I Hear You! (Weeks 15-16)

Today our little bean is the size of an avocado. They say that all of the organs and body pieces are formed they are just growing stronger and larger now. I also read that our little one can hear me now. It probably sounds like I am deep in a water well but that hasn't stopped me from leaning over and talking to my stomach like a loon.

It's been a very stressful past two weeks at work. I've had a couple of large projects that have kept me at work late and often very tense throughout the day. I have to catch myself in one of these moments and realize that my tension is probably making the baby tense too. I have to consciously relax my muscles and take a few deep breaths. I then take a second to rub my belly and say "sorry" to my now hearing fetus.

Mike, who is the one who usually informs me of the new growths our baby is encountering has been talking to my belly as well. He'll say his goodbyes to me in the morning before work then lean over rub my stomach and say goodbye to our baby too. It makes me smile just thinking about this.

He is going to be such an amazing father. If he treats this little one as amazing as he treats me it is going to be a blissful baby. I was just thinking back on when I was at my sickest and he would wake up extra early to not only clean the dirty dishes (which made me throw up that one time) but cook me breakfast because he knew it helped the nausea. There was also that one time when it was about 10pm and he came home from a long day out running errands and saw that I was starving and sick as a dog and the only thing on the whole planet that sounded edible was a loaf of whole grain bread. Not that sliced stuff but just a big loaf of bread. He went out right away and brought me back my bread. Now that is true love. I honestly do feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have such an amazing partner.

On a side note our cat Penny who is a bit of a wild child has been acting so strange around me. When I say strange I don't mean that in a bad way. She has actually been showing love and affection towards me! Since I got pregnant she will hop on the bed at night and knead my belly then lay down on my stomach for a good 30 minutes! Keep in mind, this is a cat that will rarely let you pet her on a good day. Maybe our unborn baby is a cat whisperer.

 Oh my gosh! Look at that impressive gut!

The Pop (Weeks 13-14)

It has finally arrived, the belly. The nice potbelly that protrudes from every outfit I own. I always thought I would be ashamed of this stage because I would look more chubby than I would pregnant but I don't feel that way at all. In fact I try to wear clothing that accentuates the bump. I am really proud of this gut!
The only downside I've noticed it that my jeans are SO tight at the waist and I have undo the top button if I want to sit down comfortably. This has left me wearing a lot of yoga pants to work which is okay with me.
This is also the mark of the beginning of the second trimester. I am 1/3 finished with this pregnancy already. I can't help but feel like this is going to go by in a flash. I can't decide if that will be a good thing or not.
I thought it would never happen but I am actually starting to feel like my regular self again (with the exception of the belly). My morning sickness has gone from a 9 to about a 2 and I feel like I can eat normal foods again. No more bland tasteless treats for me! I have more energy and it is SO wonderful. I didn't realize how much I took my body for granted before.
Now that I have more energy and motivation I am going to begin "project hip expansion" if I am going to do this birth natural I am going to do everything that is humanly possibly to make it as quick and painless as possible. I know I'm kidding myself if I think this will be painless so we'll just say as quick as possible. I want to shoot for that 4 hour birth not the 24 hour birth.
What is Project Hip Expansion you ask? It will be routine of yoga two times a week and belly dancing classes. I took belly dancing classes a few years ago and remember my pregnant teacher telling me that because her hips were so loose from belly dancing her labor only lasted a couple of hours. Yup, that is exactly what I want.

The Name Game (Weeks 11-12)

I've always been a big name nerd. Growing up I would create lists in several of my journals of names I really wanted to name my future child. I went hunting through my journals but seeing as I don't have hours to blow digging through all of them (I've written in a journal since 2nd grade) I will list the names I found in only a couple of journals.
Girls                    Boys
Denae                 Pete
Starsle                Guy
Lucy                   Sebastian
Zophia               

Now that it is crunch time all those name went out the window and I am left nameless!
We know if it is a boy we would like to use some of the same letters from Mike's Dad's name Tommy Gerald. So that should be a starting point right? Wrong. There are a lot of names you can make with the letters GTOMMEARYLD.
For girls it was a little easier. We both really like these names:
Ruby
Magnolia
Margaux
Cora
Cora especially feels quite nice. I knew it sounded like a family name too so I called my Mom to confirm. Sure enough, my great grandmothers name is Cora. My mom told me that she is actually still alive in some part of Oklahoma. I asked what kind of a woman she was and found out she was pretty great. My mom said she made amazing minestrone soup and was full blooded Italian.
The next weekend I drove up to Oklahoma. Not to visit Cora but to tell my grandmother our exciting news. Boy was she excited! I told her right after I arrived around 11:30pm. She rushed into her bedroom and shook my Grandpa out of a dead sleep "Wayne! Wayne! guess what!? Brittany's pregnant!" I think he mumbled something about congratulations and went back to sleep. It made me feel so amazing that my grandma was as excited as I was. While I was there I asked more about Cora and the type of person she was. I was told that she taught my grandma how to bake and that she made the best homemade pasta and Italian breads and was absolutely amazing with children. My aunts told me that she was one of there favorite grandmothers. I felt pretty confident in the name after hearing all that.
Three days after my visit to Oklahoma, Cora passed away.
I supposedly had met her when I was an infant but don't ever remember meeting her. I guess now I will never have that opportunity. What a strange event of coincidence.

