I'm cranky

I've given up hope of first trimester sickness and exhaustion going away. I'm clearly going to be tested on my previous statements that it will be okay if I am miserable for most of this pregnancy. And I stand by those statements. But darn it, I'm getting less and less excited about what is supposed to be the comfort of the second trimester. And I'm traveling soon with a toddler to the beach. While sick. Awesome.

Lame

It's 7:30pm on Friday night. Yours truly is in bed with no intention of getting back out until morning. I doubt I'm going to bed in the next hour. I'll probably goof off on the iPad, read some on the Kindle, etc. But if I happen to fall asleep, that's fine too. It doesn't get much more lame than bed before 8pm on a Friday night. I hope second trimester energy finds me soon.

14 Weeks

Not much going on right now.  I *might* be starting to feel better.  It seems like for the last couple days I've only been sick in the evenings for a few hours.  Unfortunately this boring time in pregnancy makes me worry.  Is everything still okay in there?  I have no reason to believe it's not . . . but I still worry.  I really hope our 2nd ultrasound tech was right an the placenta is right lateral - if so, I could feel movements any time in the next couple weeks and that would be a huge relief.  But for now, I just keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep counting the weeks.

Still NO bump whatsoever.  Baby is the size of a lemon right now, and is still 100% behind my pubic bone.  Of course, that space is getting tight, so I have more fat being pushed up and out (way higher than where the baby is), and my bladder is hating life right now.  Supposedly, you show a lot earlier with your second one . . . so maybe I'll have bump here soon too.  Who knows.

I did take a picture this week.  Literally, no different than week 12 - maybe a little thicker - but still getting in regular clothes fine.

First trimester - ACCOMPLISHED!!!

Just typing that made my eyes well up with tears. Even before I had multiple early miscarriages, the first trimester was not kind to me. Combine my body's physical response to the first 13 weeks of gestation with fear and anxiety . . . And I'm sure you can understand the elation to be moving on to what *should* be a much kinder 13 weeks of pregnancy.

So how am I spending the very first day of my 2nd trimester? Throwing up and going to bed at 8:30pm. I'm going to feel better any day now . . .

Random Friday Updates

Most importantly, an update about last night's pain.  I still had it this morning, so I called.  I figured it was *probably* nothing, but I also figured it could not hurt to call.  I have instructions to keep drinking lots of water and to try to take it easy over the weekend.  Which is funny since I have family coming into town and a house that is a disaster, a photo shoot with a 6 month old on Saturday morning, a promise to take my 2 year old and his 2 year old cousin to the pool Saturday afternoon, and plans for an IKEA shopping trip Sunday.  Of all those things, the only things I can really let go are the dirty house (thankfully it's just family) and the IKEA shopping trip (which I want to do, but it can wait).  So I'm going to try to take it easy when I can.  I'm supposed to call anytime if I start experiencing bleeding or contractions, but I have no reason to think either of those will happen.  The nurse said it sounds like just a lot of stretching happening at once and resulting soreness.  Sounds good to me.

My sickness issues have been GONE today (knock on wood).  I did my water and diet coke breakfast. (I'm ashamed to admit the diet cokes are becoming more like 1 a day than 1 a week.)  And then I just wasn't hungry.  I felt normal, great, and not hungry.  I had an internal battle about whether or not to skip breakfast . . . but I decided that 1) I felt good 2) I wasn't hungry and 3) I need to trust that my body will tell me what it needs . . . so I went without.  I did eat lunch about 30 minutes ago and so far I still feel very normal.  I don't want to get my hopes up that this could be the start of something new, but I'm surely enjoying just being able to sit at my computer today and focus on what I'm doing without feeling like I'm going to be sick at any second.

And finally, I've spent the last week since the NT scan just poking around looking at various ideas for the room for the new baby.  I'm a Type A person and I like to plan.  (Who would have guessed that???)  I won't be buying anything for a while, but I do enjoy getting ideas together.   I had pulled something together that I liked - fairly gender neutral, bold, vibrant.  I could be happy doing something like that, but it was a little modern and maybe a little cold for a nursery.  I was talking to a friend who is also pregnant and she sent me a link to her Pinterest boards and I found something I fell in love with.  And even better, I starting looking through old photos to see what I could print for the walls and I found the most perfect picture from our trip to Alaska (where we got married)!  So now, I just need to reel the excitement in a little bit.  I'm not ready to buy anything and I don't love being this excited about baby stuff so early.  But maybe I'll share a picture soon of what I have in mind . . .

Pain. I'm trying to stay calm.

