Week 6

This week has been a whirlwind of emotions.  We had our families up for Christmas and decided to tell them about the pregnancy as an early Christmas present.  Needless to say, they were very excited and super supportive.  They helped ease some of my fears about not being ready, and not being able to handle the responsibilities and financial burden of parenthood.  Both of our respective parents had good times and bad and got through it all, and reassured us that we would, too.

We got a couple books, and lots of advice, and I feel like we're a little more grounded in this crazy journey.  I'd like to share this crazy journey with family and friends - hence the journal entries.  I'll write at the end of every week of my pregnancy and update with how the week went, the baby's growth, and what I've been going through as a pregnant lady.

I will say that the thought of this baby essentially growing itself baffles my mind.  I grew myself?  That is crazy.

What Baby T has been up to this week:

• Baby is the size of a sweet pea at 1/5 of an inch long and is considered an embryo at this point.  
• Last week, baby changed from a bundle of cells, and split half into the placenta and half into an embryo.  
• Now it looks like a tadpole with a bump on the top that is developing into a head and the face is separating into it's parts - jaws, cheek, and chin.  
• Organs are also starting to develop - including kidneys, liver, and lungs.

Pregnancy Symptoms include:

• Alright, I'm a little peeved on this point.  No one warned me about some of the pregnancy symptoms I could expect.  I'd only ever heard of morning sickness and stretch marks.  Apparently symptoms also include constipation, gas, and bloating, which I am feeling in full force, and which I will refer to here on out as "Digestive issues" because I'm pretty sure no one wants to read about how constipated or gassy I am all the time.  
• Ridiculously sore breasts.  Which should have been my first clue that I was pregnant because they were more sore than usual before a period.  Hugs hurt.  Actually, any movement at all hurts.  I've been having to wear a sports bra to bed.  

Day 4 of knowing

I've had a few days to let the news sink in.  I'm still not to the "elated" stage, but I'm getting slightly more used to the idea.  We had our first appointment with our OB, to confirm the pregnancy and talk about next steps.  I was in on December 6th to meet her, establish a PCP relationship, get my yearly exam, and I talked to her about us possibly thinking about maybe starting a family soon.  I think I had already suspected I might be pregnant, just from the timing of everything, not from actually feeling pregnant yet.  I don't remember when I called to find a PCP... it couldn't have been after the conception...  But anyway, I called the Providence line and just asked the operator to find me a female PCP near where I lived, and that's how I got hooked up with Dr. Darla Stupey.  I was excited to see she was an OB and a family practitioner before I even went in because I figured she could take care of everything I would ever need.  And I guess she will.
So anyway, Bryann and I went back in today and the nurse teased me a little bit about how she had JUST seen me and how funny it was that I had been talking about maybe getting pregnant, and how I was probably already pregnant when I came in, and how there was another patient in the exact same situation - had come in super recently about prenatal stuff and then come in a few weeks later pregnant.
So I figure it's all fate, or God, or the Universe working things out the way they were meant.  I tend to do my part and leave things up to the Universe to guide me, and it has all worked out so far, so why would now be any different.  I called the Providence operating system and asked for a female PCP.  They found me an OB.  I think I secretly WANTED to be pregnant at the time.  I was hopeful. I was reading blogs about drinking and caffeine before pregnancy the whole next week.  I took a pregnancy test the following weekend because I'd read that results could show up in a week to 10 days.  It came out negative and I was slightly disappointed, but honestly, mostly relieved.  Because I didn't think it was a good time, and we had a good plan in place - get Bryann through school, work down our loans, get our jobs established, look at moving into a bigger house, THEN have baby.  Turns out those plans are not to be.  And I'm slowly becoming ok with that.  I'll work on it.  The more people I see that are EXCITED about me being pregnant, the more excited I am.  Though I haven't reached excited stage yet.  It still feels foreign and weird and like a crazy dream that I'll wake up from.  I was talking to Annie last night after book club, about pregnancy stuff, and I had a weird moment where I was floating up out of my body and looking down at myself talking about pregnancy and thinking how weird I sounded, and thinking why was I faking all of this?  Weird, huh?  Anyway, it's hard to know what I really feel right now.  I go back and forth between being excited and being terrified of how we'll make it work.  But I keep thinking this must be the right time for us, whether we know it, or think so, or not.
Bryann is at the elated stage.  He's so happy.  and it makes me happy to see him happy.  I'm glad one of us is excited about this.  Maybe if I start talking to the baby...
Last thing, a funny story I couldn't find a place to put in.  When we were visiting the OB, the nurse was asking about symptoms, and when my last period was, and how was I feeling now, and Bryann is sort of smiling, smirking in the corner of the room.  When the nurse leaves, he starts giggling and says "you guys were just talking about your p...puh... period!"  What a child  :-p  I'm going to have two babies on my hands.  I'm so glad for him though.  He makes me smile and keeps me laughing and keeps me positive.
It's weird to think I'll be celebrating Mother's Day for real this coming year...

I'm Pregnant...

Soooo.......  I'm pregnant.  We're going to have a baby.  Little baby Turner.

(What I do when I'm faced with something new is read and research and over-educate myself about it so I'm uber prepared.  So one of the things I read about when I was reading and researching and overly-educating myself about my newfangled condition was to start a pregnancy journal and write down my thoughts every day.  So here are my thoughts today...)

