37 weeks and counting...

My name is Amanda Duke and I have cankles. They are gross. I feel like my body is telling me that it's ready to poop out a baby, but I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. Things are progressing down there but not very fast. I don't know if I should hope to last past the 8th or hope to go early and just get it overwith. Things would be complicated with school if I had the baby early, but man... I'm just ready to do this. Shaun is ready too, and i'm pretty sure we have just about everything that we need for the baby. I guess I'll just have to accept that it's not up to me to decide when the baby comes. I've just got to sit back and let things happen. My next appointment is Friday the 24th, so I guess I won't know anything until then. I just hope that my comfort level will get a little better than it has been today, but I won't hold my breath.

Oh my belly

Shaun is obsessed with my belly and he keeps bugging me to post belly pictures. I, on the other hand, am not so crazy about letting everyone see my expanding midsection. So, this is for everyone who has not seen me with +20 some odd extra pounds protruding from my abdominopelvic cavity.
I know what you're thinking, but no, I am not holding my butt fat up. I simply wanted to show that I do still have a little curve to my back. My love handles are big, but still under control... for the most part.

This little angle is my baby at 32 weeks. The picture says "sucking" because she is sucking on her fingers. It's such a cute baby thing to do and if you look at the back of her head the doctor said that you can see she already has a full head of hair! I'm totally embarassed to admit this but oh well. When I saw her sucking on her fingers during the ultra sound I had one stinking little tear escape from my eye and run down my cheek. I couldn't help it. I just saw her there acting like a real baby and bam! it hit me that I have a real person in my belly who's going to grow up and do, I don't know, real people things. It was crazy. I don't think I will ever feel completely ready to be a mom, but that moment made me realize just how excited I am to meet her and hold her for the first time. I know that in just over a month my life will change forever, and as scary as that is, I know it will be a great change. I've always thought that when I had kids my "life" would be over. I would never get to do the things that I have always dreamed about doing in life. I thought that I would have to give up my dreams and just be a dumpy house mom who never takes care of herself or gets to do anything for herself. I have recently realized, though, that this is not the end of my "life", but a new chapter that I can't wait to start. I guess seeing Monica with her kids has helped me a lot as well. I can't imagine anything else that I would rather do than kick it with her and her kids. Maybe someday we will be neighbors and we can kick it while our kids entertain each other. Hopefully by then Kara will have some kids too, and then it will be a real party :)! So here's to the future, scary and unknown, but never boring. Who knows what life will bring next, but as Kirsten Dunst says, "Bring it on!"

Please don't poke me there anymore...

