Jude is a Republican! The Horror!

I can’t believe that in 1-2 more days (depending on what tracker I’m looking at), S will be 20 weeks pregnant, which means, she is half way to the finish line.  I can’t believe my sweet wife is 5 months pregnant.  It still seems like such a dream and such a shock.  S told me the other day that she still wakes up half of the time wondering if this whole pregnancy has just been a dream and that in reality she is just getting fat.  But she isn’t getting fat, she is getting more and more wonderfully pregnant with our baby boy.  And I couldn’t be happier.  It feels like every day I fall more and more in love with my beautiful, strong, amazing wife and more and more in love with the little boy growing inside of her.  Truly, what a miracle all of this is. 

Yesterday, I think I might have felt Jude kick.  S has been feeling him moving and shaking (and lots of kicking) for the past three weeks or so, but every time I put a hand on her tummy, nothing.  But last night we were laying in bed reading and I think I might have felt it.  It was just the tiniest little flutter, and if I just had my hand on her and wasn’t actively hoping to feel him, I don’t know that I would have noticed it at all, but because I was looking for it, I felt it.  I hope that in the next two weeks our little Jude packs on some weight so there is a bit more heft to his tiny kicks so that I can feel them.  I can’t wait.

So now that we know that we are having a boy, we have been speculating on what he will be like.  My BFF Brandon said that he pictures Jude as being a really smart, liberal, jock type, where I have been picturing him as a witty, sarcastic surfer type of guy.  S and I have also been joking over the last few weeks about what he will be like.  You see, for the last month I’ve been working this weird schedule where I don’t go in until 11:15, so I have been able to watch morning daytime TV, including The View (not a big fan though I must say).  And S has a few mornings off too, so we have been watching it, joking that Jude is really conservative and how much he really loves Elizabeth (the conservative, right winger cast member) on The View and how he thinks she has some really great ideas/points.  It has been just cracking us up, but we are pretty weird.  We also decided (again, jokingly) that he is going to be a really annoying baby and not like the stuff that we like.  For example, one of the things that I am looking forward to (among lots of other things like mostly being around my baby all day) about being a stay at home mom is getting to hopefully watch The Ellen show (which I almost never see now because I’m at work).  And so we joke that he will really hate the Ellen show and make lots of grumbly sighs while I try to watch because he hates it so much.  Again, this cracks me up. 

In nursery news, I put up the mini blinds this week.  Man, what a pain in the neck (literally!  My neck is so sore!) putting those stupid things up were.  But they do block some light.  Though, even with the blinds and the curtains, it still isn’t terribly dark in there during the day.   I’m wondering if that will be a big deal as far as daytime naps will go and if so, should I add a layer of room darkening material to my curtains.  Any thoughts? 

Happy Friday!

-Liz

12 Week Ultra Sound Pictures!

This morning S and I went in for her 12 week NT scan, where they do an ultra sound to check for a few disorders and take a few drops of blood.  Everything so far is within the normal range but we should know more in 7-10 days.  It was so exciting to do this ultra sound, the little bean actually looks like a baby now!  It was pretty amazing to see it move it's little arms and legs around and twist and just jump about!  I could hardly believe it.  I can't wait till we can do our next one, but I'm sure that won't be for another month or two.  I tried to get the tech to make a guess of boy vs. girl, but she said that she couldn't even begin to make a guess for our baby because of the quality of the picture and the position and what not.  So, sigh, I will have to wait some more.  In the meantime though, I've made a poll that's on the right side of the blog, so be sure to vote if you think boy or girl!  I'll leave you with a few pictures:

Here is the baby's profile and that thing sticking up is an arm with a wee little hand.

Here is another profile shot.

Here is a little hand and arm waving hello at you!

And then this one is my favorite, it is the little legs and feet! 

In other news, S has reached that magical 13th week and still feels crappy.  She has been going longer and longer feeling better but the last two days have been puke city for the poor thing.  She has an appointment this afternoon with the doctor and we are really hoping that they will tell her that she can stop taking the progesterone, as we think that this extra boost of hormones is what is keeping her feeling so sick.  We will see.
-Liz

Madame Zaritska's Prediction

As of today, there are only 199 days until our baby’s due date!  It seems crazy to be under 200 days.  I’m so excited to meet the little bean.  Next week S has her NT scan and 1^st appointment with the new doctor.  I’m really excited for NT scan, just because it is another chance to see the little bean.  I’m hoping that the tech will be able to tell us a possible guess about boy vs. girl.  That’s what I’m the most excited about finding out.  I really want a girl, but everything seems to be pointing towards boy.  Or at least the mystical signs are- the Chinese gender predictor chart said boy and then yesterday I went on Madame Zaritska’s baby gender predictor and it guessed that we would have a boy with black curly hair- but that doesn’t even seem possible considering that no one in either S’s family or our donors family has either black hair or curls.  So I was thinking that maybe some of my guess answer’s for S were wrong, so I redid it with more accurate answers and here is what the Madame says: The day you deliver, outside will be dark. Your baby will arrive in the early evening. After a labor lasting approximately 19 hours, your child, a girl, will be born. Your baby will weigh about 13 pounds, 11 ounces, and will be 22-1/2 inches long. This child will have light brown eyes and barely there blonde hair.

