Nesting already?

First, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! We sure did. We got a lot of things for the new baby, which is very exciting. And I got a Snoogle body pillow! I'm very excited about it.

Since I've been back in town after the holidays, I've been running around like a crazy person getting ready for baby. I've taken this entire week off (it's pretty slow at work, and I needed some downtime), and I've already spent the first two days getting ready for baby. I've been all over town several times looking for all sorts of things (storage, curtains, etc.), and I've even been to the nearby Big Town every day this week. That town is about 25 minutes away and has many more stores than Pleasantville. Some people live in Big Town and make that commute to Pleasantville every day, but, prior to this week, I only averaged one trip a month out there or so. I've been there three times since Christmas.

The good news is that things are starting to get crossed off the list. SLOWLY. I bought curtains and curtain rods over the last few days. And storage bins for all over the house (I've suddenly decided that we aren't going to have enough room for all of the baby things).

Just before Christmas, we also decided on a fabric for the window valence and crib skirt. This decision was the biggest decorating one we've made, because all of the accessories and things are going to be based on this color scheme. We decided on this fabric:



Lots of fun colors in that fabric, so I got green curtains, red storage bins, and we'll be getting yellow sheets. We aren't allowed to paint the walls because we're renting, but we'll have lots of color in other aspects of the room.

I'm definitely a little freaked out by all of the things that we still need to buy and do, but we're getting there. In real life, I'm a big list-maker. Mix that with the nesting hormones from pregnancy, and you have a recipe for disaster.

The new normal

I've made many comments on this blog about how the movements of the baby feel strange. All of the little pokes and kicks definitely have taken awhile to get used to, but it's happened. Now, it's become just a normal thing to me to feel strange little movements in my belly.

A lot of women talk about how the LOVE the baby movements. They use words like "magical" and "amazing." I'm still not there yet. If I think about it, the movements could still best be described as "weird." It's just that, now, I don't think about them very much.

The movements have changed some, too. I still get flutters and kicks, but I'm also getting rolling and pressure. It's almost as if the baby wants to stick his head out through my belly button. He's still sitting pretty low (perhaps because of my low-lying placenta), so I rarely get many movements above my belly button. I'm grateful for that, though. I have a short torso, so I suspect I'll be getting plenty of kicks in the ribs later on. I'm glad that this kid is delaying the inevitable a bit.

Kick counts

For many years (way before we ever considered having a baby), I've been reading all sorts of articles related to pregnancy and babies. Now, I have several books on the subject that I've been reading to learn more about what's going on and what I should expect.

One of the books that I've been reading recently had a section on kick counts. I'd heard of these before, but it wasn't until I read this book that I learned how they were actually done. Essentially, kick counts are a way to try to understand if your baby is in distress. In the 3rd trimester (usually around 28 weeks or something like that), you start performing these kick counts. What you do is time how long it takes for your baby to make 10 separate movements.

In the example in the book I read, there were several examples of a hypothetical woman's kick counts. The examples ranged something like 30-60 minutes for a complete kick count (that is, it took that amount of time for the woman to notice 10 movements from her baby).

A couple of nights ago, I decided to try to do a kick count. I don't need to do it yet (many people aren't feeling movement at this point at all, and, if they are, it's often inconsistent). While lying in bed before I went to sleep, I counted 10 separate movements.

I didn't actually use a stopwatch or anything, but it took less than 5 minutes for me to feel 10 movements. At most. It was probably more like 2 minutes. It was unbelievable. Given how early I am, that's pretty crazy.

We're in trouble - this is going to be an active kid. I'm looking forward to it. :-)

Expectant mother parking

Earlier this week, I traveled to Minneapolis on business, and I traveled with a colleague. Before our return flight, we had quite a bit of time to kill, so we went to the Mall of America. It's right near the airport, and it gave us something fun to do rather than hanging out at the airport all evening.

As you'd imagine, the parking lot was quite full, but then my colleague pointed out that we should look for expectant mother's parking. In case you aren't familiar with these spots, it's become a recent trend for stores to designate a few spots near the front for expectant mothers and mothers with young children.

My colleague was right. There were several open spots available right at the front of the lot. My colleague was absolutely thrilled - I think I made her week.

That may have been one of the cooler side benefits of being pregnant. Close parking.

Christmas cards and baby names

Before we ever got pregnant, we used to talk a bit about baby names. It was through these discussions that we decided on a name for a son. It just feels right, and we decided on it ages ago.

Some people like to keep their baby names a secret until the baby is born, but we're not for several reason: 1) We're settled on it, so we aren't asking for opinions. We're just informing. 2) If something went wrong at this point (and I'm not naive enough to think that's impossible), this kid would have a name. At some point, the loss of a baby represents the loss of a viable or semi-viable being. We've reached that point, I think. 3) We don't really care what anyone else thinks about the name. Neither of us is the type to really care if people have a negative opinion.

