Ultrasound #2 - Nervousness and News

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On August 14th, Dave and I went to my second ultrasound appointment. This one was the possible gender-determining one... and I was a bit nervous. Ever since high school, I've always wanted a little girl if I ever had kids. My mother and I share such a wonderful bond, and I've always hoped to continue this with my own little girl. I always imagined the Four-Generations-of-Women pictures with Grandma, my mom, me, and my little girl... of having those heart-felt mother-daughter talks... of listening to her thoughts and expressions as she played with her girl friends... of being there for her when the first boy broke her heart. I almost wanted the baby's gender to be a secret until the baby was born so that I wouldn't feel depressed or despondent if it was a boy. But then I figured it would probably be best to find out so that I could mentally prepare myself for a boy if that's what the little one ended up being. Maybe that sounds terrible. A lot of women claim that they don't care what gender their baby is "as long as it's healthy", but that wasn't the case for me. There's just something about little girls (in my mind).

Anyway... so we found out the baby's gender, and I'm feeling like a horrible mommy right now. I've always wanted a little girl, but I'm having a boy. I know it's always only a 50-50 chance, but a tear streaked down my face when the doctor announced that. I came home and cried for a good half hour and still think about how different things will be from what I had hoped. Dave kind of wanted a girl, but he's just super-excited to finally know the gender and is ready to go out and start buying stuff. He tried to be understanding and consoling and to get me to think positive (or the baby's going to "know" and "feel (my) emotions"), but I just can't help it. I know I'm going to love our little monster as soon as I see him, but it's just a little hard right now. We waited so long to have children (we've been together for over 15 years) that I'm pretty sure that this will be our only child. And i'm not sure if i'd even WANT to try again for "fear" of having yet another boy. Not to mention the horrid morning sickness or our financial situation. Sigh.

I feel I have no clue how to be a "boy mommy". It seems having a girl would be easier just since I've been one. Does that sound silly? Honestly, I don't think it does. I've always hated the stereotypes that boys are "rough-and-tumble" and less prone to thoughtfulness while girls are gentle, kind, and innately compassionate. I know that either sex can grow up to acquire and posses an infinite mix of traits... but I don't know. From what I've experienced in life and seen at the school where I work, the stereotypes are true (for the most part).

I've talked to a few moms in person and online - several who felt this way themselves with the birth of their firstborn -, and everyone says that "you'll love him the minute you see him". Almost all of them agreed, though, that it's alright to feel this way... to grieve for "the dream of your little girl" essentially dying - especially if you're fairly certain that you will only have one child in your lifetime. It's been a week since the appointment and I'm starting to come to terms with having a little guy instead. I have a feeling, though, that I'll always be wondering "what if" and feeling that longing whenever I see a girl his age.

Aside from all of that...

The doctor noted that I have Placenta Previa - a condition where your placenta blocks your uterus. I don't recall what position it was in (fully covering the uterus - "complete" - or just to the side - "partial"), though. I want to call soon and find out. I guess it's a fairly common finding and that, for most women, it generally moves out of the way by the time the baby's due. But I've also read that if it's fully covering, it usually stays there and the baby has to be delivered by c-section. I'm really scared/nervous about this as I really DON'T want to have a c-section. I guess if it doesn't move, though, there's really no other choice.

Another slight scare - all of my blood work/tests came back normal, but they found a bright spot on the baby's heart which I believe they said is a calcium build-up that may dissolve with time... but that this spot is also commonly an indicator of Down Syndrome. I'm 34, so there's only a 1 in 10,000 risk. With this finding, though, they're lowering the odds to 1 in 5,000. Which is still pretty good odds for the baby to NOT have Down's, but I'm just really nervous. Dave's confident about just thinking positive and "knowing" that everything is going to be alright "because it's our baby and he's going to be perfect". I just cross my fingers and hope for the best from everything.

Time Keeps Ticking Away

Summer's almost over. :( How can August be here already?

