Penny

Penny
Sweet Puppy.... as long as she's sleeping

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Baby Bump


Bump-tacular.  Here is my baby-bump at 14 weeks, 3 days.  Please ignore my funky hair, I was cleaning the house most of the day.  I'll try to take a better picture next week! :)


To compare, please see this picture from week 7.  In this photo, please ignore my weird duck face and the semi-mess on the floor.



Monday, April 23, 2012

Tri, Tri, Tri Again

Yesterday, I hit week 14 of this pregnancy!  Woo-Hoo!!  That means that no matter when you believe the 2nd trimester starts, I am officially in it, so let's celebrate!  Before I became 'in the family way,' there was so much I didn't realize that I didn't know about pregnancy.  First off, I didn't know there was some disagreement in when the 1st trimester ends and the 2nd trimester begins.  Some people say the first day of the 13th week is the big day.  Some say 13 weeks, 3 days.  Others insist it's the beginning of week 14.  Ay yi yi.  But I'm here!  I know I am so blessed to be at this point and I thank God daily for getting me safely through each week and pray for a safe and healthy rest of the pregnancy.  Since I am at this juncture, I thought I would put up a post about my first trimester!

I was quite lucky that I really got to miss out on morning sickness for the most part!  I was plagued by nausea and extreme queasiness from about week 4 to week 9 or 10.  I had a lot of advice to keep crackers around and once I did that, if I felt a little nauseated, I would eat a few Ritz crackers or saltines and I would immediately feel better.  I did have your typical "I gotta throw up" outta nowhere episode once, so I didn't escape unscathed from the morning sickness beast; plus, brushing my teeth always made me dry heave and gag a bit - which was just miserable.

Around week 12 I started getting bad headaches.  No where near as bad as the migraine I had in week 8 when I became stranded an hour away from home because I couldn't see to drive.  Luckily, I have a wonderful husband who came to get me and a wonderful friend who lived near the rest stop I was stranded at and let me park my car at her house for a few days until we could come back and retrive my poor little Saturn.

At 10 weeks, I was told that since I was overweight, we wouldn't be able to hear the heartbeat via Doppler, so I didn't get to hear little Squido at that appointment.  However, at week 13, I was finally able to hear the sound of my little one.  It was the most magnificent experience of my life.  I'm hoping to be able to record it for J-dubs at my next appointment so he can hear it too!  At my 13 week appointment, I also got a 'bonus' ultrasound!  I had this stabbing pain in my side and my ob thought it might be a cyst.  So we did an u/s just to make sure.  Turns out it was just Round Ligament Pain, which is common during pregnancy as your ligaments are stretching out and your uterus is getting bigger.  BUT - I did get to see my tiny baby and see the heart just beating away.  I didn't get a good profile shot, as Squido was squirmy, but I saw that big ol' baby head and I literally saw his/her heart beating.  It was like a little drum  It was beyond amazing.  

I also scheduled my BIG ultrasound that will tell us if we're having a boy or a girl!  We'll know on June 5th, and I am SO. EXCITED.  Once we find out, we can start decorating the nursery! 

So, on to the stats: 

How far along? 14 weeks, 1 day
Total weight gain: -11 pounds
Maternity clothes? Sometimes!  I ordered a lot from Old Navy, but they are still a little big.  I am mostly in sun dresses.
Stretch marks: None so far!
Sleep: Sleeping pretty well, I am waking up a few times a night.  Sleeping 
Best moment last week: Seeing & hearing Squido!  It was amazing!
Miss anything? I have never wanted a tequila shot more in my life.
Movement: I have felt a few flutters, but nothing substantial yet... I have a few more weeks before I feel kicks!
Food cravings: Still craving grilled cheese sandwiches.
Anything making you queasy/sick: Not really.
Gender: We'll know for sure in 6 weeks, but I think it is a boy!
Happy or Moody most of the time: Most of the time I'm happy but I have had many moody moments!
Looking forward to: Our June 5th appointment to find out what we're having!

I will really try to take a picture tonight and upload it tonight!

Monday, April 16, 2012

When Easy Listening Takes Your Breath Away

Holy cow.  I have literally had this blog entry half typed and open for over a week now.  This is insane.  I clearly need to carve out some time to write, I really enjoy it and want to keep all these memories.  However, lately all my online time is spent on the message boards at thebump.com!!
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Somewhere, during all internet research about pregnancy, I read that my body has been pumping about 50% more blood to accomodate the work that it's doing growing a small person.  The article said that it  might lead to becoming out of breath for activities that used to be easy.  I thought this meant that I would have to take it a little more slowly on my walks with Penny.

Ha.