                 

Hospital vs. Birthing Center (weeks 9-10)

Each morning I would wake up. Lay in bed for an additional 30 minutes debating on what I should eat. Absolutely nothing and I mean NOTHING sounded good. But I knew that once I ate something it was less likely that I would throw up.
Mike being the super hero that he is would make me breakfast almost every morning. Not only that but he would make sure that the dirty dishes in the sink were cleaned up because he knew that was one of my gag triggers.
He also learned quickly not to ask what I wanted for breakfast but to make me something tasteless and bland and I would probably be okay.
There was one morning I was walking down the stairs after finally dragging myself out of bed. I smelled breakfast being cooked and had to rush back up stairs to throw up. What must he have been cooking you ask? Cream of Wheat. Just Cream of Wheat.
I discovered that if I kept snacks at my desk at work and ate them throughout the day I could function just a little better. I couldn't help but feel like all I was doing all day was eating. Well, I would say it was more like force-feeding because everything sounded gross to eat.

Also around this time we were still debating on if we wanted to continue seeing my OBGYN and have the birth at the hospital or if we wanted to have the birth at a birthing center with midwives.
The decision was made to take a tour of both the hospital and the birthing center and see which felt like the right fit.
The first field trip was to the hospital. We were in a tour group with about 20 other people. We were guided to the check-in area, shown the lobby where family would wait, and taken to the delivery room.
Oh the delivery room. It seemed pleasant enough when I first walked in then I began looking around. The bed was tiny and super uncomfortable looking, there were huge spotlights on the ceiling, monitors everywhere and the babies bed (plastic tub) was on the complete other side of the room. The nurse/tour guide said you would be able to walk around and take a shower but when it was time to deliver the baby you MUST deliver it on the tiny uncomfortable bed. No ifs ands or buts.
We finished the tour by going by the nursery and then scoping out the food court.
While keeping an open  mind we decided to do tour number two, the birthing center. When we first walked in I was struck by how comfortable everything was. Over stuffed couch in the waiting room, calm music playing, and everyone had a smile on their face. The first stop our tour guide Megan took us was to the kitchen. Yes, a fully stocked kitchen. She explained that in a hospital they don't allow you eat or drink during labor. Even if your labor is 20 hours long. Yikes! The next stop was a visit to the "birthing rooms". The first room we entered was spacious with a huge bed. There were chairs and a nice large jacuzzi style tub right in the room. The bathroom was also spacious with a huge shower. Now this was a room that I could have a baby in.
My debate was that I had always intended on getting an epidural. If there was an option to allow me to feel no pain, bring it on! But birthing centers are all natural. No epidural.

This is where having a husband who loves to research comes in handy. With a little research about hospital births we came to discover that it's not always as simple as checking in, getting an epidural and having a baby. It can sometimes be much more complicated. With getting an epidural it does numb you to where you can't feel anything but that also slows the birth down which can lead to having to get a Pitocin injection to speed the delivery up. If this fails and the delivery isn't happening as quickly as the doctors would like, you get a c-section or your baby is vacuumed out or delivered with forceps. All of those things freak me out, especially the c-section. I really really don't want to be sliced open.
If having a birth at a birthing center, you can move around as much as you like. You can have your baby on the floor, in the shower, in the tub, and yes, even on the bed if you so choose. You can eat food at any time. You can blare music during if that's what you want. I was kind of liking all of these choices. And if anything were to go wrong, there are two hospitals within a mile of the center.
My mind had been made up. The Austin Area Birthing Center won my vote. It also doesn't hurt that it is about $3000-$4000 less than a hospital birth.