And I think that all sounds pretty good, other than the 13 lb baby.  That is one big ass baby!  So maybe we are having a girl.  Maybe we are having a boy.  Chances are good that we are having one or the other!  

In other pregnancy news, S is still feeling sick just about all of the time.  She is getting worried at this point I think that it won’t go away ever and is getting worried that she will be too sick to go to Mexico at the end of the month.  I hope that because the trip is still another 3 weeks away that she will have plenty of time to get to feeling normal because if she stays as sick as she is, there is no way I’m going to be able to get her on a plane!  Fingers crossed that this morning sickness stuff goes away soon!

-Liz

She’s got a Bump!

S and I have been taking pictures of her stomach for the last 3-4 weeks to document her growing belly.  For the most part, if you weren’t looking really closely, it didn’t look like much of anything.  But last night we took our week 11 picture, and she has got a bump!  It’s so crazy to watch her body change and grow with our baby, it makes me so happy.  Also worth noting, for the last 2-3 weeks if you feel her stomach you can totally tell what side the baby is on at that moment.  I just can’t hardly wait to be able to feel the little bean move around in there!  Here is S’s week 11 bump in all of its wonderful glory:

In other news, S is starting to possibly see the light at the end of the nausea tunnel.  She is now going for 3-4 hour long stretches everyday not feeling awful.  Yay!  She even felt well enough yesterday that we went to the gym last night and worked out.  Granted we only walked on the treadmill, but it was more than either of us had done for the last 11 weeks.  So it felt good to be active and do something other than watch TV on our beautiful big TV, though that is nice too J.  All of this gives us hope that in the next two weeks or so, the “morning” sickness will go away.  It’s hard to believe that S is almost done with her first trimester!  I think that she is going to tell work once she is out of the first trimester, which means it won’t be long till we can tell everyone! That will be a lot of fun. 

-Liz

How Much Longer Can We Keep The Secret?

I don’t think that S’s pregnancy can possibly be kept a secret for much longer, despite her anxiety to keep it under wraps a few more weeks.  After all, as they say, loose lips sink ships and far too many people around us have loose lips.  At this point probably about 25 people in real life know about the pregnancy, but certainly not everyone.  And we have had a few slips- two slips on Facebook that were hastily deleted, two slips of people making comments about it in front of people who weren’t supposed to know (though those people didn’t catch on), and then this weekend at S’s work a girl pulled her aside to talk to her because she had heard from folks at her other job (where S also used to work) that we were trying to get pregnant (she had some useless advise for S), and also at work S forgot that she was wearing maternity pants and bent over in front of a girl who had a baby recently and she probably saw the belly band part of the pants.  And then stuff keeps happening like at two different parties we have played games that S could not participate in and had to be sneaky about getting other people to participate instead (one involved chugging beer and the other involved popping balloons between two people’s stomachs).  To top it all off, S is sick so constantly it really has just been pure luck that she has been alone at work each time the sickness strikes; and she is for sure sporting the tinniest baby bump that is only going to get bigger.  So I’m thinking as S is going on her 11^th week this week that she probably only has about two more weeks tops before the news needs to be told.  

And speaking of telling people, I told my boss today.  Now my boss is a 65 year old man who used to be a preacher.  He is a great boss, but me being gay is something that I think he probably has a hard time with, though you’d never be able to tell.  In fact, I have known him the whole 7 years that I’ve worked here and he been my manager for about 5 years now.  In all of that time, I have mentioned S many times, have pictures of her on my desk and even introduced him to her AS MY PARTNER at a coworkers wedding, and it still wasn’t until about a year ago that he finally figured it out and asked one of my coworkers if I was in a relationship with S.  Duh!  So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that when I told him he had zero reaction.  No congratulations, no questions about due date or boy vs. girl, nothing.  Just an ok.  And when I went on to explain that I wanted to go to S’s doctors appointments whenever our schedule would allow, he was just like, ok, we can work on making that happen.  So it wasn’t a big deal, and I’m sure he had no idea how to react and so neutral was best.  Still, somehow, I expected more.

