Another doctor appt

Had another doctor appointment today, which means we have NO more appointments before the BIG ULTRASOUND (insert dramatic music here).

Woohoo!

It all went well. Of course I've gained another 5 pounds, but whatever. At this point, I'm trying not to stress and just eat well for the baby. We heard baby's heartbeat and it was running between 140 and 150. DH and I are really sure now it's a boy. Yes, I realize the heartbeat really has nothing to do with it, but I was already pretty convinced and now he is too. We'll see in less than 4 weeks, though. Baby kept running from the Doppler, which was funny. We'd hear the heartbeat, then a weird noise. The doctor made sure to say "that was movement, so you know it's moving in there!". She knew I'd panic hearing that weird blip. She finally got it cornered on my right side and we got a steady heartbeat. What a beautiful sound.

I hate to admit it, but I still have a hard time believing there's a growing human being in my body. Weird stuff.

Got my blood taken for the quad screen, too. The quad screen is about 65% reliable and looks for the possibily of Downs, Trisomy-18, and a few other genetic diseases. If we get an elevated result, they'll do other tests to confirm. Not particularly concerned about getting bad results. I suppose it could happen, but I've been pretty laid back lately (totally out of character for me...) about this, so I'm just trying to relax and wait to see if we get any word on the results (in this case, no news is good news).

Every pregnancy is different

I read all sorts of pregnancy books when I found out we were pregnant, but after a few, I realized they would all tell me the same thing. They all give a range of symptoms that you *could* have, but no one was going to be able to tell me how I would feel.

Of course, now that I say that, it makes perfect sense. But I really wanted someone to say, "We can guarantee that you will experience this between # and ## weeks" or whatever. Didn't happen.

I am the first to say that I've had a remarkably easy pregnancy. The nausea I did have never resulted in vomiting, which I am eternally grateful for. If the worst symptoms I've experienced up until now are extreme (and yes, I mean EXTREME) gas and exhaustion...I'm doing great. DH may disagree, but he's not the one growing a baby, now is he???

Here I am in the 2nd trimester and I'm feeling pretty darn good. I'm realizing that I need to get more active, as my legs have been really tight and sore just from sitting on the floor for a few hours, but other than that, I'm feeling fine. I do have some nausea after dinner, so I'm starting to think I'm eating a bit too much for dinner, which makes me sad. I like eating a lot for dinner so I don't wake up starving! I've also got a bit of acid, but a couple of Tums seems to be helping that a lot. I'm still able to sleep without waking to pee 6 of 7 nights a week (knock on wood). Heck, I've even felt the baby move once (nope, haven't felt it again, but trying not to get discouraged...definitely not worried, just a little sad!).

Yes, it's been a good pregnancy so far. That's not to say that anyone else's won't be better or worse than mine or that even my next pregnancy (God willing) won't be better or worse! That's the beauty of our bodies...you never know what you're going to get!

Disclaimer: Yes, I'm still doing having a hard time with this whole waiting thing. I can't wait to find out what we're having (4 weeks from today!), I can't wait to feel the baby move more frequently...I feel like I'm always looking forward. So the purpose of this entry is to try to enjoy the moment I'm in now.

Small Things

1) Going on an impromptu shopping trip with a friend
2) Making my own tote bag/purse/diaper bag (will post pictures later)
3) Watching the NFL Combine
4) Getting things accomplished without too much stress
5) Fresh fruit
6) 17 weeks!
7) Reduced Sugar Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal
8) My Lands End All-Weather Mocs
9) Buying cheap maternity clothes from Lane Bryant
10) Making easy money on Cash Duck and Treasure Trooper (if you have questions, feel free to contact me--not trying to recruit, just like to bring in a couple of extra bucks a month)
11) Seeing my niece and playing peek-a-boo with her and watching her drag my new tote around the house while pretending to talk on her cell phone.
12) Knowing we get to hear the baby's heartbeat tomorrow morning!
13) Happy Hour with girlfriends
14) Seeing my SIL get her Lifetime membership at Weight Watchers (we did it together before I got pregnant)
15) New recipes (we try at least 2 new recipes almost every week--this week I got a couple from here)

