"Dear little 4lb, 11oz Baby Barnes..."

33 weeks: Well, as many of you have heard by now, I have officially been put on bedrest. "Modified", which means I don't actually have to lay in bed like a complete invalid, but I can't actually go for a walk or do anything to make myself useful. My humback whale-like belly is starting to grow barnacles, I think. I feel fine, the baby's doing great, he's just determined to meet this world earlier than we all would like him to. "Threatened pre-term labor" is the technical term according to Dr Barnes, but I think that sounds so ominous, "threatened". Guess this little guy doesn't know that he's much better off where he is- nice and warm and weightless (weightless- what a beautiful thought!).
We got our last U/S to look at his kidneys earlier this week, and they were back to normal size, which was awesome (means no testing for him after he's born), and these are the pics we could get of his face. It's really hard now, because he's all squished up in there. He's got his umbilical cord hanging in front of it, but you can see about half. Not sure where those big lips came from, but they sure are sweet! He's getting big! 4lbs11oz right now.

31 weeks

Here's some pics of me at 31 weeks. The astute observer will notice that I am wearing the exact same outfit as a few weeks ago, but the belly has grown more in the front and has totally filled in my sides and up towards my diaphragm. Just when you thought you couldn't get any bigger, nature says "take that!", goes ahead and causes you to gain more weight in an amount of time you didn't even think was possible... yay. You can tell how thrilled I am by the bottom picture. This face makes several appearances on a daily basis. ;)

29 weeks

We got another scheduled ultrasound to take another look at his kidneys, and looks like we'll have to have another one 3w from now to follow them. They're still a little bit bigger than they're supposed to be, but only a little, so no one really seems concerned... just continuing to follow their size.
He is getting big now! His growth measures is the 46th percentile, except his arms, which measure above the 95th! Meaning, he has inherited my long, long arms- and Derrick, it's really not nice to call your son a "knuckle scraper". Long arms come in handy for many things such as reaching items on the top shelf, scratching your back, making those critical end-of-game goal saves, etc... He weighs close to 3lbs now, and man, it feels like a heckuva lot more than that. By the end of the day I find myself trying to hold my belly up for a little relief from that anchor feeling. He moves around constantly which is great, however, the bigger he gets the more uncomfortable it gets. We're having quite the battle of wills these days. I keep trying to tell him that backs go toward the back and bellies go towards the front, but even with all my nagging and poking him, he still insists on putting his big old hard back right in the L side of my tummy. It's like this big, hard mass sticking out, and trust me, it does not feel too good, and my already football-shaped tummy looks like a retarded humpback whale...
I've attached a few U/S pics from last week. He was really grumpy and pissed off that we were doing this, and refused to let us see his face. In most of the images he was either covering his face with his arms, or turning it in towards my back, so we couldn't see. In the profile pic, the one where he looks like a grouchy old man, you can see that's he's getting quite a lot of hair! No bald little eggheads for us! Just hairy eggheads, I suppose... ;)

Baby shower

We had our baby shower on the 7th of July. Sooo fun! Elma came out from Cali and Jelly came from Boston to help us celebrate.

Big thanks to "the moms" (Mom and Elma), and Christy for making it so great! The food was awesome, the decorations were so cute, and Baby Barnes made out like a little bandit. :)