Telling the Grandparents Tomorrow!

Wish us luck!

We are headed to NS to visit the in-laws for a few days and are stopping in at my mom's place on the way for lunch. We will be telling both sets of grandparents tomorrow via Isabel. I am pretty excited. Mostly because I need other people to whine to *lol*

mmmm...insomnia...my favourite

One thing I can say is that I haven't been having trouble sleeping. I am always tired and basially fall into bed every night. Until last night that is.

I had a hard time falling asleep, for no particular reason, as far as I could tell. Now, here I sit, having been awoken at 3:50am to pee, wide awake. I tossed and turned until twenty after four, when I realised I was starving, so I came downstairs to have a bowl of Shreddies. Now, I just want to be sleeping, but I don't think it is going to come easily :(

Wish me luck.

House selling vibes please!

We really need to sell our house and get this show on the road. I really want to be moved by the time school starts up again. We had a showing today and we have an open house tomorrow. Monday, the agents from our realtor's office will be coming through to get a better idea of what is here and, hopefully, find one of their clients to buy it.

And so it begins...

My doctor is not the best doctor on the face of the planet. I basically told her so when I lost my first pregnancy and she had been totally useless the entire time, not to mention downright rude and cruel when I was very concerned at around 6-weeks (with reason, as it turned out).

As a result, I was not really looking forward to have to interact with her again as a result of my pregnancy. She showed me yesterday that my concern was warranted. I got a phone call from her receptionist yesterday to reschedule my appointment scheduled for today because the doctor was going out of town. She said the first day the doctor would be back in town would be July 6th and asked if I wanted an appointment on that day. I would be 10w 1d then. I was understanding, but also brought up the fact that I needed to see a perinatologist at 12-weeks for an ultrasound to discover the gender of the baby and decide how to proceed from there if it is a boy (I am 99.9% sure I wouldn't have the amnio, but I would rather have the option). The receptionist's response was "Well, you'll have to go to a clinic to get an appointment for that any sooner. That is the first day that the doctor will be back - do you want the appointment or not?" Pardon? I explained again that the u/s needed to be done with the perinatologist because of a condition that I carried and so that I could be put in line for an amnio between 15 and 16-weeks, which is the recommended timeframe. If she figured that the doctor could get me in for the u/s with less than 2 weeks notice, then by all means make the appointment. She said that they'd do their best.

Seriously, if I hadn't been through this once already, I wouldn't have had a clue that I needed all of this early intervention and likely would have missed that window. I don't understand her need to be rude and act like I am putting her out by advocating for myself (in a pretty civilized way). *sigh*

In other cool news, my tummy is crazy big. I will be taking a belly pic tonight and will post a comparison tomorrow. I don't think I started taking pics until 12-weeks last time and my belly, at only 8-weeks, is already bigger than it was then. I may have to go dig the mat clothes out of the storage unit sooner than I expected.

A New Contender Has Entered The Ring

I believe Isabel has officially lost the title, "Parasite". I strongly suspect that this is what having a tapeworm is like.

If I am not nauseated, I am dying of starvation and, more often than not, I am both.

Yes indeed, the title has been taken by #2.

"Shhhh! Maman fait do-do..."

That is what Dave got to hear several times yesterday evening after I went upstairs to get something out of my nightstand, laid down for a little rest and subsequently napped for 3+ hours. Isabel was very concerned for the quality of my sleep apparently and repeatedly told Dave to "SHHHH!" explaining, in French, that I was sleeping.

I am *so* tired and *so* sick. I just can't even explain it to you. I don't think it was this bad with Isabel, but I vaguely remember feeling similarly miserable at about the 6 week mark last time, just in time for Christmas holidays. To the extent that we left Dave's family's place early because I just longed to feel like a pile of stinking dog poo in my own bed rather than at someone else's house, all the while trying to hide it from them that I was pregnant.

Anyway, I have punked out of Safe Grad tonight because I just don't want to be caught feeling like this while trapped at the lake for hours on end. I may also punk out of graduation if it is as bad as last night.

Wish me luck.

How do we tell the grandparents?

We want to tell them in a fun way again this time. I doubt we can ever live up to Isabel's announcement...we set the bar pretty high with that one, but we do want to do something.

So far, the front running option is a video of Isabel showing off her vocabulary, including pointing to my tummy and saying "baby."

What do you think we should do? I am trying to avoid the typical stuff because we don't want to have to tell this kid "we just called them" after describing stuffing Isabel's sonogram photo into homemade fortune cookies and having them served to our table at our favourite Chinese restaurant hehe.