Down

It seems so silly. I should be happy all the time, enjoying life, enjoying this time. I've waited for this for a very long time. But I'm having a really hard time being happy. I'm, of course, ecstatic about the pregnancy and everything that goes along with it, so don't misunderstand me there. It's just everything else. Work has really gotten me down recently and it's hanging over into the rest of my life. I find that I don't enjoy my evenings and weekends nearly as much as I would like to because I'm still carrying around stress from my days at work. I used to be able to refresh from a painful week during the weekend, but now it just feels like the weekend is just leading up to another awful week. I start to dread Monday by Sunday morning.

I still love what I do, but am having a hard time with some of the other aspects of the job. I love to support the staff members that use our new system, but it's getting harder and harder listening to everyone complain about the things that I do that are meant to help. I also seem to be everyone's sounding board about how bad the system is, which isn't much fun. I have a hard time leaving all of that at work, too, even though I know I should.

All the stress is then carrying over to my life with DH. I feel like we aren't getting "quality" time together a lot of the time, but I'm at a loss on what to do about it. We spend a lot of time together, but I want to make that "quality" time, even if it means just snuggling and watching TV. Of course, whenever we snuggle, I tend to fall asleep...which doesn't lead to great quality time. lol We both love being lazy, not showering, and just laying around the house, so going out to eat together becomes a chore, rather than something fun for us to do together. I think once the weather gets better we'll start taking walks together and doing more outdoor things (as my body allows...), but for now, I just feel so sad a lot of the time that I'm not much fun to be around. And, of course, like a man, he just wants to find a way to fix it, rather than just listen.

I love my life and think things could be a lot better if I could just find a way to not let work get me down so much. The morale around here is pretty awful and I have no idea how to suggest we make it better. If you aren't in a management role, but see how awful morale is, what would you do?

Randomness

I've got a lot of little things to say and it seems silly to have a lot of posts to say them :)

1) I'm exhausted today. My FIL is a wonderful man and has been staining our trim in our house. It looks beautiful. But when he visits we end up talking very late into the evening. Last night we went to bed after 12:30. *yawn* Me exhausted is bad news. It means I'm in a bad mood and pretty testing. But at least I'm looking forward to my busy evening--I'm headed to happy hour with some girlfriends and then going to my old Weight Watchers meeting to see my SIL get her Lifetime.

2) I thought this was a fabulous story. If you know me, you know I'm a crazed sport fanatic. Some days it's hard not to get jaded about the state of sports these days, so I love stories like this.

3) I now have over 30 unique readers a day. Do you have any idea how loved that makes me feel? Unfortunately, though, I have no idea who most of you are. And while this is MY blog, I have more thoughts in my head than I could ever spill into this blog. I'm happy to, if you all are interested, but I'm very curious what you guys want to read about. Do you want more gory pregnancy symptoms? More of my self-reflection? *shrug* Just curious. And what would make you all comment more? Because I'd love to see more comments knowing how many people are reading!!!

I think that's it. I should do some work. I hope everyone is having a great day. It's Hump Day, after all!

Well hello there!

I went shopping yesterday at Destination Maternity and Tar.get with a fellow pregger, Get Up Eight and had a great time! She's 3 weeks and 1 day ahead of me and not feeling like she looks pregnant yet (although I beg to differ!!!) and I've been feeling the same way recently. So we went looking for maternity clothes to make us feel more pregnant. :)

On my way home, I called my mom to chat and was sitting in the car in the garage finishing up the conversation when I felt something very strange down on the left side of the front of my abdomen. It felt a bit like a muscle spasm. You know how your eye feels when you get a twitch in your eyelid? Sort of like that. It was fairly light, but I definitely felt it. It only lasted 5 seconds or less and I thought, "Wow, that could have been baby...but most people always describe it as being a fluttering feeling and others say it made them feel nauseous. This was definitely strong enough that I didn't feel nauseous from it." So I finished up my phone call and headed inside.

DH met me inside and asked about my day. We chatted for a couple of minutes and then I told him about what I might or might not have just felt. As I finished explaining it, it happened again, only for a bit longer (maybe more like 10 seconds?). I didn't want to move, in hopes that it would happen again!