Well, I only have two more free days after today before school starts up again. I'm glad that I had the summer to lay around and do nothing but be sick, but I'm frustrated that that's how I spent practically my ENTIRE summer. No road trips. No trips to the park. I made a trip or two to Carbondale to visit Dave and some friends, but for the most part... I ended up spending just about every day feeling nauseous and/or getting sick. I couldn't even stand moving around enough to take the dogs for a walk. When it's been hot, I haven't even been able to tolerate just standing outside to throw Buddha the ball. Sigh.

So, I spent a lot of time reading. I've probably read more just this summer than I have for the past three or four years combined. (Sad, I know.) I should have checked out some newer stuff or some "classics" from the library, but I wasn't organized or motivated enough to do that. Instead, I just read a few books that Dave and I have had in our collections for a while now. Nothing fantastic. I think I probably enjoyed "Midwives" by Chris Bohjalian the most. It's the story of a midwife in Vermont and the events that lead up to her trial on charges of manslaughter (of a woman under her care). I've had this book for years and started reading it several times, but now I'm finally done. Good story.

I'm nervous about starting work and still having dizzy spells and nausea/sickness that comes out of the blue. Lots of women work throughout their pregnancy despite everything, though, so I guess I just need to "buck up" and get used to the idea. Maybe my little guys' work station will be right next to the bathroom again this year so I won't have far to go if the "sickies" decide to attack without notice.

I went to Trader Joe's and Whole Foods this weekend and stocked up a little on snacks and lunch foods for work. I bought some noodle bowls, a frozen meal dish, some hummus and mini pita breads, mini bagels and Tofutti cream cheese, vegan jerky, soy yogurts, and a few nutrition bars among other things. I should probably cook up some chick'n and veggie soup tonight so that I can have some additional homemade stuff to freeze for lunches as the weeks go by. In the freezer right now, I just have one dish of veg. chili, a couple bowls of frozen rotini noodles (to add beans, kale, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar or whatever to when the day comes to bring it in for lunch), and three or four small dishes of vegetable pilaf (to have along with a veggie burger or chick'n patty or something). I'm still at the point right now, though, of having food aversions. What sounds good one day may not sound good the next. I guess I'll just have to bring in a few things - along with some snack foods - and store them in our room (we have a fridge in there) so that I'll have a few options from which to choose each day. Everyone always fills up the freezer with their WeightWatchers or Lean Cuisine meals, so maybe if I'm on top of it on the first day there'll actually be room for my stuff, too. :P

The possible gender-determining ultrasound is just days away... five to be exact. Fingers crossed that the little one will actually let us see it's nether-regions... and that it's a girl. ;)

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All Pregnant and Nowhere To Go

I had another appointment on Thursday. This had to be the most aggravating appointment yet. I was scheduled to be seen at 2:45pm and arrived right on time. We sat in the almost filled-to-capacity waiting room... and sat... and sat... and sat. I went up to the front desk and mentioned my appointment time and the fact that it was already 3:30. The receptionist took a look at my doctor's patient tray and responded that there was one patient ahead of me and then the doctor would see me. WTF?!?! What's the point of scheduling an appointment time if there's STILL going to be another person before me FORTY-FIVE minutes AFTER I'm already supposed to be SEEN! UUUURGH! Finally, about ten minutes later, a nurse calls me back. She takes my blood pressure, my weight, and then leads me down the hall to the doctor's office... where she tells me... you guessed it... that there's one person ahead of me and then the doctor would be with me. FUCK! So, we wait... and wait... and wait... and wait. About twenty minutes later, the doctor comes in, checks out the baby's heartbeat, feels where my uterus if, tells me it's right where it should be, and asks me if I have any questions. And that was it. The entire visit with the doctor and the nurse took a total of about fifteen minutes, yet we were at the clinic for an hour and forty-five minutes!!!!! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Sigh.

It was cool to hear the heartbeat again and to hear the muffled static noise which the doctor said was the baby kicking. I still haven't felt anything yet myself, but that may be a few more weeks anyway. In three weeks, I go in for the (possible) gender-determining ultrasound. I'm excited, but...


