It's the Weekend!

It's finally the weekend! Today I went to Des Moines for Part 2 of a 2 part training and thankfully B was good to me today and I didn't feel too nauseus and the fatigue was not too bad after about 10am. The fatigue is not going to stay away for long...I can feel it. Since my symptoms were somewhat decreased today, paranoid me took yet another pregnancy test just to make sure everything was still in working order. The paranoia was without cause as the "pregnancy" line was again very dark and showed up faster than the control line. I think we're good. ;-) Only 5 more days until our ultrasound! Yesterday and today the baby was CRAVING veggies...and still is today. Specifically cucumbers peeled, sliced, and with a little salt on like when I was growing up - just right. At least the baby is craving something healthy. I talked to a woman today who said her sister craved and ate mcflurries every other day and gained 85lbs (and then lost it) when she got pregnant. No way!! My goal is to (remember - I'm tall) stay under 175ish lbs. That allows for MUCH room to gain a healthy amount of weight for the baby and not become a humungous fatty. I'll do whatever is necessary to keep me and the baby healthy...but not gain a ton of weight. Unfortunately, I started this pregnancy about 6lbs over what I normally like to be at so now that I've gained about 2 'baby' lbs, my jeans are starting to get pretty tight. I told Adam tomorrow that I need to invest in some pants. I am not going to buy maternity pants, but instead I'm going to buy "fat jeans" and "fat work pants" since I am not supposed to really start gaining much for another couple of months yet.

We are intermittently discussing how we're going to tell our parents. At this time next week, Adam's parents will know! We cannot WAIT to see the look on their faces. Some of our ideas include a framed picture of the ultrasound....a onsie with gma/gpa on it....or something along those lines. It's going to be the best weekend. Tomorrow we are going to a liquidation sale in Rock Island where they have leather products and electronics on SUPER sale. We hope to find a good video camera since we'll soon be having lots to record! (NOT the birth, however.) ;-)

Well, I suppose we should get back to our easy, relaxing night in front of the TV and hoping that the bean and ham soup I had for dinner didn't upset the baby...I might lose that one...might not have been my best idea ever. More soon!

Distended Belly

Today's symptom - sore, distended belly. Oh, and all the others too, which now includes morning (and almost all day depending) nausea...fun. I think it's just a bunch of extra gas in there b/c everything else is fine. Tomorrow's belly pic is going to make me look several weeks ahead of where I'm at if I don't figure out how to get some of this air out.

On a brighter note, my friend Abbie had her baby girl, Cammie, last night just before 2am. Sounds like she did great but she's tough. I can't wait to go visit them!

Adam's done with his run of 12-hour days as of tonight. He's going to be running errands and catching up on sleep, house/husband stuff, and puppy time in the next few days.

Less than one week until the ultrasound! Woop woop!

More soon...that fatigue symptom is killer. Never would have thought...

One down, two to go!

My friend Abbie (the first of 3/4 pregnant SLP friends - me included - at the AEA) went into labor today! Her water is officially broken and Cammie should be with us shortly!

After getting some great rest this weekend, I was relatively tuckered out Monday night from a day at work and then a 25' easy bike ride at the Y. I was pretty pleased that the more exercise I try, the more confident I get that I am NOT becoming lightheaded like I did in the beginning when this baby thing all started. I tried to take the girls/dogs for a walk tonight but Jessie's not trained and Maddie's a bit off her game so it ended up being quite frustrating - but my body held up well. Isn't that sad that I am excited that my body tolerated a WALK? I'm going to continue to up the anti until I'm able to walk and use the ellipticals the way I want to.

Last night was very interesting. I went to sleep fine but woke up to a scary dream involving Adam and I and the baby at a huge family get together - of which none of the people looked like any of our family. One of the young adolescent kids got hurt which scared the daylights out of me b/c it made it more real that our baby could get hurt (when s/he is actually here, not in utero)...not something that's been the least bit real to me until now. Here's the fun part - the baby was a GIRL. Interesting, huh? Adam and I first and foremost want a healthy child. However, if we were given the option to choose, we'd probably pick a boy this time around. We'd be just as happy with a girl - like I said, healthy first and foremost. I've taken some online guesstimates and one told me that for how old I when the baby was conceived it would be a boy, but for my current age, a girl. A friend did one and we'll have a boy, but it said that my friend Abbie would have a boy and she's having a little girl today/tomorrow. So anyway, back to my dreams. I kept waking up from dream after dream about this little girl who just so happened to look quite like my little sister when she was a baby. I was 10/11 when my sister was born so I remember what she looks like quite vividly. We shall see. It was just weird to have so many dreams one after the other of this little person. Adam has renamed him/her "B." Reason - sometimes we call each other 'T' which stands for tutz (sp?) so he thought it was appropriate that we should call him/her 'B,' being short for baby. It stuck. Our last name was baby bear but I didn't like it anymore.

