23 Weeks ?!?!?!

Where has the time gone?  How can I be 23 weeks already???  Somewhere between this week and 25 weeks, the baby's chance of viability should he be born prematurely will go from about 10% to over 50%.  Now, let's be clear, babies born this early have serious and long term disabilities if they are lucky enough to survive.  So I'm hoping baby boy is safe and sound inside for another 14-17 weeks, but just the fact that we are approaching the gestational age of viability is amazing.  And um, holy crap - the idea that I will be full term in 14 weeks is pretty terrifying.  The time is going by remarkably fast.

However, as an always present reminder of how much further we still have to go in this CRAZY journey, my body is keeping things interesting.  I have caught the terrible cold that my son had last week, and I have coughing fits that literally feel as though they are going to split my pelvis apart.  And we (my doctors and I) believe that is what resulted in some bright red bleeding yesterday.  It was minimal and short lived.  There was no associated cramping.  And baby boy is doing an amazing job of kicking me fairly consistently around the clock - so I didn't need to go in.  But let me tell you, there is no greater reminder of how quickly this could all still fall apart than seeing bright red blood when you go to the bathroom - no matter how small the quantity.

In growth news, he should be 11.4 inches long and 1.1 lbs - about the size of an eggplant.  For a child that's only grown about an inch in the last 2 weeks, his mama surely has exploded.  Not so much weight wise, I just feel HUGE.  I mean seriously like a bus.  I can't get comfortable at night any more and I feel like I look 7 months pregnant already.  I guess that's what they mean when they say someone has "popped."  I just wish it didn't feel like I was literally going to pop open yet.  These last 3-4 months are surely going to be interesting.

No bump picture again this week.  With the terrible cold that I have caught, I can barely muster the energy to get through the day.  Hopefully next week.  (You will not believe how much bigger I've gotten!)

22 weeks

(Note - I actually drafted and tried to publish this update while out of town.  It looks like it didn't publish, so I've backdated it for when I meant for it to show up.)

I totally dropped the ball on updates this week. Sick kid + out of town travel = exhaustion and blog updates being the furthest thing from my mind.

I assume things are still going well. Baby boy has crazy spurts of movement which are fun. And my severe crotch pain has returned with a vengeance - which I'm hoping is a function of plane travel and less than optimal sleeping arrangements. (In other words - I'm really hopeful that once we return home this will subside some.)

Nothing much else is coming to mind to say right now, other than I'm really looking forward to getting back to my own bed and getting back into a normal routine this week. I forgot how exhausting pregnancy can be - even during the "easiest" parts of it.

Nursery Update

So my $100 clearance bedding for the guest bed arrived. Sigh. It's definitely not the $500 bedding I wanted. And if it hadn't been on hug clearance, I'd probably send it back. But it's fine. Nice quality for the price even if it isn't perfect.

Unfortunately though, I'm not excited enough about it to start plowing through all the junk in there.

Hormones

Pregnancy hormones are so weird. I had an hour to get a pedicure today. I walked into the place and there was a 40 minute wait, and I couldn't wait that long. Not a big deal at all, right? Yet I got in my car and cried. CRAZINESS.

21 Weeks!

I missed my weekly update yesterday - baby is now the size of a banana.  And 21 weeks marks a somewhat interesting milestone - it's when you stop talking about the baby's length in terms of crown-to-rump and start talking about crown-to-heel.  Are you ready for this?  10 1/2 inches long.  I don't know what's more scary . . . the fact that 10 1/2 inches already sounds long . . . or that this boy is going to DOUBLE that length before he makes his debut.

Not much to report this week.  Pregnancy wise, I'm still feeling good.  Little boy is CRAZY active.  He is still nameless.  My husband and I have started tossing some names out there and agree on nothing, so he will likely remain nameless for quite a bit longer.  I have still done absolutely nothing to work on getting our guest room cleaned out.  And I have 3 weeks of work left as of today.

I was hoping to have a bit more energy and motivation by this point in pregnancy, but if being tired and lazy is my only complaint right now, then we are in GREAT shape.

You know what's awesome?  That everything in life is so boring and so normal at the moment that I really don't have much else to say here.  :)

First Nursery Purchase - Check

I purchased bedding for the guest bed in our nursery.  I could not bring myself to splurge on the bedding I really wanted.  I found something that appears to be the right color and worked out to being 1/5th of the price.  It had free shipping and can also be returned with free shipping, so I'm not taking a huge risk here.