Dave and I are really getting nervous about our living situation with the baby coming. We've decided that the best thing to do for now would be to save up our money and look for a place to rent for a few years until our credit scores improve. (Did I already write about this in my last entry?) As much as people try to convince me that I need to just stay here since I have insurance with the school and already have a relationship established with these doctors... it's just not an option. There's nowhere up here for the baby. My dad decided last night that he needs the office for all of his stuff and furniture that he's already started buying for when we move out, so we had to move all of our stored stuff and my crafty materials out of there and move it into our bedroom and into the family room (taking up even *more* of the dogs' already limited Dad-imposed confined space). So our little bedroom now has a queen bed, a dresser, a small side table, four bookcases (of varying heights), and a couple of Rubbermaid storage boxes in it. There's not enough space in our bedroom even for a bassinet let alone a crib. No, staying here is NOT an option.

If I quit my job and move down there in, say, November... hmm... or if I start my maternity leave at the beginning of December, I'll still be covered by my insurance until the baby's born. And then I guess... I don't know. I won't have a job down there and we won't be able to afford to keep up with insurance payments along with rent and the other bills on one income. I could try to apply for state assistance, but I don't know anything about that as far as medical stuff goes. Does Dave make too much for us to qualify? Does the state cover kids under 18 if the parents don't have insurance through their work (which Dave doesn't)? Will I be able to earn Unemployment due to moving out of the area? Does the state expect new mothers to start looking for employment immediately after giving birth? What am I going to do about child care if I have to work?

I'm still waking up throughout the night and unable to fall back to sleep for over an hour most times. And now, these questions and possible scenarios start playing through my head every time I wake up. A friend proposed the idea that maybe some (or much) of my nausea all of this time has been spurred by all of this worry and stress of the unknown. There's so much uncertainty in my life right now. I know we'll figure something out in time and we'll make it work somehow. We always do. It's just all so frustrating and panic-inducing right now.

*Here's where I remind myself to breathe.*

Blah blah blah...

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Well, the day after my last post, the sickness came back. Not full force mind you but enough to let me know that I'm not "over the hump" yet. If I ever *will* be. Grrr. Generally, I'll have a few good-eating days and then be nauseous and sick the next and then queasy for another day or two. Other days, like today, I'll be feeling fine all day and then get sick out of nowhere. I was actually feeling so good today, that I was considering taking the dogs for a walk for the first time since I've been pregnant. Ugh. Not any more. It's really quite annoying.


I have my next doctor's appointment on Thursday. Not sure what to expect with this one. The appointment scheduler just said it would be with an OB, but she didn't have any idea what might be discussed or anything. It's too early for the gender-determining ultrasound, so that's not it. Maybe it's for the screening tests to rule out possible birth defects? If it is, though, I read that the "triple screen" or "quad screen" has a high rate of giving false positives.

"The triple screen test is the least invasive of all prenatal tests, but it has a high rate of false positives, which incorrectly indicate risk in healthy pregnancies, resulting in weeks of anxiety while further tests are evaluated. Between 96 and 98 percent of women who first receive a positive triple screen result will go on to have normal babies, making the risks of this test emotional rather than physical."

So, I'm not sure I'm up for that. According to several sites I've looked at, the quad screen is performed between the 16th to 18th week of pregnancy, and I'll be about 15 1/2 on Thursday. I'll have to talk it over with Dave and a few others and see what they think. One of my friends in Seattle had this done and they had her worrying for weeks that her baby was going to be born with a cleft palate and numerous other types of deformities or physical/mental disabilities... but he turned out completely healthy and happy. I really don't think I want all of that stress and anxiety. I mean, if the initial results were more accurate and didn't require additional blood work or other procedures and days/weeks of waiting, I'd feel more secure with it. It would be nice to be a little more mentally prepared for a child with special needs than to find out the day it's born, but... I don't know.


