Sunday, June 27, 2010

Morning sickness on the way

I don't know if it's all in my head, but this morning sickness thing is kind of a pain in the butt. I'm learning here and there how to deal with it, but overall it's exhausting. Well, actually I think it's just the pregnancy that is exhausting, but the nausea is no fun either. I have yet to actually be sick and I think that I may feel better if I could just be sick, but the best way I have learned to deal is to make sure I have something in my stomach all the time.

Thursday and Friday mornings at work I definitely let myself go too long without food and I felt so bad that a friend went to the nutrition room to bring me crackers and a Sprite. Saturday I again didn't have enough to eat for breakfast so was feeling icky throughout the early afternoon until I went to Chick-Fil-A and had a sandwich and an enormous serving of fries. Then I was eating all afternoon at my work summer party so I was good. Today I think I learned my lesson. I had a very filling Fage yogurt (10g of protein!!) for breakfast as well as some fruit and munched here and there until I met a friend for lunch. Even with all that eating, there is still this gnawing nausea that I feel fairly constantly. I haven't had any other awful symptoms like headaches or anything but, geesh, this stuff kind of kicks you in the butt!

Friday, June 18, 2010

Be careful who you tell

When you decide to share you are pregnant, think about who you are sharing with. Even if you think there is no way that person could tell anyone who would get it back to your family in any way, think first!

Case in point, if you tell your best friend who lives in South Bend and you fail to remember that he talks to your cousin at least every day because they met at your wedding and have kept in touch and that your cousin may will definitely tell her mother who happens to be your mother's sister, you may get a phone call from your mother saying, "Guess what I found out today from Susie?!?". Yes, that's a true story! But she says she won't tell anyone and that she'll act surprised when Mike spills the beans when he's in Indiana in a couple of weeks, so that's good! This not telling family is killing me! I can't wait until after July 11th!!!

Online message boards

If you search for ANYTHING regarding pregnancy online you will every once in a while get some very valid information but you are most often referred to BabyCenter message boards or some other pregnancy website message board. My favorite (and I say that somewhat sarcastically) is when I do a quick search to see if I can drink diet drinks or eat bacon and you get all these responses that say "I did that my entire pregnancy and my kid is great and healthy!! Everyone who tells you that you can't while you are pregnant is just crazy!". I mean, I'm glad your pregnancy went well and all, but usually there is a reason that your physician tells you not to do something during pregnancy. I'm working to not be too obsessive, but I'm also trying very hard to follow the rules.

That said, I'm getting a list of questions ready to ask the doctor come July 9th. I want to know if I can still ride my bike, I want to know how much caffeine is actually OK (I'm sticking with one small cup of soda - regular, not diet - or less per day), I want to see the heartbeat so I know that things are developing well... As I read more books (which by the way, also can be one extreme or the other) I come up with more questions. I'm scared to gain too much weight, not enough weight, throw up my entire first trimester, not get enough nutrition for the baby... just so much to worry about in the first trimester.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

When to tell

All along I have said that I wasn't going to tell anyone about my pregnancy until I was at least 8-10 weeks along... well, I made it about a week. Actually, I have only told one person outside of work and I trust her to keep the secret. But my downfall is work.

I spend 12 hours at a time at work and am sitting there talking to my coworkers all day. It's really hard when the only thing on your mind is being pregnant to not say anything. I actually cracked day one to the good friend from work who advised me to get the digital pregnancy tests. She knew immediately after Mike and I did just because I needed some girly advice. Then I told her I was going to try to wait until July 9th when I had my first appointment to tell anyone else at work. She told me that may not last... it lasted for about 5 minutes.

Most people at work know that we are at the point where we are thinking about kids. So the second I say I'm tired or I don't feel well or whatever, I'm asked if I'm pregnant. And I decided that I would wait until someone asked before I would tell so that sets me up for telling people when they immediately ask that. And also, I'm a very poor liar when it comes to something like this. Additionally, if something is to go wrong, everyone will find out I'm pregnant anyway because I'll more than likely have to take time off work so it's not like I'd hide it forever. And finally, the ladies I work with are awesome and I really am thrilled to share my excitement with them.

Like I said, outside of work one person knows. I'm really really trying hard to not say anything to anyone else until after our first appointment. Our OB is in an awesome practice that most of my girlfriends from work go to. When I called to schedule my appointment, I asked if there would be an ultrasound - all I want to know is that there is a heart beat and the baby is developing well. I'm excited to say that there will be! It's killing me to know I have to wait until then to know that everything is OK. But that's how it has to be and that's when I'll start telling other people. And I can't wait to share how we are going to tell my mom and my sister!!!!!

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Seriously this is June!!

This one won't have lots of info in it - just a quick minute to say something to Mother Nature: It's June 12th!!! I'm all for not-so-hot weather, but couldn't we stick to the 70s and 80s as opposed to rainy and low 50s?!? The sun hasn't peeked out all day long and as soon as I let the dog out this morning I realized it felt more like February or March instead of June. Seriously?!?

That said, it was a nice surprise to be cost contained (too many nurses scheduled, not enough patients) this morning and I have spent a very lazy day in the house. It was especially nice because I was scheduled for 5 days in a row so I broke up my stretch right in the middle. Mike is working on a design for his 2nd paying job with a 3rd on the horizon and I have been catching up on reading and researching on the Internet. Now off to run random errands I probably don't need to do but it's time to get out of the house. I was about to head to the Y until I realized that they all close at 7:00 on Saturdays. What, doesn't anyone want to work out on Saturday nights? Or am I just a weirdo?

I hope everyone is having a fabulous weekend. I'm off to work in the morning!

