Forced Growth (and not just my belly)

I will be 14 weeks on Monday. I cannot believe how fast this pregnancy is going by. I definitely have a bit of a belly now, although it really only looks like fat, unless you already know I am pregnant. Although, this week I did have my first person ask me if I was pregnant (granted I was rubbing my stomach and had just eaten, so I was extra big, but still.) It was nice to have someone acknowledge that I was not fat.

I used to wonder why pregnant people were always rubbing and touching their bellies, and that question has now been answered. Because it always hurts. Not a truly "in pain" kind of hurt but it just aches, and feels stretched constantly. Especially after a big meal. It feels like a balloon is slowly being inflated from the inside (which isn’t too far from accurate.)

My big news for the week, is that I am now 80% sure of the gender! Rebekah is impatient and couldn’t handle waiting until August to find out, so she bought me the Intelligender test. It has an 80% accuracy rating and it said BOY!!!

I don’t claim to understand God, but sometimes I feel like I know how he works, and I knew he was going to give me a boy, no matter how much I wanted a girl. I think one of the whole points of parenting is to force you to grow (not just literally), and I am too comfortable with girls (which is why I wanted one). Excluding Robert and Hannah who I was really too young to remember their young infancy, I have “raised” 4 (or more) girls their first year of life, and 0 boys. I am not really sure what to do with a boy baby. I am sure they aren’t THAT much different from girls, but all the boys I have nannied or been around have been over 2 (and those were mostly the quiet indoor type boys).

For whatever reason, I have never really been around boy babies. So I knew I HAD to have a boy. God had to push me out of my comfort zone. Having a child at all is significant growth for Adam. It will be for me too, but ESPECIALLY for a boy. I am a bit out of my element with a boy. I would be too confident with a girl. Not the case with a boy. Rather than me feeling that I have more knowledge it will be a new growing experience for both of us to figure out together, and I am looking forward to that. I am just more scared of my chance of failure with a boy.  I will want an outdoorsy boy, but I am SOO not outdoorsy. Boys are so much more active and I am just not sure what to do with that.  That will all be Adam’s department.

God has been very kind at slowly acclimating me to the idea of a boy (I think I would have panicked if I didn’t have any inclination and just found out at my ultrasound/birth that it was a boy). I have had the feeling since pretty much day one, and then I took the baking soda gender test and it said boy, and now this test. There is still the chance that my ultrasound will tell me different, but I highly doubt it.

It is so funny how I can be so much more scared of one gender over the other. They are both babies who are going to completely disrupt my life. Boys are just a lot scarier.

Despite my fears, in some ways I am glad it’s (probably) a boy. I have not even thought of what I would do for a girl nursery, but I have a picture in my head of what I want for a boy nursery. If only I could find what I want online, but I think I am going to have to make it… but that is a topic for another blog post.

Since I am still not confident enough to buy boy things, but I want to do something for our little boy, I have changed my blog to look a little more masculine... 

Here is my gender test from today:

It's (probably) a boy!

Tiny Flutters...

Ok I am finally writing another blog post. 

I am finally feeling a little better most days (and then a day will come when morning sickness comes back full force and bites me in the butt). I have pretty much quit having to take my anti-throw-up medicine.

I finally have a little bit of a belly, but am realizing a “little bit of a belly” sucks. It basically means “I look fat”. I want to live in an ideal world where I go from looking thin and cute (with the new big boobs) to obviously pregnant. I think twins may do that for you, but the more I am thinking and planning for a baby the less ideal twins sound. One at a time sounds just right to me.

We went to the doctor this morning. It was a very quick appointment. I only gained a pound, have a great blood pressure, and heart the heart beat! My OB warned me that it might take her a minute to find it so not to worry or panic. But there is was nice and clear as soon as she put the Doppler down! ( I was secretly hoping that because of my tilted uterus she would have a little bit of a hard time finding it and make me go get another US to I could see my little gummy bear again… No such luck, but I was still VERY happy).

