You are NOT going to believe THIS!

Ok, so I go to my OB today and my weight is good. I'm at 276 which is one pound above where I started. Excellent. My blood pressure was 100 / 72 which is phenomenal! I gave my doctor copies of my two data sheets that I keep. One is on my asthma monitoring of my lung capacity that I monitor twice a day with a flow meter and I track all my symptoms. The other is a med sheet that lists all my meds I take each day and I cross them off as I take them. He was VERY impressed and he and Tom laughed about how I apparently will always be a teacher at heart and make cute charts for everything!

So then he steps out in the hall and wheels in the ultrasound machine!!!! I was sooo excited! Tom laughed and told the doctor that he'd just made my whole day. He said he had to reward me for keeping such good data. LOL! Well guess who will be getting all sorts of charts at each visit now?! Hey, positive reinforcement WORKS on me!

So anyway, instead of listening for the heartbeat with the doppler (we had the recorder with us, ready to go!) we got to get another ultrasound. I'll stick a link in below as soon as I get them up on the page, but they really aren't very good. This was the first time they got to do the external ultrasound since now the baby is big enough to be in my tummy. And the baby was moving around so much it was practically impossible to even get a good photo. Plus he/she is so much bigger now! Anyway it was wonderful to see the baby moving all around in there. We saw him/her holding out his/her hands in front of his/her face and just wiggling around. He said the placenta looked very thick and good although he didn't evaluate it for position yet.

My next one will be in 5 weeks on November 4th. That will be the one where we might be able to see if it's a boy or a girl! Very exciting!!

I'm just on cloud nine today! Quite a contrast from last night huh ;)

Ok, here's the link to the baby pictures page.

IF YOU'RE here from Fertility Friend, thank you for coming by! NOW CLICK HERE TO JOIN US OVER ON THE FREEDOM BOARD! ;)

So sad! I'm not getting an ultrasound tomorrow!

Well if you remember my nightmare that I typed back on 9/19/05...it came true! Well almost. In my nightmare I was already at the doctor and asked the nurse if he'd do an ulrasound and she said no.

Today I just had to know for sure if I was getting one tomorrow at my appt. So I called this morning and left a message for the nurse. She called me back and said that they aren't doing one! Waaaaahhhh!

She did say we'll listen to the heartbeat, so we're taking the recorder and we'll figure out how to get it on the blog tomorrow. But damnit I wanted another ultrasound picture to show everyone! Grrrr!

So anyway, I'm glad I at least found out in advance. I'm trying to prepare myself so that I won't spoil getting to hear my baby's heartbeat for the first time with my disappointment over the ultrasound.

But just so you guys know...I'm pretty upset about it.

Oh, and for all you girls from FF, thanks for coming to see me here. Now, click here to find out more! ;)

Time for a belly shot!

Thought I'd share a belly pic with you all. Now I know my belly isn't all baby, but it is finally out past my boobs which is pretty cool! This was taken at 13 weeks and 1 day!

Click here to see it!

Is it gone?

Well hopefully Tuesday was the last m/s. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I was just ill all day Tuesday, but the rest of the week was fine. No nausea. Totally exhausted, but no nausea. And I can deal with tired. ;)

Well I just can't remember if I posted this on here or not, but I don't think I did. September 17th was Tom's and my 11th wedding anniversary! Wow...11 years! Who'd have thunk it? Well, Tom and I did, but I'm not so sure about everybody else. ;) We're definitely just as much in love, if not more. We didn't do much for the anniversary, although it was funny that the Gators beat the Tennessee Volunteers again, just like they did the night of our wedding. *sigh* Memories. :)

We did go out for some yummy sushi (don't worry, I stuck to the cooked stuff Mom) and we were going to go for the movie The Corpse Bride, but it wasn't out yet. We spent the day going around town to visit maternity stores and stuff, and we found a great consignment shop for baby and kids' clothes! Super cheap clothes in really great condition. Carter brand stuff for like $2-$5! WooHoo! I know where I'm buying baby clothes now!

That was it for our romantic day. Oh except for in the middle of driving to another store all the sudden the "hunger" hit and I had to get Tom to drive straight to Whattaburger before I ate him. It's so strange how this hunger thing is happening some days! It's like if I don't eat immediately someone is in danger of losing a hand. Sheesh! Keep the pregnant lady fed!

Well, I'm heading to bed. Probably will sleep most of the weekend. (Except we ARE seeing Corpse Bride this time!) Where oh where is that burst of energy?? I'm at 13 weeks and one day today. It should be here soon...right?

It's BACK!

Ugh! Last night I woke up with the worst bout of morning sickness I've had so far. And here I'd thought I was done with it! It started around 3am and even now that it's almost 5pm I'm still having nausea. Not quite as desperate as it was last night, but more like recovering from stomach flu or something. Let's hope this is just some kind of last hurrah and it's going away soon.

Nightmare or Premonition?

Well I just remembered my nightmare from last night. It was awful! I hope it wasn't a premonition!

Want to hear it? Of course you do!

I dreamt I went to my next OB appointment (on Sept 30th) and before seeing the doctor, I saw the nurse. I asked her if he was going to do an ultrasound. And....


She said NO!

Boo hoo!

That was it. I know, not very scary sounding. But REALLY disappointing! I sure hope it doesn't come true! I wanna see my baby again!

Just for reference, how the HELL did you guys take this before ultrasounds were given so much??

Other than that, everything is peachy. I actually had NO nausea all weekend! Bliss! Hopefully it will keep up and I'll get that energy burst I'm still waiting for.

Welcome to the Second Trimester!

