it's a...

we were actually able to wait and open the envelope on christmas day. we opened it alone and the announced to our families, and we were actually nervous before we opened the envelope. i felt a bit like i did on our wedding day, which is strange, because it's not like there was possibly bad news inside. (it's not like that was a bad day, either!)

turns out we are having... a little girl!

the ultrasound tech was 99.9% sure and said we could confidently paint the nursery.

i started crying when i saw the note on the ultrasound picture. i think i had secretly wanted a little girl, but only a teeny bit more than a little boy. i would have been more than thrilled with another little guy in the house. i still do want boys.

now of course we have to have the endless debate about what to name her. brian says i don't like anything he suggests, but to be fair he doesn't like anything i suggest either. we do have a shortlist of the few that we are both agreed on. i personally don't have a need to give her a name right now! seeing as how we still have four more months to change our minds, but we'll see.

we are at: 21 weeks.

now available for viewing

if these are kind of funky-looking, it's because i couldn't get my scanner at home to work properly this morning and so had to print the photo, scan, and edit at work. it's a long story.

here is our little person, just hanging out:

and sucking his/her thumb!

i think those little teeny fingers are just about the most amazing thing i have ever seen. along those same lines, the u/s tech also showed us his/her teeny little feet, from the bottom up (as if spot were standing on the camera), and we could see all the little toes. amazing.

we are at: 20 weeks 1 day.

the big one!

so, i forgot to scan the ultrasound pictures from this morning. i'll post those tomorrow or so.

to sum it up: it was wonderful to see our little person, and it was just as awful as i thought it would be. worse, even. the joke in my family is that i have a bladder the size of a thimble (exacerbated by road trips, of course). unfortunately this was confirmed by the u/s tech, who told me, "wow, you're really full!" then while i was in the bathroom she told brian i have a very small bladder, and that i didn't need to have drank the full 32 ounces of water. i could have been fine with half of that, she said. so our regular checkup before the u/s, the wait, and the beginning of the u/s were pretty awful. and just think, labor is even more fun than that! such things to come!

on the wonderful side: i laid down on the table for our checkup and the doctor said, "my, you're distended!" which i guess is a nice way of saying i have a good pregnant belly. she also listened to baby's heartbeat which was 140 beats per minute. mil thinks it will be a boy because last time the heartbeat was 120 bpm, and apparently slower means boy and faster means girl. so i guess this throws that whole theory out the window. or maybe we're having a hermaphrodite.

we waddled (well, i did) down to radiology where i saw the line to register and almost cried. and then waited, and waited, and waited some more. we were early for the appointment, hoping they could get us in early, so every second felt like an eternity to me and my full bladder. and i hate needles, but i told brian i'd rather get another couple blood draws than do this u/s again.

the u/s tech got some great photos and man are they thorough. she took about 40-45 minutes to do the full scan and they check for everything. at one point she mentioned that she was trying to check spot's lip but he/she had its hands over its face. i think our little person was a little sleepy too, because spot was not as wiggly as it has been in the past. this u/s was later in the morning than our usual appointments and in the last two weeks i have been able to feel him/her moving around and kicking earlier in the mornings. (conveniently this morning, right on my full bladder!) she also was able to tell the sex, but she didn't tell us. she said she was 99.9% sure, and we have the answer and a picture of the "parts" in a sealed envelope to be opened on christmas.

so we're on pins and needles for the next few days. on the bright side, the u/s tech said everything looks perfectly healthy and spot seems to be developing normally. we haven't had anything come back that would give us any cause for concern, so it seems like we have a perfect little package in there.

on a slightly different note: the doctor said we never heard anything about the chromosome test because everything came back fine. i'm a girl! i have 46 chromosomes, all in the right places. (they refer to me as 46xx.) no evidence of a translocation. i'm perfectly normal, so brian has to find some other excuse for my crazy.

we are at: 20 weeks.

when being negative is a good thing

we got the results of my x-afp screening last night and i have never been so relieved, and so thankful for nothing! deep down i did not actually think there was a problem (all the ultrasounds have seemed to show normal development) but at the very least, the afp test often has a very high rate of false positive, often as high as 4/50 women tested.

