Some exciting news

At 2:00 am on March 16, sweet Meo woke up in his room and while Robbie went to get him to bring him to our bed, I got up to pee on a stick. I was almost a week late and hopeful; this was our first month of trying though and I tried not to be too eager. Actually, I have to tell you about the month prior before I tell you the result (aha, see how it feels to wait three minutes for the test to respond??).

Robbie and I had been considering trying for another baby, but we were really worried for a variety of reasons. Mainly we were worried that Meo wouldn't be ready. I was/am afraid that I won't be able to give him nearly as much attention once there is a newborn in the house AND I won't be able to give the newborn my undivided attention like I did Meo. It will have to be completely different. But I love how we have been able to raise Meo so far, and it scares me to death to think about changing things. Second, I know some moms have difficulty breastfeeding through pregnancy. Meo is certainly not ready to be done and neither am I. Third, we were worried for financial reasons. So after trying just one time, we changed our minds and decided to wait a few more months. Well, during that month I started getting really tired and having to pee like crazy. Then wen my period was late, I thought for sure I was pregnant. I took four tests over the course of that week, and after 6 days I had a very bad morning when I started my period. I was confused because I had had about 4 periods since Meo was born, and they were always one day after the predicted day. When 6 days went by, I had been so convinced I was pregnant. Robbie and I were so disappointed, we realized that maybe we didn't want to wait after all, and we started trying the next month.

This month I was feeling tired again. I decided that maybe I need to be running more because sometimes I get sleepy if I don't get enough exercise. I had been walking a lot, but not running like I used to. I was still tired after running though. Also, I started getting fat this month! I thought I was bloated and was going to start my period soon for sure. But My pants were all getting sooo tight and uncomfortable I was getting anxious. I hadn't been eating any differently and had been exercising. I decided that if this was how bloated I was going to get every month, that my periods were going to suck until menopause, because I did not like being that bloated. Even Robbie made a surprised face when I showed him how much much stomach stuck out, and I got frustrated and told him, "well watch Meo so I can run more!"

Then my period was late again. This time I didn't buy any tests though. I decided I wasn't even going to consider the possibility of being pregnant until Saturday morning (6 days late) when I had yoga class and would need to know either way so I wouldn't hurt the baby if I was (you need to do poses differently while pregnant). So Friday night we bought a test, and early Saturday morning I took it.

And...

I am pregnant! I was so excited and a little shocked because I really hadn't allowed myself to hope. I thought I would go hide the test on Robbie's phone so when he went to turn the alarm off in the morning he would see it. But when I walked in the room, I couldn't stop smiling and blurted it out right away. We are so, incredibly happy :).

I should also note that we don't really have all the concerns we had before. Meo is already getting to the point where he plays independently happily for good stretches everyday, and he already enjoys helping do things around the house. Nine months from now (he will be around 2 years and 3 months old) he will probably really enjoy helping me take care of his new sibling. Plus, Meo has a real nurturing nature. He kisses his stuffed Gobo and feeds him crackers, when we met a newborn baby, he sat next to me with a big grin and gently patted and kissed the baby, and when he was around a baby doll the other day I showed him how to hold it and he walked around the house cradling the baby and giving it kisses. I think he's not only ready, but will be a wonderfully sweet over brother. I will do my best to find balance with both children...I hope it comes as naturally as parenting just Meo has so far.

So far, (I am writing this at 5 weeks and 4 days pregnant) this pregnancy has been going great. Meo is still nursing like a champ...for a little while after I found out he started nursing a lot more than usual, but now things are back to normal. There was also a couple days where my nipples got a little sore when he nursed, but that has seemed to stop as well (or I've already gotten used to it and don't notice any discomfort anymore). I am already showing...I heard things happen more quickly the second time around and it's certainly true. It's like my body registered that I'm pregnant and instantly popped out into "pregnant belly mode". My pants are too tight so I wear sweat pants and yoga pants a lot except when I go out. We aren't telling people that I'm pregnant (except for immediate family and a couple friends) until at least after my first appointment in case anything distressing happens. So hopefully people don't just think I'm getting fat and lazy hehe.