So, even though I'm not totally sure that's what it was, I'm going to pretend that I felt the baby move last night! I know it may not happen for awhile again, but I hope it does! Hopefully if I feel it again I can confirm if that's truly what it was. But either way, it makes things feel all the more real!

Small Things

This small things entry is one "small" thing that made me happy all night last night.

We had a horrible storm yesterday early evening, but once it was over, the sun came out brighter than I've seen it in MONTHS. When I looked out my back door, this is what I saw. A full double rainbow. Rainbows are really hard to capture on camera, so you can't see how far the second one goes, but I can assure you, I could see both rainbows all the way across the sky. The bottom one we could see each color individually. I haven't seen anything so beautiful in a very long time.

And it gave me hope. Hope for my future and the futures of all of you. There are good things to come. We will emerge from this winter and things will be better on the other side.

Belly Pics so far

Not much to see, but here they are:

The day of our BFP: 3w5d

13w

14w2d

Today, 15w2d (after a Chinese dinner...have no idea how much is bloat and how much is baby)

DH, 15w2d LOL

Small Things

1) Trying a new church (and liking it)
2) Mom's homemade noodles with mashed potatoes, broccoli, and dinner rolls
3) Shopping for maternity clothes and baby stuff with my mom
4) Getting hugs and love from my niece
5) Finding a pair of maternity pants that will last my entire pregnancy (assuming they don't fall apart) for SIX DOLLARS (marked at $19.99, I thought that's what I'd pay, but they were an additional 70% off!)

Time with God

I'm not someone that you would meet on the street and know immediately that I'm a Christian. I'm not a person that wears it on their sleeve or proclaims it to all. But I do try my best to be a good person, someone who lives a good, Christian life, even if I'm not preaching the word of God to others.

I grew up in the church. My grandparents traded me off, which meant one week I'd attend a Friends church (otherwise known as "Quakers") that had, at max, 10 people at the service. The next week I would go to an African Methodist Episcopal church (picture your stereotypical Baptist church where people are saying "Amen!" and such). As you can tell, I had a pretty varied religious background.

When in the 4th grade, though, I found my true church home. I went with a friend to her church, a Methodist church. Even though she moved within a year, I continued to attend that church and be very involved throughout high school. I went to Sunday School every week, was in the children's choir, went to youth group, went on trips, went to Bible Studies (which were actually independent of the church), and babysat in the nursery every Sunday during the service. That church was a major part of my identity. When I went away to college, I lost that identity and never really found one in my new location. I regretted that, but just couldn't find a good fit.

So here I am, 5 1/2 years removed from college, 10 1/2 years removed from high school, and I still haven't found a church home. Lazy? Absolutely. Anxious about trying something new? Of course.

I've had this discussion with DH. He, in contrast to my adolescence, went to church just a few times growing up and never had a church home. But we've decided that it's something that is important to both of us as we have children. We want to have a church community of our own where we can meet other young families and have a good, solid foundation of Christianity in our home. Yesterday we finally took the leap. We went to a church very close to our house. It was nice. It was like coming home after awhile--listening to the choir, singing the hymns, listening to the message. We'll try another church next week, and maybe another after that, until we find someplace we're both comfortable. But I'm so very glad we took that first step this weekend.

Small Things

I could write the same small things every day and am beginning to feel like I'm getting boring :) So I'm going to try to do at least one post about the small things in my life a week.

1) My mom. I talked to her on the phone last night for an hour. I could tell she didn't want to go. She loves to hear about the pregnancy and asks so many questions. I love knowing I have her support and hearing about her pregnancy and knowing how much she's going to love this baby.

2) My DH. He is adorable! Last night he pulled out the paint book (comes with having a FIL who paints houses for a living) and started thinking about colors for the nursery. Of course we don't even know what sort of theme we'll go with (we're looking at different things, depending on whether it's a boy or a girl), but he has decided we should go with a lighter yellow than is on the walls now and showed me his favorites. He's so cute!

