Month 3 Journal

I don't really like the 3rd month journal questions but I'll do the best that I can, and maybe add some new things I've been thinking about recently!:)

1.) What's the silliest pregnancy advice that has come your way?

One of our patient's at work who is pregnant with her second told me to tell Justin that "I'm closed.  Like the Sahara Desert."  Probably TMI Mrs. Patient-Lady.  But honestly, I appreciate most of the advice, especially from fellow moms and moms-to-be out there.  Some stuff may go in one ear and out the other but for the most part, I like opinions! :)

2.) Your version of your pregnancy story. (A.K.A. my fairytale birthing experience.)

I think this is a little silly, and I'm really not that creative.  I'm also trying to be really open about everything coming my way in January but I'll do my best to come up with a short story:)  After sleep a full night's sleep before or on our due date, I calmly wake up at 9:00 having to go to the bathroom.  We soon figure out my water broke and I'm having contractions.  It's conveniently right around our due date since my whole family has come to visit from Illinois!:)  The labor is too quick for me to even decide if I want an epidural (which is the scariest part of the whole situation for me) and after some nice easy pushing, out pops our wonderful little...BOY! (Or GIRL!! Just kidding I'd be happy with either!)  People are taking the first photos and I'm looking amazingly glowing and beautiful and not sweaty and gross at all.

Yeah I know, wishful thinking, but like I said, I'm not expecting the worst but I'm not expecting the best either.  Plus, I figure the pain is probably well worth it in the end!

3.) Take time to write out all your good advice.

Like I said I appreciate any and all advice, suggestions on registry items etc I can get.  I can't specifically say any specific advice (besides what I already mentioned about my mom) but feel free to leave a comment!:)

4.) What did your "Hot Mom-to-be" intuition tell you today?

"Be nice to your husband.  You got really lucky with this one so PLEASE, ignore the hormonal issues and BE NICE TO YOUR HUSBAND!!"

5.) Record your most wicked and wild food craving.

Honestly, I don't feel like this is a pregnancy craving as much as an every day craving, but like a typical pregnant lady, I sure do love my pickles.  About 2 weeks ago, I also got a huge craving for crab/lobster bisque soup.  And about a week before that I really wanted some donuts (long johns for anyone who knows what those are- not my husband or future brother-in-law).  I mentioned this to my patient at the time, and, just to prove to you how AWESOME my patients are, she left her appointment for that day and came back 15 minutes later with donuts for me!!  Including a cinnamon-sugar one AND a long john!!

6.) Craziest things that make you cry?  That make you happy?

Not too sure about these things yet.  But I'll keep it in the back of my mind and update you as soon as I know! :)

And seriously, any suggestions on registry places would be so helpful!  There are too many options and too many options for strollers and car seats and everything!

Month 2 Journal

Because I missed a few days due to my trip to La Jolla, CA, I'm going to post two posts today.  Plus, tomorrow is beginning of my second trimester so I thought I should post another journal post!

Here are the questions from Chapter 2 of my book:

This chapter was about healthy eating and how your baby takes in everything around you, including sounds.

1. What healthy foods did you eat today?

M: Well, it's not even lunch time yet, so I haven't eaten much but cereal today.  However, on my road trip this weekend, we ate quite a bit at this little coffee shop that had some breakfast and lunch sandwiches, so I ate quite a bit of avocado.  And I think my new favorite type of frozen blended drink is Acai berry.  I had three from the coffee shop and they were delicious!

J: Not that it matters, but I thought it would be fun to still have Justin answer the questions!:)  He ate strawberries, eggs and milk this morning.

2. List the songs that you use to bring you back to earth.

M: I love everything Michael Buble, particularly Save the Last Dance, Crazy Love, and Hold On.  I also love Sara Bareilles, particularly Many the Miles and Maroon 5, especially Infatuation. Justin and I also like to listen to Brian Regan stand-up.

J: Most of the music Justin listens to doesn't calm him down, and I can vouch for that...it's angry music.  We'll have to change that soon.  He says he likes The Dismemberment Plan, The City.