One thing that is different about this pregnancy is that I don't have morning sickness (so far at least)! My appetite isn't quite what it used to be and sometimes I feel slightly queasy, but not enough so that I feel even remotely like vomiting. Last time it seemed like I couldn't keep anything down, I had to eat just the right combination of things otherwise I would throw up, and I usually had to have a cup of ginger tea with every meal or I would be nauseous. Also I had morning sickness through my entire pregnancy. So not having any so far is kind of amazing.

Other symptoms include being emotional (I tend to cry a lot more easily than usual...I won't go into specifics hehe), being more forgetful and being super tired. If I'm home, I take a nap with Meo, otherwise I am a zombie by the time Robbie gets home. This week we were busy and out almost every day, and I thought I was going to fall asleep in the car. It's pretty bad. I keep telling people I'm tired, and I think especially the working moms are probably rolling their eyes because who am I to complain that I am tired when I can make my own schedule. I can't wait to be able to tell people so I don't feel so silly in my sweatpants, with my tear-stained tired eyes. Well, I hope it's not that bad hehe.

I'm trying to keep up with at least walking everyday, and I am also continuing to do Iyengar yoga at the Portland Yoga Studio. Unfortunately they don't have enough interest to have the prenatal class that I took last time (and met some amazing mothers), so for now I am continuing in my normal class with the same teacher I took prenatal yoga with. I also try to find time to do yoga at home. We can't afford a gym membership, so I am not doing water aerobics and cardio at the gym like I did last time, but I am trying to run at home. So far we have only been able to figure out how to fit it in once a week, but now that the sun is out longer, we might be able to work it out so I can run a little more. Meo and I have been doing a lot of snowshoeing though, which is just as excellent a form of exercise in my opinion. Especially with an over 25 pound toddler on my back. I have to pause more often because I get winded so quickly now!

Running (4 weeks, 6 days pregnant)

Very tired snowshoe ( 5 weeks, 4 days pregnant)

So everything is going great, and we hope that everything continues going well and that we will have a strong healthy baby joining our family sometime around November 18, 2013!

Second Ultrasound and the Gender Revealed

On Monday I had my second ultrasound. This time Robbie, his mom, and my two moms all came to come see the baby which was special and fun.

Us waiting in the waiting room

This ultrasound lasted about an hour. There were two doctors, a male and a women that he seemed to be training. During the ultrasound they were taking very close looks at vital organs such as the brain and heart, as well as taking measurements of the baby's limbs and searching for gender. During this ultrasound I was unfortunately experiencing a lot of morning sickness, and after about 20 minutes of having my stomach pushed on really hard I couldn't take it anymore and had to trot off to the bathroom to throw up my breakfast and all the water I drank (I thought I needed a full bladder this time so I went overboard with drink prior to the appointment- but it turns out I didn't need a full bladder and I drank myself sick for nothing). After I got sick though, I felt great and was able to enjoy the whole experience a lot more. It was wonderful to see the baby again, and great to see that it was growing and healthy. Robbie was joking around when we saw the baby's nose saying that it looks like it has his big nose. The doctor said that everything looks perfectly normal and great. About 10 minutes before he was finished looking around, I had to run off to the bathroom again. But this time I didn't have to vomit. Instead I squatted and leaned against the wall and start sweating suddenly. I thought I was going to faint. Apparently my body was not in the mood for an ultrasound anymore. I felt pretty silly having to keep running off. But one nice thing about about getting up repeatedly was that the baby moved around as well (it was doing cartwheels in my uterus) and so the doctor was able to see the baby from new improved view points.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the whole appointment was finding out the gender of the baby. The doctor focused in on the opening between the baby's legs and asked us if we had any guesses as to what it was. Robbie saw and very excitedly bursted out, "I think it's a boy" followed by the doctor saying "I think you are right!" Right before either of them said anything I had a strong feeling that it was a boy, but I didn't want to say anything...I had this weird feeling that I could somehow change the outcome. But we are having a baby boy! Yay! We are going to name him Mattimeo Robinson and call him Meo for short...but we still have to come up with a middle name. We are so excited that having a healthy little boy. Robbie really wanted a son, so he is super excited! Here are some pictures from the ultrasound, including a gender photo.

