First up was the glucose test. Basically an hour before your appointment you drink this bottle of orange-flavored sugar water (think mc donalds orange drink that’s been sitting out so long that too much water has evaporated) and then nothing else. Whether or not you fast ahead of time (and how long) is subject of some debate. Making pregnant women fast isn’t something people like to do unless it’s necessary. My doc’s office says nothing when you wake up in the morning, but it ended up being more than 12 hours for me since i didn’t have a pre-bed snack or anything. When you arrive, they draw your blood and test how well your body handled the sugar rush. At my doctor’s office, the magic number is 130 (sometimes its 140). A couple days later I learned that my number was 144.

More on that in a minute. You want to know about Elliott, right?

He’s doing great! The bonus sonogram was to check on my placenta, which was in the “low but not too low” range during the big 18 week sonogram. It turns out that my placenta has moved so far up and out of the way that the technician found it hard to believe it was ever an issue. Hurrah! She also checked everything else out again, and he’s developing just fine. He’s a bit big for his gestational age, but not by more than a few days, so nobody’s concerned there. He’s also a long fellow. During most of the exam he was in a pike position, with his feet extending up over his head even though his knees were bent! Crazy-long kid! However, if he’s going to be pushing the 9-pound mark (I’m hoping he’ll stay under 8.5, but I’m not sure he will) I’d much rather have that weight taken up with height than girth. Although neither my husband nor I are particularly tall (I’m 5′6″ and he’s 6′), we both have some uncles with some serious height on them, so it’s not unprecedented.

See? He’s fine. Now back to me!

Elliott and I took a rather harsh tumble the day before the sonogram, too. He was never in any danger (there was no trauma to my mid-section, no spotting, and no abnormal cramping), and somehow I managed to escape doing any serious damage. Had the fall gone differently (I tripped over a power cord while carrying a dirty fish tank filter and crashed into our TV console) I might have ended up with some broken parts, specifically my left shoulder, left hand, and right knee. Also, there was a moment where it looked like our TV was going to topple over more or less onto me as well. As it was, the TV is fine and I only walked away with some serious bruises and a hearty dose of shock. It was reassuring to have the appointment scheduled for the next day and the sonogram tech paid extra attention while she was looking around to confirm the lack of trauma. I slept much better that night, or I would have without the bruised shoulder. :)

On Monday I returned for the 3 hour test. It’s pretty much the same, only “more.” I had to fast for 12 hours and since it also involves measuring the fasting level, I drank the solution (2x as thick – like when the orange soda doesn’t squirt out any carbonated water) after my blood was drawn the first time. Then I waited an hour for another blood draw. Rinse, repeat, repeat again for a total of 4 draws over the course of 3 hours with nothing to eat or drink to disrupt the test.

Know what else disrupts the test? Throwing up because drinking a super sugar solution after a 12 hour fast and then nothing else makes your belly feel super gross. Thankfully, I managed to fight the waves of nausea that hit after the first hour, but it wasn’t easy. Elliott decided that this sugar rush was great fun so he started doing somersaults right when the nausea was at it’s peak and all I wanted to do was sit perfectly still until it faded. When it was over, I slammed a banana and headed out for roast beef. I felt “off” the rest of the day. Like when you do that day after you’re done being sick. You’re technically symptom-free, but your body is still dragging and dazed and needs a bit of extra time to recover.

The great news (and why I waited until midway through week 27 to post) is that I passed the 3 hour test, so no gestational diabetes for me! Yippee! I celebrated with frozen custard and girl scout cookies!! (not really. okay, maybe.)

