Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Seriously?!?!?!?!?!?!

ARGH!!

I am so angry I can't see straight! Above is the link to an article about how Newt Gingrich has decided that he should be the moral compass for a woman's uterus!

Aside from how laughable it is for him to discuss the immorality of ANYTHING, it infuriates me that a politician would think that he (or she) could dictate how I procreate!

Argh! I want to continue ranting, but there are no words.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Wow, Its Been a While!

I didn't plan to disappear for that long. I spent the last 10 days in Texas for my baby showers. I started a post about that before I left, but I got so caught up with getting things ready for me to be gone at work, that I forgot to finish it!

So to catch up I'm going to do a bullet post and tonight or tomorrow night I will try to put up some pics of my shower (stinking crummy work computer won't let me put up pics!).

  • I had 3 showers in Texas. 2 in San Antonio (dads side and moms side) and one in Fort Worth. I'll try to put up some pics soon.
  • We only need a few more things and I think we will be pretty set for this kid! Now if only we knew where we would be living when he is born!
  • As of today I am 29 weeks 4 days or 29 weeks 2 days as the docs insist.
  • My newest and worst symptom so far is sciatic nerve pain. I think some of it comes from the position of my workstation at work. My pulled ligament probably isn't helping either. If you aren't familiar with sciatic nerve pain, it is a sharp shooting type pain that can go from your lower back and butt down your leg. I'm finding it increasingly hard to drive longer distances (which is great since my OB is 45 minutes away). I need to shift positions a lot and the foot on the pedals doesn't allow that.
  • This boy is STRONG! In the past week his kicks have gotten so much stronger. I'm fairly certain that they are kicks most of the time, but I'll know for sure tomorrow when I have another ultrasound.
  • Lots of family was able to feel the munchkin move. He really started kicking in Fort Worth so more of hubbys family got to feel that my family.
I'm sure I'm forgetting a ton of stuff that has happened in the last couple of weeks, but mostly I have been hobbling with the sciatic pain and trying to lay with my feet up so not much happens.

Hope all is well in your various worlds. Now I'm off to catch up on your blogs. I didn't have a reliable internet connection for most of my trip so I have nearly 100 blogs to read!!!

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Third Trimester

I'm officially in the third trimester. Well my OBs would say it isn't til Saturday, but whatever. I know what day he started cooking and he consistently measures a couple of days ahead so I'm calling it today :)

To celebrate I took the day off. Well not really. I had my OB appointment this morning and after eating lunch, I got super nauseous. I think it has to do with the fact that my nose often bleeds during the night and last night I ended up sleeping half on my back (preggo pillow tucked under one side). So it bled, but it all went into my stomach. I know totally disgusting. But I felt sort of gross all morning, but just figured once I ate lunch I would be fine. Food seems to have magical pregnancy healing powers. If I feel crappy, all I need to do to feel better is eat. Most of the times.

But not today. I ate and my stomach cramped up and I quickly lost my lunch. So instead of going to work I spend the afternoon on the couch, snoozing and watching netflix. I haven't had much to eat aside from tortillas (plain) and water, but I'm feeling better now. I'm going to try some pasta and a few veggie for dinner. We shall see how that goes. And I'm adding more pillows so if my nose bleeds tonight it won't mess up my tummy. I would rather mess up my pillow than my tummy.

So yay third trimester! But I hope today wasn't a sign of what is in store.

In other news, my OB appointment went great. I talked to the doc about all of the things that I want to put in a birth plan. Most of the stuff is standard at her practice. There is no nursery so all babies room in. Baring complications babies always go immediately to mom's belly where the nurse does vitals and such. Its fine to have both hubby & my mom there. She explained the reasonings behind pitocin for placenta delivery and I'm okay with that as long as I get to cuddle with Fin. There were several other things that I was glad to learn, but I can't remember them at the moment. Basically, my birth plan won't be needed for much which is nice. I think the only thing that I may have to fight is supplemental feedings. Lots of babies have jaundice here at this elevation (not sure what the connection is) and they tend to push supplemental feedings. I want to try to avoid that as much as possible. Otherwise all is well.