My hope is that it will come, I will love it - and it will motivate me to start cleaning up that room.  Motivation is a weird thing.  The child practicing his kick boxing moves inside can't get me motivated, but maybe a queen size quilt will?  That makes no sense at all, but one can hope, right?

A great appointment today!

Let me just keep up with the good news - I've got wind in my sails and I'm going to go with it as long as it lasts.  Baby boy did not play hide-and-seek with the doppler this morning - my midwife found his heartbeat right away . . . nice and strong.  Of course, I was not worried at all today because he's doing a fine job of letting me know that he's in there.

Blood pressure was good.  A bit higher than normal for me - but I was stuck in traffic, late, and flustered by the time I got there - and it was still a very normal blood pressure.  Weight was just okay.  Nothing to be concerned about - especially considering the rough first trimester I had, but in a perfect world, I won't gain this much weight every 4 weeks.  Trust me when I say that if weight gain is the only thing I have to worry about for the rest of this pregnancy I will be one happy (and unfortunately fatter) woman.

I got my flu shot and Tdap booster.  With a toddler who seems to be a petri dish for illness, and a baby who will be born in both the peak of flu and pertussis season (and will be way too young to be immunized), I'm trying to do my part to provide immunity through breast milk.

We talked about my glucose test from my 17 week appointment.  While not nearly as low as the results from my first pregnancy (54), my test results were 80.  80 is a great fasting blood sugar, but pretty low for a result 60 minutes after consuming straight glucose.  So it looks like I'll likely be battling with hypoglycemia again.  (Not a huge surprise as I am still feeling pretty crappy after I eat.)  I may purchase a glucose meter to keep an eye on it at home.  The combination of the results from my pregnancy with my son and my results from 17 weeks get me an exclusion from the standard 28 week 2 hour fasting glucose test that my midwives perform.  I still have to take a glucose test, but since it seems unlikely that I will have GD, I get to take a modified test (not fasting, and I get to provide my own sugar in the form of fruit/juice) and only if those results come back problematic would I have to take a more official fasting test.  This is music to my ears - because I seriously fear passing out whenever people talk to me about pregnancy, fasting, and sugar water.

I think that's about it.  Great news all around - even with the weight jump and the hypoglycemia news.

Send some motivation my way, please.

Well it's almost official.  Barring no major changes at my office, I will be a stay-at-home mom starting on October 5th.  My company is being awesome and encouraging about me trying to find a new job within the company.  But being completely honest, by the time October rolls around, I'll be 6 months pregnant and the holidays will be just around the corner.  Does anyone want to hire someone who is 6 months pregnant and will be out for at least 3 months right after the holidays are over?  And even better question, do I want to start a job at 6 months pregnant right before the holidays and then feel rushed to take the minimum amount of maternity leave?  But I'm being open minded.  If the right opportunity with my current company came up, I would take it.  (I'm just skeptical about that happening . . . )

Anyway, that changes my "getting ready for baby" timeline significantly.  Because it means that if we leave my son in school for the whole month of October (which we are considering doing), that I could have 3 glorious and wonderful weeks to myself to get some things done around the house that are just going to be impossible to do when I have an almost 3 year old under foot constantly.  My plan to clean out the guest room by the end of 2nd trimester and fix the nursery in the 3rd trimester was assuming that we'd mostly be working on nursery stuff in the evenings and on weekends . . . BUT if I have 3 wonderful weeks to myself in October, I need to accelerate that plan significantly.  

So why, OH WHY, can't I find the motivation to take some of my free time and get my butt into that guest room and start cleaning it out?  I found out about my job on Friday and you know what I did this weekend other than get a haircut?  I sat around and did nothing.  I didn't even walk into the guest room once.  Nor do I want to.  I walk past it . . . see the 2 large dressers full of clothes that need to be re-homed.  Not to mention the closet that is busting with clothes, shoes, and bags.  I just don't want to deal with any of it.  I want to close my eyes one night and wake up in the morning to a room that's been purged for me.  It's so overwhelming that I don't even want to start.  So I don't.  I keep making excuses about having plenty of time.  I DO, in fact, have plenty of time.  But it would be so much smarter to work now and rest later.

Why is the motivation for this task so elusive?  Just writing about it makes me need a nap.

Ouch

Fact: If you or someone you know has suffered through any form of infertility, then you know how many people are completely uneducated and unaware on this topic.

