Pregnancy is ok

I have a friend who just had a baby via surrogacy. She really hated being pregnant. I'm not sure about what quite went wrong with her pregnancy (besides the obvious that it ended 3 months early, but their kid is just fine several years later). But I thought I would comment that I don't really mind being pregnant. I need to whine about stuff a little mostly so that when I'm too worn out from painting for 2 days and doing a FULL day of shopping Eric understand when I'm too lazy too do stuff. But on the whole, I'm healthy and doing great. I think it's that health thing. Not having any complications (normal weight gain, fine blood pressure, no protein in my urine) makes pregnancy way way easier. I means sure, after a day on my feet they swell up HUGE, and I don't have any kind of serious stamina for stuff, but pregnancy is treating me well. I enjoy feeling Sprat wiggle around and in general life is good.

Excuse the profanity.

Holy crap this pregnancy got rough! I enjoyed 2.5 blissful weeks thinking I wasn't going to have awful symptoms and then everything hit at once. I'm exhausted, nauseous, not interested in eating, run down (presumably from the not eating), having issues falling asleep and so not enjoying any of it.

Oh yeah, and I'm still in charge of a 9 month old. Thankfully Eric has stepped up and taken up some of the slack, but I'm worried what's gonna happen when I go back into the normal week tomorrow. I don't know how I'm going to manage to get through a workday or through a day at home with the munchkin. Add to that, I'm trying to wean and so I need to be feeding him more food and nursing less (which is convenient since my milk supply has dropped since I got pregnant) but I have no energy to feed him and I'm so overwhelmed.

Pfft, this pregnant with a little one thing is tough! Yeah.

Six weeks pregnant now. Maybe more, I'll probably find out the results of my blood draw tomorrow. And I'll make an OB appointment tomorrow, I have the referral now.

This and that

I'm starting to feel the drain of waking up at 6:30 every day. I'm particularly tired today. Even after going home early on Monday and napping.

I have one more month at work. My goal is to make October 1 my last day until the week before Christmas (where I plan on working 1-2 days, just to get the 6 days of holiday).

I'm getting all of the arrangements for my family visiting worked out. It's a long and drawn out process because even though I started asking these questions months ago, flights are just being booked now. It's complicated. But I think it'll work out.

I'm getting some grief from my mother and my mother-in-law about my SERIOUS lack of childbirth prep. One wants me to go take Bradley. The other wants me to do Hypnobirth. I think they're both right, and that I do need to be way more prepared than I currently am for the birth, but I also think that if I spend my extra energy taking care of myself and unpacking my house I'll be a lot better off. The baby will come out of me one way or another, and I'll be under medical care regardless. I'm also incredibly stubborn, so if I think I'm doing this naturally, that's probably how it's going to go. It may be hard on me, but if I come home to a chaotic, still boxed house, I think that will be harder. Moral of this story, bad childbirth class plus moving 2 months out was the wrong combination. Also, I need to find a pediatrician.

On a high note, that new bra that I bought last week really does seem to be comfortable. I am glad I finally found something that I like well enough.

Bad internal clock

Usually I like that I am the byproduct of my parents. But one trait that I picked up from my dad is a really good internal clock.

I have been waking up at 6:30 all week to leave the house by 7am. Today is Saturday and I was suppose to catch up on sleep from the 7ish hours I got each night all week. But instead I woke up at 6:34. I'm not super perky, I'm just awake and unable to go back to sleep.

Being pregnant sure isn't helping that.

Bras and things

This is a post about bras.

You've been warned.

So, my boobs are trying to fall down and my belly is trying to push them back up again. It makes for an uncomfortable bra experience as there is virtually no space betwixt anymore. So I've tried different bras that I own, different combinations of times throughout the day (sleeping a bra, not sleeping in one, sports bras 24-7, sports bras at night... etc).

Then Victoria's Secret came out with the Incredible Bra. Now, since I've been bombarded with advertising for it, I started to ask my friends if anyone had tried it on. Having found a friend who not only tried it on, but bought it and was wearing it right then, I decided to go check it out.

I liked it. On first wearing, it seems to be everything they claimed it would be. Bra straps stay in place, padded well around under wire, seamless. Not only was it comfortable, but I actually managed to keep and bring with me the little $10 off a bra card for Victoria's Secret. So I bought one, and got the free pair of underwear too, which are also surprisingly comfortable. Now, of course, I somehow managed to buy the wrong size (band size too small), so I'm using my bra extender with it. But I think in the long run I may be more interested in the smaller size anyway because once I stop having baby pushing up into my rib cage I may go back to the smaller band size anyway.

Don't know if this is my long term bra solution, but I feel the most supported and the least squished I have in months and that's a good thing.

Days Pregnant: 232
Days to go: 48

On Moving, not so much on baby

First and foremost, Eric is amazing. I can't believe how much work he did this weekend, and without complaint, and never yelled at me about being a lazy pregnant lady (although I was only lazy by normal person standards... I too worked hard and pushed it). And then he woke up early this morning with me and helped me unload his car so he could take mine into the shop for some recall work. It's been a while since I thought "Wow, I'm lucky to have him", but this weekend was some of that.

So, we moved! Hiring movers was FANTASTIC. In 7hours and 10 minutes all our stuff (ok, 98% of our stuff) moved from point A to point B. The new house is SO much bigger than the old apartment. With the garage and extra bedrooms and extra living space and GIANT dining room, we are super spread out. I imagine it'll first fill up and then empty out as we get all our stuff unpacked.

