Look at the baby!

OK! Here are the ultrasound pictures as promised, just ... late. Forgive me!

Here is baby Jeanes lolling on her/his back in November, head to the left:


Here is baby Jeanes from the front in November, waving at us with his/her right hand:


And finally here is baby Jeanes from last week, from the front as well but flipped in the opposite direction, possibly with her/his hand up beside her/his face:


That last one is less obvious than the other two, unfortunately. I was so jazzed by the end of the ultrasound by how cool it had been to see baby Jeanes spazzing around that I forgot to ask for a picture, so I was surprised when she handed us one. I think it made more sense to me at the time, having just been looking at live images, but it isn't so clear to me now. I do think those are some fingerbones to the side of the face, though.

Baby Jeanes is pretty consistently kicky and wiggly in there. Not constantly, but more than enough to keep me reminded of his/her presence. Especially when I'm on my side. When I move to my back and try to get Andrew to feel what's going on in there the baby calms down a lot, probably because things spread out more and there's more room to stretch out.

Otherwise, not a lot is new in the realm of baby-making. Sickness is gone, heartburn is present, there's some weirdness with the relaxing of ligaments but nothing too notable. All in all it's evening out into the second trimester honeymoon, I do believe. I approve!

Moody me.

So, um, Andrew didn't get the ultrasound shots scanned on Friday but he'll try to today, promise!

I really must be feeling more energetic and happier now that I'm feeling much better physically. Dan commented on it when we were at their place for a Battlestar Galactica night (must catch up since the new season starts so soon!) I was thinking about it and yes, I think it's true. Except that I'm also still hormonal and prone to sudden mood changes, something that happened on our way home from said delightful evening.

When we left Maysie and Dan's place it was snowing out but it wasn't deep or anything. We walked to Bathurst to catch the streetcar to Bathurst station, something we normally do since it's a shorter walk. Now, this snow wasn't the lightly falling, pleasant kind of snow. It was small and mean flakes that drove persistently against us, borne on an unpleasant wind. The kind that stick all over your clothes and collect on your hair like a white blanket and then instead of brushing off bond to your hair and clothes, then melt there.

As we were walking to Bathurst we saw a streetcar go by. This isn't uncommon so we were prepared to wait for the next one which usually doesn't take too long and we were optimistic, borne as we were on the high of having had a great night with friends. The streetcar stop is situated so that hopeful cab drivers pull up constantly right in front of you and stare at you a bit until you either shake your head or just look disinterested and this happened quite a few times. We briefly discussed grabbing one since the weather was so bad but it's expensive so I suggested we should wait. So we did. We waited and waited. And waited.

The snow got meaner and meaner, coming down more heavily, and the cold combined with the inescapable annoyance of the flakes against my face got more and more uncomfortable until suddenly I couldn't take it any more. My stoic resistance to spending cab money suddenly and completely transformed into disgust and major frustration at the discomfort we were experiencing and I said we should take the next cab that came along. Andrew readily agreed, thankfully, and even though it then (of course) took a bit for a free cab to come along we got one and got in. Phew!

Now, I'm an emotional person, something I readily admit, but even I am a bit bemused by how very quickly my moods can change on a dime these days. One minute I'll be humming along, thinking about how cute my cats are and what I'm going to be eating for dinner later, the next I'll be welling up with tears over how radically our lives will be changing and worried about whether we'll be prepared. Then I'll think to myself that we won't have a choice and it'll all work itself out and I'll feel better and eat a banana. Then I'll feel the baby kick and get overcome with the total weirdness of growing a human in my very own body.

So, I'm all over the map, but managing to keep it together for the most part and remind myself a lot about how I have to keep it together for this kid since ain't nobody else going to mother it for me! (Despite the apparent need my sisters and mom have to grab it and hug it and smother it with love, I'm sure they don't intend to keep it after it starts crying or wetting itself. And besides; I might turn out to be okay at the mothering thing after all.)