3. What's your baby's womb nickname?

We both agreed on "our little soy bean" because we love edamame, especially from our favorite sushi place!

4. What are your favorite feel-good movies?

M: I love any and all romantic comedies.  Some of my favorites are The Wedding Date, 27 Dresses, Fever Pitch, The Proposal and Made of Honor.  I also LOVE musicals and sports movies, especially Singing in the Rain, Mamma Mia (despite really bad singing) and Miracle (which is probably one of my favorite movies of all time.  If you know me at all, I could list hundreds of thousands of movies I love!

J: Justin loves Top Gun, Super Troopers, and The Sandlot.

Enjoy!

Babies and Toddlers and Airplanes...Oh My!

Have you noticed how many kids are on airplanes?  Man, my two flights back from San Diego yesterday were probably about 50% kids under the age of 5.

I was in San Diego for my former teammate and college roommates wedding with some other former teammates, one of whom is also pregnant.  She's a little further along than me and was able to give me some advice, however her pregnancy has also been much rougher than mine so far.  It was nice to find out that she was on my flight to and from Milwaukee to San Diego though!

Back to the kids on the flights.  At first, on my flight back home from Milwaukee, it was late and I was a little hormonal and irritated and there were two boys probably around the age of 3 or 4 sitting in the row in front of me (from different families mind you).  They were SO hyper and talkative and loud the whole flight.  It wasn't terrible, but I was just tired of flying.  Then, as we were de-planing, one of those little boys was with his older sister (probably about 5) and his mom.  He followed me the whole way out of the airport, chatting with me about the cuts on his thumbs and running after me to keep up.  He was really cute.  His mom finally had to say, "Jack, you have to stay with me now." as they reached the baggage claim area.  I turned around and said and waved "Bye" to him.  Despite my slight irritation on the plane, I'm excited to have a child.  They are just so entertaining!:)

Here's an awesome picture of the clouds out the window of my plane at sunset. (And a picture of some of my very favorite Hokies:)

Cravings...

So I guess I haven't had too many cravings.  I have always loved pickles and like a stereotypical pregnant woman, I love pickles just as much pregnant!  But today, I got a whiff of crab or lobster bisque soup at work and just had to have some!

Don't ask me where that whiff came from, but Justin and I had a date night at McCormick and Schmick's.  I had a giant bowl of lobster bisque and Justin was very pleased with his dinner!  Plus, they had key lime pie for dessert...my favorite!

P.S. Check out my 12 week belly shot added at the request of my big sister, Aunt Meg.

Month 1 Journal

The book I'm reading, Hot Mom to Be Handbook, has a short series of questions to help you keep a journal of your pregnancy after each chapter, i.e. each month.  I thought this blog would be a fun way for me/us to let you in on how we are feeling and how things are going.  So here are the questions from Chapter 1, and answers from both of us (if I can get Justin to share!)

1. What were your first words or thoughts when you found out you were pregnant? And be honest!

M: Well I think we've actually gone over this, but my first thought was "Holy crap!"

J: Justin says his first thought/word was "Ummmm..."  Descriptive, I know.

2. What are you most excited about? What do you fear the most?

M: I think I'm most excited to embark on this new journey with Justin.  Plus I can't wait to actually live all those motor milestones that we learned about in school! :)  And I know that we won't be perfect parents but I'm just afraid I'm not ready yet and I won't know what to do.

J: He is most excited about watching he/she grow up.  He is most scared about having somebody be 100% reliant on him for everything. And he hopes they like his cooking!:)

3. What was the funniest thing that someone said or did when you told them about "the bun"?

M: This is actually completely crazy but the funniest thing that has happened so far was when I was telling my Nanny that she was going to be a great grandma.  We were at lunch in between bridal dress shopping appointments and the crazy outgoing waitress had just brought us our food.  She was peppering Megan's friend Amanda's salad and when I THOUGHT she had left, I began to tell my grandma.  Nanny was pretty surprised and she let a small gasp out, but from behind me as the words are coming out of my mouth, I hear the waitress go, "OH MY GOD...OH MY GOD!"  It's not as funny in writing but we couldn't stop laughing about it.  If Aunt Lauren can send me the video and I can somehow post it to the blog, I'll try that!