I really enjoy listening to music, especially while I'm getting ready for my day.  The other day, I turned on one of my playlists and hopped in the shower.  The playlist happened to be in the middle of a Jack Johnson set of music.  I was belting out Sexi PlexiBubble Toes, and Banana Pancakes when suddenly I realized "Holy cow, I am out of breath."  Apparently, shampooing your hair while sitting Bubble Toes is enough of a workout that I needed to stop and take a breather.  I mean, really.  I thought Jack Johnson was supposed to be easy listening music?  It's not like it has a heavy bass or is the type of music you can really boogie to. It blew my mind.

However, after I got out of the shower, Sexy & I Know It came on the playlist.  And boy, I did break it down to that song.  After that, my heart was racing, but in a good way.  I considered it my workout for that day.  I also decided that someone needs to bring back the 90s dance staple, the butterfly.  It goes perfectly with that song!

Friday, April 6, 2012

Oxymoron?

So, in exciting pregnancy news, I've lost 12 pounds.  I'm super excited about that little tid bit!  And I've consulted the internet/pregnancy books and it is normal for women to lose some weight in the beginning of pregnancy, especially if they were overweight to begin with or have really bad morning sickness.  Well, I haven't been throwing up, but I've been very "regular" if you know what I mean, and I've had zero appetite, and the doc thinks I'm healthy, so we're going with it.

However, most of my jeans are too tight.  This blows my mind.  In the past, when I've lost a few pounds, my pants become loose.  However, it pains me to button a few of them.  I'm not quite sure I'm showing yet, but maybe I am and just can't tell because I've lost my "fat" but replaced it with "baby" and it's all evening out?

Who knows.  Pregnancy is weird.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

First World Problems.

This morning, I got up early to pick my husband up from the body shop and take him to work so he can have some work done on the truck.  I know, I'm an awesome wife.  So I'm driving down the road and I see this Jaguar infront of me, in the next lane over.  The license plate said "SWAGUAR".  I immediately roll my eyes and say "douche bag".  We come up to a stop light and I catch sight of him.  Initially I am taken aback because out of the corner of my eye, I swear he was wearing those 1980s, super cheesy, slightly oversized sunglasses.  For some reason, my initial reaction was "He's a swarthy weekend hipster!" followed by "Can you be ironic if you're driving a luxury car?"  I was starting to wonder if I'd made too much of a snap judgement when I labeled him a douche, and was contemplating the type of person who clearly worked in an office environment during the week but had a hipster streak.  Would this type of person be someone I wanted to know?  What kind of hipster buys a Jag?  Is the Jag a relic of his old, "keeping up with the Jones life," and now he's embraced the hipster ways but thinks it's impractical to buy a new ride?

I pondered these thoughts about the swarthy hipster for the duration of the light and during the drive up to the next light.  We were stopped again and I looked over again to evaluate this new found oddity.  When I did, I realized that my peripheral vision sucks and this guy isn't wearing hipster classes.  He was wearing some fancy-pants designer sunglasses!  I immediately called him a douche again, and was rolling my eyes at his fancy pants glasses and fancy pants dress shirt and his stupid fancy pants car with the most douchey license plate EVER when I saw that someone had keyed the back of his car, behind the driver's side passenger door.  I thought "HA!  It's probably some girl who you did WRONG, jerkface!" and generally mocking him until he got on the interstate and I kept straight.

Then I had a terrible realization.  I was essentially mocking him because he was in a luxury car.  And Guess What.  I was in a luxury car, too.  Yup, we drive a BMW.  It's still new to me, we've only had it for 3 weeks.  But..... ours is a 2006, we bought it used with 76k miles on it and we paid less than we would've for a new SUV.  So for a second I was all on my high horse because of that.  Well, ours is used and we paid almost nothing for it, but hey guess what, no one else knows that.  For all they know, we bought it in 2006 and have money to blow on things like that.  OR, like me, they aren't car savvy enough to identify a car by it's year and just know that it's a 'Bimmer'.  Maybe they think *I'm* a snobby, good for nothing socialite that gets whatever she wants.  

However, then it all came clear to me.  I didn't think he was a douche because he drove a Jag.  I thought he was a douche because his license plate said SWAGUAR.  Just typing that out makes me throw up a little in my mouth.  (Or maybe it's morning sickness?  Who knows.) 

Anyway, after I had this whole internal debate, that took place over the course of about 2 miles, I realized that this internal struggle was so #firstworld (to be cool like the Twitter folks) that I had to blog about it - so here you go.  I clearly need to work on snap judgements, so I'm going to work on that.  What about you folks out there?  Do you make snap judgements?  What sets you off?  Would you've made a snap judgement on such a stupid license plate?

Have a great day!

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Oh, Baby!

So I started this blog to have a place to blabber on about weight loss and my sweet pooch.  I decided to also add random insights/funny sayings/experiences from subbing (and hopefully soon, teaching).

Well, now, I have an entirely new thing to blog about!  And oddly enough, my new topic is going to basically over-ride the whole "losing weight" thing, because I'm going to be GAINING for a while!  And it's the one time in my life gaining will be encouraged!  I am going to have a baby!

