Quote of the Day.

Our conversation before David and I went looking at baby things today:

Me: So, is there anything that you don’t want our baby to have?

David: Um… scraped knees and heart break.

Very cute, but I am not sure that he understood the question.

15 weeks

How far along? 15 weeks

Updates on baby:  Baby H. is now the size of an apple! About 4 inches from head to rump. Its legs are starting to get longer than its arms, and even though the eyes are still closed it can sense light. Today when we heard the heartbeat at the doctor’s office it was definitely slower than 4 weeks ago because baby is so much bigger now.

Total weight gained?  -2 :(  But I swear, after I lost those 12 pounds initially I must have gained the 10 back all in my belly because it is official… I am pudgy in my middle!

Maternity Clothes? Nope. I still wear my belly band when I want to wear a pair of pants or shorts that hits me closer to my waist. However, for hip-hugger bottoms I am still completely comfortable. Also, I have realized since getting pregnant that a lot of shirts that I owned before were kind of made to fit a baby bump. I am currently self conscious about my growing waist and belly which don’t look much like a cute bump but instead like I have been eating too many doughnuts. But I try to wear some of my tighter shirts sometimes too, because I know I won’t be getting much wear out of them soon. 

Sleep?  I am still sleeping well and I notice that I sleep really great when I exercise, so that is definitely more motivation to get moving. I am also trying to rest for about an hour when I get home from work because I am always so fatigued after a full day of math research :)

Eating: Eating continues to be a bit annoying for me. I just want to love food again and I am not back to that point yet. I mostly snack throughout the day on little things and because of this I never feel completely satisfied after I eat, nor do I ever feel really hungry. Even though the second trimester is supposed to bring a decrease to nausea, I got sick twice this week in the morning. I am going to try to wean myself from Zofran starting next week, but I really don’t want to go back to intense nausea like I had before.

Exercise: I walked 3 miles last night and I plan on taking another long walk tonight. It feels WONDERFUL to walk. I have also decided to use my first pay check of the summer to purchase some hand weights. With having a full-time job this summer I have simply not made myself go to the gym. It is too pretty outside! And I don’t like driving to campus and walking to the gym in the dark. So, if I get weights I think I will be much more likely to keep up my strength exercises in the comfort of my own home after it gets dark and while I watch horribly addictive summer shows such as The Bachelorette and So You Think You Can Dance :)

Movement? Not yet.. I really can’t wait.

Food cravings? Just ate half a cantaloupe. Seriously, it is all I want. If you want to buy me a present, just bring me a melon.

Food aversions? Meat is so much harder for me to eat lately but nothing really grosses me out terribly. I just feel blah about most foods.

What I miss: I really, really miss having a real appetite and eating like I used to. I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed food and the experience of having a real meal until now. I just feel so picky and indifferent toward cooking and eating which is a big bummer.

What I am looking forward to:  I think that this weekend David and I are going to take a trip out to Babies R Us to do some pre-registering browsing. We want to get some ideas of what we want and don’t want before we are handed that all-too-powerful registry gun. So if there are any mommies out there who have things they love (or they hate), please let me know!

And here is a photo of the delicious dinner that David made for me tonight! He is amazing.. Cooking has been difficult for me to stomach lately so he has been cooking for us a lot with my instructions :)

This is a hilariously bad picture of me getting aggravated at him while he was trying to take pictures of my belly. Apparently David knows nothing about taking a picture… we got some really funny angles out of it! But seriousy, he took like 20 before there was a decent one.

l

And that will end the post for tonight. Have a great Friday tomorrow!

Here are a few things that I have been up to over the last month or so when I wasn’t posting very much. David and I celebrated our anniversary on May 25th by going out to dinner in NKY, and we also went to Belterra Resort on a gift certificate that my parents got us. On a beautiful weekend in June after I had started my Zofran we went camping at Red River Gorge with our Life Group and it was awesome. Anyways… we did a lot but apparently I need to get better about documenting these things :)

14 Weeks!

This past Thursday marked the beginning of my 14th week which means the beginning of my second trimester. It is sooo crazy to think that I am already a 3rd of the way through! Most of the time I will try to do these updates on Thursdays, but last week I started doing research for 9 hours every day, so I was tired to say the least.

Here goes the update!

How far along? 14 weeks

Updates on baby: Baby is the size of a lemon this week! That sounds so big to me. Its face is forming lots of different expressions and he can grasp with its hands and maybe even suck its thumb. Baby is even starting to grow hair everywhere.

