I Maed Dis

Yipes! Demand for more information is higher than I anticipated! When I found out I was pregnant I decided to keep open a handy dandy draft in blogger to document some thoughts and feelings I was having, trying to keep it concise and to the point, and now that the cat is out of the bag I can finally share it!
A quick explanation about the instagram photo. Early this year, we began seriously talking about trying to get pregnant. It has always been our plan that Mark would be the "breadwinner" and I would be the "SAHM" (stay-at-home-mom), continuing to utilize my musical abilities to scootch a little extra cash now and again into our bank account but really focusing on the home. I desperately wanted to quit my soulcrushing job after my year mark (in May) but then the enticement of a severance package entered in and I was chained to the desk for at least a few more months. Blessedly, it ended a month earlier than expected and we hit the grindstone! (too much? #sorrynotsorry)
Anyway, my cutsie plan that I got far too attached to was to be able to announce IN Disneyland that I was pregnant. But the months went by and more sticks came out negative but then the week of the trip it gave me the answer I was hoping for. I still didn't want to say anything while we were there however, considering I was barely 5 weeks along and wouldn't have any concrete proof. I hadn't even been to the OB yet! So we took photos while we were there and dolled up a "First Visit" pin and I waited none-too-patiently for the time when we would finally have an ultrasound.
Now for #babyziggy. The morning my mom, sister, and I hit the road for Disneyland, my dad came out to send us off and said to me, "take care of that little zygote!" He'd been referring to 'it' as "the zygote" and I thought it was cute and the nickname "ziggy" popped into my head. Perfectly gender neutral and now I don't hafta call my baby an 'it' until we know what the gender is.

We're so ecstatic and I can't stop looking at all our ultrasound pictures. If I can figure out how to snag them off of Mark's google+, there may be videos included at the end of this post. Please enjoy my pregnant ramblings (more often complainings).

[10/28/14] I chose a poor day/moment to start this out.

Turns out I am [most likely] pregnant. (!!!!)
Parenthetical excitement courtesy of my current inability to muster much more energy than it takes to slump pitifully in an office chair and sluggishly type some thoughts out so I can post them later. Much later on. Because I just hit 6 weeks today. And that means I'm only halfway through my first trimester. So I guess /fistpump for making it through the first sexmester. #giggle

But also that's the first time I've thought about it that way and I'm halfway through the first trimester! Yikes! Granted, the moment you find out you're already about a month along so really it's not saying much.

The reason it's a poor day/moment to start journaling this pre-announcement period is because this is the first morning I've really felt icky. But just for continuity's sake, I'll start right from the beginning.

We have been trying for a couple of months. I was irrationally paranoid about the question of my fertility and the more negative tests I accumulated the more I was convinced there was something wrong with me. I had no other reason to believe this could be so other than the fact that I am adopted so my family medical history is unknown and "who knows what could be wrong with me!" Which is/was silly. But it felt real for those few months.
I knew my period was supposed to be coming around soon, but I woke up Monday morning, the 20th of October, and I felt really normal. Definitely lacking any gearing-up-for-period feelings. So I checked my tracking app and the words "0 days left" greeted me. With a shrug of my shoulders and a black cloud of doubt over my mind, I meandered downstairs for a pee stick.
I ignored the steadily inflating balloon of hope. I shoved it away, tucked under my spleen probably, where I could keep it from leaking the excitement. I told myself it would be just like all the other times.

I think "stunned" would be a good word to use here. Like being shot with a phaser set on stun with a side of freaking elated. I stared and stared and grinned at that word while the phrase "Holy moly" repeated on loop in my mind, sometimes staggering out of my mouth.
I didn't know what to do next. I obviously needed more pee sticks and prenatals and "oh shoot, I don't even have a doctor, and I gotta figure out how to tell Mark...Mark! It's only nine in the morning! Am I really going to wait until six or later to tell him?!"
I knew I didn't want to just text him the photo of the pee test. I knew I wanted to try something more special than that. But I also knew it would be a looooong long day if I tried to just keep it to myself for nearly ten hours.
So I procrastinated.
I went to the store to buy the next set of tests while also grabbing some prenatal vitamins, ginger ale, and random food bits that sounded good at the moment. The cashier casually checked me out and as I was paying she eyed me and asked, "so...are you?"
My still stuck in shock brain flubbered for a moment and I gaped at her silently.
"Are you pregnant?"
"I uh, I think I might be. I'm late and I took one test this morning that came out positive."
More grinning like a loon.
"Well congratulations, I hope you are!"
"Thank you!"

