Patience is a virtue, 19 weeks 2 days

Pregnancy does not seem to make me feel very virtuous.

Pregnancy is often portrayed as a magical time in which pampering the woman is encouraged. She needs to get plenty of rest and nutrients in order to support her growing baby (i.e. eat a lot of yummy food). Women are told to make the most out pregnancy (patricularly their first) and take advantage of all the limited time they have left to sleep in, enjoy long baths, and spend time participating in some last few child free activities like dates and parties and movies, even a vacation or two.

What "they" don't tell us, is how HARD it is to relax and enjoy pregnancy. In the long term, pregnancy is a blip in the average woman's life. Most modern women are pregnant only a handful of times for less than a year each time, and have a life expectancy of over 80 years. But during pregnancy, time just crawls. I really want to enjoy this time and make the most of it, but it is SO HARD to keep my impatience at bay!

The weeks between milestones and noteworthy events seem like months, and as much as it would be nice to focus on me, I just can't wait to find out what is waiting at the end of this pregnancy journey!
I want to meet the eating, sleeping little poop machine and find out what it will be like to have Lego home, complete with an actual name and identifiable genitalia.

I want to know where we will be living and be able to start acquiring baby furniture that won't fit in our current location. I keep finding myself looking for items that I won't need for several months after Lego has arrived. I almost bought a baby food grinder yesterday. It will be close to a year from now before I will need one of those!

We find out the sex of baby Lego next week.

The closer the big day comes, the more time seems to be inching by. Lego's kicks have gotten more frequent and stronger, (they feel kind of like being tickled from inside now) but it is hard to sit back and enjoy them when I'm so distracted by anticipation! I am as bad as a small child waiting for Christmas.

Kicking Dan, 17 weeks 5 days

Things got even realer last night, folks!

Dan and I had gone to bed but were still awake and chatting, when Lego started getting busy doing whatever it is fetuses do. I found it pretty distracting since these were the strongest kicks I have felt yet, so I interrupted whatever we were talking about and put Dan's hand on my stomach. Now, we have tried this a couple times in the past week or so since I've started feeling movement, with no results. But last night, my friends, luck (or fetal growth) was on our side. We didn't have to wait more than a few seconds before Lego obliged us with the hardest kick yet, right under Dan's hand!

We stared at each other in amazement for a couple minutes while Lego showed off for Daddy. He got to feel some pretty good ones and Lego was wiggling all over in there! It was fun trying to figure out where the next one would come from. Gradually the kicks started declining in strength, while I marveled out loud about this life growing inside of me.



This should be where I get kind of sappy about the beautiful miracle of new life or something, but my musings have been less reverential.

I still can't fully wrap my mind around this future person that lives IN me. It reminds me of a line from a movie (Super Troopers? Or something...) where a character warns someone; "I WILL S*#% IN YOU".

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT LEGO IS DOING TO ME!! Okay, not really. There is no poop. But Lego is definitely peeing in me. And then drinking it. Delightful.

For real though, this pregnancy thing is pretty trippy when you think about it. Medically, Lego is a parasite. Not only is this creature living in me (inside. me. alive.), but it's also living off me. Having lived in a first world country all my life, I really don't have experience with parasites. One would think that by now modern science would have cleaned up this whole process and done away with the parasite thing so that we could all gestate in bottles a la "Brave New World". That just seems so much more orderly. But no, even with the ability to transplant someone's face, modern science can't keep my little parasite alive. In the whole wide world, only I can do that. Trippy.

Thanks to this parasitic relationship, anything that happens to me also happens to Lego. I eat a bagel, so does Lego. I take the dog for a walk, so does Lego. I get in a fender bender, so does Lego. I watch a movie, I get kicked in the gut by Lego. This looks so much less profound when I write it down, but in my head it's pretty crazy to think about. I can't even poop without Lego! If I were to ingest something toxic or pick up some kind of blood born illness, Lego would get sick too. If I forget to take my prenatal vitamin Lego might be born missing a toe, or grow up stupid. If I go out on the town and get drunk, Lego will be born cross eyed and never get beyond the cognitive age of 14 and Dan and I will be stuck with a perpetual melodramatic teenager well into our twilight years.