3) Food cravings. Yes, they can be annoying, but right now they aren't urgent and don't require me to either leave the house in my jammies or make DH go somewhere. For now I just find myself wanting all sorts of odd foods at any given time. It keeps things interesting ;) For instance, this week I've mostly been craving Arby's curly fries and Chipotle (I think this kid is going to come out Mexican...lol). But this morning, within about a minute, I craved a soft pretzel (the good kinds that are ginormous and you get at the concession stand), spinach & artichoke dip (was given this recipe by my friend at Get Up Eight), and Cheddar Bay biscuits from Red Lobster. We're doing leftovers for dinner tonight, but I know I want to do something extra...I could get a pretzel from Sam's Club (not the same, but still good), or make either of the other two...or even just get Spinach & Artichoke Dip from Applebee's. Anybody know if I can get half-price appetizer for takeout?

4) A quiet night at home. I feel bad for bailing on a Happy Hour for tonight, but I'm just exhausted and am going out tomorrow night for my mom's birthday and also babysitting on Saturday...just can't imagine being out two nights in a row! lol How sad is that?

5) Getting to babysit the niece on Saturday! She's at a really fun age--she's 22 months tomorrow--and is at the point where she remembers DH and me, so she's happy to play with us. The babysitting will be while she's sleeping, but we'll go over early and hang out with her and her parents before they go out.

So there you go, a two-fer. I've told you about what's going on in my life and acknowledged some great things that I'm grateful for!

In a funk

I realized after a couple of hours that I sounded like a total Debbie Downer in my last post. I sounded completely unappreciative of the fact that I'm pregnant. And I don't want that...it's not true at all.

I've been in a funk recently. I haven't had any interest in getting up and going to work, so work has just dragged on and on every single day. By the time I get home, I'm exhausted from the mental and emotional drain the day puts on me, so I typically don't even make an effort to do anything more than have dinner and watch some TV with the husband. The weekends are a bit of a pick-me-up and I've enjoyed them, but then once Monday hits again...the vicious cycle starts again.

I truly believe that I have the best job for me right now. It may not sound like that, but I do enjoy what I do most days. I feel like I'm using my abilites and intelligence. The benefits here are awesome and the pay isn't horrible (there are very few people who *can't* complain about pay). Do I feel particularly appreciated? Not necessarily. Do I have fun at work? Nah, not most of the time. I've always felt like a job is a job and then I can do the things I really enjoy when the job is done. Unfortunately, I'm so tired by the time the day is over, I have no energy for socializing, reading, playing piano, scrapbooking, cross-stitching, knitting, exercising, cooking (more than what I HAVE to do...) or shopping.

I guess this is the real reason for my funk and I need to figure out how to get out of it. Maybe I'll go home tonight and work on a crafty project. We'll see what that does. Of course, maybe I'll just go home, cook dinner, curl up under my blanket on the couch, and zone out in front of the TV tonight. I do love American Idol and The Biggest Loser.

Mini Breakdown

Looking back, it seems really selfish and, well, that's what it was. Last night I had a mini breakdown to DH about being pregnant. Yes, I'm only 14 weeks. Yes, I've had a dream pregnancy to this point. Yes, I wanted this so bad it hurt! But I'm already tired of it. Not tired of it forever...I just want a break.

I just want one day to feel like myself, to not have mucus in my ears, giving me headaches and making me constantly dizzy. To not have a consistent headache everywhere. To not feel my pulse in every part of my body (seriously). To not just feel overly fat. To not fall asleep every single night by 9 p.m. (or at least want to...). To not forget every thing that happened the previous day. To be normal for one day.

As I write it, I know I shouldn't feel this way. But, regrettably, I do. I know it will get worse. I know by the time I hit 9 months I'm REALLY going to want a break. But right now, in this moment, I'd love one day, even just a few hours, of feeling "normal". To have some ham salad. To have a glass of wine. To not worry about falling on the ice and hurting my baby. To be able to think about something other than this little life inside of me!!!

(Yes, baby, I love you. Yes, I'm over-the-moon that I'm having a baby. Yes, I can't wait to meet you. Yes, I do this x100 to be able to have a baby.)