It's alive!

The very nice midwife did an ultrasound and discovered that there's actually a baby in there!

 The head is towards the left.

 Head is now pointing right and down. The thing that looks like a tongue sticking out of the front is actually a hand.

Another picture with the head down and towards the right. If you look at the original picture, you can see fingers.

It was pretty exciting. It has a heartbeat that's like a little flutter somewhere in the upper middle portion of the body. It has limbs with the tiniest fingers on them, although it does appear to have 8 or so fingers on each hand. The midwife didn't seem concerned about that, so I'm guessing it's just an artifact of the ultrasound. It wiggled around.

Cutest parasite ever.

Dream

I had two dreams last night, but can only remember the first one.

I was with J somewhere that might have been outsider her house. We were both very pregnant. We knew that the babies were going to come on the 25th (I'm not sure what month, that was never specified). Jess went into labor and had her baby in about 3 minutes. The baby was black, which we knew was because the midwife who had been at the delivery was black. I went into labor and had two contractions, then it stopped. At that point, I noticed that there were two little dogs running around. One was really tiny and had long hair (it was some sort of tiny, teacup terrier). The second was white and somewhat larger, but still a very small dog. We caught them and noticed that they both had tags on their collars. I called the owners numbers from the tags, but one person said it wasn't their dog and the second person didn't answer. We put the dogs under a laundry basket on a quilt on the back lawn so that I could continue giving birth. We also put one of J's older children under the basket to keep the dogs company.

First Doctor's Appointment

This afternoon is my first baby-related doctors appointment. I'm a little nervous that the whole pregnancy thing is going to prove to be some sort of mistake or that things won't end up being ok. Morning sickness is supposed to be a good sign, and I've had some of that... but not too bad as compared to people I've talked to or read about online. I feel like there's a reasonably good chance that things could not work out. Like it's maybe 50/50 at this point. That would suck. Before I started this project, I had never considered the idea that even if a pregnancy doesn't work out, you still have to go through all the crappy parts like the tiredness and the morning sickness. You just don't end up with a baby at the end of it.

Fingers crossed for the Dr saying that everything looks fine.

Honeymoon

For our honeymoon, we went on a cruise to Alaska. I was a little concerned that sea sickness and morning sickness would exponentially worsen each other, but it didn't end up being too bad. We had one full day of fairly rough, bumpy sailing. However, I don't think I was any worse off than anyone else. My new assessment is that sea sickness and morning sickness come from entirely different causes and don't really affect each other (except when it comes to eating).

The cruise was awesome. I think I'll post about it on my other blog, though.

M did take some tummy pictures of me standing in front of various things we could see off of our balcony (glacier, scenery). He's trying to take one picture a day so that he can make them into some sort of animated tummy growing series. So far, we haven't managed every day, but I think we've got a good enough selection that his project will work.

I did have to watch what I ate on the cruise. My tastes seem to change with lightning speed. The evening that we spent in Juneau, I got really hungry and we didn't have time to go back on the ship for dinner. we bought crackers and salmon spread, which was fabulous. For dinner the next night (or possibly several nights later), I ordered some sort of white fish with a light sauce and then couldn't eat it. Too fishy. And that pretty much did in eating fish or other seafood for the rest of the trip.

I ended up eating way too much rich food. As a TMI moment here, it made me really constipated. This isn't a problem when I'm at home, but when I'm at home I eat a LOT more vegetables and fruit and whole grains. Those didn't make up a big part of my diet on the cruise. Hopefully things will get back to normal now that I'm home and starting to eat my regular diet again.

We bought the Tiny Squee an Alaska tshirt. It's very cute. We can take pictures of TS in the shirt and then show them to him/her later in life and say that he/she was in Alaska with us. I think it's nice that the whole family could come on the honeymoon.

It's (maybe) a boy!

I took the IntelliGender prediction test this morning. It claims we're having a boy. However, I took the test too early: it says on the website that it's not accurate until 10 weeks and I'm only at 8. It also was wrong for J. So I've decided to upgrade my original assessment of 50:50 to 60:40 in favor of a boy.

M's dream

"We were probably in the city; we were on some street. Could have been just me, I guess. Some guy came up and grabbed the baby and I didn't actually see him put the baby into the box, but then the baby was in the box. Then he was running away; not quite as quickly as I could catch. He turned a corner and wasn't there, but the box was there. There wasn't a baby in it, it was just weighted so it felt like a baby was in it. We should make sure that the gypsies don't steal our babies."

