Party of Four?

you know what? there isn’t really much to report on just now. we’re all just sort of doing our thing and waiting for the next phase/doctor’s visit.

we went to the doctor about a week ago and besides being reminded why i like my doctor so much, it was largely uneventful. she asked me to stay on the progesterone until i hit 12 weeks and then start weaning myself off (which i’m doing, now that i’m officially at 12 weeks). we took a shot at listening for the heartbeat, but were unsuccessful. i’m still full of worry that something’s wrong in there and the only reason we don’t know it is because of the progesterone. i hope when we have our appointment at week 14 and we hear the heartbeat that i’ll be more relaxed, but i have a feeling it will take until the ultrasound at 18 weeks before i calm down about that. of course, that will just make room for different things to worry about ;)

the bump is growing a bit all the time (which, if i were normally rational, i would interpret as a sign that everything’s okay, but i can’t because i’m me). it’s to the point that when i’m sitting back in a chair, it will “hang over” (at least visually) a note pad or computer i have in my lap. i still have moments where i look fat instead of pregnant, but i’m starting to make the conscious choice for clothes that push towards looking pregnant. i’ve bought a couple of things (here and there, on sale and such), but i’m not quite big enough for any of them to look right yet. i did buy a bigger bra though, which has helped discomfort out a bit.

we went to a wedding yesterday and took pictures of “the bump” in a dress not really designed for bumping. it accommodates it pretty well at this stage though if you just push the gentle waistband up over the bump. those pictures should be up as soon as i get not-lazy enough to do so.

i’m looking forward to the first trimester being over. i haven’t gotten “all the way” sick, but i have had a few days where i got much closer than i’d like. nothing really crazy like the oj has happened since, i have been on a “mmm…buffalo wings/chicken fingers/chicken sandwich” kick which is probably not just me wanting things that taste good. i have days were i want meat, days where i want juice, but again, nothing quite so “omg love!” as the oj thing.

friday a (smaller than normal) group from work went to starbucks (like we do most mornings). i decided that instead of a hot sweet coffee flavored (decaf) drink, i wanted something like juice. so i went up to the little display case and gazed at the rows and rows of smoothies and fancy mixed juice drinks and such and spied the orange juice. i bought a bottle (maybe 12 oz? maybe 16?)…and drank the entire thing before our party had received all their drinks. it was not a slow day. i probably finished in 2-3 minutes.

here’s the kicker: i do not like orange juice. at all. in order to get me to drink it willingly it needs to be fresh squeezed (or taste as such) and virtually pulp free. this was neither. the entire time i was drinking it i was aware of the distasteful qualities but i could not help thinking, “this is so satisfying.”

when i was finished ryan turned to me and said “you want another, don’t you?”

he was right.

i have a bump!

…okay, so you can see from the weekly pictures that i’ve sort have always had “a bump” because i’m overweight and all, but! the bump doesn’t go away anymore. it used to be if i stood up very very tall and squeezed in i could pretend i had a flat stomach.

i can’t anymore, though! how cool is that?

less cool is the acne. it’s sort of all over the face, worse than i ever had as a teenager. in my frustration, i got a bit over-zealous with the cleaning and ended up sort of burning my face. so now it’s dry and painful and sort of scalded and still full of acne. ah well. all this lustrous hair could use a dye as well, since it’s now growing out grey even *faster* than normal, but i’m shying away from that stuff, despite the random “no, really, it’s probably perfectly safe” things i see on some websites. until there is a consensus of safeness, i’m not going for it. in a few months i figure i’ll cut off the blond and have an adorable grey bob for all to admire.

also on the list of pregnancy related side effects are some wicked fierce mood swings (my coworkers are saints, especially when i warn them it’s upon me and they stick it out for the storm anyway), a bit of digestive problems, and oh, so much sleepiness. nausea’s sort of constant but mild. just strong enough to make most foods unappetizing, but not worse than that, so i’m barely complaining.

spotting seems to be off the list of symptoms these days so hurrah progesterone and hurrah placenta! no official news on the sprout, but the emails tell me he’s a fetus officially now and about an inch long. we hit the doctors on thursday to discuss the progesterone thing, but as far as i know no pictures or anything. i suspect that’ll happen in a couple more weeks (week 12ish).

earl grey tea smells like after-shave. tastes okay though.

things with spinach (quiche, etc) now taste almost entirely of spinach.

