9 weeks is really not that exciting

It's been more weeks and I have little to report. feeling much less nauseous, in fact almost not at all, and a little less "I'm going to starve to death" all the time. My belly is growing, slowly, and I finally got a new bra. Whew! I'm actually really happy about how good I'm feeling at this point.
I have been having some trouble sleeping, getting about 4-5 good hours and then waking up at 3 or 4am with a racing mind and even what feel like a fast heartbeat. I've been watching episodes of Arrested Development until I can fall asleep again, the last couple days around 6am or so. My body getting ready for interrupted sleep already?
Josh and I got married last Friday- it was the perfect day. Now I'm all set with health insurance, and our first midwife appointment is on the 21st, which seems like a really long time to wait. We'll be 12 weeks along by then!
Also, I've decided that I think we are having a boy, but everyone else I know is saying they think it will be a girl. Josh refuses to weigh in.

Monkeys and weddings

So I added the little Lilypie ticker to the top of the blog page, which is showing the baby at the size of a raspberry. In 2002 or 2003-ish I started reading this page called One More Monkey. I came across it somehow when I was in college, you guys know how I love monkeys. This woman in Australia was working on her drawing skills and gave herself the assignment of drawing a monkey a day. I kept up with it, and unfortunately she didn't do it super long, because I loved her drawings. Somewhere in there she got pregnant, had a baby, and invented the Lilypie tickers. I've sporadically kept up with her blog and her photo album over the years, and kind of watched her daughter grow up. It feels a little creepy and stalker-ish to admit that for some reason, but I always sort of felt like I wanted her to be my friend, if she didn't live on the other side of the world. Anyway, I'm excited to finally have a reason to use on of her tickers myself, since I feel some sense of attachment to them. I've also always wanted to buy one of her monkey prints, but I never do it.

Tomorrow Josh and I are getting married, pretty short notice and very informal, but I think it will be fun. Feeling a little sad that our parents won't be here, but I'll look forward to the party we will have next year. It's supposed to be 78 degrees and sunny tomorrow, so our bike ride downtown is looking good! I've been feeling pretty good the last few days, so I'm hopeful for having lots of energy tomorrow. I also did the yoga video again today and saw some small improvement already. Gonna try to keep it up, and become a contortionist at some point.

chest pain

My chest has been hurting for the last couple of days, and I was worried I was having an anxiety attack, or that my blood pressure was high, and that was making me more stressed and then I was worried I was making it worse. Today I finally realized that my boobs are getting so big that my bra is just too tight. Can someone send me a new bra? ugh.

I also just attempted a maternity yoga video that I was able to get instantly on Netflix, called Yoga Mama (very creative name). I discovered that I am quite possibly one of the least flexible people on the planet, and that I really can't get into women saying stuff like "connect the love in your heart with the energy of your growing baby" while I'm groaning through my robot-like attempt at the warrior pose. Can someone also send me a yoga video for "modern, non-hippie mamas"? It probably doesn't exist. I wish that naps were yoga, because lately I'm really good at naps.

8 Weeks, oops

Today was my first visit to the midwives. It was just a consultation, I got a tour of the clinic and decided if I liked it enough to spend the next 9 months letting them poke and prod me. It was good, I was into it. Josh was out of town for work again , so I went by myself, which was a little sad. Leela had breakfast with me after, so then I felt better. Anyway, they assigned me a due date of May 12th, 2011.  When I got home I was talking to Ali and we figured out that every time they ask me "date of last menstrual period?" I give them the date it ended, and really they want the date it started. I don't understand why doctors are never more specific about this. I want to hear "On what day did your last period start?", which leaves it much less open to interpretation for people like me, who have a period, but are relatively clueless to how the whole cycle thing works. So, that means I screwed it all up, and I'm actually 8 weeks pregnant, not seven. Which means all this week I've been thinking my baby is the size of a blueberry, when the internet tells me it's really the size of a grape! Ali also said I need to start having pictures of my belly so I can compare as it grows, but I'm too shy to take one with my shirt pulled up. Here's the tank top covered version:

That bump you're seeing is my normal level of pudginess, so don't get all exited. And the plastic bag in my back pocket is a poop bag from the walk I just went on with Stella. There is no poop in it.

cat's outta the bag

We got to tell our families today! A tiny part of me is worried that it is still too early to be telling, but Josh's parents were here visiting, and we just couldn't resist telling them in person. They were very excited, as we hoped, and I can't wait for Josh's mom to start sewing adorable baby things. We got to call Josh's grandmother (who cried!) and then my Dad, who I made sit down and hold onto the arms of the chair, and then my mom and sisters who are all together in Oklahoma right now. It was so fun to surprise everyone! My older sister, who is already a mom and grandma, will now get to be an aunt.

I've started feeling much better over the last two days, a lot more energy and way less queasiness, and just a better general mood. Hopefully that's good, and I'll be lucky to only have one week of early pregnancy symptoms!

the bloat

as i've mentioned, i don't have the flattest stomach to start out with. in fact, i'm surprised i haven't spent the lat 10 years of my life saying "no, i'm NOT pregnant" to random strangers. so now, with some pretty serious fluid retention going on, i'm experiencing extreme bloating. i didn't expect to outgrow my jeans so quickly.

this picture makes me laugh.

