Sunday, April 25, 2010

Our little sweet potato continues to bake...

18 weeks along, 4 1/2 months, and we are still going strong!! I cannot believe in two weeks we will be half way there. This is flying by. Although, sometimes when I am feeling crappy I wish it would go by quicker. We are still in shock that we are actually having a baby. A lot of our friends, discovered via FB, are expecting too! This makes it a bit easier. It makes you contemplate your life a bit too. This week I will turn 31 and I have been doing a bit of life contemplation. Having kids seems to kind of close that "college life" door. It opens a new and exciting one for sure but the hallway seems a little shorter. I know it is morbid to express some death anxiety at this point but the potential of having kids puts it into perspective. Pretty soon they will be graduating high school, getting married, and having their own kids. You think about all of these things and if being pregnant wasn't overwhelming enough that adds to it. This weekly blog will not be a downer though, so let's move on.

Let's talk about pregnancy dreams. It is said, by various websites of course, that pregnant women have bizarre dreams. Two stand out for me. The first was frightening. Horrifying really. I actually woke up scared and worried! I was pregnant but instead of carrying the baby in my belly I carried it in my hands - fetus in one hand and placenta in the other. It was such a vivid dream. Well, I fell. I tripped on something and smooshed the baby. It was a nightmare!! The other wasn't so traumatizing. I was going to pick the baby up for bathtime from its crib and I it turned its head toward me and it was a fully grown pig. With an enormous snout and everything. These dreams are crazy! Early on in pregnancy I dreamt that I was like some sort of commando with a rifle and everything shooting anyone or anything that threatened me, my baby, or Robbie. I liked those better. These are getting bizarre. It could be I have been hooked on the sci fi channel lately and some of that is spilling over. Who knows!!

So, we definitely have baby movement. It is still pretty sporadic. More fluttering than anything else but we have had a couple of kicks and those are surprising. I am looking forward to when they are more regular and Robbie can feel them. I get a little worried because the movement is so sporadic - if he/she is faced inward I won't feel much for up to a day. Sometimes if I lean forward when I pee I can get the baby to flip back toward the front. I have only successfully maneuvered this once by accident and I don't have the guts to really try again. I feel like it is dangerous or something. At least probably irritating. I am just going to be patient and allow nature to take its course. It seems to have been working out so far.

In two weeks we will finally be able to see the little bugger! We are so excited to know that it is all right - two arms, two legs, etc. I am also eager to know the gender so I don't keep calling it a he if it is a she. People keep asking me, "what do you think it is?" I don't know. I thought for the longest time it was a boy for sure and now I kinda think maybe it is a girl. It really doesn't matter I just want to call it by its name!

This week we purchased our first packs of diapers. I have decided to gradually stock up over time. I thought it was a little soon but they were on a superb deal and I had coupons for 7.50 off! Plus, we received a $5 gift card for the purchase. We couldn't pass it up. I have been on a coupon kick lately and sometimes it really pays off!

Okay here is a promise pictures posted today. Apparently we have lost the camera...again. This is Robbie's task so if no pictures are posted - he takes full blame!

Sunday, April 18, 2010

A letter to our baby Boggie...

Dear Boggie,
Today you weigh as much as a turnip and you are about 5 inches long from top to bottom (literally your cute little bottom) and we love every inch of you. Your heart is beating around 150 beats per minute and with every beat you are growing stronger. This week we wanted to write a letter to you to let you know how we are feeling about your arrival. We are scared. We are scared we won't be able to give you what you need or what you want. We are worried that we won't be able to afford everything you deserve. And we are scared your extended family will miss out on the first year(s) of your life. We know we love you and we know we will always love you and that is all we know right now. At this time in our life things are uncertain and that makes us nervous about bringing you into the world. We always planned to have a plan and it seems that plan could be better. We have less than 5 months to get it better and we will, that is our first promise to you.

Our second promise is we will always love you - unconditionally. When you keep us up in the middle of the night, have toys scattered all over the house, when you sneak out of the house, when you go to college, if you choose not to go to college, and even when you decide to privately pay for 24 hour home care rather than put us in a nursing home (I am a case manager after all). We will always love you. I have a feeling there may be times when I do not like your actions but always know we love you.

Our third promise is that we will only use daycare when we absolutely have to. This worries us. We know we will need it use it soon after you are born and we are sorry for this. We would love to care for you at home and not leave you with strangers but that may not be an option (unless we win the lottery this coming Saturday). But please know we are working hard during that time to provide you the life you deserve.