DENIED, AGAIN!

We had the anatomical scan ultrasound today and I was SO. EXCITED. to find out the gender. I went in all happy to discover the gender of our large-banana sized child, and ultimately was denied this knowledge. Yes, the umbilical cord was totally in the way of the specifics.

The experience itself was nice, though. The tech was the same one who gave us our first ultrasound and during that one she was uncommunicative and reserved, but I'm pretty sure that was due to the mixup of how far along I was. This time she was much chattier and quite informative, seeming totally charmed by our bouncy kid. Apparently baby Jeanes was moving around a LOT, all wiggly and twitchy (although I couldn't really see this from my position during most of the ultrasound.) She'd be trying to measure the limbs and the baby kept moving them out of position. This mostly just made her laugh, though, and she told us that all of her babies today had been hyper.

After she'd taken all the measurements she turned the screen toward me and pointed out a few things like the baby's face and legs and arms. It had one arm up and a hand over its left eye which the tech thought was totally adorable. I was more worried that it was trying to suck its thumb, though! Then she did her best to see the gender but showed us how the cord was in the way. I jokingly said that it must be a boy if it was so active, taking after its dad, but she said that she was leaning more toward it being a girl. Since she couldn't say for sure, though, it was just a guess and now I have to try not to take it too seriously.

So yeah, I'm a bit disappointed but it's hard to be too upset when we could see our little mini human being all energetic and lively. That's pretty reassuring. After we left the clinic I made a lot of jokes about our naughty, uncooperative baby but I'm not literally blaming the kid. Honest! Oh, and Andrew took the new ultrasound shot and the ones from last time to work so he could scan them, so hopefully later today or early tomorrow I'll post them.

Pre-Christmas posting.

I've been hardly daring to believe it, but I think I'm feeling better! The morning sickness has eased off quite a bit and even though I still have a bad day or so, not every day is constant nausea like it used to be! It's so awesome to feel an improvement, right when I was thinking there would NEVER be one.

Of course, I've managed to get an awful cold for Christmas but I still feel better than I did! A cold isn't the end of the world but not being able to take Neo Citran feels so weird. I've been using a saline nasal spray to help with the sinus stuff and it's ... very different from Otrivin. Otrivin is meant to go in there and stay in there, whereas the saline spray is meant to flush you out, baby. I'd never used one before, or a Neti pot or anything like that, so the learning curve for me has been a bit steep and uncomfortable, but surprisingly it does help. Perhaps not when the cold is at its worst, but it makes a difference. I used to be the kind of person who never took medication for anything, but in my early twenties I discovered that medications WORK and actually bring relief, so converted enthusiastically to cold and headache relievers. Now that I can't take the ones that work best I really miss them.

I ran into my cousin-out-law (Andrew's cousin) Emily on the street tonight when I was coming home from some Christmas shopping. I mentioned to her that so far this weblog has been mostly just a bunch of bitching about how horrid pregnancy makes me feel, but there are some really good things starting to happen now and I want to make sure to highlight all the great stuff since I don't want this to be a total warning to the female population to never get pregnant.

I'm nineteen weeks now and the baby is getting very normal-looking in there, according to the experts, instead of looking like a creepy alien. It's about the size of a large deli pickle (except baby-shaped), and my uterus is a bit larger than a cantaloupe! A cantaloupe! Wow. So, I'm starting to look more pregnant although it's still hard to tell in general since I tend to wear loose clothes anyhow. I also think I'm feeling some baby movement, which is bizarre but awesome. Fluttery feelings, which is exactly how it's described by those who've experienced it before. My innards are definitely shifting around to make room for all this growth and stuff and it feels odd. Not bad; just odd.

We won't be finding out the gender until after the holidays. I meant to book the anatomical scan before Christmas but things got away from me, so hopefully they'll be able to fit us in soon after the new year. I have my heart set on finding out and if it turns out that the baby won't cooperate and they can't get a good enough look I'm going to be very disappointed. Don't be shy, baby!