Total weight gained? I am still a few pounds under my pre-pregnancy weight as far as I can tell but various scales are always different. However, I feel bigger each day.

Maternity Clothes? Not officially, but today I wore my Bella Band for the first time with my skinny jeans. In case you don’t know, a Bella Band is just this tube-top shaped piece of spandex that goes over jeans that you may no longer be able to button and holds them up as well as provides some support for your belly. You can look at one here. Although I didn’t quite need it yet it is definitely becoming less comfortable to wear anything tight around my waist so I just thought I would try it. I loved it! I mean, if you have an excuse to wear an elastic waist, why not?

Sleep? I am sleeping well and I actually can’t get enough of it lately. Even though fatigue is supposed to get better in the second trimester I have definitely been more tired lately. I bet a lot of it has to do with starting to work full time but I think if I let myself I would sleep at least 9 hours a night and take an hour nap each day.

Eating: I am still not close to eating normally, but I am trying to continue to broaden the range of what I eat. Mostly I am annoyingly picky. Packing lunch for work has become difficult because it used to be that I could pack something the night before and just eat it the next day. But now, what I pack in the morning may sound gross to me by noon. One adjustment that David and I have had to make is some more room in our budget for me to eat the things that sound good when I am hungry. My body is just less predictable in short, and it is hard to get used to.

Exercise: I walk every day but I wasn’t as good this past week about incorporating weight lifting into my new full-time job schedule. I hope to get a routine down this week. 

Movement? Not yet. But I have been having various stomach pains and little cramps. Nothing to be nervous about from what I have heard from other people but I will definitely be asking the doctor about it at my appointment on Thursday.

Food cravings? Cantaloupe! I eat it all the time and in kind of large amounts. Everyone says I am lucky to be craving fruit, but I am afraid of what will happen when melon is no longer $2.50 at Kroger.

Food aversions? I still haven’t eaten any yogurt, but I just got a few at the store tonight to try. I can’t cook chicken.. YUCK!

What I miss: Staying up past 9:30 at night… seriously, every evening I crash at about 8:30 or 9 every night. I have to lay down and chill out or I start to feel sick and get chills. I think my body just gets really tired by the end of the day but I feel very lame going to bed before 10 most nights. I guess I should get used to it though :)

What I am looking forward to: My 15 week appointment this Thursday! David and I get to meet my doctor finally and it is just always so fun to hear the heartbeat and see the little bean (or I guess lemon) moving around in there.

That is all for now… in a few days I will give you another update. By the way, I figured out how to use tags. So, here is how it works. At the bottom of this post there are words: pregnancy and weekly updates. If you click on weekly updates, for example, it will take you to all of the other weekly update posts. I will start to use these more often because they are pretty awesome.

Have a wonderful Monday night!

Detail #3: How I have been feeling

Being pregnant has clearly affected my body in countless ways. The simple truth is that my body is no longer my own… I am sharing it now with my future child. Which is pretty amazing. In general, growing a new person inside of your body is awesome! Thinking about it usually leaves me awe-struck and I am so thankful for this experience.

However,

I can only sincerely type these words now because I have been medicated with anti-nausea meds for about 4 weeks. If you were around me 5-6 weeks ago you know that I was playing a little bit different of a tune.

So here is the story:

For a week after we found out that I was pregnant I felt fine. I had some headaches and sometimes felt dizzy, but I worked out and ate completely normally. I bought and borrowed baby books and registered to the BabyCenter website. I was super pumped about taking really, really good care of my body during the time that I was pregnant. I wanted to keep up my exercise routine and eat right all the time. I read and researched; I made a diet that I promised myself to stick to; I just figured that if I am entrusted with this life inside me I am going to do my best to take care of it right from the start.

Then, at 6 weeks, the nausea started. It hit me on a Saturday right after I worked out with my sister. I felt like I needed to lay down, so I did. And I didn’t get up until that night when I transferred myself to bed. Now, some people will talk about morning sickness like they are nauseous for spurts throughout the day. Or they will describe how they puke a couple of times each day, but then feel fine. I am sure that these experiences are not fun… but what I felt was constant, intense nausea. At any second I felt like I was going to get sick. I had absolutely no appetite. I gagged at any strong smell, including my own deodorant (I am still wearing unscented). For the first couple weeks of nausea, which were also the last two weeks of school, I tried my best to get up in the mornings and make it to class. Most days I got sick at least once and I rarely ate anything except for Goldfish and Sprite. I had gracious people in the Math department sub all of my classes because I had no energy to teach. I felt helpless and miserable every day… it was a really, really low point.

