Party Pics!

Okay, so we got this like forever ago, but we just got it scanned. (Trust us, Baby, your mom and dad are NOT slackers, we do plenty of things on time -- just not your baby journal...)

This is our 8 week sonogram. The big ball at the top of the white globby pattern (yes, our child) is not the head - it's the yolk sac. The sonographer laughed at us when we asked that. Just below that is the head, which blends right in with the thickest part, which is the heart, and it was beating rapidly: 154 bpm. And then it tapers off to a tail (they assured us this was very normal and we were not, in fact, having a newt!)

Hee hee! Say cheese, Baby! It's your debut to the world!! 8)
Hey, and come to think of it, that's my uterus's debut as well. Wow. Humbling thought.

Flavor of the week

When this whole pregnancy started, up until about yesterday, I was absolutely certain that this baby would be a girl. However, just yesterday I got a strong WAVE of "boy" vibe. And it's still there today. I'm not sure what this is about. But we're firing off boy names like crazy and they seem so right. The girl names I thought I would have an abundance of are not coming to me as readily as the boys' names. Hmm. Josh started getting boy vibes, too. Although I can't really picture me with a boy, the notion is starting to grow on me. You know....I say all this, but deep down I feel an odd, deeply-rooted sense for this baby being a girl. We will find out June 22nd. It seems so close, yet so far away (for lack of a better cliche).

On another note - I had an absolutely exhausting weekend. I am paying for it today for sure. We played so hard - visited mom an hour away (got a wonderful pedicure), went to an all-day, all-out pool party and then went to an all-day, all-out visit to Worlds of Fun (for anyone not local - it's a theme park whose name says it all...it's a "world" of fun......*insert pained eye roll here*). I think toward the end of the day yesterday my body was beginning to shut down. I was emotionally and mentally still doing great, but physically I was falling apart. My knees were so freakishly swollen they looked like fat lady knees - like the thigh never stopped and wedged in there somewhere is a chubby, forgotten knee cap dying to see the light of day. My hips hurt! This was new. I had not experienced this pre-pregnancy and did not even think about this as a physical ailment I would be contending with, although it seems to be a painfully obvious one (pun intended!). Well, my hips hurt, as did my feet. They felt like they'd been clubbed from the bottom. I did my best to avoid complaining, too. Luckily, Josh bought me some pop rocks and some laffy taffy and this got me through the final stretch.

I am in my fourth month and I can't help but wonder what my final months are going to be like - I'm typically not too much of a pansy, but I physically wanted to fall apart last night. Now, today, I'm paying for it. I guess Baby knows its limits and my exhaustion today is just one of the many "lessons" this little bugger will illustrate for me!

Dream Weaver

I've read about this happening to other pregnant women, but I have had some RIDICULOUS dreams lately! The other night I had a dream that I had taken the baby out of my stomach -- like where one's appendix would be (you'd think I'd have a better grasp as to how babies got "out"...). This was only after having a "dream" sonogram that revealed a boy and then panned over to reveal a girl right next to it. (Awesome - dream ambiguity. That's helpful!) As soon as I saw it on the monitor I ripped (uh-huh...I know...crazy) my stomach open and pulled the baby out to say hello to it and tell it how excited we were to meet it, etc. Then I realized I had to put the baby back in and now I had this gaping hole in my side. Damn. I hate it when I do that. I looked at the sonographer and said in a stupidly naive voice, "I should probably go to the emergency room, shouldn't I? I probably need to have some of this amniotic fluid put back, huh?" And the sonographer, of course, concurred... and the funny thing was, no one was particularly alarmed that I had done this - apparenlty we would just shove it back in. I guess it happens all the time.

Sigh.

Okay, so last night I had yet another similar dream. This time I was asking to be induced. I was in my 15th week and I was ready! I was explaining to everyone that we were going to induce because everything was "formed" and the baby was moving, so why not? Everyone was startled and I was becoming more and more frustrated that no one was excited for us. I mean, GEEZ PEOPLE! I was ready to have this baby - I mean, it had been three months already.

Yeah. Seriously. Every single night -- and I never wake up panicked. I wake up shaking my head because it's become so common place.

Flutter update: Still no fluttering yet. I've been feeling/listening intently, but nothing yet.

