Merry Christmas and Happy Bloggiversary!

Okay, yes, Christmas was yesterday, but I had a wonderfully relaxing day that had only a brief time on the computer to video chat with our families and show off the belly. This is me in front of our Christmas tree wearing my favorite dressy shirt and new earrings that I picked up for myself and handed to Santa so he could put them in my stocking.

We've chosen a name: Brianna Noelle, with Bria as her nickname. I have to remind myself that she won't necessarily have red hair like Andy, but all I can imagine in my head is a little redhead with soft curls and an infectious giggle. This image is, of course, a toddler, but luckily I won't have to give birth to a toddler. A 10 pounder I could handle (or so the midwife said), but toddler, not so much.

Last night as the evening wound down, I couldn't help but think of how much had happened since last year when I took that sad walk alone with my thoughts Christmas night, dwelling on what I had hoped would happen. I had really set myself up for heartache with those expectations, but I was too unsure of what would happen to consider what might happen in the coming year. In the past year, I've had a whirlwind of testing and trying, going back and forth between disappointment and hope, until finally everything worked and now I am blessed to be healthily pregnant with a little girl. My only complaints revolve around a dirth of maternity clothes and morning sickness that left me constantly queasy. Even those aren't really issues any more, though I did have another fabulously weird/gross dream (I'm skilled like that). I know I could be up against gestational diabetes, or bedrest, or worse, knowing something was wrong with Brianna. So going into the next year, I don't think it's too much to hope for a healthy baby and some sanity while I figure out how to be the best mom I can in the life I've got. To everyone who's been part of this journey, thanks for coming along for the ride.

Week 24 - The Eddie Izzard Edition (With an Extra Dose of TMI)

Pregnancy seems to have turned me into a 13 year old in some ways. I have had the joy of going through my voice cracking again. This is particularly fun when I'm presenting a training session at work, and I'm afflicted by Eddie Izzard's plague. I've also had the Tummy of Satan, and Boobs of Death. Okay, that sounded better when I was trying to go with continuous Eddie Izzard references. If you don't know who Eddie Izzard is, then this post will probably be a bit boring. Or you can go watch Dressed to Kill and laugh a lot. And then come back and laugh with/at me.

But they really are *that* bad. My abdomen is now stretched to the limit of extra skin that I already had thanks to a certain amount of flabbiness. I'm getting faint stretch marks, and my torso is relatively firm all over. Or at least, it seems firm, after a lifetime of being a fat girl. The boobs though? They're really just Boobs of Death. [Hoozin and any other men, stop reading now. No, really, you don't want to know. Just go down to the next paragraph.] They're not tender anymore, thank god. No, just my nipples now. Which have also started leaking...something. Not a lot, just something clear in tiny amounts at a time. But these tiny bits of discharge also become tiny bits of dried stuff stuck in my nipple. Which I need to clean out or they become a crust that leaves nastiness in my bra. [I told you to stop reading. No complaints.] Did I mention my nipples are still overly sensitive? Good times, that.

In other pregnancy ailments, my feet have taken to a weird form of swelling, in which they turn red first and then decide to swell over the tops of my shoes. Nothing within the shoes swells quite as badly, which just makes it look like I have frankenfeet. Ooooh yeah, baby. Sexy. Because the only shoes you can find in 10.5WW look even less attractive than my monster appendages. So I keep wearing the cuter shoes. (And lest you think I'm being vain, the shoes I'm wearing ARE bigger than I normally wear. I just seem to have more swelling by the end of the day than I expected when I bought these.)

Little One seems most active when I first wake up in the mornings, around noon, and in the evenings. In fact, she's kicking a lot right now, which probably has to do with the cookie I just had for dessert. She was also kicking and squirming when I had a bit of a freakout yesterday morning thanks to some work shenanigans giving me a major headache and anxiety. So, now I know, anxious momma = unhappy baby. Nothing else she's done has been hard enough for Andy to feel without a hand pressed close to me, but I guess that just means I need to have Tea and Cake before bed. Because Cake or Death isn't hard to figure out.