For the record, I love being pregnant so far. I love my little parasite and I am in constant awe of this whole process. I even love my new little pot belly. I'm glad I get to grow my baby in me and not in a bottle. But I can't help feeling like I'm in a science fiction story sometimes, you know?


One last parting thought. How do you like the name Heidi Heather Heida for girl? I think I find it much more amusing than Dan does.

Name Game, 17 weeks 2 days

I have been asked a lot if we have a name picked out yet. The truth is, not even close!

It's not that we haven't discussed it much, because we sure have talked about names. Last week we went almost 2 hours straight throwing name ideas back and forth! The lack of decision probably comes from the lack of urgency. We both feel like we still have plenty of time, and neither of us is taking the task of naming very seriously at this point. For example, we agreed that the name Lego has grown on both of us, and that Legolas is a nice full name for a kid called Lego. Don't worry though, while Tolkien inspired names are fine for our dog we aren't actually nerdy enough name to name a child after a famous mythical elf. Not quite, anyway.

We have agreed on 3 main points of consideration for choosing a name.
1. Aesthetics. We want a name that we like the sound of and the way it looks written out. We also want it to flow nicely with our last names, since we still aren't sure what we will do about the kid's last name. Damn me for being so stubborn and keeping my name!

2. Popularity. We agree that we like less trendy names. We don't really want our kid to be one of 6 Ava's in her class. Even though we don't intend to make up a brand new name, we want our baby name to be on the unique side. So we have pretty much ruled out the top 100 most popular names that are easily found on naming websites. Not that we have anything against those names (I actually really like some of them), but we have to narrow the field somehow!

3. Meaning or backstory. We aren't putting as much emphasis on this one as of yet, but the meaning of a name may very well impact our final choice. I also included backstory because Dan has been suggesting classical greek names and I've been vetoing all the ones with the most tragic stories. No Antigone or Oedipus for us!

I'm not giving any clues yet, but we do have a few favorites in mind. Once we find out if we are going to be choosing a name for a boy or a girl I think we will be able to narrow the contenders down fairly easily. But until then feel free to offer your suggestions!

Appointment! 12/30/2011 16 weeks 3 days

Yesterday we had our first group appointment. Group appointments are offered as an option through the Nurse-Midwives at the Swedish clinic. Every month instead of a regular one-on-one visit, a group of women all due the same month meets together and shares their experiences and questions. Each visit includes one on one time with a midwife to check fetal progress and discuss anything we don't feel comfortable sharing with the group. The sessions also include a reunion meeting, where everyone brings their baby after the last one has been born.  We decided to join group appointments because neither of us have real experience with babies or pregnancy and are glad of any extra support and advice we can get. We also still don't know many people in Seattle very well, and even fewer who have any children so we were hoping we could make a new friend or two for ourselves and our kid. Only 4 of the 8 women in my group showed up to the first appointment because of the holiday, but so far so good!

None of the women in our group are obviously pregnant at this point. I wouldn't have thought any of the others were expecting if I met them under other circumstances, and I guess that I fit in that category as well. Just because my belly is the roundest it's ever been doesn't mean anyone else thinks there's a baby in there! No one I work with has mentioned anything so far, but that's not surprising because no one points out to a woman when she has been gaining weight. Which leads me to believe that I look chubby, not pregnant. Oh well, this stage will pass soon enough!

As for yesterday's stats, my uterus is measuring 17 centimeters. That's right on schedule; it should measure within a centimeter of the number of weeks along you are (16 weeks = 16cm plus or minus 1cm). We FINALLY got to hear the baby's heartbeat, which was a fantastic 150! Since they couldn't find the heartbeat at our first appointment and the ultrasound we had was silent, it was pretty exciting to hear the heartbeat. It came through loud and strong, and sounded wonderful.