i pretty much just drink water, juice, and propel these days. i’ve mostly given up caffeine. i only have some when my brain says to me, “caffeine or migraine?” mostly that’s tea, because i can control the strength to some extent and not add on a bunch of calories. i miss soda, though. i’m trying to stay away from sweeteners as well as the caffeine, and i really can’t justify the extra calories of a full-sugar soda, so i pretty much only try it out when i need the boost. yesterday’s diet dr. pepper tasted “off,” but i wrote it off as being old and not used to the taste of sweeteners anymore. today i was feeling cranky at lunch, so i got a regular fountain dr. pepper to cheer me up. it, too, tasted off, and i had neither old-ness or sweetener to explain it. when a coworker asked if tasted tinny, (which it did), he shared that his wife cannot drink it while pregnant either because of how funny it tastes. this is more irritating to me than the fish.

for the last almost 30 years, if you had put sugar candy (esp. cherry or caramel flavored) next to a piece of chocolate and asked me to pick one, i would have grabbed the sugar candy every time (huge disparity in quality aside, mind you). it’s not that i don’t like chocolate, i just like the other stuff more. not so much anymore. now sugar candy tastes “okay” but the snow-caps at the move theatre taste divine and intensely chocolatey.

i am trying very hard to eat good food and decent amounts but the perpetual queasiness makes it difficult to find anything appealing.

the last couple of weeks have been pretty crazy, both in terms of the baby and life in general. my dad’s health took a rather drastic turn for the worse, so that, coupled with my own “take it easy” needs helped us decided not to take our trip to New York. As it turns out, all 3 of us (grandpa, baby, and me) are doing much better a week later.

me: the progesterone seems to be kicking in fairly strongly. i haven’t spotted in about 3 days (a record), and all the standard first-trimester symptoms have taken a step forward in strength. still no vomiting, which i say hooray too. my biggest smell aversion seems to be “boiling starch.” plain noodles or rice boiling in a pot sends the gag reflex up faster and stronger than anything. i think that the vanilla/dairy/egg bit may just be a similar smelling by-product of that. i’m also getting sensitive to spices and seasonings, but since i like flavorful food, it seems to be working out in my favor (except black pepper).

the baby: oh gosh, i can’t tell you how great it was to see it on the ultrasound on monday. so many fears and concerns were put to rest in a single “your baby looks lovely and healthy” moment. i know the picture looks like a blob, but during the actual scan, you could fairly easily make out arms and a head and especially the 161-bpm heart. it was beautiful.

our next visit is mid-april (week 10ish), to talk to the doc and stuff about me.

okay, if you don’t know us all that well, you’re probably thinking “wtf? why does a coffee shop know or care that you’re pregnant.”

well, you see, this is that starbucks i was telling you about earlier. the one we go to 5 or more times a week (every weekday morning, basically, plus a few random trips in the afternoons/weekends), where a very good friend works (who, as i’ve said, really should know, but i haven’t told), with a staff that’s really working the brand image of everyone knowing you and knowing your name and such. and yes, while i know they get paid to serve us *and* makes us feel like friends, they’re still folks i know, who are on the list of people who get to be told, and will probably be very enthusiastic about the whole thing, like real friends who don’t make you tasty beverages for a small fee.

however, and i *knew* this would happen, they figured it out. it wasn’t too hard. you just had to notice that instead of my daily 2-3 shot filled drink i’d started slipping down to a 1 shot (half-caf), or a chai tea and such over the last week or so. i’d gotten by for a while, mixing it up with baristas, but today i was in the mood for my caramel macchiato and i ordered it de-caf.

one does not order a caramel macchiato decaffeinated at 8:30 in the morning from a friend who knows better when the store manager is marking the drink without someone raising an eyebrow or two. they both did, one after the other. fortunately they were both subtle enough about confirming their suspicions that the members of our party that were not in on the secret did not catch on…or at least the party members were polite enough not to say anything.

which is good because many people from our office visit that starbucks, and i’d like to stay in control of the information for as long as possible. fortunately we won’t be back in the office until after the doctor’s appointment, and assuming everything goes well, we’ll be telling folks anyway.

in an earlier post i talked about some spotting and related testing that was taking place this week.

well, the tests came back later on tuesday and it was determined that while i wasn’t doing the best job at making progesterone, the spore was doing alright with the hCG (hGC?), which was great news. one perscription and a handful of little peach pills later, and my hormone levels were taken care of for the time being. i had a bit of a run-in with a nurse who seemed a bit flighty (everyone else i’ve talked to has been great, for the record) and seemed to pass some judgement on our trip to new york. i think if it was business, she would have given me very different advice. that was kind of frustrating.