according to the postcard from the lab, our baby has a 1/150 chance of having down syndrome, a 1/100 chance of having trisomy 18, and an even lesser chance of having anything else that they test for, like smith-lemli-opitz syndrome, neural tube defects, or abdominal wall defects. so i suppose there is still a chance - we could be that one in 100 - but the risk is so small that the doctor is not worried about anything.

no news on the chromosome test yet. i imagine we'll hear about that next week sometime.

yay!

we are at: 18 weeks 4 days.

touché, honey

last night when he came home from work and gave me a hug:

brian: "you know, i've never been with anyone whose belly got bigger every day!"

me: "huh."

brian: "YOU KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT."

we are at: 18 weeks 1 day.

have i mentioned

how cute and sweet it is that every monday morning, my husband wishes me "happy (x) weeks!"?

we are at: 18 weeks.

be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it

today i am scared of this baby.

i am also scared of putting this out here for everyone to see and read. i admire women who blog honestly about their emotions and experiences because i am not that brave. i am trying to be, if for no other reason than this baby is going to need a mother stronger than me. most days when i blog i try to pretend i have a whole slew of readers who are interested in what is going on in my life. today i am trying to pretend that no one reads this. i haven't kept a journal in years; maybe i should start again.

i didn't ever want to be pregnant. i have wanted to have babies and be a mom as long as i can remember, i just didn't want to be pregnant. i wish there were another way.

i am scared that everything i am feeling is not just hormones and normal. i am scared that i am going crazy, like seriously, institutionalized crazy.

i am scared i won't be a good mother.

i am scared of taking time off of work and how it will be when i go back to work.

i am afraid of leaving my baby in daycare, because right now we can't afford for me to not work. i am afraid something will happen to my baby if someone is watching him/her who doesn't love him/her as much as brian or i will.

i am afraid that being in daycare will mess up our child. 85% of a child's brain is developed by the time they are 5 years old, and i want brian and i to be the ones influencing that development, not a daycare worker.

i am afraid of how forgetful i am getting. everything i have read says that being forgetful is part of being pregnant, but i am scared i will accidentally burn the house down or forget something vital to my job and get fired.

i am afraid that i am hurting my baby when i take tylenol for a headache, even though the doctor said it was fine and doesn't cause any harm. there just comes a point where i can't handle the pain anymore.

i am terrified of giving birth. i am afraid of the pain and that i won't be able to do it. i am afraid of the epidural and the episiotomy and if i have to have a caesarean.

i am scared of the recovery afterwards and the bleeding.

i am worried that my baby won't be able to breastfeed.

i am scared that brian and i won't be able to agree on a name for the baby, and it will be named something awful that i can't stand, and i will have to call it that for the rest of my life.

i am worried about how we will manage when the baby comes and i am too exhausted to brush my teeth, let alone cook dinner for us. i am not so worried about brian surviving, but i have to eat healthy for myself and for the baby. brian can't cook and i am worried that i won't be able to depend on him.

i am afraid of how this baby will change my relationship with my husband, and how things will never be the same.

i am afraid that if i don't work, even for 6 or 8 weeks after the baby is born, that my husband will resent me because i am not contributing financially to our family.

i am worried that my husband won't appreciate the sheer work it will be to be a new mother, because i won't be getting up every morning and trudging off to the office for 8 hours.

i am afraid that the baby will be a burden on our family.

i am afraid that i will love the baby more than my husband. i am afraid that my husband will see that, and resent me and the baby.

i am afraid that my husband will be so tired when he comes home from work that he won't want to hug me or hold his baby, and i won't ever get a break.

i am afraid that i will want to go back to work, just to get away from my baby and interact with normal adult human beings for a while.

i am scared that my tears and stress and and headaches and negative emotions will hurt my baby.

i am worried that i don't want this baby enough, and i'm scared when sometimes i don't care that i am pregnant. sometimes i even wish i wasn't, and it isn't because i can't fit into my favorite jeans or have a glass of wine anymore.