During this time I felt so overwhelmed by the fact that I had no control over my body at all. And that I would have to endure 40 weeks of it! Or even just one more day. I know it sounds dramatic, but most nights I would cry to David in bed because I just didn’t want to go to sleep knowing that I would wake up the next day, having to face the nausea and vomiting again. I also felt guilt. Guilt that I was a wimp… because I had heard others talk about morning sickness and a loss of appetite, but I was literally debilitated and I thought it was my fault. Mostly I felt guilt that I wasn’t taking care of the baby inside of me. Clearly it isn’t getting all of its vitamins from Goldfish! I stopped reading any books or websites because all of them just amplified this guilt and shame and just made me feel like I was being a bad mom already.

After school was over I thought that I could just get some rest and get better. But it just got worse. This was when the vomiting intensified. I couldn’t keep down my prenatal vitamin, coke, water, anything. Within these two weeks at points my appetite would increase, but then as soon as I ate anything my body would reject it. I struggled with feeling angry toward my own body and just really frustrated. I thought I would figure it out for a bit… like if I don’t eat anything in the morning but instead suck on a peppermint I can get myself up and somewhat ready for the day without getting sick. This worked for about 3 days, and then it didn’t work anymore. My WONDERFUL husband was literally bathing me and helping me to get dressed each day because I was so, so weak. And on top of everything I was attempting to study for my prelims, the huge exams that I had to take in the beginning of June.

Then on May 19th I got a wake up call and a glimmer of hope. The Wednesday before May 19th I had thrown up 8 times. My body had kept nothing inside of it. I felt awful! On Thursday morning David came into the bedroom to help me sit up before he carried me into the living room. This was our morning routine… pretty pitiful. When I sat up I blacked out completely and got all hot and dizzy. So David called the doctor and they said I needed to go to the hospital. I looked and felt so gross, but we immediately got in the car and drove to the UK hospital where we checked into triage. The nurses quickly took a blood test and got an IV in my arm. Within 30 minutes I felt like a different person. We stayed there all day, getting the IV and repeating the blood test which wasn’t normal at first, but once I had fluids looked great. We got to see our baby again and hear the heartbeat and I was reassured that baby was perfectly healthy and wonderful! I know it sounds bad, but it really helped me when the doctors called it a big parasite. They assured me that it was taking everything that it needed from me and that while I was feeling terrible, it was doing just great.

Along with the IV they pumped some Zofran into me, the anti-nausea medicine that I have been taking since then. THANK THE LORD FOR ZOFRAN… seriously. Ever since it has been in my system I haven’t gotten sick once. However, I still had a road of recovery ahead of me. The doctor at the hospital warned me that my digestive system would be messed up for a while since I hadn’t really eaten for a month, so he suggested that I re-introduce foods very slowly. The weekend following my trip to the hospital we decided to go to NKY for a change of scenery and to give David a break from the intense care he had been giving me. This was such a hard weekend because as soon as my nausea lifted I was SO HUNGRY. I have never been this hungry in my life. I wanted everything… steak, salad, milkshakes, fruit, pasta, cheese. I wanted to eat everything in sight but I knew that it would just backfire if I did. So instead I ate toast and bananas.. for 4 days. You may think I am exaggerating, but I am not. That is all that I ate. One time I had some Cheezits and they hurt my stomach; as in I could feel them being digested for 5 hours. I had to lay down it was so painful. After eating like a sick person for a few days I got my appetite under control a little bit more and started adding certain things back into my diet. Some chicken here, some pasta there. And eventually I could eat normally again.

So here I am, at almost 14 weeks and if you ask me how I am feeling I will tell you that I am WONDERFUL! Because, those 4 weeks of feeling awful definitely gave me perspective. Yes, I still feel nauseous sometimes; no, I can’t eat how I used to; yes, I am still under my pre-pregnancy weight because my appetite hasn’t completely come back; no, my digestive system still has not returned to normal. However, “normal” is now very relative. Because who knows if my pre-pregnancy “normal” will ever be normal for me again. My body is no longer my own and I know that it will most likely never be the same. Babies do crazy things to you! But I have been told and I very much believe that it is all worth it.

Thus, I will end with some little pieces of advice so that if you are pregnant, or if you ever do get pregnant and you are feeling sick and like no one understands you can read this and remember that you are not alone. Because that was the overwhelming feeling that I kept having during my month of being debilitating-ly sick.

