What if?

We'd decided after the whole ultrasound debacle we went through before, that we were done with ultrasounds. We know we're having a girl now, and we're done looking. At least I thought. But now out of nowhere I'm starting to get really anxious and nervous that maybe they missed something at that last ultrasound. Yes, the hour-long ultrasound that included me, both moms, an ultrasound tech and a trainee. I know any one of us would have seen something between those legs as many times as I had her check, but I'm still thinking what if?? They say that after 24 weeks gestation it's hard to tell gender anymore because the baby starts running out of room and gets more balled up in there. So my window of time to get one last look is shrinking daily! Yesterday I emailed the place that told us it was a boy to inform them it was really a girl. I'm hoping they email me back and say "come on in for free!" Still waiting. I'm just thinking about all of those horror stories where the parents planned for a girl and out came a baby boy on the big day! Think of all the weeks we could have been prepping. Yep, I think I might need one more ultrasound to set my mind at ease. I hope I won't (but know that I will) be this neurotic the rest of this poor child's life.

Half Way There!

We're 20 weeks in! It's amazing how quickly we've gotten here. I swear the beginning of the pregnancy moved sooo slowly, and now, I can't keep up with it all. Here's the comparison pics between 4 weeks (when we found out) and now... 5 months!

Spidey Senses Gone Wrong

I've had the most incredible sense of smell since becoming pregnant. I can identify whether the Cheerios the person 3 cubicles over is eating are plain or honey nut. I can tell if the person that just entered the building 50 yards away is a smoker or not. For some reason the candle that the lady across the hall has always smells like cat pee to my new nose, and the new fragrance that comes out of the bathroom odor eliminator smells like flowery poo to me, even when I know no poo has been there. Bleh. I do not work in the best environment to be super sensitive to smell. Today was no exception to that rule. I saw a woman today who smelled so strongly like a dog kennel to me that it was completly overwhelming. I tried the ol' fragrant-lotion-on-the-hand trick to try and drown it out to no avail. I ended up dry heaving in front of the poor, smelly lady 3 or 4 times before I had to leave the room. I tried to explain to her that I was pregnant and I don't think she caught on to how offended I was by her odor, but I couldn't finish helping her. I had to have someone else take over. I feel so bad/rude that I almost lost it in front of her and I'm still super embarrassed that I couldn't control my vom-reflex this far into the game. Does this last until birth, or can I look forward to normal senses sometime soon? I see way too many less-than-clean parents and children in my line of work to spend another 20 weeks heaving at the first sign of poor hygeine.

4XL or Size 4 Maternity??

The person who made the genius decision to put the big lady section and the maternity section together in every store is a skinny, childless bitch. What woman wants to discover that her everyday size is bigger than a 8 month pregnant woman? And I held up a size 18W pair of pants today unknowingly, and thought eh, maybe. Not what I needed since I was shopping because I only have 2 pair of pants that actually fit anymore! Holy hormones!

Surprise!

Well, I went to the hospital for the REAL ultrasound today and SURPRISE, IT'S A GIRL!! I made the poor lady look between those little legs a million times, seriously, like 30 minutes before I would believe her. I can't scan the ultrasound pics in here, but I'll try on Monday. Here's some belly pics for you though! Oh, and for any of you thinking about buying something... neither one of us are big fans of pink... maybe purple or teal or something? We're terrified to think of the pepto-closet we're destined to have.

Clothes clothes everywhere and not a thing to wear!

It's amazing how things that I once would not be caught dead in, look just fine to me now that nothing else fits. Turns out holding on to that sweater I got as a gift 2 years ago (mostly because I was too lazy to return it) was a good move. All of my work clothes looked ridiculous on me this morning (my tummy showed up out of nowhere overnight!!) so anything that covers the bump will now be considered cute in my book. I'm now starting to understand the origin of "mom jeans." Let's hope my situation never gets that serious.

Yummy

I had a bowl of frosted mini wheats and half a jar of pickles for dinner. Mmm.

Glad to be in the 2nd trimester

My energy is coming back. I still go to bed around 9pm, but I'm not exhausted all day anymore and I'm able to actually get stuff done again! I still dry-heave constantly and feel like I must eat ALL DAY to prevent it, but it's a good excuse to have snacks on hand at all times. :)

I am feeling movement much more frequently now too. He likes to move around after my 2am potty breaks. Inconvenient but neat. I still have to stay really still to feel much, but the taps are getting stronger every day. I visited with my BFF and my SIL last week (they're both just a few weeks ahead of us) and they're both really showing now, so I'm expecting to be full-on pregnant looking in a few weeks. I'm thinking by the time I show like they are, Chris might be able to feel the little guy moving too. Crazy how fast everything's happening!

Starting to pop!

Here's a comparison between right when we found out at 4 weeks, and now at 16 weeks. It's starting to be obvious to more than just me!

Oh My Aching Back!

