I'll Never See This Size Again...

Well, I made halfway through this pregnancy and my smallest pair of pre-pregnancy pants still fit. Well, they don't button, but I'm wearing them today! I've got a hair tie that loops around the button, through the button hole, and back over the button.  Surprisingly comfortable and easy to hide under a long shirt.

In a way, I feel like I deserve to still fit in my favorite bottoms since my "top" has grown out of control in these last 20 weeks.  Seriously out of control. And after spending $90 on assorted bras, I no longer have a single one that fits right. Conveniently, nobody in town stocks bras in my size either. One starts to feel like a true freak of nature when even Walmart doesn't carry the right size. They have bras big enough to haul water for an expedition across the Gobi Desert but those big old bras also have a band size big enough to go around the moon or several camels, perhaps.

I have a few pairs of maternity jeans that I like but they don't stay up very well. And it's not like they have belt loops. Every few minutes I gave a saggy crotch and they're hard to pull up with the giant elastic belly band.

Nothing makes me feel sexy like having a big old belly and a saggy crotch!

All complaints aside, I am glad nobody expects to see me in a muumuu. How do ladies pee wearing those things anyways?!

It Takes a Village...

Dear Baby Girl,

I'm writing to let you know that you aren't born yet, but you have a whole village of friends, family, and loved ones who are making it possible for you to have an awesome life in and out of the womb. What a lucky baby you are, and what lucky parents we are going to be.

I hope, as your parents, we raise you to BE grateful and SHOW your appreciation for all of these wonderful people who are quietly working behind the scenes to give us everything we need to help you suceed.  I hope, as your parents, that this village of people knows just how much we appreciate everything they do.

Loved ones hundreds of miles away are planning your baby shower, sewing you your first quilt, picking out just the perfect baby book for you, and diligently window shopping for your layette. Friends are lending us baby books, fetal dopplers, and priceless advice so we can make good choices for you until you're big enough to start choosing with us.

Your grandparents already think you're beautiful, even if your ultrasounds show you look like an alien. (Don't worry, your dear mother and Uncle Taylor were "aliens" for the first several months of their lives too, but in a different sense. Ask Grandma Diana if you don't believe me.)

Your dad has traded in his 'Outdoor' magazine for a baby names book and makes me tea and food at strange hours with no complaints.

You are a lucky, lucky baby!  We can't wait to meet you in the spring. (Please, don't make your grand appearance any sooner, despite what you might hear me say in a moment of exhaustion!)

Love,
Mom

A heartfelt thanks to everyone, everywhere, for everything.  I feel like I can't thank everyone enough and that I'm constantly forgetting to thank specific people for specific things. I'd like to blame the baby-brain, but I'm really just so excited that I'm twitterpated. Forgive me!

20 Week Ultrasound...and Gender Reveal!

Today we had our 20 week appointment, and luckily Don got to come along. We hit up the Ultrasound Tech first and got to see the baby for the second time. The first time, it looked like this:

The banana on the left is the baby and the circle on the right is the yolk sac.

This time, it actually looked like a BABY!!  A very alien baby, but better than the pseudo-fruit-scorpion of previous times. Look at that little alien face! At 20 weeks, babies don't have much fat on them so their bones show up well....those giant alien eyes are actually just the brow bone and the cheek bones showing up brightly. In between them is the nose/sinuses. The head is tilted to the left and the eyes and nose are below the "ARM" text, if you're completely confused by the ultrasound.

Baby is laying on its side, facing the screen. The face is on the left, baby's left arm is in the middle, and a little leg is showing at far right.

IT'S A GIRL!

Looking upwards towards the baby's bum and bottom of her thighs. The poor kid is already having her privacy invaded on the good old internet. Hahaha.

What a good lookin' lower skeleton, right?? The lower back and pelvis are on the left and the legs point to the right.

At the beginning of the scan, she was curled up so tight that we weren't sure if the baby was a he or a she. And then, she started running laps or moonwalking like crazy.