Unfortunately, uneducated and unaware often translates into insensitive.

As I'm enjoying my Saturday getting my hair cut, my stylist and I start talking about pregnancy. She has no idea that I've struggled with trying to conceive our second child.

She asked me if I am a conservative pregnant person when it comes to what I will and won't do in pregnancy. I said I'm probably somewhere in the middle once first trimester is over. I'll have some caffeine and some Tylenol if I need it. If I was at a wedding I'd have a sip or two of champagne, but I'm definitely not that pregnant person who will have a glass of wine on a Tuesday night just because I want one.

I don't know how the conversation turned into how easy pregnancy is for some people and how fragile it is for others. And the words that came out of her mouth were almost paralyzing.

"I know people who have had, like, 3 or 4 miscarriages. Don't they get it? Their bodies are trying to tell them that they can't have a baby."

And with absolutely nothing else to say, "Well I guess it's probably one of those things you don't understand unless you've been through it," made its way out of my mouth.

I was stuck on her words. I could not move past them. Not nearly as painful as they would have been six months ago - what if this conversation had been 6 months ago? Or what if the woman in the chair next to us is struggling with infertility? Why must people who know nothing about this issue share their opinions when they know nothing about someone else's personal journey?

At least I got a good hair cut.

The 20 Week Baby Bump

I did take this picture yesterday, but thought 3 posts in one day was quite enough.  Now that the expansion has started, I predict it will be exponential.  :)

Hypnobabies

Wow, three posts already today . . . My HypnoBabies home study course just arrived.  Yes, I admit it.  I'm a bit obsessed with natural birthing.

Despite a valiant attempt, I did not have a natural birth with my son.  That failed for a variety of reasons, primarily 1) a doctor who was not encouraging of a natural experience and 2) serious dehydration (I apparently puke a lot from labor pain) that caused my contractions to stop after my water had been broken for over 24 hours.  Overall, it wasn't a bad birth experience.  With massive amounts of pitocin and an epidural I was able to have an almost 10 pound baby vaginally with less than 30 minutes of pushing.  And he arrived into the world safely - which is all anyone can ever really ask for.  But . . .

Here I am, yet again, hoping to get to attempt a completely natural birth experience.  I'm a bit skeptical of self-guided hypnosis to manage labor.  But I have heard wonderful things about the HypnoBabies program.  (Not to be confused with HypnoBirthing - similar principles but fairly different programs.)  We'll see how it goes . . .

Nursery / Guest Room Pictures

SLOW day at work today.  (Long story short, my job might be ending next Friday, or it might not be.  I work on a contract that is expiring and we are waiting to hear about whether or not it will be extended.  And even if it is extended, my role will probably be changing from full to part time.  Nothing like employment, health insurance, AND finances all being up in the air with less than a week and a half to go . . . )  Anyway, as things wind down the amount of work to be done on my end is dwindling.

So keep in mind as I ramble on and on about nursery options, that money may be tight.  There are not many splurge items at all in the room, but the ones I do have may have to go (or be "financed" with gift money for my birthday and Christmas).

Here is a 3D layout of the room.  Keeping our queen size bed is going to make it tight.  While I would love a more open and less cramped room, I can't bring myself to completely eliminate our only guest place to sleep.



That is a bookcase under the window, so even though the far corner of it will be blocked by the dresser, it shouldn't be a problem to slide stuff into that area.  (I think it might look better to have the dresser and bookcase swapped, but then you can't open dresser drawers, so this is what we have.)

As you can see, there is LOTS of open wall space to be decorated.  And I have thousands upon thousands of pictures I have taken that I would love to use to make the space more personal.  (Not to mention, save money by providing my own art.)  I found a color scheme / inspiration nursery on the website projectnursery.com and started sifting through my pictures.

The color scheme is a very soft gender neutral palette with a beachy feel.  Unfortunately my husband does not love the beach and he and I don't have any beach pictures that are meaningful to us.  I really wanted to be able to incorporate one of our Alaska pictures, since we have very few of them up in our home, and it's the most meaningful and memorable place we've been together.  (We got married there.)  But almost all of the landscape pictures seemed too harsh for the softer look I wanted in the room.  Hard landscapes (mountains, barren fields, etc) or really really bold colors.  Then I stumbled across one that was perfect.  We did actually go to a beach in Alaska!  And of all the placed we went in the state, the beach happened to be in the tiny town where we got married.  (Honestly, if I hadn't taken a picture, I probably would have even forgotten the town had a little beach.)  Is it the best picture I've ever taken? Far from it.  But it will work beautifully for the colors I wanted in the room, and it's the closest we will likely ever get to a beach picture that means something to either of us.