Fourth promise, we will get you closer to family as soon as we can. Being far from our family is tough. We don't have the luxury of having grandma or grandpa next door for advice. Or having large holiday gatherings to celebrate the your new life. We do feel a little isolated and we are sorry for that. The only thing I am hoping is that you will be too young to even notice they are absent. Unfortunately, we aren't too young and sometimes we could really use their presence to comfort us, encourage us, and hold our hands along this new and scary path. One thing I know for sure is your Daddy will never let you feel like you do not have enough people loving you and caring for you. He will always make sure you feel supported and he will always take care of us - he does now and I don't expect that to change.

This week was a bit of a turning point for us. Reality smacked us in our face and our fears are emerging. We know we love this baby we just wonder is love always enough. Will we be able to love it enough to make up for those that are absent? Will we be able to love it enough to make up for our occasional lack of resources or the time it is away from us in daycare? I think so. I hope so. Some people say the fact that we are scared and worried is good. We care and that is important. I tell those people I would rather be oblivious. I know people that are oblivious and they seem to be able to cope much better than I am.

Well, 3 weeks until our next OB appointment and 3 weeks until our US! We are so excited to get another picture of our little baby. We are hoping then we can finally know if it is boy or a girl and call it by it's real name. We honestly do not have a preference, but after watching discovery health channel there are few genetic abnormalities I am hoping to avoid.

Oh, by the way Boggie, severe morning sickness at 17 weeks? Really? I was up all night with nausea and vomiting like a world record projectile vomitist. I really appreciate that. I haven't vomited like that since college - obviously a baby wasn't the reason back then :).

No pics were posted last week. I am a little body sensitive right now and laziness got the best of me. I will try to suck it up and display my huge butt for you to see this week.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Our Amazing Avocado

I'm really running out of catchy titles for these things! This week it is about the size of an avocado. I tried to think of something funny having to do with guacamole, but then I thought I really don't want to think of my avocado all mashed up. It's hard to be creative! Next week we are looking at a turnip so send me some suggestions people or we are going to have something like "totally turnippy"!!

We are 16 weeks along today! 4 months! That is 5 months away from welcoming our baby into the world. I am stressed a bit about accumulating all the stuff we need before the baby gets here. We did start a registry to help us organize all the stuff we think we need (and some cute stuff that we don't). That sort of makes things worse. I don't know where we will put all this stuff. Robbie brought up a good point. He thinks that once you have kids they basically take over the whole house. He is right, as usual. I have seen pictures of my friend's homes that have young children and there is baby stuff everywhere!! That amount of clutter makes me stressed and I just watched that show Horders on TLC so I am worried our home will look like that and we will need an intervention!

We have started to slowly accumulate stuff, as mentioned before. We actually found a seriously crazy deal on baby bedding. We found a complete, basic, bedding set for $45 - this was more than 1/2 off the original price. I checked my Baby Bargains bible and the brand was rated a A!! We bought it. It is a little boy oriented - more blue than most girl rooms would have but hey it was on sale and if we have a girl I will throw some pink sheets on there or something. We may take a trip out to Babies R Us today to pick up a couple of things too. Once you sign up for the Rewards program you get coupons in the mail and I think I am going to cash in on a couple of those today to get some other necessities. Right now we are just dumping all our baby purchases in the baby room. I think I will feel better once we can get the room a little more together.

So, on to important stuff! We had our 4 week check-up and everything is going well. Baby's HB is strong - a little slower in the 150's this time. This is causing my mom to believe it is a girl. Early in the pregnancy I had a strong feeling it was a boy. That has kind of gone away and I am just not sure. I did watch another show on TLC and I am just hoping he or she has two arms and two legs and two feet and two hands and all the appropriate digits and other anatomy stuff needed. We did do the AFP/triple screen test which shows whether or not the baby could have down's syndrome or a neural tube defect. I have read this test can have a lot of false positives so that is worrisome but we are hoping for the best and will love this baby no matter what. We did not leave that appointment with an US scheduled...BUT...they called the next day!!! We will find out if we are having a "normal" boy or girl on May 11th!! I actually was able to get that day off work so I am super excited. Again, I cannot believe how fast this is going!

The issue of this week seems to be weight gain. I have put on about 10lbs and I am extremely irritated by this. Many of you know that I have recently "won the battle of the bulge" so to speak and lost a lot weight that I had been carrying for quite some time. It seems that is creeping back on again. Robbie tries to reassure me that it isn't because I am fat it's because I'm pregnant blah blah blah. I don't buy it for some reason. Once you have been 200+ pounds the thought that you will be there again is frightening. It is hard too because running isn't going to be in my cards for the next 5-6 months. I tried and my heart rate was way too high and I was way too short of breath. I am trying to walk and do my yoga but I don't find prenatal yoga all that challenging and I am still battling issues of fatigue after work. I am all excuses it seems...doesn't it. I am working on it. Trying to make good food choices and trying to work out regularly. It is still pretty frustrating to see and know the number on the scale will continue to rise.