Don knew it was a girl all along. I never really had a feeling either way, and in a way, it's strange to know it's a little "she."  It does make picking out names easier though.

So everything looks great with baby from her measurements to the fluid around her and her movements. Everything looks pretty good for me too, except for the fact that I haven't gained a single pound yet. Doc says I need to do that if I want ample breastmilk supply, so literally as I sit here and type, I'm chowing down on ice cream with chocolate, carmel, and waffle cone chunks. MMMM. Also, fried chicken for dinner.

Gratitude 2012 (Week 3)

21 November 2012: Today I'm overjoyed to have a fetal doppler, lent to me by a sweet friend. I had horrible dreams last night about losing the baby and there was nothing more comforting than to walk to the kitchen and find that little galloping heartbeat.

20 November 2012: Loving my dishwasher today. After almost five years without one, I can say I want to cry with joy every time I turn mine on. Even if it only cleans half the dishes because it's old and cheap.

19 November 2012: COWS! Can't wait to have that beautiful angus roast for thanksgiving dinner.

18 November 2012: Coffee! And all of those studies out there that have verified it is safe for me to have caffeine during pregnancy (under 200 mg per day.) And husbands who bring me coffee in bed.

17 November 2012: Down, as in what we rip from birds. So light. So warm. So fluffy. So good at hiding my pregnancy fat.

16 November 2012: This fine day, I'm eternally grateful for spray bottles! They are my best tool for shutting up a barking dog (and occasionally, startling a toddler out of a tantrum, hahahaha) and they keep me from overwatering my cacti. 

15 November 2012: Today I'm grateful for people who care about the things they expose their bodies to as much as I do. I do my best to not drive myself crazy over it, and I generally refuse to pay double for something organic if it's not on the dirty dozen list, but I do care. I am grateful for the internet which makes it extremely easy to do research on a company or product or ingredient and to find healthier substitutes.  I urge everyone to read labels and think carefully. Febreeze? Seems too good to be true? Well, it sort of is. It's horrible for you, your kids, and your pets. Even nail polish is full of toxins that shouldn't be a problem unless you are a nail-biter or using it on your kids. I'm so, so glad for the latest "purity" fad, and I'm looking forward to checking out the new -Ology line at Walgreens, in the nerdiest way possible.

Eyeball Update, Round 2

Well, I got a phone call on Wednesday that I wasn't expecting...

The surgical center where my eye surgery was to be performed has denied me as a patient because I'm pregnant and have adverse reactions to anesthesia.

Surgery is postponed until 9 January 2013...NEXT YEAR?!   :(

I'm definitely sad that we have to wait even longer. However, it is really nice to not have to think about it over the holidays! I really didn't want the "cancer-not-cancer" diagnosis hanging over my Christmas, so in a way, this is a big reprieve.

Thank you all for your well-wishes and prayers. Y'all can bump me and my eyeball farther down your list until after the New Year.

Eyeball Update

Ever since I was a wee human, I've had a "freckle" on my right eye. We think it showed up as "reactionary pigment" after I was whacked in the face with a giant pine tree on the playground at Sandstone Elementary. (If you went there, you know what I'm talking about...we all got hit at least once, I believe.)


Well, this freckle has never bothered me. I can't feel it in any way, and it doesn't affect my vision. In fact, every once in awhile, someone will say, "You have a spot on your eye!" And I have to think long and hard to figure out what they're talking about.

It wasn't until high school that I even gave any thought to it thanks to the Postal Service song:

"""And I / Am thinking it's a sign / That the freckles in our eyes are mirror images / And when we kiss, they're perfectly aligned."""

Random the Postal Service band poster.

It actually turns out the unfreckled boy I was choosing to kiss was a toad that was never going to be a prince, but that's a whole different blog! Ha ha!

Every year, I go to the eye doctor like a good little patient, and they measure it, write down the measurement, and send me home with stronger contacts because I get a little blinder each time.

