31 weeks.

By: Rachel Bridgwood
30+5 weeks.

Nine.  Oh my gosh. Nine weeks until my due date. Crazy! This week has been very eventful! Monday & Tuesday are kind of a blur, but Wednesday we left on our 8 hour journey (which took 10 hours thanks to traffic & a flat tire) to Virginia. Road trips & pregnancy do not mix. I could only drive 2 & a half hours because my poor feet/legs got so swollen & crampy. & I just got uncomfortable. The excitement began when we arrived at Rachel’s place in Virginia.

About an hour after we got there, I started having cramps. They were unpleasant & coming every few minutes. I probably should’ve been more concerned, but I was tired. I woke up the next morning prepared for a day of maternity photo shoots. The cramps were still there, but only coming every 10 or 15 minutes, so I figured that was an improvement & ignored them for the morning shoot with Gabe. While walking around a grocery store, I realized how uncomfortable I actually was. On our way to Rachel’s mom’s house for the shoot for just me, I called my doctor’s office in Ohio & explained to a nurse what was going on to see if I should be concerned. Uh. Duh Alexa. You’re having actual contractions, of course you should be concerned. That’s not what she said, but she did tell me to go to labour & delivery asap. So naturally I told Rachel I could wait & we did the shoot with just me (which I’m glad we did cause the pictures turned out great). After we were done there, she took me straight to the hospital & husband met me there. As soon as they put me in a bed & hooked me up to the monitors, the contractions stopped. OF COURSE! So I was in this bed, contractionless, feeling & listening to baby girl slosh around violently inside of me. (The doctor was actually impressed with how rambunctious she was.) After I had my exam, a switch flipped & my body hated me again. I was having contractions every 1-2 minutes that were lasting 40 seconds-60 seconds. Um. Not cool. They hurt. I’m aware that when I go in to labour they will be worse & I’m definitely not prepared for that. Anyway. They discovered I had an infection. It came out of nowhere. They got an IV going with fluids & an antibiotic. The first attempt at poking me was awful. Pretty sure she hit a nerve cause when she asked me to move my hand I couldn’t. Not good. So anyway. When the contractions went down to every 10 minutes or so they sent me on my way. I continued to have contractions that night & was told to take it easy the next day. I’m glad we are back in Ohio. Heading in there I was terrified I was going to give birth to my baby during our trip to Virginia. They told me to keep her in there another 6 weeks. That’s it.

So anyway, that was fun. So Friday we were supposed to go to DC, but that didn’t work out cause I had to take it easy. So instead we drove to Stafford to see a good friend of mine. Linda! We went to junior high in England together. It was so nice to see her & catch up. We ended up going to DC on Saturday. I was feeling a lot better & I knew Gabe really wanted to go to the Air & Space Museum. So we went in to DC for the day. I was bound & determined to walk all the way to the Lincoln memorial after the natural history & air & space museums. I told Gabe that I was so determined that I would have the baby on those stairs. What an exciting story!!! But that was a no go. I barely made it to the Washington monument. If you’ve been to the mall in DC, you know that is a long walk. & I was just not having it. 

The main purpose of our trip to was our maternity photos. My good friend Rachel (also from England) is a photographer. Rachel & a friend of hers run a company, Sweet Root Village, that does photography, floral arrangements, & coordination.  She & her husband let us stay with them & their 3 month old baby girl Mia, who is easily the cutest baby I have ever seen. It was great to catch up with Rachel. & she took the most wonderful photographs for us! We did two shoots. One with Gabe & I, & another that was just me. It was a lot of fun. She’s so talented! It’s hard not to look good in front of her camera. She works some sort of photography voodoo magic. Anyway. It was really great & I’m thrilled with all of the pictures we got. So I’m sharing some in this post. As you can see. You can also go to these links (Maternity: Alexa, Maternity: Alexa & Gabe) to see the ones she put on their company blog.

Anyway. I’m back in Ohio now, waiting to see my doctor on Friday so he can approve travel for me again this weekend. I’m flying to Colorado Springs on Sunday & then going down to Sierra Vista, Arizona on Thursday for my sister’s wedding! So excited. Hopefully everything checks out at the doctor so I can go.

Hope you’re doing wonderfully!

That is all.

- Alexa