Baby Dreams

I dreamed that M and I were in bed and I rolled over and something came out from between my legs and I knew that I had miscarried and the baby was dead. I didn't want to look at it, so I had M take a picture of it with his cell phone. Then I decided I did want to look and I picked it up and held it. It was a very small, white baby. We held it and cried and petted it and it started to get warmer (it was cold from being dead). Then it was a squirrel. Once it was a squirrel, it was fine that he had been born early because squirrels don't require nearly as long as humans for gestation. He dried off as we petted him and opened his eyes. We called him Buttons, after Benjamin Franklin (the connection made perfect sense).

I was very protective of Buttons because he was my baby and he had almost died. We came home one day and there was a dog in the house and something else that could have hurt him (I can't remember what it was) and I was very stressed out until I found him and held him.

We also had a cage with several funny-looking mouse things. Buttons did not live in a cage because he was my baby.

Funny

M says to me tonight, as I've climbed into bed close to 10 after taking a nap this afternoon, "it's ok, you're sleeping for two."

Walking

Yesterday was a good day, tummy-wise. I'm not sure if it was the introduction of mint tea with ginger syrup or the fact that I took a good walk in the morning. I'm just finishing my tea and then I'm headed out for a walk. Hopefully today will be a good tummy day too.

Finally Final!

Last day of summer term today! The students take an all-scantron final, I whip it through the machine and am done with grading for the rest of the summer.

Today has been a pretty good tummy day. I started off with half an english muffin with peanut butter and a cup of mint tea with ginger syrup. The ginger syrup is basically ginger juice (or essence, or ground up ginger or something) in honey. I got it at New Seasons and it was quite expensive. When it runs out, if I need more, I think I'm going to try grinding up some fresh ginger and mixing it with honey at home. That seems worth $15.

Other foods consumed today: Toasted English muffin with egg salad, my new favorite food. Also, a second cup of ginger-mint tea. I brought a small bag of rabbit pretzels to the final, but have eaten them already. I should have brought some more food.

Morning bunnies

Rabbit pretzels first thing in the morning settle the stomach. Oatmeal with berries takes a few minutes to prepare.

I had a dream about picking up my wedding bouquet. I didn't like it very much and the woman had raised the price from what she told me originally. It was a very round bouquet with blueish flowers (not what I had asked for). Then I noticed that it had hair and a face on the front. I told her it was terrifying and that I didn't want it. She got all huffy and started stomping around making another bouquet.

Morning sickness lasts all day

Mine seems to be reduced by: crystalized ginger, ginger altoids, protein+carb foods like english muffins with peanut butter or hardboiled eggs, rabbit pretzels, kombucha.

Things that sound totally unappetizing: tea or any other warm beverage, foods with more than about 3 ingredients, most sweets (until I take a bite).

Last night, I dreamed that the class I was teaching was totally out of control and wouldn't listen to me, even though I was yelling at them as loudly as I could. They left the lab a total mess, then wouldn't do what I asked them to. Oddly, it was a college class. I think the theme of the dream was frustration, but I'm not sure what I'm frustrated about.

Dream

I dreamed I was teaching at some college. There was a lot of roaming around through the dorms and buildings. I had a little single room in some hall full of doors.

Suddenly, it was time for me to be teaching. As in, it was exactly the time class was supposed to start. I didn't know where my room was and I had to go back to get my laptop so I could teach. A guy with red hair said he knew where it was and he would take me. There were several versions of this guy with red hair throughout the dream. This one had longish hair. I thought he was cute. I grabbed and held his hand as we ran through the corridors looking for my room.

Street of Dreams

My mother and I went to the NW Natural Street of Dreams, courtesy of a 2-for-1 LivingSocial coupon. My mother, who is always on top of this sort of thing, determined that the ticket also gets you discounts at restaurants and things. We went to Agave Grill and had a most excellent mexican lunch, with $10 off.

I told her I was pregnant. Actually, I said I had something to tell her and she said "you're pregnant" and I said "I'm pregnant". She said she knew that we were going to have a baby from the time I told her we were getting married. I thought she knew - I've commented to M that she's been saying little things about families and kids and making comments that she's never made before. She said she knew me well enough to know that I was going to get pregnant and I said I knew her well enough to know that she knew I was trying. It was a nice finish to an excellent lunch.

She bought the tiny squee a tiny outfit with a duck on it. Green and yellow since we don't know what sex it will be yet.

I'm just a wee bit blorky due to over-consumption of Mexican food.

Dreams again

Last night I dreamt that I got engaged to someone I hardly knew. It was kind of a Victorian era thing. He had fallen madly in love with me and got me an engagement ring. It was my actual engagement/wedding ring.