Except this year. In June, my lovely eye doctor (Dr. Melissa Rice in Silverdale...I recommend her!) let me know that the freckle was growing. My first thought was, "Nope."  Seriously this thing has been on my eye for almost 20 years with no change. Obviously she measured incorrectly. Actually, the freckle had doubled in size and added some little pigmented arms to boot. She referred me to Dr. Cole at Cole Aesthetics for a biopsy.

Now, Dr. Cole mostly specializes in aesthetic procedures (hence the name....)  so it was a little weird to be there for an eye freckle. And it was even weirder when he had my eye flapped open (I could literally see a chunk of my eye held over my face in a pair of rounded tweezers!!!) and hear him say, "Uh oh. Hmmmmmmmmmm. This doesn't look like anything I can do anything with. Let's schedule her with blah, blah, blah." I was laying there just thinking, "OK, please put my eye down."

As soon as he had reassembled my eye, they let me know that none of the freckle was in the top clear layer of the eye known as the conjunctiva. The conjunctiva is a very soft, fast healing layer so it's apparently ok to just make big flaps in it and then send me home without a super cool eye patch.  So the freckle was in the tough white part of the eye known as the sclera also known as the last layer of your eye before we puncture the eye ball and you DIE. Ok, not really. But if they do puncture the sclera, you don't just get a patch and a ride home. So naturally, Dr. Cole was hesitant to start digging around in there and I left with a referral.

Here's a gross picture of the cross-section of the eye.

Yesterday was the day I got to see Dr. Kremer who is a cornea specialist and works at an office that doesn't specialize in lasers and chin-lifts which was slightly more reassuring.  Dr. Kremer also has done thousands of eyeball surgeries and has a very loud voice so he must be qualified, right?

Dr. Kremer's office people shined about fifteenthousandbillion lights and thingies into my eye and decided it needed to come out. (They said it that way too! I was like, "The ENTIRE EYEBALL?!?!" And they laughed and said, "No, just the freckle.")  Boooo. I was really hoping to hear them say, "Nope, it's nothing. Just a way for us to tell you apart from your clone. Go home and eat lots of ice cream."

So we immediately segued into my pre operative appointment, and everyone made me feel ok about the whole thing (even though I was just faking and was really sort of falling apart in my head) and then they sent me on my way with a surgery date.

I am opting to do the surgery with no anesthesia for the safety of the baby and myself since past surgeries have proven that I am not a champ at all when it comes to anesthesia. They'll basically stick my head in a big foam block to immobilize it, and then I just lay there and try to not run away as fast as I can. They'll numb the surface of the eye, cut back the conjunctiva, and dissect out as much of the freckle as they can without puncturing the eye. Chances are they won't be able to remove it all, just enough for a biopsy. Then they'll put the conjunctiva flap back in place and finally give me a cool eye patch. A few days of recovery, and all is well.

It'll take 7-14 days to hear back from the pathology lab to know if the freckle is benign or cancerous. If it is benign, we start all over again with the "measure yearly" business. If it is cancer, we start eye drops to kill it and/or schedule a second, more invasive surgery to remove it all. 

Risks for the surgery are the chance of spreading the cancer, if it is cancer or puncturing the eye. A punctured eye will just need an additional surgery to repair the tear or hole using stitches or a graft.

So how am I actually handling all this? I definitely wish I didn't have to deal with this while pregnant, but many pregnant women deal with much more dire circumstances. I have my husband not-deployed to be able to help, three warm dogs to snuggle with, audio books to prevent boredom, and a mom on call to fly out if something really drastic should occur. This is outpatient surgery with little pain and very short recovery time. All will be alright, even if it does turn out to be cancer. Not many people can really say that. I am blessed, 99.9% healthy, and very, very excited to be a mom in 4-5 months.

Please feel free to pray for quick recovery and pray that I look good in an eye patch. I'll keep everyone updated on how good I look, of course.

Surgery is scheduled for the morning of the 26th of this month.