One thing that was fun this week is we got a webcam. No not to make home videos and submit them to YouTube. But to video chat with family. We were able to talk briefly with my mom using a FREE program called Scype! I am hoping we can do that pretty regularly through the pregnancy and after so family can stay in touch with us and the baby. Anyone else familiar with this program let me know and we can video chat sometime!! It's pretty neat!

Alright, it's about 2am and I think I am ready to try to go back to sleep. I tend to wake up about about midnight or 3am and stay up for a couple of hours before falling back to sleep these days - it's wonderful. So, today we will post some new belly pics and we will take some new pics of anything else baby related we can think of! BTW did you know that blogspot will turn your blog into a book for you??? I can't wait for this to be a keepsake for our family at the end of this pregnancy journey!

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Orange you glad I didn't say pineapple??

I'm not! I love pineapple!! In fact I can't seem to get enough of it these days. Regardless of my new obsession with pineapple (and cream cheese) our baby is the size of a navel orange today. I cannot get over how fast it is growing! 15 weeks already??? It seems like yesterday Robbie and I were staring at the pee stick saying, "no way. already??" We are blessed to have this opportunity and the excitement has definitely not worn off!

So, we go back to the OB this week and I am really excited. During the first and second trimesters (until the second is about 1/2 over anyway) we see our OB every 4 weeks. That means an entire month goes by without me being able to hear a medical professional, other than fellow RN's and general surgeons, tell me everything is going well. 4 weeks we have to wait between appointments to hear our baby's heart beat again!! Those 4 weeks do go by fast but they are agonizing. One thing that makes/will make those 4 weeks go by a little easier is fetal movement. I think we have it. It is hard to tell but my rule is if I feel the same weird movement 3 times then it is fetal movement. Now, it obviously cannot be something I have felt before - aka gas. This has happened. I have felt the "fluttering" people mention. It feels like a little vibration to me. It doesn't happen often but it provides a little reassurance. Last night, while I was eating some pineapple, I felt a different movement - like someone was flicking the inside of my lower abdomen. This only occurred twice so I am counting it as gas for now. I am hoping it reaches my "3 times" rule!!

You can rent on the Internet home dopplers that allow you to listen to the baby's heartbeat whenever you want. I think this takes things to a level of crazy I don't need to go. I can doppler pulses on feet, carotids, brachials, femorals, etc. But, I don't know about babies and I'm not going to try. What if you find it one day and can't find it the next because the baby has moved into a weird position - do know how freaked out I would be?? Please, I will leave it up to nature and my 4 week appointments.

One thing pregnancy can make you do is really think about the creation of life, the human body, and how the gestation period prepares you for the birth and life of your child. Let me give you some examples - some graphic and TMI but I warned you on week 7. 1.) As you progress in pregnancy your boobs grow, right? But did you know that your nipples get darker. This isn't because its cool to have a tan, it's because it makes them easier for the baby to see! NEAT. 2.) Every night, like clockwork I wake up every two hours to pee, literally every two hours. It sounds like this is preparing me to wake up frequently when the baby arrives! The quality of my sleep is much different now too. I wake up to the slightest noise - another way to prepare me for when the baby comes! IT'S CRAZY! 3.) During the first trimester many women, including myself, have heavy food aversions to the foods that can potentially harbor dangerous bacteria for your growing baby - raw meat, raw fish, weird fruit, processed cheese (not really a bacteria grower but gross). I think this is NEAT! 4.) Just the simple way your body knows to adapt to the growing baby is pretty amazing. This process is pretty amazing if you really sit down and think about it. Oh one more, I was sick this week and I assumed if I was sick my baby probably is sick so I freaked out and called my OB - we are on a first name basis BTW. She said, "your baby is extremely well protected and only you are feeling sick". That's weird, right??

Anyways, so this week we received our first out of state shipment of baby gear!!! This package is from Nana - my mom!! Along with some old childhood friends she sent some baby clothes and my old baby blankets. It was so nice reminiscing and going through all the stuff - I posted some pics!! We, okay really Robbie, began the process of tackling the baby room. I have posted some before pics. Please notice the lack of all but one, significantly smaller, bookcase. Pay no attention to the fact that this bookcase is holding all Horror books - Stephen King and Anne Rice. I am working on this :)!

Okay, so next week we will have more belly pics and an OB update. I am hoping this visit we will schedule our anatomy US - you know what that means???!!! We will find out if it is a boy or a girl and reveal our top name pics!!