And let’s talk about that “week” thing, shall we? People always ask how many weeks along you are. It’s tough to answer. I get emails from various sites on a near-daily basis giving me updates on how I might be feeling, what fun new complications being pregnant may have recently caused, how the baby’s growing, and of course, how I should invest thousands of dollars in cord blood banking and start stocking up on diapers right away. They all have a different idea about what week I’m in, even though i’ve given them all the same due date. How do you define when a week starts? I know that on Friday, I will be at 26 weeks, meaning that I’ve completed 26 full weeks of being pregnant. Today, however, most everyone agrees that I’m “in my 26th week”, even though I’m really “at” 25weeks and 5 days. Some sites started me on “week 26″ emails as early as last Saturday (25w1d). Some seem to wait until you’re in the middle of the week (as if the 26th week extends from 25w4d to 26w3d.

Is any of it the end of the world? Of course not. So why am I ranting about this?

Because ranting feels good sometimes, you know. Plus, no matter how you slice it, I’m supposed to be in my second trimester. The second trimester “started” sometime in early December (there’s some discrepancy over whether that’s in week 13 or 14 – or when those weeks even are ;) and should be ending mid-March (same kind of gray area).

For “boring” pregnancies like mine without any serious complications or risk factors, the second trimester is the best time of your pregnancy. You’re past all the nasty nausea and fatigue of the first trimester. You start rocking a really good-looking baby-bump so you feel more “pregnant” and less “misshapen and overweight”. You find a groove with your diet and schedule. Your baby kicks often enough to comfort you, but not often or hard enough to start hurting or getting annoying. Yes, it gets annoying. Any woman 8+ months along who tells you differently is lying to herself, too. If it’s your first baby, your breasts finally calm down for a while, or at least you get used to them being so crazy weird, so that’s not as big of a deal, either.

It’s also before all the 3rd trimester stuff kicks in. At some point the baby gets so big that you can’t go 20 minutes without peeing, you don’t have any room in your stomach for a decent meal, you get heartburn, back aches, swollen ankles, etc. You start having serious trouble sleeping at night. Any number of “get ready to deliver” changes start happening with your body, too. I won’t go any further into those details because frankly, it’s more information that you probably want to know.

The second trimester is the sweet spot between those two more unpleasant bookends. …or at least it’s supposed to be. I got ridiculously cheated this time around.

While the nausea had a sharp decrease in intensity fairly early in December, it lingered, along with extreme fatigue, until early February. I couldn’t shake it, and I was too tired to try. I wasn’t eating very much either, because I just couldn’t find the motivation. If I couldn’t easily acquire something hella tasty within about 3 minutes of realizing I needed to eat, I’d get distracted and forget for a few hours. That ravenous feeling that was supposed to kick in never did. It wasn’t until a stern but friendly chat with my doctor (after she tested me to make sure I wasn’t anemic) after which I forced myself to start eating more did the fatigue wear off and my appetite kick in a bit. I’m still exhausted, but a couple of strategically timed caffeinated beverages and a nap and I can make it to 11pm without too much trouble. I didn’t really start feeling “good” until I was more than 1/2 way through my second trimester.

Fortunately, that window managed to stay open for a surprise trip to Las Vegas for my friend’s birthday. We’d been planning to go in July (when her birthday actually occurs), but since there was no way I could leave or take a 4-6 week old with me, we bumped it up.

The window (that was open for less than a month) is already starting to close — almost a month ahead of schedule. I had a few rough meals in the past 24 hours and I realized it was because my stomach just couldn’t handle the volume of a normal-sized meal any more. And I’d just started to find a good groove with my diet. Because it’s my second pregnancy (I’m assuming) and my belly is looser and he’s a bit bigger, I can feel him wiggling around in there all the time. My bladder is his favorite punching bag, so I’m already making 3rd trimester worthy trips to the bathroom to head him off at the pass, or to keep him from inflicting pain. And my boobs? Also within the last 24 hours it’s like they woke up and said “oh, shit! we’re behind schedule!” They’re hotter than the rest of my body by 5-10 degrees, they’re crazy sensitive (and not in a good way), and … let’s just say they’re not the same soft plushy pillows they were pre-pregnancy, or even during the first trimester. And sleeping? Forget about it. That crap kicked in around 12 weeks and hasn’t let up. It just gets steadily worse.