In a rather squee-inducing moment last Friday, my mom and sister sent me a care package full of adorable baby clothes. Little pajamas with tiny feet on them. Soft sweaters and shirts with rosettes on them. Outfits of pants with coordinating hoodies. But you know what those f*ckers did to me? They included an In-N-Out bag. An empty bag. A bag which didn't even give me the luxury of a quick whiff of a double-double that someone would have eaten a week ago. Why did they include an empty torture bag? So I could torture other people at work who know what In-N-Out is. Mission accomplished, one person has been tortured. Except that person is me, and now I want a double-double animal style with a chocolate shake even more than I already had. If I get really desperate, I can always pay $300 for a ticket to go out to California and get my fix. And I guess I could see them too. Those f*ckers.

Another sweet thing in the package was a pair of books that a family friend got me in Hungary. I had meant to pick up a couple, but couldn't find anything I liked when I went last spring. So now I have a bath time book about a whale, and a board book about a cow. Eventually, I can teach Little One some Hungarian, but instead of phrases like "La chat est sur la chaise, et la singe...ou est le singe?", she'll get "A macska van szekon, es a majom...hol van a majom?"

By now, Little One is over a pound and a quarter. The sicker part of me thinks of that and goes, hey look, that's the same as the packages of ground turkey we get at Costco. Thanks brain. You just had to go there, didn't you? She's also too big to be described in the produce section, but apparently the folks at What to Expect have never heard of eggplant or any of the other 9 inch fruits or vegetables roaming the supermarket. Whatever the actual size, she's big (according to the Tummy of Death). Her face is almost fully formed, and she has a complete set of eyelashes and eyebrows. She might have a bit of hair, but apparently, there's no color right now. Cross your fingers for red hair, everybody! I want a red-headed daughter who looks just like her daddy.

Week 22 - Funky Dreams and Big Kicks

My computer has been on the fritz for the last week since a Trojan horse decided to make my life hell. I thought it was taken care of, but it looks like I get to reformat everything to get it back to a crappiness free existence. And by me, I mean Andy gets to do it. He had some unexpected dental work done this week and we both seemed to be affected by a stomach bug that had been making the rounds at work, so this post is a bit late but there's tons of fun stuff going on.

So, for the past several nights I've been having weird dreams. First, it was a hospital dream with all kinds of what-the-hell-was-that-about details (don't worry, I'll get to that in a moment). The next night I don't remember exactly what the context was, but there was a specific dollar amount that was really important that kept popping up. It was so important that even after waking up, I remembered the exact amount. Why I would need to have $28,245.10 is beyond me (not hospital bills, since our insurance puts a cap on out of pocket expenses, and not a reasonable down payment for a house, since that gets you a broken down shed out here), though if someone wants to give it to me, I will happily take it and start Little One's college fund. The night after that, Andy and I were touring a, um, ahem, adult film studio and critiqueing what we saw (this is what happens when you feel Frisky during Weird Dreams Week). Last night, it was a serial killer. Not a killer after me or anyone I cared about, but he was out there. He was a relatively friendly serial killer, seeing as he didn't want to kill me, but it's never any fun to have murderers running around.

But that hospital dream? One of those epic dreams that seems to go on and on and changes course several times and the details that might have some basis in reality don't really stick. At first we went to the hospital because of an infection I was having or something, which of course means I should be sent up to Labor & Delivery. But this hospital was a zoo. I mean that in a figurative way, but it was really crowded and not exactly clean, which is, well, BAD for a hospital. There were people running around not knowing where to go, and L&D switched to being just a general hospital but with too many people for the LDR (labor, delivery, recovery) rooms they had.

So we're waiting around for a room, and I'm deliriously trying to crawl around the cafeteria (which is in the same area as in-take) when my tray full of broccoli and jello went flying and I turned into a blubbering mess on the floor. At that same moment, my in-laws show up and expect Andy to give them all of his attention, because it's TOTALLY normal for someone to fly across the country when your expectant daughter-in-law goes to the hospital. For an infection. But I was back in L&D at this point, so of course I must be having my baby. (I should mention here that I love my in-laws; they're incredibly generous and understanding about how quickly Andy made me his top priority, so it's really weird that they would be so demanding in my dream).