Mattimeo at 19 Weeks

Mattimeo at 19 Weeks

Mattimeo at 19 Weeks

Gender! This shows Meo's legs and the little hand arrow in-between his legs is pointing to his penis!

Happy future parents

We are very happy that we know we are having a baby boy. It is making it easier for us to bond with him because now he seems more real. It's easier for us to talk to my tummy now that we can call him by his name. I think maybe for our next baby we will keep it a surprise, but it was so much fun finding out with all of our moms this time and knowing that there will be so many other things to be surprised about on Meo's birthday I am glad we allowed ourselves this little indulgence this time around.

Tonight we had a fun little revealing party hosted by our good friend Lindsay. I had to wait all week not to tell any of our friends what we were having (which was so hard!) so that they could be surprised tonight. It was so much fun, Lindsay made some cupcakes and injected them with blue frosting. The we covered up the evidence with white frosting. It was so much fun to watch everyone bit into the cupcakes and find out what the baby is going to be! It was worth the wait to be there and celebrate all together. Thanks Lindsay!

Cupcakes pre-injection

Lindsay preparing cupcakes

Lindsay injecting the cupcakes

Me adding the white frosting to hide the evidence

Nick, Tatyana and Gib: some of our revealing party participants

It's a boy!

15 Weeks!

Already 15 Weeks! It seems to be going by quickly lately. Everything is going well. I am certainly showing now, and can't comfortably wear a lot of my normal cloths. Luckily I am not completely without options. I have a couple of outfits that Mom and Sam had gotten for me, plus Aunt Darlene brought me her overalls to borrow, and someone I walk dogs (Kate) for gave me her belly band. It's fun to have a belly, it makes the pregnancy feel more real.

Fetus at 15 Weeks

I haven't been as nauseous anymore which is great. Sometimes I am a little in the morning before breakfast, but definitely not like I used to be. I also feel a bit more energized. Most days I am fine without taking a nap. Although Tuesdays are really tough for me. On those days I run an adventure program with my co-worker Kate and we pick up 6-10 dogs (depending who's signed up that week) and take them someplace where they can run around off-leash for a few hours. We try to go someplace new each week, so we walk a lot of trails and visit lots of beaches. Then right after adventure I have to walk a few more dogs for regular walks (takes about 1.5 hours). By the time I am finished picking everyone up and dropping them off I have been running around non-stop from about 7:30 am to 2:00 pm and am physically exhausted. Tuesdays are the days I take naps! It is a lot of fun and it's nice to get so much fresh air and exercise, but I have to be careful and make sure that its not getting to be too much of a workout for me. Plus walking dogs this time of the year is pretty dangerous for me. I've been wearing nonslip studs on my boots to help prevent falling, but it still gets really slippery. In general, the dogs have been pretty good about not pulling, but I have had a couple minor slips. Years of clumsiness has taught me to be a pretty good faller, so I've managed to have pretty controlled/painless falls. But it only takes one bad fall to mess everything up, which worries me! Mom has been coming on Tuesdays and days when I have a few dogs in order to help me out so I don't fall, which is awesome. Plus I think the chocolate lab, Ruby, senses that I am pregnant (her mom just had two babies, she is the one who lent be her belly band and has been awesome to talk to). On Tuesday it was really icy and Ruby would walk really slowly beside me, never pulling, and even stop to sit and wait for me if I was going really slow during an especially slick stretch. She looked so concerned, she is the sweetest!