Holy fu*#ing sh*t I'm pregnant.  I can't believe I'm pregnant.  This is completely unfathomable, though I can't pretend to not understand how it happened...  hahahahahahahahahah  The PLAN was to avoid relations when my handy dandy calendar said I was probably ovulating.  The problem is that I'd gotten pretty lazy with it and wasn't checking it religiously like I used to. So when said relations happened and Bryann made a comment afterwards, like he usual does, about how his super powerful sperm probably just impregnated me, I realized I hadn't looked to make sure it was a non-fertile day.  Sure enough, my handy dandy calendar said I would be ovulating the next day, but I was sure our one mishap wouldn't result in a pregnancy.  I had actually convinced myself that we would have a really difficult time getting pregnant.  Over the last year, I've met 4 women my age who have been trying to conceive for YEARS, some of whom have even tried fertility treatmtents, to no avail.  Which is a large part of the reason that we've been so careless the last year or so.  These women advised me to just stop NOT trying, so I wouldn't be stressed out TRYING, and make it harder to conceive.  When we got married I stopped taking birth control, figuring that if we did accidentally get pregnant, we were ready and could handle it.

Anyway, I thought there was a chance I was pregnant just because of the timing, so I took a pregnancy test last week (12 days after the possible conception) and it was negative.  So I figured I was good to go for a weekend of drinking - a beer on Friday and lots of wine at Wine & Dine on Saturday.  According to my calendar, my period was supposed to start Friday, but it didn't and I wasn't worried because I'm usually on a 30-day cycle instead of the 28 day on the calendar.  So I wasn't even concerned when it didn't start Saturday.  I was getting the usual symptoms, so I figured it would start Sunday.  But still no period Sunday.  Plus the symptoms were a little different than usual.  By late Sunday night, I had a gut feeling that something was up and asked Bryann if I was just being paranoid of if he would go to the store and pick up another test.  He said I was being paranoid, but if it didn't start today, to go ahead and re-test.  No period this morning, slightly different cramps and tenderness, a lot suspicious.  On my break, I went to the store to get a test, peed in a cup, saw it turn a very very bright pink and unmistakably positive, and freaked out.  A lot.

I called Bryann like 11 times because he didn't pick up his phone, and almost called my mom, but Bryann got out of his meeting and called me back.  He was very excited, and slightly teary, and noticeably more thrilled than I was.  I told Alesia, my co-worker and panel presentation partner, because she noticed something was amiss, and then later that day I called Annie because she is pregnant, and she talked me down from my ledge - telling me not to worry and that the baby wasn't attached at this point to my uterine wall, and wasn't getting any nutrients directly from my food/beverage intake, and the changes of miscarriage were actually quite low from drinking just one weekend.  She came over after work and brought me another pregnancy test.  Still very bright pink, still definitely pregnant.  She talked to us more, and commiserated, gave some advice, showed me some helpful websites, and I've been reading and researching ever since.

Conception was Nov. 29th, so I'm currently, technically, in week 5 of my pregnancy (even though it's only week 3 since conception) with a due date of August 23rd, 2013.  Right now, baby is the size of an orange seed and apparently looks like a tadpole.  I'm supposed to start taking prenatal vitamins, drink more water, eat more super foods, and ween myself off of caffeine.  So far I'm just pregnant.   I'm still in disbelief.  This is really not a great time for us to be pregnant.  Bryann just started school, and I wanted to be in a better financial position.  I wanted him to be done with school, I wanted to have our student loans paid off, and I wanted to have a plan in place before any of this baby stuff happened.  But I would rather be surprised pregnant, than all planned and ready to go and then have a hard time conceiving and the be stressed about the process.  I know we'll figure it out and we have a fantastic support network around us.

I'm done with my thoughts now.  Not my best piece of writing, but maybe I'll get more eloquent when it sinks in a little more.  :-)

November in Review

Had a girls weekend in Seattle with my wonderful, amazing friends and fellow book-club members.  We were reading "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" which is based in Seattle, so we spent the weekend at Annie's parents' place on Bainbridge Island, and enjoyed lots of much-need girl time.

On the ferry en-route to Seattle

Pike's Place Market

Tea sampling

Mac & Cheese!!

Panama Hotel (where the book took place) still houses left-over belongings  from  the Japanese internment

Had Lychee tea at the Panama Hotel

Girls weekend participants

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I went on my first ever business trip!  I spent four days in Missoula, Montana with my Epic Core team and helped get them ready for the St. Patricks Hospital Go-Live.  And as an added bonus, it turns out Missoula is home to some great breweries!

My beer-sampler at the Montana Club - all are from Missoula breweries

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Went to another Wine & Dine party at Katee and Travis's!  Got to meet (and hold) their new baby, Isaac.  Sorry, no pictures!  It was a small, intimate party of 8 and we had a delicious pre-Thanksgiving meal, you know, to prep our stomachs, and tasty wine!  My favorite was the Headsnapper Radiant Red.

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Sang in my third choir concert with Consonare Chorale.  I love my choir, and I'm so glad I'm singing again!  In this last concert, I auditioned for and got a part to sing as part of an octet in "Lieto Godea: (see below)

Program from latest concert

I'm not actually in this photo, but this is the view of our choir at First Congregational 

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Hosted my parents for 6 days, and had other family members over for our 3rd annual Thanksgiving Potluck. As always, it was a smashing success.  We missed Reezy and Grandma, but they called us that morning, and we had them there in spirit.

Aside from Thanksgiving dinner, we got a few projects done around the house thanks to the ReBuilding Center and the help and know-how of my dad.  We went to our traditional fun Thanksgiving movie and saw Wreck-it Ralph.  And did the traditional pre-Christmas shopping trip with mom!

Gathered round for Thanksgiving dinner

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Started on our second homebrew.  We attempted a spiced IPA, and if it turns out to be any good, we're calling "Hoppy Holidays IPA"

"Hoppy Holidays" going through it's first fermentation on the kitchen counter

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That about wraps up our thrilling November!  As usual, we enjoyed time spent with friends, family, and each other.  We're so blessed in this little life of ours.