I spent yesterday trying desperately to unpack things. But here's the deal with unpacking while pregnant. I can't really move anything. So if there is a stack of boxes and I want to get at the 3rd one down, I have to unpack the two on top of it first. So I did a lot of unpacking the topmost boxes where they were. This meant a lot more running back and forth than I would have otherwise done, thereby leading me to get worn out even faster. But I watched a movie and then 2 episodes of TV yesterday (on the DVD player, no satellite set up yet), and for the most part I'd watch 10-15 minutes and then go unpack another box or so. I also managed to run the dish washer 3 times and actually make most of our plates and cups clean (maybe 1-2 more loads to go).

Here's the real problem I've hit. The kitchen is technically bigger than the old one, but it's organized completely differently, so I'm having a very hard time figuring out where things go. Also, the bathrooms are WAY smaller, so I have to be really careful about what actually goes into each bathroom. The long term (1 month??) plan is to get me an old school vanity that will live in the master (there's space for it!), and it'll hold all my hair and make-up products. But I have a lot of stuff. A lot. And I currently haven't unpacked ANY of it, besides what fits in a quart sized bag. Pfft.

Also, all of the rooms that are getting furniture screwed to the walls need to be painted still. Which means that the easy stuff to unpack (books, DVDs, etc), can't get unpacked because we A) don't know where the bookcases are going exactly, and B) will just need to move things in a month when we have painting help again. Not that I could move the book box anyway.

The new house is SO quiet. Anyone have a good noise machine recommendation? I'm good with the iphone app solution for now, but I think in the long term I want a more sophisticated machine.

Lastly, anyone in San Diego want to come hang out at my house some night this week or next week and keep me motivated? I figured out that I'm much more productive if I have someone else around to entertain me. It could also be helpful if you'd move boxes for me so I don't have to run around as much.

Days Pregnant:229
Days to go:51

Yes, for real

I moved! And I'm huge! And I'll write a real post with pictures someday after I have Internet again, but for now while I'm posting from my phone, I give you this.

Some areas of skin are a different color than the rest. Palms are light, nipples are dark. I always thought belly buttons were dark too... until today. My belly button is almost flat, and it is super easy to get to the bottom of it now. I'd actually tried in the past to invert it enough to get to the bottom but it was really hard. Well today in the shower, I really cleaned my belly button. It turns out, it is just normal skin color.

And that's what I got.

Hard work is hard

Two quotes from Eric this morning:
1. You look like death.
2. This must be what it's like to be pregnant, you just hurt all over.

This weekend we really took possession of the new house. Thankfully, we have some truly remarkable friends who spent many hours with us over two days stripping wallpaper and painting two rooms. It was a LOT of work, but the babies room is done (except for the forthcoming mural), the dining room is void of flowery wallpaper (and most of the glue/paper stuck to the walls too!!), and the front living room is now green instead of two tone purple.

In terms of how this work was on my pregnant body, the short answer is hard. I didn't work as hard as everyone else, or work with toxic chemicals, but I did work about as hard as I was capable of for 2 solid days. Today my quads burn and my feet hurt and I'd like to spend the day laying down, except that hurts too.


In completely unrelated news, one of my coworkers (or building mates, I'm not sure), has a peach tree and approximately every 3 days there has been a bag of fresh peaches in the lunch room. Peaches are not a fruit that is very good in the typical San Diego grocery store. They're super hard and bitter and to get sweet they have to get really squishy. These peaches are nice and firm and super sweet and juicy. I've probably eaten a third of the peaches that have been in the lunch room myself and they're so amazing. I need to leave the peach tree owner a note :)

And there we have it for Monday morning.

Under Appreciated Mothers

I don't think I do enough for my mother. I think mothers in our society are grossly under appreciated.

Why this new thought pattern? Well, this week the fetal movement is starting to get painful. It's like someone shoved a foot and a half long, dexterous, multi pound person inside of me right where all of my organs are. Ouch. And hey, I get another 8-10 weeks for it to get bigger and cause more havoc.

So I asked my go to source for all pregnancy related things if she had pain from fetal movement, and of course she did. And she reminded me that some women have their ribs broken. And when the kid is out, it breastfeeds (at least mine will) and they bite and pinch and cause other pain when they're on the outside.

And today I'm having serious acid reflux.

I think my honeymoon phase of the second trimester may be over.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still glad I'm doing all of this, just, appreciate your mother more than you do.

Days Pregnant: 219
Days to go: 61

This all started because I'm tired and I want a coke.

Last night I had some acid reflux, so I curled up propped up a bit on an extra pillow and watched TV in bed with Eric. Then he turned off the TV and we both lay there and fell asleep. After a nap, Eric woke me up to tell me to go take my contacts out. A great plan! Also, getting into pajamas and brushing my teeth would be good too.

So I got ready for bed and climbed back into bed. But in round 2, nothing was comfortable. Being propped up hurt my back and laying on my normal pillow caused too much heartburn. And thus is (one of) the plague(s) of pregnant women everywhere.

I had a coworker stop me in the halls to congratulate me and ask me how I was doing. He is the father of two children and had such gems to tell me as "No one understands a mother's burden." Not even my own mother it seems.

Being pregnant now is awesome in a lot of ways. Modern maternity clothes are awesome and fairly easy to find. They're flattering and stylish. My medical care is also super good and it's been easy to follow whatever their recommendations are.

On the other hand, no caffeine, no alcohol, no smoking, no sushi, no roller coasters... all of these are things that would have just been part of life 50 years ago. And I wouldn't have to worry about getting the carseat installed and checked out by the fire department either. I'm super exhausted today, but I'm not a stay at home wife so I don't get to relax. I have to plow through work and try and get everything here done. Because if I don't, that's stressful and stress is bad too.

I use to think that I really liked living in the era that I do, but I'm not so sure anymore. Although I've been using solidworks all afternoon to make a really awesome 3D renering of one of my systems at work and that's really satisfying.

In any case, things.