Pregnancy Journal: Week 14

Still sick. Still tired.

I am starting to get amazed at how much my body can expand and grow when I feel like I am not keeping down/eating much. It makes me realize just a little bit more that there really is a little person inside of me! I am slowly getting some of my energy back. Now, when I come home from work I can do a few things and actually watch TV in the living room all night instead of watching it in bed :)

My clothes are really starting to not fit anymore, but all of the maternity clothes that I borrowed from my wonderful sister-in-law Happy (thanks Hap!) seem too big. I'm thinking that it might be time to do some in-between wardrobe shopping.

Belly picture:

Pregnancy Journal: Week 13

We had our second doctor's appointment this week and got to hear the baby's heartbeat again! It was so wonderful!!

Right before Anthony hit record, the doctor had found the heartbeat but then the baby moved and he had to search around a while before he found it again. I imagined he/she getting woken up by someone messing with him and trying to move away from the intrusion :)

Cool New T-Shirts

So Ant and I decided to buy some cool new t-shirts a few months ago. Here is a picture of us wearing them:
Did you look at them closely? .... We are going to have a baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We seriously can't be more excited! I am almost 13 weeks along and I am due February 27, 2010, just two days after my birthday :)

Here is the story of how we found out (Written June 23, 2010):

I missed work yesterday because of a really bad migraine, so yesterday I stayed in bed all day recovering. Today I was feeling better and ready to go back to work. In the back of my head I realized that today was the day that I was supposed to start my period. I took my temperature in the morning and it was still high, and I hadn’t felt any kind of cramping or PMS symptoms. Once I fully realized this, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get any peace of mind until I took a pregnancy test. Of course, I was sure that it was going to be negative since I’ve taken about a million of them and they always turn up negative, I mean that is just what they do for me! I stopped by the store for a few tests and took it in the bathroom at work. As I watched the test start to work, I noticed that the first line showed up right away. “Wait a minute..” I thought. I’ve taken enough of these to know that the control line is usually at the end of the test so that you know that it worked correctly. Sure enough, a few seconds later, another line appeared. TWO LINES!!!!! I couldn’t believe it!! I was in shock, and then crying, and then I didn’t know how in the world I was going to get through the day without being able to tell anyone.

Finally I decided to just go home really quick, pretend that I had forgotten something, and then show Anthony the pregnancy test. I entertained the idea of doing something cute to surprise him, but we have been trying for so long that I just couldn’t keep it from him. When I finally got home, I said hi to him and told him I forgot something. Then I slipped the test out of my purse and told him that this is what I forgot to show him. He was so happy!! He couldn’t stop saying, “Na uh!!!” and squeezing me so tight that I needed to ask him for air. He still wanted to see “the magic” for himself, so I took the second test in the pack so that he could watch the positive result show up. It came up right away, and he got even more excited all over again. Now it was time to go back to work and try to pretend that I wasn’t bursting!

Pregnancy Journal: Week 12

I can't believe that I made it this far! I have been in seriously whiny survival mode for the past two and 1/2 months and I am just starting to feel like we are getting somewhere. If I have to feel so yucky, I might as well feel yucky farther along, right? I have my 2nd doctor's appointment next week and I can't wait to hear the baby's heartbeat again. How much do you think it would cost to buy one of those doppler thingys? Hmmm... How awesome would it be if I could hear the heartbeat anytime I wanted to?


Most of the extreme hunger and crazy cravings has kind of calmed down. It is weird, I would think they would get worse but it is kind of nice to go back to eating like a normal person. There are finally more things that I can eat than I can't, so that is nice. At the moment I still can't eat: vegetables (raw snacks are okay, but cooked vegetables, gag!), meat (any kind, even chicken), smoothies, yogurt unless it is the extra thick kind, and anything that is too spicy hot. The baby LOVES refined carbs, so I am often trying to talk myself out of buckets full of bread, crackers, and pancakes :) (Oh and that is my excuse for now and the next 7 months if I want to eat something. It is not for me it is for the baby, so really I am sacrificing by eating that piece of pie)

Pregnancy Journal: Week 11

Same old, same old. Still nauseous everyday, but usually only at the end of the day so I can make it through work reasonably well and go home and crash in bed and watch TV for the rest of the night. I am running out of shows to watch, I'll tell you what

This week I took my first belly picture! I've kind of been avoiding because I haven't really felt cute, but the day I took this I did. Plus, I couldn't believe what my belly was doing, so I decided to take a picture. Of course, I am fairly certain that most of this belly is water weight and bloating, but belly it is nonetheless :)

Pregnancy Journal: Week 10

There isn't much new this week, just sick and tired all of the time. I finally filled my prescription that I got from my doctor for nausea, and tried it out. It works great! At least, for a few days and then it seems like the effectiveness wears off and I have to have more of it for a smaller effect. So now I ration it and try not to have it unless I am at work or doing something I absolutely have to be functional for. If I am just at home, I do my best to just rest and drink broth or something to soothe my stomach.