Nesting: *rolls eyes* Well, we're in this super fun housing limbo situation right now. We have to sell one house before buying the one I'm wanting -- but the seller doesn't want to take our offer since ours isn't sold yet. SO we have to at least get it on the market (no small task as we were in the midst of a pretty hairy renovation) before we can make an offer -- and then she'll let us "rent" it from her till our other one sells. Which means we'll be hella strapped until we do sell his. Anyway, it's just a hurry up and wait game. And it's hard to start doing what I'm instinctively programmed to do - NEST! Every time I look at baby furniture I have to look away because I can't get a settled feeling just yet. I'm sure that by July we'll be able to make a move, but for now...we're finishing a renovation on one house and amassing a bunch of boxes at the other house and simply driving by and looking longingly at another house. Home sweet homeless.

On a really exciting note for me personally ------ IT'S SUMMER!!! School's OUT!! Yipppeee!!

Happy summer, have a cocktail for me! (it's Memorial Day weekend, typically I spend this time on a raft, in a bikini with round the clock cocktails...I'm struggling this year.....)

Another milestone!

So, today was my first day of truly acquiescing and wearing a straight up maternity blouse. It was not one of the flowy type things - it was a very structured button up blouse with french cuffs and....tah dah...an empire waist neatly stitched under the chest. Wow. It's just bizarre I felt so comfortable. All of my fitted button up blouses were starting to pull at the belly - all I have needed was a beer/sweat stain around my gut and would totally be that slobby guy with a beer and a gaping shirt. So, I felt very at home in this shirt, but at the same time I felt like I didn't have the license just yet. It's so odd to explain -- it's like there's a secret club of REALLY pregnant women who get to wear the blatantly "maternity" type clothes and I don't quite qualify. However, today I just decided --- dammit! I DO QUALIFY! So there.

Also, our little peach is growing like crazy (according to the books). Last week we heard the heartbeat again -- and this time it was with one of those standard handheld monitors. Prior to this it was through this vaginal microphone thing. Frankly, it looked like a sex toy more than anything --- and trust me, it wasn't, uh, pleasurable. So getting the first sonogram - I have to explain this to illustrate the marvel of this latest sonogram - was very ambiguous. Sure, we heard a heartbeat up on a monitor and it was neat and all... But for all we knew the sonographer could have been playing a VCR tape with a little thump on it. In other words, there was no stomach area-baby heartbeat connection. We never saw anything happen in my tummy region to associate with baby. Okay -- so anyway, the other day we heard the heart beat and it was with the little dealie actually touching my belly. It was so cool. It was cool because after it was all over I could put my fingers exactly where the monitor had been and know that this is precisely where this baby was swimming around! Now I feel a little more connected to my stomach area now - it's like I can actually point the spot where this baby is! Josh and I both lit up when she showed us that and we agreed it was so much cooler than the "magic wand and tv monitor" version we had originally seen.

Okay, so yeah, a lot of chatter to capture the essence of our heartbeat experience, but it was really really neat. I can't wait to feel the "quickening" or the little swimming around/butterfly feeling I'm supposed to feel in the next week or so. Again, it will make everything seem so much more real. And I'll be dressed like one of the "club" members too, so that's good......

Next week, NESTING!! I'm DYING to start nesting!!!

SHOPPING!!!

It feels like Christmas!!! Yippeee!! My massive loss of control has resulted in a large batch of ebay deliveries! In spite of the ick factor of wearing a stranger's clothing and all of their random fabric softener smells (double ick) I am SO loving my new purchases!! I am sitting here wearing the MOST comfortable pair of cute jeans EVER! I may wear these forever. Why aren't most jeans this soft and cut generously (and yet "snug-ly") in all the right places. Apparently though, my boobs are not even fitting in XL type shirts... what size am I then?? Mercy. Enough of the breast tissue already!!

Okay, I know short post, but I have new shopping to dissect!!!

Hot Momma!

Week 12! I am toting around a baby right now who is about the size of a large lime. Why does this immediately make me think about fresh margaritas? Cause I'm a lush, that's why.

