Baby Fever

I'm on this website called BabyCenter.com and it has a forum for the month that your baby's due so there's all these ladies on there who post different stuff and different questions. Anyway this one lady posted this link which had a quiz on how your labor and delivery would go. And the italicized is what it predicted.
http://pregnancyandbaby.sheknows.com/pregnancy/baby/Madame-Zaritska-predicts-your-birth-experience-1.php

The day you deliver, outside will be warm. Your baby will arive in the early morning. After a labor lasting approximately 4 hours, your child, a girl, will be born. Your baby will weigh about 4lbs, 14oz, and will be 17 1/2 inches long. This child will have medium amber eyes and a little patch of auburn hair.

That sounds dreamy! Guess we'll see if it's a boy or a girl in a little over a week, but everything else seems possible! Except 4lbs seems awfully small.

I did have a dream last night I had the baby early but everything was ok. And in my dream I was trying to keep it warm because I know that babies need to be kept warm for the first little while outside of the womb. I kept trying to keep it's head covered with one of those light-weight foil type blankets. It looked just like a newborn! All my baby dreams I've had the baby is always older. Then I realized that I didn't know if it was a boy or a girl so I laid it in its crib and peeked at it and it was a boy! He was totally cute! And he had long toes sort of and I remember thinking they were just like Zack's. That particular dream for some reason was so real and it made me so excited! I can't wait to meet our baby. As far as my dream predicting the sex goes though, who knows. I've had a ton of dreams where I have a boy, but yet a ton of dreams that I have a girl. At this point it's a complete mystery to me.

But the baby is moving all the time now! I was scared last Tuesday because I slipped and fell on the ice but really I only hit my tail bone (which is still sore). I was scared I hurt the baby. I called the doctor and they told me what to look for, and everything ended up fine. But ever since that day the baby has really been squirmy. I love it. I hope that Zack's able to feel it soon. I'm not really sure when that is supposed to happen. I think my belly needs to get bigger though before that can happen. But my last post was me complaining about not having a belly and then fate caught up to me about 3 days later and gave me one! I finally have a belly to hang on to. I'll post a picture in a week or two and give it time to get a little bigger.

I've also been getting a small case of shopping fever where I really want to go buy a bunch of baby stuff. I did buy a couple of tops from Target.com and a diaper bag from Overstock.com and a new B-Buckle. But I stopped myself after that. So I started a registry as a type of personal wish list. It has boy stuff and girl stuff and after we know I'll go through and weed out the opposing sex. But making a registry is a great way to satisfy your shopping urge; you're still shopping, just not spending.

Oh and I found something for Zack that maybe I'll try to get him next month. It's a cargo jacket made my dadgear.com and it has secret pockets inside to hide diapers and wipes and even a pocket for a changing pad!

And it looks like a normal jacket! He already has like 2 jackets that look like this, so I hope it'd be something he'd use. I hope.

Wish I had a Bump! (16w5d)

I'm just 4 months pregnant now but really wish I could get out of the "in-between" stage of my tummy. I'm too big for my pants (well I can still button them but it's really, really uncomfortable) but not showing at all to the untrained eye to justify maternity clothes! So I've been using this thing called a B-buckle given to me by my friend Beth which connects your two front belt loops on your jeans with a cute strap of fabric so you can leave your jeans unbuttoned and have been wearing my looser tops so the help hide that. But I guess any day now I'll "pop out" with my baby bump. They say it happens all of a sudden, and I think that's how I'll be.

Also, I have to pee literally ALL THE TIME (sorry for the TMI) and have a hard time getting full. I had another doctor's appointment on the 12th of this month and have gained 2 lbs which is great since apparently last time I lost 1.5 lbs. That was weird because girls with morning sickness are the ones who usually lose weight. I've been very blessed not to experience any of the horrible symptoms of pregnancy so far, only the small annoyances (i.e. eating eating eating, peeing peeing peeing, not too big but not small enough.)

But some exciting news is we have an appointment in about 2 1/2 weeks for our full OB ultrasound, which is when we ought to be able to determine the baby's gender! I'm sooooo soooo excited for that! I'm not impatient though, but exited. Boy or girl this baby will be loved and spoiled. My gut feeling tells me it's a girl but don't quote me because what do I know about being pregnant? And only because I feel so strongly that this is a girl will it be totally odd to find out if it's a boy but I will be equally excited! Little Charlotte Gwen or little Zackery Cash is on his/her way!

