March 31, 2011

Hard to believe…

Posted in Pregnancy tagged at 8:17 pm by lifebytheday

That we thought I was HUGE at Christmas…lol!!

16 weeks

And here I am tonight…legitimately huge, and not even as big as I’m going to get! 😛

30 weeks

March 30, 2011

30 week update (and some randoms)!

Posted in Pregnancy tagged at 8:50 pm by lifebytheday

Sorry I fell off the radar again!  I suffered through another cold last week and didn’t have energy for any non-essential activities. 😉 

But I’m back, and I have to say, it feels AMAZING to have finally reached 30 weeks – almost more momentous than the third trimester!  After this week, we’re down to a single digit countdown, which makes me think that I should probably start dealing with some of the important things (maternity leave, deciding on a cord blood company, etc.). 

For some reason, I was really into reading and research at the beginning of the second trimester and then I stopped after freaking myself out about the OB conspiracy theory.  I need to find a happy medium between researching my options and going with the flow…

So here’s our 30-week update!

How am I feeling?  SORE.  My right leg (the first one that started hurting) now hurts ALL of the time – the muscle feels like it has been pulled and my skin hurts to the touch (clothes, sheets, etc.).  And I just had my first leg cramp that woke me up from a sound sleep…it happened on Sunday night and my left calf still hurts today.  So between my two legs, I’m literally limping around like a cripple! 

Weight gain? +20!!

Cravings/aversions?  I’m in a not-liking-dinner phase again…nothing sounds good and I only feel like a few bites of whatever we end up making.  Which leaves plenty of room for dessert 😉 but means that I’ve been trying to eat better/bigger lunches to make up for it.

Movement?  This child’s new favorite position is sideways, tush firmly planted against my right side 😛 …although s/he has also finally grown enough that his/her legs can reach my ribs!

Other updates:

I finally bit the bullet and had a conversation with my boss on Friday about shifting to half days (1/2 day out traveling and 1/2 day working from home) and it was a complete non-issue, which was quite a surprise.  The way my job works, I just have to get through the end of April and then I can work from home the majority of the time.  So hopefully I can start gradually down-shifting and still maintain some semblance of productivity.

I nearly have S convinced to squeeze in a quick bedroom re-do before the baby comes.  We need to pull down the old (horsehair and plaster) walls, re-insulate, drywall and paint.  Since the nursery is good shape, we have time, except for the fact that S’s one full-time employee is leaving on Friday to have shoulder surgery, and won’t be back for 8 weeks.  Get that?  10 weeks – 8 weeks = too close for comfort!!  So right now we’re trying to figure out how crazy work will get for S, and whether it might be worth (gasp!) hiring someone to do it, instead of doing it ourselves.  I would love to be able to bring our baby home to a brand-new room, but we’ll see.

Upcoming/milestones?  Our childbirth class is a week from Saturday and I’m really excited to learn some new things, meet some other local pregnant folks, and take a tour of the hospital wing!

March 21, 2011

Nursery update

Posted in Pregnancy tagged at 5:06 pm by lifebytheday

Our nursery furniture arrived on Sunday and we were so excited that we picked them up and assembled them that day! 😀  Well…I drove with S to pick them up and watched while he assembed them, lol! 

So I thought I’d share now that we finally have something in our nursery beyond carpet and painted walls…yay!!

From the door...

(The chair that S is building me will go over in the corner on the right…)

And a better shot of the furniture (from the corner of the room, where the chair will be)

Can I tell you how SURREAL it felt to stand in front of the crib and realize that there will be an actual baby in there in 3-6 months??  I’m almost getting chills even thinking about it. 

And now that I have a dresser, I am DYING to fill it up with clothes. 😉  I went shopping with a friend on Saturday and got some super cute things at a local consignment shop – 6 outfits for $25!  Although it was funny…S loved the clothes but told me that he didn’t want his kids in secondhand clothing (unless it was from friends).  I guess being the youngest of 7 traumatized him more than we realized. 😉  I told him okay for now, but that I’d ask him again in 6-9 months, once he realizes how quickly babies outgrow their clothes, lol!!

Next step is our curtains, which are currently in progress with S’s seamstress.  We should have those back in 2-3 weeks, and the chair completed soon after.  I am so excited to start pulling the room together…every time I walked by the room last night (which was often, since it’s on the way to the bathroom) I had to go in and look around.  I can’t believe that there is actually a nursery in MY house!

