Tuesday, April 19, 2011

34 weeks! Advice?

This week marks the 34th week of growing our little super human inside my body. The excitement and apprehension grow more and more everyday. Ben and I have had some serious "nesting" attacks in the last few weeks. We keep downsizing all of our storage so that we will have more manageable space once the baby is here. The nursery seems ready, we're just waiting on a few items like a stroller and car seat.
32 weeks. Taken in Key West.


We've also began reading infant books. That's right, just now. haha! Ben and I kind of walk to the beat of our own drum if you haven't noticed. We just picked out names last week for goodness sakes! Either way, something's going to happen, and we'll be just fine.

Some notes of advice that I've really liked reading thus far are:
* Just be prepared to make a lot of decisions on the fly... there's no way to prepare for the decisions that you'll need to make in the years to come.
* There is no way to spoil a baby in the first 4 months. (Therefore, we get to use our "get out of jail free card" quite often to snuggle them until our hearts are content)
* First 3 months are considered 4th trimester. The baby has been used to it's own "room" without siblings or animals to bother it, lots of cool noises like my heartbeat, could eat and sleep anytime that it wanted, and was in complete comfort in it's water-land. When the child is born, this all goes away, and our job becomes mimicking my uterus as much as possible. This also builds trust between child and parents, or so they say.
* Swaddle, swaddle, swaddle!
* White noise is apparently a savior for most couples. My great hubby just ordered a white noise machine this week off of amazon. We, of course, are going to try this out n ourselves (we may spring for a second machine for both our bedroom and nursery).
* Don't bite their thighs. Just kidding.

And this is where I'd like to open up the floor for all mothers, fathers, and those of you that also have great advice. What worked for you???? Any tricks?