Week 17

BUMPDATE!

Here's a 16 weeks and 5 days bump shot, because I woke up today and realized that I couldn't suck in my stomach for the first time, well, ever...

16 weeks!

We spent the day in Cleveland, first with Wendy and Javier at the art museum, then the four of us met Nina and Logan for lunch at Melt. We saw Nina's apartment for the first time and got a brief drive-through of her college campus. Before heading home, we stopped at a bookshop where Felipe picked out a few birthday gifts for himself and I bought a tragic children's book about 3 elephants who starved to death in a Tokyo zoo during World War II. It was a fun, exhausting day, and I am ready for bed. We are excited to take Baby on a day trip to the museum when he or she is outside of the womb.

♥ 15 weeks ♥

It's Saturday again, and another week is gone. We will be leaving for our belated honeymoon in three weeks, and when we return, we'll be just one week short of halfway through this pregnancy. It's hard for me to fathom how quickly time has been passing, and so I'm already a little anxious about Baby reaching teenagedom and suddenly deciding we're the least cool, most terrible people on the planet. I might be getting a little bit ahead of myself...

This past week had its ups and downs. Every morning, I'd crawl out of bed, get hit with a sudden bout of nausea, and after I'd stared at the toilet seat for what felt like hours and all of the acid had drained from my pitiful stomach, I'd go eat some breakfast and not get sick for the rest of the day. Usually, one or both of the cats would join me, although I suspect their motive wasn't to comfort but rather to remind me that they, too, needed food. Yesterday was the first day in a long time that I spent my lunch break doing something other than sleeping. In fact, I cleaned the upstairs bathroom and tidied up our living room, which I haven't had the stamina to do in awhile.

I'm getting anxious to feel our little one move around. There's been a lot of random instances of pressure against my lower abdomen, which I think is probably the growing/stretching uterus, but it's fun to imagine that Baby is doing somersaults or playing the air guitar rambunctiously in there. Maybe the walls are like a trampoline, and he/she is just having a blast bouncing back and forth, boingboingboing...

In terms of size, he or she is approximately four inches long and weighs 2.5 ounces. If you're big on fruit representation, we're looking at an apple-sized Baby right now. Now, I think I'll be going to drink some apple juice and switch the load of laundry.

14 weeks!

My bump is starting to get a little more defined! I was concerned because I've been losing weight since the pregnancy began, but I weighed in at 132 this morning, which compared to the 130 I'd been earlier this week sounded pretty good.
Around 11am yesterday, I started getting very severe mid-to-upper back pain, which I thought was caused by the bad sitting position I'd been in all week for work... but by last night, it was so bad that in order for me to move, I had to have someone lift my torso up from the couch/bed. Bathroom runs were not a good time. This morning, it had gotten even worse, and I woke up at 7am with no ability to roll out of bed on my own, so I called my doctor's office, and the doctor on call told me to go to the hospital's labor and delivery unit for a urine sample in case it's kidney stones or a kidney infection. He assumed it was muscle spasms, though. I called the hospital, and they said I could just go to the ER, which isn't something I want to do again anytime in the near future after two visits in the last few months, so I decided to wait it out and see if it worsened. I slept for a few more hours and as of right now, my pain has eased a lot, and I'm able to stand up straight/sit down without too much discomfort. I just hope this isn't a recurring thing.

4 months of marriage + 3 months of pregnancy

 

Today marks 4 months since I walked out of Kingwood mansion, fumbled down a couple of flights of steps in a very long gown, and married my best friend. It's also been just over 3 months since our pregnancy began, which is not the way we would have imagined our first year of marriage to go, but honestly, I don't believe that either of us would have it any other way. What I'm learning is that life has a lot of unexpected turns, and when it comes down to it, whether you find out about them while you're on your lunch break in the Kroger restroom or not, you simply have to accept that your own plans aren't ever going to be be the final say in any matter. And if you don't want to find out you're expecting two months into your new marriage, use birth control pills. If you're not taking precautions against conceiving a child, chances are you may just be a little hopeful that you will. I can't say it upsets me that I'll only be 39 when this little one becomes a legal adult. I won't say "moves out," because we just never know what the situation is going to be, but -- perhaps that, too?

