Nesting, Registering, Melting, Worrying

Instead of a bullet point post, I’m going to do 4 mini-posts in one.  I know you are excited!

Nesting

The nesting has begun.  We cleaned out the “scrapping” room to make way for the baby furniture we bought.  I still have to clear out half of the closet but we are well on our way to having a real nursery.  We even installed some shelves in the closet.  The lady at work that had her baby girl 7 weeks early gave me a box full of clothes that her little one has outgrown.  I can’t believe that I have baby clothes in my house.  We brought the crib and dresser home and set them up in her room.  I fought tears a couple of times because I was just so overcome with joy and love and disbelief that this is happening for us.  BJ didn’t see the tears.  He went down to the neighbor’s house for a little while and I took that time to hang out in baby girl’s room and have a talk with her and God.  Of course the flood gates opened up at that point.  We had put her bedding in her crib to get an idea of if we liked it (we love it) and to see what color(s) we want to pull from the bedding in order to paint.  I kept looking at the empty crib in awe.  There’s finally going to be a baby in our house (hopefully) and it’s so emotionally overwhelming that sometimes I just cry.  I pulled myself together and by the time BJ got home I was fresh faced again.  He doesn’t like it when I get over emotional like that so I try to keep it all to myself until I’m alone.  It makes him uncomfortable and he knows there’s nothing he can do to prevent the tears so I try to protect him from feeling like he can’t protect me…confusing, yes, but it works.  We also started clearing out the basement.  We have a huge load of stuff to take to the thrift store this weekend.  Once we do that he will have room to work down there whenever he feels like working.  It will be nice to get started on the basement finally.  I really need my scrapping space back.  :-)

Registering
We started a baby registry when we picked up the crib and dresser.  We picked out the bigger ticket items that we’d both need to agree on and then added some smaller things here and there.  It was so fun to watch BJ with the scanner…he walked passed a teddy bear and scanned it and looked at me with a sly smile on his face and said, “she needs a big bear”.  There are some things that I still need to research to make sure we didn’t pick something that got bad reviews.  There are many, many small things that still need to be added.  BJ said that he was fine with whatever I picked as far as bottles and breast pump and stuff like that go.  I don’t blame him for opting out of another big visit to the store.  It’s so overwhelming to have to choose what we want.  So here’s my question…I plan on nursing but know that I still need bottles.  What kind of bottles did you moms out there love or hate?  I want to make sure that baby girl isn’t getting too much air and that she’s getting a bottle that is as close to the breast as possible.  Also, are there things that you really couldn’t live without in the first several months?  What did you get that you had no use for?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Melting

So you all heard about BJ feeling baby girl for the first time and now you get to hear about the Little Guy’s first experience.  We ordered pizza from Dom.ino’s on Sunday because we were so worn out from working in the basement we didn’t feel like cooking.  Anyway, I had 2 and half slices of pizza and the boys had pizza and wings and then we all crashed on the couch.  The LG always sits between us while we watch TV.  Baby girl started kicking and wiggling away in there.  I thought I’d take a chance and told the LG to give me his hand.  I lifted my shirt and gently placed his hand on my stomach.  I told him to be very still and concentrate.  Sure enough she kicked!  I asked him if he felt it and he said he did.  AWESOME!  Then she did it again.  Then BJ wanted a turn.  His hand is so much bigger and he knows what he’s expecting and he could feel her rolling around.  Then the LG wanted to try again.  He felt a very small kick and then couldn’t feel any more.  She was moving around a lot so she either liked the pizza or didn’t like the pizza.  Then the LG said to me, “it seems like she’s never going to get here.”  Awwwww…so sweet.  I assured him that she will be here before he knows it.