When I was a Rad Pregnant Lady

Alright, fine, I never was. I thought for sure I'd be one of those awesome ladies like my friend Michelle who had no morning sickness, no crazy moodiness, and well, just nothing but a growing belly. That apparently isn't my destiny. I haven't hurled yet. My stomach says Let's do this! but my clenched teeth say No! Also, in other news of my physical well-being, I'm HOT. Not sexy hot, but sweating and flushed face hot. I am having brief chills, then hot hot hot. What fun all of this is! I'm feeling a little guilty for not just having pure baby excitement, but honestly I feel pretty yucky, and it's just hard to be happy about that. Yesterday I figured out that exercise seems to really help my nausea, so I'll be doing a bunch more of that now.

On the upside, I've been getting really excited about sewing baby stuff. Found some great websites with fabrics and patterns for awesome baby things, so hopefully we won't have to buy so much stuff, and I can just work on my sewing skills. Having trouble wanting to spend money on baby stuff yet, but picked out this high chair that you can use as a regular chair, so it's not so disposable. What a great design! Stokke Tripp Trapp

a question of gender

What do people call the baby besides "it" when you don't know (and aren't going to find out) the sex? I'm having trouble imagining this androgynous being. If I talk to Josh about the baby (it?!) I find myself saying "I hope he wants to skateboard! Or she. She can skateboard."  How can I start pushing all my hopes and dreams on this unborn child if I don't know it's gender?!

Ugh and Yay!

I'm waffling a bunch between feeling exhausted and mildly nauseous to being really excited about the baby. My schedule at the bakery has been pretty rough this week, and I thought I would handle it pretty well, but I wasn't expecting how tired I would be feeling, or how HUNGRY. I need to eat every half an hour or so or I feel like I'm going to pass out. I haven't had any typical morning sickness, just really mild queasiness if I don't eat often enough. I feel like a squirrel, I've got cashews and dried fruit in the pockets of my hoodie, so i can just shove some in my mouth as soon as i feel hungry. I know my employees are thinking its weird.
Josh was out of town all last week for work, and that was unexpectedly rough as well, I mostly just missed him, and was overly emotional about it for a couple of days. I feel worried about the amount of traveling he will be doing not only while I'm pregnant, but after the baby comes. It didn't help that he ended up in the hospital instead of flying home, and that added quite a bit of stress to the weekend. I'll be pretty happy when my weddings taper off after this month, it should free up my schedule more, and maybe I can get more sleep.
Speaking of sleep, it's not happening very well for me these last couple of weeks. I have to get up to pee 10 times a night (I'm considering a diaper), and every light or movement in the room wakes me up. I told Josh yesterday that he had to stay on his side of the bed all night, and he did a pretty good job of it, I think that helped a bit. My boobs (which I'm sure everyone wants to hear about) are slowly getting bigger. They're sore but not as much as I expected. I guess overall, being pregnant hasn't been very bad so far. The problem is mostly that I don't lie resting, or sitting still all that much, and I think I tend to push it too far when I really need to rest. I just get mad at feeling tired, when I should be listening to what my body needs.
I was going to take the obligatory "belly at 6 weeks" photo, but I can't tell any difference so far. My belly is always so poochy anyway, it just looks like always. I'm most concerned about how my roach tattoo will stretch. Ha!
I've been waiting and waiting for this coming weekend, when we finally get to tell all of the grandparents!

5 weeks?

I'm really close to my family, and it feels really awful to have to keep being pregnant a secret from them right now. So I'm keeping this blog so they can know how it went these first 2 months, and keep up with how it's going once I finally get to tell. I've struggled a lot with the notion of keeping things a secret for a couple of months, it seems like this is a time when I could use a lot of family support since this is all very new and slightly scary. We decided we will tell them after 8 weeks, and tell friends and employees after 12 weeks.
I haven't been to see a doctor yet, but I think I'm at about 5 weeks pregnant right now. I had my IUD removed, had an awful heavy, scary period, then got pregnant two weeks later. I was kind of hoping for it to be a month later than it was, but this is pretty much the story of my family's fertility. We were born to breed. I took a couple of pregnancy tests that were negative, but I guess they were just too early. One night I couldn't sleep, so I got up to watch some tv at 4am. As I was sitting there I realized I had been peeing every 15 minutes all week, and that my boobs were really sore, in a much more sensitive way than if my period was coming. I waited until 6am when Josh's alarm went off, and went in the bedroom to tell him. Took a test and it was positive! Thought the moment would be more exciting, but we were both kind of shell shocked. We hugged and looked at each other and said "now what?". It took until later in the day for both of us to get more excited, and less scared.

In the 2 weeks since then, I've been mostly just really hungry. My breasts are sore, but not every day, and not miserable. My sense of smell is intense, and going to work is crazy, because I can smell everything at the bakery. Also, when I'm a little sweaty I can smell it and I've been worried everyone else can smell me, but I think it's just me. I should shower more. No nausea, and only one day of serious tiredness so far, but it could also be from that weekend of making and delivering 5 wedding cakes!