I was worried that my parents wouldn't approve of the marriage because we didn't know each other very well, even though he was a very "good match". 

Dreams and upset tummies

M says I need to write my dreams down before I get out of bed. I guess that's true, because during the course of today, I seem to have forgotten almost all of the dream I was going to write down. I'm just left with a vague sense that there was a dream and that it wasn't a bad one. 

Today hasn't been my best tummy day so far. I had an excellent breakfast - oatmeal with cut-up fresh peach. Then, we headed out to the farmer's market to get eggs. Sadly, there was no one selling eggs, but we did get delicious berries, peaches and cherries. And two large cookies. I had a lemon and white chocolate one and it was awesome. The lemon was just so tasty. However, by the end of the cookie, I wasn't feeling quite so happy about it. My stomach hasn't quite calmed down. I've been sipping water and an Izze soda (natural carbonated juice beverage) and I ate a hard boiled egg not that long ago. I'm feeling a bit better post-egg. In a little bit, I think I'm going to have some plain yogurt with raspberries mixed in.

Dreams

I've been having very vivid dreams since learning I was pregnant. Night before last was something about a gorilla who knew sign language. Last night, I had a very vivid work dream. I was teaching lab and we were learning about gel electrophoresis. The students all ran gels, but then they all seemed to leave early before we talked about what the results meant. One lab group stayed and I explained the whole thing to them and told them that we'd take a quiz on it next class. Then maybe the class came back? There was this giant gel that we were going to look at which had like 6 smaller gels within it. I put it on a light box, but then it broke taking it back off. I was worried that S would be pissed that it was broken, then decided I didn't care. She walked in earlier in the dream to do something, but I ignored her.

Overall, it was a very vivid dream of teaching lab. Nothing happened in the dream that couldn't have happened in reality.

Pregnant!

Alright, it's another pregnancy blog. But this is *my* pregnancy blog, which no one else is ever going to read anyhow.

Backstory: we've been trying to get pregnant for about 6 months now. I broke down and bought some Pre-see lube to try since we hadn't been successful yet. The reviews seemed promising. We'd been using xanthum gum because it's a food product so we were pretty sure I wasn't going to be allergic to it. However, I wasn't sure how it was as a sperm-friendly lube. We went camping over 4th of July weekend and had sex twice with the new lube. I think we may have had sex one other time later that same cycle. I got what seemed like a really weird period when I was away with my mother for the weekend. Brownish, and it only lasted a day. I took a pregnancy test when I got home and it came up negative. I was suspicious and took another one a couple days later, and then a couple days after that. My breasts started hurting and I was having sort of period-like cramps, but still negative on the pregnancy test. Finally, more than a week after the fake period, which must have been implantation bleeding, I got a very faint positive. I tested again first thing the next morning and got a definite positive. That's the day I told M (boyfriend, soon to be husband) - July 25th. I marked it down in my calendar.

It's now a week after testing positive. Here's how things have shaken out:

I've had quite a bit of period-like cramping and have had very faint pinkish discharge twice. The cramping seems to be tapering off now, though.
My breasts were *way* sore for at least a week, mostly before the positive test. My nipples were hard during that whole period and then beyond. They've been pretty unhappy up until very recently. I'm just looking at them now and it seems like this is the first time they've relaxed since this whole thing started up.
I feel like I've gotten the tiniest hints of morning sickness. Often, I'll feel vaguely unsettled when I get hungry. A couple times I felt a bit like I was going to start thinking about throwing up, but nothing worse than that (so far).
I've been tired. The couple of days right after the positive test, I napped for at least an hour in the afternoon. I've been going to bed about an hour earlier than I normally do. A couple of times, I've felt like my energy was suddenly sucked out in the middle of doing something. It makes it harder to get things done (although I must admit that today, I haven't gotten much of anything done but it's been due entirely to laziness).
Today, I've been *starving* the entire day. I've been on a schedule where I'm eating breakfast (usually oatmeal), then an early lunch and an early dinner, with a couple of snacks in between. It seems like I'm pretty much done eating by 6 or so and I just don't much feel like eating after that. Today, I feel like I've eaten about 8 little meals:

1. Cheerios with blackberries
2. english muffin with peanut butter
3. half an avocado with pita chips
4. Activia peach yogurt
5. Yogurt with home-canned pears and blackberries

Well, maybe it's only 5 little meals. Still. At this point (5:00), I'm feel done eating. I'm going to go pick up the CSA and hope that M comes home soon.