The feelings that come with expecting a child are not easily explained to anyone who hasn’t already been through it, and I apologize ahead of time if any of my thoughts seem disjointed or random.  Every pregnancy is different, which is great because then it would likely be kind of boring going through these very long but short 9 months.  Every part is something new and exciting for me.  We saw the first ultrasound and heard the first heartbeat right around 5-6 weeks.  We had several bleeding scares, which were even more stressful considering we had just lost one a couple of months prior to finding out about this one.  Not being able to eat for the first few months…  Eating like it’s going out of style ever since that went away..  My clothes not fitting by about 12 weeks…

I will start the main body of this by saying that we have an awesome doctor who has been there for us every step of the way.  It takes a lot of stress and pressure off of you and your husband when you know that your doctor is knowledgeable and capable, and most of all really cares about how you are doing as Expectants, not just another tally on the patient list.

We really started this pregnancy scared witless and afraid to get excited about a pregnancy that could disappear just as easily as the last did.  After a couple of weeks of sticking it out, we decided that it was going to either be ok or not, and we may as well get excited about how far we had come, considering it took 5 years to get there.  So then it started to get very exciting.  Lots of phone calls were made, lots of excitement shared, and lots of tears of joy cried.  We have some very supportive friends and family who have been there for us the whole way.  The first month and a half or so after we found out the news, we were pretty much on edge at the slightest hitch.  I bled a lot, which scared us every time.  I had a lot of cramping, which was actually less scary, thank goodness.

Just before 6 weeks, I had some pretty bad cramping and started to bleed quite a bit.  I was beside myself in thinking that I was losing yet another one.  Mike was at work, so I got in the car and drove down to his station, crying and praying the whole time for me to be wrong. When I got there, I walked in and just had him hold me for a minute until I could get my breath, felt so hopeless.  He got emergency leave, and drove me to the ER where we waited for 4 hours before they finally saw us and did an ultrasound.  By the time they did, I was almost totally numb.  I just remember retreating inside somewhere and thinking to myself, “Whatever is happening, I can’t change one way or the other now, so there is no use feeling anything about it.”  Then we went back into the ultrasound room, and she had a rough time finding a good picture from through the belly.  I told her that my uterus is normally retroverted, so she tried the other way.  There it was.  And better yet, she found a heartbeat.  We could see it.  The relief was so intense I couldn’t even cry.  I was almost immediately tired.  After that I tried to not worry about the bleeding or cramping as much.  It worked, for a few weeks..

Then I hit about 10 weeks.  We were at the end of a wonderful weekend vacation with friends, out to breakfast no less, when I had a sudden rush of bleeding.  No pain, just blood, and quite a bit of it.  I sat through breakfast trying so hard not to believe the worst yet again.  I called my doctor to find out if he was in the office, or if I should go to the hospital.  They told me that he was not in the office that day, and reminded me that even if I went to the ER, it may or may not come back conclusive of a miscarriage for at least a day or two.  So we rushed home, which was about 4 hours away.  When we were about an hour out, my doctor called me.  He had stopped in the office for a minute and got the message.  He said he would be able to wait there until 4 if we could make it there by then.  It was 2:45 and we were in Galt; he was in Folsom.  We made it there at 3:45, and he rushed me in to do an ultrasound.  He skipped trying the belly, and went straight inside, knowing my history.  And there was baby, looking right at the wand, waving a little right arm as if to say, “It’s ok! I’m still here!  Don’t worry Mom and Dad.”  I cried right there on the table.  The heartbeat was still there and everything looked fine.  Yay for passing Big Scare #2!  When I hit 11 weeks, the bleeding stopped completely.  We were so relieved, but still on edge for awhile just waiting for it to start again.

During the first months, I had a very hard time finding anything that sounded good to eat.  I ate whatever I could, but it wasn’t much.  My first real craving was Spagettios…  It was just a sudden feeling of, “I have to have them.”  Most anything I ate had to be drenched in ketchup for it to be palatable.  It made for a very uninspired diet…  The smell of seasoned salt tended to make me nauseous, so I did not do a great deal of cooking during that time, since I couldn’t even open the spice cupboard without being overwhelmed.  At about that same time, I had to take some REALLY nasty antibiotics that smelled like rotten eggs…  I never actually got sick, but I came close several times.  Even the Omega 3 prenatal vitamins made me nauseous.  I have had to find other ways of getting those vitamins.  Luckily they sell juice that contains it now, and I can try to eat a couple of servings of fish per week.  Once I got over this bit of the pregnancy, I could finally start to eat fairly regularly again, although my tastes change almost daily.  There are things that are good almost anytime, which is nice.  I have been loving anything that is flavored like the seeded red fruits (raspberries the most, but strawberries, cherries, blackberries, etc.)  Cheese is usually pretty good.  Veggies like broccoli are wonderful.  Beef, not so much.  Pork sausage is great.  Ham and turkey are also good.  I still have a hard time choosing something to eat, but when I do, I eat well!