J: He says it has been funny how many people don't believe us when we tell them we are expecting.  We also laughed when his best friend Andrew said, "Yaayyy....right?"

4. Once you're pregnant, you notice every baby in the world.  How many babies did you see today?

M: Seeing as I've been sitting on the couch watching movies all day today, I've seen none (not even in the movies).  But I have to admit I've noticed more of those little suckers recently:)

J: He says he heard one crying at the Farmer's Market across the street today.

Happy Birthday Grandpa M!

Today is my dad's **th birthday!:)  I wish we lived closer so we could spend some time with him, but I think we gave him a pretty good Father's Day present a few weeks ago!

I love you Dad!

Favorite questions after telling someone I'm pregnant...

I should probably write posts more often because there seems to be a lot that I can talk about!  Here are some of my favorite and most common post-people-finding-out-I'm-pregnant questions (and answers):



1. Are you going to find out the sex?

No.  Period the end.  I don't care if you think it's easier to pick colors or names or anything if you find out, and I REALLY don't care if you want to know:)  Plus, I find it funny hearing people tell me what they think it's gonna be...so far: IT'S A BOY! :)

2. When are you due?

January 24th (tentatively), and "wow really? You're great aunt's first child was born in January? I can't believe it."  Here's to not caring what the actual date is because let's be honest, how many babies are born on that day? And more importantly, here's to our baby having their very own special day :)

3. Have you thought about names?

Um, I'm not sure if I mentioned this to you but it's taken me about 4-5 weeks to actually feel like I'm in this situation...actually hearing the heartbeat was the deal-sealer for me:)  So no, I haven't really thought about names, but I'm sure you are going to tell me which ones you like.

4. How are you feeling?

How in God's name do I answer this question?  I feel sick about 20% of the time, I feel AWESOME about 50% of the time and I feel like I could fall asleep standing up the rest of the time.  But otherwise, I feel exactly the same as I did 2 seconds ago, BEFORE I told you I was pregnant.

5. That's great news...right?!? OR Congratulations...?!?

As Justin's best friend and best man #1 at our wedding said, "Yaaayyyy....right?"  Haha, yes, even though it may not have been planned and maybe it was a surprise, we are still excited.

6. Have you started setting up a nursery?

Ugh, can someone else do all this other crap I have to do?  I'll worry about pushing this little thing out of my body and someone else worry about all that stuff?  I'm taking offers...

I think those are the main questions we have been getting, and my slightly sarcastic, pregnant lady way I wish I could answer them.  Maybe my next post can be of all the advice I've gotten from random patients so far...but for now my favorite quote from the best Mom I could have asked for to learn from:

"Yeah well, pregnancy is a weird time all around."  Thank you for the insight Mom.  I love you! <3

We heard the heartbeat!

We had our second appointment with our doctors/midwives practice yesterday.  Unsure of what to expect, we got there and got asked a few family background questions: Any history of metal illness on either side...yes:).  Just kidding families!

Anyways, the midwife we saw yesterday said, "Well do you want to try to hear the heartbeat?" Ummmm....yeah!  She said we might not hear anything and sometimes you can hear it at 10 weeks, but most often you can't hear it until around 12 weeks.  Well, 2 seconds after she put the gel on my stomach, she goes, "There it is. and it sounds really good." I looked at Justin and said, "Well, now it feels real!" We got an order to get our first ultrasound this week to do a nuchal translucency test, to test for down syndrome (I believe). 

On a light note, like my dad says, "Did it sound like a setter's?" Yes, Dad, just like a setter, 6ft lefty! :)

Morning sickness?

