forgetfulness...

ok. can i blame my inadequacy on the pregnancy? i'm forgetting everything. in the past week, i forgot to go to orchestra practice until hours later, i forgot sam's piano lesson (until he walked up to my front door), and...at the moment, i forget what else i forgot....but i know there were at least 3 things. oh yeah! i forgot to make dessert for sunday until sunday at church when someone reminded me (normally i would have done this on saturday)...and i forgot that i was supposed to babysit blake last tuesday (like i have for about the past 8 weeks in a row) until tamara texted me on her way saying she was almost here....i was not showered and the house was a wreck but luckily a 21 month old doesn't care. :) anyways, it has been interesting. i see i'm going to have to check my planner several times a day from now on so i don't forget things so often....

i'm having a day where i am just feeling yucky. i'll feel pretty good then i get hungry and no matter what i choose to eat, i regret it a few minutes later. like i just drank some orange juice. and now i feel like throwing up. i thought that most of this "all-day sickness" was behind me by now...but maybe not! so i was planning to make taco salad for supper. and now i'm just not feeling that so much...what do i do???

anyways, today marks week 13. yay! only 27 more weeks until our baby is with us. well, i say that as if it will be born RIGHT on it's due date. yeah right. only God knows. anyways, i can tell that david is getting more and more excited about it. i'm just not sure. it's like i'm still trying not to get too excited in case there's something wrong. is that weird?

a friend from church scolded me the other night for moving 2 chairs from one room to another for FPU. she said that i should make someone else do it for me since i'm pregnant. it kind of upset me. the chairs weren't even heavy! and i have done a lot more than that since i've been pregnant (like helping move the washer once, carrying half of a sheet of plywood, carrying heavy groceries, etc.). so now i'm being kinda paranoid and worrying that i'm doing too much. i figured that if i was doing too much, though, i would feel like i was in pain...hhh...am i being a terrible mother already???

Pregnancy Photos

Ok. Here are 2 pics I've been promising. I won't procrastinate any longer... The one where I was wearing the orange shirt was taken at 6 1/2 weeks (Dec 6th)...I wish I was skinnier before getting pregnant, but oh well, what can I do now? And the one with the blue shirt (where my hair looks bad cuz I haven't showered and it's not as flattering of an angle since I took it myself...) was taken today, at 12 weeks. I don't think that you can see that big of a change in my belly. Maybe the shorts are slightly tighter. And I think my chest looks bigger. Because, well, it is. And now that I look at these pics side by side, maybe my face is fatter too. :(

But anyways, here they are. Enjoy!

is it a boy or girl?

i read that too that if your nose changes while pregnant that is a sign you're having a boy. but dave noticed it changing before i even told him about that, so maybe it's not all wishful thinking. it's not that we wouldn't want to have a girl. i've just always thought our first baby would be a boy. i will try to get dave to take a pic of me tonight when he gets home from work...or maybe i'll figure out a way to take one of myself. haha!

and, no, we will probably not get an ultrasound at all (unless i go to like 42 weeks to make sure baby is ok). dave really never wanted to find out the sex of our children until they were born. i kinda did, but since i don't have maternity insurance, we'd have to pay cash for the ultrasound so we are just going to wait since the midwife said it's not necessary.

and i think the guessing the sex is kind of fun. i personally think that the baby is a boy. dave does too. so does his dad. and cassandra, who i babysit for. and i think emily does. right, emily? but based on how many nieces we have and how few nephews we have in dave's family, and some other reasons that i won't explain since they'd be TMI about the conception, odds are we will have a girl. ...in fact, i would feel bad if when we have it, it's a girl, and i've been thinking of her as a boy this whole time. but it's hard not to...my reasoning for thinking it is a boy is based on that time that God showed me our boy name in the Bible in the middle of the night and on what i'm craving (not liking sweets like normal but a bunch of salty and greasy stuff, etc.) and on my nose changing....so i don't know if those are good reasons or not. i guess only God knows and for now, I'll just be content with that.

but if anyone wants to comment and let me know what they think it is....that might be kind of fun. we'll see how many votes we get for boy and how many for girl...and then in july, we'll find out who won!