I do a two hour gestational diabetes test next week one day. I'm not worried though. My blood sugars have been rocking.

Thats all for now...

Monday, January 9, 2012

I Have Hit That Point

Anyone who has a kiddo knows the point. The point in pregnancy where everything starts to get progressively harder.

A few examples:
  • It took a good bit of finagling to get my socks on today. I warned hubby that he would likely be taking over that task in the near future :) I think the main reason that it was harder today was because I WAY over did it yesterday and it now hurts to move my legs, but I can see how it is just going to keep getting worse.
  • I now rarely get off the couch without an "omph."
  • I walk up the stairs like a duck. My feet are spread wider and I kind of lean forward. I told hubby if he laughs at me, I will kick his butt (except that I'm not confident that I could lift my leg up that high).
  • Organizing the baby's room yesterday required 4 or 5 breaks and a night with my feet up and I still feel like I was hit by a truck. But the baby's room is in great shape!
  • I think I may be starting to waddle. My stride feels different, but I don't have access to a long enough mirror to know for sure :)
  • I have to run pee every 45 minutes or so. Which means that I have roughly 2050 more trips to the bathroom before he is born. That is quite depressing since that only includes the aware hours. I didn't factor in the 4 trips per night!
  • I now have to wear the support belt all the time. I can feel the strain if I don't. I sometimes take it off if I'm just on the couch, but otherwise it is my constant companion.
  • It is getting harder and harder to get up and down from my chair at work. I have one of those slightly taller desk chairs to sit at the teller line. I am trying to combine all I can into each trip up or down.
  • Based on our ultrasound last week (and on the new high up kicks), Fin is head down. His head was sitting squarely on my cervix. I thought I felt him do a big flip last week and I must have been right. He had been feet down. With his head pushing down, I'm getting lots of pressure on my lady parts which seems to be adding to the leg moving pain has helped to increase my bathroom trips.
Well I guess that was more than a few, but I want to try to remember as much as possible. I guess it makes sense. The second trimester was so nice and now the third is starting and it will be less fun except that each day gets me closer to my little man!

Thursday, January 5, 2012

How Can I Nearly be in the 3rd Trimester!

Holy cow! I only have 100 days to go! Today I am 26 weeks so according to about 50% of the internet, I will start the 3rt trimester in a week. Its so strange. The first trimester felt so long. The second seems to have flown by!

On that note, here are a few pics.

26 Weeks
Awesome aquarium volcano bubble (cool red LED light makes it look AWESOME!)

Hubby assembling our new stroller!

Hubby "changing" the kitty on our new playpen changing station. Amazingly he didn't bleed after this :)

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Super Exciting & Overwhelming

Our house is filling up with baby stuff!!!

So far we have a crib (thanks hubby's mom!), a play pen (thanks dad!), a swing (borrowed from a friend). a play gym (super cheap at the thrift store) and TONS of clothes. I know that what we have is no where near what we will need, but still, it feels like a lot!

I think we have all we will need for 0-3 months (a big bin stuffed full) and are close on 3-6 (a big bin almost full). I'm planning to hit a few consignment sales in the next couple of months to stock up on bigger sizes.

All of this is BEFORE any of my baby showers. I was originally thinking I would only have one shower with a part of hubbys family, but apparently I am having 5 baby showers! I don't even feel like I know enough people for that! Each shower will be fairly small, but I think that will be awesome. If I had one big shower, I wouldn't be able to spend much time with everyone. This way I can acutally talk to everyone who comes instead of just having time to eat cake and open gifts. Plus this way I won't be overwhelmed at any of the showers.

This many different showers also helps with the geographic issues of living in a different state from my family. I'm having two showers in San Antonio (one for dad's side and one for mom's, I'll write a full post on that drama one day) and one in the Dallas area (hubby's family & college friends) and two in New Mexico (one a friend is throwing and one at work, none of the details on these two are set yet).  That should have our munchkin decked out very well!

