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| Monien, France at 33 weeks |
Our gift this July will be a baby girl! That's right, just 11 days from today our little bundle of joy is expected to arrive. No one knows when she'll actually make her entrance, but I'm fairly certain about the girl thing. The fetal scan technology these days is very reliable. So unlike my 2012 year in review post. This one will be in reverse chronological order. Starting now with July, where Will and I are spending my days close to home and enjoying the last days of my pregnancy with home cooked meals, fresh seasonal fruits and vegetables, air conditioning, and visits from my friends and family. It's not been our typical summer, very few days have been spent by the pool, none have been spent in tents or sleeping on the ground (at least not for me), there have been no vacations, and I haven't been on my bike since November 2013! That's probably no surprise if you consider that May-July have been the third trimester of the pregnancy. Now that's not to say we haven't been enjoying life, because we have. We've just been enjoying life in a different way - a slower, more domestic kind of way.
I am having a healthy pregnancy with no complications. According to my doctors, our baby is growing normally and her heart beat is regular. I'm experience little to no "pain" but due to immense swelling since late May, my feet and ankles are tender and I'm carrying a lot of water weight making certain things more difficult, such as putting on and wearing shoes, picking up objects from the ground that I've dropped, or sitting in one position for long periods of time. I have a new appreciation for pregnant women and an insiders view of what it's like to be rotund. I miss being active, nimble, and quick. I can't wait to not be swollen anymore.
Now in June, or what I like to call the best friend birth month - Will turned 27, Sara turned 37, Laura turned 32, Daniel turned 38, Natalie had a birthday (not sure how old she is), Julie turned 35, and my Mom turned 56. So we celebrated all those in some form or fashion. For Mom's birthday we went to see Iron & Wine in concert at the NC Museum of Art outdoor amphitheater and on a breezy summer night alla picnic style. The music took me back to places in my past since I've been enjoying Sam Beam's voice for almost a decade since I moved to Raleigh. I recalled walking from the Rose Gardens to classes at Nelson Hall and long bike rides along the green way or drives along Interstate 40 singing or crying, depending on the moment. Then Sam Beam addressed us neighbors because he now lives in Durham, and that made me smile. Will preferred a nice dinner on his birthday, so that Monday night after he returned from a day hike at Pilot Mountain, we enjoyed a decadent dinner at Braza Brazilian steakhouse and deep meat induced sleep followed. I think he was pleasantly surprised to open his gift of legos that I'd gotten him and we've been enjoying building with them these past several weeks.
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| View from flat in Bordeaux, France |
At the beginning of June I traveled for work to South-western France for a work trip. I took advantage of the location and added a couple days pleasure with my dear friend, Julie. We started in Bordeaux and stayed at a flat rented out by airbnb.com, the owner was around put made herself scarce and despite the nightly visits by mosquitos and the lack of A/C - it was a very pleasant trip. The location was perfect - her flat was right above some hip boutiques and trendy restaurants and within walking distance of everything. Bordeaux is a great place to visit with your girlfriends, lots of shopping and people watching and places to stop and sip wine and enjoy the European architecture. It was easy to navigate and not too expensive, I would highly recommend a long weekend visit to the city. After three nights in Bordeaux, I took the train to Pau and a taxi to Monein where a room was reserved for me at a quaint provincial B&B called Entre Vignobles et Vergers. This B&B would be perfect for a stop along a bike tour, or longer European vacation, or a nice quiet honeymoon. The town is pretty quiet and you would want to rent a car to explore further the area, but the owner and concierge Michel, is one of the best. For more on the trip this link is a photo diary.
May is Mother's Day month and this May my mother moved to Raleigh. After spending her entire life in Bluefield, West Virginia where I was born and raised, she packed up, got her company to transfer her job to the Raleigh office, and came to live here; just 14.8 miles from my house. We celebrated Mother's Day together at my cousin Lee's house in Winston-Salem surrounded by family. As always Lee put on a spread and we enjoyed the company of his wife, Erin and their children, George and Mary.
