How far along?

How far along? 25 Weeks

Total weight gain: Fat. Is that the answer you were looking for all these weeks Mr. Survey?! But in all seriousness I only weigh myself at my doctor, and I think I’m up past 15 pounds at least. Tis a double shitty thing to be in the 2nd trimester AND subjected to holiday food and treats!

Maternity clothes? All maternity. In fact two shirts that I got in “small” maternity are a bit too short.

Stretch marks? None yet.

Sleep: Not too good. I wake up from 3am to 5am. I wake up because I am on my back and it hurts. I also wake up really thirsty all the time.

Best moment this week: How about laughing until I started choking because a skier took a tumble trying out for the Olympics? Then coughing and laughing so hard that I peed myself a little. Okay… fine I plain out pissed my pants. Luckily I was at home and already on the ground rolling around with laughter. Kegels here we come …

Movement: About three weeks ago I started seeing movement from the outside. Like something poked out and the force shook my tummy. I find this being my favorite thing to observe.

Food cravings: Okay, two weeks ago it was salami. And now I am all about the steak. Thank goodness for Applebee’s 8.99 7oz sirloin. I also ask for it cooked medium. I can’t believe it, but the pink juices makes my mouth water. Ideally I would just eat it with my hands and bite off huge chunks the way a polar bear might do it. Josh insists on me cutting it into sensible bites. Must be the iron deficiency.

Food aversions: Still pizza sauce, or any red sauce. And salmon.

Gender: It’s a boy. Oh, how I love him already.

Labor Signs: Some mild contractions (Braxton Hicks). I think I have an Irritable Uterus.. That’s Dr. Google for you. But it seriously describes me to a T.

Belly Button in or out? It is half way there. Like right on the cusp of poking out.

What I miss: Sedatives sedatives SEDATIVES!!!!! Just kidding (well a little). I do miss not looking roly poly. I feel like the last month I have packed it in. Where’s my cute little bump? Why are my cheeks so chipmunk-y? I’m starting to look seriously pregnant.

What I am looking forward to: The third trimester in just two weeks!! Also, putting together the crib, birthing classes in February,

Weekly Wisdom: If you gotta go, GO! Otherwise you will be sorry. Oh yes, you will indeed be sorry.

Milestones: Buying the crib, narrowing down the name,

Merry Christmas (24 weeks!)

Merry Christmas! Here I am with our tree at 24 weeks! So many things have happened.
#1 After two years of pining, researching and saving we got our dream tv! In fact, we took so long that new technology came out (LEDs, oh boy). But prices also lowered (yay!). We couldn’t decide between a 42 inch and a 46 inch so we made newspaper mock ups and hemmed and hawed some more. Here’s josh modeling our newspaper tv as I check out the view(s) from the couch.

Josh with our mock-up

We love LOVE going to the movies. It’s really our thing. Josh is the best movie buddy ever. One year we went 20 times! Still... basically that left no fun money for anything else. So a lot of what we own is second hand, furniture, decor, clothes… which is completely worth it to support our movie habit. I suppose seeing a movie on DVD once the baby comes is like going second hand so I guess I’ll get used to it (sob!). I’m going to assume our movie money will just go to diapers now anyway.

Well, with baby bot our traditional dinner and movie date nights are going to take a serious hit. So we got a 42 inch, 120 Hz, LCD 1080p LG with Netflix streaming video. I could kiss it. I actually did kiss it, and I hugged it. It is possible that bot kicked it (I was pressed against it for a while)

#2, (this one is baby related news)
We got the crib! It was in stock, had great reviews in Baby Bargains and we were able to knock 130 dollars off the price between the Christmas sales and a "50 dollar off a 250 dollar purchase or more" coupon. I didn’t even care at that point that they didn’t make a matching dresser that could double as a changing table. If bot’s parents can have second hand mix matched dressers so can he! We ended up going with a traditional crib. The latest trend is to get a crib that is made up of the headboard and footboard of a full size bed. So the top part is higher (the headboard). We were leaning towards this crib at first:

NOT THE CRIB

Well, Josh didn’t want his 5 year old in a full size bed, and I didn’t want a constant reminder of the conversion rails (to make it into a full size bed)we wouldn’t buy (for some reason all I could see was the headboard). So, we went with a one that just converts to a toddler bed. I also like that the two solid side panels helped eliminate that “cagey” feeling with all the rails.. I love it!!! I searched the web for people who have my crib in a decorated nursery so you could get the idea.

I like this first pic because it also has a dresser that doesn’t match and I like it too!

THE CRIB!!!