and yeah, erica, thanks for the warning about the last trimester. :) sounds like fun!

update

since erica asked and maybe others are wondering, we will probably hear the heartbeat at the next visit, which was scheduled for feb 1st. however, we now have to reschedule that since dave found out he has a meeting at the same time at church. so...it will either be the monday before or the monday after feb 1st, most likely, when we hear the heartbeat. i'm getting very, very excited about it. i think that it will help to make this whole thing more real to both of us.

tomorrow i will be 12 weeks pregnant and in the 2nd trimester. it is really hard to believe we're reaching that milestone already. wow. if the 2nd and 3rd trimesters go as quickly (which i'm sure they will) then it will really not be that long until our little baby is with us. in some ways that really scares me, and in other ways i'm really excited to meet him/her. after wanting to have a baby for so long and almost giving up hope at various times, it's unreal to me how quickly this time of being pregnant is going.

i will probably post a picture soon of my belly (not bare) just so we can compare it later. i've only gained about 4 lbs (as of the last time i weighed myself) but all my weight is re-distributing to my waist so i have a nice muffin top. and there's some added weight in my chest, too. i can still wear most of my clothes, which is nice. but i suppose it's only a matter of time until i can't do that. dave & i don't think that my face is getting that fat yet, which is nice. but he said that my nose looks different. what's up with that?

after getting back the results from the blood test, the midwife suspects that i may have been dehydrated at the time and that i need to drink a lot more than i have been. so today i've been drinking nonstop since i got the message from her. i am praying that there is nothing wrong with the baby because of this.

met with the midwife for the first time last night. i really wanted to meet with her about a month ago but i was waiting for a time when dave could go along since he wanted to be there. then, it turned out that he had to work late and attend his first deacon's mtg. so he didn't get to go after all.  i was super emotional about this and cried all the way to the appt. and called and harrassed david for being unsupportive, which was not nice, considering he already felt really bad about the whole situation. that was lovely. i finally got it together right when i arrived.

anyways, everything went really well and i feel confident now that this is the route that i want to go. i was a little apprehensive going into yesterday because i felt like maybe i should just forget this midwife idea and go to my regular doctor.  i already knew this going into last night, but going this route, i'm able to save a lot of money. one way i found out last night is that they can forego a bunch of tests that would most likely be mandatory at the doctor and are optional based on my opinion here. tests for all kinds of STDs, etc. that amounts to over $1000 savings. since i know we don't have these STDs (praise God!) then we don't have to get the tests.

all this money savings is very important because i don't have maternity benefits. however, i don't want anyone to misconstue this and think that i'm not giving my unborn child "good" care based solely on saving money. i would probably have gone to the midwife whether i had insurance or not. i just feel that it's a good choice for us based on various reasons which i will not go into since it would take a lot of time and many people probably wouldn't agree with me.... the money savings is just an added benefit.

i've also been worrying about some "pains" (i'm not sure if this can really be classified as pain...maybe discomforts would be a better word) that i've had and some other strange symptoms i had last weekend while in ohio, but was assured that it's probably all normal.

we could not hear the heartbeat last night, but she said she's only ever heard it in 2 women at this stage of their pregnancies, so i should not worry. probably when we go back in february we will be able to hear it. dave's planning to go then, so that will be good, we will both get to hear it together.

i also had a blood and urine test last night and she said that i have to have my urine checked every time that i go to be sure i don't have a bladder infection without symptoms, since i had some infections as a child and may be predisposed for that...since that can cause preterm labor.

she also confirmed what i already thought...that the due date is july 28th. she said i could get an ultrasound from a radiologist that she recommends in carmel to know the date more exactly but that if i'm ok with going with my own suspicions about the date of conception then she is too and i don't have to have the ultrasound. there's only one other time in the pregnancy that she might recommend an ultrasound...if i go all the way to 42 weeks to make sure the baby is not in distress and decide if we will continue to wait or if i would have to be induced. so....hopefully we will not get to that point.

in conversation i also found out that the midwife and her husband and children used to go to our church. they went to costa rica once and were/are friends with a lot of people that we know from church. i thought that was a really neat connection. they now go to church in lebanon with a couple people i used to work with at GRW. :)