So I think the first thing I thought of when discovering I was pregnant was morning sickness.  I had a strong urge to call my mom and tell her first to find out how her pregnancies were and if she got a lot of morning sickness.  I then decided it was probably more important to tell her something like that in person (although I semi-spilled the beans on Facebook to my younger sister...oops!)  I had heard that often your pregnancies are similar to what your mother experienced, but I guess I was going at this on my own (and with Justin of course.)

Well I was feeling great!  I was extremely fatigued...like to the point that I could fall asleep standing up working on one of my patients.  But besides a small amount of nausea in the mornings when I got up, I wasn't feeling terrible.  Especially since I am not a morning person anyways and tend to not feel awesome waking up even when not knocked up! :)  So here I am, informing my patients that we are expecting, bragging about how besides being exhausted (which they initially thought was due to my century bike ride at the beginning of the month) I was feeling great and hadn't had any morning sickness.

Fast forward to last Wednesday.  I had a pretty long 10 hour day at work, followed immediately by a volleyball game and I wasn't feeling all the great afterwards.  Come Saturday morning, I had a terrible night's sleep and was trying to clean up our apartment for the in-laws to visit, when a sudden urge of nausea hit me that I couldn't ignore.  Yesterday I was fine and again today I had to go into work a little late because every time I moved I felt sick.  Now, don't get the wrong idea.  I haven't really been throwing up a lot, but I'm also not feeling as awesome as I was 2 weeks ago, or even after my 100 mile bike ride!

Being the scientist that I am, I've been trying to correlate my sickness with something, I'm thinking it's either the particular brand of pre-natal vitamins I've been taking the past 4 days or the nights that I don't sleep very well.  But either way, I'm hoping that it doesn't stick around for long.  I've been reading the Hot Moms-to-Be Handbook and the 2nd (month) chapter last night was all about positive thinking about your pregnancy.  Therefore today, I'm trying to think about how great the end result of all this will be and it won't last forever!



P.S. When/if you or a friend gets pregnant, buy a body pillow. They help me sleep a ton!

Also, if anyone has anything in particular that they want to read about just let me know.  Until then, I'll just be talking about whatever comes across my mind or I might use the little journal questions for my Hot Moms Handbook!:)

Here we are!

Ok, so this is my first blog post.  As you most likely know if you are reading this blog, we recently found out that we are pregnant!  Well more like, I am pregnant and Justin puts up with me while I'm pregnant. :)  I thought that starting a blog where I could post pictures and videos hopefully would be the best way for our friends and family across the country to stay up-to-date with our lives!

So here is our little story, starting from day 1 (or about week 4/5):

I was a little late and had warned Justin about a week or so beforehand, but as you know, I was doing a lot of biking so I thought maybe that was part of it.  I decided that it was probably smart just to make sure so on Monday evening, the 24th of May, I bought 2 +/- pregnancy tests on my way home from work.  I was so nervous and almost embarrassed since, being the good little Catholic girl I am, I had never done this before.  Took one, thought it was positive and told Justin that I thought I was pregnant but I was going to take the other one just to be "sure."  When that one was + I started to freak out a little.  Fast-forward to about 40 minutes later, after Justin went out and bought 4 more digital tests, 2 of which I took and were blaring the word at me...pregnant, pregnant...ok ok I got it.  We are pregnant.

I wish I could share with you what was going through my head at that moment, but I think it best to leave it between Justin and I, but needless to say, we were shocked!!!  I wish I could say that I was 100% excited right away, but as most of you know...I'm a life planner.  I plan my life out well in advance and I stick to that plan come hell or high water.  Well, this little one wasn't quite in my plan at this moment in time.  But, such is life!  The idea of having a baby is really growing on us, and I can really only speak for myself but thank you all for sharing your excitement and support with us!  I constantly crave others' approval (a large personality flaw) so I can't explain how glad I am to have so many wonderful people behind me.  I can't wait to share our journey and our lives with you all, especially my family in Illinois and Wisconsin, I miss you all like crazy!