Also, because of where the Dr. found the heartbeat, I am also now sure that I felt the baby move this week!!!! It was nothing big. It is hard to even describe it was just the faintest of little flutters (although flutter is not a good description). It is not a feeling that I have ever really felt. I am looking forward to it getting more pronounced, and turning into kicks and having Adam be able to feel them.

I am still feeling like it is a boy, even though I am leaning towards wanting a girl. So I think Adam is going to win that one, but we will not know for sure until the end of August.

I am going to start including this little “survey” at the end of my blog posts to keep up updated on the “basics”

________________________________________

How far along? 12 weeks, 4 days

Total weight gain: -8 lbs. ( up one from my low point)

Maternity clothes? Nope, but most of my pants need to be unbuttoned. I will probably invest in a belly band soon.

Stretch marks? none yet.. . need to start to cocoa butter soon, so I don’t get them. J

Sleep: I am finally able to fall asleep on my own again. Most nights. Although ever since getting pregnant I have been waking up at like 6:30am. I guess my body is preparing for a baby.

Best moment this week: Hearing the baby’s heartbeat!

Miss Anything? Enjoying food.

Movement: The FIRST LITTLE FLUTTERS!!

Food cravings: Fruit. Tangerines especially this week.

Anything making you queasy or sick: Food.

Gender: Feeling like it is a boy.

Labor Signs: No!

Symptoms: Morning sickness

Belly Button in or out? in

Wedding rings on or off? On…and it seems like looser than ever.

Happy or Moody most of the time: Well since happy is one of the MANY moods I go through in a given day, I will go with moody.

Looking forward to: Enjoying food, having the 4^th of July off work, not look fat, and finding out the sex.

13 week belly Pics!

With shirt down I just look chubby.

With Shirt up you can see a little belly.

Our Redneck Paradise to beat the 109 degree heat this weekend.

The green thing on the tube was a mister that was hooked up to the hose lightly spraying me with cool water, the purple thing is a water gun to shoot Adam :-)

What to expect (and not expect) when you are expecting….

I consider myself pretty well versed in kids and/or pregnancy. Granted this is my first time being pregnant, but I feel as though I have studied it more than the average or above average person. But I have still been thrown through quite a few loops.

Symptoms I expected, that were (mostly) as expected:

• Boobs growing and hurting (hurt a little more than expected, but still not outside of the realm of expectation)
• Increased sense of smell- This is really no worse than I expected. What I didn’t expect is the influence this has on morning sickness… and the fact that it seems like the only things I have an increased sense of smell on are smells I DON’T like. Good things don’t smell any stronger or better… just the bad ones.

Symptoms that I expected, but were NOTHING like I expected:

• Morning Sickness- I even expected it to not JUST be in the morning…but I did not expect 2 months of non-stop endless misery, puking almost all the time, and even when I got meds for puking having NOTHING sound or look good to eat.
• Fatigue- I expected to feel tired, want an afternoon nap etc. I did not expect to feel like my body weighs a ton, and getting off of the couch is an effort.
• Mood Swings- I expected it to be PMS like, and I really didn’t expect it so early. I thought it was a later pregnancy thing. I definitely didn’t expect to go from being a royal witch with a capital B, to cry about the fact that I was a witch with a capital B, 5 minutes later.

Symptoms I didn’t expect at all:

•  Psycho Dreams- I have been having the weirdest craziest dreams ever. And I remember the EVERY night… and I NEVER remember my dreams.
• Increased Saliva- I didn’t expect the disgusting increase in saliva. I have even had to have a spit cup some days. It is gross.
• Insomnia- I expected fatigue… I didn’t expect to be constantly tired and not able to sleep for the life of me.
• Itching- I have been constantly itching. It is almost like I am allergic to being pregnant.
• Cramps- No one told me I would have period like cramps not constantly, but frequently. They don’t really hurt they are just annoying and I didn’t expect them. 

On that note, here are two "belly" pics. (Does anyone else see issue with the fact that I am bigger at 7 weeks than I am at 10 weeks? Yay for morning sickness weight loss....You can even see the stronger puking abs..)

7 weeks

 

10 weeks

 

 

 

A Roller Coaster of a Day: One of the Best and Worst Days of my Life.

