Tomorrow is 21 weeks and I think I felt a punch...

I've been waiting to feel the baby. I've felt a lot of things that feel like gas, or maybe a baby rolling over, but this morning I had my hand resting on the fibroid free side of my belly and there was a little punch. I waited for another 3 minutes or so for a repeat, but no luck. But it really was a little kick or punch. Funny thing is that I felt it from the outside with my hand, but I didn't feel it from the inside of my stomach. I think I'll have to wait a couple weeks until Kung-Fu baby is strong enough to make me feel ALL his punches and kicks!

I'm working on another belly photo - it's time. It seems like it grows an inch a week, so I'll get Mark to take a new one tonight and update the blog.

Bye for now.

Registries

By popular demand, I've gotten my baby registries started. It's hard work folks.

So far, I've registered online at Amazon.com and for Target.

Target: Registry ID: 014399700229465
You can also search for me or Mark's names or by baby's expected b-day March 23, 2009.

The online page for this is: https://www.target.com/registry/baby/find


but you can go into a store and just do a search on the machines and it'll print out a list I think. (I've very bad at girl stuff like this - the process of doing this almost sent me into an existential crises!)

Amazon Registry Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/baby/3TZPJ4MDRCW83

Just trying to choose stuff for the registry, all these questions started to plague me: nursery? Are we even going to have a nursery? We're in the middle of looking for a new rental house, but as of yet, the nursery doubles as our bedroom! So then the panic ensues, "what if we DO find a house w/a nursery, can I paint it? Are paint fumes toxic for me? What color(s) should I choose? Should I pick a theme or do it all a la carte? Do babies really like pastels, or is that some nonsense that adults made up? Baby toys are always bright colors? Will I make my kid nuts if the room is painted in loud primary colors? It's a boy? What kind of boy do I want to raise? What do I know about raising a boy? Am I going to indoctrinate him with the stereotypical - pictures of footballs and sports equipment? Will I damage him if the room is too soft looking or nerdy?" UGGGGGGH!

At this point, somehow Mark senses emergency and comes into the room and pries my hands from the mouse. "You don't have to decide everything tonight. Let's just eat dinner now."

I've since calmed a bit. I've settled on a sort of jungle like theme. That way it's not pastel, but not crazy looking, avoids cars, trains and sports equipment and allows for lots of animal stuff to go in the room. I am not, as I had thought, a total failure as a girl. I CAN actually coordinate and decorate when prompted to. It's just not my natural instinct. Without friends or other people's input, I swear I'd just get a crib and a high seat and call it a day. Eventually, I'd see the need for the decorative stuff, but I'm so pragmatic that it doesn't occur to me until I get bored and have enough time to look for something new to do. I mean, I'm the type of girl who actually likes it when her husband buys her an appliance for xmas!

Mark and I have decided that for xmas, instead of getting each other presents, we're probably just going to buy stuff for the baby. We're adults and have had plenty of time to get the stuff we want, so xmas is going to be baby stock-up time.

Catch you later.

Gigging with the belly - November 1st

I had a gig this weekend and found this dress that accomodates the belly quite well. Thank God for the styles the last few seasons that are all baby-doll. I haven't yet had to buy a top or dress from a maternity store because everything this shape is so forgiving. The gig was fun but it wore me out some, dancing around non-stop for an hour or hour and a half. It was a shorter-than-normal gig because their program ran over. It was for a Chinese association, although there were lots of non-Chinese folks in attendance. I had a good time and baby Miles/Kai didn't seem to object! If this baby comes out liking disco and dance tunes, we'll know why.

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Moods and Cravings

Most of my cravings and food aversions left at the end of the first trimester. The first 6 weeks of pregnancy were nuts. There was one week of only roast chicken, then a week of only fried chicken, then a week of pizza and red sauce, then several weeks of everything seeming disgusting!

I'd been introduced, earlier in the year by one of the Perry sisters from the singing group Perri to red velvet cupcakes, which are chocolate cupcakes in disguise w/some coloring and flavoring. I hate chocolate cake, but somehow love red velvet. Go figure.


A particularly strong craving for red velvet cupcakes was cured by a so-so cupcake that just made me say, "enough!" I'd had 2 before at this place called Yummy Cupcakes, which I found through internet research at midnight one day after a particularly strong, specific craving. Yummy Cupcakes got great reviews and is only about a mile or two from us, in Burbank, so it could've been dangerous being so close. But this third cupcake was just solidly OK, and did me in for those, so no more chasing that sugar high.