I went out for coffee with my mom over the weekend. Unbeknowst to me, it was all part of her plan to get me to create a baby registry and to buy me "appropriate" maternity clothes. My brother was all excited when he first learned I was pregnant and wanted me to register somewhere so he could get started on spoiling his little niece or nephew. So, I registered and then scouted out some clothes. I didn't actually find too many things that were specifically labeled as maternity wear (save for a pair of khakis with the preggo waist thingy, a nice blouse/shirt with long-sleeves and an empire waist, and two plain v-neck t-shirts)... mainly I just bought things in my normal pre-pregnancy size (since I've lost so much weight and am almost down a size) or one size larger than that. I'm sure once my belly starts growing and winter is on its way, I'll be out looking once again. For now, though, I think I'm all set.


The initial excitement of being pregnant is over. This is starting to seem like it's going to be an incredibly looooong wait. Six more months. Sigh. Well, at least I'm not an elephant, right? Twenty-two months is much too long of a commitment to being sick, tired, and excessively rotund.

It Feels So Good To Eat Again! Now If Only I Could Get a Good Night's Sleep!

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Today marks Day 5 of almost normal eating! I'm not sure if this is just a temporary reprieve or if my all-day-long morning sickness is finally bidding me "farewell" for now... but I'm happy whatever the case may be! I've missed eating food so much! Well, that is, I've missed eating food and having it actually TASTE good and having it actually stay in my stomach for the most part. I've actually been eating a fairly typical breakfast, lunch, and dinner and then eating a light snack in between there somewhere. Food is good.

For now, I'm giving all of the credit to Jolly Ranchers and Blow Pops (from Charms!). Yep, I credit artificially colored and flavored sugary candies with calming my pregnancy nausea. And yes, I've researched and supposedly they're both vegan. I read a few places that sucking on hard candies can help the nausea, so I decided to give it a shot. I'd heard about Preggo Pops, but then I found out that they're kinda pricey and essentially nothing more than naturally flavored/sweetened lollipops. I generally avoid candy and super sugary stuff and especially have since the nausea started... but the nausea just happened to go away shortly after Dave bought me a bag of Jolly Ranchers. Oh, but I only like the cherry and watermelon flavors... so Dave gets the rest.

My mind is sort of at a lull in thinking baby thoughts. I've always been fairly pudgy... and with having lost almost twenty pounds... I really can't tell if I have a "baby bump" or not. I definitely don't need to worry about buying any maternity clothes right now since my prepregnancy clothes are fitting even better than before. My mom and I have already been baby shopping, so I have a bunch of cute little onesies and newborn clothes as well as a few other things. I don't even know where I'll be living when the baby's born, so there's no nursery or special area to "set up". I have another check-up appointment next week, but the gender-determining ultrasound won't be until another week or two after that. Everything's just kind of "meh".

My back has been starting to hurt lately, but I have no one here to massage it. I'm trying to sleep on my left side as much as possible (like the baby doctors all recommend), but my left hip feels like it's all bruised and sore. I try to sleep with it slightly angled or put a whole pillow under my hip to help a little, and I guess it works halfway decent. Like a lot of other mommies, I've been having very vivid dreams that wake me up in the middle of the night... and then I can't fall back to sleep for an hour or so afterward. So I end up sleeping in for about two or three hours more than usual in the morning.

The prospects of obtaining any kind of loan for a house are starting to look slim. School (work) starts in just over a month, and I'm really not looking forward to going back to work while being pregnant. I really wasn't wanting to be back there period, but it doesn't look like there's going to be much of a choice now once again. Don't get me wrong, I have great co-workers and the kids aren't too bad (sometimes)... I just want to be with my husband! And I don't know how I'm going to manage getting up early for work in the morning if those crazy dreams keep up. I'll have to start going to bed at 8 o'clock or something! Urgh!

Hopefully Dave and I will be able to save up enough money after I start work again to have enough for first/last/deposit on a place to rent by at least October or November. We don't want to have to essentially throw our money away every month, but I think we're going to have to for another year or two until we can get our credit reports polished up. I cannot be a single mom... no... I refuse to be a single mom when I have a husband who's so incredibly excited to be a father.

