Double TMI

Only because it's super gross is this labeled as TMI...

29 Weeks Pregnant

Holy crap! Usually I remember when I'm a whole week more pregnant than I was before, but this time it has snuck up on me. I start to lose track of myself when I get the babysick like I have been again lately. The only difference between 3rd trimester babysick and earlier babysick is the fact that I am emotionally and physically wrecked after puking (even once) the earlier I am in pregnancy. As time goes on, I feel fine but I physically just want nothing more than to ball up with my cats and Shawn in a blanket. It exhausts me and it makes my throat raw. I can't even worry about what it's doing to my teeth enamel. Seriously, who pukes mostly everyday for 6 months+? I've said it before and I'll say it many more times: Being Pregnant is WEIRD.

Tonight we are going to look at cribs and finish registering at Babies R Us. We are very excited for that! Last night we checked out the hospital near our home in case of transfer during the home birth and it is so nice! So quiet and so clean. I'm sure we won't need to go there but if we do, I'm happy with that hospital.
After the next 2 weeks go by it will be damn near all-baby all the time. Kind of excited for that, too. My first prenatal with the Home Birth Midwife is the day before baby classes start. Then we have the baby classes 2 hours/week for 6 weeks.
Nightly activities for now include eating ice cream in bed and watching the baby move ferociously between 7PM and 10:30PM while Shawn and I poke and play with him or her and s/he responds in kind. This is getting fun; we can't even imagine how amazing it will be to sit and stare at our actual baby. Every little common jiggle seems amazing!

The 10 (to 12) week count down starts next week! Belly explosion ahead!

25 Weeks Pregnant

Baby has open nostrils now (they had coverings!) and can hear very well. I feel finger movements! Baby can control his or her reflexes better and better as the days go by.
We have done baby-related things everyday this week so far and it's getting more real that we'll have a baby soon... and sometimes I even believe that the baby is inside me now. I still have lots of denial, but it's fading. I mean, it's hard not to acknowlege an increasingly heavy and jabby-elbowed mass laying on your guts all night while you are sleeping. If you have cats you know exactly what I mean.

In the last week I have gone from the bizarre pregnancy sleep patterns which once plagued me to sleeping from 10:30ish PM to 5:30 or 6:30 AM. I usually only get up once to pee, maybe twice. I feel a lot more rested on the days I get to sleep until 6:30 or later than I have for a long time.
I am STILL puking.
Seriously.
Yesterday and today sucked for it, too. But it usually doesn't happen again for the rest of the day. Usually.
So I've had morning sickness this entire time and only now, when it "should be" gone, is it the intensity and frequency it should have been when we were back having fun with Zofran. Weeeeird.
I also finished yet another crochet hoodie for the baby.

Shawn and I are changing in lots of ways. We think about the baby a lot, and discuss how easy it is getting to give the bird to the nay-sayers we encounter when we are questioned about our choices. We're getting called stupid, receiving eye rolls and being laughed at when we are asked about cloth diapering, unmedicated birth and not finding out the sex of the baby quite often now. The only thing I can think of is that we're gaining a thick skin with which to defend our baby with before s/he is here and that it will be in place once s/he is born. Then we will be ready to stand up against anything for him or her.

Chin Whiskers... am I pregnant or a cat?

When I fell on the stairs last week I did NOT hurt the baby. My appointment the next day for my 16 week checkup went beautifully and the baby's heartbeat was as strong as ever: between 154 and 158.

Onto the next installment of "Being Pregnant is Weird" crap: today I woke up to about 5 chin whiskers. I'd be embarassed to share this but it was just so odd that I can't help but to extrapolate. I had a rogue 1 or 2 chin hairs before getting pregnant that I would pluck every couple of weeks or so and it was no big deal, but this morning I looked like a damn cat! I'm not even kidding when I say each hair was at least a half inch long (HOW LONG WERE THEY GROWING THERE?!).
Some of you may turn away in disgust now and the rest of you who are like me are more than welcome to collapse onto your keyboard in fits of purple-faced laughter.
Some days I admit that I have a hunch that the baby is a girl and then days like today I wonder if this is from extra testosterone... or just plain hormone changes in general. I really can't make a guess. Even when I dream I don't even give it away to myself; I always see a chunky blonde baby with beautiful green eyes and it has been a boy in a couple of dreams and it has been a girl in the last couple dreams as well.

In 3 and a half weeks I'll be 20 weeks pregnant and we go to see our baby's arms and leggies and all of the baby's other body parts... except for the between-the-leg bits. We want to be surprised and I am saying this like 5 times when we are finally in the room with our ultrasound tech next month just to make sure they don't say anything, label anything or show us anything. I am going to have to look away when they check for the baby's sex because I have looked at so many ultrasound photos and videos that I would know if I saw either set. At this point I wouldn't be disappointed either way but I would be disappointed if I knew; I'd be the only one... and I can't keep things like that to myself.

Please promise to exclaim my bravery in the face of the hem-and-hawers in response to my new status as a cat. I only share because googling this morning offered me solace in the midst of other catlike mommies-to-be and I wish to pass on the feeling. Thanks.

Being Pregnant is Weird

My belly LAST week!

At just about 14 weeks, no one is more amazed at how fast this is going than I.
I could go on about all the little changes happening; the little pinches, pops and twitches in my belly; or how I somehow received implants gradually over the course of the last 10 weeks and have no memory of it whatsoever. But instead I just want to put it out there: being pregnant... is WEIRD.
Some days I lay on my side, imagining the fruit-sized fetus inside me wriggling with life and its own heartbeat and I get as teary and excited as the first day I found out it was finally in there.
Other days I sit and feel the new pressure in my uterus, the sensations of what must be the baby rolling and turning in its small space only to get the sensation that I've been holding a snake and I'd  like to put it-down-NOW. NOW. NOWNOWNOW. But I can't; I have to keep holding it.
Like I said: it's weird.

I also go from being very happy and excited for a few days, almost completely worry-free, and then I get overwhelmed and wonder if we did this at the right time. I also obsessively fear miscarrying and being in a car accident while pregnant every few days.
I blame hormones entirely. And lack of sleep.

Sleep is like something entirely new now. I sleep whenever and wherever I am able to do so for an hour or more. Sleep is also the 3-4 hour stints of rest I get at night between trips to the toilet and the pantry. I used to get so much sleep that I dreamed crazy pregnant dreams; now my sleep is so broken I haven't dreamed in almost a month.

Eating is still what my life revolves around. Every hour or two (sometimes 2 and a half) I must eat, or die... not really, but if I don't eat I'll puke and that hurts like I could be dying when my stomach is empty. This is why I not only visit the toilet in the wee (ha!) hours of the morning, but also the pantry: the baby bitch-slaps me with early morning (3:40 AM) hunger-induced nausea. What works the best and buys me the most time back asleep are my homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.
The nausea I still have is almost always due to hunger. I have to be eating 2 hours after the last time I started to eat or else I'm asking to get sick. Yesterday I stayed on schedule and I still threw up, so who knows? As soon as I figure out my pattern I have a weird day or a new variable to toss into the mix, like sneezing. If I'm starting to get nauseous I sneeze. Sometimes the nausea goes away after I sneeze and sometimes it's a warning that puke is imminent.
Like I said: weird.

Pregnancy isn't at all anything that I thought it would be.