I actually just sent out our Christmas cards few days ago, and my husband and I spent quite a bit of time discussing how we would sign the cards. We decided against using the baby's actual name, mostly because we felt it would make other people uncomfortable. Instead, we signed the cards "Merry Christmas from our growing family! Love, (Our names), and Baby Boy X (estimated arrival 4-30-2011)." We decided that was a good way to acknowledge the situation without weirding everyone else out.

Or, maybe we're the weird ones for even acknowledging the baby on the card. Who knows...

It's a boy!!

We had our anatomy scan today, and, as you can tell by the title, we're having a boy! We were right, and we couldn't be happier.

If you had asked me yesterday how I would feel knowing that we're having a boy, I would have thought that I would have been a bit nervous about it. I only have a sister and have never really had a lot of experience with little boys. Plus, my husband was a bit of a naughty kid. Still is naughty - now he's just a grownup. Now, though, I couldn't imagine it any other way. I'm absolutely over the moon about having a little boy.

Here are a couple of pictures of our son (SON!!! I'm going to have a son!!! Crazy):

Here's a profile shot. Notice him with his fingers in his mouth. We may have a thumb-sucker...


Here's one of the 4D pictures. Kind of alien-like, no?


Here's a foot. You don't even have to wait until the baby is born anymore to make sure it has 10 fingers and 10 toes.


And, here's an arm, complete with the elbow he's apparently been using to poke me with (you could see him jabbing me with it during the scan):


I'm not going to post any photo evidence that we're having a boy, but you'll have to trust me that it's true.

The ultrasound tech commented that most babies don't move their limbs as much as our kid was this early. OBVIOUSLY, our kid is already way more advanced than most. :-) I kid. It was pretty funny, though, and it supports my theory that, if this kid is as active outside as he has been inside, we're in for an adventure.

As for the rest of the appointment, everything looks great with the baby. Spine, heart, kidneys, brain, amniotic fluid...everything's great. We actually elected NOT to have any of the birth defect screenings (the blood tests), which I think was surprising to us both. Before I got pregnant, I think we both would have thought that we'd want the testing. Now that we're here, though, we aren't interested in the tests. Since we aren't high risk, and since most of the tests aren't diagnostic, we just decided to skip them.

My placenta is a bit low-lying, but not of any concern right now. They're going to check it again in a couple of months, but it should continue to move out of the way as I continue to grow.

Wahoo! Everything's going well!

Feeling the baby?

For the past few days, I've been feeling little flutters. At first, I thought I was completely insane - it's still early to feel baby movement. "They" say you can usually start feeling movement at about 16-22 weeks. I'm 15 weeks and 2 days pregnant today, and I think I've been feeling little flickers for at least a couple of days. I dismissed it at first as something else. Just a random muscle spasm or something. But it's been happening to regularly now to be anything other than baby movement.

I did a bit of research, and it seems that second-time moms can start feeling movement at 14 or 15 weeks. The difference usually comes because second-time moms just know what they're looking for. Once I read that, I started to feel better - maybe I'm NOT crazy.

In other news: My work clothes aren't going to fit much longer. This is as much a function of the type of work clothes I have than anything else. I wear a lot of fitted button-down shirts, so I don't have much room to grow in my clothes. All of my clothes are the same size, and most of them are pretty fitted. I have very limited options for transition clothes. Plus, my rib cage is actually getting bigger, so my button-downs don't fit anywhere: They're too small in the bust, around the waist, AND in the belly. I may need to start wearing maternity clothes soon. I've been wearing a belly band for a week or so, and I may just make the switch soon. I bought a TON of clothes this past weekend, so I have enough stuff to at least start making the switch.

I'm a couple of days late in the belly picture, but here's the picture from today: 15 weeks and 2 days pregnant. Crazy.



I think you can actually see a bump now. My administrative assistant said today that she thinks someone who didn't know I was pregnant would be able to tell. Maybe. I think you can tell that I'm CHANGING, but I'm not sure if you could tell I'm pregnant if you just met me for the first time. It's going to be pretty apparent soon, though.

What I thought this would be like

Before I got pregnant, I had ideas about what the pregnancy would be like. Some of my ideas have been relatively true (I haven't gained a ton of weight, my symptoms haven't been too bad), but others have been way off base. The biggest area where I've been wrong has been my excitement level about the pregnancy.

Don't get me wrong: I am excited to be pregnant and to have a baby. But, at the same time, I'm still just trying to live my life. Work is busy, and I'm busy with other areas of my life. In a lot of ways, it's as if life is just progressing as normal.

I thought I'd be taking weekly (or at least frequent) belly pictures. I haven't taken a single one yet. I thought it would be hard for me to keep the pregnancy a secret, but it hasn't been. While we've told several of our friends face-to-face, I still haven't sent out a mass e-mail to all of my friends back home, cousins, etc. to let them know about the pregnancy. I'm not really sure what I'm waiting for. The baby is clearly getting bigger (I can feel my uterus growing when I push on my belly), but I'm still delaying. I have another appointment next week, so maybe I'll be more interested in telling after that.