This will be printed on a large canvas to hang over the dresser.

And then I just started pulling ideas together from there.  I have an "inspiration board" of products that right now I would love to see in the room, and am having a hard time figuring out where to start.  I think I need to start with the queen size bedding.  Finding bedding in the right colors and for less than a small fortune is going to be tricky.  If I get the right bedding, matching the other smaller accessories to that bedding should be easier.  Furniture will be all white.

Quick run down of what's below:

- Main wall color will be a taupe-ish gray.  Light yellow and light aqua will be the accent colors and may or may not be incorporated with stripes on one or more walls.

 - Bookcase in the top right corner will the the one under the window and will be half that size (2 cubes tall by 4 cubes wide) and will have some open storage and some storage in the yellow bins shown below it.

- Queen bedding in the lower right corner.  Oh my goodness, I love this bedding.  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it.  But it's a big splurge.  Particularly if I want both the yellow and aqua.  And it's very hard to tell true colors on the internet.  I've googled around and in some pictures the colors look significantly more pale than they do in the image below.  It's also very hard to tell if that's more yellow or more tan.  Purchasing both sets me back by more than a couple hundred dollars, so I'm keeping my eyes open for more budget friendly options.

- Chevron curtains on the top row . . . Most likely not what we will end up with.  I think we are going to do chevron curtains in our master bedroom and being right across the hall from the nursery, I don't want chevron overload.  The reviews for these curtains are also fairly mixed for the price, and I'm a sewer, so we will likely end up with something custom instead.



The other thing that is bothering me right now is the seemingly disproportionate amount of blue I have relative to yellow.  Impossible to know how it will really look and will likely depend on what ends up being the primary color on the queen size bed.

Thought process right now . . . Buy the yellow bedding and see what it looks like.  If I hate it, then I can rule out this bedding and start looking for something else.  If I love it, then I can either splurge and get the matching aqua set, or save and just do some aqua throw pillows and maybe a matching throw blanket.

Sigh.  If only I didn't have a room full of CRAP to sift through before I could really start this.  And if I only I knew whether or not I was going to have a salary at the end of the month . . .

20 Weeks and So Thankful!

20 weeks.  HOLY CRAP!  We made it to half way.  WE MADE IT TO HALF WAY!!!!  Our little man is supposed to be the size of a cantaloupe right now and is only 4 weeks away from what is considered the gestational age of viability.  

How can I possibly explain how much relief I have had in this past week?  Everything finally feels good.  Physically and emotionally.

Physically:

- The pounds are climbing up.  I knew they would.  My metabolism sucks in pregnancy.  (Not that it was anything grand pre-pregnancy . . . )  Here's how my weight gain works when I'm pregnant:  Spend most of my days eating moderately healthy.  Avoiding excess sweets, trying to eat fairly balanced meals without overeating.  Choose snacks that at least have some nutritional value, etc.  And my weight doesn't budge an ounce for days at a time.  But I am a pregnant woman, and I'd say about once a week I just have to have something indulgent.  Depends on the week, but what I indulge in varies wildly . . . a cupcake, or fast food, or Chipotle, or a huge bowl of pasta, etc.  Or even worse, a whole 3 day holiday weekend of excuses to go out to eat, order take out, and indulge in other forms of social eating.  And when I do any of these things, my weight jumps up A LOT (totally disproportionate to whatever it was that I ate).  It would also do that pre-pregnancy . . .  Just water weight that would disappear a couple of days later, right?  NOPE.  Not when I'm pregnant.  It's a little bit frustrating to feel like I can't eat like a normal pregnant person (or even just a normal person for that matter) without feeling like my next doctor's appointment is going to turn into a reprimand for how much weight I've gained.  It's also a bit frustrating knowing that I started pregnancy on the overweight side, so my gain over this 40 week period should be fairly conservative.  I don't want to be even more overweight at the end than I was at the beginning, so I'm trying to be careful.  But as much as I struggle with weight, I'll be honest . . . this "problem" feels more normal to me than where I was several weeks ago which was barely up at all.

