we left, my mom and I made a couple of trips to some fabric stores and picked out a few things. She is going to make the bedding and curtains for the new nursey. I will be sure to post pictures as soon as we see the finished product. I'm sure they will be wonderful.  She did such a great job helping my neice Stella out with her room I'm sure our little man will love his just as much!

All in all, it was a great trip. Hopefully we won't have to stay away too long after the little man is here. A ski trip would be very nice this season and we hope to fit it in.

One other thing to mention is our newfound fondness for a game to which my brother Paul and his wife Amanda introduced us: Cornhole. We've posted some pitures of us all playing on our Flickr site (see below for an example). I would like to mention that Paul and I won 5 of the 7 games we played as a team. We rule! Needless to say, Chris is planning to build the appropriate fixtures so we can play here in Dallas as well. If you live in the area, don't be suprised if you're invited over for a game or two in the near future.
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Next up? Painting the nursery. I will have pictures soon. We plan to have it done by the end of the month if not sooner. We have furniture arriving in October. Wow, this pregnancy is flying by!