6 Months

I’m the size of a house already people!  A HOUSE!  Seriously, I think this belly will just split right down the middle in the upcoming months.  Don’t even get me started on the sound the scale makes when I climb on. UGH!  Weighing more than your husband just sucks.  I knew it would happen but I didn’t know how big I would actually be when the time came.

Anyway, our check up today went just fine.  I didn’t get a lot of info though.  We had another ultrasound to take a second look at Nuggets heart, last time his ribcage was creating a large shadow.  Today, it was perfect.  You could see all four chambers and surrounding blood vessels. He was looking right at us today so we got lots of pictures of his face, he looks JUST like Mike to me.   Especially the shape of his chin.  He was kicking his little feet around , all 10 toes visible. Yay.  So all is well.  My next appt is my glucose test.  I don’t know why but I’m a little worried about that.  

 So, without further ado…  me.  

And- my kick ass new shoes.  Yeah, yeah I said I wasn’t wearing heels anymore but I had to have them.  So there!  (not pictured, the slingback or the cankle)

Piss and Moan

Okay, I am clearly boring the pants right off of everyone with this I’m so fantastic, pregnancy is dream stuff.  So while I am still great and all annoyingly happy I will let you all in on the stuff I haven’t been complaining about.  I know a couple of my blogging friends are trying to get pregnant and another is in her first trimester and is expecting sheer bliss in a few short weeks.  So, here it is. You have heard the good; here are the bad and the ugly.

·        My feet are officially attached at the cankle.  At first the swelling would go down at night and they were normal in the morning.  Not anymore, it’s all gout, all the time!  If I go shopping for a few hours or have been doing chores they get even bigger and are then pretty painful. I have sworn off heels, I’m in flip-flops 7 days a week.  Also, painting my toes is an exercise in contortion!

·        Boobs, OMG the boobs!  They weigh a thousand lbs each at this point and should have another growth spurt in the 3rd tri.  The next size up is mail order only.  God help me when I put them to work.

·        Sleeping is getting harder all the time.  I wake up a lot.  Rolling over has become much more effort and if I fall asleep on my back I wake up when my legs fall asleep. (This also happens when I am sitting a work)   Then there are the bathroom trips, and the almost nightly leg cramps.  My books promise all of this will get worse as we both keep growing.

·        The joint pain is almost constant.  It hits every weekday before lunch and it’s all down hill from there.  I walk as if I am 14 months pregnant and also, 90 years old.  I still don’t take any thing for relief.  I’m sort of a hard-ass about that, so I suffer although the Dr. says Tylenol would help if I weren’t so stubborn.

·        I drop everything, EVERYTHING!  And by god the floor just keeps getting farther away.  This too is pregnancy related.  As your soft muscle tissue continues to relax your grip gets weaker.  .

·        Absentmindedness. I’m very forgetful.  I leave the oven on until its time to do the dishes; I come out from the store and find I didn’t lock the car.  Did I feed the dog?  I have to keep checklists at work so I don’t loose track of what I’m supposed to get done and even with that getting a full day in is hard.  You just don’t concentrate like before and I am typically pretty brain dead by mid afternoon.  Oh how I miss my old friend, Diet Coke!

·        You don’t look like you thought you would.  I didn’t think I would gain much weight and would just have a cute little belly.  The belly is cute but the rest?  Not bad but also not what I hoped for.  

·        The round ligament stretching is annoying.  It only lasts a second and it’s not really painful but it takes me by surprise and takes your breath away every time.  These have subsided for the time being but again, my books promise a 3rd trimester return.  Awesome!

·        My belly button is half out now.  For about 4 weeks it felt like I got punched in the gut, like it was bruised.  The inside of it is still purple.   I hate that you can see it thru my tops- HATE!  I wear an undershirt everyday and I just cannot hide it.  I do not enjoy jokes about my “turkey timer”.

·        The baby is already big enough to hurt me!  He’s around 11-12 inches and just over 1 lb.  I have no idea what he’s doing in there but he finds places to get cozy that are pretty painful and I cannot make him move.  He hangs out until he’s good and ready to switch.

