Team Fox

So I just realized that I did 2 posts for week 18 but none for week 19.  Since I’m still technically on week 19 (will be on week 20 tomorrow if we go by ultrasound dates or Thursday if we go by midwife’s math)… I figured that I would combine the two posts into one.

So yes, I do look preggo, whoever had any doubts should have them settled by now, like some people at work that didn’t seem to have heard the gossip and didn’t notice until they saw me walking around with a bump hugging shirt this week.

Now I wouldn’t feel bad for using the stork parking spot at Babies R Us, except that I haven’t gone there except for once in my life, lol.

This is me at 19 week in full maternity dress, lol.

Now I have to lean forward to be able to make sure that my shoes match:

Today we had another midwife appointment, everything is proceeding smoothly, we got a new recording of the heartbeat and started to discuss more things that had been postponed previously as being too soon.  This coming week marks the halfway point in Baby Fox’s cooking process, I am starting to feel like I need to stop procrastinating or I’ll be crunched and stressed near the end with learning and decisions to be made.

Thankfully I haven’t had much in the way of weird cravings, I do get a lot of “hmmm, I could really go for some _____” but that’s nothing new, I used to get that pre-bump.  The odd craving that I get regularly is caffeine, in the form of soda of all things.

I have never been a caffeine fan (with the exception of a short lived black tea addiction a few years ago), I’ve been known to go for years at a time without drinking any caffeinated dark cola and not miss it.  Now that I’m pregnant and making a conscious effort of avoiding caffeine, I find myself drooling over the top of drinking pepsi or coke, stuff I never really would drink if I could help it.

So my compromise is to get one serving per week in the form of a coke slurpee from 7-eleven.  It brings me so much joy… at the same time I’ve felt with the utter disappointment of going to the store and discovering that the machine is broken or that specific flavor is not available, I take those news hard!

And because situations like this are oh so helpful…

(I apologize for the crappy quality, I scanned it from a book.)

I find it helpful when others share their experiences, I do welcome and appreciate that.  It’s the individuals that dwell on the “everything that could go wrong, did go wrong” aspect without mentioning any positives (like you did get a baby in the end after all, isn’t that good?) that bug me.  Why are they trying to scare me with all the horrible things that could possibly happen, it’s not like I can change my mind now.

I do cherish those women that give a fair and balanced view of their experiences outlining both negatives and positive aspects, that part is truly helpful.

And yes, my appetite has greatly increased. Not only do I get hungry more often (although thankfully I’m now more likely to sleep through the night without having to get up to snack) but I’m also eating larger portions. The other day I finished a huge taco salad and was still looking around to see what I could eat next.

I actually have to be careful not to over do it, I can’t really justify the “eating for 2″ mentality because it’s not meant to imply “eat twice as much” since baby Fox only needs an extra fraction of the calories I need. I’ve gained 5 pounds since my last prenatal a month ago, the most so far but still within “normal” range.

So at first I didn’t think I had grown much at all until I realize that to one extent or another I show regardless of what I am wearing…

I don’t know if my subconscious is being hung up on semantics but I seem to respond a lot nicer to “you have a bump!” than when I am told “wow, you’re really showing!”, it’s not a conscious thing, it just happens.

What I find interesting is how I suddenly have so many relatives and friends that are pregnant. My oldest sister, my sister in law, several Miami friends, several Pagan friends, even midwives… is this the year of the baby?

I remember when I was single in Miami I only knew one pregnant woman at a time at the most, it just goes to show that just as the bump evolves so does life and the people around us.

And even though I’ve never watched the TV show Keeping up with the Kardashians, I can only hope that I’m half as cool in labor as Kourtney was. I didn’t (and probably never will) watch the whole episode, but I smiled at the clip of her water breaking. When do you ever see that televised beyond the ridiculous images of actors having a gallon of water dumped between their legs, then instantly doubling over with contractions and being rushed to the delivery room on a gurney?

video clips here.

When I bought into the idea of being pregnant I had no trouble accepting the fact of a lot of discomforts such as morning sickness, frequent trips to the restroom, sore breasts, cravings, back pain, swelling, moody hormones,  the self image issues from the changing body shape, pain and potentially long labor, potential complications, amongst many others.

After a miserable first trimester, I am happy to report that the second trimester has so far been rather kind to me, most days I don’t even “feel pregnant” except for the way my clothes fit (or don’t).

But there was one big pregnancy discomfort that I didn’t consider though, one that I wasn’t warned about…. other people.   The books and websites don’t really talk about this and I will admit that I sometimes prefer to have ’round the clock morning sickness come back than deal with people’s questions and comments.  This is my #1 pregnancy discomfort.