Alright. The 9pm hour has hit and I'm tuckered out. Adam's at volleyball. I don't miss it yet. I am currently at home with a "sore back" according to my teammates. Next week I'm going to have to say the same thing or figure out another good one. After that, we'll tell our parents when we go home and then we'll let the cat outta the bag here in Muscatine. Good night!

Smaller meals next time...

I learned a new lesson today that you think I would have learned by this time in my life, but now that I'm pregnant, it seems to be more apparent that I need to remember what I have learned in the past from this lesson. My stomach and the baby cannot handle giant meals. Nope. It doesn't go over well. It doesn't cause me to physically become sick, but the after-effects result in a very sore, distended stomach. I would like to blame it on the baby...but it's just me and my own darn fault. Smaller meals next time!

This weekend was long, boring, and just right. As I stated in a previous post, I was pretty wrecked after a long week last week, so after sleeping in both Saturday and Sunday and overall just takin' it easy, I have more energy (maybe not immediately this morning) overall today. Feels much better. Adam worked 12-hour shifts all weekend so he was pretty tired when he got home both nights. I put on my "Betty Crocker" hat and made beef stew (for the first time - it was awesome! Adam called me from work today just to tell me how much he liked it), pizza (ok, I cheated, it was from papa murphys), and spagetti with peppers and sausage. The great thing is now we have lots of leftovers to get us through nights when we're too tired to think this week. Adam's last day of 12s is Wednesday and he's really looking forward to a few days off.

Our ultrasound is officially (not counting today) 9 days away. We are both so excited and pleased that it's finally under 2 weeks...My friend from work, Abbie, is just about ready to have her little girl any day now. I wouldn't be surprised if it was within the next 48 hours (although I'm sure she's hoping for sooner). There are 4 of us SLPs at the AEA who keep in close touch and 3 of us are currently pregnant. Must be something in the paperwork...Sara (preggers SLP #2), got pregnant about half way through Abbie's pregnancy...I got pregnant about half way through Sara's...now Denise (who's not preggers) should be getting in on the action in a few months if she's to keep up the tradition. I don't think that will happen since they're not trying (who knows!) but it's fun to think of it as an "epidemic."

More soon. Tonight Adam wanted to go out for dinner so we're going back to Applebee's (we're gluttons for punishment) and hope we don't find any screws in our food like Adam did last time. Oh well - nobody got hurt and that incident will pay for tonight's dinner. :-)

Slideshow issues

By the way - I have tried and tried and the slideshow on the right side of the blog keeps playing backwards. No matter what I do, I can't get it to play the right way. I've tried reversing it, downloading the pics differently, and nothing is working. So just know that you're watching it in reverse order. :-)

An emotional week

I have the "worst" and best husband in the world. Let me explain.

By Thursday of this past week, I was ready to be in bed by 5pm every day because this baby is making me SO tired. I am frustrated by this because I've always been in relative control of my body and emotions (although Adam may disagree on the latter of the two) and now that someone else is in control of both, it's a hard pill to swallow. Needless to say, I did not go to bed at 5pm as I had hoped any of those nights. Thursday night, Adam and I were watching TV (Grey's anatomy and then Private Practice) which both (of course) had all sorts of sad baby/mommy stories on them. Well, after crying/sniveling every so often about the shows, Adam tried to lighten the mood with a little joke about my symptoms and fatigue. On any other day I would have laughed and told him was a goon...but on this particular sleep-deprived day, all I heard was, "Your symptoms are fake." (keep in mind - this is not at ALL what he said or meant, but I can be a little irrational at the moment...) He went on with his business of playing with the dogs. I lost it and started bawling. And bawling. And bawling! What was wrong with me?!!? Gotta love hormones. Adam finally saw that I was crying and came running over looking at me like he had just broken me as though I were made of glass. Then I cried even harder b/c I didn't want to be crying about anything and I was a mess...needless to say after I had calmed down, Adam suggested we head up to bed - smart guy. Here's where he begins to turn into best husband ever.

Adam is currently working 7 days straight of 12-hr shifts for work. This means he needs to be out of the house by 6:05am which usually means he gets up slightly before then, brushes his teeth, and runs out the door. Well, today (Saturday) he got up a little early and fed and let the dogs out for me so I could sleep in as late as I needed to. What a great husband!! I love him more today than I ever have, I think. He will look at me funny for saying that, but the gesture was so greatly appreciated and I got 10.5 hours of much-needed sleep! Now I can be productive all day and hopefully get some reports done for work since getting them done during the work day is an impossible task at the moment (non-preg related things). I love my husband! He doesn't know it yet, but I AM going to get him pizza for dinner tonight like he wanted...