Not actually being in labor, we leave the hospital (as in, just walk out like we hadn't registered with the in-take nurses, which I'm sure would be fun for them) and go...somewhere. Suddenly I don't have an enormous belly, but I'm still pregnant, and we're walking around deserted construction sites that have giant gaping holes and rotting floors because that's a perfectly safe thing to do. Until a floor gives out from under me and I have to cling to something to keep from falling down 10 feet, but Andy and his dad (who apparently were 10 feet tall) pick me up and carry me off to safety like a bag of potatoes. All that stress actually does put me into labor, so we go back to the hospital.

Remember when I said there were too many people at the hospital? Yeah, they decide to put me in a room which apparently had previously been occupied by a really wealthy woman and hadn't been fully cleared out yet. That, or all rooms come equipped with scary looking stuffed animals for all the newborns that aren't even aware of them and a professional caterer who makes food that would have been more appropriate for a cocktail party for everyone in the delivery room. The nurse keeps sneaking me canapes so I can eat something (seeing as I had a stellar meltdown in the cafeteria), and then they start prepping me for delivery and doing just about everything I've specifically requested to NOT have in my birth plan. I try to tell them "No, I'm only 26 weeks, I'm just here for an infection" and they just tell me to push, despite the fact that I haven't had any contractions, and in reality I was only 22 weeks. The dream kept going on and on with me telling them I was a different number of weeks every time, anywhere from 20 to 28 (apparently you can reverse your pregnancy in dreams). Then I actually started contractions and woke up. How's that for a doozy of a dream?

So yeah, I'm hoping that my dreams get a little less bizarre, or at least don't happen every night. Though it could be worse, I guess. For the past month, I've been waking up to pee between 1 and 3 every single night (like you do when your bladder is losing real estate in your pelvic cavity), which has been stopping most of my dreams. Chances are some of the dreams would have gotten weirder before I woke up. Other fun effects of pregnancy include itching all ove and a constant appetite. The itching is probably half having my skin stretch out and half from the weather, but it's still no fun. But the appetite probably means just one thing: growing baby.

I'm pretty sure Little One has just gone through a growth spurt, what with me being hungry not long after eating and the huge growth of my belly, seemingly overnight. My coat is just about to the point that I can't even button it (you can see the belly even when I have the coat on), so I'll be switching to my fancy-schmancy maternity peacoat tomorrow. I'm also pretty sure that my earliest maternity shirts will be too tight by New Year's. Her movements are getting a lot easier to feel, and a lot of her kicks are pretty strong. Friday morning I thought it might be enough for Andy to feel soon, and that evening he got to feel her for the first time, making several kicks that were actually kind of painful at times. He looked so happy to finally feel it though, and it really made our day. I will have you know though, (TMI alert) it's really distracting to feel her kicking during the previously mentioned Frisky time. Kind of like having the dog watching, but with less noise.

As of last Sunday, Little One was a full pound and about 8 inches long. Her senses are developing, and by now she can feel enough that she grabs her umbilical cord just for fun. She can open and shut her eyes and see enough that if we put a flashlight against my belly (which I'm not quite cruel enough to try...yet), she would turn away and push against me to get it away from her. Her fingernails are completely formed, and her brain is rapidly developing. Her skin is getting thicker and thicker, so she's looking less like a transparent alien and more like a real baby, or a doll as so many books put it. And in just over four months (hopefully not too much more), we'll finally get to meet her.

Week 21 - About My Dad

I've been trying to figure out how to write this all week. There's somthing I've wanted to talk about that I haven't touched on much, but now seems like the right time. Go ahead and grab a box of tissues now.

Today would have been my dad's 50th birthday. He had a heart attack at 44, partially because of genetics, partially because of an enlarged heart that was weakened by working so hard, and partially because of a strong fondness for ice cream and other goodies. I struggled a lot after he died, having left some things unsaid. I wish I had just taken the 20 minutes and gone to see him and tell him I loved him the day before. My father-in-law was one of the last people to talk to him, and had told him that I had been in town the night before but decided to wait until Saturday to come by. It killed me that he died knowing I had decided he could wait.

