24 Weeks and Counting...Sewing, Showing & Growing

This past week I went to San Antonio for work and stayed through the weekend with mom to work on baby bedding. We made incredible progress over the weekend sewing virtually non-stop and have nearly completed our project. I will be attempting to finish the bedding up myself and I'm hoping this attempt is successful since I also broke down and bought a pattern for baby clothes on Sunday. Whoops! haha

Mom cutting out pieces on the bed - there was fabric everywhere for this project!

Me adjusting my shirt to prepare for MORE cutting. The belly really looks large here!

At 24 weeks, I regularly incite comments like "Op! Looks like someone has an additional passenger." as I worked my way through the security line at the airport and "You shouldn't be lifting that. Can I carry that for you?" And the belly continues to grow! It is noticeably harder now for me to bend over and pick things up, it's harder to roll over in bed at night and I am hungry all the time, but I can't eat nearly as much in one sitting because of all the space that baby now consumes.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't intimidated by the growth that is to come in the remaining weeks. I'm overwhelmed when I think about our baby being here in 112 days or less (that's right people, I'm still not hoping she'll be past-due but I do really appreciate all of you that tell me about your babies that came 2 and 3 weeks late) and excited about all of the learning that we have to do between now and then AND after she arrives.

I'm particularly amazed to think of her in there this week because my twin cousins Heather and Holly were born somewhere between 24 and 25 weeks and I feel like they give me a glimpse of what Baby Anderson must look like in there. They were so tiny with red skin that you couldn't rub because it hurt them, no visible nipples at all (which is why I found it fascinating that these are on Baby Anderson's development list for this month!), their eyes were still sealed shut and admittedly, they were still very unprepared to be in this world. However as unbelievably tiny as they were, they were in many other ways more prepared than you would expect for being born just over half way through a pregnancy. They were living breathing babies and with help from the NICU they and are now happy 1-year olds! So when I think about our daughter being that much of a baby hanging out under this swell of belly.... well, that is pretty amazing.

I look admittedly tired in this picture, but I wanted to hurry and take it early into week 24 for accurate documentation. The belly at 24 weeks.