I'm headed to Texas for over a week in just over two weeks. I can't believe that I have made it to the point of having baby showers!!!

I am so thankful for our family and friends being so generous to us! Having to worry about buying everything for the little man, on top of all of the job and living arrangement worries would be too much. I am so relieved to know that he will have everything that he needs and more.

Monday, January 2, 2012

The Best & Worst Year Yet, but 2012 May Take That Title Too

I think 2011 was the best and worst year ever. I got pregnant after two years of trying and many more years of worrying before we started officially trying (I was diagnosed with PCOS at 17 so that's 10 years of knowing what I was in store for before we started trying).

But before I got pregnant, we went through several rounds of frustrating treatments (frustrating in that they did nothing other than make me a crazy hormonal mess). Both hubby & I had our minds blown when they jumped us from Letrozole to IVF. Jumped right past injects with IUI. We found out that hubby only had 2% morphology.

Our IVF went great til retrieval then I had crazy insane pain from them having a rough time that lead to OHSS (not severe, but enough to make me miserable). Our car broke down that afternoon on the way home from the RE so instead of heading to bed, I helped my hubby change the water pump in our Jeep after taking a very long, very bumpy ride in a tow truck. We got home about 12 hours after the docs let us leave. That may be the most miserable day of my life, well maybe second to the day of my deviated septum repair.

The day of transfer, we headed to the RE expecting to hear that we had lots of great blasts since we had 13 eggs that fertilized. When we arrived, we were told that only 2 had made it to blast stage and even those were not the best quality.

But somehow we got pregnant. Somehow we made it to today which has me sitting here on the couch, six months pregnant feeling my little boy kicking away in my belly. I keep telling myself that I made it through all of that so I can make it through this. But now, I am worried not just for myself. Now I have the baby to think about. I didn't realize how much more stressful that would make this job situation.

As we speak, hubby and I are making plans to sell our house and most of our stuff in less than two months if he doesn't have a job by then. Luckily for us, we purchased our house for such a low price that we have a good bit of equity so we should be able to live on it for 6 months at least. We can stay with hubby's grandma if needed. Hubby's grandpa passed away not long ago so she would be happy to have the company. And we can help her with a lot of the things around the house and make things better there for her. Its not the worst thing that could happen by any means, but it does change things a lot!

Our plan was for me to be able to quit my job 3 or 4 weeks before my due date. I know lots of women work right up to the end, but we were hoping to give me a break before the baby comes. But if hubby doesn't have a job, I have to work as long as possible to keep the insurance going. So we would probably list our house in Feb but with the stipulation that it won't really sell til after the baby comes. Then we would move 7 hours away to his grandma's with a newborn. I am so scared that this is what is going to happen. And I have no clue what we would do when my 12 weeks of FMLA time runs out. With PCOS I am uninsurable by private insurance, but we should at least be able to get some coverage for the baby.

I feel so bad for my hubby. He isn't sleeping well. He is so stressed and I can tell the even though he doesn't say it, he feels like he is failing us. It breaks my heart. He keeps telling me that no matter what happen, he promises that this isn't forever. That things will get better. I have no doubt that that is true. I know we will make it through this, but man is it hard. I look around the house and know that we may only be here for a few more months. We may only have all of our stuff for a few more months. I really don't know how to make this better. I really wish this whole recession thing would end so he could get a flipping job!

Okay, now my rant or bawlfest (yep, I'm trying to keep the bawling quiet cause hubby went to bed early in hopes of getting a good night of sleep) is over. If you know me in real life, please don't make too big of a deal of this. We are just trying to roll with the punches and do what we need to do. For now, I am just looking forward to my baby showers knowing that no matter what, our baby will have everything he needs. And most importantly, if you know hubby, don't let him know how much I'm stressing. He of course knows, but it just seems to stress him more if he really sees it.