Eventually I moved past my guilt and anger (he had done some pretty crappy stuff that we found out about afterwards, but I won't get into that here) and have been through some of life's biggest moments without him. Graduation didn't hurt too much, since I walked before actually finishing, having needed another semester after taking incompletes for some courses (one asshat professor felt that 3 weeks was plenty of time to grieve and catch up on missed material before taking the final - I seriously wanted to punch him). My wedding was joyous but still hard at times. Somehow I knew he wouldn't be there, I just had always thought it was because we would end up estranged. But being a parent? I never thought he wouldn't be there when I had my first child.

My dad was the moody-yet-funny one in the family. When he wasn't being grouchy (or downright mean), he was joking and good with all the kids. I had always imagined what a wonderful grandpa he would be, pulling the same jokes and stunts that my cousins and I had seen a thousand times, making our favorite foods when we came by for a visit. I know exactly how he would respond if we could tell him in person that he would be a grandpa: wrap me in the perfect hug and then proclaim "Outstanding!". I don't know why, but that ended up being my dad's phrase of choice for anything that deserved commendation or praise. Any time I hear it, I think of him.

So now I'm grieving again, though not as hard as the first time. And through it all, I'm wondering if I'm ready for all this. Can I handle the stresses of daily life and keeping a career moving and supporting my kids? Will I end up a hard-ass like he could be sometimes, or go too far in the other direction, being too lax because I don't want my kids to ever be afraid of me? I try to keep tabs on my health so I catch any heart disease early, but I think of how much exercise he got in PT with the Guard (he served full time at our local National Guard Armory) and worry that I won't be around long enough for my own daughter. He was so young, and I could just as easily be at risk. And while I may be lucky enough to have not have inherited his dad's genes for major heart disease, that doesn't mean my size isn't an issue. You would think it would just be a bigger motivator to get healthy, but sadly my perfectionist tendencies leave me reluctant to start something that will be too hard for my body (like the prenatal yoga disaster) or that I don't like enough to keep up with. Which would have him lecturing me about being disciplined, blah, blah, blah. Dad's lectures were not one of his most endearing qualities.

But I do know there are a couple things I learned from my dad about what kind of parent I want to be. So many of my fond memories are just simple routines that we had. Mugs of chamomile tea with honey before a long drive early in the morning. Walking the dogs every evening and talking about our days. Learning to make different Hungarian foods that he had growing up. He was someone I could talk to when I was a moody teenager, and I really want that with my kids. To give them a place that they feel listened to and validated. Of course, Murphy's Law says I'll have teenagers who want me to leave them alone because I'm smothering them. Go figure. But I think most people just end up trying to give their kids the things they couldn't have, and it's hard for kids to understand where their parents are coming from because we strive to give them something else. Hence a lot of the tension in adolescent years.

So, onto happier things. Little One is about the size of a large banana. I would make an "are you just happy to see me?" joke, but I'm sort of fresh out of funny right now. She's learning to swallow amniotic fluid right now, and her taste buds have developed enough that she can taste the foods I'm eating. I'm sure she's sick of Thanksgiving leftovers and bananas by now, since that's what we had a lot of this week. Soon, she'll be getting a whole lot of eggnog as we set up our Christmas tree. Yum!

Ultrasound Pictures!

Hey look! Pictures from the ultrasound! And it only happened 10 days ago...

I was going to do a cutesy side-by-side explaining what exactly, these are showing. But if I did that, then you would never see these. So here we go:

Here's a nice profile shot with her nose which she was so damned determined to hide before.

And one of her actual face so you can see her eyes. The creepy looking lips are especially fun.

And this is a side-by-side of her feet. Why the tech got a shot like this, I don't remember, but...yay, toes!

And these two are the ones that need some help explaining. Basically, she was laying face down across my uterus, and then she tucked/crossed her legs sort of "Indian-style" giving us a perfect view of the three lines that say "this is not a scrotum". There are helpful arrows that the tech added for us in case you have no idea what you're looking at. Oh wait, that's everybody.

So there you go, pictures! Look for a full post tomorrow. It'll be kinda long and kinda sad. Sorry about that.