So, nobody told me that pregnancy would make you feel like an alien was trying to escape out of your rib cage from both sides. Had I known, I would not change my mind about becoming pregnant, but I would have saved myself a trip to Labor & Delivery and a hospital copay.
I'd noticed a couple of weeks ago that the right side of my back would really start to hurt by the end of the day. It wasn't the dull, low back achiness I'd read about. It was shooting, stabbing pain just below the bra strap. Then, last week, it moved around to the front of the right side too, just under my rib cage. It hurt so bad on the 10th that I called my doctor to make sure it was normal. She said no, and sent me straight to the hospital. Ugh, what a waste of time/money. They drew some blood, gave me no answers and sent me home in the same amount of pain I was in when I got there.
Since then, I've had the same pains EVERYday. I'm assuming it's a pinched nerve or my muscles splitting it two... one or the other. Either way, not so comfy. My sweet hubby got me a prenatal massage yesterday and there I learned that that terrible pain is totally normal. Smaller women tend to get it as they don't have as much room and have to create more. All of my guts are pushing upward and yes, it is probably both my muscles stretching and possibly pinching on a nerve. Neat. I'm hoping things will spread out like they're supposed to and give me a break soon!
The joys of motherhood.

It's a Boy!!

Today is my bday and the hubs and I both had yesterday off, so we celebrated then. He got me a ultrasound at one of those 3D places for my present, and we discovered- IT'S A BOY!!! We are so excited it's just more than I can express! Here are the pictures they printed for us.

13 weeks!

So, I didn't post the scrapbook pages when I thought I would... surprise! We're 13 weeks in now. To the outside world, it's not obvious that I have a bump, but to those of us who knew what I looked like before... we can tell! Here's the latest pics:

Second Trimester!

We've made it to the second trimester and I'm so excited because this is supposed to be the best of the trimesters. Baby Cano has decided that a minimum of 9 hours of sleep is a necessity for Mommy every night, which is usually fine. Problem is, this little one has also decided that 9 hours is too long to go without eating. So, this morning, I woke up and had my first bought of morning sickness because it'd been too long since dinner. At least I had nothing on my stomach, so it was just a 5 minute stint with my head in the toilet. Yuck though. I hope this isn't a sign of what's to come! Oh, and I have a hint of a bump now. My whole mid-section is getting thicker at once, so the bump is hard to see, but I'll post pics with the newest scrapbook pages tonight so you can check it out.

Scrapbook Pages

Little Lime

Today marks week 11. We've progressed from a prune to a lime. What a change in just a week! Speaking of changes, I have discovered the slightest bit of morning sickness... no puking, but constant nausea and some dry heaves if I do not eat ALL DAY. My obsessive eating brings us to the biggest change. I went from being in the exact same clothes 4 days ago to having to wear a hair tie between the button and button hole of the fly of my jeans. :( I kept saying I wanted a baby belly, but I somehow wanted to have a belly AND get to keep wearing all of my clothes. I don't know, I just did.

I finally figured out how to post my scrapbook page to the blog too. I'm going to wait until Chris gets home to take the week 11 picture before I post it though.

Baby furniture came in this afternoon! I'm meeting the hubs when he gets off of work and we're going to go pick it up! I can't wait! I think having a room and a place for everything will really start making this whole thing real. I'll take pics of that soon too.

Heartbeat

It wouldn't let me upload just the audio, so here is a blurry but audible video of our little prune's heartbeat.

Pictures

Belly pics for weeks 9 and 10. I talked about bloat last time I posted pictures, and week 9 is a good example! :)

In week 9, baby was a green olive. Week 10 was a prune! We're growing fast!

We got a home doppler a few weeks ago and this week, it's getting easier to hear the little heartbeat! I recorded it but blogspot won't let me post it. I'll keep trying.

Updates and more updates

We went to our ultrasound appointment on Friday. It's amazing how much that little one has grown in just a few weeks! It actually looked like a baby! There were arms and legs and we saw that heart beating away! Baby is a ham already. As soon as the baby knew all eyes were on him/her, (s)he started dancing like crazy! Moved the arms, the legs, then a full body wiggle. So cute! The heart beat was in the 170s which is supposed to be really good for this early on. Awesome! I'll post pics soon.
The doc tried to talk me into the flu shots. I told her I was hesitant. I have never had the shot or the flu, and I didn't like the idea of putting extra stuff in my body anyway, especially when there's someone else in there to worry about. She scared the crap out of me though! She said she's got 4 mommies in ICU right now with the flu and one of them doesn't look like she's going to make it. What the heck?!

Fast forward to Monday. I had a conference scheduled for Monday and Tuesday. I woke up feeling crumby, went to the conference and decided to call the doctor about my symptoms (because my OB scared the bejesus out of me). They had me come in, and low and behold, they think it's the flu. Neat. My doctor didn't seem nearly as concerned as I thought she would. She said it's been a mild season and that I will probably be just fine with the regular ole Tamiflu. So here I am, sitting at home instead of at my conference I really want to be at, trying not to think about how yucky I feel. Guess what one of the side effects is of the medicine they gave me... vomiting. So I haven't thrown up one time from being pregnant or having the flu, but I did yack a little thanks to the medicine that's supposed to make me better. Isn't it ironic?