We visited Anthony's family this weekend and got to tell them the good news! It was really fun. We wore these shirts that I ordered off of the internet that say "Mommy '11" and "Daddy '11" and we wore them to visit Ant's sister and brother-in-law and to visit his parents later on. It was so much fun waiting for them to notice and say something about it. Ant's sister, Happy, noticed right away and said, "Are you guys trying to tell us something". We just grinned and nodded and she was really excited for us. Ant's brother-in-law, Jared, needed a little more coaxing :) We basically had to keep hinting around, "Do you like our t-shirts?" and "Don't you like t-shirts that say things?". He was completely oblivious for awhile until he finally got it. Once he did, he said that he noticed them, but just didn't connect it to us being pregnant.

Anthony's parents were really fun to tell! Almost as soon as we walked into the door his mom saw my shirt and kept repeating it hopefully, "Mommy?!, Mommy?!". I told her to look at Anthony's shirt and when she saw what it said she squealed so loud, I couldn't believe it!! She was beside herself. Ant's dad was happy too, but nothing compares to her joy :) We all hugged and hugged multiple times and then she raced out of the room. I thought she was going to get the camera, but she came back with a stack of maternity shirts that she bought for me last year and was saving for just this occasion. Here are the pictures we took with the future grandparents and great-grandparent:

Pregnancy Journal: Week 9

The hunger has set in this week! I am hungry literally all of the time. As soon as I eat, about 15 minutes later I am ready to start planning my next meal. Sometimes it is kind of fun, but at other times it is really inconvenient. Like, when I had to scribe for a spanish exam for someone and about an hour through it I was ready to yell at the student to hurry it up because I needed to eat my lunch! I also get tired of feeling hungry all of the time. Sometimes you just want to feel full and satisfied, but I never seem to be able to get there. Part of it is that I have to pace myself and I can't let myself eat too much or my stomach will hurt and I will feel nauseous. It really is a delicate balance that I have to learn! Another new thing for me is that if I find something that sounds good to me and and I have it, I instantly want another one. Like right away, I need seconds. So strange for me!

The coolest thing yet so far happened this week. We had our first doctor's appointment and our very first ultrasound! I can't describe just how amazing it was!!! We got to literally see the heart beating away and got to hear the heart beat. Here are the best ultrasound pictures from the appointment. We found out that I am a few days farther along than we thought so my new due date is 2/27/11, just two days after my birthday!

My Poor Pitiful Dogs

My poor dogs! They are not having a good week. One of our dogs, Brownie, somehow scratched her cornea last week and we ended up having to take her to the animal hospital. She has had to go back for a check up at least once and was given more medicine. Now we have multiple medications to give her every 4 hours! To make things worse, she hates getting the drops and ointment put into her eyes and rubs at it constantly so we had to get an E-collar for her.

To add to that, our other dog, Bitsy, just went into heat so she is moping around being clingy and giving us sad faces since she has to wear a diaper.

They both painted such a picture last night that we had to take a picture of it. Oh the joys of animal ownership!

Pregnancy Journal: Week 8

We've basically stopped grocery shopping around here. Instead we just go buy whatever I feel like eating every night. Since this means a lot more take-out Anthony is as happy as a clam! I just can't bear the thought of cooking, even though some things do sound good to eat. I don't really get it. It's like the idea of the cooking process makes me feel sick, but the smell of good food is no problem. Whatever. I am just trying to stay alive at this point as well as keep my will to survive :)

I am so sick of feeling sick! I have really started to feel like my body isn't mine anymore. I always have felt some control over what I eat and if I work out and now that is all gone. I basically eat whatever I can keep down, which changes day to day and I am either too tired or too sick to even think about working out. I get out of breath climbing the parking garage stairs to my car every day! I've had two migraines back to back this week and they really knocked me out. I have spent Thursday night all through Saturday in bed trying to recuperate. I tried to go to work Friday morning, but ended up turning around and coming home, up chucking in a plastic bag. Not fun.

Never, ever, have I ever pictured pregnancy as this. I always pictured cute bellies, and fun ultrasounds, and husbands waiting on me hand and foot... I never pictured the miserable parts. Still, I am eternally grateful that Anthony and I get this opportunity. We know a lot of people who don't, so I am not ungrateful. I am just adjusting. That's all :)

Pregnancy Journal: Week 7

This week has been pretty good. I still feel sick to my stomach a lot of the time, but I am finding more and more foods that sound good to me and that don't make my stomach unhappy. I was able to set up an appointment with an OB/GYN that was recommended to me by my old doctor from Gainesville, so that is exciting! They told me that the entire appointment will probably take around 3 to 3 1/2 hours, so I have to plan to take the entire afternoon off of work. The said that they will be doing an ultrasound, so that is exciting! The thing I am most looking foward to is hearing the heartbeat. Once I hear that and everything looks good, and I think a lot of my residual anxiety will be able to recede into the background. I guess because it took us so long to get pregnant (almost an entire year) that I have started to expect things not come easily for us.