1. You are not alone… for real. Your husband won’t understand because he isn’t pregnant and your friends may not be as sick as you. But someone, somewhere out there feels worse than you. So try to stay positive.

2. You are not a wimp, nor are you a bad mommy. Your body knows what it is doing, and while being healthy during pregnancy is important, many things in the beginning are completely out of your control. As long as you are a healthy person to begin with you really don’t have much that you can do to hurt or help the pregnancy.

3. Along those same lines, don’t stress about your prenatal vitamin. You should try to take one, but if they just make you sick, try to switch and see if there is another one out there that is better for you. You should of course talk to your doctor first because they know best. When I was stressing about not being able to keep my vitamin down my doctor told me to get a chewable flinstone vitamin. No joke! So I did, and some days I take that and other day I take a chewable prenatal vitamin without iron in it.

4. Ask your friends and family for help. You won’t be able to go through this whole journey alone, so stop trying to be independent already! If you are like me, you may feel weak when you need other people but that is just silly. You will most definitely need those around you who love you when you are pregnant.

I think that is all for now. Sorry about the ridiculously long post… but so far this has been the hardest part of my journey by far. I hope that someone out there can relate with my experience and that it can help encourage someone who is struggling also.

More details to come… and some non-baby posts soon!

Detail #2: Due Date

I am due December 15th! I am super excited to have a baby in the winter and around Christmas-time although many people tell me that we will have to be careful that the kid doesn’t feel cheated of a birthday every year. We hope that our baby decides to come right around the due date… in fact we are praying for December 17th, the Saturday after finals week is over. If you would like to join us in this prayer it would be much appreciated :) We also hope that I am not much later since we both will have to start our spring semester of school in mid January.

I am currently 13 weeks pregnant. Only 1 more week left in my first trimester! If you didn’t know this before, pregnancy is actually tracked in weeks rather than months. So on average women are pregnant for 40 weeks, not for 9 months.  Now for the belly pics :)

This was taken two-ish weeks after I found out.


And here is 13 weeks:


You may not be able to see a difference, but I feel a lot bigger. In fact I bought a couple tankini tops yesterday for the summer (they were only 4 bucks). I can’t wait to actually show, but I know that will come soon enough.

Here is a little week by week pregnancy survey that I found so I will use these as a guide to keep you updated on my journey through this special time.

How far along? 13 weeks


Updates on baby: (Thank you BabyCenter for this)

Fingerprints have formed on your baby’s tiny fingertips, her veins and organs are clearly visible through her still-thin skin, and her body is starting to catch up with her head — which makes up just a third of her body size now. If you’re having a girl, she now has more than 2 million eggs in her ovaries. Your baby is almost 3 inches long (the size of a medium shrimp) and weighs nearly an ounce.

Total weight gained? I am down 5 pounds… check out my next post, Detail #3.


Maternity Clothes? No, not unless you count the tankini tops. Most of my pants are actually big right now because of my weight loss, but if I wear some of my tighter tanks I feel self conscious. I really don’t think I will need maternity clothes for a while. I just hope to get a cute baby bump in my summer dresses soon :)


Sleep?  I slept great for the first 12 weeks, as in about 9-10 hours a night great. But now I am having a little more trouble. I got up at 5:45 this morning just because I couldn’t get comfortable and because I was hungry. More on that below.

Eating? After experiencing a lot of nausea at first I am back to eating pretty normally, however I have to eat ALL THE TIME. Seriously… like every 2 1/2 hours. I never feel slight hunger; I am either not hungry or I must eat right that second. So I just kind of make myself eat small meals/snacks really often so that I never feel nauseous or too weak. My favorite things to eat lately are fruit, granola bars, crackers and anything cold and fruity. I still struggle to eat yogurt and cheese, two staples in my pre-pregnancy diet.

Exercise: I started lifted weights again for the first time this week and it is going pretty well. I had to lower my weight on shoulders because I don’t want to strain my back at all and I had to do fewer reps on biceps. I didn’t use any weight on my lunges for this week because I wasn’t able to exercise for a while with being sick, but I think I will add some weight in starting next week. Abs are definitely harder but I have been trying to do some every day to keep my muscles strong! For cardio I just try to walk a lot!

Labor Signs?  No way… this question will not be included for a while :)

Movement? Not yet. I probably won’t feel baby move for another month or two. I am so looking forward to it!