- Speaking of things climbing up . . . Hello baby bump.  If I can find my black tank top, I may try to take a picture today.  My little boy has finally decided to start the journey up from behind my pubic bone, and it's becoming more and more obvious every day that I'm pregnant and not just fat.  LOL.  Most strangers still wouldn't dare ask me if I was pregnant, because it's not THAT obvious - but to people who saw me a couple weeks ago, it's obviously a change.

- And with things moving up into my middle abdomen, the lower cervix and pelvic pain that was almost crippling a few weeks ago is G.O.N.E.!!!!!!!!!!!!  I am almost as happy about this as I was to say goodbye to my sickness a few weeks ago.  There are not words for how worried I was that I was going to spend my entire pregnancy in pain to just walk around the house.  I could not imagine dealing with that pain every day . . . and thankfully, my doctors (and Doctor Google) were right - it was just a growing baby and uterus that hadn't "popped" yet and were keeping the pressure on everything below them.  Time to give my pelvis a break and enjoy a few weeks before my intestines and lungs are the ones getting the constant pressure.  

- He is a mover and a shaker.  I knew, in my mind, if I could get to the point of feeling regular movement that this would be a lot easier on my anxiety.  And little man has not disappointed.  I know that regular movement is not expected this early - in fact it's not expected for another 8 weeks really.  So he could have his slower days coming up.  But for now, even with this anterior placenta, I can almost always elicit some movement from him within 15-20 minutes whenever I need some reassurance that he's okay.  And when he's in the right position and having a burst of activity, it's actually pretty crazy how much I'm feeling at this point.  I did feel my son starting at around 18 weeks, but I don't remember feeling this many movements at 20 weeks.  (Of course, they do say that with subsequent pregnancies you are just more aware, so maybe that's what it is.)  As he was practicing some sort of ninja moves right as I was trying to fall asleep last night, it was hard for me to fight back the tears.  THIS is what pregnancy is supposed to be like.  It's AMAZING, and PERFECT.  (To the point that I actually had a fleeting thought of maybe, just maybe, considering a 3rd child.  Don't worry though, my sanity is back this morning.)

Emotionally:

- I'm not constantly freaking out about what's going to go wrong.  The ultrasound last week helped tremendously.  The pain that has subsided in my lower pelvis helps tremendously.  And little man's movements are truly the most amazing thing I could have asked for this early.  (Based on the location of my placenta I was really expecting to be anxiously waiting for movement for several more weeks.)

- I'm ready to start doing stuff to prepare for his arrival.  Not that there is a HUGE hurry, but we currently have a guest room FULL of stuff, and we were previously going to turn it into a full blown nursery.  But with both of our families out of town, and neither in a real position to pay for hotels if they want to come visit us, we have decided the room will double as a nursery and a guest room.  We still need to do a ton of cleaning / sorting / purging of the items in there to make room for a crib and for all the baby items that will need to be stored.  That will have to happen before we can really start thinking about bringing stuff from our son out of storage - all of which will need to be sorted / cleaned / etc.  I think my goal right now is to have the room cleaned out by the end of 2nd trimester.  That gives me 7 weeks.  And then spend the last 13 weeks digging baby stuff out of storage and turning the room into a functional nursery/guest room.  

- Is it weird that as good as I'm feeling, I don't want to think about names for this little boy yet?  I can't explain it.  Maybe it's just because I don't have any boy names I really love.  Or maybe it's because I know my husband and I won't agree and I don't feel like negotiating this decision right now.  I don't know.  We still have 20 weeks to think about it.  No hurry.  (Except my husband wants to do it - like NOW.)

- See the first point under my emotional well-being right now . . . I am not constantly freaking out, I swear.  But I am definitely still a little concerned about whether or not those elevated AFP levels could indicate a complicated 3rd trimester problem.  I am so very very thankful to have been referred to MFM and to have another ultrasound in 6 weeks.  That helps keep me a lot more sane about what could possibly happen.

And I think that's it for now.  Hopefully we will have many many more weeks like this . . . Where the joy outweighs the worry and my biggest concern is whether or not to eat those french fries I so desperately want. 

It's official!

No going back now.  My picture frames arrived, my son cooperated, and I got a ridiculously cute series of pictures of him announcing his baby brother's arrival.  We put the word up on our family blog and on Facebook this morning.  I felt a brief moment of "Oh shit, I can't believe I'm posting this," but it was short lived.  And now we have what we hope is a very normal, calm, and uneventful 20 weeks left to enjoy it.