Where did that 2nd trimester go?! I remember most of this from last time, but I remember it happening later. Much Later. If everything is this intense and he’s got another 3.5 months to bake, how rough are May and June going to get?

Am I really complaining? Not too much. I know from friends and what the internet tells me that I’ve been blessed with another easy pregnancy, and I’m very grateful for that. I know that some of these differences have to do with being a bit older and it being my second pregnancy. It could be worse, too, even with my track record. By this time last pregnancy I was ridiculously swollen (but just edema, thankfully) and had added hearburn meds to my daily pills. Even with everything else, if I stay up late enough, I can almost make it to morning without having my light, uncomfortable sleep completely derailed by a mid-night trip to the bathroom.

By no means am I ready to be done and start the infinitely more anxiety-full stage of newborn+toddler-hood, I just wish I could have had more time to take advantage of the easy-breezy second trimester, you know?

Who’s Elliott, you ask?

Oh, right. That’s the name of the fetus formerly known as Squirt. We kind of love the name, and in struggling for a good middle name to accompany it, we’ve pretty much ruled out the possibility of scrapping it and starting from scratch. I call him Elliott more often than I call him Squirt, and any number of “we’re keeping it to ourselves for now” decisions have been ruined by my off-handed “Whatcha doing in there, Elliott?” remarks when he starts wiggling around.

There’s only one problem with his name: finding the right middle name to accompany it. Right now, “Michael” is in the lead, but it’s a default “I guess that’ll work” sort of lead. That’s lame. Nobody wants to tell his 4th grade class that he got his middle name because his parents couldn’t be bothered to try harder.

Besides the obvious “initials that spell trouble” issue, Elliott has a few more complications.

Elliott’s first and last names have 3 syllables each, so a one-syllable middle name is ideal. Two will work if it’s the right sort of two and we’ve discovered that the more clipped or staccato-sounding, the better. Phonically, Elliot flows and the stops, while Stephenson “stops” then flows. If you put to much more “flowing” syllables in the middle, his name sound extra long.

Elliott, with its syllabic density and “fancy French-ness” needs a strong, no-frills middle name. It has to have a similar agelessness as well. Cole or Jacob might sound okay otherwise, but are just too trendy to pair well. (Yes, I’m aware Jacob may be the oldest name ever, but it’s super-hip right now, so no).

We’ve entertained both “Ryan” and “Robert” as middle-name candidates and they pass both the “sounding good” and “no bad initials” tests. The problem is that we either are the people who name their children after family members or we aren’t, and we don’t think we are. Plus, when we’re being extra cross with Elliott, nobody wants punish someone else’s names. “No family name” rules out other decent candidates like “Paul,” “Richard,” “Arthur,” and “Alan” as well. And while we’re at it, that means close friends, too. “Mark” and “James” are other likely-but-inelligable names.

We briefly tried to be entertaining, figuring if we couldn’t find something that fit, we could find something that was at least entertaining or interesting. We looked at just initials. Ryan suggested a number, possibly the day he’s born, and then spelling out the number for the name. “Elliott Twelve Stephenson” just doesn’t work for me.

The greatest idea we had, that’s sadly something I might do to character in a book, but not to my own children, was “spelling” the middle initial. Think about it. If you were the sort of person who liked messing with folk’s expectations, how much fun could you have with this?

“What’s your full name?”
“Elliot Sea Stephenson.”
“What’s the C stand for?”
“What C?”

“What are your initials?”
“E. W. S.”
“What’s the W stand for?”
“Why.”
“??”

It’s an Abbott & Costello routine just waiting to happen! Sadly, I’m sure it would get old before he even understood what we’d done to him. Kinda brilliant though, since no matter which letter you pick, it going to sound right.

Setting all silliness aside, what we need is:

• a short name
• low-frills/strong
• classic sounding
• not the name of someone special to us (or, naturally, someone we collectively or individually dislike)
• doesn’t give him any awful initial issues.

That’s not too much to ask is it?

Oh. You know.