Worrying

I had my regular OB check up yesterday.  Now is the time she’ll start measuring me from the outside and I was very excited about that.  She showed me where my uterus was and how to feel  for it myself.  I thought that was very cool since I had been unable to detect it up until that point.  Baby girl’s heart beat was between 147 and 152 bpm, which was perfect.  When she measured me, however, I’m only measuring 21cm, which is basically 21 weeks.  I was 22 week and 5 days yesterday.  She said that at this stage it’s nothing to worry about as long as I’m within 2 week either way.  I scheduled my glucose test, my flu shot and my pertussis shot and was out the door.  Then the worry set in.  I did a little googling and decided that I wasn’t going to stress about it.  But of course that is easier said than done.  We had our anatomy scan less than 3 weeks ago and she measured exactly with her due date.  How is it possible that now I’m almost a full 2 weeks behind?  Then I started to worry about the amniotic fluid.  I know baby girl is fine, I feel her kicking and dancing and cartwheeling in there all the time…but what about the uterus?  Is it too small for her?  Will I go into pre-term labor and lose her?  Oh my gosh I’m tearing up just thinking about that.  Then the cashier in our cafeteria was amazed at how small I am for 5 months.  I almost started crying right there as she was giving me my change.  BJ has been trying to reassure me that everything is fine.  He even looked up pictures of 5 month pregnant women on his phone while at work to see how I compare with them.  He told me we have nothing to worry about right now.  We’ll see what happens at the next appointment before we start to worry about anything.  Yeah, easy for him to say.  So I will just have to pull out my mantra of “baby’s fine, baby’s fine, baby’s fine” to get me through the next 4 weeks.  As I’m typing my baby girl is doing flips and spins to let me know she’s ok.  It’s not her I’m worried about right now.  It’s the uterus in which she calls home.  Anyone else have this experience that can set my mind at ease, at least a little?

Sweet, Sweet Moment

BJ has been trying to feel baby girl kicking for over 2 weeks now.   I had my laptop on my lap the other day and she kicked really hard and I jumped up and moved over to his side of the couch and grabbed his hand to put it on my belly.  Well of course I freaked him out because he didn’t know what was happening until it was too late.  Wouldn’t you know she didn’t kick that hard again?  BJ said I scared her when I jumped up, which I probably did.  There have been quite a few times that she’s kicked but he just can’t feel it.  He has pretty tough hands and I think that has been part of the issue.  He barely feels it when the cat bites him while a bite that hard would almost draw blood from my hands.

Last night we were on the couch and I told him to come over to my side because she was kicking.  He laid his hand across my belly and we waited.  I told him to put some pressure with his fingertips because it’s easier to feel when you are also pushing from the outside.  She kicked and I said, “Did you feel that??” He said, “I felt something!”  And he looked at me and his eyes were all aglow.  Then she kicked again and he felt it again.  We were both laughing at this point.  She seemed to settle down after that so the show was over unfortunately.  Then he leaned over and kissed my belly and said “that’s a good girl, kicking so daddy can feel you.”  My heart melted.  I was so happy he was finally able to feel her move.  I know that as she grows it will get easier and easier (heck, we’ll SEE my belly move eventually) but it was so nice for him to get to feel these early kicks.  I should also mention that his tone of voice when talking to baby girl was the same tone he uses when he talks to our cats…so cute to hear him use that affectionate voice.

Of course, then he says “I hope we didn’t hurt her by pressing on her.”  What a way to make me worry.  Especially since she hasn’t given me any big kicks since then.  I’ve felt her rolling a little bit but she is definitely not as active as she has been lately.  He’s got me thinking we hurt her in some way.  I searched online and it appears that we did not do anything that anyone else hasn’t done and everything is ok with them so I’ll have to assume that she’s fine in there.  Baby’s fine, baby’s fine, baby’s fine.

No big plans for the weekend but I’m taking Monday off to spend with the husband as it’s his 40^th birthday.  We might go out to dinner with his sister Saturday night to celebrate.  We have the LG this weekend so we need to figure out something to do.  Our little town does not offer much.  I’m just looking forward to sleeping in and hanging out with my boys…while my little girl tags along oblivious to it all.  Hope you all have a great weekend!

A Little Clarification

Thank you all for the congrats and the well wishes on our PINK news.  We really are excited about this.  I just wanted to drop a quick line of clarification on my husband’s comment of “if it’s a girl, I’m sending it back.”  I don’t want my husband’s remark to brand him as an ass or to offend anyone.  It was completely in jest and our neighbors have known us for almost 3 years and they are familiar with his sense of humor and his “joking” tone, something that doesn’t convey in print, obviously.  I think most of you got it but it seems that he may have offended some and I definitely don’t want that to be the case so here’s the story behind that comment.

