Aaannd... Second Trimester

Well, I'm now 13 weeks 3 days. Goodbye morning sickness! Halleluja! We had the latest doctor's appointment last Wednesday, and we got to hear Baby C's heartbeat. It was very cool. It kind of sounded like a helicopter. :)

Otherwise, not much new. I'm working on crocheting a baby blanket (Broncos colors, of course), and it's coming along really fast! I also found this nifty crochet website called http://www.myrecycledbags.com/ where this person decided to make yarn out of plastic bags from stores and newspapers. We have oodles of plastic bags, so I think I'm going to try and make some "plarn" and crochet something out of it. We'll see how it turns out.

Almost over the hump!

Tommorow I will be 12 weeks, and on the last week of the first trimester. The morning sickness is virtually gone, which is pretty exciting. There was one day last week that I had to leave work early because I was sitting at my desk gagging, but I'm hoping that was my hormones' last hurrah. Apparently, this is the part where the placenta takes over the hormone production and all that jazz which gives me a bit of a break. Now it's just waiting for the fatigue to go away. People keep telling me about this big surge of energy that I'm supposed to have, but I'm still skeptical at this point. :P It would also be nice if I didn't have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, that's always a drag. I guess that's supposed to go away in the second trimester, only to come back in full force in the third. I'll definitely take the break.

I think I forgot a pregnancy tip in the last one (big surprise, I think my head is full of mud right now), so here's a good one: One of the less glamorous pregnancy symptoms would be crazy gas. One of my pregnancy books compared it to a bus full of high school football players only worse. My advice is to use it to your advantage. Feel free to just let it rip around your other half, and then when they whine about it just tell them to stuff it because now they know how you feel. Maybe they'll get the point. :P

I added my two pictures thus far, but those are unfortunately mostly just chub. And bloating. The next one should show a bit of a difference though, I feel like I'm definitely starting to expand. Hooray!

9 weeks, 4 days

Holy moly do I still have a long ways to go! But, the first trimester is almost over. Woo!! I'll be really happy once my uterus gives my bladder a little more space and I don't have to get up at night to pee anymore (for a while, anyways). :) It's not so much the getting up part that annoys me, it's the fact that once I do I'm either so hungry I could eat my pillow or I feel like crap. Then I usually have to go get a snack or try not to throw up and toss and turn for an hour before I manage to fall asleep again. Thursday night I was up for about two hours, I was not a happy camper. The nausea seems to be getting a lot better though, so that's good. I still want nothing to do with apple juice and pepper still grosses me out, but it's getting a lot easier to eat.

Now that I'm starting to finally feel better (watch, now that I said this I'm going to be spending some quality time with the mop bucket tomorrow :P), I'm going to try and start a regular exercise schedule. Plus, now that it's finally starting to warm up a little I really want to get out and walk. So, the goal is to alternate that with my yoga dvd. I ended up getting Shiva Rea's Prenatal Yoga, and I really enjoy it. She has modifications for each trimester, so if something is getting a little tougher to do there is always someone else you can watch. The pace is pretty good too, so once I'm bigger than a beached whale there will be enough time to move from one pose to another. She includes lots of standing poses and things like squats, lots of stretches for your back and sides, and lots of focus on breathing. There is also a kegels section which is supposed to help throughout pregnancy. My only complaint is that all of the ladies are in these spandex onesie things and kind of look like Teletubbies, but oh well. Can't have everything. :P

On the non-pregnancy related front, this last week was a huge waste of my time. In order to work with CA workers comp claims, we have to go through so many hours of training each year (I think I have to get 80 or something like that). We had 18.5 hours last week. It wouldn't have been so bad if we were in the room for 3 days solid or something like that, but instead it was spread over the week with an hour at your desk here, half an hour there which meant that nobody got anything done. There were 6 of us that had to sit through everything and we were completely stir-crazy by Friday afternoon when we finished. It didn't help that it was all over the phone either. We have an on-staff attorney who does all of the CA training in our office, but last week she was in the AZ office, so we had to sit in this room all week and try to listen to this big conference phone... Aaagh. Needless to say, we gave up trying to pay attention and just left the mute button on so we could sit around and talk. That helped the time go by, but we were still stuck in this little room all day. I'm soooo glad that's over! Next week will be tough though, because I have to catch up on everything that I didn't get done this week (which was pretty much everything) plus cover for someone else that will be out of the office all week. Yikes. I'm going to try and do a kick-ass job of getting everything done though, because that will definitely help with the getting a promotion thing. We'll see how this goes. :)

We're going to take the second picture of my expanding stomach (I can notice, anyway) this weekend, so then I'll post them together. I was going to post the first one, but I just look chubby so hopefully with another picture there will be something to compare. Some of my pants are getting a little snug, so there should be a difference. Yay!! :)