With one night’s exception (Monday), it’s been a trial every night. No less than 2 hours is spent re-directing her back to her bed at 1-3 minute intervals. Sometimes we’ve played it stern, sometimes bored, sometimes gentle. Sometimes we’ve gone to bed so that she’ll see that everyone’s sleeping. Every night we’ve broken down and tried bribes like extra books or special toys. We’ve gone through the motions of the bed-time ritual to try and re-set her attitude and calm her down. In short, we’ve tried “everything”.

Nothing really works. She has entirely too much fun throwing herself dramatically on the bed, waiting for us to leave and shut the door, then running back out to us as fast as she can shuffle around obstacles and across the hardwood floor. It’s never not a game to her, even when we’re mad. Then she just yells at us whatever we just said as she runs back into her room. It is awesome.

At some point every night, we enter the “danger zone.” She gets so tired that she gets clumsy and doesn’t zig or zag as cleanly as she could, or stumbles to the ground or bumps her jaw/head on some part of the bed when she’s being all dramatical. We’ve been trying to avoid this period by getting her to calm down, which is usually when the game changes. One night, she and Ryan watched Tinkerbell until 11:30 and then the completely fatigued baby was much less interested in getting out of bed and fell asleep. Another night, I sat on the edge of her bed and sang songs until she stopped getting up and started snuggling. A third night, Ryan managed to get her calm and sleepy with only a half-hour of TV. These were all last-resort options, because we don’t want to make a habit of any of them. They were only pulled out once we’d reached the point where we were exhausted and she was dangerously tired.

Last night was pretty much the same thing, except I started the calming/resting part a bit earlier and instead of singing, I crawled into her bed myself and started reading her favorite books. The rule was, if she was in the bed too (there was room), I would read aloud. Otherwise, I’d read to myself. At one point she snuck around behind me to catch a glimpse of the book and climbed up onto the lip of wood that frames the mattress. Standing on the bed is a big no-no, and has been for a while. Like I always do when she’s standing on our bed, I reached around behind me and wrapped my arm around the back of her knees to pull her down. She’s supposed to fall onto me and right next to me, which I thought there was room for, even on her tiny bed.

Instead, likely because we’d reached the danger zone of clumsiness and because at 2, she shouldn’t be expected to compensate for the change in space from our bed to hers, and because I was sleepy too, and not at my clear-thinking best, she fell straight across the bed. Most of her landed on the mattress (and me), but her forehead crash landed on the wooden lip of the bed frame. This is not the same thing as falling on a protruding headboard or bed rail. This was a flat surface about 3 inches wide that is usually flush with the mattress. In other words, it could have been much worse.

Immediately following the crash, we went into action. There were tears and screams and frantic grabs for ice packs. Most importantly, there was an an ever-increasing welt growing on her forehead. Two panicked parents got dressed and in the car as quickly as possible and sprinted through the rain to Children’s Hospital which was (thankfully) very near by. Before we got even halfway there, the crying had ceased except when we tried to put the super-cold ice on the welt and the welt had stopped increasing in size (but was turning a sickening shade of blue). She was sleepy, but at that time we weren’t sure if it was “I hit my head” sleepy or “it’s 10:00pm and I’m extremely tired” sleepy. We did everything we could to keep her engaged and as we pulled up to the emergency room, she was timidly singing along with “Old Mac Donald.” For the first time since it started, we started to believe that eventually everything was going to be okay.

And it turns out we were right. After being checked out by a very friendly group of ER staff, it was determined that she was totally cool. She hadn’t passed out, she hadn’t thrown up, and her eyes were dilating normally. Before we left, she was back to her normal “It’s 11pm and I’m super sleepy” self. She chatted, played with the activity wall in the room, and shuffled around from Mom to Dad every time someone new came in. She performed all high-fives and “you should see the other guy” echos requested of her. The staff sent us home with a list of signs to look for and the task of checking on her every few hours overnight. Today she’s been on the sluggish and sleepy side, but that has more to do with not getting enough sleep last night than anything else. We’ve had other days like this, so I’m not worried about it being “abnormal behavior.”