Well the last few weeks have been entertaining and crazy as usual. I thought that once we got everything out of the apartment that things would settle down a little bit, but boy was I wrong. Things with the house are going good. We've recently found out that we will be getting some much needed funding to finish the basement! Woo hoo. We're hoping to have at least one room completely done before the baby is born so that we will have an extra room for company to stay in. So that's a fun project for Shaun and his dad to work on and it's been keeping us pretty busy.
With that in mind I just want to share a fun pregnancy story with everyone. I went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago for one of my normal check-ups and had to have the Gestational Diabetes test done. I wasn't really looking forward to this visit because I heard that the sugary drink they make you chug is pretty bad, but I grew a pair and went through the appointment like I was supposed to. I choked down the gross drink in five minutes (that's the time crunch they give you) waited around the lab for one hour, BORING, and let them stab me with a needle so that they could take a sample of blood. This was not the way I wanted to spend my day off and this also was the FIRST appointment that Shaun was not able to go to (he's such a good husband he's made it to all of my other appointments), and it was one of the appointments that I wished he could have been there for. We both hate giving blood and need to be consoled and babied when we do have give blood. Well the appointment was finally over and I was grateful to be able to go home and let Shaun console me over my terrible wound. I was sooooo glad to have this appointment done and over with. Well, fast forward to the next morning. Right before I went to my first class of the day, anatomy, I got a call from my doctor saying that my blood glucose levels measured too high and that they would have to do another test. They also informed me that my glucogen levels were off and that I had pregnancy anemia ( big surprise, my Iron levels have always been to low to give blood) and that I had to go on a High Iron Diet. Well lets just say my mood was crushed for the day. I felt awful! I was so worried that I had Gestational Diabetes, that i was starving my baby of iron, and they informed me that I was measuring small and had to have another ultra sound done to make sure everything was okay. "You haven't even given birth and you're already a terrible mother." is what it honestly felt like they were telling me. Crap! I dragged my feet into Anatomy, completely bummed and feeling crappy as ever when it was called to my attention that our next test was only a couple days away. (Something I was not at all prepared for). Where did the freakin time go? I have been so wrapped up in moving and everything else I had lost track of what day/week it was.
I grudging went to another appointment a few days later to have the second test done. This test, though, made the first one seem like a cake walk. I had to drag my butt out of bed and into the doctor's office at 7:30am on a Friday. I had to fast for eight hours before taking the test which meant an early dinner the night before and no breakfast before my appointment. For those of you who have not experienced me during my pregnancy, I HAVE TO EAT BREAKFAST. I get disgustingly sick if I don't. So...I stumble into the office grumpy, hungry and scared out of my wits just hoping to get this thing over with. The first thing they did was stab me with a needle and take my blood. This didn't help my upset stomach at all. Immediately following, they gave me a twelve ounce bottle of the sugary drink (which has more sugar than the last one I had to take) and told me I had five minutes to drink it. It was 7:30 in the morning, and if you know me and my bad stomach, cherry cough medicine tasting sugar solution is not the thing to chug that early in the morning on an empty stomach. Somehow I managed to get it down without throwing it back up. I then was escorted to the lobby to wait an hour before they could test my blood again. Tick tock, tick tock, man it was good thing I brought Anatomy to study. Finally they called my name and like a crazy person I followed them back into the lab where they stabbed me a second time and took more blood. Then it was back to the lobby to wait another hour. tick tock, tick tock... the Second hour passed and again like a fool I let them stab me a third time to take my blood. Back to the lobby, tick tock, tick tock, another hour passed by. They took me back to their dungeon, I mean lab, and stabbed me for a fourth time and took more blood. Keep in mind that I still hadn't eaten anything that day and in pregnancy world, that is TORTURE! Well, they informed me that they had gotten 3 of the 4 results back already and that my glucose levels were better than perfect. I was fine and was free to leave. If anything funny showed up in the fourth test they would call me and let me know. So I stumbled out of the doctors office and 11:30am, (It took FOUR HOURS!!!) with both arms bruised and bandaged, starving, and feeling very nauseated. Do you know what it's like to have a needle stuck in each arm twice in a four hour period. I was miserable, and I was an hour late for my three hour class because the appointment took so much longer than it was supposed to. So I had to run straight to class (no time to stop for food) and sit through two hours of Stress Management, of all things, before I could stop and eat the most delicious Subway Sandwich I had ever eaten in my entire life.

The moral of the story is... Pregnancy can Suck! But... I hear that it's worth it in the End.

New House!!!

As most of you know Shaun and I have recently moved into our new house. We're still getting everything unpacked and put away but I thought that I would post some pictures of what we've done so far.

This is an older picture of our house, I would take a new one but there is too much snow to really see anything.

Here's me and my big belly getting ready to paint the baby's room.

(I look really bad, but hey, I'm painting)

Here's what we've done with the baby's room so far.

I'm still working on painting this border around the wall. It's cute, but a pain in the butt!

This is our bathroom, and Shaun has already managed to clog the toilet.

(oh man, it was bad)
This is the entrance way... still in the works.

Living room

Dining Room

Kitchen

This is our bedroom which is still in progress. I think it will be cool when it's not in shambles.

7 Things I Love About Minnesota

For those of you that have not experienced Minnesota (which is pretty much anyone looking at my blog), here are 7 things that I LOVE about MN...

1. Tons of snow that never melts and -25 degree temperature.

2. Not being able to see out of my patio because the snow is so high.
Please Note: I am on the third floor, not ground level.

3. People on ground level have to shovel to get out of thier doors.

4. My school parking lot has a protective wall of snow that's twice the height of most cars.

5. The protective wall of snow spans the entire parking lot.

6. The preferred method of travel to local bars and McDonalds in the winter is by Snowmobile. (Click on picture to see enlarged version.)

7. Minnesotans give drive-thru a whole new meaning!

Christmas Vacation!!

Here you go everyone, I'm actually updating my blog. Here are some wonderful pics of our Christmas Vacation, which included my Wonderful baby shower (thanks to my beautiful and hardworking sister Monica). We had so much fun on our trip, both Shaun and I had a hard time leaving.