Registries

We ended up with 3 registries. I was hoping to have just one, but the stroller, carseat, and swing we wanted ended up being a Sears-only thing, and then I went and found a few things at babycenter.com that I couldn't find at Babies R Us. So. Three registries. The links are in a new section on the lefthand sidebar, under the On the Web section.

Please note that these are works in progress and are pretty slim right now. We'll be adding to them slowly over the next month or two.

22 weeks

Today marks 22 weeks. There are only about 125 days left until our due date, which seems like an extraordinarily short amount of time. Since the baby was measuring slightly larger than average last week at our ultrasound, I'm guessing that by now, it is probably around a pound. That seems like it should be a milestone of some sort.

Not a whole lot new is happening. Mostly it's a lot of the same ol' stuff. I'm feeling the baby kicking from outside of my belly a lot now. Last week I had a lot of heartburn, to the point where on some days I'd take some Tums and an hour later need more. We went to Jason's grandparent's place in Cincinnati over the weekend for a party to celebrate (or as it turned out, mourn) the Ohio State-Michigan game. I forgot to bring Tums so we had to go buy some. I practically tore into the bottle before we hit the checkout.

Today I learned from a coworker that some pain that I've been experiencing for almost the entire pregnancy now is actually a fairly common pregnancy malady. I don't remember reading about it, but maybe I glossed over that part. It's called coccydynia, or tailbone pain, and feels like, well, what do you think? My tailbone hurts. A lot. It's very ouchy to sit, especially on hard chairs or when I sit for a long time. I never thought to mention it to Dr. V before, because I didn't want to complain about every little ache or pain I had (even though this was a frequently recurring one and I probably should have mentioned it), but I will next month at our appointment.

Jason felt the baby kick!

We were resting and watching TV last night before going out for ice cream (mmmm Graeter's peppermint stick...). The baby started kicking a lot, so I put Jason's hand on my belly in the right spot. We waited. Not long after that, I had forgotten about it, but he asked, "Was that a kick?" And I realized that yes indeed the baby had kicked right under his hand just then. Wooohooo! He felt the baby!

ultrasound picture link

If for some reason the link to the ultrasound pictures doesn't work, try this direct link with no javascript:

http://www.abendintheroad.com/babym/images/u1.htm

Sorry for any trouble!

21 week appointment and ultrasound

We had our 21 week appointment today, which consisted mostly of the ultrasound. The doctor asked very few questions, and I had no questions myself so that part of things went very quickly. I gained another ghastly amount of weight, though the doctor didn't say anything so I'm guessing she's not concerned. I am. I have NEVER seen the scale tip so high. Ever. This is frightening, people.

It was funny, while the nurse was taking my blood pressure she confirmed that I was getting a gender scan. I said yes I was. Then she saw the note written in large letters on my file that said "DO NOT TELL GENDER." The nurse's brow furrowed and she said, "And you... don't... want to know the gender?" I said no, we don't. She looked confused, and asked if we were having another scan later to find out. I said, "No, we just want to make sure the baby's growing normally and that all is ok in there." "Oh, okay..." She said, as if the concept of NOT finding out the sex of the baby was incomprehensible to her. I was amused. Jason and I had a nice laugh over it later.

The doctor was away at a delivery when we were taken back to the examining room, but we were promised she wouldn't be too long, and surprisingly, she wasn't. We only waited half an hour or so, during which Jason gave me a lovely foot rub. (Awwwwww.....!) She finally arrived and we got down to business - quick appointment stuff with no questions, and then the ultrasound.

All is well and normal and healthy looking with the baby. Hurrah! It has two arms and two legs, a head, a heart, kidneys, and hands. In one picture, you can clearly even see the bones in the hand. She said the placenta is anterior, or at the front of the uterus, so that may be one reason I'm only now starting to feel more than flutters, rather than big thumpy thumps (and why Jason hasn't felt anything yet). She measured the head and the chest and the thigh and something else I can't remember at the moment. Overall the baby's measuring in the 60th percentile. According to the super smart computer, the baby weighs 15 ounces. The measurements came out all a few days ahead of schedule, especially the head, which measured two weeks ahead of the due date!

We successfully managed not to find out the sex. The doctor even managed not to see. There was a moment when she asked us to look away since she was having trouble getting the thigh onto screen to measure, but she did it without revealing certain telling bits of the baby. She told us didn't find out with her own, and she prefers not to know what her patients are having, so the fact that we didn't want to know seemed to make her happy. Oh! And also, at the end of the appointment, she told us she's pregnant with her second and due the month after me. How's this for strange... when Shannon was pregnant with Fiona, her doctor was pregnant and due soon after her! Funky!