This certainly has an effect on the “big girl bed” landscape, however.

Our new plan of attack is multi-phased. The first phase is not even asking her to go to bed until she’s super-sleepy and interested in staying there. Even if it means staying up until 10:30 every night and watching late-night children’s programming to keep her calm. The theory is that this will encourage the “go to bed and stay there” concept. Once she seems to “get it”, we’ll start slowly bumping the bed time back up to a normal time. This may mean no naps in the mean time, since getting her to sleep during the day has also proved fruitless. Today, sleepy as she was, she entertained herself with her books for about 10 minutes before deciding she was done.

If this doesn’t take, it’s back to the drawing board. Putting her back in the crib won’t work. Now that she’s seen life outside those walls, she refuses to go back.

It was not without difficulties and very important lessons learned.

Silly Mommy thought that if Charlotte couldn’t handle staying in the bed, we would just drop her back into her crib. Hell to the No. She has never sounded as emphatically miserable and lividly pissed as when we tried to put her back in her crib for the night after a set amount of “tries” staying in bed. We might have let her scream longer, but being in an apartment building is not without complications and neighborly considerations.

We also flubbed when we decided to start the process on a Sunday night instead of Friday night. Monday morning looming on the horizon as we struggled to get her to fall asleep made things even more stressful.

Another “next time we’ll be better” error was building the in the evening. She was still so excited about the bed when it came time to sleep that for a while, the reason she kept getting out was to come out and show us how cool it was that she was sleeping in the big bed.

So did we do anything right?

That remains to be seen, I suppose. We certainly talked up the transition, which means all the internet advice about dealing with kids who are afraid of the big kid bed was moot (so far). Likewise, as much as we’re doing this for ourselves (to free up the nursery for someone else), we think she’s ready. She sleeps well on cots at daycare, she understands routines, and she’s in the process of being potty trained (something else that she’s decided she’s ready for well in advance of me being ready for her being ready). It just doesn’t make sense to send the message “don’t pee in your pants, unless of course you’re trapped in your crib. Then pee away. It’s not gross or anything.”

There were some pretty awesome moments last night. Hearing her mad dash across the floor to get back into bed when she heard us walking up was hilarious. Sitting on the edge of her bed and leaning over her while she snuggled down into her covers and kissing her good night will never get old.

The general consensus of the internet, day care professionals, and friends who have “been there”, is just to keep at it. After a few nights of walking her back to bed over and over and over again, it should take.

Here’s hoping.

On top of that, I’ve also picked up some rather frequent heartburn, back aches, and an inability to be comfortable sleeping at night. My least favorite “oh so pregnant” side-effect has to be the lack of stretching. I can’t stretch any part of my body without risking some painful cramping. Especially in my legs. My calves are so angry and aching but if I dare give them the stretch they crave, they’ll just charley horse up on me. I’m also pregnant enough that I can’t really twist my spine any longer and stretch out my back. No decent stretching leaves me feeling all smashed together and heavy. It is made of lame.

But enough about me. What about that 18 week sonogram?

The technician started with the gender question, since some times it can be a bit difficult (you don’t have to tell us that). Within less than 30 seconds, we had our answer. It went something like this:

Step 1: Locate the baby in the belly.

Step 2: Locate the tail end of the baby.

Step 3: Try to find the –

Step 3a: Discover that the baby is not only spread eagle with his parts perfectly on display, but his hand is pointing at them as if to say “right here! here! this is where it says i am a boy!”

There is no Step 4.

The picture is awesome, but since I don’t want to embarrass the poor kid by posting pictures of his prenatal boy parts on the internet, you’re out of luck unless you see me in person. I am his mom, after all. Whipping out inappropriate pictures to embarrass their sons are what moms do. Protecting their internet privacy when it comes to their boy parts comes with the job, too.

awww…. “his mom”. I think that’s the first time I’ve said/thought that.