Okay, so I made the crib shopping seem pretty easy, but in reality…
I spent two weeks researching cribs and then 7 hours shopping for a crib (literally from 1pm to 8pm). We went to Buy Buy Baby then Babies R Us then Buy Buy Baby again (keep in mind these stores are 20 minutes away from each other), then home to do some internet research to see finished nurseries with my crib (well, josh took a nap). In those seven hours I was calling my sister (2 phone calls total) and my mom (5 phone calls total) to look up the cribs online we were deciding between. I proceeded to drive them and josh absolutely f*cking nutz before driving back out to Babies R Us to make the purchase. I had like ten panic attacks just taking it to the register. I mean this was the start of THE nursery! If I didn’t get this key piece right, I was screwed. It was redunk. But in the end, I’m so glad we picked it!

Sad and stressed. Poor bot!

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. This has been a horrendous week. Very stressful and very sad. The Friday before last, Nemo became very sick. We made the decision to put him down rather than have him suffer again when his illness flared up. It was very sudden. Leela has been meowing her sad meow and running from room to room. I’ve keep thinking I see him in the corner of my eye. I’m getting better. I know the reason it hurts so much is because Nemo is getting comfortable in his new home, which is in my heart. We are still going to hang up his stocking this year.

Nemo 2003-2009

Last Monday Charlie got out and was gone for 5 hours. I thought he was stolen/dead/lost forever. Feeling that way for hours put such a strain on me, I literally forgot a coworker’s name when I got back to work. I have never cried so much and so hard between Nemo and Charlie.

It all came to a head on Thursday 12/17 at 23.5 days pregnant I began having contractions. When it is not true labor they call them Braxton Hicks. If you get more than 5/6 an hour you are supposed to go to the hospital, because it starts to get dodgey on rather or not it is faux labor. Well I definitely exceeded that. On top of it I was dizzy, vomited and felt extreme fatigue. I had been eating and drinking well, so that wasn’t it. So, I called my midwife, and she told me to check myself into the labor and delivery ward. There I was hooked up to monitors to track the contractions for about 90 minutes. It turns out that I am having mild contractions but my cervix is a mile long still (their words not mine) so luckily the contractions are NOT telling my body to start having a baby. They are uncomfortable and scary. I’m trying to relax. Usually walking upstairs or picking something up sets one off. The doctor told me that if they start getting more frequent come back for another cervix check (lovely). If it starts to shorten, I fear being put on bedrest this early.
Side note: Josh sitting beside me while the nurse shoved her fingers up my vag to check my cervix made him firmly decide that his place will be at my head while giving birth. Not to mention I got reacquainted with the dildo cam.

Extra sidenote: Bot was kicking so much! We could hear him on the monitors even when I couldn’t feel him. Everyone who came in agreed that he was a very active baby and was going to be trouble when he was born.

Nursery Ideas

I’m feeling in a nursery mood! Keep in mind that I am not looking at prices or reviews or the like. Just exploring the world of baby stuff, and I am getting pretty psyched about decorating this here nursery.

First of all I must have a tree on the wall. I’m thinking I will get a tree decal, paint over it and have it be a white silhouette. But I am not sure how crafty I will get! We will have to paint the whole thing white again when we move, but that’s fine. Here are my inspirations:

I’m also feeling a gray blue wall. I would love to have green, but we all remember the disaster of finding a “sage” green for the living room. 6 paint samples later and they all look like either toothpaste or grass or puke. I finally went with “Almond Paste” also known as off-white. I don’t think you can mess up gray/blue.

So then I thought: what about a forest theme.? Please note, that is NOT jungle, NOR farm/zoo animals. These are forest animals that have no discernable sounds. Cows moo, lions roar, monkey’s chitter. But what about a deer? A raccoon or a squirrel? I feel like the room is peaceful already. And the nature vibe totally won josh over. Ideally I would get a transportation theme. But Josh thinks that gasoline is the drink of the devil and cars are Hitlermobiles or something.

Last night I stumbled across a couple of beddings that I like:

Counting the ways

As you all know I had a difficult first trimester. I wrote an email to josh counting the ways that I appreciated him when I was in the heart of darkenss (aka the toilet bowl). This list was made when I was about 8 weeks pregnant. I didn't edit this. I know for a fact that this isn’t really the half of it:

got me flowers every other week
went to buy pregnancy books with me twice
read up on that how to make a pregnant woman happy
went grocery shopping and got me fresh fruit
ordered ginger drops online
got me wristbands, ginger gum
got the car serviced, made a new fit key
did research and booked the vacation
doing pretty much all of the house chores (dishes, laundry, charlie, bathroom)
getting me water, my purse, and other things I leave downstairs
getting me pretzels and saltines
cleaning up for company coming over
doing the video blog
letting me decide where/what we are going to eat
working hard on perfecting the smoothies and washing that damn blender by hand
giving me a hug when i get home
lots of stuff!