I don’t blame other people though, they have good intentions.  But as a reserved loner (some would call antisocial) personality, this pregnancy brings a lot more attention to my personal life than I like to share, add to that the same cliche questions over and over and we can have a disgruntled preggo woman rather quickly. 

Add to that the fact that as much as I like diplomacy I oftentimes lack the patience and will power to force myself to be “polite” and some people are walking on landmines by trying to be nice.

• FAQ #1- “Are you excited?”  (this is a repeat from my engagement/ wedding planning days, I still answer it the same)

• A- ::silence and stare:: or  “I never know how people EXPECT me to answer this one, I’m not unhappy if that’s what you mean“

(I always think WTF?! on this one, am I supposed to start giggling and bouncing?)  Am I excited to be pregnant?  yes, do I feel the need to proclaim it to the world and live each day as if I’m about to break into song and dance? no.

• FAQ #2-  How are you feeling?

• A-  Ok. (If I’m in a good mood I may say “tired” just to satisfy their expectation for a pregnancy complaint)

People LOVE to ask this question, even people that didn’t care whether I lived or died pre-baby.  The weird thing is their reaction when I say I feel ok, it’s as if they expect me to complain about morning sickness, pain or something else.  I may or may not be feeling great at the moment but I don’t feel the need to share that with anybody but my husband, midwife (and potentially my boss if it may affect my performance for that day).  Unless I look like I’m dying, it’s none of their business how I may feel, and if I do look like I’m dying, then chances are that I won’t want to talk about it.

• FAQ #3- What are you having?

• A- a baby

• #3a- I meant, is it a boy or girl?

• A- ::silence and stare::  (in lieu of “none of your business” or “how about you wait and find out until he/she is born like I am” or whatever other sarcastic/smart ass response I really want to give at that moment)

• FAQ #4- But don’t you want to know? (about the gender)

• A- If my curiosity didn’t let me sleep I would have already found out or there’s so few surprises left in life, why can’t I have this one? (although I really want to say:  “apparently not as badly as YOU want to know“)

• FAQ #5-  What are you hoping it is?
• A-  human… healthy  (if I’m in a good mood I may add “but I’ll take a kitten if that’s what I get“)
• 5a- I meant are you hoping for a boy or a girl?
• A- I don’t intend to set an expectation as to what gender it should be
• 5b- But you must have a preference?
• A- ::cold glare:: in lieu of “back off or I’ll punch you if you stop pushing your curiosity on me“

• FAQ #6-  When are you due?
• A-  In July (if I’m feeling generous I’ll add mid-to late)
• 6a- I meant which day?
• A- baby hasn’t given me a specific date and time

This is just a sample of the DAILY questions I get, I also get weekly questions such as “have you gone to the doctor?”, how many times do I need to tell you that I’m not seeing a doctor, it’s a midwife!, or did you pick a hospital?

I’m not looking forward to future questions  and comments such as “you haven’t had the baby yet?” … “I did but I changed my mind and put it back in”, “wow, you’re huge!”… “thank you for letting me know, I hadn’t noticed”

While in conversation I had made the statement that this is my #1 pregnancy discomfort, that person had the nerve to say “consider yourself lucky that you haven’t had worse things to complain about“  WTF?!

Why are people so obsessed by what I do or do not feel?  I’m starting to wonder if they get off on a pregnant woman’s suffering.  And then there’s those that just want an excuse to start telling you the horror stories about their pregnancies.   You want to know my discomforts?  Here’s your list, have fun.  And it’s by no means comprehensive…

First Trimester/ past discomforts:

- extreme fatigue
- non-stop morning sickness for 6 1/2 weeks
- boobs so sore that the shower stream on them made me want to cry
- back pain so horrible that I could barely move, drive properly and would wake up crying in pain for 1 1/2 weeks
- aversion to almost any smell

Second trimester- current or past discomforts (with more to come)

- regular trips to the restroom- every 2 hours on a lucky day, usually more often, I don’t remember the last time that I was able to sleep through the night
- occasional back pain
- increased appetite
- crying hormones/ having a harder time “getting over” things

Some people seem to be offended that I don’t show more of a Hello Kitty/Happy Cat personality, I tend to be happier than most but at the same time one of my keys to happiness is venting that which makes me unhappy.  If that makes me come off as a negative person that is a small price to pay for increased joy in my life.  I find that holding that which bugs me inside just makes me bitter, angry and resentful, it’s so much better to get it out.

