Week 8 is upon me. :)

Hello everyone.  It seems like it has been forever since I blogged!  Weird, huh?  So, I’m just getting into week 8 of my first pregnancy.  Last you read I was dying of nausea.  Fortunately, in the last couple of days that has eased off a fair bit and is much more manageable.  YAY!  On the downside, I’m enjoying plenty of “growing pains” in my lower abdomen.  Somebody’s making some room!  According to the week-by-week calender, between weeks 7 and the end of 8, your uterus grows from the size of your fist to the size of a grapefruit.  That’s a big jump.  I like being not-nauseous enough to express being happy, but poor Matt is discovering that the stretching and pulling of my busy organ has a propensity to make me a little irritable and impatient.  I think that’s what’s causing it (the irritability).  I hope so, anyway – then at least I have something to blame.  Officially, my ultrasound (7/18)  showed that my due date is March 4, 2008. YAY!My next ultrasound is scheduled for August 15th, I’ll be 11 weeks and 1 day.  I know they likely won’t be able to tell then, but Matt and I can’t wait to find out if it’s a boy or a girl – Matt’s already putting a fair bit of thought into names (even though it’s early) since I think he feels like that’s one thing he ”can” do while I’m busy being uncomfortable.  It’s pretty exciting.   This week, I got an adorable card in the mail from my dear friend Kate, who sent us a giftcard for baby-type stuff.  I didn’t know what to do with it yet, until tonight.  I was walking through Target and thought, “you know what would be great? a pregnancy journal!”  So, tonight I picked up a journal/organizer made up by the people who did “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”.   I’m sure most of the stuff I write in it will appear downright comical and silly later, so I figured, why not?!  Oh!  and today I had my first bizarre craving: Twix and cranberry juice.  Oh man, it was tart and wonderful.  I know it should be disgusting, but it was awesome.   Work too, is getting special.  And by special I mean, slightly uncomfortable.  I’m SO grateful that my coworkers are understanding.  I’ve been battling the “scrub pants don’t fit anymore” opponent.  Last night, I sacrificed one of my scrub pants to the maternity gods and did some chop chop and sew sew to add an elastic panel/waistband to my scrubs.  MUCH more comfy and I was much happier at work today for it.  Now not only do they fit around my waist and tummy, but I can leave the waistband up in the back and pull the waistband down under my tummy when I feel like I want some extra support.  <<Happy Amber face>> So that’s pretty much this week… Thanks for all your support guys!

First Ultrasound Excitement!

Hello everyone!  I have returned.

 

 I’m happy.  I saw my baby on a big screen today.  S/he was tiny (to the tune of just over 1cm from head to butt) but s/he appeared to be quite happy.  Little heart beating away…

Needless to say, I was all teared up the whole time and VERY happy that Matt was there with me.  The tech pointed stuff out to us and showed us how the baby is implanted in the perfect center of my uterus.  Man, it was cool.  A very moving experience for which I was thankful to have a few pictures. 

 When I talked to management at work, I told them I wanted to kind of keep it quiet until we officially knew it was a baby and not a “tumor” or something.  Well, today we had that information.  It’s officially a baby, not a tumor.    Now, of course, just about everyone knows as I shared my fuzzy and otherwise undecipherable pictures to my pals at work.  Wow.  That’s a lot more attention than I was really expecting.  I’m sorta glad that it’s spreading one person at a time though, as opposed to a giant note on the dry erase board in the breakroom.  Sorta gives me a chance to ease into this. 

I got the cutest call from my 10 year old niece last night (the night before the ultrasound, of course).  We weren’t home so she left this quiet little stammering sort of message on our machine: “Hi, Amber… I just wanted to … um… see how your baby’s doing… … …  in your tummy.   …  call me back.   Love you… bye.

Very cute, very entertaining.  She’s SO excited to have a cousin for the first time.  All the more reason to pray like crazy that this baby makes it. 

Matt is referring to it as the “little monkey in the tummy”.  He’s bonding, for sure.  The nurses always tell you to not tell too many people about your pregnancy until the about 12 weeks.  Well, I’m a spaz, and can’t keep it to myself (as evidenced by my blogging).  I’m just too excited… and way too physically ill to fight not telling the people I see every day.  Unfortunately, what that means is that some people find out before others.  So folks at work and friends online found out before one of our family members who wasn’t thrilled with not being told right away.  So, Matt spent a fair while on the phone yesterday ironing that all out.  Sorry!!  If you get not told, or told at a odd time, or place, or in a weird way, it’s not personal; I’m just sorta crazy right now.

Thanks for all your support, you guys.  Thanks. 