Other than my "morning" sickness, I've felt fine all day. Felt fine until dinner was over. When I got up from dinner I felt like my entire lower abdomen/uterus was severely strained. (Like my abs used to feel the day after I would over do it on sit-ups.)

I had a lot of round ligament pain (RLP) with my son and have already started having some with this pregnancy, and to-date all of my RLP has been sharp short lasting pain associated with quick movement.

An hour later and this strained muscle sensation is still pretty severe.  Not so bad that I can't walk or function, but bad enough that all I really want to do is stay in bed. I'm hoping this could just be some form of RLP I've never experienced.  After all, there is a lot of stretching that needs to happen.  I've formed what I think is a reasonable plan:  drink a lot of water tonight, stay off my feet, go to bed early, and call my doctor in the morning if I'm still having this pain.

I don't want to overreact, but I'll be honest, I'm sort of freaking out.

Our Announcement Plan

I knew there was something I forgot to say this morning!  I have a plan in place for our announcement.  It will involve pictures of my son holding up framed messages about his new sibling.  But it won't happen super soon . . .  

I found some picture frames I wanted for this project.  They are unfinished frames that look very similar to a current popular brand name frame at a tiny fraction of the price.  While I think the name brand frames are lovely, I just don't spend $100+ on one 11x14 picture frame.  So instead, I got THREE 11x14 frames for under $90 shipped!!!  And I'm so excited.  They will find their final home in our guest room/new nursery where they will be perfect on the wall, but before they get hung they will be a part of our pregnancy announcement.

So, why not soon?  Because the company that sells these unfinished frames custom cuts them for every order, and as they have started to be featured on various blogs and Pinterest for being absolutely amazing frames with infinite DIY customization options, their shipping time is now 3-4 weeks.

That buys me some time to get more comfortable . . . including another appointment to hear the heartbeat.  But also puts an end to the unknown about when I will do it.  Sure I could keep talking myself out of it once the frames arrive, but I like having a plan and an end goal.    

13 Weeks!!!

I'm a stickler for math, so I'm not saying that the first trimester is over yet . . . just a couple more days.  But wow does 13 weeks feel like a wonderful place to be right now.  Baby should be the size of a peach.  I still look and feel no different.  (Still pudgy with no baby bump and still sick.)  And I'm definitely not feeling any fetal movements either.  So now is when I have hunker down, and just trust that all is going well.  Not an easy thing for me to do, and it's really really hard not to buy a home doppler right now.

Other than that, not much to report here.  This stage of growing a baby is pretty uneventful . . .

Still Sick

The first trimester is just days from being over, and I'm still constantly sick.  I know all pregnancies are different, but by 13 weeks with my son I was definitely feeling better and by 14 weeks I was feeling great.  (Because by the time we told everyone we were pregnant I was talking about how horrible my sickness had been and I was so glad I was over it.)

My days go something like this:

Wake up.  Feel kinda queasy, but mostly thirsty.  Drink a bottle of water over the course of the morning routine (getting my son up, out of the house, dropped of at school, etc.)  Am ravenously hungry by the time I do school drop off, and try to find something to eat for breakfast.  It all goes downhill from there . . .

It does not matter what I eat.  It can be peanut butter on wheat toast.  It can be ice cream.  Or anything you can think of between those extremes . . . Eating makes my sickness worse.  And usually it's not puking sick.  It's just the CONSTANT feeling of going to puke any second.  I actually wish I would get sick, because the threat of it happening at any second is just miserable.

And that's how it goes throughout the day.  Every time I eat it gets worse and worse until we make it to 7/8pm and I am literally having so much nausea that I'm gagging (almost dry heaving) over the tiniest smells.

I have tried staying ahead of the hunger, thinking that maybe my stomach is getting too empty.  Doesn't work.  I have tried eating something bland first thing in the morning before I drink my water.  That is the worst (on those days I usually do end up throwing up my water).

So today I did school drop off, and as hungry as I am, I haven't eaten.  I am sipping very slowly on a diet coke.  (I already put down 20oz of water this morning.)  And I feel okay.  Queasy.  REALLY hungry.  But I don't feel like I'm going to be sick at any second.

Obviously, living off diet coke and water is not an option.  I am pregnant and I NEED to eat when I'm hungry.  But I'm just so sick of being sick that I can't even bring myself to open a refrigerator door this morning to look at what my options are.

I will say it again for the hundredth time . . . If it means we can have a healthy baby, I will do it every day for 40 weeks.  But darn it, I'm hungry and just wish I could eat like a normal person.

It's a small world . . .