I hope that random cashier at Walmart realizes that she was the very first human on this earth to know that I suspected I was pregnant.
After I brought everything home and got it all stuck away and took some vitamins I couldn't stand it any more and had to send Mark a message.
I went outside and got the best shot of the dogs I could muster, edited it with my fat finger on my sub-par phone app and sent it over gmail chat with the caption "the boys wanted you to know how the test came out this morning!"

*please appreciate my clever pun, plzthxbai*

But apparently the message wasn't exactly clear enough because the conversation ensued as such:

Such eloquent. Very words. So wow.

From that moment on about 7 in the morning I would pop awake and find it completely impossible to fall asleep again and at 7 in the evening I would feel mildly nauseous. That's still happening only I guess now the sick feeling is extending to morning as well, so cheerio on that. But! I am most certainly not complaining because there has been no actual puking yet so for that I am eternally grateful.
But I do have a bit of a head cold. Kinda divebombed me the night before we drove out for our Disneyland trip and just stuck around for probably the heck of it. Rude.

So now I'm back home and rehabilitating our house back into a semblance of an adult abode considering I'm supposed to be prepping to be a mommy now #unpreparedlikewhat?
But it's just after eleven and so far I've started laundry (mounds and mounds of it but at least it's started!) and finished the dishes and wiped down the kitchen and, now, blogged a bit. Oh, and I fed the dogs. They're alive so kids should be a breeze, right??

[11/16/2014]

Meh. All the meh.
The sickness has taken deep root in my tummy and just made itself at home. Constantly. I spend a lot of time hanging around the bathroom with a towel on the floor to kneel on but nothing ever really happens (except one awful morning but I'm pretty sure it was my fault, how dare I try to brush my teeth) so now I basically shlup around the house trying to do stuff, crippled with anxiety about throwing up at any moment.
I hate vomiting. I hate it. It makes me anxious and irritable and even if I'm not the one sick I don't deal well with it. (Guess how well that's sitting on my feelings about becoming a mom.) In the past few weeks I've discovered that it's not the actual act of vomiting that I detest, it's the anticipation. The build up. The contemplation of what's about to happen. I find myself thinking often, "if only I could just actually throw up, then maybe I'd feel better..."
BUT I am so, so, so, indescribably grateful that I just feel bad. I can handle feeling bad. I know it could be so much worse and I could be dehydrated and need medical help and be worrying about the health of my baby so if it has to be miserable, I'd prefer this over anything else.

I'm a little peeved with the OB office considering I know absolutely zero things about how this is all supposed to go. So when I called them that fateful day of the positive pee stick and said, "this is my first time I don't know how this works," and she asked the date of my last period and then told me to come in that monday I just figured, "okay! sounds good!" I didn't realize that it's basically useless to go in before 8 weeks or so.
SO I still, as of yet, have not heard the heartbeat or seen an ultrasound of the munchkin in my belly. My next appointment isn't until 12 weeks, December 9th. I was telling Mark the other day that it's a good thing that, obviously, you don't have your period for the whole of pregnancy because otherwise everything else I would probably be explaining away out of paranoia. Having had no concrete confirmation yet there's still a tiny voice in the back of my mind that's like, "noooo, nah you can't be pregnant, that's silly, no, nope." And then when I DO accept it the fact that they didn't check the heartbeat has me irrationally paranoid that something will inevitably be wrong.
But I'm trying to be sensible about it and just take deep breaths and not stew in worry for the next month. Although I suppose stewing in worry is my new state of being for the rest of my life now.

In summation, eating food is a chore, laying on the couch or the floor with a pillow and blanket is my saving grace, and I can never get enough water. It's time for a Disney movie.

