Bloat Baby (13w3d)

I used to hate it when one of my blog friends got pregnant and stopped having anything interesting to say. Well, I think I get it. There is a lot more interesting (albeit, frustrating, heartbreaking and fucking awful) to write about when you are in the throes of trying to get pregnant. Or maybe that’s just the part of pregnancy that I’m in. Or maybe I’m just bad at thinking of things to write about?

The only thing I can think to report is that my bloating is OOC (that’s out of control, for those of you not as attached to acronyms.) It has started causing me some serious pain and is making evening activities hard to engage in. Yesterday, La and I went with BFF and BFFBF to Blackhawk (where the casinos are in Colorado) to hang out with them and BFF’s sister. Since we are short on cash and gambling mostly just makes me anxious, we decided to enjoy the buffet instead of the slots. We also had some ‘food and retail points’ which made the buffet half off for both of us. It was all-you-can-eat crab leg night, and I figured I’d enjoy my allowed two servings all in one, since crab is a rare experience for us. But almost as soon as I put a little food in my mouth, the gas bubbled up and quickly made even breathing a difficult prospect, let alone eating much. Mostly I sat across from La looking pitiful while she chowed down on a buck’o’crab legs. Damnit.

Worse than missing out on crab legs was the writhing pain I was in all the way down the mountain. I was finally able to do some yoga at home and get a little relief in the way of some farts, but it really didn’t resolve until this morning. After doing some research, it appears gas-x is on the ‘approved’ list, so I’ll be investing and hoping its effective. Because seriously, this is not sustainable.

I haven’t got much else to report . . .La wanted me to correct a misstatement from my previous entry: Seafoam’s heartbeat was 164, not 146.

My uterus has definitely made its way out of my pelvic cavity, and is a hard ball of baby house under my belly button. Given that I generally tend toward squishy, it’s kind of fun (and weird) to feel something so hard in my belly! I also continue to feel uncomfortable in my body, though I’m trying to be intentional about remembering that’s its an amazing baby house right now, and that’s good enough. Thanks all for your words of wisdom and support on how to get over this hump before the bump.

I hope to have something more exciting than gas to update you about, very soon!

Second trimester, ho! And baby mama bodies

12 whole weeks pregnant! Depending on how you divide the trimesters, I have either hit #2, or will in a week or so. But why wait? I think now sounds like an excellent time to be in the second trimester. And Goofball, our midwife, apparently agrees.

We had our 12 week appointment today, and everything is looking good! All my blood tests from last appointment came back with excellent results, I’ve gained 3 lbs. since the beginning of my pregnancy (more on my anxiety about this below) which is in the normal range, my blood pressure is good, my cervix is “beautiful” and long and “you tall women have the best pelvises!” which, I believe, should mean good news for delivering a baby! We heard little dude’s heartbeat with the doppler – reassuring to know he’s still hanging out in there, whoosh-whooshing away at 146 bpm!

For the first time, this week, I couldn’t quite button my pants. I got out the belly band I bought a few weeks ago, and other than the realization that you can’t just wear whatever shirt you want with it, I found it to be effective and comfortable. I’ve been feeling some general changes in the shape of my body, but most of them haven’t really impacted what I can wear, although it has definitely impacted how I feel in my body. The cup size up in bras is one thing, but feeling like my middle is thickening out is another.

I’m a big girl, and 96% of the time, I feel pretty awesome about this. I care about my health, and while I could always improve it, I also keep myself healthy by eating lots of vegetables and not many processed foods and moving my body. It took me a lot of work to feel ok in a body that is closing on 6′ tall and fat, and while I don’t have it together all the time, it’s been a while since I’ve felt this . . .undone.

I honestly haven’t known what I weighed for a very long time. I paid attention at my first “OB visit” (not really an OB visit) at the fertility clinic after my positive beta because I knew weight gain would be a thing in some respect or another during pregnancy. I was shocked at how much anxiety I’ve had this week about how much I might have gained since my last appointment (we don’t own a scale on principal, so I have no way of knowing at home – which is for the best) and felt a huge relief when it was only 3lbs. Although, if I’m being honest, I was hoping it might have been none or even a loss. I haven’t thought about losing weight in a long, long time.

I also made the decision to stop following a facebook group for ‘plus size’ moms and pregnant women, despite really craving pictures and shared experiences of being fat and pregnant. There was just too much talk about weightloss and body hate for me to feel healthy continuing to read the posts. And I want, so badly, to have a space with other women who are fat and pregnant and trying to stay sane in the middle of it all.