Belly Pictures

Well, I have a really cute scrapbook page that I put together with all the belly pics, but I can't get it to transfer over here, so I'll just put up the first picture at 4 weeks, and the most recent pics, at 8 weeks. It's amazing how much difference there is between morning and evening pictures. If those week 8 pics would have been taken at night, you'd see a much larger, bloated tummy. I need to start taking ALL the pics in the morning! :)

Time Will Fly

I took a second to sit back and think about it and these next few months are going to FLY by. I've got to finish the nursery THIS weekend! Haha. Seriously though:
Oct. 2-4: ACL Festival (AND our first official sonogram on the 2nd!!)
Oct. 8-11: KK's wedding in California
Oct. 17-18: Neighborhood garage sale
Oct. 23-25: Ryan's wedding in Baytown
Oct. 31- Nov 1: Halloween party in Corpus
Nov. 7-8: NOTHING YET! Nursery time!
Nov. 8-15: My birthday WEEK. That's right.
Nov. 21-22: Christmas shopping
Nov. 26-29: Thanksgiving weekend
December 4: Hopefully finding out the sex of the baby!!!
December 12-13: December birthday family celebration
December 19-20: Christmas parties
December 23-27: Christmas
December 31- Jan. 3- New Years stuff

Holy crap, by then I'll be 23 weeks already! Life is about to move is fast forward!

On a completely different note, Chris got the job at TG and will be starting Oct. 12!! That means normal 8-5 hours and weekends off! We won't know what to do with all the time together! I'm thinking we've got a lot of work to do on this room since every weekend is spoken for until 2010.

Off to work on this pig sty we've created! I'll post belly pics and stuff later today. Promise.

Hello, Symptoms.

It's the last day of week 7 and while I'm happy to be having a symptom or two now, it's awfully inconvenient timing. I've got a million things going on at work right now, none of which I can deligate off of my desk and NOW I'm nauseous (just slight, but all day) and EXHAUSTED. I could sleep sitting up at this very moment if I let my heavy lids do as they pleased. Why am I blogging instead of working then, you ask? Well, because symptom #3 is baby brain. I have lost all long-term focus and can only stay on task a few minutes before I flit off to something else. I've already stopped to send an email since I've started this blog entry! I love all my symptoms, poorly-timed or not.

A positive side effect of pregnancy has made itself known. I had shoulder surgery in July and got pregnant in August. Well, my physical therapist is astonished at my amazing recovery time. Apparently my shoulder should be fighting every motion I make and it should be really painful and time-consuming for me to get full range of motion back. Well, the hormone Relaxin is released in high doses when pregnant, allowing joints to move more freely, which is making my recovery a piece of cake!

Oh, the bachelorette party was fun. I was actually really glad to be Sober Sally. Good thing, I've got until May 2010 before I can even entertain the thought of a glass of wine.

I'm going to try and post pics tomorrow... I think I may have located the camera cord. Stay tuned....

Blueberry

Well, we're 7 weeks in now and baby Cano is the size of a blueberry! I decided that now that the "as big as" is big enough to actually see in pictures, I'll start taking belly pictures with the fruit of the week. So, from here on out you'll get to see me posing next to a blueberry, olive, plum, etc. One day I'll find the cord that allows me to transfer pictures from our camera to the computer and I'll post the progression.

I've been a little bit of a nervous nellie seeing as I haven't really felt too much different being pregnant than I did when I wasn't pregnant. That being said, a friend of ours told me a couple weeks ago about a place that she went to that did free ultrasounds. Our ultrasound isn't for another 2 weeks and I just HAD to know that our little blueberry was alive and well in there, NOW! So, we went downtown and visited the place. It took no time at all to find our little blur and the heartbeat was so obvious! I had heard horror stories about the doctor having trouble finding the heart early in pregnancy, but ours was so easy to spot... we got to hear it too! Tear.

My friend's bridal shower and bachelorette party is tonight. This will be my first wild night out without being wild. I'll be taking my sparkling white grape juice for the champagne toasts. I'm a little worried that I'll be tired early, seeing as my new bedtime is 8:30, but besides that, it should be fun! I've decided I'll be historian for the night... it'll be so strange to be on the other side of the crazy party pics! Just kidding, Mom.

Who Blogs?

So, I always thought blogging was a little narcissistic, but I have really enjoyed reading random preggie blogs of women I don't even know, so it's been decided... I'm now a blogger! I've attached Chris' name on this whole experiment so that I'm not theoretically alone in it all. I want to use this as an outlet to log all of the little symptoms, and milestones. I know these nine months are going to fly by and I want to be able to look back and remember what it was like. So, here we go.

Today's only symptom to report is: no symptoms. I've become a little obsessive over every little twinge, burp, bathroom trip, etc. but to be honest, there's not much of a difference in today than before I knew there was a bun in this oven. That's a little scary... I want some symptoms so I know there's really something going on in there! Until our ultrasound on Oct. 2nd, I guess I'll just have to lean on my stockpile of cheap internet pregnancy tests to satisfy my need to make sure that little bean is real!