So I haven’t written a blog post in a while, because I have been feeling so sick, but I had planned to write one today no matter what. This post is turning out a little differently than I had originally planned. I planned on it to be upbeat and exciting and full of all of my good news, but I am really not feeling it right now.  No worries, the baby is ok. (S)He is growing well and right on schedule with a heartbeat of 174 beats per minute. :-)

But let me go into the details of one of the best and worst day of my life:
This morning started out like any other morning, except instead of waking up puking my brains out I woke up excited to see my little one today. We left in plenty of time to get to the Dr. for my 9:30 appointment, knowing that we would probably hit all sorts of traffic trying to get downtown at that time of day. We got a little lost on the way to the Dr. as I have only had one appointment at this location previously.

Driving downtown around the hospital with a million signs pointing a hundred different directions can be quite confusing, and we almost missed our turn, and made a quick left to try to make it…. Right into the path of another car. She was almost able to stop before hitting us, so thankfully no one was hurt, just delayed an hour and a half while the police came and wrote up a report etc. I called my Dr. and they said they would do their best to work me in still.

By 10:30 we were back on our way to the Doctor. My wonderful doctor was able to get us in and we saw our first pictures of our “beautiful” baby blob. (Pictures below… you can even see what I think is a tiny leg in one of them.)

After an hour and a half at the doctor where they drained pretty much all of my blood, we went out to lunch at P.F. Chang’s (It was 12:30 and I still had not thrown up!!). I called my mom and my MIL and let them know that their grandbaby looked good, as they were waiting anxiously to hear.
Fast-forward 3 hours. I am sitting at home trying to get my whole day’s worth of work done in a few hours, while being distracted by my beautiful blob, and I get a call from my daddy. I answer excitedly thinking he is calling to tell me he saw the pictures and to talk about his grandbaby…I was wrong. (Although he was kind enough to start with that and not send me into full shock.)

No, the reason he was calling was to tell me my sister’s base in Afghanistan was attacked by suicide bombers and she had been airlifted to the hospital over there. My stomach sank through the floor. I have never gone so quickly from such an emotional high to an emotional low (and I don’t think it was pregnancy hormones.). I still don’t know all the details, just what was relayed to me from him, by her in a pretty addled and shaken up state.  Thankfully, as far as we know, she is not *SERIOUSLY* injured. She “just” has a really bad concussion, shrapnel injuries to her forehead and hands, and POSSIBLY a broken bone in her neck. (Hopefully we will know more soon, and I personally think those are pretty serious, but I guess relatively speaking…).

As far as I know, (based on every news article for any part in the world that I could get my hands on combined with what I know from her) the Taliban drove a truck into the middle of her base, close to the base restaurant where she was sitting with some people eating, and blew it up. She blacked out, as she was about 45 feet from the explosion, was dragged into a bunker where our guys proceeded to kill all the (excuse my language) *^%^%^%#@^*&^%$^@. She was then airlifted to a civilian hospital in Kabul, where she was able to call my parents.  That is really all I know. I hope to know more soon, as I am really just writing this as a distraction to keep myself from thinking about it and crying.

As a Pollyanna, who always likes to see the bright side and silver lining, my one hope is that because of all of this my sister will get to come home and be a part of my pregnancy and the birth of her first niece/nephew, whereas otherwise she was planning on being over there until March.

On that note, here are pictures of my beautiful baby blob. :-)

Close up of baby. (head is at the bottom, it is attached to me at the top)

Another Close up. You can see a little foot/leg sticking out. :-)

Futher away, closer to actual size...it is the size of a kidney bean :-)

Another one far away.

If Morning Sickness= Healthy Baby ours is a champ.

I made a big mistake early in my pregnancy. I said the words "No, I am not feeling sick at all. Maybe I won't get sick", and proceed to have a mild fear that I wasn't really pregnant or that something was wrong because I wasn't feeling too sick. I think that is the equivalent to praying for patience because God answered.

My morning sickness really started to kick in on Sunday, aka Mother's Day. God gave me the gift of reassuring me that I really was pregnant and on my way to being a Mommy. While I had nausea here and there when a wrong smell hit me, this was this fist day I felt yucky ALL DAY, and it seems to have gone down hill from there.