I have been afraid since we started this journey that I wouldn’t “look” pregnant. I still wonder what I will look like. We started taking belly shots, but haven’t for weeks. It hasn’t been conscious, but I think I’m scared about what I won’t see, as much as what I will. I want to track my pregnancy, but I can’t quite get the mental shit together to make it happen.

Of course, complicating all of this is that I have entered the extreme bloat period of pregnancy. By the end of the day, no matter how much water I’ve had or what I’ve eaten, I can hardly move for all the air built up in my body. La informed me that, on Tuesday night after I’d fallen asleep, I let forth some of the loudest and most triumphant farts she’s ever heard. (You must realize that when you live with bulldogs, farts are only funny and not taboo!) Which made me feel both terribly proud and totally mortified. The good news is, those farts did something, because I consistently wake up feeling much better. Still, it’s hard not to have your body image complicated by the excess of gas in your intestines.

My midwife hasn’t said a word about my weight, not one word. I need to remember that. This is old shit, it’s cultural shit, it’s not real. But whoa, this is gonna be harder than I thought – to keep it together for another 6 months. Just keep swimming, right?

In other news, we are going to a cloth diaper class tomorrow (h/t to Jenn for the tip!) which is a very exciting prospect! We also ordered our crib and glider (thanks to my momma for the really wonderful gifts – she’s pretty damned amazing, I’d say!) which probably won’t be here until mid-December (not exactly a problem, since we won’t need them until April!) Finally, La installed a back of door basket organizer in the nursery closet, which looks fabulous and will be a big help with storage and organization (see, I’m not the only one feathering the nest!) So, despite feeling a bit uneasy in my own skin, I am still hella excited for this kid to be born!

La is off at a show tonight, so I’m at home watching “Call the Midwife,” eating butternut squash mac’n’cheese and, hopefully, starting my Ina May Garten Spiritual Midwifery book. I’m hoping that reading about some bad ass birthing hippie ladies and the magic of pregnant bodies will remind me that mine is pretty awesome, too.

Nest Building (11w3d)

We are home from Indiana, and we are both emotionally and physically unscathed. (and there was much rejoicing!)

Mostly, we hung out with La’s amazing mama (who cooked us delicious breakfasts every day!) and her cousin, who is going through a rather heinous divorce at the moment. So, there was a lot of shit talking her soon to be ex husband. And rightfully so, the d-bag cheated on her and then, after getting served with papers, cleaned out their checking account so she couldn’t buy anything, like,  you know – food, their two young children.

Everyone was really excited about Seafoam’s impending arrival – or at least they faked it well. Of course, ShitBro and his wife had decided not to tell their children. Their ‘reasoning’ was that I am not yet out of my first trimester (true, but only barely so) and they didn’t want to have “two awkward conversations.” However, they also knew that we were coming home and that everyone else would know and be talking about it, including their children’s 5 year old cousin, who can’t keep a secret to save her life. Anyway, this means that we ended up (inadvertantly) telling their kids. This happened, beautifully, right before they were all leaving for the day. So I can only hope that there were LOTS of uncomfortable questions on the ride home! For the record, the only thing they asked was “why Auntie Andie is pregnant, not Auntie Lala?” Once we explained we had rock-paper-scissor’d for the privilege, and Lala would go next, they seemed satisfied.

I seem to be recovering my energy fairly as the first trimester starts to close out, and I am very, very excited! Mostly, I am excited that I might start to eat well and cook again!

You see, La is very good at many, many, many things. But cooking just isn’t her most favorite thing to do. It’s not that she is ‘bad’ at cooking, it’s just that she tends to stick to what she knows. And what she knows is a fairly small repertoire of simple things – like spaghetti or BBQ chicken. To her enormous credit, she has 100% stepped up while I have been too busy napping to contemplate cooking, and for this I am grateful. But, she doesn’t have the interest to make the kinds of food I most like eating, so I’m very excited to have enough energy to shop and cook again! Hallelujah! To celebrate, I have picked out a whole bunch of new recipes to try! Yippee!

I’m also heavy into the stick gathering phase of what could be called “nesting.” Like, I am feeling the itch to start getting shit hella organized, and am thinking about what life might look like in 6 months when there is a squalling infant in our house.

To wit:

-After already mostly deciding I want to use my birthday money on a new dishwasher that actually, you know, washes dishes, I amended this and decided we should find a way to ALSO get a small deep freezer. So that I can spend an entire day cooking and then freeze the food for later! And so we can buy more in bulk/in season and save things. I started salivating over the idea of my little chest freezer in the shed right next to a shelf of canned produce. Oh, be still my urban homesteader heart!

-I have started actively seeking out the organizational tools and techniques I have been ‘considering’ since we moved in. Things like pot lid organizers and tupperware systems and organizational door systems!