i am afraid that i am alone, and i have to do this alone, and no one understands what i am feeling, least of all my husband. i am afraid that he doesn't know how to help me or comfort me, or that he is too afraid of making me more upset that he won't try.

i am afraid that you will read this and everyone will know how crazy i am, and i am afraid that you won't read this and no one will know how lonely being pregnant makes me feel.

we are at: 17 weeks 3 days.

moving?

i keep thinking i feel the baby move, but i am not sure, because i've never felt it before and i have no idea what i should be feeling. it doesn't feel like gas (one description i've read) nor does it feel like "butterflies" or "fluttering." and i keep thinking it might be too early to feel the baby. they say first-timers usually don't feel anything until 18-22 weeks and we are not quite there yet.

it is like nothing i've ever felt before and it is very inconsistent. almost like digesting, but not. kind of like a little scratch or rub at the side of my stomach.

am i nuts? is it just pregnancy weirdness? my mom said she was 20 weeks exactly when she felt me first kick, and she had fallen asleep and it woke her up. these are nothing that would wake me up.

what did it feel like for you, and how did you know it was the baby and not just something else?

we are at: 17 weeks 2 days.

stuck again

last night i went in to the lab to get more blood drawn. i should point out here that i detest needles and can't even look at a syringe without cringing. this time it was for my x-afp test, which tests for four proteins (including alpha-fetoprotein) produced by the baby and carried in mom's bloodstream. abnormal levels of these proteins can indicate chromosomal defects such as down syndrome and trisomy 18 as well as non-hereditary defects like neural tube defects. we are not as concerned about genetic defects because both brian and i have pretty good genes, but non-hereditary - random - defects do concern me, especially since a friend recently lost her baby to anencephaly and i saw how heartbreaking that was and continues to be for her and her husband.

a second vial was also drawn for a chromosome test on me. again, brian and i are not terribly concerned, but we figure the more information we have at our fingertips, the better. the test is going to look for chromosome translocation in me and could be a remote possibility (and an even more remote chance of a birth defect) because of my mother's history of miscarriage (she had four before me); my father's direct, severe, and repeated exposure to agent orange during his tour in vietnam in 1968-69; and his brother's (my uncle's) mental retardation. if there is a translocation, likely it is balanced since i have no problems, but it could cause problems for a baby. again, the likelihood of a problem is minute, but i figured it's no more hassle for the lab to draw an extra vial and run an extra test and we get more information this way. also, it's not something we would need to do with subsequent babies, since it's not like my chromosomes are going to change.

this whole pregnancy has certainly been a learning experience for me. we'll have the results from the tests back in about 2-3 weeks.

we are at: 17 weeks 1 day.

being thankful

we are thankful for baby spot:


we are at: 16 weeks 5 days.

back off

i am no longer allowed to sleep on my back.

it sucks.

this is because as baby grows (and so does uterus), sleeping or resting too long on one's back creates pressure on the inferior vena cava, a large vein that supplies blood to the placenta. it can also put undue pressure on the spinal cord and/or large nerves and contribute to or exacerbate sciatica.

unfortunately sleeping on my back (or stomach) is most comfortable for me. i am not a side sleeper. even with a pillow between my knees, my back and hips get tired and sore. my hips also start to ache from my legs not being stretched out straight.

maybe i could learn to sleep standing up?

in the meantime i guess i'll have to learn how to sleep comfortably on my side.

we are at: 16 weeks.

get a little backbone

we were only supposed to hear the heartbeat this morning, but brian really wanted an ultrasound and begged the doctor for one. so she rolled in the machine, squirted that cold jelly on my tummy, and baby spot popped up on the screen.


