Passing Time

It almost feels like time is passing without my knowledge.  How did I get to 21 weeks already?  Things feel so emotionally different this time.  I feel kind of detached or something.  I feel so busy with every day life that I don't have the time to enjoy being pregnant, but that has me wondering, what did I "enjoy" so much last time.

I've started freaking out about picking a name, I have this feeling I will bond better if I have something to call her other than Baby Girl.  Problem is I don't know if I like any of the names.  I went through the entire girls name list on babynames.com and came up with a list of about 30 names to consider.  I've narrowed it down to 15 or so and I think I have a top 5 out of that, but not a one of them has a middle name and my brain feels like mush trying to think of one.

Then this week it hit me.  I have 19 weeks, if I make it to 40 weeks this time.  Since I work full time that pretty much leaves me 19 weekends, which is 38 days to prepare my house for this baby girl.  Considering I have a trip the weekend of Nov 11th, family visiting Nov 10th and 26th weekends and pretty much every weekend in Dec busy due to Holidays, I'm down to only 11 weekends and when you subtract 3 more so every thing is ready by 37 weeks, just in case, I'm down to 8 weekend, that's 16 days!!!  Granted I try and sneak things in here and there, but some of the work will be a whole weekend project, like cleaning my craft and other stuff out of her room and painting and such.  So I finally started looking at bedding this week and realized that I have no idea what I want!

But besides this stress I'm going through now in an effort to not have anxiety later, everything seems to be going well.  Here are some new ultrasound pictures that I got last week when we went back to get her heart and profile views.

The Halfway Point

I sincerely apologize for it taking so long to get to this post.  The last part of the first half of this pregnancy was not a very happy one.  No worries, everything is fine with the baby!  I got my flu shot and confessed about my depression to the midwife.  She has offered a medication that has been tested to be safe in the second trimester, but depending on the doctor they may suggest discontinuing use in the last month of pregnancy to prevent the baby from having any withdrawal symptoms.  She said she would leave the decision up to me if I want to go on it and if in the last month I would want to continue use or not.  The withdrawal doesn't last long, but can cause feeding issues.  I'm still up in the air on how I feel about the whole thing.

My cake balls turned out awesome!  Probably not the prettiest ones, but they sure were yummy!  Strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting and coated with chocolate.  Like heaven in your mouth!

My girls get away was ok.  I was the only one who stayed up past 9, I couldn't eat much and felt sick half the night, but it was nice to relax and not feel like I was being pulled in a million directions.

Sunday Lilli and I spent the afternoon with my sister AKA Pocca.

Sunday night when I went to bed my shoulder was very achy.  I thought that the ache from the flu shot had gone, but I just chalked the pain up to that.  By morning both shoulders my neck and chest were sore and taking deep breaths hurt.  I got up and got ready for work anyway.  I had a supplier coming in that I'm working on a major project with.  By the time I got to my desk I was no longer hoping I could make it, I was sending and email to my boss with all the information he was going to need to run the meeting in my place.  By the time I got home again it hurt just to breath.  And trying to lay down in bed was some of the worst pain I think I have experienced since giving birth.  I slept ALL day.  Yesterday I stayed home again, the pain wasn't as bad, but I knew if I pushed it I wasn't going to get any better.

Also Sunday night as B and I lay in bed, just dozing off, the phone rings.  Everyone knows not to call our house past 8pm. I knew it had to either be a drunk buddy of his or something important.  Considering the person it was we decided to let the machine pick it up.  The message left was just "B, it's T, get a hold of me."  Not odd for the person, just the hour.  5 minutes later the phone rang again, same person.  I decided to let B decide if he wanted to answer it.  He didn't, I found out later he already knew what the message was going to be, but it was "B, it's T again, I'm in Roc with L and they are taking J off his machine."

T is B's cousin and L & J are brothers that have been their friends since childhood.  B actually lived with L & J and their family for a few years growing up.

Turns out he was expecting this call because my FIL had been told by J's mom that they were seeing no brain activity for a while.  J had a rough life, in his early 20s he was diagnosed with brain tumors that wouldn't go away.  This was about 8 years ago, just after B and I met.  May he rest in peace pain free.

Now on to what you are actually reading this post for...

It's a... Girl!

Since there were only 5 votes (that I knew who voted) I decided to enter everyone in the drawing.  Turns out it was a girl vote that won anyway.  Congratulations to Joy!

Send me an email at brandisboutique@gmail.com to talk about your prize!  And if any of the other voters would like a discount on a hat feel free to email me there too!

Well, I think this is long enough for now, I better get some work done!

17 Weeks

I can't believe I'm almost half way there!  For some reason that seems to be a big point for me this time.  I'm really hating this in between stage of only feeling the baby every few days.  I keep telling myself to be patient, but it doesn't keep me from worrying.  And I also know that soon after feeling frequent movement comes the uncomfortable positions and feet, hands, butt, whatever in my ribs.