-I applied for a part time gig with the Princ.eton review to teach GRE, SAT and ACT prep classes (and/or be a tutor for these programs.) Seeing as how I aced my ACT (yes, really. a 36) and the writing section of my GRE, and I like teaching, and I need an extra $15-30/hour, and I have weekends free . . .I thought it would be a good plan. We’ll see what I get in the way of a call back, but I figure even a couple of extra days a week could mean stocking up on some extra cash that could mean either extending my maternity leave into unpaid territory and/or having some extra cash for things like childcare once seafoam gets here.

-We are well on our way to stocking up on cloth diapering materials. BUT I NEED YOUR HELP! We are clear we want to cloth diaper, and we know we want to use pre-folds with covers (that can have extra padding added) and we’ve found some good, inexpensive high quality covers. But, if you cloth diaper using prefolds, can you give me some tips on the brand you like, the folds you like, places you scored good deals (we are open to pre-owned and new!) or any general tips?

(of note, this seems to be the one ‘weird’ parenting thing that both of our families have a lot of commentary about. Mostly in the realm of ‘we’ll see how long THAT lasts.’ It’s obnoxious but honestly, it’s probably just the beginning. Still, tips on how to respond to cloth diaper haters would be welcome too!)

I’m excited to be thinking/planning/excited, instead of just barely getting through my days due to exhaustion. I guess I didn’t realize just how much it was impacting me until I had a flood of ideas about our house, our dinners, and our future. And I realized I hadn’t thought about so much of that because I was thinking about when my next nap was.

The nausea seems to have made a little uptick, as if to say either 1. Don’t forget how much I made your life suck when I’m gone OR 2. I’m not going anywhere. Option number three is that I picked up the stomach bug that was plaguing my in-laws in Indiana. Which would be righteously unfair, as I am still today working on getting my sinuses free of snot.

Looking for a good home

Hi Friends! This post is specifically for folks who are doing/contemplating IVF (I mean, you can still read this if that doesn’t apply but . . .)

I am *finally* weaning off of my FET meds! Yippee! The problem, of course, is that it’s almost impossible to guess the right amount of most things, and so I ended up ordering WAY too much of some, not enough of others.

I happen to have two boxes (8 patches per box) of minivelle estradiol patches .1 mg/patch. The patches are the most expensive part of most IVF/FET protocols (that use them!) so I’d like to recoup *some* of the money, but also don’t want them to go to waste! (I think I paid $75/box! ack! would definitely give you a MUCH better price!)

If your protocol uses minivelle (they are the same as vivelle, just smaller size – double check the dosage) and you’d like the patches, let me know and we’ll work something out! I am more interested in them going to a good home, but obvs wouldn’t mind getting some sort of refund on this hellaciously expensive process!

Immuno-whine (10w5d)

You know what sucks? Pregnancy immune system. 

I am really, really good at NOT getting sick. This usually means I get one really horrible sickness each year – like the sinus infection of spring 2014, or the Strep Throat of Winter 2012. I just don’t usually get colds . . .or if I do, they are sniffly nose annoyances, not full scale sicknesses. 

But since I got my BFP in late July, I’ve been sick with a head and chest cold TWICE. Twice in what . . .6 weeks? Totally inappropriate. And it wasn’t like I was all up in someone’s business . . .nope, I had breakfast with a friend who had sniffles, but I don’t think we even hugged. I was in her presence . . . that hardly seems to warrant a shared cold. But . . . the rules of the game are different, I guess, when your body’s usual defenses have been lowered to allow the long sought after parasite fetus in your womb. (Y’all know that I fucking adore my parasite, right? Its just, well, it’s kind of an accurate description.)

I have been whiny and sick since Monday, when I woke up with the tell tale stuffed nose and dry mouth. Yesterday was the worst, and today I think it is finally beginning to move along – or, I hope it is. The other option is that it is migrating to my chest to hang out for a bit longer. I’m very grateful for the snoogle, which has let me sleep propped up, and for breathe right strips (h/t to Searching for My Truth for that recommendation) and for raw garlic (which is a lot harder to ingest when one has morning sickness, but is still the cheapest immune booster available. We call it poor man’s antibiotics in our house.)

I’m also grateful for paid sick time, although I’d like to be saving it rather than using it prior to seafoam’s arrival. But I couldn’t imagine doing anything but laying in bed yesterday. So that’s what I did. I also made La get me pho for dinner, which I think – in conjunction with the garlic and sleep – is probably why I am feeling somewhat human-like today.