WOW! what a change from four weeks ago when we saw him/her last! eyes and nose were clearly visible to us and the doctor could see its brain (all i could tell was a big head). that curved horizontal line on the left side is its spine, and there were little stripes across its chest that the doctor said were ribs. spot was very wiggly this morning and we saw arms and legs flailing everywhere. apparently he/she was as happy to see mommy and daddy as we were to see him/her!

we did get to hear the heartbeat as well, which the doctor said would get stronger and easier to hear as the baby gets older. it was beating along at 120 bpm which she said was good. normal is 110-140 bpm, she said.

my uterus is up at my belly button, which means spot is growing well. doctors measure "fundal height," the distance to the top of the uterus, as a way of making sure the baby is growing enough. they just poke around on your stomach as if they are feeling for your liver or spleen or something. i had been trying to figure out where it was the last couple of weeks and have been unsure so she showed me. i was quite surprised - it is hard and firm, like a flexed muscle, and then at the top my stomach gets all squooshy again. personally, i knew that baby was growing without her even having to tell me. i only fit into a couple pairs of my pants anymore and my bias-cut, elastic waist skirts.

our next visit is in december, the same day that we have the 20-week ultrasound. next week or so i go in to the lab for the expanded alpha-feto-protein (xafp) test, which tests not only for some chromosomal abnormalities (like down's and trisomy 18) but also for non-hereditary problems like neural tube defects. i will also have a chromosome workup on myself, as there are some minor family histories that could have caused a problem that could be passed on to our baby. highly unlikely, but i figure it's just one more piece of information, and i only have to do it once. it's not like my chromosomes will change from this baby to the next.

we are at: 15 weeks 3 days.

nursery musings

a few years ago mil got this cute little rocker for brian, as a gift for the future grandbaby:


brian just adores baseball and the san francisco giants and has all his life. he has always been and always will be a giants fan. (i even incorporated baseballs into our wedding.) so he was thrilled with this little rocker. it sat in mil's basement for a couple years, in it's shipping box, because we did not have the space for it nor a little one. since we purchased our home this summer, it has moved up here with us and lives in the museum - brian's office which also doubles as a display room for all his baseball memorabilia, including that from his playing years. when the rocker was purchased i suggested we could create a gentle, peachy, giants-themed nursery around the rocker when we had a baby. in the meantime it complements the museum nicely.

now brian wants to get started on the nursery. as in, now, let's paint this weekend.

keep in mind that i am only 15 weeks along.

keep in mind also that the nursery will displace my sewing room, which i use almost daily and have longed for since practically the beginning of time. once the sewing room is converted to a nursery, the sewing room will [somewhat inconveniently] share space with the guest room. displacing the museum is apparently not an option to my dear husband.

am i nuts, or does he want to get going on this just a tad bit too early? i told him we didn't need to start on the nursery until the beginning of april. spot is due may 12 and could well be late. that gives us 6 weeks, at least, to prep and paint and build furniture and shop and decorate and move my entire sewing life downstairs.

we are at: 15 weeks 1 day.

14w

brian is so cute and sweet: mondays are the "anniversary days" when we gain another week. so every monday morning before he goes to work, he tells me, "happy (xx) weeks!"

i love that my husband is as excited as i am about this baby.

we are at: 14 weeks.

our christmas present

this year will be finding out whether we are going to have a son or a daughter. (i'm sure there will be more under the tree than that, but that's the most exciting one.) this is because we are lucky enough to be at 20 weeks the week of christmas, and my doctor wants us to have our 20-week u/s that week. not a week before and not a week after. i know, i asked.

i am insanely excited about this but for one thing: because your bladder sits in front of your uterus, you have do the u/s with a full bladder. (the bladder is one of the only places in your body made of special cells that actually stretch like elastic. a full bladder means it's stretched thin like when you blow up a balloon.) that means two hours before, i have to empty out and then within the following hour (so an hour before) drink 32 ounces of water. i told the scheduling guy they had better not keep me waiting when we get there!

so ladies, my question is this: is it as uncomfortable as i think it will be? or am i overreacting?

we are at: 13 weeks 4 days.

insanity

all the books and doctors tell you about "mood changes" due to the increased hormones. apparently there is such a wild cocktail of hormones coursing through your veins that it's like pms on steriods. what they don't tell you is how insanely nuts you feel all the time and how hard it is to keep it all together.