the peach pills seemed to be doing a pretty good job. wednesday i “took it less easy” at home and everything cleared up nicely. thursday i went to work and faked my way through a few “really bad stomach bug” conversations. friday was almost back to normal. we were going to head out to ryan’s parents house for dinner to discuss the trip, and then to visit my dad (who is back in the hospital with some blood-clotting issues-nothing too serious, all things considered) but as we were leaving, i discovered more spotting. heavier and darker than any i’ve seen before but not “fresh” and not accompanied by cramps, so there isn’t/wasn’t much we could do about it except go home and take it easy.

it calmed down almost immediately, though, so no real worries. okay, i’m worried shitless, obviously, but the logical part of me that’s not trying to prepare me for a possible miscarriage is trying to focus on the positives and that’s a good positive. so, this evening’s little “gift” aside, everything seems to be going smoothly.

the spore and i are chatting a lot, so he doesn’t get scared in there all by himself when stuff happens on the outside. i was never really one of those persons who prayed every night before going to bed, but the past few nights i’ve ended my day with my hand on my stomach, talking to the spore and telling it how proud i am of what a good job it’s doing. it’s kinda nifty, especially when ryan joins in.

saturday (on the cusp of week 7) we went down to our local starbucks to hang out with nobody for no good reason other than that’s what we sometimes do. and like they sometimes do, they had some free samples just sort of hanging out. they had two cupcakes and we immediately went for the dark chocolate looking ones.

which were oh-so-tasty i could have eaten 5 of them.

a bit later (when our crowd hand grown to 4, one of which worked there and does not know about the spore, although really, he should, and i feel bad that he doesn’t yet), ryan brought over the yellow-looking ones. i inquired what they were (they looked lemon-poppyseed like), and was told they were “the best damn vanilla cupcakes ever.”

i took one whiff and almost gagged. yes, they were vanilla. so very, very vanilla. they also smelled like the inside of a play-dough container. they needed to get the hell away from me. i played it off as best i could, with knowing glances to the folks that might understand, that i just wasn’t in the mood for vanilla and wasn’t that odd.

that night we went to our local favorite sushi restaurant (i behaved, don’t worry), and could not get over the smell of fish. if you’ve never been to a sushi restaurant, you might think, “well, duh, there’s raw fish everywhere”, but no. good sushi restaurants (and good sushi for that matter), do not smell fishy. if they do, go somewhere else. i spent the evening just not breathing deeply. last night we made some tilapia and i could barely handle the smell/taste again. sadly, i think fish is off the menu for a while.

spinach may be a possible new development. i have these really tasty spinach pancake things that i’ve bought that are pre-cooked and healthy and i zapped on this morning for a mid-morning snack thing and the smell of spinach was very, very strong in a way that it usually isn’t.

so…this is a crummier one to write, because it might be one of the last. i debated whether or not to document this week, *in case* something goes bad, but this is part of the process and i like the truth, so i’m doing it anyway.

wednesday i had some very light spotting, without any cramping. which is not “a very big deal” and is “somewhat common” but they told me to go home and take it easy. it cleared up by morning.

sunday it came back (still no cramping), and was a bit more suspicious looking. it was probably just a clot (again, “somewhat common” and no cause for serious concern), but was officially not cool.

by monday morning, it had cleared up, but the doctor’s office told me to come in for some tests (the same tests they would have done at my first visit in april, only earlier). so i did, and apparently a trip to the doctors office does not qualify as “taking it easy” because i started spotting again. we got some blood drawn, talked about all the things it might be that are not a miscarriage (specifically: low progesterone levels which can be boosted with drugs), and that it might be a miscarriage. “the plan” was to call back tuesday morning (today) for the results. the good news is that i’m now almost completely caught up with my TV watching.

and now it’s almost tuesday afternoon and i’m still spotting a bit (it’s all “old blood” which is apparently less cause for concern) and i just learned that the test results aren’t back from the lab yet. so i’m sitting and waiting.

the positive points are that i’m still feeling all sorts of pregnant. the nausea is threatening to reach the tipping point (re: actual vomiting), my breasts are still cranky, and that bloodhound nose thing is really kicking in. vanilla and to a lesser extent fish and spinach are “off the list.” this all points to still being pregnant, which is good. also, all of this spotting has not been accompanied by cramping (at least, as far as i can tell since nerves and nausea are masking a bit of what i can read from that section of my body).