Here's a blurry picture of the nefarious freckle....it's right on the edge of my iris.

Nursery Ideas!

Well, our baby isn't even half done cooking and we've put a ton of thought and work into the nursery. First we got it all set up in the room at the end of the hall because it was closest to the spare bathroom. After a month of musing on the floorplan (which I HATED), I finally decided we needed to switch it to the room closer to the stairs. It sounded simple in theory but it turns out both rooms were packed with junk so it took an entire evening of Don's muscle. He did it willingly but he did mutter a few times about how much junk I have, heehee.

And now the floor plan is perfect. The crib is away from the window and anything else that baby might reach for later in life. The changing table is unobstructed and relatively close to the crib. The bookshelf is by the glider, and the spare bed has enough room around it to be usable. Phew! Oh, and there's an itty bitty amount of floor space for changing clothes/playing/dogs to lay down and be in the way.

So what's next? Well, we have all the important parts and pieces so really we could probably call it quits. Buuuuttt, I really won't be satisfied with such a sterile looking room for baby, and it's a little room so it won't take much for it to be made-up. So what is next is my favorite part: design and decorating!

We both decided that we want the room to be very gender neutral for a few reasons: the first is because this house is destined to be a rental so gender neutral will mean we won't turn away potential renters. The second reason is because we might end up in this house longer than planned and need to use the room for more than one baby. Even if we move before baby #2, we can take all the parts and pieces with and still have a gender neutral room. See how clever that is? :)

We also both decided that we didn't want to do anything to "baby" or with too much of a "theme." I always look at rooms full of monkeys and bananas or pink daisies and butterflies and think, "That's really cute! And the kid will agree for the next 2-3 years. And then what?!" We definitely want the room to be fun, quirky, personal, but also calming and simple. It's actually a relatively hard balance to get just right.

Here's what we've come up with so far! (By the way, all images are from Pinterest and should link directly back to their original pins.)

All of our furniture is white except the glider and bookcase. I'm planning on painting the bookcase white to match with a fun pop of color on the back. The glider will stay the dark wood that it is because it's beautiful, mostly covered by cushions, and a complete pain to try and paint.

The walls are going to get beadboard wainscoting about halfway up. The wainscoting and trim will all be painted an off-white. The doors and windows will also get beefed-up trim in the same color.

Above the wainscoting, the walls will be a green of some sort. We're trying to decide what shade of green and probably won't until we find out boy or girl. For a girl, a softer sage is in order and a boy will probably get something a big darker and more saturated like a forest green.

This is the green I'd use for a girl.

And this is the green we'd use for a boy. The wainscoting here is also similar to what we want to do, but the white paint is a little bright in this picture for our tastes.

I also like this green for a boy or girl.

As for fabrics, we both wanted a subdued, but fun print. Our first choice was a special order birch tree fabric that came in almond and white or gray and white but it's waaaaay out of our price range! (And probably a bit serious for a baby's room.)  Here it is in almond and white:

Pretty!! Pretty expensive...

So what we've settled on is a different birch fabric which I also ADORE and think will make for a much better baby's room when we build around it.

The winning fabric!

Isn't it adorable?! I think it'll mesh well with the green and white walls. And look at that handsome woodpecker. If it's a boy, I'll incorporate a little orange, for sure.

Here's what I think I'd like to use for the fitted crib sheet:

I think I'll find something in the soft blue to make the crib skirt out of. I also want to make some felt animals to set around the nursery.....

Aren't they huggable?!

Finally I'm going to make a pennant or two to string across the corner over the crib out of fabric scraps along the lines of this guy:

It's not safe, in my paranoid mind, to have anything solid above the crib that could fall down, but I think the pennants should be cute and soft, right?

Lastly we'll hang some photos in spray painted frames and leave some empty shadowboxes to be filled at a later date by my creative friends. I'm loving the ones that have the announcement and the outfit baby came home in all arranged artfully in a way I'd never think of like this:

So, there you have all that we have for now! I'm sure there's a lot I'm leaving out, but it'll all come together on its own good time. Like after Christmas when we can afford the tools for the wainscoting and trim, haha.

