IT'S A...

BOY!

Yes, David and I will be having a precious little boy sometime next June J Up until the last couple weeks I have not had much time to think about being pregnant. Now that I am almost 16 weeks and we know we are having a boy, reality is somewhat starting to set in.

I had my very first Centering appointment this week.  I had never heard of Centering before the military, but it is a new trendy type of prenatal care being offered to women.  At first I was completely against it because I thought it was just one more way to cheapen a women’s prenatal care. The more I researched it, the more I considered that it might actually be a very good opportunity for me.

You may be wondering what Centering is – it is basically a group of about 8 to 12 women who are due around the same time and they all go through their prenatal care together in a small group environment.  Centering provides a setting for women to take control of their own prenatal care, learning to take their own blood pressure, temperature, weight and also to track their own progress by keeping their own medical charts throughout the pregnancy.  There is also short one on one time spent alone with the health care provider to take the fetal heartbeat and ask any personal questions a women may have that she does not feel comfortable bringing up in the group setting.  Appointments last approximately two hours and also include prenatal education information. Arguably, one of the benefits Centering can provide is the camaraderie among women that develops over the course of the meetings.  This is especially important in a military setting due to the nature of the reality of deployed spouses during pregnancy and birth.  To give you an idea of the frequency of deployments and pregnancies over lapping each other, 50% of the women in my Centering group will have deployed spouses during the pregnancy, birth of their child, or both. Many have no family within hours of where they are stationed. It is definitely a unique situation.

Lately I have really been trying to focus on establishing relationships here and creating a solid support system so that when the baby comes I will have a few people to lean on.  I am staying positive and drowning out any negative thoughts or contacts I may encounter.  My recent obsession is planning the nursery. Here are some pics so far of what I really love!

This is the crib bedding - I have decided to do a black and white theme and add a gender appropriate accent color. That color is still up in the air.

 This is the actual crib I want.  All the furniture is black. I've read that it scratches pretty easy, but I'm sure that scratches on the furniture will be the least of my worries once the little man gets here.

 This is the chest that goes with the crib. It is also black. 

 I was debating on even getting a changing table.  I wanted to just use the top of the dresser (not the one pictured above, but a different one) as a changing table, but the add on part that converts the dresser top to a changing table was only $30 cheaper than this whole changing table.  So, I figured I could use the extra storage space.
For now, I have opted against getting a glider for the nursery and I am looking at rocker/recliners for the living room. I may regret that decision after the baby gets here, but I am sure the rocker/recliner will get MUCH more use for many more years compared to a glider. If I find a cheap, nice, used one on Craigslist or something, I may cave and buy it...keeping my options open.

This is the first little outfit I bought him...before I knew it was a him.  I saw it and thought it was just SO cute, and being only $3.97 for a pack of three AND it being the last one, I couldn't pass it up!

This is the other one that came in the pack. The camo one is just plain camo with no writing on it. I love them!