This is what we made for my parents. They loved it! I handed my mom the package, and she was like "Oooo, what's this?" Then she opened it and started reading, and once she figured out what it was, she got really quiet, looked up, and asked "Really??" Then she handed it to my dad and got all teary and started clapping, and my dad had a giant grin on his face. It was fun. :)

We're making something for Jared's parents too, but that one isn't done yet so once it is I'll get a picture of that one too. We told them over Skype. We said hello and were chatting, and then Jared said, "Hang on, someone else wants to say hello too." They thought we had gotten another pet, but Jared covered up the webcam and when he uncovered it again I was holding a word balloon next to my stomach that said "Hi Grandma and Grandpa!" There was definitely some shouting coming from their side. :)

Both sets of parents are excited, my mom has called to see how I'm doing, and Jared's mom naturally calls 10,000 times a day. She and Jerry actually came up last weekend to buy us a crib! It isn't set up yet, it's still in the box in the extra room. We have to figure out what we're doing with the futon before we do anything else. We have plenty of time for that though. :)

In other pregnancy news, morning sickness blows. And when they say morning sickness, they really mean feel like crap 24/7. I basically feel like I'm about to throw up all of the time. Hasn't actually happened yet, but sometimes I wish it would just so I would feel better for a little while. Only 5-6 more weeks of this. *Sigh*

Also, it would seem that apple is not my friend. I always keep a box of instant oatmeal in my desk at work, and the current flavor was Apple & Cinnamon. I made some the other day, but had to throw most of it out because it was grossing me out. The next day, I someone else made some, and the smell made me want to hurl more than usual. Needless to say, I gave away that box of oatmeal. I'm going to give Maple & Brown Sugar a shot, hopefully that one doesn't bother me too much. Today it was apple juice. I read that drinking something sugary helps with morning sickness, so I thought I would try some apple juice. Mistake. I opened it up and the smell was overpowering. I made myself drink some of it because I know it's good for me, but it tasted terrible. So that came home to Jared, and he had to drink it where I couldn't smell it. I was also seriously grossed out by my tomato soup today (which makes me sad because I love tomato soup), and black pepper isn't a good thing either.

As miserable as I am with all of this going on, at least I know that there's a little one in there that is the cause of it all. :)

Pregnancy tip #3: Keep some saltines next to bed so you can eat them before you even get up in the morning. It helps postpone the queazy a little bit. Also, keep lots of ice cream in the freezer. That stuff never tastes bad!

Oi.

This baby stuff sure is a lot to take in. What can I eat, what can't I eat, what exercise can I do, appointments to make, stuff to buy, symptoms, what's normal, what's not... Lots of changes all at once. The early symptoms are really starting to kick in now... Dizziness, nausea (I'm a little queasy as I type), my boobs hurt, I'm really tired, and I'm ravenously hungry all the time. Seriously. All. The. Time. They joke about a pregnant lady eating you if you don't feed her, and, well, it's true. The Subway lady was joking about having trouble getting her gloves on instead of making my sandwich, and I was about ready to hop over the counter and punch her in the face. It's entertaining after the fact, but at the time I was pretty pissed. There aren't any foods or smells that really bother me, so maybe I'll get lucky and escape that one.

Our first appointment was on Thursday! We got a lot of good info, but it wasn't quite what we expected. We went over medical histories and all that jazz, talked about all of the upcoming appointments, picked our doctor, talked about basics (food, exercise, etc), then they drew some blood for the initial tests and that was it. Afterwards I was thinking, "I know that you say the home tests are really accurate, but don't you want to make sure I'm actually pregnant before you start all of this stuff???" Guess not. I'm not really doubting that I am at this point, but it's still kind of hard to believe.

So... Pregnancy Tip #1 (for all those who may be trying for a baby in the near future :P): Start your prenatal vitamins early! Folic acid takes a few weeks to build up to useful levels in your system, and it's needed most in the first few weeks of pregnancy (before you even know you're preggers) when the spinal cord develops.

Pregnancy Tip #2: Keep a lot of food around. A lot. I haven't told everyone at work yet, and they're probably all like "What the hell?" because every time someone walks by my desk I'm stuffing my face with something. Granola bars, apples, applesauce, crackers, popcorn, and things like that are good to keep around, because you won't get outrageously fat from pigging out on that stuff. Easy on the stomach too. The nurse said the need to feed (and feed, and feed) will taper off after the first trimester, so enjoy endless eating without repercussions while it lasts.

My parents are coming tomorrow (!!) so that's when we're going to break the news to them. I'm excited, I'm sure they're going to be VERY excited. :) We're going to tell Jared's parents this weekend as well, probably over Skype. We made some cross-stitch pictures for them, so once they're 100% finished and framed I'll post them.

In other news, I finished my scarf! I also made a really cute crochet hippo. Pictures also forthcoming. Crochet is like crack, I really really enjoy working on it! My next project will be a frog cocoon, hat and booties (found here: http://crochetme.com/media/p/117171.aspx) which hopefully will turn out well. So pumped!