I did however, last night, have a craving at 10pm for tortilla soup. I'd had a good one at a generic chain restaurant called Islands, but they close at 10pm on weeknights. So I looked in Google (thank God for google) and typed "tortilla soup Burbank" (not in quotes - if you put something in quotes in google, you get instances of the EXACT phrase only) and found out that in addition to Islands, Coral Cafe has a good chicken tortilla soup.


I went on their website and it's open 24 hours, so I called and ordered us 2 tortilla soups to go. Mark got a cold in the middle of the week, so I went and picked them up. (I love night driving anyhow - the roads are open and all the signs are lit up! Lovely!) The place is 5 minutes away, the soup was $3.50 and Mark and I thoroughly enjoyed the late night snack. The only thing was that the soup didn't have avocado in it, which I consider a bit of a deal breaker, so I vow to learn to make my own chicken tortilla soup. I found a bunch of recipes, but I think I draw the line at frying my own tortilla strips.

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As for moods, I was moody yesterday. Not having had any PMS for several months, I'd sort of forgotten how it felt to be irrationally, inexplicably cross and spent part of the day trying to diagnose what was up until I remembered: Oh yeah, I'm pregnant, probably moody and not really pleased at the moment-for no reason at all. For most of yesterday, no one could do any right and I had a permanent frown on my face. I tend to be naturally happy, so it's extra distressing to me to be not so happy and since I didn't know why, I couldn't really solve it or talk myself out of it. I settled on reading a book and that was about as good as I could get.

Don't get me wrong, I've had a couple of blowup moments during these last four or so months, but they were all in reaction to something displeasing. They made sense. Yesterday, I was just crabby Patty for no reason. And when I thought about it, I'm pretty lucky if this is just now hitting me at almost five months pregnant. In general, it's been a mild-ish pregnancy. I've had weeks where my ribcage felt like it was going to split and weeks or stretching pains, but in general, not too bad.

A friend of mine who's a Tina Turner tribute singer had a pregnancy so bad, that I thought she was dying (I didn't know she was pregnant, nor did she for a bit) of some mystery illness. She actually LOST weight for the first few month. So bad was her pregnancy, it's taken her four years to get enough amnesia to want to try for round two for another baby. Wish her luck - I want my kid to have some local playmates!

Itchy Stomach

Took it really easy for the first two days post amnio. Didn't leave the house on Monday and stayed either in bed or on the sofa. I heard a horror story from a friend of mine who made the mistake of cooking dinner on the same day as amnio, started leaking amniotic fluid and got rewarded with 6 weeks of bedrest! I prefer prevention, so I was a big, fat couch potato, loaded up with the final 2 Sookie Stackhouse (Trueblood) novels, a couple of other books and some DVDs from Netflix. Mark was a pretty good caretaker too. He made me a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch and cooked dinner.

But the next day or so, my stomach started to itch. And although it felt topical, it was so itchy and burning that I started to worry. I removed the bandaid, tried Neosporin and hydrocortisone alternately. The itching woke me from sleep on Wednesday night, so I called the doctor on Thursday finally. I was a little annoyed when the lady said, "oh it probably has nothing to do with amnio." I said, "it most certaintly has something to do with amnio, it's itching for about a 3 inch radius from the injection site." She put me on hold, talked to the doctor and said that they thought it was an allergy to betadine, since they spread it far around the actual injection site. While she's yammering, I look it up and see a couple of buzzwords that say bingo! Shellfish allergy=allergy to iodine and sometimes betadine. They forgot to ask me, and lathered me up w/betadine so I went back in, and they told me to get some hydrocortisone (didn't work, already) or Benadryl cream.

I bought it and all is well. Welts are almost gone and not much itching. And most of my amnio tenderness is gone as well. We're heading to 19 weeks folks! This seems to be flying by.

18 weeks and It's a Boy!

(Photo at 17 weeks)

We've made it to the 18 week mark already and little baby Martryce (just kidding) is doing great. We went for an amnio and ultrasound yesterday and got lots of new pictures of the little GUY. Yep, it's a boy. The doctor is 99% sure. He said girl when he saw this view during the ultrasound:

If you look at the top and turn your head to the left, you'll see two skinny legs extended and what looks like nothing in between. However the baby flipped over several times during the ultrasound and we soon saw a lil' bobbing thing that stayed present for the rest of the ultrasound. So he recanted and told us 99% - this is a boy. So now the name negotiations begin. I've been rooting for Miles, but we'll see what Mark does and doesn't veto.