I do enjoy most aspects of this pregnancy, I do admit that I get sad at the fact that I feel like time is not on my side when it comes to being able to fully savor the experience.  Lately I do feel like so much of my day is spent on work and other mundane tasks that barely have the chance to stop and appreciate the process that my body is going through.  I wish I could just work part time…

So over the past few days it was confirmed that yes, that is kicking and it’s become more and more common and it wakes me up in the middle of the night. It was cute at first but now I’m struggling to learn to sleep through the aerobics. After a couple of nights I only wake up for the particularly strong ones, such as when baby Fox doesn’t approve of my sleeping position (how I miss sleeping on my stomach…).

It’s all surprising to me because even though it’s normal to feel the baby at 16 weeks, as a first timer I wasn’t really expecting kicking sessions until another month or so, some people say that my compact size plays a role, who knows…

The bump keeps growing, can’t really hide it anymore. To strangers it may look like a love affair with McDonalds but to people that know me it’s pretty obvious that there’s a baby on board. I’ve got a new t-shirt that reads “Expecting: to kick your ass if you touch the bump”, it turns out that Spencers has a very cool maternity/baby section after digging past all of the “daddy is an asshole” merchandise, I can do lot of damage to the wallet in that small piece of wall.

On the hormonal front the questions is: will I ever be able to read this book without crying?

We got this book from grandma Fox several weeks ago, it’s super cute. The first time I read it I was crying so hard I went through about a 1/3 of a box of tissues. Weeks later Fox read it to me to try to cheer me up during a “blah” moment and it had me crying. I tried to picked it up again recently and the waterworks were on in no time. I’m hoping that it’s just my hormones in general that make me all teary at the sight of anything cute or happy, otherwise it will be daddy Fox’s job to read this to baby Fox.

So it’s been established that movement aka flutters have been felt as of last week, now today we’re at the “was that a kick?” stage. Given my recent familiarity with gas and indigestion I know for sure that’s not the explanation, I’ve also become very familiar with the annoyance and pain of expanding tissues in the abdominal area, doesn’t feel like that either.

Today I experienced the first “can’t sleep, can’t think about anything else” craving. Don’t get me wrong, I have craved stuff before but it’s never been a show stopper, I’ve been able to (mostly patiently) wait hours, days or weeks to satisfy them. Not this time, this morning I woke up at 4:30am and was not able to get back to sleep, a complete first for me. I patiently waited several hours for daddy-to-be to get out of bed and get ready and almost 5 hours later I was able to finally satisfy my craving for scrambled eggs and bacon (not homemade, not from a chain restaurant but from a mom cafe, yes the craving was THAT specific), and move on to other things in life.

Here I am at almost 10pm and I still don’t know how I made it through the day without a nap. I hope that this is a “just once” episode that I get to blog and laugh about and my future nights are only disrupted by trips to the bathroom.

I wanted to share the cartoon below because it accurately reflects my feelings at this stage.

Although I must be proud of myself for sitting at a movie theater for almost 3 hours and only having to get up once.

You can look forward to more cartoons in the future as I have a huge collection and I don’t know when I may identify with one of them.

And finally, on the “things I never thought I would find cool and potentially become obsessed about”, we have the unlikely winner in the form of sticker calendars. You see, I got this cool pregnancy calendar for Christmas where I get to write in the dates and place stickers for select milestones, that’s pretty cool. Today while at Borders Fox walks to me carrying this “Baby’s first year” sticker calendar, that’s when I noticed how much I had underestimated the cool factor and my enjoyment of these things. So even though I won’t need it for quite a while I had the whole “it’s on clearance now, don’t know if we are going to find it again” debate inside my head and just gave in to pressure. So yes, there’s stickers in my foreseeable future.

Great appointment with the midwife, all tests came back great and things are progressing on schedule. Daddy to be got to record the heartbeat on his cellphone so now he gets to proudly show off. Funny how 2 different people at work made comments alluding it to be my baby with no recognition to the fact that it’s also his, weird.

Here is a crappy quality recording of the heartbeat to go along with the belly at week 15:  heartbeat

Is it me or did I suddenly pop out? I guess it would be more noticeable since I’m on the slender side.

So I find it interesting that people at work who never talked to me or shown an interest in whether I lived or die are suddenly all very interested in the pregnancy and all ask the same question: “do you know what you are having?”/ “do you want to know?” and variations thereof.

This has quickly become my pet peeve question du jour, reminiscent of when I always wore a pentacle and people kept asking “what does it mean?”. Both innocent questions, but both highly annoying when being asked over a dozen times per day.

My standard response to the “what do you want to have?” question has become “healthy…. human…” that usually gets the point across and if I’m lucky it won’t be met by judgment and lectures of “how can I possibly wait”, “aren’t I curious?”, “but you must have a preference” and (my favorite) “what am I going to do about shopping”.