Amusing little story for you. The other day I was showing Dan my belly. He didn't believe me and told me to stop pushing it out to look bigger. So to prove to him that I wasn't faking this time, I pushed my belly out and made it as big as I could. His eyes nearly popped out of his head.
"Wow, you're PREGNANT"!!
So it seems.

I've been feeling pretty good. The last month or so seems to have seen the very last of any morning sickness. These days, as long as I have some kind of snack on hand I'm great. I've found that if I go too long without eating anything I start feeling a bit sick again, so I've been carrying a bag of trail mix with me. It's sweet, salty, and satisfying AND it got the midwife stamp of approval last night so Dan can stop worrying about how much chocolate I'm eating. Turns out the caffeine content of chocolate is very minimal, and I'm past the point in pregnancy where caffeine does any damage it may or may not do. It's cute that Dan is so concerned though. He's been really worried about my diet and it's effects on the baby!

Something a couple of the other ladies brought up last night was having trouble sleeping. I feel lucky, since so far I haven't been having any problems in that area! I'm sure eventually I will be tossing and turning and pining for pregnancy pillows, but for now no complaints. I've been a good sleeper ever since I can remember. I rarely have trouble falling asleep and once I'm out, I'm down for the night. Bathroom breaks are unusual and when they do happen I always fall back to sleep with ease. Apparently, in many women pregnancy messes with that! So far the biggest change for me has been a bit of an uptick in midnight bathroom trips, but even those are not every night so far. So, I feel pretty lucky. I hope I didn't just jinx myself by writing about it!

Oh, almost forgot. We have the ultrasound scheduled and do plan on finding out the sex of the baby! Unfortunately for all you Wisconsin friends and family, it won't be until after I get back from my upcoming trip. It will be the same day as our next group appointment. They don't like to do those scans until 20 weeks along for the best chance of everything being big and developed enough to see adequately, and when I called they wouldn't make it for sooner. Oh, well. I guess we will all just have to be patient for another month!

Developments, 12/28/2011 16 weeks 2 days

I've started showing, a little. We have been taking (but not sharing so far, mostly out of laziness) belly photos about  bi-weekly since about 10 weeks. When we remember. There has been little change from photo to photo, until this last one. I feel so big! I know I'm still tiny compared to what I will be in few months though. I can technically still button my pants, but it's been uncomfortable to wear them buttoned for the last couple weeks so I haven't. I got a nifty little thing called a Be Band, which is basically a tube of spandex that goes around my middle and holds up my pants. I had my doubts, but so far it does the job pretty well! And it's way cheaper than buying new pants. I may spring for maternity pants eventually, but I'm thinking the closer I am to "full size" the longer they will fit me, and I'm too cheap to want to buy new pants that I will only wear for a couple months before having to buy more.

A couple weeks ago, I was laying on my back on the floor after doing some yoga with a DVD, and out of curiosity I was poking around my abdomen. I finally, certainly, felt it; a hard little lump above my pubic bone! I was super excited and I made Dan come and feel it too, even though he was nervous about hurting the baby. Since then, my uterus has gotten a lot bigger and easier to feel. No wonder I feel big! I'm thinking that even though new pants are still (hopefully) a while off, I may have to start buying some maternity shirts. That should be fun!

After the last few weeks of no real news or changes, I have another little bit of excitement to share. I think I'm starting to feel little Lego moving! It's only once in a while and not very strong, but the last few days I have been feeling little twinges in my tummy now and then, kind of like a tiny tapping or single muscle twitching (which I have never had in my abdomen before). It's so light I only notice it when I'm quiet and still, and even then I can't be entirely sure my mind isn't playing tricks on me. It's barely stronger than my own heartbeat, but it's not rhythmic. It's not like anything I've ever felt before, but from what I read most women who are pregnant for the first time don't feel movement until 18-20 weeks along! Lego must be an athletic little one! I'm thrilled that I'm feeling it this early, but I can't wait until it's big enough to feel from the outside, too!