It was right about 15 weeks or so when I first felt this tiny flip-flop feeling in my tummy..  When someone asked me what it felt like, they all described butterflies or tickling fingers…  Best way I could describe it was like holding a little fish in your closed hand and feeling it flop around in your fist…  I suppose butterflies or tickling fingers is a little more girly and cute and something that people would relate to more, but that was the best I could describe it and be perfectly honest.  Over the last several months, the tiny flip-flops turned into tiny kicks.  Then those turned into kicks and barrel-rolls.  And the last 3 weeks or so, it feels like I am carrying an Olympic gymnast some days!  Some days it’s still a tickle, some days it feels like my whole stomach is turning in somersaults, and some days it feels like she is trying to kick out walls around her.  She has gotten the hiccups a few times lately, which is another strange feeling; this rhythmic tic feeling every few seconds for several minutes.  Most of the time when she moves, I can just sit and marvel at feeling her.  Recently, there have been a few times when she was moving around, that I could push on a spot on my tummy and she would push back; now that is a very cool feeling.  It really is another life growing inside me.  She gets more and more cognitive every day.  She gets bigger and bigger every day.

At 20 weeks we found out that she was a girl, but to be honest Mike and I had known for over a month.  I know signs are silly things, but we got several of them that we just knew were trying to clue us in.  The first that we noticed was the fortune cookies..  Mike and I both got the exact same fortune with the Chinese word for Daughter on the back.  Sounds silly right?  But the ironic part was that we got these separately, at two different restaurants.  I got mine, and then about a week later, Mike got his at another spot.  Silly and superstitious? Maybe.  Or maybe God was putting these notes in our path.  🙂  The next sign came over the course of a few weeks.  Mike and I started this night-time ritual of playing a game on my iPhone before we would go to sleep.  The game was Life.  We would pick our characters, go to college or start a career..  Every time we played, Mike would without fail land on “Baby Girl” as his first child in the game.  Every single time.  What are the odds of that in a computer game where the possibilities are almost endless???  There are somewhere between 10-15 children spots to land on, only two of them are Baby Girl, and on top of that, you can go the whole game not landing on a single one!  But we played this game likely about 15-20 times before our 20 week ultrasound appointment, and every time, it was telling Mike that he was going to have a daughter.  It didn’t work the same for me; that would have been even more strange, but then, I think I knew already, so I was more prepared for it.  It was like it was trying to get Mike to get used to it by making him smile and laugh about all the signs pointing to it.  The other sign that I took as a sure sign that I was having a girl was when my dad looked at me and said he was sure I was having a boy.  He said the same thing about me when my mother was pregnant with me, and he was exactly wrong then too.

Now that we know it’s a girl thanks to the wonders of modern science, we talk about Tori all the time.  We immediately had a color scheme that we had pretty much had picked out from the beginning.  Mike’s favorite color is green, so that was going to be incorporated whether it was a boy or girl.  My favorite color is pink, which is the essential color for a baby girl.  So pink, green, and white it is!  Oh and elephants; Mike loves elephants, and there are some really cute girl patterns that we have found that are pink and green with elephants!  We went and signed up for baby registries at Babies R Us and Target (which we are both sure that we will get almost nothing off of, but are good to have anyways.)  Mike has been talking about the pink guns and knives he wants to get her and teach her how to use properly.  I have been busy making a green, white, and pink blanket that I am hoping will be something she will want to keep and treasure for many years to come (but then, I would be ok if she just got a ton of use out of it and loved it to a literal death as well.)  We have been discussing painting the nursery.  We have been discussing the places that we will go to look for anything we still need after the baby shower..

Well, I think that about does it for my update thus far on the joys of pregnancy!  I will post more about smaller things a little later. 🙂