There is some pain and lots of tiredness and it pretty much takes over in most areas of your life.  The reason I just go on about my business?  It’s all fairly tolerable and to be expected.   Plus, I am still 20 times better than I was in the 1st tri, so I do try to keep the complaining to a minimum.   Mike does hear a lot of funny moaning and groaning, getting up off the floor or when I bend over to pick up whatever the hell it is I just dropped for the third time.  I’m actually surprised at how many things are on the list, you really get used to most of it and while sometimes it does me in, most days I’m just so stinking happy and excited that I just keep going.   His foot may be thumping on my bladder but he’s in there, moving around and healthy.  So what if its 3 am?   When’s the last time any of you woke up at 3 and smiled?

I have a lot of fun things coming up.  My trip home next week, then our Anniversary and after that, my Birthday.  Hopefully they will all give me other topics to write about that you all may find a little more entertaining.

Busy bee

My weekend was once again,  ridiculously productive.  I seem to spend every spare minute of the work week planning my to-do list.  I’ve always been a list maker but this is a little different.  There’s a deadline, and it is sort of a now or never feeling behind it all.  If I don’t get the dining room painted,  those hideous shrubs replaced, the windows cleaned I won’t have another chance for who knows how long.  I love to decorate, it’s really the  hobby I enjoy most (collecting shoes aside) so I have this urgency to get the house done.  I wont be totally finished,  I know that our living room will still be empty when Nugget is born.  That room has never been high (enough for me) on the list as Mike finds it completely useless and “may as well be a play room”  right, every wife wants her formal living room to be covered in ABC foam floor tiles.  The living room isn’t on the official list, I know better!

Each weekend my list gets a little shorter.  This time I painted the baby’s room and hung all of the framed prints, and checked off some other items on the less exciting list of “needs”  like tiny blue hangers, new hardware for the broken roller shade, etc.  It is adorable!  Not too babyish, not too grown up it is just as I pictured in my head.  I can’t stay out of there, I spent a good hour this morning after it was all cleaned up just looking at it. It’s not finished yet, I haven’t ordered the crib set and there are a few other things it needs but it is getting there.  

We had a huge setback earlier this week.  Our siding went up and our landscaping, down!  The team that was here for two days didn’t even notice there were flowers underfoot.  My entire house has flowerbeds around the perimeter and 90% of it all is dead now.  They hacked up my raspberry bushes, trampled the herb garden and ground all of the other flowering plants into the dirt.  Our contractor came out to survey the damage Friday night and agreed that this was extensive enough for compensation.  I’m awaiting his idea of compensation.  Add to that frustration our A/C crapped out on a 90′ day.   When our service tech came out it happened to be in perfect working order but the siders flipped the main breaker (located in some box outdoors that I didn’t know existed) so no big deal, outside the fee for a service call.   The house itself looks outstanding!  The roof and the siding colors are so complimentary it looks like a new house.    We have a good week or two left before it’s all done as our shutters and window screens are still on order but we are mostly finished.  No more people pounding and wandering around the yard until 9pm.

So, all and all I am using this “honeymoon trimester” to the best of my ability.  I can’t wait until this coming weekend to get back to work.  I will also be shopping for an outfit for my upcoming shower, you all remember how my last shopping trip went!  This trip will not include Target.  Wish me luck

Death of a Feminist

I was reading Frema’s post today about her arranging maternity leave and the fact that her awesome husband has decided to stay home with their baby once her leave expires.  This brought my thoughts back to our own plans.  I have always looked forward to an early “retirement” knowing that I would be home when we started our family and that’s still the case today.   I have many times since February questioned whether this is the right choice for me now that I’m facing it.  I worry about becoming lonely, bored and overall loosing my mind with cabin fever.  We are in another new place, are all alone, no friends, no family, no help.  Will being home all day with no adult interaction make me loose it?  Is cleaning and cooking and taking care of the baby going to be enough?  I still don’t know the answer to that, what I have learned in the past few months is I will make up my mind after the Nugget is here.  I know now that while my job is mostly okay, it’s not a good fit for me.   So, I plan on working here until I either have the baby or until October 19, which is two days past my due date.  Then it’s so long.   If I do decide to go back be it 12 weeks or 12 years after Nuggets arrival, it will be a new path as the one I have been on for the past 7 years has become stale and is no longer a challenge.