my husband, bless his heart, is taking most of this in stride. he's reading all the books too, especially the ones that tell the husband your wife will be as sweet as pie one moment and a raging witch the next, for no apparent reason. it's not your fault. she's just pregnant and hormonal. so he [mostly] let it roll off his back when i blew up at him in mervyn's on saturday.

in retrospect, i do still think he acted somewhat inconsiderately. but had i been a normal (read: not pregnant) wife, this would have rolled right off my back. he might have gotten some smart remark directed his way when we left the store, to vent my frustration. but not this time - oh no. i was fuming and let him know it, right there in the store. then i stormed out of the store (with brian calling after me), got in my car, and left. then i started sobbing.

the hardest part about these "mood swings" (they are so much more than mood swings!) is that we pregnant ladies know we're being nuts and unreasonable when we go off of you guys, and yet we just can't stop ourselves. we hear those words coming out of our mouths and are appalled at ourselves. that just makes us feel more insane, because we know this isn't really us, and yet we're acting like that. most of the time [i think] i can keep my emotions in check, but when i can't, it really makes me feel insanely crazy.

we are at: 13 weeks.

getting plumpy

my lovely hubby commented this morning that i was starting to look pregnant. (those were not quite his exact words, but that was the general gist of things.) i love him, but this is not exactly what i wanted to hear at 8am as i was getting out of the shower and trying to figure out which pants i can still fit into. poor guy, i didn't take it exactly well and i know what he meant - that he enjoys seeing the woman he loves start to visibly show that she is carrying his baby - but he just kept digging himself into a hole. i reminded him that the baby books he's been reading voraciously are quite adamant that daddy should NOT under any circumstances comment on how much weight mom is gaining or how flabby or saggy her bottom is getting.

unfortunately, he's noticed what i've been noticing for the past two weeks or so: that my body is really starting to change. at the moment i'm not thrilled about it because i don't really look pregnant unless you know intimately what i look like un-pregnant (like brian does). otherwise i just look like i can't lay off the krispy kremes and halloween candy. my pants still fit for the most part - the waistband is just tight - but i did discover this morning that the cummerbund of my gypsy costume doesn't fit anymore. (i had to find a different, less restrictive costume to wear to hand out candy tonight.)

all that to say, i cannot wait for when i actually start looking like a pregnant lady. then at least i have an excuse to eat all those krispy kremes.

we are at: 12 weeks 5 days.

11w3d

spot waved at us!


it looks really blobby in this photo - the doctor said we have a little kidney bean. the head is on the right and its bottom is on the left, and a couple times spot raised its little hand and waved. the doctor said everything looks good - spot looks healthy and has certainly grown since last ultrasound and is very active. (is that good or bad? good i guess, since it means the baby is healthy - but i'm thinking i might want it to be a little less active later on when he/she is kicking me in the ribs.)

next time we go in - one month - we get to hear spot's heartbeat!

8 weeks

i meant to post this a while ago, since it is 3 1/2 weeks old now. well, better late than never, i guess. here is the first "baseline" belly shot, at 8 weeks along:


yeah, so not showing yet. anything you think might be a baby bump is really just carb belly. it's the only thing showing these days, as i don't have the energy to suck it in anymore.

because i can't go to work naked

i've been dreading maternity clothes lately, because i don't want to look like a tent. i know i am going to get huge and pregnant and my feet are going to swell and i will generally just be fat, but i don't want to look even more huge in maternity clothes. of course, the only real reason i have to have maternity clothes anyway is because i can't go to work naked or in brian's t-shirts, so i wanted them to at least look semi-cute.

enter alice, my closest girlfriend with style sensibility galore. we went to old navy yesterday (read: super-inexpensive and stylish!) and she helped me score a billion cute things for only $200. two pairs of work khakis, a sweater-jacket, five camisoles, five tees, two blouses, and a cute dress. the icing on the cake was the super-awesome teal ballet flats i picked up also. our ob/gyn recommended flats to begin with as pregnant women (not now, but later for sure) tend to be off-balance with their changing bodies, and alice pointed out that when my feet swell i will likely only be able to fit into flats. and cute shoes are a nice pick-me-up when one is feeling fat and yucky and hating one's clothes.