Tomorrow we leave for Indy to celebrate La’s mom’s 60th birthday! I ❤ my mother in law (I actually call her my mother outlaw, because, well, when you’re gay and only sort of legally married, you can do things like that) and am excited to celebrate her. I’m less excited to see how Shitbro (La’s super conservative older brother who has been a real d-bag to us) handles the pregnancy news, and in particular, if/how he has told his kids. So, send us some good queers-in-the-midwest woo, yeah? Also, please pray that my sinuses clear before I get on a plane because otherwise I am going to be miserable. 

I have my 12 week midwife appointment next Friday, and I realized I am jonesing for it really bad. No more ultrasounds for us until the 20 week mark (part of choosing prenatal care with less intervention, so I can’t exactly complain!) but we should be able to hear the heartbeat with the doppler. And I need that right now. I mean, I have no reason to believe anything has happened to seafoam, but I have noticed a leveling-off of my symptoms and as I am still not viably showing (although I have noticed a loss in my ability to ‘suck in’ and also a general thickening of my middle and a loss of my waist) I am in that terrible no-woman’s land of undetectable pregnancy. I’m definitely looking forward to some evidence that seafoam is still kickin’! 

I’m sending out lots of love to the blogosphere, where there is a lot on the horizon! Transfers that should be showing up as BFPs, and lots of other goodness! ❤ to all!

Clearing Out (10w2d)

La and I moved out of a tiny (no, really,  it was 600 sqft! ) 120 year old house three years ago in preparation to have babies (and to quit paying to repair things like cast iron pipes. )
Despite knowing from the moment we saw the house which room would belong to our future baby,  we were both resolute about not painting,  decorating or otherwise nursery-ifying the room.  I’m way too suspicious for that.
So,  instead,  it became the guest room.  Our old double bed (yes, two fat girls and a bulldog once slept in a double bed) and the Cedar trunk with extra linens lived there while we waited to get pregnant.

The other extra room, designed as an office but becoming more of an all purpose/ place to put crap room, actually stored the baby items we were gifted or acquired to take care of our nephew.  It was a wreck but it stayed in a sort of disorganized waiting room while our fertility journey continued.

Now that we are pregnant,  and confident enough to have made an announcement on Facebook about it, we decided it was time to actually make the space in our house reflect our intentions and plans.  No more waiting.

We started the process last weekend by cleaning out our garden shed to make more room for things that have lived in the house until now, including the boxes of baby clothes we won’t need until next fall or later. Next,  came selling that double bed.  Then clearing out the guest room and shedding old paper from the office.

But last night,  we finally had some fun.  We painted the guest room a pale blue when we moved in.  I was never a huge fan but it was an ok neutral.  A while back, we found a picture of a fabulous nursery with pale blue walls and one highlight wall in orange.  We thought we might crib (pun not exactly intended) the design but couldn’t find an orange that wasn’t obnoxious or overly reminiscent of the broncos logo (we are fans but not those kind of fans.) Last week we found the most amazing red-orange and decided to go for it!

We also marked out the furniture spaces on the carpet (because when your partner is an MFA in theater,  you have gaff tape to do these things) and started planning some of the other details.
Seafoam has a room!

Not much else to report,  except that my snoogle has become a coveted spot,  as seen here:

Shameless Product Promotion Tuesday

You guys.

I know SO MANY (all?) of you have told me to get the snoogle and I was like, ‘yeah, ok, I mean, I love a good body pillow but . . .’

I’m here to officially say: “You were right. It is totally worth the hype.”

 

Look how happy this woman is . . .

But, I’m cheap. And I really couldn’t justify buying a $50 pillow at the moment, and La has a lot of (justified) fear of the entire bed being lost to bulldogs and pregnancy pillows. But this is where MOM comes in!

Yesterday, my mama took La and I for some baby look-shopping. And when we happened upon the snoogle, I didn’t even have to do any sweet talking to get her to want to buy one for me. She was like, “oh . . .is that something that you could use now?” And of course I was like, “yes yes mama please!” and it was done.

And I am so very grateful because last night I slept like a dream – aside from the getting up to pee 5 times, and the catapulting myself over the snoogle to get out of bed to pee. So, we’re still working through some complications, but I’m still 100% in love.

I, personally, think everyone – knocked up or not – needs this pillow. It makes my old body pillow look like a pile of microfiber fill. 

Hopefully, the snoogle will help me get some good rest over the coming days as I deal with so many insurance claims adjusters calling me (seriously – 4 calls today and it’s not even 5pm)

 Also – I guess wordpress detected some shady shit happening with my account so if I left you weird comments or tried to get you to send me money in Saipan – it’s not me, yeah?