Morning sickness is pretty much a thing of the past. I've started getting tired again though. And Mark got a little preview of the vegetablized wife who can't do anything yesterday after amnio because you can't lift anything heavy or do much standing for at least the next 24 hours. So he got to cook and walk the dogs. Max pulls like a sled dog, so I think that qualifies as heavy lifting. The healing seems pretty close to done. I could only sleep on the opposite side that the needle went through yesterday, but most site tenderness is gone and I feel some muscular pain every now and then. I'll be good as new by Wednesday. Within a week, we get back 100% accurate test results of the baby's gender. Mark already took a blood test, so the baby's not in danger of sickle cell anemia, which my family carries the trait for. My aunt has the full-blown disease, but only me and another of my sibs carries the trait. Coulda sworn my mom said that Pam and Damone carried it, but I guess she was wrong because I got a positive when it came back. But Mark's free of all of it. Yippee - good choice of mates. I guess I'll keep him.

Ultrasound pics look pretty creepy, but I think I can make out a decent amount of the baby's face and some body traits to think that he already looks somewhat like his father and he's only half done. The forehead shape, the leg shape look like Mark. That's all I could make out so far. This pic has the baby lying on its side, face turned towards us with a hand over its ear. Mark said that he's listening to his ipod in utero already.

Large and in charge

Alright, I gave in. I went yesterday and bought 2 pieces of maternity clothing. Tired of attempting to walk around with unbuttoned jeans (it works, but then I have strange pokey forms marring the bottom of my shirt) I gave in and bought a maternity jean skirt and a pair of maternity jeans, both with the nice round fabric belly panel. The jeans fit SO well that I'm frightened that they won't last long. I tried on the large (only SM, M and L in the maternity world) and they were just so ill fitting every place else, that I couldn't bring myself to do it.

But I'm glad I did it. Winter's coming (LA winter - ha!) and I might need some long pants at some point. I was just tired of having to wear dresses every second. And my wardrove shrinks day by day. I think I'm going to start a box of unwearables, and just hide all the stuff that I cannot wear from myself to make it easier in the morning. The dance of pulling up pants and then getting stuck there is old. And after having lost so much weight in France that I took my old size 8 fat pants and tossed them, keeping only the 6 fat pants and some 4's, I screwed myself. I also gave away my really big, old mommy jeans about 2 years ago, so none of that - although that's a blessing. Size notwithstanding, they are just so outdated in color and shape that I knew I'd never wear them regardless.

I still do need a good pair of sweatpants or jogging pants that don't lend towards camel-toe or any other unfortunate wardrove mishap. And some more longer tshirts would be nice. All my tees are now baby tees and I just look sort of round and strange. Not fat, just weirdly shaped - not big enough to be obviously pregnant, but big enough to look strange.

I'm almost through the first trimester, where a lot of people don't even show, but I appear to be about a month bigger than I am due to my fibroid. So I look about 4 months pregnant. I think I might be relieved when I'm finally large enough to be visibly pregnant all the time.

List of No-No's for Pregnant Women

Upon getting pregnant, somebody should present you with a golden list of no-no's. But alas, they don't and you usually find out that you've eaten or used something you shouldn't have after the fact!

Here are some fun ones I found out about:

Food

• Honey - some say it's fine to eat while pregnant, but not fine to eat while breastfeeding and universally forbidden for children under the age of 1 (unique type of botchulism)
• brie, camembert, mexican queso, goat cheese - basically anything soft and white is suspect, also no bleu or moldy cheeses
• hot dogs
• cold cuts unless warmed to steaming (listeriosis)
• soft serve ice cream and yogurt (haven for Listeria)
• sushi, raw shellfish or any shellfish if you or spouse have allergies in your family
• tuna and a couple of other fish like shark, marlin, swordfish (high mercury content due to age and size of fish)
• wine and alcohol, of course
• caffeine - coffee, tea, green tea
• ginseng, echnicacea and almost all types of herbal supplements - many stimulate contractions
• a couple of herbal teas, black cohosh, among them
• peanut butter (experts are split)
• soy products (controversial)
• pate
• liver

Medications

• Benzoyl Peroxide (experts are split)
• all topical acne medication, retina, fade creams
• Ritalin
• psychiatric medications
• ASPIRIN!
• vitamin a supplements

Ill-advised Activities

• Hot baths or jacuzzi
• High temperatures for any reason, especially w/in first trimester (linked to lower birth weight and IQ)
• standing in front of the microwave (questionable)
• breathing in secondhand smoke
• avoid high altitudes
• high risk of falling activities like horseback riding, waterskiing, rollerblading
• amusement park roller coasters
• changing kitty litter

Wow. I didn't know the world was so dangerous! Peanut butter? Really? They can't seem to decide if early exposure causes peanut allergy or not, so to be safe, I just avoid it even though it was one of my favorite, safest food the 2nd week of my pregnancy (technically week 4).