We're going to be traveling like mad over the holidays, which is our usual way of spending Christmas. Three cities (Kingston, Ottawa and Montreal.) Maybe I'll be able to score another caramel apple from the Purple Cow!

Second ultrasound!

Oooookay. I'm awake at three in the morning with nausea and heartburn. Blah. What better way to get sleepy again than write? I actually have something to write about, though, which is that today (technically yesterday at this point) I went for the second ultrasound.

It was a totally different experience than the first one. Most notably because Andrew wasn't there. He's been out of town all week for work, so I did this one alone. I went in expecting a very similar atmosphere to the first one, where the tech was uncommunicative and brisk, but immediately this tech treated me totally differently. She was really warm and friendly and explained every single thing she did. She was doing two kinds of ultrasounds, abdomen and vaginal, and she took a long time with the abdominal one, really pressing down with the scanny thingy. I didn't expect her to turn the screen for me to see, since they're not supposed to discuss medical results, but she mentioned that as soon as she was done taking measurements she'd let me see.

So, when she did I got my first real look at our baby actually moving! I was blown away. There was the peanut, much bigger than last time and facing in the opposite direction, kicking its little legs and kind of waving its arms around pretty enthusiastically. Probably due to the pressure and movement of the ultrasound, since at around this point the baby starts responding to pressure on the uterus. She pointed out the arms and head and legs and I watched its heart just pumping away. It was awesome.

She let me see the internal one, too, which was a face-on shot of the peanut. That one was actually less clear and interesting to watch since peanut wasn't moving as much, but she printed me off a good shot from both ultrasounds and the internal one looks like the peanut is waving. Sweet.

So all in all this was a MUCH better ultrasound experience for me. I'm eleven and a half weeks now, which means I can once more start waiting for the morning sickness to fade in a couple of weeks or so. I'm way too hopeful about it, since for some women it just doesn't and I have a looming dread that I'll be one of them. The Diclectin is still helping some, although not as much as I'd wish. It keeps me from vomiting, I think, rather than take away the nausea completely, but I'm thankful for that, believe me. I still have some days where I barf no matter what, but again: It's improved with the meds, so I just remember that!

When Andrew gets back home he'll scan the new ultrasound photos at work so I can upload them and you can see the peanut throwing gang signs from the womb.

See the peanut!

We finally, finally got an ultrasound! I went in kind of nervous because by my calculations I was nearly fourteen weeks and the nuchal translucency test isn't as accurate by then (where they're measuring liquid at the back of the baby's neck, and it can absorb into the body by that point making for a misdiagnosis.) It's to check for things like Down's Syndrome and Trisomy 18, so that's the kind of thing you want to be accurate.

Anyhow, we got in to the ultrasound room and the tech started doing her thing. She didn't turn the screen for me to see anything at any point and kind of looked a bit confused. Finally she informed me that I'm not almost fourteen weeks, I'm nine weeks! Nine and a half, really, but still! I guess I skipped a period and that threw off the whole thing. Wow. So, we ended up announcing it pretty early but what can you do?

Nine weeks is way too early for the kind of tests they were going to do, so I have to go back next month. The tech wasn't even going to print us off a picture but I finally just asked her to and she did, so here you go:



The head is the upper right blob, in case you can't quite get what you're seeing there. I'm disappointed that the tech didn't let me see the screen during the scans or point out anything to us, but you get who you get and I'm hoping that next time we'll have a more friendly tech.

Horse pistol.

Hi. Just a quick update to let you know that I haven't been writing because I'm in the hospital. Yeah, so that's fun. Seriously, though, the baby is OK (so far as we know; I STILL haven't had an ultrasound done yet) and I'm OK. I'm getting treated for the extremes of morning sickness, thank goodness!

My internet connection is really sketchy so I don't know that I can update much from here, but I'll do my best!

