6 posts tagged “babywatch 2.0”

BOY!!!

More importantly, everything looked just perfect. By dates, due October 27, by size, due November 3. Not surprising, since I usually ovulate late. Not to mention the fact that Dora was a week late, so I should just expect that, then I won't be disappointed when I have to keep waiting. HA. Remind me I said that when I go overdue.

Actually, don't. It could get ugly.

Now to come up with a name. It's rather unfortunate that my husband likes only the most dorky names ever. I mean...Milo? Come on. If you are a farmer, you don't name your kid a crop. It's just not right.

Stay tuned for pictures, I will eventually get the sonogram pictures scanned, and the pictures I took of Dora looking at her little brother on the screen downloaded. I am kinda sad I missed the one of her kissing the screen, it was pretty darn sweet.

Hot damn. A little boy. I'm feeling so lucky right about now I'm feeling like I'm tempting fate just by my mere existance.

Yesterday, I was 20 weeks pregnant. I finally managed to get a few belly pics, even though by this time with Dora we probably had a memory card full of them. With no further delay:

                                                                            The Belly

In other news, today my sweet, sweet, princess pie is 18 months old. 18 months! Look at the last post to see her picture. Behind her impish smile, you might be able to imagine life with her. Peeking around corners to give a 1,000 watt smile, only to run off again so you will chase her. Falling down and trying to decide whether she should cry this time or not. Getting frustrated when you try to help her, because she can do it by herself. Getting FURIOUS when she can't do it by herself. Clapping when she does do it by herself, and looking around to make sure you are clapping too. We are, baby, we are.

So, only 11 more days until my sonogram. I mean, that's basically just 258.5 hours, not that I'm counting.

Good thing I have this to distract me, huh?

Porch smile

Tomorrow I have a checkup at the coochie doctor. I'll be 17 weeks and a few days along, so I'm really excited because we should finally be scheduling our FIRST and ONLY SONOGRAM OF THIS WHOLE FREAKING PREGNANCY! With Dora, I had 2 sonograms recorded on VHS by 11 weeks. I am supremely glad I got to start feeling this baby move at 14 weeks and have been feeling it daily since 16 weeks because reassurance is something that has been sorely lacking this time around. Most of the time I love that my doc is a minimal interventions type guy, but the sono's are sure something I miss not having. Of course, that means that I didn't have to go to the RE, so YAY!

And because I don't want this baby to feel like it's a left out second baby, a letter:

Dear Baby,

I love you. Your daddy and I are SO excited to meet you, but stay put a while because you need to cook some more, okay? OH, and keep kicking, it makes me smile every time.

Love,
Mama

(OK, so still kinda second babyish...)

" The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us."
Ashley Montague

I've been putting off writing this post, and since this post is basically all that is in my brain right now, I haven't written anything. My brain has had a hard time processing some things, and I still don't think I'm there yet, but I'm ready to write anyway. As ready as I'll ever be.

As soon as I had my first cycle after birthing Dora (Jan 21, blogged about here.) my husband started wanting to have another baby. Wanted to start "trying". I...did not. There were several reasons. One is between my husband and I, dealing with a few changes I needed to see happen so that I felt confident in being able to handle two children. Another is that two kids sounds WAY harder than one. I mean, bedtime routine for a kid AND an infant? Sounds like murder. Another, and possibly looming the largest in my mind, was "trying". I mean, I'd had a two year break between being pregnant and not having cycles while nursing and the absolute relief at not having to worry about it all day every day was still palpable. I was not ready to do that again. At all.

If you read the post I linked above, you know that after my big heavy cycle of Jan 21, I had a few days of spotting on Feb 20, and then I had some more spotting that started March 18 and never really developed into a period, but just cycled between spotting or not for several weeks. That is what I used to fight with all the time. Heavy periods with spotting in between, and very little time of the old utero-cooteral region actually playing nice. I was not happy about the quick return to the bullshit. I was constantly bloated feeling and tired and just not happy about the whole thing. Why can't my body ever just be normal? And all this time Sean is still bringing up wanting another baby pretty regularly. "Well, why don't you just start taking your temperature? We don't have to go to the doctor." You know, subtle pressure. And bleeding like that all the time always makes me anemic. It had only been going on off and on very lightly for a few weeks and I was already feeling exhausted. I had forgotten how draining it was.