. . . particularly when you used to work with your husband.  Crap.

Years ago my husband and I actually met at work.  It was a fun group of people on that job, and we were all a pretty tight knit group of coworkers, some of whom we are still very good friends with to this day - even though most of us (my husband and I included) haven't worked together in years.

In fact, my husband still plays volleyball once a week with a bunch of the guys from that job.  And he told them all last night that we are pregnant.  Which is fine.  We don't have some marital pact that he won't tell anyone until I'm ready.  BUT . . . because of how close many of us still are (and some even still work together), I immediately realized that at least 3 of MY friends are now likely going to hear the news from someone other than me.  And not in a gossipy, "OMG, did you hear?" sort of way.  Just because I'm sure these guys assume that if my husband is telling that it's not a secret and that I'm telling too . . . 

And yet, I still don't want to make the phone calls or send the emails.  :(

 

Afraid to tell

For all intents and purposes, our NT scan on Thursday was *the* first trimester milestone we were waiting for.  For some people that milestone is seeing the heartbeat, but we learned with our last pregnancy that we needed to wait a lot longer than that before we would be comfortable.

So the NT scan came and went, and I've only told one more person that we are pregnant since Thursday.  A fair number of people already know.  My immediate family, my best friend, my boss, a few people who have shared their own infertility stories with me over the years, close photography friends, and people who know of me from forums (which is one of the reasons I keep this blog anonymous).  But most people still don't know.  Old college roommates, extended family, coworkers, etc.  Let's put it this way, if I give our holiday address list a glance (as those are the people who would most likely also get birth announcements) . . . I'd say fewer than 10% of that list knows I'm pregnant.

And I don't want to tell them.  At least right now.  I don't know what I'm waiting for.  More time, maybe?  I think I'm waiting for this reassurance that everything is going to be okay . . . But will that ever come?  Losses after the first trimester are rare.  I know this.  But statistically speaking, I'm the woman who lost four consecutive pregnancies in a row with no known cause.  I don't get much comfort out of knowing that something is rare.

Four days later, I still cry thinking about our ultrasound Thursday afternoon.  I could not have asked for anything more perfect.  But for now, I'm still not ready to share that with the world.  It's just one more level of vulnerability I need to protect myself from a bit longer.  Maybe I'll be ready at 20 weeks.  Maybe.

12 Weeks! (With Pictures!)

I ended up having some time this morning before my midwife appointment, so I am going to get some pictures up after all.

Yesterday officially marked 12 weeks by my midwife's calculations, and according to that, the baby should be about the size of a plum.  However, as I mentioned in my post last night - baby is measuring a full 6 days ahead at just over 6.5 centimeters.  Crazy that in 3 weeks it's more than doubled in size!

I took a "bump" picture yesterday which is laughable.  Clearly after my jeans freak out, it's obvious that I don't have much of a bump at all yet.  I am feeling pretty fat through my mid section (up higher than where the baby is or where my jeans sit), so I'll be super happy when this bloat finally fades away.  I probably won't take one of these every week.  I'm not motivated enough to keep up with it.  But I'm glad I have a picture from pretty much the starting point.  It will be fun to see it change over the coming months.



And here is a shot of our little one from yesterday.  I'll tell you what - ultrasound imagery has gotten amazingly advanced on high definition screens.  Unfortunately they still have really crappy printers.  Anyway, for those of you who don't exactly know what you are looking at - it's a profile shot of baby facing up with his/her hand up to the mouth.



And with that I'm off to see my midwives.  Thankfully after our scan yesterday, I promise I will not freak out if they can not find the heart beart on the doppler!

Have a great weekend everyone!

For a day that started crappy, it ended rather great!

Today did not start of well. Between the irrational jeans freak out this morning, and the anxiety of waiting for my appointment, things went from bad to worse when we got there.  My appointment was at 2pm.  By 2:20pm I was impatient.  By 2:40pm I was annoyed.  When the nurse came to apologize sometime around 2:50pm to say she had screwed up and misplaced my file and I had been forgotten, I was pissed.  When she proceeded to inform me that it meant other scans had just started and it would be another 30 minutes before I would be seen I was effing LIVID.   In hindsight, it was a simple accident.   In real time, my anxiety level had gone from barely tolerable to I'm-going-to-rip-someone's-head-off.  I calmly explained that I understood, but I had to pick my son up at school by 4pm and not starting my appointment until 3:30pm was not an option.  She scurried off to try to figure out how to solve this problem she created and my husband, bless his heart, in his futile attempt to distract me started blathering about Tom and Katie gossip from People magazine.  I'm freaking out about whether the baby is still alive or not and he's talking to me like like I give a shit about a rich celebrity divorce.  And I FLIPPED out on him.  Which I shouldn't have done, but OMG I was about to lose my shit with anxiety and he was just making noise.  So we proceed to argue and I end up crying.  Awesome.  Thankfully I pulled myself together before the nurse came back to tell me that the actual doctor would start my scan and then the technician would come in to complete it.

