It's official! It's a baby! No puppies for us! No twins, either.
We had our first appointment this afternoon. It went really well, we saw the baby, saw the heartbeat, and stumped the doctor with a question she said she had never been asked before. That was so incredible! It was right there, a little wiggly blob inside me! Amazing.
The baby measured right on the dot to where it should be based on the date of my last period. That surprised us, as according to my chart I ovulated 5 days late. But she said it was right on the nose, so our due date is March 30. That puts us at 9w1d now, instead of the 8w4d we were this morning when I was going by conception date. I would continue to go by the conception date-based due date except that the baby measured right for the LMP due date. So we'll use that one.
During the ultrasound, Jason asked the doctor how far the distance was from the end of the ultrasound thingy (it was a vaginal ultrasound) to the uterus. She was stumped, having never been asked that before. So she did some tests and determined that it was 4.5 cm with the bladder squished in (boy THAT was pleasant...). And now you know, too.
The best of the two ultrasound pictures is on the right of the page under "Pregnancy Pictures." Incidentally, that's where belly pictures will go when I get around to doing them. I took one around 6 weeks so I would have a pre-baby belly, but I must say even at that point it's a bit more sticky-outy than my normal belly - not from the baby, just from certain systems not working as ..erm, efficiently... as they should, if you know what I mean. I haven't posted that one yet, though, because I can't find it. It's here somewhere. Anyway, I'll probably take another one here soon. Not that I think there's been a whole lot of change. But you never know... my pants are *definitely* getting tighter, so maybe there's more belly here to go along with my increasing waistline.
I feel like Annie! Ha! But it's finally here and tomorrow's the day! Less than 24 hours now and we'll see our baby and hear its heartbeat... rock on.
So we've started telling family about the baby. Last night we told my mom and little sister. It was Aileen's birthday, so it was doubly nice as it worked as a present for her (we gave her a real present too, don't worry). Their reactions were fun to watch. They were both surprised, naturally, although mom claimed afterwards to have started to suspect something on Saturday when we went peach picking. I have been accused of rubbing my belly a lot on Saturday, so maybe that's it. If I was doing it, it was unconscious and only because all that walking made things hurt in there!
Tonight we told Jason's grandparents. They were so shocked and surprised! They didn't suspect a thing! All though dinner they kept coming back to the baby and couldn't stop talking about it and how happy it made them. It was a warm fuzzy dinner.
Tomorrow we'll call my dad and Barb, Thursday we're having dinner with Jason's other grandmother, and then this weekend we're driving down to North Carolina to visit his parents and tell them the news. The baby's not the only reason we're going there, of course. It's been a while since Jason's been down to visit his family, and we want to do it on this last long weekend before the holidays.
I am beginning to lose my waist, I think. I've noticed all week that's it's starting to get flabby and soft looking. I suppose it'll continue to slowly disappear over the next couple of weeks. It's kind of sad, really. I've had this waist for years and now it's going away. All for a good cause of course, but still. Bye-bye figure! Haha!
As for other symptoms, morning sickness has faded somewhat this week, so that for the most part I'm nauseous mostly in the evenings and unable to eat dinner. I'm starving all day and eat and eat but then at dinnertime, suddenly food is the last thing on my mind and nothing sounds good. Not veggies (still can't eat most veggies, 'specially the cooked ones), and sometimes not even meats. We had pork chops the other night and I had three bites and couldn't stomach anymore. The other day, I couldn't eat chicken. Tonight, four bites of my roast beef sammich was all I could handle. Oh, and Taco Bell? Nearly made me hurl Sunday night. *shudder* Other than that, I'm just tired. Exhausted. Pooped. Gimme a bed all day long and I'll be a happy girl.
That was kind of fast. Just the other day I was complaining about how I wanted to spruce up this site but had no ideas. Then I was looking at a website that had a picture of a moon on it and WHOOSH, all of a sudden I had an idea. Last night I did up the images real fast and tonight I slapped it all together in Movable Type. All that worrying that I had no energy for such things and it only took me 3 hours, if that.
I still have some kinks to work out, like why the entries are so skinny in Explorer and not in Netscape, and there are still templates to fix up, but this is a good start. And if anyone is still seeing that verticle scroll problem, let me know. I finaly did see it, from work this morning when I rememebred to check. I wonder if it was an Explorer problem? I use Netscape at home and never saw it.