I finally made it public knowledge today on Facebook.  I've been plotting that for a while now.  I knew I didn't want to announce it too quickly, so I decided to wait until I started my second trimester.  After my first doctor's appointment I slowly started to tell my 'inner circle' of friends, but kept pretty quiet about it overall.  However, after consulting a calendar, I realized that April Fool's Day was only two weeks before I was going to make my public announcement anyway, so I decided to go for it.  It made my giggle to think that everyone would think I was joking when I wasn't!

I initially made the announcement with this picture:
I immediately got several congratulations, and then the fun started.... posts to the tune of what I'd been expecting: C'mon people, it's April Fool's Day, or Is this for real? and various other "I'm not sure what to think but congrats?" posts.  After a while, I finally said "No joke, I'm for realsies pregnant!".  Then I put it on my status and still got a few questions about the validity of my announcement, but for the most part, I'm getting tons of love and congratulations.  I'm so excited that the news is finally out there!!

So I've put together a list of questions I know you're just dying to know the answers to, complete with all the answers.  I am quite sure that I will be updating this blog much more frequently now that I have something exciting to talk about!  (Side note: some of these questions I made up on my own.  Some I stole from this blog, which I've fallen in love with.  She beautifully details her pregnancy and I am pretty sure I'll be stealing a lot more from her.  Plus, we own the same dress from Target.  Not sure how that's relavent, but it seems like a good sign.)

Were you trying to get pregnant? Pretty much.  We didn't have an agenda or timetable to get pregnant.  We wanted a baby, but were in no huge rush.  We do know where babies come from, and realized that by taking no preventative measures, a baby was a possibility, so we were prepared (and excited) for the consequences. We just took it month to month.  It took us about 3 months of sorta-kinda-maybe-a little trying before we got preggo.

How did you find out? I was supposed to start the P on a Saturday.  It also happened to be the Saturday of one of my best friend's baby shower (remember the diaper cake?)  Well, that whole day I was waiting and waiting.  Nothing happened.  The next day, same deal.  I kept waiting and waiting.  I started to get suspicious.  So, we drove home from South Hill and stopped at the Rite Aid by our house.  I grabbed a test, we rushed home, took the test, and stood over it for two minutes while we waited for the two lines to pop up.  And low and behold... they did.  There was lots of smiling and jumping up and down and hugs and kisses and a few tears.  It was magnificent.

Gotta love the mirror images when you take pics with a Mac...

Did you have a suspicion? I kinda did.  The week before I took the test, I'd been overwhelmingly exhausted.  I chalked most of it up to it having been my first week as a substitute teacher, but I was constantly tired.  I came home from school every day and slept for several hours.  It had only been about 6 weeks since my student teaching had ended, and I was surprised that I could have gotten so lazy after not having worked for that short period of time.  I also could not stand to eat greasy food.  It made me gag and once I had to spit out a hush puppy.  A HUSH PUPPY!!  Which is basically the best food item ever.  It made me sad to have to do that.

Have you been sick? I've been incredibly nauseated, but I haven't really been sick.  I had your stereotypical, turn green and run to the bathroom morning sickness precisely once.  However, there was one day I had a migraine and couldn't take my medicine and I've never been so sick in my life.  It was miserable.  That, so far, has been the worst day.

Have you had an ultrasound? Yes!  We had one at week 7.  It was amazing and I almost cried.  They didn't give me a picture to take home though. :(  Lame.

How far along are you? I am 11 weeks today!

Have you gained weight? Nope!  Not yet!  I had lost 10, but I gained two back, so I've down a total of 8 lbs.  I suppose I'm starting to gain weight now, but we'll see.  My Nanaw lost 20 pounds when she was pregnant with my mom, so maybe it's in my genes to lose weight during the pregnancy.  I have plenty to spare anyway.....

Do you miss any foods/beverages? Tuna. Wine. Sushi.

Are you craving anything? I don't know if it's a craving, but I've been wanting grilled cheese sandwiches a lot lately.  I haven't really had an overwhelming, if I don't get this NOW I will kill you feeling, but when I'm asked what I want and I think about it, the answer has been "A grilled cheese."

Are you starting to show? No.  I keep feeling like I might be, but I was so chubby to begin with, I think it'll take a while to show.  

Do you have a gender prediction? I think it's a boy!  J-dubs and I have both had dreams that it's a boy so I'm kinda on the boy wagon.  Although, we're just praying for healthy.... which sounds cliche, but I've a condition called Neurofibromatosis 1, which in addition to creating tumors it can cause some complications during pregnancy and it's genetic, so when I say that, it's not cliche, it's down right honesty.  

What are you looking forward to? I can't wait until I'm showing!  I'm also eager to find out what the gender is and feel the baby start kicking.


So there ya go, peeps.  My first of many, many, many postings about being pregnant!  I am so excited to be entering this new chapter!!