Me walking Casco and Ruby

Casco and Ruby after wrestling in the snow during our walk

Bodie, Tika and Kelley running through the forest during adventure

Yesterday, it was really snowy! Robbie ended up working from home on his laptop, and I didn't have to walk any dogs. We ended up playing Wii Fit in the evening to get some exercise, which was a bunch of fun. We hadn't played that since we were still living in Waterboro. Now that I am pregnant, it felt like much more of a workout!

Wii boxing with a baby belly

I think the only other thing new this week I'd like to add is that I've been finding it a little more difficult to get comfortable in bed. There was a couple of nights where I kept tossing and turning and couldn't find a position that either didn't squish my belly and make me nauseous, or made me feel like I couldn't breath. But I figured out that if I stuff a pillow or two between my legs, it gives me the extra space I need for my belly and makes it much easier to breath. I know this will only get worse in my third trimester, but I think it was just taking my body a little getting used to having a belly to deal with!

Morning Sickness

I was really excited about breakfast this morning: porridge with fresh strawberries, bananas and milk with a mug of maternity tea. Unfortunately, I immediately through up after eating it all. I am trying so hard to get good healthy foods to this baby, but sometimes it's so hard! I take my time eating in the morning because that's when it's most difficult for me to eat, and I thought I was going to be able to keep it down this time, but I couldn't. So for now I am settling for an organic cheese stick so I at least get something in my belly before I go walk dogs.

Pregnancy Symptoms

So far since I've been pregnant I've been feeling pretty good. But I have been having many symptoms that I am going to share now in case anyone is interested:

Frequent Urination: Especially at night, I've been having to pee a lot. I think I usually get up about 3-5 times in the night. This is annoying to me because I usually am having a great dream that is interrupted by my dream-self having to pee. But my kitty Pi loves it, he races into the bathroom with me and perches on the sink waiting for me to turn on the faucet for him so he can get a quick drink of water.

Morning Sickness: I have been feeling nauseous everyday nearly all day long. It is usually strongest in the morning because I'm hungry (I might start putting snacks next to my bed so its not so bad) and is mild the rest of the day. It almost feels like I am slightly carsick constantly. But its so mild that most of the time I don't even notice it. I have been lucky because until this morning, I hadn't even thrown up. There has been instances where I was nearly going to but I have been able to walk it off, take deep breaths and convince myself that I am fine and have no reason to throw up. This morning I made the mistake of doing yoga on an empty stomach (you aren't supposed to eat before yoga) and was really hungry after. I decided to drink some juice while I was making porridge, but I guess that was a mistake and I threw up the juice (and probably my vitamin). I felt surprisingly refreshed after though, which was nice. Hopefully that was the first and last vomit session I have. I will have tea or something before yoga next time.

Drowsiness: These days, I am all about taking naps. Especially after dog walking. This was actually one of the reasons I thought I might be pregnant a long time ago. I was starting to get tired really easily. This was weird because about 4 or 5 months ago I started taking vitamins (New Chapter Organics) and they helped me feel energized all day. I had been sleepy a lot, probably because I was missing something in my diet, and the vitamins made a huge difference. So I was surprised when one week I started getting sleepy again. But it hasn't been so bad. Usually I still have lots of energy, its just after I do a lot of walking that I feel like a nap. Tuesdays are the worst because I have adventure from 7:30-11:30 in the morning (non stop walking/hiking), then I have a quick bite to eat and walk 4 dogs which takes about 2 hours. By 2:00 I am ready for a nap and the last two weeks have managed to fall asleep until Robbie gets home from work. Luckily Mom has been helping me with the dogs, especially on Tuesdays. She keeps me company and walks a couple of them so I don't have to hold all four at once...a couple of them are a bit rowdy.