I have been SO hungry and thirsty the past two days. I eat and then I am hungry again in no time. A large bagel should leave me full for hours, but instead I'm starving again in an hour. And if I go too long without any water, I get so thirsty I start feeling panicky. It's frustrating, especially if I can't get to water soon enough (or if I do and it's lukewarm... only cold water really quenches my thirst).
The crampiness I felt for the first few weeks has changed and now I mostly feeling a stretchy/pully kind of pain, especially if I twist my body wrong or when I've done a lot of walking.
Seven days from today and we can tell everyone! Wooo! So excited. I can't believe we're so close already, but at the same time a week still seems so far off. It'll go fast. I hope!
So sleepy. I just wanted to post a quick update. We're 7 weeks as of Saturday, so 7w2d today. Our first doctor's appointment is in 9 days, and we can't wait! Jason and I have been counting down the days so very eagerly. Every morning one of us remembers the new day count and tells the other and we get all excited that we're that much closer. But still, 9 days.... sooooo long......!
Now I'm going to go try and finish the latest Harry Potter (yes I'm just now reading it. what? The library took ages to get a copy in - we were 1559 on the waiting list when I signed up!) and go to bed.
I'm beginning to suspect that baby does not like vegetables. It started with the broccoli in the first week or so after we found out I was pregnant. Since then, with growing intensity and frequency, the taste of vegetables completely turns me off. Now it's to the point where I can't even choke them down just because I know they're good for me. They literally make me gag. Right now, just thinking about vegetables is making me nauseous. OK, this would have been great when I was a kid, a valid excuse not to eat veggies. But now? Now it's quite a disaster! I need these veggies! My kid needs these veggies!
Tonight we went out to dinner (for the first time in ages and ages, because we have something to celebrate.. more on that in a minute). We went to a Japanese steakhouse. I made a valiant effort to eat the veggies, really I did. But I just couldn't do it. Jason leaned over and talked to my belly, saying "Baby, this better not be a trend that continues very long!" Meaning of course that the kid better like veggies when he grows up into a big baby.
The other thing that really gets to me these days is sweetness. I had to stop drinking coffee because it was way too sweet, even with minimal sweetner in it, and I can't stand the flavor without sweetner. So the unthinkable happened, and I stopped with the coffee. Funny thing is I can still eat sweet things. There's just a certain kind of sweetness that I can't stand. And just eating too many sweet things all at once. I don't know. It's wierd.
Morning sickness/nausea seems to be getting worse on the whole. I'm eating crackers in bed before I get up now. If I lie awake too long without eating some, I start feeling sick. I'm nauseous off and on throughout the day, but mostly from mid-morning until lunchtime, and then starting again in the mid-afternoon (maybe a sign I need to eat more, eh?). Problem is practically nothing sounds good. AND to make matters worse I'm having serious breakfast issues. None of the cereals I have tried actually taste good, toast is tolerable but not that great, my soy milk is too sweet when combined with cereals, and other than that I'm out of ideas. I'd skip it if that wouldn't make me even sicker.
So, the big news! (As if baby wasn't enough, right?) After a year and a half(ish), Jason has finally been hired into a fulltime position! He's been hired as a permanent contractor, with salary and benefits and everything. His first project is with a bank, inventorying their computer equipment and such. It's a six month contract to start, but could be extended. The only downside is that the position requires some travel, although we aren't sure how much yet. But yay! A job! Now we can start house hunting!
As of Saturday I'm at six weeks. This week the baby apparently goes through a big growth spurt, growing from the size of a BB pellet to the size of a green pea, according to a number of the baby sites, including babycenter.com.
These days we''re counting time by the number of days until our doctor's appointment. It's 16 days from today, 15 from tomorrow, and that's just a hair more than two weeks. Two weeks is a lot closer than the 30 days or so it was when I made the appointment. I got my packet of papers from the obstetrician today, but I think I only need to fill out one of them since they already have the other info on file, as I've been to her before. I also got a new prescription for a different prenatal vitamin, so we need to get that filled - well timed, too, as my last refill of the prenatal prescription I had before is just running out this week.
