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.