I guess that's all for now. I think mood swings have officially started. Fun fun.

...and the days drag on

being constantly nauseous is really getting on my nerves. some days i can't even drink water without it coming right back up. i'm so dehydrated that my lips are dry and cracking/peeling. i want to just grab a big, tall glass of ice water and chug it down, but i know that would be a BIG mistake. i can't focus on much for very long anymore - books, tv, the computer screen - and don't have the strength or energy to do anything more than the basics when it comes to doing anything around the house. the dogs need a walk, but i can't do much more than give them a sympathetic look and pet their fur for a while.

i was supposed to meet up with my co-workers from school today for lunch, but i hadn't been able to keep anything down all morning. not that i had to go there and force myself to actually eat anything, but i'd been getting sick all morning and didn't want to risk being sick while trying to get out of the house for a while.

the weather's been so beautiful lately - sunny, cool, no humidity -, but i don't have the stomach to sit outside and enjoy it. this all really sucks. the days drag on, and it seems like the nausea will never go away. i swear... whoever finds a cure for "morning sickness" is going to be a billionaire.

Will the Sickness Ever End?

I'm just about at the end of my first trimester - the point at which the nausea is supposed to start subsiding... for most women. I sit around hoping that I won't end up being among the small subset of women who are sick throughout their entire pregnancy. I try to think positive, but that's pretty hard to do when one can't even drink water or tea without puking. I'm starting to rethink the whole prenatal-vitamins-causing-sickness idea and will probably start on them again soon. It seemed to be helping for a while, but now it seems like the baby just truly doesn't like anything. And it's likely best that the baby get some nutrition with the vitamin instead of virtually none at all. The only thing with that is trying to find a time of day when I won't end up losing the vitamin directly to the toilet as well.

With school out for the summer, I'm temporarily unemployed and thus without a paycheck. It's a good thing that the school year ended when it did since that's when the nausea started becoming an issue, but it's going to be rough trying to make it through an entire summer with bills to pay and with my bank account quickly dwindling. I applied for a position at a child care center, but I'm not sure if my body would even be able to tolerate a full work day again at the moment. The sickness used to be mainly in the evening, but now it's extremely random.

I always had this idea that I would be very "Earth Momma"-ish whenever I got pregnant. That I would love almost every minute of it (until the last few months) and be "in tune" with the baby. It all seems so silly now. I hope, though, that eventually my pregnancy becomes something a little more joyous than all of these trips to the bathroom are proving to be.

Heartbeats and Ultrasounds

A few weeks ago, I had my first official pregnancy visit with my OB/GYN. An intern saw me first and tried to find the heartbeat with no success. A while later, the doctor came in and was able to find it relatively quickly. It was pretty amazing to hear the fast thumping of another little heart inside me, but even after that... it all still seemed so surreal.

I talked with him about my constant nausea and vomiting and got his "OK" to discontinue my prenatal vitamins for a while to see if that helped. (I've lost over ten pounds since I became pregnant thanks to all of the sickness.) I tried checking into the chewable Flintstone vitamins, but they have gelatin in them as well as a host of different sweeteners that I'd rather stay away from. I'll have to look into vegan brands, but I really don't have much extra money right now with not having a paycheck over the summer. Not taking the vitamins seems to have helped a bit. I'm not nauseous all day long like I had been for weeks on end. Now I'm actually fairly alright for a day or two, although the smell of most foods still repulses me and I'm not able to eat very much.

This past Thursday, we went in for my first ultrasound. I layed back on the examining chair and the doctor/nurse told me to watch the screen on top of the cabinet in front of me. For a while, all that we could see was just black-and-white fuzziness, but then... I reached out and grasped Dave's hand. There was our little one floating around in his little fluid-filled coccoon! My heart swelled as I watched it moving around - the tiny hands and skeletal head. The nurse needed to get three pictures at specific angles, but Baby T wanted nothing to do with that - already a combination of Dave's stubborness and my shyness. No matter which way I rolled or how many times the nurse went back and forth over my belly with the magical ultrasound wand thingy, the baby turned away or shielded its face from her view. It took a good thirty minutes or more to get the pictures that she needed. We had brought in a DVD and she inserted it into the machine as soon as she began, so we have a recording of the entire "show". Seeing all of this for so long made my pregnancy seem much more real, but it seems like the full impact won't truly set in until my belly actually starts to grow.