October 14th is the big ultrasound day if I haven't mentioned it already.  I am going to add a poll to the sidebar so you can vote for boy or girl.  Of the people who guess correctly, I'll use random.org to choose a winner for a free crocheted hat of your choice! 

 

17 Weeks with Lillian






17 Weeks Baby 2



Week 17 according to Baby.Center:

Your baby's skeleton is changing from soft cartilage to bone, and the umbilical cord — her lifeline to the placenta — is growing stronger and thicker. Your baby weighs 5 ounces now, and she's around 5 inches long from head to bottom. She can move her joints, and her sweat glands are starting to develop.

This week we have a Hockey Puck/Turnip.  In all honesty I don't really have any idea of the actual size of either of them!

So here is another one we should all be familiar with...

16 Weeks and More Unexpected Happenings

Thanks for the comments yesterday girls.  I don't think my family and friends would think ill of a gender reveal party and I suppose anyone that doesn't care to celebrate it with me, doesn't have to.

Now the next problem is the guest list.  Who I really want to invite is just our immediate family (the grandparents and my sister) and our closest friends.  This would be about 30 people total, if everyone showed up and I know that there are a few that couldn't.  Ideally I only want 25 people there anyway.  The problem, this means not inviting the 15 extended family members that expect to be invited to everything and won't understand why friends got invited before they did.  Don't get me wrong, some of them would completely understand (and of course they are the ones that if I could pick and choose would be invited).

Unexpected: B talked this through with me last night and since most of the extended family is on his side he says that either we just have a dinner party to celebrate or invite everyone.  What would you do?  Inviting everyone is almost 50 people!

Unexpected #2: My midwife had a student working for her yesterday.  This normally doesn't bother me for an exam or my general health, but when it comes to my unborn child it makes me a little nervous.  He was good though and admitted when he wasn't sure about something and needed to ask my MW which I was thankful for.  What I wasn't thankful for was him searching for a heartbeat for over 5 minutes before going to get my MW.  I knew right away he wasn't going to find it because even though I told him the baby was low he never put the doppler low enough and second he certainly wasn't pressing hard enough.  Thankfully he went and got my MW just before I was just going to ask for the dang doppler.  She came in and found the heartbeat right away!  Talk about relief. (oh it was 153 by the way, I'll do my weekly post tomorrow)

Unexpected #3:  Lastly was a very nice surprise.  I was telling B how I had been talking to Lilli about getting the big girl bed that's in her play room and giving her crib to the baby and she was so excited she wanted to get out of the bath right then and move it!  His response was, well then as soon as you are feeling better we'll get on it.  I said "you realize that means you have to start doing part of her bed time right.  Like putting her to bed, in her bed?"  He understood!  I think we may get going on this, this weekend!  I'm very excited.
Well, I'm sure there was more I wanted to say, but work interrupted me, grrr.

Please click on the link and vote for me.  I'm quickly falling out of the 200s!

Not What I Was Expecting...

Apparently a lot of things today are not going to be what I was expecting.  First I figured I'd wake up with an extremely sore throat as I'm getting my first cold of the fall season.  Instead I woke up with my throat feeling a little better, but a sinus headache that I just know is going to linger all day!

I have my 16 week OB appointment today and when I asked B if he was going to try and make it I was fully expecting an "of course".  I mean this is his baby too, right?  Well instead I got "Probably not, we're working in..."  I'm not even going to go into how I feel about this.

I figure I will probably be making my appointment for my 20 week anatomy scan today.  It got me thinking, that means there is only 4 weeks until we find out the gender of this little monkey!  Since before getting pregnant I've thrown around the idea of a Gender Reveal Party.  I don't want to have a baby shower as I already have most of what we need for this baby.  I got all the big things in gender neutral colors so I wouldn't have to worry about it.  So yeah, this means I have only 4 weeks to plan this party because we all know I can't keep a secret very long.  Anyway I started searching for ideas.

I was very disappointed when I started to read all the comments on articles and blogs about gender reveal parties.  90% of them are negative.  Saying things like "When I said greedy, I really meant more greedy in wanting attention than in wanting gifts", " agree that it's overkill. I have no problem with expectant parents being totally immersed in the pregnancy and sharing a lot. But to expect everyone to gather for everything about it... no." "No, no, no, no, no! This is really obnoxious. Even if you don't expect people to bring gifts to this gender-reveal party, you're still taking up people's time on another party that's just for you." "The byproduct of high unemployment." "I think most people probably have better things to do on a Saturday afternoon than find out if your cake has pink or blue frosting. Get over yourself."

And those are all after just 2 articles.  Does the general public really feel this way?  Are my friends and family just going to think I want attention?  I'm thinking maybe I should just forget it.

Did you have a Gender Reveal?  What were people's reactions?