 My other line of thinking here is a concern for “family time”.  Mike is in the first year of his career and it is not one of Monday- Friday 9-5 like mine where I leave it all behind and live it up when it’s over.  His is never done, he works every night and every weekend for a good 10 hours each day.  This will get better over time, but not soon.  This has me thinking that his only job when the baby comes should be his job.  No more dishes, cat box cleanings, lawn care, garbage etc. all of his chores will become mine.  I really feel like this is fair anyway, he’s got the sole responsibility of sustaining our life style.  Is it too much to ask that I do the same for him?   I want him to have time to spend with us when he can back away from his workload.  This time is precious now, I long for a day we can just take the time to go run errands together again.  When the baby is here I know it will be even more important.  Not that I won’t ask his help from time to time or that he’s off the hook indefinitely but right now I’m thinking of his well being too.  Were not talking the 1940’s housewife who laces up her corset and prepares her man a drink while awaiting his arrival, but if I’m at home all day it certainly won’t kill me to add on a few things to my day to help him out.  After all, he’s doing our family the ultimate favor of working this hard so we can have the life we worked so long for.   I don’t know what it will be like when our little one is here so this plan will have some kinks, especially in the early days when I’m recovering from the birth but I will give this the old college try.  Mike doesn’t know of any of this since it’s been coming to me slowly for the past few weeks (during which our quality time is spent carpooling) and I’m sure he will protest a little and be worried that I shouldn’t have to do it all.  That’s when I will remind him this isn’t exactly a free pass but more of an attempt on my part to make sure that when he is available our time together is spent doing things that matter.  Not cleaning the litter box!

So, are you a stay at home Mom? How do you maintain the balance of who you are and your new self as a parent?  Is staying home all puppy dogs and rainbows or insanity in diapers, maybe a combo of both.  Talk to me, what’s your story , do you share chores, are there weekly play-dates,  reading time at the library, swimming lessons, what? 

I went down fighting!

Mike won this one.  You can only argue so much when it is the right thing to do.  We are now the proud owners of a stinking fire extinguisher! Ugh!  Additionally, the god forsaken carbon monoxide/natural gas detector has been plugged back in.  I hate that thing, for the first 3 nights I had dreams that it was going off.  Not that dying in my sleep is a good alternative but my husband is a safety freak.

 Aside from the aforementioned boring business I had a really great weekend.  I ran off for an afternoon to shop for Mr. Nugget and register.  I had a blast, all the while trying to maintain a balance between items needed and the pure and utter greed that can come over one when you have the all mighty scanner.  I did go a tad overboard, scanning every device known to baby to keep it as entertained as possible.  Activity mat, bouncer, swing, excersauser, jumperoo.  All of it, and you know what?  I take some comfort in thinking I will have a safe place to put him in various places in the house so I went for it, scanning away with complete abandon.  Then again, if I am lucky enough to receive two of them I will be thrilled.  The act of choosing things for him got me so excited for his arrival.  I’m just beside myself.  I got him a few t-shirts, all very boyish.  One has a robot, another reads bug inspector, and the third, a dump truck.  I also got him his first baseball which Mike loved, it’s a teether and a rattle in one but a baseball nonetheless.

Mike hadn’t said he preferred one over the other but I did catch him checking out infant gear on the Cub’s website.  He later admitted to looking for a jersey with the nuggets chosen name, nothing available in infant sizes. (don’t try to use that as a clue you will not figure it out)

 I awoke at about 3:30 this morning, it was the first time his movements have stirred me out of sleep.  I instinctively placed my hand where I felt him, then questioned it.  My pulse is much stronger these days as your blood supply increases 40% during pregnancy.  You can see it thumping away on nearly every body part.   I thought for a minute it was just me I was feeling.  It wasn’t, he had the hiccups!  I fell back asleep rather quickly.  I can’t wait until he gets them again and I’m awake for it.  This part people try to tell you about.  How amazing it is to feel another life inside of you, you nod and smile but you can’t understand.   Heidi gave me the perfect analogy the other day, you can talk all day long about it but until you feel it you don’t know.  She said,  “its like trying to describe red to a blind man”.  It sure sounds nice, but it ends there.  I tell you what, if things don’t get real difficult toward the end I’m going to want to do this over and over again.  Maybe more times than the 2 we have planned.  I’ve come along way since week 7 when I would have put money on this little man being an only child.  Maybe too far?