My belleh!

We had a photo shoot today. And I have zero idea why we hadn't included Charlie until now. He's so cute! I also think I popped. Here is me at 19weeks. Notice I am wearing a combination of maternity pants and non-maternity shirt.



Here I am at 21.5 weeks. It might not seem like a big change, but the belly to boob ratio is expanded. Right at 20 weeks I started getting the strangers noticing. One woman I was helping at work cut me off mid sentence and pointed at my belly and said: "Oooh, look at that!"

And now for some Charlie interactions. Here he is wondering how I could do this to him.

Lastly I put bare belly photo on the right bar. I will continue to do this until I feel/look disgusting and/or the orange pants don't fit.

Some of the highlights of the last week

Forewarning this blog post is all over the place:
I‘ve been getting kicked a bit more. But only on my left side. One night, we couldn’t sleep, I got like 5 kicks. Big booming ones.
Baby loves chocolate milk. I had a big jug of it, and I finally felt those low flutters I had been hearing about on Friday Nov27th. In fact, it kept me quite entertained, and I zoned completely out of the conversation I was in. Apologies to the Miller Family.
Baby had the hiccups I think on Nov 30th. It made me giggle.
OOOh update! I got kicked in my lower belly while typing. It makes me laugh, it’s like I heard a hilarious joke. It just warms my heart!
I googled what a 22 week old fetus looks like, because for some reason, when I think of baby bot, I just see him in ultrasound form.

A concern:
I have no idea what I’m going to name this baby. I had like ten girl names that I LOVED and could pull from. I got no short list with boys. Nada. And worse, when I think of one, josh always always says either, “nah”, or shrugs. I don’t want trendy, (Cayden, Hayden, Jayden) but I am also bored with traditional (Michael, Ethan, Christopher). Josh says we have plenty of time, but I want it to marinate for a while before the birth. I have a feeling it’s going to be something ridiculous or stupendous. So get ready for it. (PS, we are keeping the name a secret when we do pick it. I’ll take suggestions but you will have to wait until the day he is born for bragging rights on picking the name.

My small pet peeve:
People who say “Just you wait” I can’t even freakin’ yawn, without someone saying, “Think you’re tired now? Just you wait!” I excuse myself to the bathroom and I get “Oh you will be doing that a lot more, just you wait.” If some kid cries in the next room? Oh that’s a big “just you wait”
Can I please just enjoy the moment?
This is almost as bad as people who say “Enjoy (fill in the blank activity) now, cause that’s all OVER when the baby comes.” Buzzkill. Plus, I think after ten years of it just being me and Josh we can hardly complain that we didn’t have a blast just the two of us before becoming parents.

Besides those little things, truly, everyone has been really great. I do enjoy pretty much everything else about being pregnant. I don’t care if people touch my stomach or anything like that. In fact, I might be the only pregnant lady who loves it. I guess I am touchy feely. Or maybe because I secretly longed to touch pregnant bellies while trying to make this baby.

Top five things I love about being pregnant right now:
1. I don’t have to suck in my gut. I just let it all. hang. out.
2. Laughing fits. It doesn’t take much to set me off. The most recent incident was a college kid having trouble scanning his hotdog buns at the self checkout machine. He was so hilariously disoriented and confused when his checkout light started blinking, the computer voice started yelling at him and like two employees rushed at him like he was trying to stuff hotdog buns down his pants. I had tears in my eyes.
3. Watching my belly grow. Strangers are making comments now!
4. Josh utterly spoiling me rotten.
5. The anticipation, surprise, and wonder of little bot doing his calisthenics.

Biggest adjustments
1. Not dieting. I have to remember it is okay to have juice, or a second helping. I try hard to get all my calories in, but cutting them is a hard habit to break. Josh is constantly reminding me to EAT. I will just have to watch helplessly as my ass expands.
2. Trapped gas and round ligament pain. I thought I was headed to the ER, but I just needed to toot. And how cute that josh clapped his hands for me when it did.
3. I can’t sit on my butt for more than an hour without it hurting. Movies suck and so do roadtrips, youch.
4. The awful guilt I feel when I eat junk food.
None of this compares to the horror of my nausea and vomiting first trimester. So when people ask me how I am feeling, I smile big and honestly say “I feel GREAT!”