I haven't had any cravings, or any weirdness at all. If you ask Zack though he'll tell you he hasn't ever seen so many empty cold cereal boxes in the house. Hey, I like cereal! My eating schedule goes something like this: Cereal for breakfast, some type of sandwich for brunch, then my lunch, then a snack when I get home from work, then dinner, then most of the time some other little snack before bed. I can't believe I've only gained 2 lbs! I'm not complaining though. I hope I'm not one of those women who just let themselves really blow up just because they're pregnant. I know I'll gain weight that isn't just baby weight. I just don't want it to be excessive.

I just wanted to keep up my posting through this pregnancy for my own reference and also to maybe help satiate my friends' curiosities about pregnancy. Even before I was pregnant I wanted to know EVERYTHING. Anyway, hopefully my next post will have a nice little pregnancy belly picture, or at least tell us the sex of the baby!

14 Weeks

We FINALLY went to our first doctor's appointment on December 1st and I was SO nervous! My appointment wasn't until 3pm but around 2pm my nerves started in on me. And for some reason, I just couldn't get my heartrate to slow down! The nurse said my blood pressure was great but then she's like "Yep, you're a little nervous" when she was checking my pulse. Then Dr. Lavengood came in (who is totally awesome and I owe my coworker big time for getting me in with him since he's not taking new patients) and I relaxed but not my little heart. I was excited too, which probably didn't help my BPMs.
At that point, Zack wasn't there because the nurse had told me all we were going to do was exams and tests and that's it and that Dr. Lavengood didn't do ultrasounds until later. So he asked me where my husband was and I told him he's at home on stand-by in case we did anything cool, and he told me to call him and tell him to come over and when he got here we'd try to hear the heartbeat and then go take a peek with an ultrasound. That was awesome because that's all I wanted! I just wanted/needed to see it. Like I said, it's totally weird to know there's a small human inside you and not being able to really tell.

So when Zack got there and we had finished all my exams and poking and prodding, then we went to another room where the office keeps their small ultrasound machine. It was so cool. I was only 10 weeks and we could see little leg buds and arm buds and the head and even the umbilical cord. The baby was really moving too. It rolled away from us a toward us and wiggled it's arms and legs. I won't forget it. I posted pictures on Facebook but here's one of them! This one's probably my favorite just because you can see the shape a little. The baby's head is on the right.

And at 10 weeks we couldn't hear the heartbeat yet because it turns out my uterus is tipped back slightly (which is totally normal) so the baby was sitting too far away to hear it. So I went back 3 weeks later on December 22nd at 13 weeks just so we can try to hear the heartbeat and as soon as he put the machine on me (I don't know what it's called, but it basically looks like a microphone connected to a walkman) we heard "wooshwooshwooshwooshwoosh". That was pretty neat. He said the baby's heartbeat is 162bpm and that once we're able to hear the heart chance of miscarriage is less than 2%. I was never too worried about miscarrying but I know it happens a lot and it's nice to have some of that worry off my shoulders. We found out sooooo early, but currently we're 14 weeks and going strong.

I have another appointment in 3 weeks as follow-up and then the next appointment is when we should be able to tell if it's a boy or a girl. So it should be right around the first of February, I think.

Oh, and am I getting any bigger? My friends and family can attest that I don't look any bigger but if you run your hand from one hip bone to the other you can feel a definite curving in my lower abdomen. And my pants and jeans are definitely tighter and sometimes when no one's looking I'll unbutton them. And where some tops made me look slim I now look like maybe I've been going a little crazy with the Holiday food (which I haven't, I swear.) I'm thirsty all the time and I need to eat every 2 or 3 hours or so because I can't eat a lot of food but I need to eat all the time. I feel like all I do some days is eat and pee all day long, to a point where it's seriously a chore to do either. But, all in all I feel lucky and blessed that it's been so easy so far. And Zack's great and awesome and supportive. I couldn't imagine not having the support and love he gives to me. I guess life is a series of adventures, and this one's of the most exciting ones so far!