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Summer work projects

OK, so I have been away from the blog - again - for a long time. But it's been because we have been doing crazy things to our yard! Well, that is what is was recently at least. We have a list of things we'd like to do and the biggest of those was to expand our back yard. If you remember a year ago we sodded the backyard and seeded the side yard. Well this year, we decided to enclose the side yard up to the front porch so 70% of what we seeded last year is now part of the back yard. These are not the best quality pictures because I took them with my iPhone (the battery in my good camera died so this was all I had) but this will give you a good idea. Click on the links I put in for previous entries to remind yourself what the yard looked like before.
Looking from the side yard at the new fence

From the backyard along the new fence looking back towards the garage

From the patio looking at the new fence - you can appreciate the meadow grass and wildflowers the best here, I think

Also I have gotten my garden up and running for the year. I don't know how it will do but we are going to try to put a sun blocker up that will filter out 30% of the sun since it gets SO hot on the back concrete pad. This year I have planted 4 types of sweet peppers, 3 types of hot peppers, parsley, 3 kinds of tomatoes, sugar snap peas, broccoli, 2 kinds of lettuce, and cucumbers in the back raised bed. I'm also trying some container planting for my herbs - cilantro, basil, rosemary, and thyme - as well as a pot for strawberries. I'm not sure if you can appreciate in the pictures below quite how the basil and cilantro have taken off, but basically I'm giving it away to people at work because there is so much of it.

I won't bore you with what is what, but just know it's a lot that may or may not actually survive

The cilantro is in the right and left corners and the basil is in the back corner

My strawberries!!

So as we do more projects, I'll post more pictures. But for now just be content with the fact that I promise I will have more to post soon - and I think I'm going to change the name of the blog in the next month or two so be on the lookout!!

Amazing what I don't know

You'd think that as a previous childbirth educator and newborn care educator I would feel 100% ready to be pregnant. It's amazing how many things I find myself asking though. What can I eat, what's safe to do, can I still ride my bike to work occasionally like I have been, should I just walk on the treadmill instead of run, what does my baby look like right now, how will I know if something isn't right, how much water should I be drinking... my thoughts, needless to say, are going crazy right now. And I'm not normally a morning person yet I have been up early every day thinking of all the things I need to think about and I haven't been able to get back to sleep. So either this is my body preparing me for no sleep as a new mom or my mind really needs to calm down - otherwise it's going to be a LONG 9 months. And yes, it is almost a full 9 months - my due date is February 17, 2011!!

Cat litter

I said I would use this as a way to share little things that we are feeling throughout the pregnancy and this is one of my favorites (actually, it's what gave me the idea in the first place).

I didn't clean the litter box on Saturday - I meant to, I just didn't have the time. Then Sunday rolled around and here I am officially pregnant so now I can't clean the litter boxes. Mike knew that once I was pregnant I couldn't clean the litter boxes so he told me he'd take care of it Sunday. Tuesday morning rolled around and I asked him if he had cleaned them yet and he said no but that he was going to do it right now (which he did). I went down to ask him something and he was about to start cleaning the boxes but told me I had to get out of the room because he didn't know what it would do to me and the baby if I was around while he cleaned them. I just thought it was so sweet and cute!

I'm so excited that he is so excited, too. He is definitely feeling different things than I am right now and I think he believes it more than I do because he's not waiting for symptoms and morning sickness like I am. I really will feel more pregnant once those things come to pass.

Here we go!

We found out on my birthday that we were going to be parents. Actually, we "faintly" found out on my birthday but we officially found out once I bought the digital test to check the next morning. I have started this blog to talk about the little things that are going on for us right now and to record some of what we are feeling at the moment even though we won't open this to family and friends for a couple months. Either way, here's the story of how Mike and I found out we were going to be parents.

Knowing that we hadn't been trying specifically but had not been preventing getting pregnant, and knowing when a positive test may show up, we decided to, on a whim, take a pregnancy test on my 31st birthday. And when I say "we", the conversation went more like, "Wouldn't it be funny if I were pregnant right now? Maybe I should take a test just to see. There really is no way that it would show positive this early but heck, it's my birthday, what do you think?" At which point Mike said, "Sure, why not?".

So three minutes elapse (I set the timer on my phone) and I go look at the test which showed a VERY faint second line. Between the two of us, we must have looked at that test about 50 times that day trying to decide if we were pregnant or not. On the advice of a good friend, I went to the store and bought the digital "Pregnant"/"Not Pregnant" test and had it ready to take on Sunday morning.

I spent my birthday downtown with some friends at People's Fair and then Mike and I went to dinner with a couple who we have gotten to be good friends with over the past year or so. We made no mention to anyone (well, maybe I said something to a friend because I HAD to ask what a faint line meant) and just went on with our day.

Sunday morning rolled around and I took the test and there was no question it said pregnant - as you can see below:
Again, we must have looked at the test at least another 50 times. We left it in the bathroom all day until after about 24 hours when the digital screen goes blank just so we could go see it again. Not to fear though, on Monday, just to be sure the first two weren't flukes (because at this point I had come to believe the one on my birthday was a positive as well), I took one more. So for a point on Monday we had two tests sitting on the back of the toilet saying "Pregnant". That's something I should have gotten a picture of but by the time I thought of that the first test had gone blank.

To say we are shocked wouldn't be completely true, but it would be a little bit true. It's not like we didn't know it could happen, I'm just still not believing it because I don't feel pregnant by any means. But I have been told to just give it time, soon I will feel pregnant. I guess I should just be happy with how I'm feeling now and read all these books I checked out from the library.