along the same lines, my burda maternity patterns arrived on saturday. burda had the best selection of cute maternity clothes and the patterns did not break the bank. (we're talking $22 for five patterns. awesome.) so i need to get started on a couple tops and dresses, a pair of black pants for work, and altering a pair of existing old jeans to supplement the old navy haul.

we are at: 11 weeks.

sleepless in sacramento

i hate that i am not getting any sleep right now because i know it will only get worse. i mean, we still have 6 months to go, and then a newborn to contend with! but it's annoying now, because really for the first time in my life, i can't sleep through the night, and i'm so exhausted during the day. i am not sure if the exhaustion is because of my strange sleeping or just from being pregnant in general. this is what i am dealing with:

9 pm - oh so tired. get in bed and read a little or watch a little tv. fall asleep approximately 20 minutes later.
11-12 pm - brian comes to bed. i'm a very light sleeper now (i never used to be), so even though he is a gem and does his best not to wake me, he still does (no fault of his).
130 am - second wake-up. first bathroom trip, just in case. though i know it doesn't exactly help the waking-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night problem, i also drink about a half a cup of water. i'm parched when i wake up. go back to bed and lie there for 15 minutes trying to fall asleep again and feeling wide awake.
330 am - third awakening. second bathroom trip and small drink (parched again). go back to bed and lie there for another 15 minutes trying to fall asleep.
5 am - fourth awakening. third bathroom trip (just in case) and a tiny drink. go back to bed and lay there. doze very lightly until alarm goes off.
615 am - alarm goes off. get up, even though i'm exhausted, because i've been laying there basically awake for the last hour.

if i'm lucky and it's the weekend, i get up (no alarm), have breakfast, and read the paper - and then go back to bed till about 8 am or so. i also get to take a nap sometime after lunch. on workdays of course this is just not possible so i'm just tired and fall asleep earlier than usual at night.

ugh

morning sickness. or at least i think it is, as i'm not vomiting. just nauseous and achy and feeling generally like i have a mild flu that just will not go away.

only four more weeks until the second trimester starts, which everyone says is the glorious part of pregnancy. i can't wait.

completely normal though the husband disagrees

everything in those tests came back completely normal. and man do they test for a lot! i now know that i have enough red blood cells, white blood cells, hemoglobin, and platelets. i'm not anemic and i don't have hiv or syphilis or gonorrhea or cervical cancer. i'm immune to measles/rubella (see, vaccines work!), i don't have a uti, and i'm a+ blood type. hooray for average!

first glimpse

we had our first prenatal exam today, and the nurse did a full physical on me. i am not sure brian was prepared for this. i tried to prep him beforehand of what they would do (the pelvic exam, pap, et cetera), but he still looked uncomfortable and a little stunned when the stirrups came out. poor guy. i feel for him (i mean, he's never had a pelvic exam, so how would he know what to expect?), but really, he has to toughen up if we're going to get through the whole labor-and-delivery thing.

along with the exams and my complete medical history (including when i had my last alcoholic drink - how should i know that date?), the nurse also did an ultrasound to determine fetal age. we thought i was 8 weeks 2 days along, but apparently it's only been 7 weeks 3 days, give or take two days. which puts conception right around august 11, which is what i've been thinking all along. which also pushes my due date back one week to may 11.

she also sent me down to the lab to have a bunch of bloodwork done. they took five vials of blood. five vials. what the heck do they need with five vials? sheesh. i wanted to ask the tech if she would like my credit card also? or fries with that? five vials.



we also got to see our baby's heartbeat, which brian said looked like tiny clapping hands. that has got to be the absolute most amazing, beautiful thing i have ever seen in my life. it's only about 1/2 inch long, about the size of a blueberry, and yet it has a beating heart that we could see. we both agreed that we could have stayed and just watched that little heartbeat all day.

brian is insanely concerned that i will miscarry. everything he's read says that the seventh, eleventh, and twelfth weeks are the most dangerous for miscarriage. here we are right in the seventh week, so he's a wreck that i'm up and walking around. he completely nixed me painting the wall in the living room also, which is annoying.