The other exciting thing is that once we hear the heartbeat and everything looks good according to our doctor, then we will start telling our family that we are expecting! I will be 8 weeks by then and I don't think we will be able to wait much longer than that. We are soooo not secret keeping people, we are both so bad at it! I've actually started avoiding spending time with our friends and family recently because I am so horrible at hiding things that I can't think of a good way to explain me not feeling well, and I am afraid that I will somehow let it slip without thinking. I know that there are a lot of mixed opinions about when is the best time to tell. Some people tell everyone right away, and others wait until at least the 2nd trimester before they breathe a word to anyone. I think we are okay with being kind of in the middle of the two camps. One good thing about telling our families is that once we can talk about it with people other than each other I think it will start to feel more and more real to us. Now it is hard to imagine that I have anything more than a really extended flu :)

Update Finally!

I promise we are still alive and kicking! Life has been a whole lot of the same stuff over and over again that I just couldn't think of anything worth writing! I always used to balk at people who said that or put that in their blog posts, but now I really feel like it is true. We have become pretty boring and monotonous people :)

Anthony and I are starting to really enjoy being cub scout leaders. Even though there is still a lot more to learn and understand (Hello forms!!!!!) we get to just play a lot of the time, so how great of a calling is that? Primary is good too, but it is a little more of a gamble. Some Sundays are great and we think we are pretty good teachers, and other Sundays we wonder what in the world we did to deserve this assignment because we have no idea what to do!

Work is going well for me, same old same old. Anthony's semester is going pretty well and he is looking forward to being done at the end of July. He doesn't hate his life anymore every time he comes home from the health department for his women's rotation, so I think he has gotten used to the more personal aspects of this rotation. I still think it is so funny to me when Anthony comes home from class sometimes, excited to tell me something interesting he learned about how women's bodies work and the majority of the time I already know it. I think he forgets that since I am a women I sort of was forced to learn this stuff already! :) He really loves the day a week he gets to spend at the Urgent Care Clinic and he comes home late in the evening excited about all of the things he was allowed to be in charge of that day. It is really fun for me to see him enjoy himself so much!

My garden is not doing to well. We had such a wonky bit of weather the past few months that it has either been too cold, then too hot, then too much rain at once. Pretty much nothing is left standing, and I was barely ever able to get anything out of it. The plants grew like champs, they just never gave me any vegetables! I'm not giving up, but I definitely have lost a little steam for my tiny backyard garden.

Pregnancy Journal: Week 6

Oh, the morning sickness is here to stay!!! I am pretty miserable. And tired. I keep telling myself that it is a good thing to feel all these symptoms, that it means that the baby is doing what it needs to, but I am still miserable. I just never have a moment when my stomach doesn't feel upset, and swing back and forth between some foods sounding really good and then all of a sudden sounding disgusting to me. Sometimes I change my mind about eating something as I am making it and end up giving it to Anthony. At least doing this I can work on getting him as fat as I can. (My goal is to have him gain as much weight as I do)

I also had my first migraine since I found out I was pregnant. I had been dreading this and hoping that I wouldn't get one until after I had a doctors appointment and could get some kind of medication that I can take. The prescription medication that I have now for migraines you can't take in pregnancy. This early on in a pregnancy, really the only medication I can have is tylenol. The last time I only took over the counter medication for my migraines I ended up heading to an urgent care clinic after 13 hours of misery. Sooo, I thought I was in for a horrendous night. Luckily, it really wasn't that bad! I had a total of two large doses of tylenol throughout the night and I was able to sleep pretty well. It ended up being more like a normal bad headache than anything else.

The next day I had off of work for the holiday and I literally spent the entire day in bed sleeping and recovering, which really wasn't that bad. I watched a serious amount of movies, including Juno. You know, the movie about the teenager that gets pregnant? I totally envied her how she didn't even realize she was pregnant until she was 12 weeks along. But then she was an unwed teenager, so I guess I can cut her some slack :)

Since I found out I was pregnant, I am pretty sure I haven't washed any dishes, cooked any meals, or done any laundry. With the way I have been feeling I don't think that that is going to change any time soon. BUT, I have gone to work everyday and done my job as well as always. Since my paycheck is the one that is paying the bills right now, I don't feel at all guilty about coming home everyday and camping out in bed. That is just the way it needs to be right now :)

I do however, have a funny pregnancy brain story already! About a week ago I made up some snacks to bring with me to work. These nacho flavored quaker rice cake things were doing pretty well for me, so I put together a bag of those. When I got home from work, I couldn't find them anywhere and I was bummed, thinking Anthony had finished them off. I opened the refridgerator, and there the bag was on the shelf! I didn't even get anything out of the fridge that morning, I must have just put it back in the fridge instead of the pantry for no good reason. Plus, I didn't even remember doing it! I grabbed the bag and asked Anthony if he saw where these was. He just laughed and said, "Yeah, I thought that was funny".