One day at work (April 2, to be exact) I was complaining about all of this to a close friend of mine who had also been going to our OB/GYN to try to get her birth control side effects straightened out. After showing her all the bloat I had, she asked if I'd taken a pregnancy test. It was that bad. I scoffed at her, and was like "Thanks for the vote of confidence." The fact that it looked that bad convinced me that I should probably call the doctor, even though I was pretty against going back on the pill and I was afraid that was all he could offer me. He comment niggled at me all day, and I finally decided I'd pee on a stick when I got home just to rule it out and to be able to have more info for the doctor. Also, the more I thought about it, the more things felt vaguely familiar.

It was positive.

I was still spotting.

I called the doctor, and said that I assumed my last cycle was Feb 20. They said there was no reason for me to see the doctor until I was 10 weeks along, and I asked them to have the nurse call me because I was spotting. The nurse called and told me not to worry about it unless it was bright red. I kept spotting off and on, and I kept calling the nurse and she kept telling me not to worry unless it was bright red. During the week after I first called the doctor, I got a blood draw for the pregnancy hormone, which she said was "good" and two progesterone checks which were also good. I got the numbers on them, because I had to be supplemented with Dora and wanted to be sure that wasn't what was causing the spotting, but I just accepted her "good" on the hcg number. Very unlike me, but my brain still wasn't working very well.

The spotting tapered off, my husband got cut off, and I waded through the days until my appointment. I was getting so big that at around what I thought was 8 weeks I had to dig out my maternity pants and tell my boss what was going on. My husband was teasing me about twins, and finally my mom says "You know, I asked you if you were pregnant in February and you laughed at me." My husband also decided it was a great idea to tell the whole town. I was not ready for that. By the time my appointment rolled around on April 24th, I was praying that I was 13+ weeks along rather than 9+, because if this was twins I was going to have a heart attack and the belly was BIG. It had to be one or the other, surely.

The doctor said my uterus was consistent with a 13 week pregnancy, and that 4 days of spotting in February does not a period make. We heard the heartbeat. The heartbeat. The beautiful, beautiful heartbeat.

I am pregnant.

16 weeks. I only had one true period after my cycles returned.

You are caught up.

I am astounded, I am grateful, I am scared, I am flabbergasted, I am confused, but most of all I am pregnant.

February 8 and 9 Sean and I went skiing. I didn't offer the boob when I got back, and Dora didn't ask, so there you go. Of course, she's been sick since then. I think we're pretty lucky that she wasn't on any antibiotics until she was 14 months old, but unfortunately she inherited the gene from the women in my family whose bodies decide that if anything funny is going on, like say antibiotics, or snot, or OH look that cloud is shaped funny, then it's time to be constipated. Poor girl. I have to say that I have never been so glad of seeing the last medicine in a bottle gone. It was WAY worse than the double ear infection.

Speaking of skiing (weren't we?), I am an old, old, decrepit woman. And out of shape. That is all.

In the realm of tmi, I offer the following: I had a period on January 21st (very heavy) and another on February 22 (very light). For those of you playing along at home, that is exactly one normal cycle. Or, well, you know, normal-ish. Odd. Very odd. So I guess we are entering into the realm of BabyWatch 2.0 (henceforth known as BW2.0). You'd probably be well-advised to tune out now. Things could get stupid.

The Dora update is that besides being sick and constipated for most of February, she is delightful. Picking up new words and new games at a rate faster than I can count. She pretended she was nursing this morning. She pretends to 'drink' out of toys that kinda resemble cups. She tries to fool us into believing she has 'kat-sis' (glasses). Also? The cuteness is kryptonite. Resistance is futile. Maybe I will get off my ass and post a picture to prove it, but don't hold your breath.