The ultrasound was an amazing experience. It was so very worth the money we spent on it. Seeing our little baby wiggling and flipping around... awe inspiring. I could have sat all day and watched the wee thing. After seeing it today, I can imagine it so much better, though. And when I feel the thumps, which have definitely grown stronger in the past few days, I can see in my head the little arm or leg that's doing the thumping. I'm sure I could have survived without having seen the little peanut, but I'm so very glad I was able to!

(I suppose you want pictures, don't you?)

an update

We had a weekend of starting things. Friday night we planned on going to see the new Matrix movie, but the times were reported wrong on the web so we ended up not seeing it and went to start our baby registry instead. I know, hardly the epitome of Friday night fun, but what can you do? It was something we needed to do. It was also so incredibly overwhleming. All those things in the store that before were dreamy little things with so much possibility became huge monstrous decisions we had to make. In the end we registered for only about 30 things. There's lots more to do, but we'll do it in bits and pieces.

Saturday morning we started packing up the books in the office. We're going to put the books in boxes in the basement, and eventually most of the things in the office closet will go down there too. Then we're going to switch rooms so the office will go into the small bedroom where our bed is now. There simply isn't enough room in the small room for the bassinet and our bed and dressers. We had hoped not to have to switch rooms, but we decided in the end it would work better - particularly since very soon we're going to buy a new, bigger bed so there'll be even less space there.

We spent most of the rest of Saturday with Rose and Mark, who were visiting from Cleveland. We went to the Eddie Bauer outlet store and later had dinner at Buca di Beppo with Rose's parents and a couple of other friends to celebrate Rose and Mark's anniversary, which is on the 17th (oh, that's today...Happy anniversary guys!).

I'm very overwhelmed by the amount of money we're spending on maternity clothes lately. Even though I'm buying only underwear and pants new and everything else is used or on super clearance, I'm so frustrated and feel so awful that I'm spending this much money on clothes for myself. I've never been a clothes horse, never really cared much about fashion or having lots of clothes. I typically go shopping twice a year, in the fall and in the spring, with very rare shirt or jeans purchases throughout the rest of the year. This is crazy to me, spending all this money week after week on clothes. Ugh. Make it stop!!

Lately I've been shifting focus from reading about pregnancy things to reading almost exclusively about labor and delivery. Starting two or three weeks ago, I began flipping ahead to the chapters on birth in all my books. Since then I've bought two new books, the Baby Book and the Birth Book by Dr. Sears. The Birth Book wasn't a planned purchase, but I found it for 2.50 at a used store and couldn't resist. I'm really glad I bought it, and in fact wish I had a more recent edition - this one is almost 10 years old. This book is cementing more and more my decision to do (ok...attempt) a natural birth. All this reading has given me tons to think about. I never dreamed there was so much thinking and planning to do before giving birth!

Tomorrow we're 21 weeks and end the fifth month. Onward to month 6! Also, on Wednesday we have our November appointment and our ultrasound! Wooohoo! We can't wait to see the baby again, although as exciting as it will be, I'm a little scared that we'll accidentally see the baby's bits and know what sex it is. Hopefully the doctor can keep away from that area, since she said she actually prefers not knowing the sex of her patients' babies either. Rest assured, even if we DO find out accidentally, it's still a secret from the rest of the world!

Oh yes, and happy birthday to Fiona, our niece. She turned two today. We went to her birthday party this evening. She's such a little sweetheart and just loved all her presents. We bought her a baby doll high chair, which she warmed up to after a while - she had a ball feeding her baby doll (also a gift, but from her parents) all night. Happy Birthday little one!

20 weeks and (more) things that make me cry

Halfway! That's where we are today! It hardly seems possible that we're 20 weeks into this pregnancy already. Those first few weeks after we got the positive test crept by, but now, time is flying. This baby's going to be here before we know it!

In celebration of Half Baked Day, as Jason has dubbed it, we bought the baby its first outfit while at Kohl's today. Later when we were home, I took the outfit out of its bag and just held it, imagining it filled with the warm, snuggly little baby that will someday soon be here. Naturally, it made me cry. What else is new? These days the pregnancy hormones are going wild. I have been more emotional and teary in the last 2 weeks than I have been before during this pregnancy.

Something else that made me cry was yesterday when Jason came home from work with "just because" flowers for me. The real kicker was when he explained that all the flowers in the bouquet were for me, but the rose in the middle was for the baby. Sob.

Not a whole lot is new with me this week, apart from the extreme hormonalness (is that even a word?). I think I *might* be feeling the first faint external thumps when the baby wiggles around, but it's so faint I am not sure if it's really there. Jason's very anxious to be able to feel the baby kick. One of these days!