Well according to some I'm now in my second trimester. (Some say theres one more week, but poo-poo on that! I'm sick of being in my first trimester!)

I'm waiting for that burst of energy to hit...any second now...any minute... well, maybe we better not hold our breath.

My nausea is much better (in that it's not bugging me most of the day now) but Tom was all sick to his stomach up till about 4pm today. Luckily I was able to work from home and get some stuff done that I've been putting off. I also pulled two chat-reference shifts so I'm feeling pretty productive today!

More later I'm sure. I think I need a nap.

Getting along swimmingly

Everything is fine here. Still not eating as well as I should, because I just can't face vegetables much lately. Except peas. Peas are good. Mostly though it's been chicken fingers and sour cream. Or bacon and sour cream. Or fries and sour cream... there's a theme here I think.

Yesterday Tom took me to the store again. I was only able to get red seedless grapes (andI've eaten almost all of them today), pepperoni pizza, cottage cheese and shredded cheese. Would have gotten sour cream but I think I have enough to last another day or two. ;)

You should have seen me though, when I walked past the fish section of the meat department I was overwhelmed by the smell and ended up running up the nearest aisle waving both hands in front of my face saying "eeeaaaagggghhh!!!!" It was pretty funny in retrospect. That smell kept me out of a few aisles though. Powerful stuff!

I'm getting back on the calcium supplements though. I just don't think I'm getting enough on a daily basis with the sour cream and cottage cheese. They aren't as high in calcium as I'd hoped. I do have milk, for a while it was daily, but not lately. So back to the pills. I did manage to find some calcium liqui-gels though so those should be easier to swallow than the giant pieces of chalk I had before.

Guess that's about it. Mostly I'm sitting on my hands trying to wait for the next ultrasound. I hear some women rent a fetal doppler so they can hear the heartbeat whenever they want. That's sounding like an idea about now. It's about 25$ a month though and I'm sure I have better things to spend that on. (Like the first maternity bra I'm expecting in a few days. ;)

Have a wonderful week guys!

Ok! Ok! I'll update!

Whew! Mom sure notices when I don't update the blog for a few days! Thanks Mom!

I really do want to keep this up to date, so let me see, basically I've been doing pretty well since the ultrasound. I've pushed my new pictures on just about everyone including waitresses and checkout clerks, and perfect strangers. (Actually it's Tom's fault, he was taking them everywhere for a few days.) We're thrilled with them, and now it seems like forever before the next one. (Sept. 30th)

Work is going just fine. We're very busy of course. Sometimes I think I may have marketed the service too well! But it's all working out and the faculty and students seem pretty happy. I still love it!

I have been being careful not to let myself get sucked into all the media reports about New Orleans and others affected by the hurricane (and our leaderships ineptitude) since it seems to set off my crying and then my asthma. From the little I've seen I am so shocked, horrified, dismayed, disgusted by the way this has been handled by our government. All I can do right now is hope that all the money, supplies and help pouring in from the common people of the US (and the world) are going to make to those who so desperately need it. And I'm not even going to get into what I'm hoping will happen to those responsible for the bungling of the rescue efforts. (Of course I ultimately blame Bush, but that's probably not a surprise to anyone who has known me for any amount of time.)

Oy! Let's try not to wax political on here. This is supposed to be about me, Tom and the baby. I've been trying to pick out nursery stuff, designs & themes and such. There is so much out there! And from what I'm reading about breastfeeding it sounds like our baby won't really be spending much time in the nursery for the first year anyway! I think we've settled on an animal theme, probably mostly african animals using Brandee Danielle's design "African Plains" for the bedding. I think going with something simple for the bedding will allow for more accessories and wall art. This theme would work for a boy or a girl, but if we do find out it is for sure a girl I might go for more of a garden theme with flowers, butterflies and insects. Not sure yet though. The neat thing about that would be JM does beautiful photographs and digital paintings of flowers and butterflies, Donna can do all sorts of painting and mural work on just about anything, and Liz & Mom are doing all sorts of the Whimsey Glen stuff with flower fairies and such. We could really tap into everyone's creativity with a garden room! But maybe not for a boy... sigh. The 20 week ultrasound feels like it's a year away! (Only 9 weeks really, but still!)

So there's the update. It turned out way longer than I thought. I can just talk (or type) forever if you let me!

And by the way, I'm 11 weeks along today! 29 weeks to go!

One more thing! I just found out I can set up word verification for the comments. This will hopefully cut down on the spam comments, so that its only you guys that can post! It should be pretty easy, there will be a word in funky font for you to translate and then it will let you post. If it's screwy and a pain, email me and let me know and I'll take it off. Death to spam!

It's a baby....baby! New pictures!

We have new BABY PICTURES! Everything went just fine at the appointment. Dr. Marichal was wonderful and Tom and I got to see the baby moving all over. He/she was flipping around, waving arms and kicking legs and just having a fun time in there. He had such a time trying to measure the little wiggler that we ended up with five pictures this time! :) Yay!

I've created a page for the pictures so that you don't have to click separate links for them. It might take a while for all the pictures to load if you have dial-up, but it will be worth it! I have the newest ones at the top and we even re-scanned the old ones so they look a little more clear. I'm also recording the measurements and due dates since it seems the due date might be changing every time I go to the doctor.

Our next appointment is four weeks away on 9-30-05. Which seems like forever! I'll be in the second trimester by then though, so that should be neat. Oh, the doctor didn't even try out the doppler to see if he could hear a heartbeat. He said it's still too early. It might be a little early to hear it on me I guess; there is a lot of "me" in the way. ;)

Click here for the new pictures!