 

I didn’t type out the whole conversation in which that statement came from and maybe I should have.  We were talking to our neighbors (as they had just found out about the pregnancy) and they were asking all the usual questions about how I’m feeling, what the Little Guy thinks, what do we want, had we discussed names…all that stuff.  When we were talking about these things the subject of how girls and boys are different came up.  When we talked about how as girls grow up they get interested in boys and then boys will be coming around wanting to date our potential daughter.  BJ is a very protective man toward the important women in his life so this part of the conversation scared him a little.  The thought of having to keep boys “away” from his little girl was not something he was looking forward to.  So he said, “I can’t have that…I don’t want any boy near my daughter so why don’t we just tell the baby that if It’s a girl I’m sending it back?”  He meant no offense to anyone and we all got a pretty good laugh about it because we know how protective he’ll be of his daughter.

 

It didn’t take long for us to start calling her Baby Girl after our u/s last week.   It also did not take long for him to get over his “aw shucks” moment that he experienced when it was announced he’s having a girl.  Deep down we both knew it would be a girl.  Less than 48 hours after we found out he was telling me that she’s going to be a Daddy’s girl.  Well, duh.   I knew that right away but it was nice to have it come from him.  As we were walking through the baby store (after we bought her crib!!) we were oohing and ahhing over the girl clothes and he agreed that girls have great clothes and he even started picking things out that he’d like for her to wear.  We didn’t buy anything but it was fun nonetheless.

 

Above all, my husband wants a healthy child.  Don’t we all?  And before anyone starts in on what he will be like if she’s not healthy…it’s not about that.  His first born was diagnosed with a major heart defect 2 days after he was born.  No one knows how it was missed at the anatomy scan but it was.  This diagnosis stressed him and the LG’s mother out of their minds.  They never knew if he would stop breathing or if his heart would stop beating.  He had to have open heart surgery at 6 weeks and then again when he was 4.  Along with a few other more minor procedures along the way.  It’s been a scary ride.  What should have been the happiest time of their lives with their new baby boy went down a very dark and terrifying road right from the beginning.  He’s scared of that happening again.  So when I say that he just wants a healthy child what I’m saying is that he just wants to be able to enjoy her without the stress of a health problem.  Like I said, don’t we all?  He knows all too well what it’s like to have an unhealthy baby and he just wants to be spared that pain this time around.  I hope that for us both.  We will love and adore and spoil any child that we have.

Halfway, Enough Already, Anatomy Scan

Is it just me or is this pregnancy flying by?  I am already halfway (over halfway, really) to my due date.  Today marks 20w6d.  It’s amazing to me.  It seems like only last week I was coming out of my bathroom on my birthday holding a (very) positive pee stick and saying “good morning, daddy” to my husband.  I am relishing every single day of this pregnancy.  Even now, as the evening heartburn is getting worse, I’m just so happy to be carrying this child.  Every movement (and there are LOTS now!) and every kick (there have been some doozies) just makes me smile and makes my heart swell with love.  I never knew just how happy being pregnant would make me.  It’s one of those things that you build up in your mind and sometimes it just doesn’t live up to the hype.  Not this.  This has far surpassed all the hype I have built up over the years.  I know that there are complications that could still arise but for the time being everything is better than I ever imagined.  I could not have asked for a more picture perfect pregnancy so far.  Even the queasies, the migraines, the heartburn, the fatigue and the new tendonitis/carpal tunnel have not put a damper on this experience for me.  I know of so many women that have had terrible pregnancies with complication after complication and I feared that it would be like for me (like I said, I’m only halfway so anything can still happen).  I feared that since this was going to be my only pregnancy and getting here was such a fight that I would have to suffer through 9 months of hell.  So far (fingers crossed) it has been just the opposite.  I’m more than thankful and grateful for this opportunity and I hope the good fortune keeps up.