Eye Pain: This is by far the worst thing I've had to deal with. A couple of weeks before I took a pregnancy test, my eyes really started to bother me. They were burning and watering, and really sensitive to sunlight to the point where I was driving with one eye even with sunglasses. It was pretty bad. I stopped wearing contacts for a couple of days and it seemed to be getting better, so I put in a new pair, but the symptoms came back so I went to the eye doctor. She saw no signs of infection or anything and assumed I must have contaminated my contacts somehow, and since I hadn't changed the case when I switched lenses, I probably contaminated the new lenses too. So I changed lenses again, this time using a new case and a fresh bottle of solution. But last week the symptoms came back. Friday was really bad, my eyes were burning and it was awful to even look up in a lit room. I noticed the pain was dulled when I turned off the heat and opened a window. And when I was driving, I kept the heat off and rolled down the windows too. I did some research to see if other pregnant women have had these symptoms and it looks like they have. Apparently because of the hormonal changes your body goes through while pregnant, some people aren't able to produce natural tears as easily which lead to dry eyes. This causes grittiness, burning and sensitivity to light...exactly what I have been experiencing. That would explain why my eye didn't hurt so much when I was outside in the moist, cool air. My research suggested that I contact my eye doctor and have her recommend eye drops to use. So last Friday I called the doctor, spoke to the receptionist and described my symptoms, also telling her that I was pregnant now and thought it was a side effect of pregnancy. She told me to continue using GenTeal Eye drops several times a day and that she would write me a prescription. No one had the prescription available that day, so I didn't get it until Saturday. So in the meantime, Robbie and I decided to get a humidifier (one that boils water and produces steam) to put in our bedroom. I also bought a new bottle of GenTeal Eye drops because I realized my other ones had expired a year ago (whoops). The combination of humidifier and eye drops have done wonders for my eyes!

On Saturday I got my prescription and was surprised to see it was Bacitracin Ointment, which is a topical antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections. Even though it is topical, the anitbiotics can still get into my system and have a bad reaction with the fetus. It is also especially risky for women who plan to breastfeed (which I do). So I was not very excited about using the medication, and, since my eyes were feeling 100% better with the humidifier and eye drops, I have decided to forgo using it at all. I didn't have an infection three weeks ago when I came in with identical symptoms, I don't see why she thinks I have one now. I feel like the receptionist wasn't really listening me as she systematically ran through her checklist of symptoms. Maybe because I said my eye was red that day (from pouring water on it and non-stop fussing because I was in serious pain) and it was sticky in the mornings (from being so dry) they misinterpreted my symptoms as an infection or something. Anyways, I am not impressed and don't intend to use the antibiotics unless it's a last resort. My eyes have been great ever since, except for yesterday. But I think that's because I accidentally poked myself in the eye when I was putting drops in them in the morning. The irritated my left eye a bunch. Then during adventure, at three different points, the dogs jumped up and poked me in the same eye with their snouts. And two other times I got licked in THE SAME EYE. Unbelievable really. But it was no surprise that my eye was killing me when I got home. Today it is perfectly fine though. White and happy. Seems like the humidifier and eye drops will work out just fine. Here are a couple of articles about the dry eye symptoms:

Eye Problems During Pregnancy
Pregnancy and Dry Eyes

Lack of Appetite: Since I've been pregnant, I've been surprised that I haven't had any particular food cravings yet. I suspected this might be because I have been doing a good job of eating balanced meals, and my body hasn't been craving to fill in the voids. But about a week ago, I found that instead of cravings, I now can't seem to find food appetizing at all. Nothing looks good to me anymore. I have still been eating, because I know how important it is. Especially since I am vegetarian, I have to make sure I get several servings a protein each day. I just don't particularly enjoy food right now. And of course, I am nauseous all the time, so my body is telling me to eat, but then most food makes me sick just thinking about it. It's all very interesting and kind of annoying. The worst was when I ate tofurkey leftovers. I loved the tofurkey we had for Thanksgiving, and was so excited for the leftovers. I even was hoarding them from Robbie telling him I needed the protein. But after a couple of bites of leftovers (which tasted good) I was oddly repulsed by it. I couldn't even open the fridge and told Robbie he had to eat it the next day because just thinking about it made me want to vomit. I guess that's when it all started. The only thing I have craved was a couple of nights ago I really wanted Annie's cheese ravioli. But that's it so far, and that was only a one night thing. Ravioli DOES NOT sound good to me right now.