Over the weekend we had quite a time masking my tiredness and nausea from Jason's family. His dad and Julee, his dad's wife, visited over the weekend to go to the state fair. We went with them on Saturday. It was fun, and a wonderful day for the fair, being warm, but not hot, and overcast, but not rainy. We did an awful lot of walking, however, and it took its toll early and lots. I sat and rested when I got the chance, but there weren't often obvious and inconspicuous times for me to sit down. We managed to find fairly plausible excuses, but I felt as if they were hollow and see-through. I'm not regretting out decision to be cautious, not too much anyway, but it sure would be easier if we could just tell everyone now!
One of the fun things about the fact that our family doesn't know yet is that we have a secret that we can share and enjoy between us. On the couple of occasions when the subject of babies came up, we rather enjoyed being able to smile to ourselves over what we know and they don't yet. It made us happy to see how eager they are for us to have a baby, and know that very, very soon we can tell them the news that will make them so happy! I'm just glad they didn't ask us directly when we were going to have a baby, because we might have had a hard time dodging that one...
Morning sickness is back in force, although fortunately I haven't thrown up yet (knock on wood). Saturday night - Sunday morning, actually - I woke up at 3:00 am, hot as hell and feeling generally crappy. I'd been having feverish dreams about the fair and all the food I ate, and the longer I was awake and replaying those dreams in my head, the worse I felt. Jason woke up with my tossing and turning, so I asked him to get me water. When he got upstairs with the water, I thought of crackers, so I asked him to go get me some. Which he did. Because he's such a wonderful husband. I ate some crackers and sipped some water, and after a while, I started to feel better. We talked a bit, because I wasn't quite at the point of falling asleep again. Jason told me that I could ask him anytime to get me things, that he wouldn't mind a bit. In my hormonal state, this made me feel bad and as if I should have thought of water and crackers sooner. Naturally, it made me cry. I cried and cried, the most sincere crying I think I've done yet with all these hormones.
I haven't had it quite that bad since - morning sickness or hormonal crying - although this morning I had a brief period where I was sure I was going to hurl. I didn't, but I felt darn close. I'm a bit on edge, waiting for it to get worse, simultaneously glad to have the sickness just so I know things are still chugging along in there and dreading it getting any worse from the simple physical ickiness factor. Only time will tell. I'm just trying to get from one day to the next, biding my time to get through the first trimester. I know the dangers don't end there, and neither will the worrying, but it's a milestone I am anxious to reach.
After several weeks of virtually nothing to do at work (except raise my winning percentage from 22% to 50% in Freecell), yesterday and today I finally got work. Lots of it. The work I have been given has been of the type that makes me play the chicken game, as I told one of the managers at the end of the day yesterday. That made him raise a questioning eyebrow at me, at which point I explained that I'd been running around like I didn't have a head all day.
Yesterday when I got home I was pretty tired, but a half hour of sitting on the sofa watching the Simpsons was enough to make me feel fairly rested. Today I got home and felt pretty good. I wasn't too tired, which amazed me given all the running around I did today. I wasn't tired, that is, until I sat still and let my mind relax. Ten minutes later my eyes were burning and drooping and my mind was fuzzy. I knew I had to nap; Simpsons just wouldn't do the trick. So nap I did. Forty-five minutes later, Jason woke me up so we could make our pizzas. I felt much better, if a bit groggy.
I went downstairs and started putting together the ingredients for the pizza sauce. As the onions and garlic cooked, my nausea returned full-force. The smell was so overwhelming that we had to open the front and back doors to air the apartment out. I just flopped on the couch and savored the onion-and-garlic-less air, warm and humid, coming in from outside.
The nausea has been back for two days now. It had been missing for about a week, since last Wednesday or so. Although I don't exactly mind not feeling like crap for most of the day, it bothered me to some extent. I want the reassurance. I want the symptoms, even if they suck. This evening after we finished watching an episode of Angel and eating our pizza, we got up to take a walk. I noticed soreness in my chestal region and commented on it to Jason, and then I laughed and said, "I can't think of a time when I've ever been so happy to feel like total crap."
That's about the size of it. The worse I feel physically, the better my mental state. I actually find myself giggling to myself when I feel nauseous. Okay, maybe giggling is a bit extreme. Smiling to myself, maybe. Of course sighing with resignation and relief is probably more accurate. In any event, it's a bizarre mindset to have, not bemoaning how awful I feel.