That is where my day DRAMATICALLY improved.  There was a huge 42 inch flat screen on the wall transmitting the entire ultrasound in real time as it was performed.  The second the wand hit my abdomen, the baby was there - heartbeat just flickering away (at a wonderful 165bpm).  A baby.  Our baby.  It looked nothing like a blobby mass on an ultrasound screen . . . It looked like an amazing, perfect baby.  The brain, the heart, the arms and legs, the spine, the profile shot with the perfect little nose, and even fingers.  In three weeks it has gone from having arm and leg "buds" to having full limbs with visible fingers and toes.

Up until today I had made it through 4 ultrasounds relatively emotionless.  Today was more than I could hold in.  I cried like a baby.  The tech started crying.  My husband started crying.  I have spent so many days of the last 8 months of my life convinced that I would never again carry a baby any longer than a few weeks.  And here we are, almost 3 months in, watching this tiny thriving human inside me.

The tech took tons of measurements, and when we got down to the abdomen and legs she asked if we planned to find out the sex.  We said yes, and she said that at this point there are no certainties, but she showed us and there was absolutely nothing visible to be seen.  I mean nothing at all.  So we aren't going out to buy anything pink yet, nor or we getting attached to the idea of a little girl, but the tech said she was fairly certain.  Definitely a fun part of the scan I wasn't expecting.  We'll find out if she was right in 8 weeks.  

Speaking of measurements, baby is measuring a very healthy 12w6d.  Which based on what my midwives changed my due date to, is 6 full days ahead.  No big deal.  Ahead just means that either I'll deliver earlier than my due date or I'll deliver a big baby (been there done that).  Measuring ahead is infinitely preferable to measuring behind!  

I asked about my anterior placenta.  She said it's really to early to say for sure where the placenta will end up.  The uterus is rapidly expanding and as it does, the relative location of the placenta moves.  She said it currently looks more right lateral to her than anterior.  Interesting.  I hope it stays there.  I'll gladly take fetal movements ASAP!

And finally, at the very end after all of our measurements were taken we met up with the doctor who had started our scan.  She went over all the measurements with us, and told us that without the blood work results to factor in, our risk of any problems seem to be extremely low.  The blood work will be the final piece to the statistical equation and will come back in 5-7 days.  But I had to ask - could the blood work significantly change our chances for birth defects?  She said that while they are always a consideration, it would be very rare for the blood work to indicate a problem when the measurements look this strong.

And THERE you have it.  What a crazy day.  I'm going to bed asap.  I'm emotionally and physically exhausted.  And I'm growing a baby!  :)  I know I said I might post pictures this week.  That may have to wait until next week.  I'm beat.

P.S.  My friend who I blogged about yesterday got great news at her appointment today as well!  So for those of you who were thinking about her - THANK YOU!!!

Morning Freak Out

My kid is sleeping like crap lately - so when he woke up screaming today about an hour earlier than normal, I had to rush around to get myself ready.  I couldn't find any clothes I wanted so I grabbed a pair of non-maternity jeans sitting on the dresser that I haven't even attempted to put on in weeks.  (Not because I was a afraid they wouldn't fit, but because it's been 50 billion degrees here and who wants to wear jeans when it's that hot???)

But, I'm 12 weeks pregnant.  Surely I was going to have a hard time getting them on, or at least they would be snug around the middle, right?  Nope.  Not in the least.  WTF?  In my first pregnancy I would have jumped for joy about this.  I gained weight too quickly in the first trimester with my son (carbs were the only thing that helped my sickness).  I've been keeping an eye on my weight - and I'm only up about 3 pounds for the first trimester this time around.  And while I wouldn't expect 3 pounds would make my pants completely not fit, HELLO - isn't there supposed to be a baby the size of a plum in my ever-expanding uterus?  How can my pants fit and not even be snug in the middle???

So what did I do, in my exhausted emotional state?  Sat on my bed and cried.  Because in my traumatized brain, this is clearly a very bad sign.  :(

Tomorrow. Holy crap. Tomorrow.