Anyway, here's the litany of complaints for the day. Today was one of those days where you just want to whine. SO much. I can't dress my damn self!!! I wore maternity pants for the 2nd time today, and they're just too big. So, here's the issue this created ALLLL DAYY: My pants were long in the crotch and dangling lowly on my hips, thus exposing my rotund belly out from under my barely staying buttoned shirt. Fun. ALLLL dayyy! It was one of those days where I didn't even want to get up to do my job because I knew my pants wouldn't stay up and I risked my gut poking out. OH, and so half way through the day I took the safety pin out of the middle of my blouse (the boob level pin that I discreetly affix every day) and used it to pin up my pants. So, of course I'm now contending with the shirt pull at two button levels - the boobs and the gut. Stunning. Did I mention I'm pail as a ghost too? Yeah, I'm hot. Happy summer. OH, and here's another fun little side effect of my prenatal vitamins. Haven't I heard everyone sing their praises over the years? I thought these little wonders were supposed to rock? For me, not so much. What it has done has made my hair grow like prairie grass. It's thick and heavy and has no shape whatsoever. Thus I've been forced to wear headbands like everyday. Pretty. Acrylic headbands. All the rage. Really. And back when I was thinner, more tan [tanner?], and had a generally pleasant look on my face, I put some darker "low lights" in my blonde hair... and now, well let's just say the look is ALLL gone now. I am now a fat, sloppily dressed, dishwatery flat hair havin', pale faced HOTTIE.

Now, all that said -- YES, it's all worth it. But if I could just hit my stride with my own vanity I'd sure as hell be enjoying this as it was meant to be enjoyed....

WORKING ON GLOWING,
~niki
P.S. ...I only have 9 more days of dressing up for work - then I'll be out on summer break and my daily "cutification" will not be necessary...

short

I love this woman.
Joshua

Crabtacular

Okay so what is it about this adorable little bun that sucks every bit of energy and friendliness right out of me. I am typically not a "hormonal" person, but DANG! "Fetus" is a nice medical term but it would seem so much more fitting if we just called it what it was - a parasite. It's taken over! Luckily I don't feel as hungry as I did before; in the up till about week 9 I was eating constantly! My appetite was never satiated. And right about week 6 or 7 till about last week I was extraordinarily tired. I mean, I could fall asleep mid-sentence. Now here we are about 1/2 way through week 10 and the hunger issue is subsiding a bit, the tiredness has been remedied with a rearrangement of the pre-natal vitamin as a morning ritual, the boobs are much less sore, but holy buckets if I'm not as crabby as a crabapple. Man, I feel so hostile. Simple things are making me a homocidal maniac. For instance, a really annoying commercial today apparently warrented swearing and a mad dash for the remote. ...a commercial... Yeah, it's ugly. And to think little Miss/Mr. Rapid Growth is responsible for this. I just hope it's taking full advantage of all the niceness its stealing from me and growing into something big and strong!

Who's Driving this THING?

So now we're on our way into week 11. According to all the stuff I've read, we're out of the "danger zone"...As I knock on wood...But I don't know that the nerves ever quite subside. I must say, I've never felt so out of control with regard to anything. I am SO not driving this one - I'm not driving how big I'm getting, or how small I'm NOT staying, it's just happening. It's a tough thing to get my mind around. I'm also not in control as to how well this baby does in pregnancy. Until I feel it moving, I won't even know that it's doing okay. That's something that once it does start moving I could at least monitor for normalcy, but in the meantime, I have no confirmation that everything's okay. Yes, I'm trying to micro-manage my own body. It's worked for this long... (wait, no it hasn't. I'm coo coo!).

On a more sentimental note, I'm realizing that this worrying that I'm doing now and the lack of control I have is simply a symptom of how deeply I feel for this baby. I'm realizing that this feeling of helplessness and constant worry, while admittedly a sign of my constant neuroses, is a clear indication of what the future has in store and what it must feel like to fall madly in love with a child. You can't lock it up in closet to keep it safe, you have to just trust that you know what you're doing and can then impart this wisdom on to a child. But you're never completely in control - sure you play a key roll, but then there's fate and life in general rolling around out there that is much more powerful that we will ever be. Wow. I guess it's time for this neurotic micro manager to surrender and learn to let go. Yeah. I'll start working on that -- neurotically, of course.