trying for a 30 pound gain (only)

It's been a very rough week/weekend, but I slept pretty good last night and I am very glad. I am thankful for little things like that. We got our new couch and it looks wonderful! It is so big and comfy and I love it! We are fortunate to be able to get new things.

Yesterday was the baby shower at school which was a lot of fun of course. I got a few things off of our registry and a very nice gift card to Babies R Us to put toward our glider. Now I think we'll only owe about $320 on it. I didn't take any pictures at the shower - sorry to disappoint. I did get some cute outfits for Julianna and lots of practical things like burp cloths, pacifiers, and diapers. Probably the gifts that I was most excited about were the ones that we really needed like the safety gate, the baby monitor, and baby medicine. Gosh babies are expensive!

Last night we had class at the hospital again. It was OK. I was just too tired to comprehend a lot of the stuff, but it was mostly about epidurals and meeting the pediatricians in the area. They talked for a while and then we had a question and answer session. We also watched a video on epidurals. I'm still not sure whether I will have one or not. I'll have to wait and see what I think then, but she did say that out of the 6500 or so births at Forsyth Hospial last year about 80% of people had the epidural. That number sure is high! The lady in the video that had a natural child birth said that she had always thought that she would have the epidural and then during the contractions she was doing so well and her husband was helping her manage the pain so well that she started thinking, "maybe I can do this without the pain medicine" and she asked not to have the epidural. Then afterwards she said how intense the pain was that she didn't think she could describe it. That it was nothing like anything she'd ever experienced. That made me a little scared. Anyway, a couple of things that I learned from the doctors that were there include random things like how to prevent SIDS and it was also obvious that they all supported breast feeding, but in almost all cases/questions they kept saying things like "it's a personal decision for you and your family" which was to be expected. I think the main thing I learned is that parenting is going to be a big job, but there are lots of people to help.

I am still only up around 25 - 25.5 pounds total which makes me happy. I have nine weeks left and I keep hearing how you gain most of the weight at the end. I am hoping to just keep it under 30 and maybe I can.