Also of note, we want to tell them earlier this time because we will likely need some help moving, given the size of my pot belly already and the fact that I likely oughtn't be lifting 50lb boxes of books.

Arrowroots are a food group, right?

GACK! The nausea! All the time. If I don't eat for 1/2 an hour, I feel sick. What's more, the easiest and most soothing thing is Arrowroot cookies. I am going to be the size of a house when this is all over.

For those who are keeping track, the current symptoms are nausea, sore boobs, increased appetite, frequent trips to the potty, increased tiredness and little pot belly. Doing well so far :P

Crunchy, granola, hippy wannabe...that's me!

So, not only do I plan to nurse number 2 for the first year and feed him/her homemade and/or organic baby food, but we also just made the change over to cloth diapers.

I might as well whip out the Birkenstocks right now.

I just cannot stand how much we spend on diapers and how much waste is produced. It makes me absolutely nuts. I had planned to do cloth with Isabel, but Dave was very hesitant and, given that she was our first, I decided to make it as uncomplicated as possible.

At this point in the game though, we both agree that we can manage it and is worth giving a shot. So, I purchased a cloth diaper stash on Kijiji today. It includes several pocket diapers (BumGenius and Happy Heiny), about a dozen Chinese prefolds and a bunch of accessories for both types (inserts, covers, snappis and stain/odor remover). It was a great deal and we are very excited to try them out on Isabel.

So in other words, I should never trust anything you say...

Today was my first orthodontist appointment since finding out I am preggo. Let me give you a little background before I tell you how it all went down.

Since we got back on track with my ortho work, the plan has been for me to have my surgery this summer. So it came as a kick to the teeth when the orthodontist looked at me like I had four heads when I asked him, in April, if we were still on track. He followed that up with a snarky "We are still at least 8 to 10 months away from you being ready for surgery.

I held back the tears until I got in the car, but I was distraught. We had reluctantly decided to put off having a second baby until after my surgery because the timing was better this way. This change in timing meant that there with be another year plus to wait (because I wouldn't be able to have the surgery during the school year) for everything, meaning there would be at least 4 years between Isabel and her sibling and likely longer....much more time than we wanted.

After a few days of chatting about this, we decided to stop planning around this surgery and just let life happen.

Well, it happened...

Back to today, as I am laying there, with the doctor and tech speaking "orthodontic" over me, the ortho asks me if we put in for a surgery date. I respond, "No because you said we were still nearly a year out last time we talked about it." He then says, "Well, I think we should do the surgery sooner so that I can better assess how to move your teeth." I know my face says it all at this point and he confirms it when he asks, "Is there a reason this isn't going to work for you?" I had no choice but to tell him at this point. He was less than enthused. Too freaking bad, eh? a) I am going to take what you are saying at face value because that is all I have and b) As I have told you before, my life does not revolve around my orthodontic work.

Anyway, he knows now :P

My new motto: "I'm hungry."

Seriously, the increased appetite is hitting me hard.

I am starving when I wake in the morning - I eat breakfast around 7:15am.
I am hungry again by 10am and *starving* by 11am - I eat a snack mid-morning.
I am hungry enough to eat again at lunch time (12:15pm)
I can usually last until 3pm, but have to have a snack by the time I leave work at around 4pm.
I am thinking about supper at 4:30pm and eat by 6pm.
I am hungry again at 8pm, so I usually have a snack between 8 and 9pm.
Most nights, if I don't eat again after that, I go to bed hungry.

I am going to be a blimp by the time this baby is born!

Kind of interesting...

So with my last two pregnancies, I have felt that the babies were girls. It wasn't anything I consciously decided - it just felt right. When I pictured them, I saw girls in my head. I attributed this to the fact that having a girl is just easier for us, given the condition I carry - NDI. Girls can be carriers and even manifesting carriers, but neither is nearly as serious as a boy actually having the condition. So, having girls eliminates that risk. I figured that my brain was defaulting to the girl thoughts because I was kind of hoping that they would be girls, so we wouldn't have to deal with the NDI issue.

Now, we don't know what the first one was, of course, but Isabel is most definitely a girl. That said, I still didn't put much stock in my inkling.