Madame Zaritska at pregnancyandbaby.com has predicted the following about the birth of our baby:
The day you deliver, outside will be windy. Your baby will arrive in the evening.
After a labor lasting approximately 5 hours, your child, a girl, will be born. Your baby will weigh about 6 pounds, 4 ounces, and will be 20 inches long. This child will have blue eyes and a lot of hair.
I made the mistake today of reading a website that told me that August 1 through September 5 some really important growing and bodybuilding happens with the baby. The mistake in this is that the website also said that this period has the greatest chance of birth defects and as a result, miscarriage. Egads. I so didn't need to read that! I'm worried enough about the next month and a half without having some stupid website blaring it out to me that this is a dangerous time. But the damage is done, and now I'm going to sweat bullets until we're through August. Whoever thought it was a good idea of put that type of information on a website? Not a pregnant woman, let me tell you!! I think I'm going to avoid those websites from now on and visit only ones that tell me encouraging, happy, pleasant things about my pregnancy progress.
How far I am: 5w3d
How I am feeling: I'm fatigued from the moment I wake up, hungry all the time, peeing constantly, and my breasts are sore (although not achy or anything, they're just a bit sensitive). Today I had cramping worse than it's been in a few days, including a few sharp zaps of pain that made me stop walking and gasp for breath. I'm not craving anything in particular, and haven't had much in the way of nausea or persistent aversions, although broccoli seems to be growing grosser and grosser each time I eat it, and one night last week the scallop dish we cooked for dinner tasted like paste. I'm also emotional like you wouldn't believe. Saturday I cried like a baby at a show on Animal Planet where they were rescuing a dog that was stuck on ice in the middle of a river. Of course, they showed his shivery little face with white icy whiskers and that made me laugh because it was kind of funny, so I was sobbing and laughing, sad and amused all at the same time. Jason wasn't sure what to make of that.
Welcome to 5 weeks, Baby M! According to the Yahoo Pregnancy Calendar:
Your baby's heart, which is no bigger than a poppy seed, has begun beating.
The baby is also the size of an apple seed right now. Amazing, isn't it? That it's already big enough to see!
Today also marks the start of the second month of pregnancy. According to Parenthood.com, this is what we can expect this month:
All major body organs and systems are formed but not completely developed. Early stages of placenta, which exchanges nutrients from your body for waste products produced by the baby, are visible and working. Ears, ankles and wrists are formed. Eyelids form and grow but are sealed shut. Fingers and toes are developed. By end of second month, fetus looks more like a person than a tadpole, is about 1 inch long and still weighs less than 1 ounce.
How could I have forgotten my most obvious symptom that remains? Pee! Pee! Pee! Me and the potty room have become bestest friends, for I am there every freaking darn hour! This is going to get really old REALLY fast....
I can't believe it's 9.30 and I'm still awake - more importantly, I'm not overly tired either. The last two nights I've been in bed and asleep by 8.30. (Mom, you called last night at 9 and Shannon told me how you couldn't believe we were in bed already, but now you know the REAL reason I was in bed! Ha ha!) One reason I think I'm not feeling so tired right now is because I know I can sleep in tomorrow morning. It's a mind game, to some extent, isn't it?
Of course, I'm a bit worried about the lack of extreme tiredness, because my other symptoms have faded a bit over the last day or so. I haven't felt particularly nauseous since Tuesday or Wednesday, my breasts aren't nearly as sore as they were earlier this week (although they are still large and hefty, which is good), and I haven't been quite so tired yesterday or today as I was Wednesday. It's all got me worried. Very worried.
But then I have still been getting crampy feelings in my lower abdomen, and they aren't sharp and painful and sustained, which is what the books say you should be worried about. And I *am* tired, just not as tired as Wednesday. And my temperatures have remained high - in fact, this morning, my temperature shot up 0.6 of a degree to 98.7, which is higher than my normal temperatures during the day, and way higher than my waking temp has *ever* been. All good signs, but it's hard not to worry even so.
Today marks one week since we found out we were pregnant! It seems so much longer than that, but it's only been a week. One week down, seven weeks to go until the end of the first trimester (well, really, five weeks down, but for four of them, we didn't know we were pregnant! That's the beauty of the first trimester!)