we have almost settled on calling the thing inside me a spore at this point. according to the charts the spore’s growing arms and legs and a bigger brain this week. so that’s pretty cool.

sunday we went to my parents house for dinner (with ryan’s parents and sister as well) to celebrate. that was pretty cool, but even before the spotting i was in this whole “please let’s not count this chicken before we know it’s an egg” state of mind, which only got worse when i discovered the new spotting. it’s not that i don’t want to celebrate, and i didn’t think i was a terribly superstitious person by nature, but it really freaks me out to spend too much time talking about or making plans about this baby (things that involve actual timelines) until we know it’s a baby. my mom had bought a couple of pairs of little 0-3mos sneakers (pink and blue), “just as a centerpiece” but they kind of freaked me out. not only for the jinx factor (i feel bad enough for buying maternity pants), but because um…i did the math. i know that the difference between 0 and 3 months is substantial, but i thought about how big a foot would need to be to keep that shoe on, and how big a proportunate body would be, and imagined that being *inside* of me, and the absurdity of the whole thing, and well…it freaked me out. i mean, *duh* i know all of this, and wanted it, and see it happen all around me, and yes, it’s quite too late to be changing my mind, but still. pretty damn freaky.

sunday night, when i was pretty damn convinced i was going to miscarry, i felt my first sort of connection to the spore. i’d joking pointed to my belly and said or done things, but mostly for entertainment value. sunday night i reached out in my mind and begged it to hold on. that it was made of me and ryan and that it must therefore be stronger than this. the urge is not going away, even though my rational mind is trying to temper it.

ryan, by the way and for the record, has been very, very good. he’s much more stoic about this stuff than me (about all stuff than me, really), but i almost had to force him to go to work today. he’s doing his usual blend of humor and concern that’s working really well. so glad he’s my baby-daddy ;)

(note: i am too scatterbrained to edit this, so if whole sentences don’t make sense and stuff, that’s why ;)

math is a funny thing. i’ve known for 1 week now that i’m pregnant. if you go by my uber-obvious-when-it-happens ovulation schedule, conception happened about 3 weeks ago, but since the world counts pregnancy from your last period, i’m actually just wrapping up week 5, and am cruising into week 6 as i type.

also, “everyone knows” that pregnancy is 9 months, but really, it’s 40 weeks…which is 10 lunar months. makes it difficult to track the “what you’re feeling this month” to “what you’re feeling this week” bits on sites and in books cuz i don’t know where the months and weeks line up.

oh the trials of an overly obsessive, barely pregnant woman.

so how am i feeling, you ask?

well, not so bad. not so good. i’m tired. a few days last week i had fairly constant abdominal pain/cramping (nothing to worry about), and off and on nausea. saturday and sunday the cramps had pretty much left but the nausea made up for it. i haven’t puked yet (wooo!) but have come decently close. i’m actually a little relieved about the nausea thing. statistically, the more morning sickness you feel, the less likely you are to have a first-trimester miscarriage. the day or so it went away, i was actually a bit cranky. which is not to say that no nausea means no baby by any means.

oh dear. and the mood swings. they’re driving me a bit nuts, to say nothing of everyone else who has to deal with them. at least i can still recognize that i’m “off” instead of just assuming i’m rational. it’s a small blessing, i suppose.

as for physically, well, i’ll spare you the details about my breasts, but from what i’ve been told from other pregnant women, i’m getting off easy…so far. i haven’t gained any noticeable weight, according to my scale, but it’s certainly shifted a bit. a couple of weeks ago i was itching for a bit of a diet because only a couple pairs of pants fit. as of saturday i was down to a single pair of jeans. tried to find inexpensive pants that were just the next size up instead of heading to maternity (since this isn’t really maternity weight quite yet), but the maternity pants i tried on fit sooo much better (to say nothing of comfort) and were about the same price so i went for it. i don’t *think* they scream out “omg! you’re pregnant!”, but i’m still leery of wearing them before everyone knows. i’m going to try and stick to my jeans and some spring skirts for now. hopefully, that’ll tide me over until we get to the telling.

so yeah. that’s about it for me. as for the sprout (omelet, spud, etc), without any doctor’s appointments i don’t have much to report. the books and such tell me we’ve moved past “layers of goo” into something that loosely resembles humans and is about the size of a lentil.

also, as you can see, we clearly haven’t settled on what to call him/her quite yet.