Place Your Bets!

Brandy: I have set up a game website which will allow you to make your best guess on Baby Markey's birth stats... gender, date of birth, time of birth, weight and length! Once Baby Markey has arrived, I will input the actual birth stats, and the website calculates a winner based off of a point system. So, place your bets and let's see who will win! http://www.expectnet.com/logingame.php?game_name=BrandyMarkey

I have also added a Link on the bottom of the right column, which will direct you to the game page as well. Good Luck!

Email Please

Brandy: I am trying to get prepared for when the baby comes, and part of this will involve creating an email distribution list to let everyone know when Baby Markey has arrived. If you want to be notified via email, please leave a comment with your email address. It is a good idea to leave it in the following format so that it isn't picked up by programs scanning for email addresses so they can send you tons of junk mail. myemailaddress[at]gmail[dot]com
If you do not feel comfortable leaving your email address in a comment, then shoot me an email with your information. You can look under my blog profile and find my email address there. I have never gotten any weird messages from leaving my email address in a comment on a blog, but I am giving you an alternative just in case.
I will eventually post an entry on the blog announcing Baby Markey to the world, but that might take a while! I will also eventually post something on Facebook, which will also take a while. You also need to be my friend in order to see it! Giving up your email is the one and only way you will find out super soon when Baby Markey has made his/her grand entrance into the world.
Also, stay tuned to my blog because there will be some upcoming posts that will allow you to guess on some important "top secret" information! I will be posting the number of letters in Baby Markeys first and middle name so that you can make a comment with your best guess! I will also post a link to a website where you can guess on all of Baby Markey's birth information - date, time, sex, weight and length.
So, there are lots of exciting things coming up as Baby Markey's due date gets closer and closer. I am so excited and can hardly wait!

33 Weeks - 7 Weeks Left - 82.5% Cooked!

Brandy: Today marks the beginning of Week 33. It is really hard to believe that I only have 49 days to go! Baby Markey's nursery is pretty much done. I have washed and put away clothes, blankets, towels... pretty much everything! Our car seat bases are installed and we have an appointment to get them checked on 11/4. I am also about to make an appointment for us to attend an infant CPR class. I am child and adult CPR and AED certified, but not infant. We are halfway through our 8 week course of Bradley classes. Thursday will be class 5. We are all the way up to 2nd stage labor! So Thursday I get to learn about pushing the baby out, which is probably the only part I am truly nervous about. I am not nervous about the pain or the lack of pain medication as most people assume. The #1 thing that has me nervous is the thought of tearing. I will just leave it at that... no elaboration really needed!

I have been feeling pretty good for this stage of pregnancy. The exhaustion has slowly started to creep back into my life. I have good days, and then there are the days where crawling under my desk for a quick nap sounds SO GOOD. I will not try it though for fear that my infamous snoring will give my whereabouts away! In the past week, I have started waking up even more often than usual to pee in the middle of the night. I also drop things all the time, which is getting annoying because bending over to pick them up is getting increasingly harder! I continue to go to prenatal yoga every Saturday morning. That is "my time" and I relish it. I have started going to the chiropractor every week now instead of every 2 weeks. The baby is growing so quickly now that my body gets out of whack faster. Dr Durkee helps keep everything in check, and I truly heart her for that. My back has not been an issue at all since I have been seeing her on a regular basis. I would recommend seeing a chiropractor to any pregnant woman in a heartbeat. I feel like it is some little known secret, and I am happy to pass it along. Seriously, go try it out! Just find someone who is well versed in practicing on the pregnant body. So with all of that said, I feel like I have very little to complain about physically. Most of the things going on with me are very typical, and I honestly expected them. They pretty much come with the territory, and I know things could be so much worse. I am happy to be pregnant, and I love my Baby Bump!


Baby Markey has been getting the hiccups almost every night lately. They usually last about 2-3 minutes and then stop just as suddenly as they started. This week the baby should be about 4 1/2 pounds and 19 1/2 inches long. At this point, it is just an average because all babies grow differently at this stage. Baby Markey should be putting on about a 1/2 pound each week now (give or take a little). This will slow down and possibly stop in the last few weeks of pregnancy as the baby runs out of room! We had a 3D/4D sonogram this morning. I will say that the pictures we got at 29 weeks were a lot better. At this point, there is not much room in there and it is much more difficult to get a good shot of the baby. If you are planning a 3D/4D sonogram, definitely try and get it done between 28 and 30 weeks. I am including a couple of pictures from this morning. You can see the difference for yourself if you go back and look at the pictures I posted at 29 weeks. In all of these Baby Markey is either sucking on its thumb or fist. And I noticed that it happens to be the left thumb/fist. Does this mean I am going to have a lefty? Anyone have any feedback on being left or right handed based on the thumb babies favor? It was totally cute to see this in live motion! It is good to know that the baby likes its thumb since we are not using a pacifier! I asked the technician if she could tell if the baby had hair. The answer is yes BUT it could be lanugo that has not shed yet. Hmmm... I guess I will just have to wait and see. Darnit! Waiting is SO HARD!

A Weekend of Organization

Brandy: This weekend was a long, busy one! Friday night we went to the state fair with a friend and his two daughters. It was fun, and I got in a lot of walking! Saturday morning I went to prenatal yoga, and then snuck in a nap when I got home. The rest of the day consisted of organizing everything from our shower last weekend. Brian put together the stroller too. We also hung pictures in the nursery and got the window valances up. Sunday we took a little shopping trip to get some of the things I wanted to help finish up the nursery. We also got the other car seat base for Brian's car. Babies R Us has some really good 15% off coupons going on now through the end of the month. While we were out we ate lunch on the patio at Chuy's. It was such a beautiful day! Once we got home, we got busy with the nursery again. I started doing Baby Markey's laundry and getting things put away. I got everything except for the clothes done (slings, towels, blankets, sheets, waterproof pads, changing pad covers, etc...) We also installed both of the car seat bases, the car mirror and the window shade. Now we just need to get the car seats inspected!! Did you know that 80% of car seats are installed incorrectly? SCARY!
Besides all of the nursery work this weekend, we also touched up screw holes and paint on 3 different areas of our ceiling from light fixtures changes. We have been procrastinating forever on that one! I am SO glad it is finally done.
We only have a few things left to do to get finished with the nursery. I still need to wash all of Baby Markey's clothes. They are separated by size and all of the tags/packaging has been removed. I am going to do one load each night this week and try and get it done by the weekend. I also have one more wall where I need to put up pictures. I am waiting on this wall until I get in Baby Markey's name in wooden wall letters. I want the name above the crib, but I am not sure it will fit there (since there are windows on both sides of the crib). So just to be safe, I left the pictures off of one wall in case I need to put those above the crib and put the name on the other wall for space reasons.
We still have a few items left on the registry that we need to get. We are working on those slowly, and waiting for sales and coupons. The big items we have left are the play yard, monitor, breast pump and bouncer. There are some small items too... All in time right? Easy enough if time isn't counting down! It will get done... it has to!