The other thing, which I have been meaning to mention, is that I decided to take off my wedding band and engagement ring. They were small on me to begin with, especially since I was 10 pounds heavy when I got pregnant, so with the uggy amount of weight I've already gained (thanks again, hormones, for making CARBS the only thing I could stomach in the first trimester!) they were getting really tight. We've been searching high and low for a quality, inexpensive band for me to wear as a replacement for a couple of weeks now, and we finally found it tonight at Kohl's. I was there on Sunday (before my disastrous trip to WalMart) and learned they were having a 60% off sale on their jewelry, including wedding bands. Woohoo! So we went tonight and found one that will work. It's nice quality, too, which is way better than the cheap ones we found elsewhere. The only downside is I won't get it for three weeks since they had to send it out to be sized up.

when aunts and uncles babysit

When aunts and uncles babysit, unpredictable things might happen. For instance, when a diaper needs changed, it might leak allllllll over the only pants that were brought with the child. Then, when the diaper is being changed, it might leak further allllll over the only shirt that was brought with the child. This, in turn, might cause the aunts and uncles to have to improvise (because said aunts and uncles most likely would not have clothes to fit a toddler)...

bad day

Yesterday afternoon Jason had his pinball league finals to go to, so I was left on my own. We hadn't gone to the grocery store on Saturday like usual, so I ventured out to do the shopping. The trip started out fine, but it was Sunday afternoon and it was WalMart and it was crowded. Add to that a pregnant me in my heavy winter coat and you get a quickly overwhelmed, hot me with sore feet and an aching back. I got all the way through the grocery side, fighting for aisle space all the way, then I headed to the toiletries section on the other side of the store to pick up a couple things. On my way to the registers to check out, I looked at my list and realized I forgot salad dressing. I stood there trying to decide if it was worth fighting my way back for salad dressing and decided at last that I didn't care. I waited in an excruciatingly long line and was saved from certain madness only by a very kind man behind me who asked if I wanted to go into the next line, which was free of people. I barely made it through the line without crying. Just barely. When the cashier said something about putting my coat back on because it was cold outside, I nearly lost it.

Once I was in the car, I did lose it and I cried all the way home. Jason got home a little while later, and I cried all over again telling the story to him. I must have been a pathetic sight, crying because some nice man let me into the empty line and because the store was crowded.

Later, we made hamburgers for dinner. I got out the condiments and fixed my bread, then proceeded to fix Jason's. He glanced over at the bread on the counter and asked rather confusedly where his was. I pointed to his. He said "Oh. Why does it have ketchup on it?" And then I remembered that Jason doesn't like ketchup - he likes mustard! How could I have forgotten that he always, always, always takes mustard alone on his burgers! I began to scrape the ketchup off the bread into the sink, and all would have been okay except Jason jokingly said, "I just looked over and both sandwiches had odious things on them!" Then I *really* lost it. The bread and the knife fell from my hands and I crumpled into tears. I had failed, I had ruined dinner and surely this was an injury Jason could never recover from. Odious ketchup on his burger, what had I been thinking? Jason comforted me and reassured and I was soon recovered, but it really was quite a bad day as far as the pregnancy hormones are concerned.

19 wks and belly pic

Today marks 19 weeks, and depending on what you read the baby's anywhere from 6 to 8 or more inches long. Kind of a large variation, it seems. I'm doing well. I've got energy, I haven't had very much more round ligament pain, and I can even eat vegetables most of the time without gagging. I am getting more and more heartburn, though, and sleeping is growing increasingly more uncomfortable. Jason and I have planned for a couple years to buy a new bed, and when we found out we were pregnant we decided to go ahead and do it this year around Christmas. I'm starting to think we'll do it sooner than that even. This bed just is not comfortable!

There's a new belly picture up today -- see link to the left. We took them this morning before I ran off to work. It was such a beautiful day - sunny, warm, and so not seasonal for November! Anyway, in comparing the 15 and 19 week pictures, I really don't think I have grown a bit! I have to have grown, since I my maternity clothes actually have something in them now as opposed to at 15 wks when it was not so noticeable, but the pictures don't show it.

baby dreams

I have only had one baby dream so far that I remember. I'm surprised I haven't had any of the scary ones, where I lose the baby or where the baby comes and we aren't ready for it. Anyway, in the dream I had the other day, we went for our ultrasound and told the doctor we didn't want to know what sex the baby was. She said ok, but in the middle of the ultrasound she held up this small pink silk bag. I think she had written the sex down and put it in the bag. Later after the ultrasound I held my belly and shook it gently and said down to it, "Hi [Girls Name]!!"

So that's the second dream I've had where the girl's name we have picked out has been said. The first one, which I don't think I ever wrote about here, was kind of interesting. Since I charted my temperatures, I know exactly when I ovulated. The night before my temperature rose (when I ovulated), I had a dream where I was walking down a wooden path by a beach. I noticed plants growing all beside the path and up between the boards. I asked if it was poison ivy, and someone answered, "No, that's not poison ivy, it's [Girls Name]."

I don't know if that's significant at all, but I find it interesting just the same.