March 17, 2011

Yee-ha!!!

Posted in Pregnancy tagged , at 3:49 pm by lifebytheday

I just heard back from the OB’s office with my blood work from yesterday and got two GREAT pieces of news. 🙂

My glucose test came back NORMAL (yippee!!!), even after the huge bowl of ice cream I had on Monday night!  And it turns out that I am slightly anemic – which normally wouldn’t be great news except that now I know why I’ve been feeling so worn out.  It makes me feel hopeful that with a few diet tweaks I can start to regain more of my energy…at least for a few weeks. 😉

The “normal” result was so anticlimactic after how anxious I’ve been for this test…I honestly don’t know how to express how relieved I am.  I think I’m just so used to my body failing me, and having everything go wrong that possibly could, that I had literally convinced myself I already had GD.  I know that it wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but it’s another thing that gives me hope.  Maybe it really IS just the getting pregnant that’s the problem…and that my body actually knows what to do while pregnant.  The final test is going to be breastfeeding…hopefully these puppies can finally be good for SOMETHING! 😉

March 16, 2011

Random updates, 28 weeks, and photos!

Posted in Pregnancy tagged , at 5:44 pm by lifebytheday

  • Last Wednesday officially marked the beginning of the third trimester – YAY! – which was exciting, but not all that momentous until this morning when S said “do you realize that you’ve been pregnant for half a year?”  CRAZY.  We are so anxious to meet our baby that it feels like June 9th will NEVER COME, but it’s scary to think how fast the past six months have gone by. 
  • At a company meeting last Thursday/Friday, my awkward but well-intentioned boss commented on how big I already was and how he didn’t know how I was going to make it to June.  LOL!  Hopefully that means that he’ll be sympathetic when I discuss a modified work-from-home schedule with him next week.
  • My body has decided that drastic action is needed in order to avoid turning my Irish baby into an Italian.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m in St. Patrick’s Day mode, but for the past two weeks I have been CRAVING corned beef and cabbage dinners…which S has been only too happy to oblige.  We’ve had a full Irish dinner the past two Sunday nights and have another one planned for Thursday night.  Yumm!
  • At my appointment today, my OB (the last one I had yet to meet…and yes, I liked her) gave me some hope re: my legs, saying that just because they’ve been hurting for three months, doesn’t mean that it will continue through the end of the pregnancy.  Obviously, there’s no knowing for sure, but there’s always a chance that the baby will shift enough that the nerve pain will ease.  Fingers crossed!
  • And here’s a quick 28 week update:
    • Weight gain? +16 lbs
    • Cravings? Corned beef and cabbage!
    • Movement? The baby has gotten much stronger and has started moving into the strangest positions…lying horizontally across my belly, standing straight up and down, and rolling his/her entire body onto my right side.  I keep telling him/her (who coincidentally has been head down throughout my entire pregnancy, until now!) not to get stuck in any of these crazy positions!
    • Milestones?  Third trimester!
  • And here are some photos!

24 weeks

 

Me and my 2nd cousin at her baby shower (~28 weeks)

March 8, 2011

Meant to be

Posted in Infertility, Pregnancy tagged at 7:07 am by lifebytheday

This post has been percolating in my head – and my heart – for a while now, but I’m pretty sure that it’s not going to come out exactly the way I mean it, so bear with me, okay?

I have come to the realization that this baby – and the path we had to take to get him or her – was 100% meant to be.  There have been times when I find myself remembering everything that we went through – all of the pain, sadness, money, worry, fear – and it almost feels like it happened to someone else.  Or maybe more accurately, like it happened to me in a completely different lifetime.  I can still remember everything in minute detail, but it’s almost as if I’m dreaming, or watching the replay through a curtain. 

When we got pregnant, I made a conscious choice to enjoy every minute, and (to try!) not to worry or feel guilty about being happy or excited.  I still have no way of knowing whether we’ll ever get to experience pregnancy again, so even with the physical challenges, I am loving being pregnant.  But by the same token, I still hate to complain – partly because I like to think of myself as pretty tough, and partly because I don’t want anyone to ever question that I know how lucky I am – but I am trying to experience and honor my feelings for what they are.  There are even some days when I just think of myself as pregnant and not “pregnant after infertility” and I think that’s a miracle in itself.