Love ya!

Fat and Fluffy

Okay, so I’ve actually known that I was pregnant for the last week or so.  And while I’ve had symptoms for MUCH longer (as chronicled in my last blog), I’m really starting to realize how much those symptoms will be a part of my life for a good while yet.  We’ll find out Wednesday exactly how far along I am (since I suck at figuring out what happened when – I never did well on the “chronology” portion of literature/history tests, facts yes, when no).  I’m looking forward to this ultrasound since I think it will just make all of this more real and help me to understand on a deeper level just who I’m barfing for. 

In the last two weeks however, I’ve experienced something I didn’t think should happen until at least the start of the second trimester: changing size about the tummy so much as to not be able to snap or zip any of my pants.  Trust me, I haven’t been binge eating or anything (in fact, in light of riding my bike to work on a regular basis, my legs look better than they have in years!).  No.  In fact, it’s just hormones making me bloat up like a whale.  Not much of a fan about it yet.  It’s like, “Congrats!  You’re gonna be a mom! Now you have 2 days until none of your clothes fit!”  Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to be a momma, and I’m sure there have been many a pregnancy more trying than mine, it just goes to show you, that you can’t count on anything with pregnancy to be “normal”.  So, this weekend, I entered into the scary world of maternity shops in search of a pair of pants.  It’s a good thing that the salespeople are used to crazy women who are visibly nauseous or are incapable of producing a sentence that makes any sense.  I’m not just talking about me (though I fit pretty easily into both those categories), but there were more hormones shuffling about that little, tiny store than should be legal.  Happily to say, however, I made it out with a pair of jeans that don’t pinch, pull, or in other ways cause me to suffer.  So now I can be nauseous and comfortable at the same time!  Yay!

So, on the busy agenda this week: 
Tuesday- eye appt and tour of the birth center
Wednesday – first ever visit with the “dildocam” ultrasound (as named by my dear friend Erin)

Thanks everyone for your support and encouragement this last week!  Love you all!  Special kudos to Kate and my sweet husband who’s doing his best despite my wildly fluctuating needs/impulses. 

What ride is supposedly “better” when you’re puking?

The answer to that question is: pregnancy

So, um, friends, family, whoever reads this, you might (or might not) have figured out from the previous line that I’m pregnant.  I figured I’d keep a blog of my progress just to fill folks in on the most excruciatingly terrifying and exciting time of my life thus far. 

Here’s where I’ll begin: “The Story of How I Found Out”

So, about a month ago, Matt and I were sittin’ around yakkin’ and got to thinking, when *would* be a good time to start thinking about having a baby?  We decided, after much discussion, that we’d take a serious look at quitting the ol’ birth control in December of this year.  (Can you smell the forshadowing??)

Fast forward a week or so: we notice our friends at Church asking us more and more frequently when we’re gonna get this ”poop-and-all-nighters” project underway.  I had just started a new round of birth control.  Then it happened, and I’d never heard of this as a symptom before: I started bloating up like a puffer fish (which you can imagine was a little frustrating since I had just kicked off a vigorous exercise routine in an effort to lose weight and be healthier come December).  Another week passes, I’m getting tired – just like, walking along just dandy, and then BAM! so tired I could collapse and my boobs couldn’t ache more if someone had been slapping me in the chest with a clipboard all day.  My tummy was getting more and more sensitive every day (smells making me nauseous, etc), and I stopped losing weight despite my 60 minutes of exercise and no more than 1200 calories a day.  Naturally, because I’m dumb, I assume my problem is because my cycle has been crazy for months and the birth control is just making my hormones a little nutty.  Yeah, I’m dumb.  So, on Monday of last week (July 9^th, 2007), I make a quick stop at the Dollar Tree (where a great friend tipped me off like forever ago is the BEST place to buy pregnancy tests), fully expecting that the test would be negative like every other time I’ve suspected something might just be up before.  I get them home, do my thing, and low and behold, the test strip shows up faster and brighter than the control strip.  So, like any terrified human being, I grab the second test and pee again.  No surprise here: the result is identical to the first.  I’m pregnant. 

Terrified, I call my best friend, Kate – who squeals with joy and promptly asked how I’d tell Matt (who was at work at the time).  I had no idea.  I ended up just leaving the completed tests on the counter, strategically placed just above the print on the box that says how to read the test.  Matt comes trotting on in, and told him that I have news and that he needs to go look on the counter next to the toilet.  Speechless, he comes out of the bathroom, gives me a big hug, pauses, looks at my tummy, taps it with his finger and says, “well, you’re welcome here – we don’t have much to give you just yet, but you’re welcome here.”