Until now that is. I am seeing this baby as a boy. It feels the same - no real emotion behind it, just matter of fact, this is the way it is. I still kind of hope it is a girl for the same reasons I did before. Not to say I wouldn't love a boy, but I would feel very guilty if I had a little boy who was sick because of my genetics. Having a boy with NDI could be very complicated and his life could be very difficult. My hoping is purely logical. That said, hope or not, I feel quite matter-of-factly that this baby is a boy.

Time will tell, of course. I just find it all quite interesting, given how I had reasoned away my feelings with the other two pregnancies.

Baby Brain...

ugh. In the last two days I have forgotten the most simple of things and it has resulted in a rather annoying and worrisome situation.

The not so important things that I've forgotten were the basics to my favourite rice recipe and shoving the body wash under the vanity with the cleaning products after cleaning the bathroom for a house showing. The worrisome bit though is that I've lost my agenda at school. It has *so* many important things in it, along with some sensitive information. I retraced every step I took yesterday, despite the fact that I have absolutely *no* memory of taking it anywhere with me, and I've come up empty handed :(

I don't know what I will do if I can't find it.

The History...

The short version is this:

I lost my first pregnancy to a missed miscarriage. I had to have a D&C to have the pregnancy removed. It was very sad for me and the aftermath changed me a great deal.

My second pregnancy was par for the course until week 25, when I went into pre-term labour. I was kept in the hospital for four days and then was sent home on strict bed-rest. This was a real challenge for me, but a healthy baby was pretty good motivation. I was on bed-rest until 32 weeks, at which time, I was allowed to do what I normally would, within reason, and from which time we expected the baby could be born at any time. This meant it was a bit of a surprise when I had to be induced three days before my due date because the doctor worried waiting longer would result in a c-section due to the size of the baby. This pregnancy resulted in my wee Isabel.

And here we are....waiting to see what will happen with pregnancy number three.

Not as symptomatic as before...

I am not experiencing quite the number/strength of symptoms as I did with Isabel. It concerns me a little, but I am pretty sure the nausea is starting to settle in, so that should be a small comfort ;)

So far, that is about it, my body just kind of feels....weird. When I was pregnant with Isabel, I referred to her as "The Parasite" because, honestly, a pregnancy takes over your entire body and makes it do very weird things.

WAIT! PIRATES ARE WILD!

Little Simpsons allusion for you fans out there.

Basically, this cycle was my first off of birth control. It had been a little wonky. I was convinced I was pregnant very early on though. I took four pregnancy tests in the run of a week and a half (starting *way* too early :P ) and got negatives on all of them.
I was pretty sure that if I wasn't getting a positive by that point in my cycle, I wasn't pregnant. This made me a cranky girl. I stewed inside about how annoying my body was to be messing with me like this...extra long cycle, no pregnancy, when it should know that time is of the essence, given our situation (for those that don't know, I was supposed to get major surgery on my jaw this summer, we were planning to get pg after that, time frame changed on the surgery, so we decided to try for a baby sooner, but still had a limited window).
By week five of this cycle, I was getting particularly irritable. I was craving a cooler, but didn't want to have one until my period arrived...just in case.
Well, while grocery shopping, I decided to get an expensive, hyper-sensitive test to corroborate my previous results. Up to this point, I had been using Dollarstore tests (yes, they sell pregnancy tests at the Dollarstore...who knew) and there was a little voice in the back of my head that said "cheap=less-accurate".
When I got home from grocery shopping, Dave saw the test and laughed. I explained the situation to him and he snickered something about "serious business."
The next morning, bleary-eyed, I peed on the stick. The whole time I fumed to myself about how it was going to be negative and my body was just being a jerk, so on and so forth. I put the cap on and held it at arm's length, not really paying attention, knowing the result already. It took a full 1o seconds for my brain to process the fact that the test line was showing up before the control line. Umm.....wtf!?!?!
After staring at it and putting it down and looking at it again and brushing my teeth and staring at it some more, I decided to share with Dave when he got up. I put it on top of the alarm clock snooze button, meaning it was the first thing he found. Apparently, he didn't even need to put his glasses on to see the two lines.
The rest, as they say, is history.

5w 3d is very early...

so I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. That said, I regret not documenting enough of Isabel's pregnancy out of fear of getting too attached and then losing her. I decided a while ago that I wouldn't make the same mistake this time, no matter the risks, because the disheartening situation of getting to the end and not having written down an account of this amazing experience is a greater risk.

So...that explains the motivation behind the blog. The next post will explain the humour in finding out we were expecting.

Here we go again....

We are trying this journey out for a third time. Excitement and anxiety run rampant :)