-Liz

Melt Down #2

S had her second melt down last night.  It was pretty intense, to say the least, but with how terrible she has been feeling for the past two weeks, I can’t say I wasn’t expecting it.  S went to the doctor on Wednesday and they were supposed to do another ultrasound but the machine was broken (lame!) and so they just took some blood.  And she got the call on Thursday that her progesterone levels went down, from a 1900 to a 1300 and so they wanted to put her on two week proscription for progesterone to balance it back out.  And I know that a lot of you have done the progesterone thing during TTC and some of you during early pregnancy, but S doesn’t have the time that I do to follow all of your lovely blogs (she reads a few and knows from me what most of you are up to J), so she doesn’t know anything about it and felt like a failure over the whole thing.   Any words of wisdom you can give her or just a “Hey, I’ve had to take that stuff too and it sucks” message would be really helpful for her right now. 

So the melt down was over having to take this stuff along with her thyroid med, her prenatal,  the fish oil stuff the RE recommended, and the two anti-nausea meds is just making her crazy.  If you recall, S is the sort of person who I normally have to coerce into taking an ibuprofen when she has a headache, so to her all of these meds make her feel like her body can’t do this whole grown a baby thing on it’s own and so maybe it isn’t meant to be.  Plus yesterday she didn’t feel as pregnant as usual (and by pregnant I mean totally terrible feeling and exhausted) so she convinced herself that she wasn’t pregnant anymore.  Also she doesn’t think that she has her tiny little baby bump anymore, which wasn’t much of anything to begin with.  Poor lady, getting herself so worked up over all of this.  

I guess what it all boils down to is that neither of us really understood just how hard the first trimester would be and how constant the sickness and exhaustion and whatnot would be.  And I know that if you are reading this and have had/are having TTC troubles that it seems like we should be just thanking our lucky stars that S gets to be this miserable, that some of you are desperate to feel this miserable, and I totally get that and we are very grateful and happy.  But when you are puking everyday and dragging yourself though life and really hungry but everything sound disgusting, I can understand how it’s hard to see past that.  I think I’d melt down too.  Hopefully things will get better soon and before we know it, S will be in that mythical second trimester where all of her sickness will magically disappear.

Fingers crossed.

-Liz

Not Much Happening

It seems like there was more to talk about, more to consider, more to fret over when we were just TTC vs now that S is pregnant.  Not much is happening around  here other than preparing for lots of visitors over the next month.  Right now my mom is on her way down from Oklahoma to visit for the weekend, which I’m sure will include lots and lots of shopping, because that is what she loves to do when she is in town.  Maybe this time she will buy some baby stuff.  The only nice thing about all of the people coming to visit, other than it will be nice to see them, is that they all know that S is pregnant so it’s not like we will have people staying in our house and trying to hide this or not talk about this.

So nothing to report.  Things are going along nicely here.  We had a little date night last night and ate a nice dinner and drank a bottle of sparkling grape juice out of our nice crystal glasses and watched a movie on Netflix.  S hasn’t been getting “morning” sickness really at all, just a little nauseous for a few minutes here and there, and other than that, all other symptoms have been mild.  A craving here and there, bigger boobs that are sore, a little bit of cramping, being tired, etc. but nothing that she hasn’t dealt with beautifully.

Now I just wish that time would go faster.  I want to do the fun end of pregnancy stuff, like set up the nursery, have a baby shower, feel the baby kick, see her/his little face profile on the ultrasound.  It can’t get here soon enough as far as I’m concerned!
-Liz

Malt Vinegar is...Delicious?

As a person who has never been pregnant nor have I ever really been around anyone I was close to while they were pregnant, I am surprised by how different S already seems to be.  It’s been less than 6 weeks and already, you can tell that her hormones are racing.  Her cravings are weird.  She is off the carrot juice kick and is now crazy, and by crazy I do mean CRAZY, for malt vinegar.  Gross, so very gross and weird.  On Sunday we went and saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean in 3D, which we enjoyed, at a movie theater here called the Alamo were you can have drinks and food brought to you while you watch a movie.  It’s awesome.  Anyway, much to my surprise, instead of ordering her normal sandwich or pizza, S gets fish and chips and then pours pretty much half a bottle of malt vinegar over the whole thing.  Later she confessed that when she finished her glass of water and there was just ice in the cup she seriously considered for at least 30 seconds pouring malt vinegar in her cup and drinking it straight.  Yesterday, on her way home from work she went far out of her way to stop at a Long John Silver’s and get fish and chips again and delighted in covering it in malt vinegar, and if you were wondering, apparently Long John Silver’s has the best malt vinegar ever.  Not that you were wondering.  Now keep in mind that this is from a girl who in almost 9 years I have only seen eat fish once, and that was in Maui on our honeymoon at fancy restaurants.  And how does Long John Silver’s say in business anyway?  I swear I haven’t eaten there in over 10 years, though I’m guessing if this craving continues it might be in my future.