During my second trimester, February - April, we carried on as usual. Easter weekend in April we drove to the mountains and Will's mom threw me a Cowan/Painter Family Baby Shower. I hadn't been the center of attention in a long while and to have twenty some people doting over me and showering me and the baby with gifts and words of affection felt really good. After the shower and the visit with the family, we started to put the room together. We also announced during the second trimester our baby's name, Stella Day Cowan.  |
| Anniversary of 3 years and 5 months pregnant |
We celebrated our three year anniversary in March by going to Chef and the Farmer restaurant in Kinston, NC and enjoying the ambiance and tasty good I'd been watching on the series PBS, a Chef's Life. It was surreal to be at the restaurant after watching the TV show I admired so much. I won't get all foodie here and list out our courses, but know that it surpassed our expectations and to this day is one of the best meals I've eaten in the USA. The second trimester is a stabilizing one, where I started by pregnancy routines, bought maternity clothes, and began making lists. It was hard at first accepting that your body changes are normal and that pregnancy is beautiful and not grotesque. My prenatal yoga practices really helped me with acceptance and letting go of the past forms of myself to enjoy the present moments of pregnancy. Now don't confuse my acceptance with bliss because I was not/am not floating around as if pregnancy is the best thing that's ever happened to me and I don't think I'm most beautiful this way. However, I do appreciate what my body can do and I'm grateful to be given this opportunity as a woman to experience growing another human being inside me. To lay here in bed as I type this and feel her movements inside my belly and know that she will grow and see and smell and hear and touch and taste and feel and talk and walk and become a woman like I am today. Then to wonder how she will describe those senses and what path she walk to become the girl, teen, young lady, and woman of what will be a different generation then when I grew up. When she is 33 years old, then I will be 66 years old and the world will be a different place.
So to welcome baby Stella into our home, Will has been busy on improvement projects. The upstairs room is now multi-purpose: man space complete with air-soft equipment closet, laundry room, spare bedroom, and home office/Will desk and it's all complete with a fresh paint job and laminated wood flooring. It looks great and is a welcoming space from it's former life. The yard has been expertly improved as well. New plants, bags of mulch, and a path of brick colored paving stones later, it's a stark contrast to the overgrown vine infested hedges that stood there since I moved in.
We thought we would try some place new for Valentines Day this year, and we went to an Osteria downtown and it was pretty bad. Luckily, we always enjoy our time together so the fact that the food and atmosphere were subpar, we still enjoyed our date together. Will got me beautiful roses to mark the occasion and we went out despite with snow and ice on the roads.
That brings us to the first trimester, October 2013 - January 2014. In January we laid low, it was a blistery winter for the area and we actual had some snow days. It was so early in the pregnancy that at New Years I didn't even have a glass of champagne and although we were at Kristin and Matt's new house surrounded by their friends, it just wasn't a good night for me. Will got his celebratory buzz on before I convinced him to leave and drove us home to lull in front of the TV until midnight. Oh well, we have NYE 2012 to recount should we need party memories.
On Dec. 5th, we saw our little baby in utero and received the projected due date - July 24, 2014. We conceived October 19th according to the ultrasound math. 
All around December was a great month. We knew we were pregnant, Will proposed on Christmas Eve, and we got to celebrate our news with friends and family over the Christmas holiday. The proposal took place at home in the morning before breakfast and as I was finishing up some work at the kitchen table, Will called for me to come in to the living room. There he was illuminated by the Christmas Tree lights, down on one knee with a ring glimmering from a box in his hand. Of course he didn't need to say a word, the gesture told the meaning and my answer was a resounding yes, but he said, "Sarah, will you marry me?" and I threw my arms around his neck in joy.  |
| Nantahala National Forest |
We were both a little distracted during Thanksgiving last year because we knew the at home pregnancy test said I was pregnant but the doctor wasn't so sure. She'd recommended a blood test over the holiday to confirm, which meant that on Thanksgiving day Will's mom, Debbie and my future mother-in-law, would drive us to the hospital in Franklin, NC where she worked as the Head of Pharmacy to take the blood test looking for the pregnancy hormone HCG. A couple days after Thanksgiving we drove back to get the results, and while we were waiting Debbie drove us through some of the Nantahala National Forest and we stopped at Dry Falls, which was featured in the movie, Last of the Mohicans. During the first trimester I experience nausea similar to motion sickness but I never threw up. Those roads were curvy and twisty and although the blood test results weren't known yet, I was still feeling different. The blood test was still a bit misleading, although the HCG levels had risen they hadn't "double" which is what we were told they needed to do in order to confirm the pregnancy. We drove home to Raleigh still in doubt but hopeful that all would be well.
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| White Oak Canyon Trail |
Our vacation in early November 2013 took us to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. We started the vacation in Vass, NC at Will's Uncle David's retirement party from the Army. After serving many tours, he tired as a Colonel and the party to celebrate was fantastic. The next day we drove to Charlotte and spent the late afternoon riding roller coasters. Then we drove to Lake Norman State Park to camp overnight. It was a great campground and we discovered it also boasted miles of single track mountain biking, which we plan to go back to. My fondest memories of our Shenandoah Trip are (in no particular order): fall foliage, sweeping vistas, drinking bourbon by the fire and talking and laughing with Will all night (I didn't know I was pregnant at the time), the sunsets, roadside bear sitings, and getting close to nature.