I almost crawled under my desk to sleep today

Hi. This one's going to be short b/c as some of you may know, fatigue is a common symptom of early pregnancy and I have it something FIERCE today. I was thisclose to crawling under my desk for a 2-hour long power nap today. I had lots of kids at work (it was a birth-3 day so I was in their homes) which didn't help. I was in my pjs by 6pm and under a blanket for the rest of the night. My knees hurt real bad today too and I'm not even carrying around any extra weight yet. Odd. As I am very absentminded from fatigue, I will end this one early and pray my brain cells don't all go to the baby - momma needs some left over for herself! :-)

Dizzy Momma

So today I had the day off of work, so after going in to work for a few hours to catch up on some reports (of course), I went to the Y as exercise is highly recommended due to the extra weight I'll be carrying around and this fun thing called childbirth. So anyway, I went on the treadmill to do some walking (-2.0 to 2.0 in/declines at around 3.8-4.0 to try to keep my heart rate around 120 as I read somewhere that it's a good target rate) for 40 minutes and felt great the whole time. The second I got off the treadmill I became really dizzy. I made sure I was ok and then wiped down my machine...but continued to feel various forms of dizzy for the next 10 minutes or so. When I got home, I posted a note on babycenter.com (such a helpful site) and found out I have already made lots of new blood to share with the baby and that my body was probably having a hard time adjusting to all the new body stuff. Another woman thought I might have just overdone it which is a hard pill to swallow b/c for me, overdoing it means I strain a muscle or put myself out of commission somehow. So it finally subsided so that was good. Then I got a big craving for cheetos (thank goodness we had some in the house) and ate almost a 1/3 of the bag. Woops. Then I started to get some minor cramping in my gut later tonight which (according to my fellow mommys-to-be) is pretty normal as long as it's not accompanied by anthing bad...which it's not. I'm guessing it's baby bear's way of saying "mom, lay off for now. I'm trying to be a sticky bean and hang on tight." I guess that answered my question about volleyball...all done! The nurse said I could continue as long as I didn't take any gut shots and didn't dive...but I'm just going to play it safe and be done.

Adam and I went to Younkers tonight b/c he needed jeans and I found the cutest onsies ever that said "I love..." mommy, daddy, and grandma. We're still trying to find fun ways to tell our parents/family, so that onsie is definitely a contender. I'm really hoping to find a "grandma's brag book" or the cutest onsies ever that say something about g-ma or g-pa on it. We shall see. More tomorrow! ~Liss

While walking through Younkers Melissa of course went to the baby clothes isle, and holy crap, those things are small. I cant believe that something that small is going to make that nuch noise! Liss has been pretty good so far, she just gets in these laughing fits where she wont breath so she ends up crying. I guess if that is the worst thing that happends during this thing it will be ok. ~Adam

Another symptom

Today I got to add another symptom to my list of preggers symptoms. Heartburn. Woo hoo! Most other people might think that the symptoms I'm having are awful, but first of all, they are not severe by any means and secondly, they make me feel like I'm pregnant since I have no other way of knowing other than taking a pregnancy test everyday. I bought a journal today so that I can write to the baby until s/he is born. I thought it might be something fun for him/her to have later on. Earlier today I had lots of energy and then sat down...and promptly fell asleep. I don't usually take naps so this 'nap thing' is new for me - and I like it. :-) More soon. It's time to relax. ~Liss

Adam was going to write something but chickened out. He wanted to write about his first baby dream last night. It involved our little "boy" playing on our (not yet existant) jungle gym. He is also trying to plan out a baseball field on our yard but isn't sure how it's going to work due to the several random hills we have around the property. He's decided we might have to move. I'm ok here. Hmm...

It was positive! Three times!

Greetings to our blog! We started it because we just found out on 02/12/09 we are 5 weeks 2 days pregnant with our first child! How exciting! It's a mixture of pure joy, excitement, and a little fear all put together in one happy bunch. I am feeling pretty good with my biggest symptom right now being fatigue. Let's hope it stays that way and I don't start to get sick...even though it would be worth it in the end. Today we are going to the Quad Cities to do some "baby window shopping" since we haven't really allowed ourselves to do any sort of looking until we had a reason to. Now that we do, off we go! Our first ultrasound is March 4th...we should be able to see the heartbeat then. Can't wait to see the little bean-sized tiny one!