Now for the griping:

Ever since my husband made the funny comment of “if it’s a girl I’m going to send it back” to our neighbors, they have done nothing but pick on him about it.  Every time they see us it’s “oh, how’s the baby girl doing?”  And “when do you find out that it’s a girl?”  And “see what you have to look forward to when your baby girl is born”.  They are not nice about it.  Their tone and their facial expressions are very snide and sarcastic.  The way they say these things makes it seem like having a girl is the end of the world for my husband.   It’s like they can’t wait to see my husband disappointed with his child before it’s even born.  And the kicker is…they have 2 girls!  It’s not my fault that your 18 month old girl cries and fusses and won’t let you eat at a restaurant without screaming her head off.  It’s not my fault that you told my husband weeks ago that if you knew she would act that way you wouldn’t have had her.  Yes, my husband wants a boy.  HE’S a boy and he already has a boy so he knows what to do with a boy.  He’s not into pink and dresses and dolls.  However, my husband’s first concern is that we have a healthy child and that our dream comes true to parent a child together.  The day before our anatomy scan they were on their porch and we had been outside.  They called over to us with a “so what time tomorrow do you find out it’s a girl?”  We tell them and we walk over to talk to them.  The husband said something else to my husband and I about lost it.  BJ started talking to the wife and I looked dead at the husband and said, (in a not nice voice with a not nice look on my face) “you know, he’s still going to love it if it’s a girl.”  And he smiled strangely and said, “I know.”  And then I continued with “and he’s NOT going to be disappointed if it’s a girl.”  And he said, “he’s not?”  I said, “no” and I looked away.  I couldn’t look at him in the face anymore for fear of punching him in it.  Just then another neighbor was driving by and she stopped briefly to talk to me so I was able to remove myself from the volatile situation that was brewing.  I like these people and I think they are good people but for the love of God, stop trying to diminish my child’s life.  Later BJ told me that the husband told him that he made me mad.  BJ told him that I was tired of getting such a hard time about the possibility of it being a girl (and to set the record straight, it’s not about it being a girl it’s about THEM hounding us about how awful it would be to have a girl).  Then BJ told me that I needed to chill because they were just kidding around.  I said, “I will not chill about this.  Having a girl is not bad.  They are making me feel like you will be disappointed in your child and no mother EVER wants to feel like the father of her baby is upset because of the gender which is completely out of our control.”  He sort of understood where I was coming from when I explained it that way.  I probably am over reacting but in their kidding of my husband they were making me feel like crap.  I was almost in tears a couple of times because of things they said that were negative about girls.  Maybe it was done just to get a rise out of BJ but it really hurt MY feeling to hear it all.  Anyway, have any of you mamas out there ever encountered something like that?

Now for the fun stuff:

Our anatomy scan was Friday morning.  We drove up separately because we each had to work afterward.  I was nervous, of course.  Mainly for the health of our baby.  I had felt it move here and there so I knew it was alive but that’s all I knew at this point.  I hopped up on the table and the wand was on my stomach and in no time we heard the beating heart.  It was 149bpm which concerned me because a week ago it had been 157.  The tech said it was fine.  There on the screen was a HUGE (compared to 12 weeks) baby’s head.  I fell in love all over again.  Measurements were taken and everything looked good.  We got a really good picture of the feet side by side and some good profile pictures, too.  And then it was switched over to 4D and oh my gosh…the baby was beautiful.  The hands were by its face and it looked like it was posing for the picture.  The tech had a hard time getting the arm and hand measurements because the baby wouldn’t move its hands away from its face.  Then we saw the baby holding its own hand…I melted again.  Then came the gender reveal.  Now let me say this; I’ve always thought it was going to be a girl.  Anyone that has ventured a guess has guessed a girl.  I’ve told BJ numerous times that he better be prepared to hear that it’s a girl.  When the money shot came up on the screen I didn’t even need the tech to tell me because I saw the 3 white lines myself.  We are having a baby girl.  I couldn’t stop smiling.  The tech handed us the pictures and went to get the doctor.  I started crying as I looked at the pictures.  I said to BJ, “I hope I’m a better mom to my girl than my mom was to her girls.”  And he said, “Uh, you are not dancing on a pole, doing drugs and getting involved with men that treat you like crap.”  And I said (through happy tears), “I meant emotionally”.  And he said, “you are way better off emotionally than you mother.”  I couldn’t stop crying.  I am going to write a whole post on my thoughts about having a girl but for right now I just have to say how excited I am.  The doctor came in and took a look and in those few short minutes baby girl decided to show us that she wants to be a gymnast.  Up on the screen was a picture of her legs bent all the way forward until her toes were tickling her forehead!  We all busted out laughing.  The doctor was trying to coax her into putting her toes in her mouth.  It was hysterical.  My baby girl is quite the character already.  As we looked at the 4D picture again I told BJ that she has his mouth.  He doesn’t see it but he did say that the way she was posing means that she’s already prissy.  We laughed about that, too.  It was a great appointment that ended with me feeling very emotionally overwhelmed but extremely happy and grateful.  She’s healthy (as far as anyone can tell) and she’s measuring exactly with our due date and she’s funny and she’s the light of my life.  Now if we could only find a name for her.