Last night, I experienced sleeplessness between the hours of 2:20-5:00. For whatever reason, I started thinking about words that I like, because I read in some book or other that a good way to figure out baby names is to take a word you like, then find names that sound similar. Around 3:30 or so, I woke up Felipe to inform him that the word "diatribe" really appeals to me, and could he please help me find a similar name? He breathed angrily, sort of like a mad bull, then mumbled something about "Guyashribe." Around that point, he flipped around in bed so that his feet were next to my face, which I suppose meant he didn't understand the importance of rhymes at such an early hour. Some time after that, I woke him again to wish him a happy monthsaversary and to remind him that we used to be fun, young people who would do crazy things like go to a diner and eat breakfast in the middle of the night. He growled about how we used to do that at 11pm or midnight, and not when we had work in the morning. (He'll probably tell you he got no sleep himself, but that's not true at all. I only jostled him awake for things of the utmost importance.)

Baby's sex

Last night, as usual on a lazy Sunday evening, Felipe and I were lounging about in our living area. I was in one of my less hormonal moods, moving between cooking dinner and watching something on Netflix, when he asked me something -- a question I won't quote, since I'm not sure exactly how it was worded -- about whether I thought I'd start crying when the baby was delivered. After making a comment about how I'd be crying for joy once the agony of labor had ended, I realized that I hadn't really put much thought into how I'd feel in that moment at all, other than ripped apart and bloody and regretting intensely my decision to refuse pain medicine from those kind souls who'd so generously offered it. I'd thought about how badly I want my baby to successfully latch, to begin the bond of breastfeeding between mother and child that I've spent the last months reading about and praying for success in. But that moment, the one in which baby separates forever from my womb and becomes its own, semi-independent person, with a social security number and an overwhelming weight of societal expectations placed upon on his or her shoulders? I guess it hadn't really occurred to me what I would feel, but in the back of my mind, I was pretty sure I wouldn't cry. Maybe it's Fergie's fault, with her insistence that big girls don't cry, but I have viewed my own tears as a source of shame for quite some time now, even to the point of masking them with excuses: allergies, spicy foods, or anything at all besides emotions. Which isn't what I want my children to believe, regardless of their sex, and suddenly, I was spiraling hard into a pit of worry that this all could only mean one thing. I'm a bad mother.

So this morning, as I was laying miserably on our sofa after throwing up multiple attempts at breakfast (forget what I say about nausea ending; I don't believe it ever does), I had forgotten all about the event aforementioned. I picked up my phone to see what was new in the pregnancy apps. Lo and behold, there was a post that said, simply,

"gender at birth?
Anyone else waiting tell birth to get the gender"

Despite the poster's lack of punctuation, I was intrigued. I clicked on the subject line and began reading the responses of women who have made the decision to wait for their babies to announce their sex. (And no, I don't agree that 'gender' and 'sex' are synonyms, but I understand that a lot of people do use them interchangeably.) Maybe it was because of my empty stomach, or my hormonal daze, but I suddenly saw so clearly that this is what I've been missing out on. Ever since we found out we were expecting, we've been talking and receiving questions about finding out baby's sex and when we will be able to do so. I read somewhere that over 80% of parents choose to find out via ultrasound, not birth, though I'm not sure how accurate that statistic is, since many people obviously don't have the option for a pre-labor sex scan.

You got it: we have decided to wait until birth to find out this baby's sex. I know not everyone feels the same way, but here is a list of reasons I have for this decision:

1. I cried, quite pathetically, when I imagined that final push and hearing my husband's voice announcing to me whether we have a son or a daughter. And I imagine I'll cry, quite happily, when it's really happening.
2. Labor is extremely scary for me, but when I imagine the outcome as not just holding our precious miracle for the first time, but also knowing that such exciting news will be waiting for us, I feel a whole lot less afraid and way more determined.
3. Regardless of this baby's sex, we probably want to have more children in the future, and buying an array of things that are designed for that specific "kind" of baby would be tempting if we found out pre-labor. This way, we'll have lots of unisex items that can be recycled for the future.
4. There are a lot of gender expectations that we wouldn't want our children to be subjected to while they're still trying to develop into fully-formed human beings, and can't even cry audibly to express their disagreement.