Another pregnancy related thing is that I have never seen S so tired.  Yesterday after work we were laying in bed together talking when I get up to make a phone call.  From the kitchen and in less than 5 minutes, literally, I can hear her snoring, she passed out that quick.  But she has been working a lot so that might be part of it.

Tonight we are having two of our friends over tonight for dinner to tell them the good news.  They don’t know that we were even thinking about trying to do this, so it will be really fun to tell them.  I think that they will be very excited and surprised.  I can’t wait to tell them!

-Liz

Second Beta Coming Soon

So S went in this morning for her second round of blood work.  We should know sometime after 2:30 what the second beta ends up being.  Monday’s ended up being 60.5, so we are hoping for something over 120 today.  We think that S ovulated late and that she probably didn’t actually get pregnant until May 4^th or 5^th, so that’s why the low first beta.  Also S has been having lots of cramping and the doctor assured her that it is normal.  Other than the cramping, not too many pregnancy symptoms, she has been craving carrot juice (gross) and has been tired, but I think that is about it.  Oh and there was lots of crying yesterday, but last night’s Glee was an especially sad episode, I cried too, and most of the other crying was at How I Met Your Mother, which is one of our favorite shows, at a happy moment in that show. 

Oh and if you were wondering how S is over 4 weeks pregnant when we only inseminated a little over two weeks ago, it’s because they start counting from the first day of your last period.  So it’s like we get bonus weeks.  J  And as far as the gender is concerned, I want a girl and S wants a boy.  Last week S told me that she just knew she was pregnant and that she was pregnant with a girl, but I don’t know how sure she is about that anymore.  I think that we will end up with a boy, so the last day or two all of my Amazon wish list baby shopping has been for nursery stuff that could go either way, but is probably a little more boyish. 

Yesterday we went to Barnes and Noble to look at pregnancy magazines and books and could only find one magazine, which wasn’t that great.  But we did find a super cute pregnancy journal, I think it’s called The Belly Book.  So now S can record her craving and thoughts and whatnot.  Fun stuff.  I wish there was more that we could be doing right now, but it’s just too early.  If only time would go faster!

Now come on doctor, call with the second beta!

-Liz

Probably Pregnant

The last two days have been wonderful.  S and I both managed to get off work on Tuesday and Wednesday, so we could go to the insemination together and get to spend some quiet us time afterwards.  It was so nice.  On Tuesday morning I got up with S and went to her acupuncture appointment.  I read and drank coffee at a nearby shop while she did the appointment and then we went together to the RE’s office.  I’d never been before, so it was nice to meet the doctor and get to see the place where this was all happening.  We got a report on the second batch of baby brain batter and while it wasn’t as good as Monday’s numbers, the RE said it was more of a normal count while Monday’s count was through the roof.  So the count of motile sperm was 10.25 million according to the report.  The whole thing took about 5 minutes and we got to sit and hold hands and just really smile a lot at each other.  I’m glad I got to be there.  Afterwards, we went and got lunch and some snacks and watched movies all afternoon (including Look Whose Talking and the Lion King, ha), while S kept her butt up in the air for good measure.  Yesterday we did pretty much the same thing, lunch, movies, and relaxing.  

I’m convinced that S is pregnant.  She thinks so too.  We know that it’s way to early to tell, but we think that we have had some lucky signs.  To start with, our first insem the numbers were crazy good and it was a good friend’s birthday that day.  Also, we had this strange and wonderful cold front roll in the last three days, keeping the weather a lovely 75 and breezy most of the time, which is very strange for Austin this time of year.  And we got amazing parking every place we went and we went to get dessert at the grocery store yesterday and S found a $20 bill on the ground.   Plus with so many people thinking happy baby making thoughts for us, surely the universe will listen?  Anyway, we won’t know for sure until May 16^th, which feels like an eternity from now.  But we couldn’t wait and so yesterday, S took a home pregnancy test.  And while we knew that there was no way even if she was pregnant that she would get a positive, we still did it. And of course it was negative, but it was fun to try.  So we are probably going to test again on the 11^th, because our darling roomie is moving out that afternoon and we want to test again while she is still here, and then we will test again on the morning of the 14^th because it is the morning of my birthday party and it will make for such a happy party to know and then we go in for the final official blood draw on the 16^th.  I’m sure some of you are super good about just waiting it out and not testing early, but I honestly just don’t know how you can stand that.  Obviously, we don’t have that sort of patience.  And if it wouldn’t be a bit expensive and bit maddening, I’d have S take a pregnancy test everyday for the next two weeks.  I know that’s silly, but I just gotta know! 

Oh one last thing, good vibes/thoughts for all of us out there trying this month!  I really hope that we ALL get BFP this month and we can all blog and follow the amazing ups and downs of pregnancy together.  Wouldn’t that be amazing?

-Liz