Scary Situation

This actually happened a couple of weeks ago but I am just now getting around to writing about it.  Everything turned out fine in the end but it was a very stressful few hours.

I took a couple of days off work to spend with the Little Guy before he went back to school and because we have a cut off of Labor Day for taking any more time off due to the busy election cycle.  I took off a Thursday and a Friday.  We decided to go bowling Friday and the LG asked one of his friends to go with us.  Before we left, I had the LG scoop the cat litter and throw the bag in the trashcan out in the garage.

When he went out there the door was open for maybe 15 to 20 seconds and we both smelled a terrible odor.  It smelled like really rotten food.  I wondered what the heck we had in the trashcan that could smell so bad.  I decided to open the main garage door and pull my car out and have the LG get in my car from the outside to avoid either of us getting ill.  I was still very sensitive to odors at that time.  I held my breath and pushed the button and slammed the house door shut and out the front door we went.

After bowling we were on our way to take the friend home and I called BJ.  I told him that he had to get the trash out of the garage before I got home because it smelled like something died in there.  Neither of us could figure out what we had thrown away to cause such a stench.  I went inside the friend’s house to talk to the mom for a few minutes (ended up being like 25) and left my phone in the car.  When I got back in I was joking with the LG about how many missed calls I might have.  BJ had tried to call me 5 times!  I knew something was up so I called him back right away.  As it turns out, the trash is not what was stinking up the garage.  BJ had left a 4-wheeler battery on the charger in the garage and it over charged and started leaking!  The whole house smelled of sulfuric acid!  He opened all the windows and turned on all the ceiling fans.  The first thing he did was to open both garage doors and get that battery out of there.  He said that I should stay out a little longer so we hit the grocery store for a few things.  I was really worried about my cats, too.  He said they seemed fine other than being freaked out at him running all over the house and throwing windows open.  When I got home we quickly put the groceries away (I had my shirt over my nose and mouth) and headed out for dinner.  He posted a question about the safety of the house and how to get that horrible odor out of our house on FB.  Everyone told him that it was very dangerous to breathe the fumes and to call poison control.  Of course, the cats were still in the house.  I was panicked.  I knew I was safe and that the baby was safe because we weren’t home most of the day (thank goodness!) but the cats were there ALL DAY breathing that horrible stuff.

BJ talked to the poison control lady and she said that since the battery was out in the garage that it was most likely just the bad smell that was in the house and not the gasses themselves.  She said that opening everything up was the right thing to do except we should have turned off the AC.  The AC unit naturally recycles the air through the house so it would keep the scent around longer.  Great…it’s 90 something degrees outside and we have to go home and turn our AC off.  She put our fears to rest about the safety of being in the house so we headed home.  The house still smelled but not nearly as bad and we kept the windows open a while longer and turned the AC off.  It was hot, but at least we knew we were doing the right thing.  We went for a walk and then hung out at the neighbor’s for a little while.  And the cats were no worse for wear, thank goodness.   As it got closer to bedtime we turned the AC back on so that we could get some sleep and we shut the windows.  Being in the house, we were able to get used to the smell somewhat so that was good.  By the next morning the odor was pretty much out of the house.  We left the garage doors open all night and put an oscillating fan in there to blow out any remaining fumes.

We kept talking about how the LG and I were lucky to be out of the house before we were overcome with fumes and how it worked out that we hung out at the bowling alley longer than anticipated and that the friend’s mom is a talker because all of that allowed BJ to get home before us and start the clean-up process.  We definitely learned a valuable lesson here.  Do not charge batteries in your garage unless you plan on staying with them until they are charged.  It was a very hectic several hours to say the least but we all came out fine so that’s the best part.