I think, in some ways, I kind of like it being a secret. It's like a little secret between me and my husband, and, in some ways, it makes me a little sad to let it out. We're only planning to have 2 or 3 kids, so I know that there are only going to be a few times in my life where I'm pregnant and no one knows it but us. It's actually kind of a cool feeling. And, while I'm thrilled to be able to start telling people, there are definitely some mixed emotions.

I have a feeling that the next 18 years (and probably the rest of my life) are going to be filled with all kinds of mixed emotions. I'd better start getting used to it.

Telling the parents

Sorry I've been a bit MIA lately. I've been absolutely swamped with work. Good swamped, mostly, but I wish the timing would have been a little different. I still generally feel okay, but I'm still occasionally nauseated and often tired by the end of the day. I've been staying late at work lately to try to work on some big projects, which is quite a bit harder while pregnant. I'm nearly done with the 1st trimester, though, so I hope things will be getting easier soon.

In baby-related news, this past weekend, we told my parents about the baby. The weekend before, I told my sister. It's starting to feel a bit more real now, although I still don't really think it has sunk in yet. Everyone's excited for it, and I think they're still in shock, too. This upcoming weekend, we're going to a wedding. I'll be 11 weeks at that point, and I'm thinking that might be a good time to start telling people. I don't want to detract from the wedding, but, if people ask why I'm not drinking, maybe we'll just tell them about the baby. We'll see, I guess.

Other than that, things are going well. My symptoms have actually been a little worse the last few days than they had for the previous couple of weeks, but I've generally still been really lucky. I've mostly felt fine. Not "good," but "fine." It really hasn't been that bad. I haven't really been a big fan of vegetables lately (they sound a bit repulsive), so I've been eating a lot of fruit to try to get vitamins that way.

We just bought a baby name book, too. We're pretty settled on our boy name, but we haven't really agreed on any girl names. I'm hoping the book will help, but I"m a little worried that it won't. It's not that we disagree about names - there just aren't that many girl names that we like. We have plenty of time to decide, though.

At some point, I'll probably go back over this blog and hide a few of the posts from before we were pregnant. I'd like to keep those posts for my own knowledge, but i also want to be able to share this blog with family and friends once we tell them about the baby. Stay tuned...

First appointment

We had our first appointment today. I know that I'm 8 weeks and 3 days pregnant, but, the OB thought I should be something like 11+ weeks pregnant. Luckily for me, that meant that the OB scheduled a dating ultrasound. Even luckier, we were able to get in to see the ultrasound tech today, too.

She found the baby right away (I still can't believe there's actually a baby in there), and she saw a heartbeat. I'd been a little worried about a miscarriage (as all pregnant women are), so I was very glad to see it. The heartbeat was 170 beats per minute. There's an old wives' tale that heartbeats over 140 beats per minute are indicative of girls, but we'll see if that's true. We'll get another ultrasound at about 20 weeks, and we'll find out the gender then - probably right before Christmas.

Everything else looks good. It was my husband's first time being at an OB / GYN-type appointment (obviously), and he was pretty horrified and uncomfortable by parts of the exam. He got over it, though, and he was so so so excited to see the baby on the ultrasound. He and I talked afterwards about the fact that we'd just started coming to terms with the fact that we're having a baby, and now it seems so unreal again.

I also found out today that the practice has midwives, which makes me really excited. I've wanted to deliver with a midwife for quite awhile, and this is exactly the type of delivery environment I want. The delivery will be at the best hospital in the area (the only area hospital with a NICU), and it will be done by a midwife as long as things progress normally. If things go awry, there is ALWAYS a doctor at the hospital to step in and assist as needed. We also got some information today about the hospital where I'll be delivering, and it sounds like exactly what I want. I'm very pleased.

Other than that, things are going well. I feel fine, mostly. Occasional mild nausea, but nothing really noteworthy. Some insomnia, some headaches, some moodiness - basically a little bit of a wide variety of symptoms. I know that I'm lucky to be feeling so good. While there's still time for things to turn south, I've been really lucky so far.

My next appointment is scheduled for the end of October. It's really starting to feel real now.

Now I start getting symptoms

So far, I've been pretty lucky in the symptoms department. Granted, I'm only 6 weeks and 4 days pregnant (it still feels weird to consider myself "pregnant"), but some women get morning sickness earlier than where I am now. So far, my chest has been sore (that was a very early symptom), and my breathing has been labored. I occasionally get waves of nausea, but nothing major.

Tonight, though, the exhaustion hit really hard. It's not even 8:30, and I'm in bed. After dinner, I just needed to go to bed right that minute. Like, I couldn't even stand being in the kitchen anymore.

Luckily, my endlessly patient husband graciously offered to clean up the entire kitchen, including my dinner dishes. I can hear him down there right now straightening up. I think he really feels a purpose with helping me out. It's really sweet. He's actually been amazing in other ways, since I've been rather impatient and short-tempered for the last few weeks. He's been nothing but understanding.

I'm pretty lucky. So far, no terrible symptoms (although I expect them to get worse any day now). And, when I do get symptoms, my husband bends over backwards to help.

I can't wait to see him as a father.