Gratitude 2012 (week 2)

Here we go with week 2. I'm pretending like I'm NOT so, so many days behind.


14 November 2012: I am grateful for the miracles that science has wrought. It is incredible to me the things that modern medicine can accomplish to make our lives better and even save our lives. Thank you to the men and women who dedicate their lives to being the absolute best at what they do from scientists to doctors to researchers, and everyone in between.

13 November 2012:  Today I am acutely grateful for my health. It's not by any means perfect, but it's pretty stellar. My entire life I've been plagued by little things here, and I've let them snowball in my head into a much sadder situation that reality calls for. This pregnancy has been quite the wake-up call. I have had NO morning sickness or other major issues come to light, so I really need to be positive when it comes to my upcoming eye surgery. It's merely a bump in the road.  God, thank you for my health, every day, but especially today.

12 November 2012: God, thank you for my husband. He goes above and beyond the duties of husband and even beyond the duties of best friend and life partner. I take him for granted all too often and I need to stop every day and feel blessed.

11 November 2012: Clean water. Clean water when I turn on the faucet, when I grab a Nalgene out of the fridge, and even when I turn on the garden hose. So many people live without clean water and so many die from dirty water. It truly is an amazing thing.

10 November 2012: Sushi!! A healthy, wonderful, delicious vacation for my tastebuds.

9 November 2012: Teachers!! Every day I thank my lucky stars that I had the wonderful, talented, kindhearted teachers that I did. They prepared me physically, mentally, AND emotionally for thriving in the 'adult' world.

8 November 2012:  The rain. I know y'all are hating on it out here, already, but it smells good, it's cleansing, and it sure beats shoveling the driveway every morning!

Gratuitous Doggy Pictures

Well, I'm having a strange day, emotion-wise, for no reason. To remedy that, I'll make an entire post of just gratuitous dog pictures because it makes me feel better.

(Ignore the leaning tower of magazines and say "aw" at my snuggly siblings.

Barley gives new meaning to the fetal position.

They make it sooooo difficult to get out of bed in the morning.

"Can we open the package from Grandma?!"

Everyone needs a good roll in the dirt.

Awkward fat-girl pose. Nice, Barley.

Grati-tooted (Week 1)

Last year I was horrible about keeping up with my days of gratitude so I thought I'd start this year by making a fart pun. Off to a good start!

7 November 2012: I'm absolutely glad nobody is holding me to this month of gratitude. So far, I've earned a big fat F- for my punctuality.  


6 November 2012: Today I'm grateful for our Constitutional rights. So many American wander through life without realizing that people all over the world live without rights that we take for granted.


5 November 2012: I couldn't get through the day without knowing I was coming home to my pups. They are full of love and energy and trust me fully. Zak and Sara were the start of me really growing up.


4 November 2012: On this rainy day, thank you Lord for a roof over my head. And not just a plain roof, but a beautiful, lovely home.


3November 2012: Absolutely, endlessly grateful for the means to have a full pantry and refridgerator.  I'm trying my best to never ever take that for granted.


2 November 2012: I'm incredibly grateful for this pregnancy. We were starting to wonder if it was even possible or if storks really were the ones responsible. No matter what happens, I'm excited and blessed that we are going to be parents before 2022!


1 November 2012: I'm grateful for the loving family and friends that surround me, buoy me, and encourage me. My dear husband is the mac to my cheese. My parents and brother are my foundation. And my awesome friends are an endless source of laughter, sunshine, and sushi dates.

Disposable Diapers are apparently the devil's invention...

I decided a long time ago that disposable diapers were not something we wanted to use except in case of an emergency...today I found this article that has actual sources and I'm firmly set. Cloth systems, here we come!

http://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/dangers-of-disposable-diapers