I'm about 12 weeks along right now - nearing the end of my first trimester. I hope the nausea goes away soon so that I can start eating normally again. Although I still don't even want to imagine the smells right now, I miss cooking so much! I miss my healthy foods - my veggies, my black bean burritos, my berries, and my grains! I miss my comfort foods - my homemade goodies, my vegan ice cream, my vegan chocolate chips, and chocolate almond milk! (I know, I know... almond milk isn't "food", but it is a "comfort" thing for me!) I miss eating... period!

I won't have another doctor's appointment for about another month, and I'm hoping to start gaining at least a little weight back by then. It would be nice to not gain more than twenty pounds from where I'm at right now and only have about ten pounds to lose after the baby's born (to be back to my original pre-pregnancy weight, anyway). That's about as much weight as they say you should gain over the course of a pregnancy. I'm wondering how the whole losing weight bit will factor into that.

I've always loved looking at mommy-tummies growing month-by-month, but I likely won't be placing any of those on here... at least not until maybe the seventh month or so. I've never been happy with my belly anyway and since I haven't grown at all since finding out, I haven't bothered to snap any pictures yet. It'd be nice to have one or two nice black-and-whites at different stages, though. Maybe in a few months.

Welcome to the Blog for Baby T

On Mother's Day, I took the first home pregnancy test that told me my life was about to change. Dave didn't know if he could trust something that told you anything that important just by "peeing on a stick". I took another one two days later and told him, "Well, I'm still pregnant." He was elated and couldn't wait to tell everyone, but he still wasn't 100% satisfied until I got the official result from a doctor.

After holding off for fifteen years (mostly at my insistence trying to wait for "the right time"), we'd been trying for a few months... and it happened pretty quickly. We're probably the only couple in our group of friends to have children so late in life, but I like to think that gives us a bit of an edge in some ways. Now I just have to hope that everything goes alright with my pregnancy and that we have a healthy baby.

Eating hasn't been an easy thing. The first few weeks (before I knew) weren't a problem, but this last month I've been nauseous all day long. I've finally started forcing myself to eat, and I think it's actually helping. I've read that the nausea generally goes away after the first trimester for most women but that it lingers throughout the pregnancy for some women. I'm just crossing my fingers that I'm in the former camp.

My mom's been waiting for this for years - dropping hints and reminding me that there will never be a "perfect time". She's already been out hunting for cribs and is wanting to take me out soon to start looking for maternity clothes. At just a little over two months along and with the nausea causing me to lose over five pounds over the last two weeks, I'm not showing in the slightest yet. I know it won't be too long, but I really don't want to think about maternity clothes right now.

Aside from the nausea and constantly feeling exhausted, I'm not feeling any different yet. I know you're really not supposed to at this point, but for some reason I always thought that I'd know and that I would feel different. It's going to happen eventually (feeling and seeing the changes and raising this new life), but now I'm not sure if I'm ready for it.

It's scary thinking about adding a little human to our lives. We've always managed to scrape by and take care of ourselves and our animals one way or another, but this is truly going to be a drastic change. Not that we didn't think about that or realize it beforehand... just that it's different when you know it's actually going to happen. If that makes any sense. I always pictured myself as a parent someday, but I was starting to grow accustomed to the idea of Dave and I just being a happily married couple without kids. Now the uncertainty has been setting in, and I've been wondering about our future and the baby's. Life happens, and I'm sure we'll just deal with everything as it comes... but it's hard to stop stressing about something so life altering.

In other thoughts, I think I need to get Dave to watch some more Super Nanny episodes. :P