So I have a feeling that as the bump becomes more obvious the question will remain as a symbolic pentacle on my neck begging to have random people known and stranger alike ask the same question day in and out. And I thought that the only thing that I had to fear was people touching my belly uninvited.

Yes, I dread the day when people start to do that, I’d much rather have them stare at my belly than try to touch it. As of right now only my husband and midwife have unlimited belly touching rights, anybody else must be invited or else I’ll have to suppress violent inclinations at the violation of personal space that I’m not sure I’ll be able to contain. And yes, I’m already planning the design for a “hands off the belly” shirt.

But since it’s not practical to wear a warning shirt everyday I hope most people have enough respect to not attempt it and the rest get the point from a glare and back down.

On other news, midwife appointment later today so there may or may not be another post soon.

Today is the 10 month anniversary of our legal wedding (we celebrated the 5 month handfasting anniversary a couple of days ago).

I lot may change but we’re still corny with the best of them….

This week’s theme was been discovering my mother identity, I didn’t set out with an agenda, it just worked out that way.

Since none of my close friends are mothers, I have resorted to internet communities for advice and networking, one of the communities that I had joined was the online social group for the What to Expect When Expecting group for moms that are all due on the same month. In the early weeks it was all great and interesting, lots of different viewpoints and styles.

By the time we all entered the second trimester I started to notice that most of the discussions didn’t apply to me. By the time last week when everybody became obsessed about how soon they could have the ultrasound to find out the gender and how they felt like they would die if they didn’t find out now I decided to unsubscribe. I gave it a week and visited again to see if the conversation had changed, it kinda sorta had but still not useful to me.

When a heated debate evolved over whether to use liquid or powder formula in which breast milk was not an option at all I finally took the hint that these were not my type of people and that when I was called a crunchy mama by a member last week I should have taken the hint then.

So I have bid my farewell to mainstream motherhood forums that believe that giving birth is a medical event that requires intervention, away from women that think that having a c-section is a blessing and breast milk is disgusting and I’m seeking to connect with the crunchy type, the hippie tree hugging moms that know that if our body was designed to do it, we most likely don’t need the modern crap being shoved our throats and that know that it was possible to raise a healthy and happy child centuries ago before the invention of baby formula, disposable diapers, Babies R Us and Nintendo.

It’s no surprise to me that my mama identity is so close to my regular identity, it was still interesting to learn the viewpoints from the other side and I can only hope that the mother that is due a week before me and has already had 5 ultrasounds, 4 of them with no medical reason and uses a doppler on a daily basis out of pure obsession can have a healthy baby. I just don’t want to read about it, my hormones just make me want to cry at the unfortunate situation.

So on bump news, last night I jokingly discovered that no matter how much I hold my breath I can’t suck in the little bump, lol.

Most of week 14 was spent feeling like $hit courtesy of a cold and upper respiratory tract infection. I’m mostly recovered from the yuckiness but not 100% yet, at least I’m able to go back to work. Things at work are intense, it comes with the field, every few months job security is up in the air…

Something interesting that I’ve been dealing with is the peer pressure to find out the sex of the baby. Fox and I have agreed that we won’t have an ultrasound unless there’s a medical reason for it which means that if everything is ok we won’t find out the sex until D day. But it’s amazing how friends, coworkers and even other moms in pregnancy forums are obsessed with ultrasounds and knowing.

I admit, I am mighty curious and I would prefer to buy other colors besides yellow and green but at the same time I don’t want to melt baby’s brain cells with ultrasound waves just to satisfy our vanity. I just tell myself about all of the millions of women that didn’t know what they were having until the midwife/doctor/daddy made the announcement at birth and they were just fine and it didn’t cause a shopping crisis.

I know the above statements open a whole can of worms about the supposed safety record of ultrasounds and I am not looking to debate. I hold no judgment for those that choose to have multiple ultrasounds during their pregnancies, I myself already had one early on to determine my due date and I am not opposed to getting another one if there is a medical need for it I simply choose to treat it like the medical procedure that it is and not take it as a fun and recreational “let’s see what the baby looks like this week” approach.

Enough rantings, back to updates. I’m so hormonal I cry very easily, my weak spot, animals (although surprisingly enough I am starting to develop feelings towards humans too). Last night I cried on TV over the funeral of a fictional cat, FICTIONAL! No cats had to die for the recording of this scene.

The previous night I couldn’t get through watching the second Babe movie, all of the (usually funny) challenges the characters where experiencing had me crying uncontrollably. Isn’t that fun?

And now I leave you with the bump at week 14. I start week 15 tomorrow, don’t know if there will be weekly bump pictures but we will aim for at least monthly…