Spilling the Beans (week8)

With just mere hours to go, the anticipation of our first doctors visit was nerve wrecking and exciting.
I was finally 8 weeks along and our little embryo was the size of a kidney bean.
I wasn't really sure what to expect at the first doctors visit but I knew it would take about an hour. When we arrived I filled out the usual forms, got my blood drawn, and waited pant-less in the exam room to find out if our little bean was healthy.
The nurse came in and got straight to the point. Would you like to see your baby?
I didn't even realize that it was possible to see it so soon! Yes of course!
It only took about 5 seconds to find out little bean. Well, it looked more like a gummy bear. But sure enough you could see little nubby arms and legs. Then we got to hear the heartbeat. That is when I started crying. It was beautiful. This tiny tiny bean was mine, inside me with a tiny, very fast heartbeat.
Even the nurse was glowing she was smiling almost as big as I was. She explained that this was one of the favorite parts of her job. I can only imagine!
She printed us some pictures and we were finally released to spread the word to all of our family and friends about the wonderful news.
I didn't miss a beat. I got on the phone right away and began calling everyone in my family. It was so invigorating to sense everyones excitement. It finally began to sink in that this was real.
I was really pregnant.
I was really growing a tiny person inside of me.

The Big Secret (3weeks-7weeks)

After we discovered our big, no, BIG news we wanted to stand on a mountain top and scream out the news so everyone could share in the excitement with us.
Instead I couldn't help but feel fearful of the high rates of miscarriages and I did not want to jinx anything.
We had decided to wait until after our first doctors appointment (8 weeks) before we told anyone. Just to make sure the baby was healthy and everything was normal.
Talk about torture!!
I am horrible at lying. Not that I was really lying but I definitely felt like I was having to deceive a lot of people.
Being a social drinker, I was a nervous wreck anytime we were out with friends and alcohol was involved. I tried to play it off that I was on a cleanse but I knew I could only pull that off for so long when I was still eating cheese and french fries.
I think the worst was when morning sickness (more like all day sickness for me) came rearing its ugly face. I began throwing up constantly almost every morning. I was a mess at work. If I walked past any air freshener, smelled cigarette smoke on someones clothes, smelled perfume, smelled a hot pocket, saw dirty dishes, thought of eggplant or basil, thought of a dirty toilet, heard someone snort, brush my teeth, or thought of that one time my friend made me smell his rotten tooth. I would gag. Big time gag.
When I was about 5 weeks along I was leaving work early. I told my boss I had a stomach bug and couldn't stop throwing up. He said "Are you on the baby train?" and I broke down and said "yes". He had just had his first kid a week before and luckily had some sympathy on my situation.
It was nice being able to come into work a little late and not have to explain myself, or work from home the occasional day that I couldn't get up from the couch.
I was not prepared for this kind of pregnancy.
I was wanting a pregnancy where I could still be active and eat nothing but fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
What I got was the constant desire to be laying down all the time. The only foods that I could stomach at this point were dry toast, instant mashed potatoes and...nope, that's pretty much it. This sucked.
So not only did I feel like poop all the time, I couldn't even tell the people around me why I was so sick!

Photo of me at 7 weeks.

The Journey Begins (Aug 2011)

On August 12th 2011 I peed on a stick.
I then covered the little window with a square of toilet paper and was prepared to stand there and stare at it for 3 minutes. With Mike by my side he said lets go into the other room and wait. It'll be easier.
It wasn't.
Longest 3 minutes of my life.
When it was time to reveal the special results I wasted no time in wisping the toilet paper away to reveal two solid lines.
Silence.
Then Mike and I hugged. We held each other and wept.
But they were absolute tears of joy.
Then came the shock "Oh shit! We're going to have a kid in just a few months!"
Then more crying because I didn't think my body knew how to get pregnant.

Here's a little back story to get you up to speed on this point.
On our 5 year wedding anniversary (July 2010) we decided to stop using protection and just "be careful". We were open to the idea of having a kid and thought we would see what would happen.
Nothing happened.
That January we decided to not be careful anymore and get this baby thing started already.
Nothing happened.
By that May I was starting to worry that something was broken with me. Every time my period came I would have this sinking feeling and have to cry it out. In July Mike caught me crying it out on the couch and decided to take matters into his own hands. He went out to the store and bought a basal thermometer, he downloaded a pink colored pregnancy app, and we began legitimately "trying".
A part of me felt like I would be forcing things if we did it this way but I was beginning to worry if I was even capable of being a mom so I was willing to give it a try.
Each morning before I even sat up in bed I would take my temperature and Mike would record it in his fancy phone app. I was worried too that this "project make a baby" would cause us to be having sex when neither of us wanted to just to make a baby. This was not the case at all. We did everything like normal. We did have more sex but it was never ever forced feeling.
Fast forward one month later and we were staring at the stick with two lines.
Full of anxiety and euphoria we immediately went out that night and bought the highest rated baby book and loaded up on prenatal vitamins.