After that, the rest of the sonogram was a bit of a blur. We were too floored by the awesome wave of reality that was washing over us to pay much attention. There’s something amazing that happens when you find out the gender of the baby. Until that point, there’s two theoretical babies inside you. One is a boy and one is a girl and until you know which one it really is, neither one feels quite real. Once you know, everything changes. Suddenly the list of things that I needed to accomplish in the next few months manifested and plotting began in earnest. Well, it did once the sonogram was over, anyway.

While we were babbling about having a boy and all the silly consequences related to that, the awesome technician kept doing her job. She checked out all his parts (and they looked great), and all my parts, which looked more or less great. Apparently the placenta has taken roost a bit too close to my cervix. It’s not officially too close but it’s close enough that we’ll be going back at 24 weeks for another sonogram to make sure it’s sliding up like it is expected to.

No worries.

No really. No worries. You can freak out for 1/2 a day like I did, but then you must remember that I’m only 18 weeks along so that even if I had placenta previa, it wouldn’t be an issue for another few months and even then it just means eventual bed rest and a c-section. It’s super manageable. Plus, like I said, I don’t have it. I just have a low-lying placenta. Which is hardly a deal at all that is on its way to being a complete non-deal. So no worries, ok?

Also on the sonogram, we also learned that Squirt is a big boy. Not dangerously big, but definitely “measuring large” with respect to his head and belly. Are we surprised? Not really. Charlotte was almost 8 pounds at birth (7 lbs, 15.5 oz) and babies get bigger in subsequent pregnancies. It does mean that we probably won’t bother with any newborn clothes at all save for the unisex stuff that we’ve got from Charlotte.

…And maybe some adorable blue thing with trucks or turtles or something on it for taking him home from the hospital.

Him. That hasn’t gotten old yet. It’s barely gotten normal.

We got some great shots on the video of his arms and legs and heart and brain. There’s an entire section of him kicking my ever-expanding bladder, requesting not so politely that I empty it (again) to give him more leg room. Sadly, he spent most of his time curled up against my placenta with his hand over his face. We got a close enough look to rule out any face/head related problems, but no real shots of his pre-natal smile.

I bet he was still embarrassed that we caught him checking out his gender himself.

14 weeks is on the absurdly early side to feel anything moving, so I’m only about 85% confident that’s what was going on. It’s happened twice so far, and at this point it doesn’t feel like much. The baby’s still pretty low and tiny so it wasn’t so much of a kick as a slight “shift” down there that didn’t coincide with any other rumblings or heartbeats or anything. I wouldn’t have noticed it either time it happened if I hadn’t been lying perfectly still and already had my attention focused inward. The first time it was because I was trying to fall asleep and the second was while we were experiencing a bit of turbulence while flying. Meditation is the key to success in both situations.

Since I’m definitely in the second trimester, all my “omg you’re newly pregnant” symptoms are rapidly fading. Until the bump gets more pronounced and the babe starts twitching on a regular basis, I don’t have much to “remind” me that I’m pregnant or that everything’s still going well in there.

Even tiny “probably quickening” twinges are a great spirit-lifter.

How are we doing? Just fine, and better every day. The first trimester is my least favorite and I’m looking forward to being free of it. The extra B6 has really taken the edge off the nausea, as has taking 2 progesterone pills at night, instead of spreading them out at 8 hour intervals. That 4pm pill ruined my whole evening. Still, there’s always a slight undercurrent of discomfort in my belly and it takes something seriously tasty to push past that wall. I’ve been struggling to keep my weight “up” this time. Instead of gaining a couple of pounds, I’ve actually lost almost 10. Most of that was due to a bug I caught that left me sick and seriously dehydrated for about 36 hours, but I wasn’t exactly “eating for two” before then. Thanks to a very feast-filled Thanksgiving, I’m only about 5 pounds down from where I was when the pregnancy started. There’s very little doubt that by the end of the Christmas season, I’ll be back on track, if not a bit ahead.