Ultrasilent

Man, am I pissed off. Today was supposed to be the day I had my first ultrasound. Since I didn't find out I was pregnant until eight weeks in things have been a bit delayed with getting to see my OBGYN and the initial ultrasound and whatnot. My regular medical clinic referred me no problem to an obstetrician and gave me the number for the the ultrasound clinic. I was instructed (in a voicemail message) to contact the ultrasound clinic and set up an appointment.

I did that. I called them and they told me when to come in and where. I was supposed to go there at eleven this morning, which I did, along with Andrew. When we got there (after going to the eighth floor, then the tenth floor, then finally the eighteenth floor which was ultimately the right one) the receptionist asked me for my requisition forms. I had none, had not been told to bring any, had not been given any or advised of their necessity. The term 'requisition form' had been spoken to me by NO ONE.

So she called my clinic and I guess now in hindsight she thought maybe she was calling my OBGYN, and as it turns out the ultrasound appointment was supposed to come after the OBGYN appointment, which isn't until next week. This is also something that had not been mentioned to me and hadn't been asked of me when I called the ultrasound clinic to set up the appointment. It feels like the ultrasound appointment is something that maybe I shouldn't have been setting up if it depended on seeing the OBGYN first and getting forms from them, so I'm not sure why I was instructed to do it.

I don't know. I'm frustrated that we went to the trouble of going there and fudging around and now I have to go have both appointments on the same day in the same part of town, but six hours between them. I'm an irrationally angry pregnant woman!

Inaugural post: How we found out.

Welcome to my pregnancy weblog, I guess. I intend to keep it longer than that, but until I'm no longer pregnant it is what it is!

So ... I'm pregnant. Twelve weeks. Anyone who knows me well knows it's not a state I was sure I'd ever be in, but I am! Holy crap. We found out when I was about eight weeks along (although my first ultrasound which is coming up in a couple of days will verify the timing for sure.) We were spending the weekend in Ottawa and I'd been feeling all kinds of terrible; headachey, constantly exhausted and then suddenly fiercely nauseated on top of it all. I'd been planning to go visit La that afternoon but after having slept most of the day before, all night and then all morning I was convinced I was still dying.

Andrew offered to go buy me some medicines like Advil and Gravol. We kind of looked at each other skeptically and wondered if we should get a pregnancy test too, and I figured with the first two items it might be a good idea, just in case, just to be safe and basically tick THAT off the list as a possible cause of my malaise. I quite honestly was not expecting a positive result.

So, Andrew brought me those things and then he and Colin and Jen went out to New Mee Fung for a delicious dinner. You know I must have been feeling like CRAP to not go to my favourite Ottawa restaurant if offered a chance. Off they went and I got up to pee on the stick before popping an Advil and Gravol.

I've taken pregnancy tests lots of times before (but mostly out of paranoia rather than efforts to conceive.) I've peed on those sticks and believed the instructions when they said not to read the results before a certain amount of time (usually two minutes) has passed as a positive result might not show up immediately. And then to possibly wait as long as ten minutes just in case it takes a while to register a weak positive. So I kind of half-assedly watched the pee creep along the result windows just to make sure I'd peed on it enough and nearly fell on the floor at the IMMEDIATE, DARK, NO-KIDDING-AROUND plus sign that signaled a positive result. Like, as soon as my pee touched that result window the vertical line began screaming at the top of its lungs.

Mah gah. I was shocked. I was stunned. I was pregnant.

When Andrew came back from New Mee Fung and came upstairs and into the bedroom I hadn't really thought of what to say. I certainly hadn't come up with any cutesy way to let him know, hadn't run out to buy a card or pair of baby booties or anything like that. I just grabbed him and said, "We're having a baby."

He looked back at me and, knowing me and my fears and all the reasons behind my ambivalence toward being a parent, said the best thing he could have possibly said in that moment: "It's going to be OK."