I finally told my one female boss on Tuesday, just because I had to mute myself and sneak out of 2 meetings to go throw up, and I didn't think I would be able to hide it well. I had originally planned to tell my whole team when I went up there in June, right after my first Dr.'s Appt.

I have decided that they call it "Morning sickness" is because it seems like the only respite you have is approximately between the hours of 1-4pm, and the rest of the time (mostly "AM" hours) you are sick. I threw up no less than 6 times between the hours of 12am and 3am this morning, and at 7:45 when I woke up again, I literally started crying because I knew that consciousness equaled throwing up and I couldn't handle throwing up anymore because my head and throat still hurt from the last round.  

Since I had the day off work anyway, because my awesome hubby is remodeling our bathroom this weekend, so I can finally have a bathtub (YAY!!!). I just took two 2-hour naps where I forced down a couple swallows of food in between them. That seemed to work alright.

While I still feel a little nauseated, it isn't so bad, since I am on my 1-4pm break right now, and I slept through the morning round.

One bit of information that I forgot to mention in my earlier posts: You know how I wrote a whole blog post about worrying about giving up Dr. Pepper? All for naught. Two days after implantation, I no longer liked it. I never had a caffeine withdrawal headache, or anything. Since I stopped liking it over a week before I knew I was pregnant, I actually thought they may have changed the formula a little or that maybe our area had a new bottler, because it just tasted weird. So that was one weird first symptom, that made my life a little easier, and took a worry away.

Oh! Here is the first belly picture I promised you. All future ones should be with our new nice camera that the fedex man is supposed to be bringing today! This was taken May 4, at 4.5 weeks.

We made it a week and a half...

FYI- The previous post was written the night we found out (May 1), but I stopped and planned to write more..and didn't. In the future I just need to learn to post it once it's written.

As proof of how good we are at keeping secrets, I made it 12 hours without telling anyone, 24 without telling my parents, and a week and a half without telling the rest of the family. I was just too excited. My logic is, I should tell anyone who we would tell if I miscarried, that way they would still be able to experience the joy first, just in case something did happen. It was pretty sound logic in my opinion (sound enough that I was able to convince my hubby :-) )

So to update on my pregnancy symptoms. I had my first puking session today when Adam made coffee. It was terrible. I was feeling a little queasy this morning, but nothing bad...until he made coffee... and I immediately ran to the bathroom and got rid of the crackers I had just eaten to settle my stomach.

Outside of that my only symptoms so far has been moodiness. It is like PMS on steroids. I go from wanting to kill someone, to wanting to cry, to deliriously happy in the course of 15 minutes. (You can ask my husband, I literally did all of those in that order in about an hour time span today). So this next 9 months is going to be fun....

On another note my boobs are HUGE (for me), but they hurt if I look at them funny. I think I am going to like this part of pregnancy. After 26 years I can finally get cleavage. Yay!

My first doctor's appointment is June 1. I am super excited to see my little sesame seed (that is the size he/she is right now). I am torn because I have to wait so long, but the fact that I get an ultrasound when I go makes up for it a bit.

Well I am going to go eat the hotdog (with cheese...right now I want everything with cheese on it... this is definitely my husband's baby) and veggies (I also can't get enough veggies right now- this baby is definitely mine). 

I will put my first "belly pic"  and pics of the test up soon for people to see. I think I will finally make this public since we have told enough people that will want to follow it.

Two Pink Lines!!!

So obviously this idea of "getting in the habit of blogging before I got pregnant" didn't work out so well. But the good new is... IT FINALLY HAPPENED!!! I took the test tonight and (shockingly) saw two pink lines. I didn't think I was because I got a negative a couple days earlier, and I have convinced myself that I was so many times when I wasn't, I began treating myself like the boy who cried wolf.

After wanting this for my whole life, my first reaction is fear. After a few minutes it was excitement, but fear and shock definitely came first.

The big task now is keeping the secret. Adam says I have to wait til 12 weeks to tell anyone... I am not sure I can wait that long. Hopefully blogging will help.