Happy Week 33!

I'm not loving this picture, but it was the best of the bunch that I managed last night. 

I had my 32 week appointment on Friday and had lots of great news! All of my blood work came back fantastic. My hemoglobin is at 12 or 13, my vitamin D is at 38, which falls in their "sufficient" range, and the glucose test was totally normal. After finally having a good bit of belly growth at my previous appointment, I was measuring small again this time, but I think I measured small most of my pregnancy with Tony. Baby is head down, and terribly active. Deb is feeling confident that I'm going to make it to term this time. I wouldn't mind going early, but I'm not holding my breath at this point. 40 weeks is only 7 weeks away, and time is passing so quickly, that I feel like I will blink and it will be over. My in-laws are planning to come in September (there WILL be a baby by then, without any question!), and when my Mother-in-law was saying goodbye, she said she couldn't believe that next time the baby would be here. Yeah. Wow.

Tony loves going to see Deb. He talked about it all weekend. He gets to push the button on the doppler, which is a huge deal to a little kid. 

I don't know why he was biting her hand. He loves this doll. It warms my heart when he says "Don't cry, don't cry."

Our last two weekends have been busy, busy. We had my Mother- and sister-in-law for a visit last weekend, and my Mom, Grandma, and three sisters this weekend. I don't know if Tony will know what to do with himself without all of the extra people to play with him. Coming off of a couple weeks of Zach studying like crazy for midterms, it was so nice for me to have company. 

Yesterday we quickly organized the attic, which had turned into a jungle. AND, we moved things around in Tony's room to accommodate the birth pool! I need to remember how quickly things can come together with an extra set of hands. Some days I feel so discouraged because there's only one me, often with Tony hanging on my leg.

See all of that space in the back right corner? It wasn't there yesterday! Now we can build the whole train track!

We're in a bit of a situation about the baptism, and if there are any spare prayers out there that could be directed at Fr. John Hardon, I would appreciate it. I know that we can have the baby baptized by the priest who says the Latin Mass we attend. My only issue is that it is an hour away, and I don't really want to have to drive that far a week or two postpartum. Talking about it with my Grandma yesterday, she suggested that I email him and see if there is perhaps a religious order in the area who might be willing to come to our town and baptize the baby in the Old Rite. Last night I found a group of Franciscans just under two hours away who say both the OF and EF, so I emailed them this morning. IF they are willing to make the drive, we would have to get permission from the pastor here, but I don't really see that being an issue. What would be totally awesome is if we could have someone come here, say a Traditional Mass, and baptize the baby! (Yes, I am optimistic!) Why did I bring Fr. Hardon into it? After emailing Grandma the website for the Franciscans, she went to the main website for the Order (Franciscans of the Immaculate, for anyone interested) and found that Cardinal Burke is very close to them, and he was a great friend of Fr. Hardon (who my Grandma knew, and loved).

I was just perusing our wedding pictures from my MIL on Zach's computer. Had to share one.

 Oh, and one more thing, because this isn't long enough. Last night I stumbled upon House Unseen, and read about Dwija's very risky pregnancy. Today while I was looking around, I saw this post: "NFP doesn't work. You have so many kids!"  She makes really good points, and I appreciated reading her perspective. Some of the comments are awesome, too. We had someone close to us ask if this baby was planned. It made me so angry. How do you answer that question? "Yes." is the shortest, end-the-conversation answer, but if you're talking to someone with a contraceptive mindset, to them it probably means that you went off your birth control. Not the impression we want to give. "Well, it wasn't not planned..." I feel like a moron saying that. You could say, "Planned by God." but sometimes that feels like far too mild of a response, depending on the questioning party. Thankfully I encounter that question far less than my poor husband. It makes me so sad that this society looks at children as such a burden! The debt incurred during our four years here will be a far greater burden than a child could ever be! And yet people don't even blink to take on $150k worth of loans to start a career.

On that sunny note...

Fr. Hardon and St. John the Evangelist*, pray for us! 

Love,

Jess 

*St. John the Evangelist is the patron of this baby, should we be having a girl (Evangeline), and perhaps Fr. Hardon's patron, too!