Mostly, my food habits haven't changed so much, other than being a slave to cravings, but the cheese thing has been harder to live with. I pass the cheese counter, gazingly lovingly, wondering how many weeks until I can eat it again. Well, it's 28 weeks and some change until my next Brie sandwich or greek salad!

It's weird going out with friends and family, trying to not order questionable things while simultaneously not tipping them off to why. Everyone is skeptical. If these things were so bad for pregnant women, wouldn't we know it? So obviously, I'm just a paranoid nelly, making it up. I read it several books folks! And although I don't believe everything I read, and I know that people who don't know eat these things and give birth to healthy babies everyday, you wouldn't risk it if you knew. Ignorance is bliss, and being a grown woman with a lot of time on my hands, I have significantly less bliss than some. I may have had one week with cold cuts where I didn't know, but I started reading early and all the goodies got taken away.

Talk to you soon. I need to go figure out what I'm not eating for dinner.

11 Weeks and counting

Welcome to my update. It seems like it's been a week or so, but I'm now at 11 weeks! Time is flying and dragging at once. Some days I feel like the baby's taking forever, and yet the tickers keep changing weekly. I think the time might move differently also according to how you feel about your pregnancy. Whereas somebody who's not so thrilled is probably dreading getting bigger and showing and having to deal. those who are very excited about their pregnancy can barely stand the wait!

There's a bun in my oven

Two Fridays ago, I decided that I'd had enough of peeing. There had to be a cause to this. I'd awakened several times the night before to pee and I woke up with resolve. I'd decided to go to Trader Joe's for the first time on my bike, with my spiffy new dual grocery baskets.


I called my OBGYN and made an appointment, on principle, for next Wednesday. This way I could skip home testing and if something else were wrong, we could handle it all at once.

No home pregnancy tests for me, no sir. I had wasted a good $12 or so the previous month, when in a fit of anger, my aunt convinced me that I must be pregnant and hormonal, rather than just fed up with some folks, I purchased a kit and used it a couple of days before my cycle was expected. The test was negative immediately.

This time, I'd waited until the day on my cycle, and even alloted a couple days for pilot error or funny counting. I was now about 2 days late no matter what type of math I was using. So I bought the test, silently with no word to my husband or anyone. Then I rationalized that I'd still wait until the end of the day to take the test, to still give Aunt Flo a chance to catch up.

No such thing happened. While riding home, I crossed paths w/my husband driving the opposite direction in my SUV, so I knew I'd have a chance now to take the test alone. Since he'd scoffed at my assertion at being pregnant the day before, I wanted to know first.

I get home, now a pro at test taking, get a dixie cup (no stream chasing for me, buddy) and prepare. When I insert the test into my vitamin-rich collection (gotta get your folic acid before you conceive, even if you're not sure you will) it started IMMEDIATELY to get the 2nd pink line. It said to wait three minutes, so I put it down and walked away, pretending to not know the answer just in case some funny business happened and it ended up negative despite the initial hint of YESSSSSSSS. I come back and, of course, it's TOTALLY positive. I smile, in awe, and go grab my camera to now document this most historic pee moment in my life to date.

6 pictures later, I hear Mark return from the bank. "There's something you should see in the bathroom," I tell him and he looks at the sticks and bursts into laughter. Then he hugs me and I proceed to photograph him with the stick. I tell him that his response is better than I'd expected, considering his scoffing the day before. He informs me that I thought I was informing him of a food baby when I'd showed off my tumescent belly the day before during some work deadline he was busy with. Silly boy.

So now, we're pregnant. And I'm nervous because the reason I knew I was pregnant, in addition to the constant need to potty was the fact that my ribcage felt like it was stretching and imploding in a manner similar to what I expect Michael Jackson's nose has done, and it didn't feel so good.

So I call my OBGYN to get an appointment, and I get one for Wednesday of the next week, the same day Mark's parents are coming to town.