Afternoon appointments stink. By the time we have our appointment, get the crazy toddler from school, and get dinner it will probably be late before I have any updates here. I would MUCH prefer a morning appointment, but my husband's job isn't as flexible in the morning so I will sit and obsessively stress for the entire morning tomorrow.

Tomorrow. For starters, I didn't think we'd get this far. 12 weeks. No bleeding. Lots of pregnancy symptoms. 4 good (GREAT) ultrasounds already behind us. We have so much to be thankful for. And yet we still have SO far to go. Another 12 weeks just to have the chance of viability. Another 25 weeks from now to full term. I don't know how to stop worrying that this could be taken away from me at any second. I had a very graphic dream about miscarrying last night. I wonder if those dreams will ever stop. I wonder if I will ever relax. I wonder if I will ever feel like this pregnancy is more likely to succeed than fail. Tomorrow is a big hurdle on this journey.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

P.S. If you have additional thought/prayers/vibes (whatever it is that you prefer to send), I have a dear friend who could use some of your well wishes tomorrow. After 1 healthy child, years of infertility, and multiple miscarriages, she and her husband gave up their dreams of a second child and got off the emotional trying to conceive roller-coaster. After selling all of her baby stuff and months of grieving this decision, she got a surprise positive pregnancy test several weeks ago. Her first ultrasound is tomorrow and I am almost as sick for her as I am for myself. I want this miracle for her so badly.

Less than 48 hours . . .

I am a nut case about Thursday.  An absolute nut case.  Not only will we find out if the baby is still alive, but this will also be the first of 2 scans to determine if our baby has any possible birth defects.  (The second one is the more typical anatomy scan performed at 20 weeks.)

I just want to close my eyes and sleep until my appointment.  Unfortunately sleep is still elusive and I'm not even sure how I'm going to get through tonight.  Two more nights.  Two more nights.  I can do this.  I have no other choice . . .

11 weeks

This update is a few days late, so I'll probably move my weekly updates to Thursday now to reflect what my current office says is my due date.

According to this whole baby/fruit size comparison thing, baby should be the size of a lime this week. I think someone has different size limes than what I'm used to because baby should be about 4cm now and that's a darn small lime. (And next week's fruit is a plum and in my neck of the woods plums are smaller than limes.) Whatever.

It has been a shit week. It's our first week without our nanny and my son's first week in daycare. It's a transition for all of us and it's going okay - but not great. The problems are mostly manifesting themselves in his sleep (or lack thereof) and coupled with my insomnia, it's pretty brutal. Oh, and I'm still sick no matter what time of the day it is. Blah blah blah, whine whine whine. I am thankful for every day of healthy pregnancy that I have. I am also thankful that the days keep passing and the end of first trimester is in sight.

Next week is a big week. Our NT scan is Thursday afternoon and my first standard midwife appointment is Friday morning. The other big thing that happens next week is the developmental end of the first trimester. Personally, I'm more of a math person and think of the trimesters as 40 weeks divided by 3 (13 weeks and a couple days), but developmentally speaking, all of the major first trimester development is done by the 12th week. You won't hear me letting out any sighs of relief next week, but I will gladly celebrate the passing of each milestone we cross.

Next week might be a picture week too. Probably one of our ultrasound. At 6 weeks the baby looked like an inchworm. At 7 weeks it looked like a pinto bean. At 9 weeks I thought about sharing the ultrasound picture, but it still didn't look anything even remotely human (even though the "blob" had sprouted arm and leg buds by 9 weeks). I remember from our NT scan with my son that he actually looked remarkably baby like - so if we are so fortunate to see the same thing next week, I might put up my first ultrasound picture.

And, as this is my personal journal, and we haven't shared our pregnancy publicly, I may start bump pictures next week as well. I don't have a bump yet (although I am sporting the thick and bloated look), but I've heard that you "pop" much earlier with second pregnancies and I want to document this experience, as I doubt seriously I will ever be pregnant again.

So that's all for now. Deep breaths.

I'm going to lose it . . .

I CAN'T EFFING SLEEP AND I AM GOING CRAZY.

I am so fucking tired I can hardly see straight. I have no patience. I am irrationally angry. My body hurts. I am mentally and physically exhausted. And I can't fucking sleep no matter what I do.

I can not function like this. I am reaching the limit of what is possible without a total meltdown.

Tired. Sick. Crazy.

Maybe not in that order. My insomnia continues to plague me at night and by 2pm every day I feel like I can't even hold my head up anymore. I'm pretty much sick around the clock. And I'm still freaking out that something will go (or already has gone) wrong.

So that's a longer way of saying that nothing has changed. 1 week and 3 days until our NT scan . . .