Food cravings? Ice cold things… coke, lemonade, icees, popscicles. I just want it cold.


Food aversions? Like I said above, yogurt is a big one.


What I miss: Deli meat sandwiches!! And sleeping without having to wake up for bathroom breaks. Also, I miss being low maintenance. Before I was pregnant I feel like I was a pretty laid back person as far as my preferences go. Now preferences have turned into needs which I really don’t like. For instance: now I don’t just prefer to not take the garbage out; I gag when I try. I don’t just prefer to not cook chicken; I get nauseous just looking at raw meat. I don’t just prefer to have ice in my beverages; I can’t swallow luke warm water. I am not just kind of hungry; I am hungry right at this instant and if I don’t eat something in the next 15 minuets I will pass out. I feel ridiculous most of the time and very out of control when it comes to my body. But every knows that pregnant women are just high maintenance and everyone has been so understanding thus far.

What I am looking forward to:  L ots of things that probably won’t happen for a while.. I guess the thing I am looking forward to soon is being in the second trimester. Hopefully I will gain back most of my energy soon and maybe just maybe I will be able to stop taking my anti-nausea prescription.

That is all for now, friends! Keep checking back on Thursdays for more updates.

Detail #1: That little plus sign

David and I found out about the tiny baby growing in my belly on a Friday afternoon, April 15th. I know… tax day. To make a long and very TMI-ish story short, we had our suspicions for a few days and on Friday after class I walked down three flights of stairs from class and then up 7 flights to my office. I do this about every day, but that day when I got to the 7th floor I felt like I was going to die. I was hot, dizzy, nauseous and I knew right then and there that I was pregnant. I texted my husband and in between leaving school and driving up to Northern Kentucky for a weekend with family we stopped by Kroger to pick up a test.

A plus sign! A plus sign??? WHAT!?!?!

I was never, ever prepared to know that I was pregnant. I had always told myself that it would be fine no matter what, that the moment is a joyous one, and I really thought that all I would feel in the moment that I found out was happiness. Nope. This was the first of hundreds of things that I was wrong about. I started crying, and crying. My husband came and looked at the test and held me. I kept asking, “What are we going to do?” and he would answer, “We are going to have a baby.”

After David’s reassurances to my questions of, “How are we going to graduate?”, “How did this happen?” and “How in the world am I going to survive childbirth??” I finally calmed down. As I am sure is clear by these reactions, we were very shocked that I was pregnant. Believe it or not it was not our master plan to have a baby while both of us finished up intensive graduate programs. But sometimes it happens. And we very much both believe that it didn’t just happen, but that the Lord meant for it to be this way. He has a perfect plan and once I finally chilled out and we realized that He will provide for us and our baby we were so happy.

It was perfect because as I said we were already planning a trip to NKY to see all of our family. So I told my sister first, of course, and she screamed and cried and jumped up and down and hugged me. I love her. I told my mom the next morning in the car and she was so excited and was full of words of comfort and wisdom. The Saturday after we found out, April 16th, was my brother’s 9th birthday so after a day of burgers, laser tag and Wii we all sat down for some chocolate cupcakes and ice cream. I told Josh that we had one more birthday surprise for him and asked him how he felt about being an uncle at 9 years old. He looked curiously at me as my dad’s eyes got wide. My dad turned to my mom and asked, “What?” then to me, repeating the question. I told him the news and he just kept saying, “Well, isn’t that something.” After a few minutes he said his congratulations and then asked, “How old will you be when the baby is born?” We answered that we would be 24 and he shrugged and said, “I guess we had two by then.” Such a great memory!

We shared the news with David’s family and got more excited and emotion-filled hugs. Our families are SO wonderful and supportive. We are truly blessed. It was so hard for me to keep the news in for long. We told close friends after a couple weeks and then after a few more called grandparents and such. And now the news is out!

In some ways the day that I first saw that positive test seems years away and in other ways I still can’t believe that there is a tiny human resting in my womb right now as I type.

Some big news...

So I know that I haven’t been writing much… or at all lately. It isn’t because I have been too busy, or because I have forgotten about my blog. It is because I have been keeping a secret and I didn’t trust my self for one second to try writing about my life without blurting the news out. If you haven’t heard it from me, or figured it out yet… our big news is

we are having a baby!!

I know… it is crazy. We were so surprised, maybe I should say shocked, but we are really excited and happy now! There are so many things I have to write about and tell you, but if I just started rambling all the details now this post would become much, much too long. So instead I will leave you with the news and make you check back soon.