Between all the vitamins, supplements and general meds I’m taking, I’m up to 11 pills a day (6 in the morning and 5 at night) and some of them are mighty beasts. This gets pretty annoying. Also annoying is the continued aversion to garlic-like smells. Eating something with a bit of garlic (or chives or leeks) in it isn’t so bad, but if it’s the only “note” in the air, I can’t handle it. On the flip side, I haven’t had many cravings. I went through a week of loving hamburgers and a night where I inhaled 3 pieces of Long John Silver’s fish, but I haven’t run up against anything as powerful as I experienced last round.

The nausea factor is a bit different this time, too. I think that stomach bug reset my gag threshold. I’m extremely sensitive to even the suggestion of throwing up. In fact, trying to “talk myself out of” being sick has resulted in a couple of close-calls over the past few weeks. In fact, recalling the incidents while writing this section has made me a bit queasy.

The last of my minor complaints that I’m fortunate are my only issues would be my belly. I am in a really annoying spot where none of my clothes fit. Thanks to second-pregnancy belly popping, my “real” clothes became completely useless weeks ago. Normal pants are too tight and normal tops don’t reach to the lower-cut maternity pants. Since I’m just barely getting the true pregnancy bump, none of my maternity clothes fit quite right, and some of them are completely out of the question. I picked up a couple of new pairs of jeans since I had very few non-capri pants last time, and just like my body, they didn’t snap back to “mini-bump” size at the end of my pregnancy. Everything contributes to making me feel fat because everything is just a bit too loose and a bit too baggy. Unfortunately, the only solution is to ride this wave until the belly starts coming in.

That’s about it. Squirt and I have a checkup tomorrow where we might be able to pick up a flu and H1N1 vaccine. I haven’t been actively seeking it out, like I probably should, but that’s how I roll. The biggest difference between this pregnancy and last? How laid back I am about everything. I’m not slacking off, but I don’t have my nose buried in pregnancy books, sites, emails either.

Hopefully next month I’ll have a great sonogram report with some gender-related news!

(mini-disclaimer: don’t use my vitamin/medicine regime without talking to your pre-natal care provider first.)

That’s right! Our happy family of three is about to become a bit bigger. We’ve known for several weeks, but wanted to wait until after the first sonogram to spread the news far and wide. Last Thursday we went to the doctors for our 9 week checkup and it included a sonogram to make sure everything was going well. It was! Squirt, as we’re calling him, looked great with a super-healthy 175 bpm heart rate. “Him” is just a guess at this point, it won’t be until the next sonogram (probably some time in January) that we’ll have a shot at knowing for certain. This is assuming he doesn’t cross his legs like his big sis did.

So….yeah. I guess that’s our news. You can follow all the ins and outs of the pregnancy here, and on a special twitter account I’ve created to keep the pregnancy stuff separate from charlotte’s stuff and my normal account. That way nobody who doesn’t want to be inundated with pregnancy stuff won’t have to be. The twitter account is @baby_squirt, and I’ve been adding to it since before we officially found out we were pregnant (!), so you can catch up if you’d like. I’ll also be adding it to the side of this site, in case twitter is not your thing, but religiously checking this site is. I’m debating adding one of those “how far along is your baby” ticker, too, but they’re just so cheesy.

As for me, this pregnancy is pretty closely mirroring the last. I have low progesterone levels again, so I’m taking a supplement to correct that. While I haven’t officially been “sick”, I think the constant nausea and fatigue is stronger with this pregnancy than last, and it’s definitely taken a toll on my ability to get things done. I don’t exactly have a baby-pooch yet, but my abdominal wall relaxed almost immediately (common in 2nd pregnancies), so none of my pants fit. I’ve been stuck wearing new and old maternity clothes for the past couple of weeks, and it won’t get “better” until I actually start popping for real.

Keep your eyes on this space for more updates on Squirt as well as some much-delayed updates on Charlotte. She turned 2 last week! Can you believe it?