I still sometimes think about my original plan, which would have put me in the middle of pregnancy #3 (or thereabouts) right now, and I realize how glad I am that that isn’t how things worked out.  S and I are so much stronger and more mature after everything we’ve been through together, and I honestly don’t know if our relationship would have been ready for kids five years ago.  We were ready to be parents, but I think that now, we’re truly ready to be a family. 

I recently mentioned these feelings to S, and asked him, “don’t you just feel like this was all meant to be?”  His response?  “Well, yeah!”  (in the tone of “well duh, you idiot” lol).  I don’t know if it’s just S or more of a guy thing, but the hardest part of IF for him was all of the energy/effort/money spent with nothing to show for it.  Now that we actually have our baby on board, I think he has been able to see the value in what we went through, shut the door on it and move on.

I tend to walk a fine line between honoring our experiences and moving forward, which I think is a healthy place to be…both as a woman and a mother.  I don’t think we need to tell our child how much pain we suffered on our journey to find him/her, but I do want them to know how much we wanted and loved them.  And that they were always meant to be our firstborn.

March 5, 2011

Rough week (and 26 week update)

Posted in Pregnancy tagged , , at 6:17 am by lifebytheday

I have come to realize how ingrained it is to keep negativity and sadness inside of me…not healthy, I know…but as my grandmother always used to say “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”  Hence my silence for the past week. 

Monday I woke up just not feeling right – extra sore and just bone tired (you know the tired you feel with the flu?  Like that.)  Since we were due for an icy rain storm later that morning, I worked from home and managed to squeeze in two naps.  Tuesday was my first day trying out my support band, but I again spent the day sore and tired.  Wednesday was more of the same…I ended up finishing up work a little early and came home for a nap, followed by a meltdown.

The pain in my legs is really starting to get to me mentally, and I spent the first part of this week fighting off feelings of depression.  It’s not that each individual little pain is that bad, but add them all together and keep the pain building for 3+ months and it starts to feel like torture.  This is going to sound really dramatic, but I feel like I finally understand people with chronic pain (including my grandmother who committed suicide from a nerve disease).  And obviously, I’m not in that category, either physically or mentally, but everything came to a head this week and I just felt WORN OUT. 

I’m sure that it’s just because we’re bumping up against the third trimester – only five more days until it’s official!  But add to that the never ending stress about work and feeling like I’m not able to keep up, and my father’s disappointing reaction to us telling him we wanted to name the baby (middle name) after him if it was a boy, and I was fit to be tied. 

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, my father is Jewish (although I was raised Catholic after my mother, and the maternal tradition in both religions) and apparently, it’s taboo to name a baby after someone living.  I knew that you were supposed to name Jewish babies after the most recent relative who had died, but I never knew the converse.  So here S and I are thinking that we’re doing something really nice to honor my dad and show him how much he means to both of us, and my father was struggling with being flattered, and simultaneously trying not to feel like we were cursing him. 

After a whole lot of awkwardness, we just dropped the subject, but there’s still this giant elephant in the room.  I don’t want to have cursed my dad just by thinking it, and I’m equally sad that our baby boy won’t get to have his Zadie (Yiddish for Grandfather and my dad’s request)’s name.  The middle name was the only thing S and I had agreed on for a boy, and now, to be perfectly honest, I’m kind of hoping for a girl just because we have a name that we’ve agreed on and everybody loves!

In fact, for the past few weeks, I’ve started to have a few more inklings that it might be a girl…just little feelings here and there, that culminated in outgrowing my second pair of maternity pants (could barely get them up over my @$$) and the realization that I’m growing more than just a belly! 😉

So anyways, moving on to a quick 26-week update:

How am I feeling?  Sore, tired, and overwhelmed.  Oh, and the hole from my belly button ring is red and inflamed.  I’m sure it’s just another growth spurt – especially since I started to feel a bit better Thursday/Friday – and as long as the little one keeps growing healthy and strong, it’s all worth it.

Weight gain?  +14 (+2 lbs since last week)

Cravings?  Still nothing weird, but I didn’t do a very good job cutting out salt or sugar.  I cut back on salt – a bit – but when I tried to throw out the leftover Valentine’s day candy and couldn’t bring myself to put it in the trash, I realized that I’m in a little more trouble than I thought. 😛

Movement?  This past week the baby has started really going to town, kicking all of its arms and legs simultaneously and flipping around.  S managed to catch one of their wiggly fits and couldn’t believe it, lol!

I missed the 26-wk photo op, sorry!  I spent Wednesday night red and puffy from crying and didn’t really want to document it. 😉