[12/8/2014]

Tomorrow is our first ultrasound and I am so beyond describably stoked. And terrified. And excited. And nervous. Mark got the day off so he could come with me and depending on the news I may be forcing him to take me out to lunch somewhere afterward. He's practically giddy with teasing me that it could turn out to be twins since we know nothing and my birthmother did indeed have twins a few years after I was adopted. And they are fraternal. So genetics is blaring like a neon sign in the back of my mind. But beyond that I just can't wait to finally have some visual and auditory evidence of the little bean(s) that I can pull up whenever I'm feeling poopy and remember the reason for all of it.
Speaking of feeling poopy, my second trimester starts tomorrow and already I've been feeling much, much better. Praise, hallelujah. The way I described it to Mark is that now I just feel like I ate some bad yogurt rather than staking out all the places I could inconspicuously puke whenever I step outside the house. I felt like the nauseous version of Jason Bourne..."I come in here and the first thing I'm doing is I'm catching the sightlines and looking for an exit." But by sightlines I mean trashcans and other such projectile catching bins. But regardless, I am so incredibly grateful that the nausea has abated. December is always a busy month but to be performing multiple times a week right up until Christmas takes its toll when I'm not winded by walking up the stairs or driving the car. So yeehaw for feeling alright. And Christmas.
Poor Mark was on call this past week and missed our first two Christmas concerts, one of which was at the temple lights. He also missed my dad performing with a community college in singing Handel's Messiah (or at least highlights thereof, they didn't do the entire thing). He mentioned that it was particularly bumming him out because usually these things are what help him get into the Christmas mindset. It's tricky here in Arizona when "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" basically means Walmart has tree decorations and lights for sale. Most of my childhood years were spent in Utah and he lived in Iowa for a few years and we both love the White Christmas effect. Me a tad more so than him, but still. We miss it.
Our Christmas shopping is nearly finished. We're still waiting on a few mailed items to arrive and we need to get a couple white elephant gags but beyond that we're all set! We went super conservative on buying for each other this year, agreeing to only get one thing each. Which wasn't totally fair because he bought me (exactly what I asked for) a body pillow for this growing whale belly and it was, of course, pretty expensive. And then I found the perfect gift for him, a recipe book detailing the "secrets" of Asian cooking, and it was, naturally, $15. So we'll also be getting him a new pair of shoes because his current ones are absolutely falling off his feet.
We're also in the middle of selling our house and rather than pull out all the packed decorations, I just set up a little "Christmas Corner" where we have a tiny tree, poinsettias, and a couple stockings surrounded by the presents we will be giving family and friends. It's cute and tiny and I'm glad I did it rather than just skipping decorating altogether.

[12/11/2014]

Ultrasounds are the BEEEEEEST!! I just want to stay at the OB office for the whole pregnancy and watch him/her the entire time. It's nice to finally have it OUT on social media so I can stop being careful about what I say and how I say it and who I say it to and blah blah blah. It's unfortunate that it was nearly impossible to not know so early on since we planned on trying and I was just super hyper aware of cycles and all that.
Not to mention I really, desperately wanted to be pregnant for disneyland. Originally the plan was to be close enough to 12 weeks that I could just announce it from disneyland, but that wasn't in the cards. I literally woke up that Monday morning, two days before our scheduled Disney Departure, and took the tests that told me I was pregnant. After experiencing my first trimester it's probably better that it happened that way anyway. If I had been in the throes of the first nausea era, it may have been a bittersweet trip for me. Instead, I had a glorious time, ate all the park food I wanted (although sadly the fishy smell of the chowder bowls set my gag reflex on edge so we skipped that) (#devastated), and only had to be mildly careful about the repetitions of wild rides such as Screamin' or Ghost Galaxy, and even Star Tours.
Right now, I'm munching on lots of fruit because I'm too lazy (or we could call it fatigued) to assemble some semblance of a real meal. And peanut butter is tasting dangerously good. Taking small licks from the spoon to try and convince myself it isn't awful what I'm doing. Better peanut butter than nutella or ice cream, right? I actually don't know, nutella and peanut butter may be very close in caloric value...
Every time I look at an ultrasound I just want to pat my baby's little round tummy and kiss it and hold them and guys, I may not make it to June. This is impossible.
Until next time I feel like blabbing, or at the very least January 21st when we go in for round 2 of ultrasounds! Thanks to everyone that has already been so happy for us and congratulating us. We're so happy it's going well and that we get to share the happiness with all of you :)

Does this qualify me for oversharing Mom yet?