16 Weeks: Stripes, Spring, and Some Settled Things

The weather is warming, flowers are blooming, and for the last few weeks it has been mostly glorious outside. Temps in the 70's and lovely little springtime zephyrs breezing around us. The kids have been anxious to play outside on their scooters and bikes, so yesterday morning I hauled my tired pregnant self out into the front yard with them and sat in the shade with my striped-bump and watched them play.

I've been feeling almost totally human in the eating department lately, which--in addition to the sunny springtime weather--has lifted my mood quite a bit. I've switched from eating tons of rice and croissants to oatmeal for breakfast (ironically, I can't eat this when I'm not pregnant because I threw it up so many times during my Gracie-pregnancy!), quesadillas with salsa and sour cream, with a side of apples for lunch, and pretty much whatever everyone else is eating for dinner. Last night I even cooked chicken to make a salad, which I haven't done since 2015. I am happy that my body is now accepting vegetables and fruits as well as carbs, carbs, carbs.

That's not to say I don't still have some queasiness. I'm down to one Zofran a day, for the evening sicky feelings, but I do also chew spearmint gum non-stop all day to keep my stomach settled. Steve says the whole house smells like mint when he gets home! :) And I have to be in bed by 10ish or my stomach revolts. But for the most part, I'm like a million times better on that front.

The babes (who is 5 inches long/avocado-sized) and I have also had a predilection for springtime Oreos at dessert time, and Welch's fruit snacks pretty much any time of day. One great thing about being a grown up is that you don't have to ask permission to eat fruit snacks anymore. And you can eat as many as you want in a day, and even have them right before breakfast.

My belly out grew all my shirts this week, so I sneaked off to the mall find some stretchier shirts when Steve had a free morning. Now I feel pretty well stocked for the second trimester, and I can't tell you the difference that well fitting clothes are making for my self-esteem. I feel pretty for the first time in this pregnancy. :)

And this time around... I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that I'm just not going to feel 100%. All through Juliette's pregnancy I kept waiting for the normal-Jamie energy and healthiness to come back. I pushed myself really hard (I was literally scrambling to finish editing a novel for a client from my bed the night before Jules was born) and all it did was make me more tired, more desperate, more discouraged. Last night I told Steve I just want to be able to be myself again, feel like myself, do the things I normally do. And he very kindly responded, "But you know you won't be able to until the end of this pregnancy, right?"

I guess I knew, but I hadn't really admitted it to myself yet. It's a tough pill to swallow, to say the least.

Many other things are settling into place for us, though. We found out last week that we are going to be assigned to San Antonio for the next four years! We are SO excited, and already hunting through house options and daydreaming. We also finalized our temporary housing situation (so we have somewhere to live between closing day on our NC home and moving out to TX when Steve finishes PGY3 at the end of June). We signed a lease on a nice apartment nearby, and plan to take just the necessities, treat it like a vacation, and spend a LOT of time at the complex's pool with the kiddos. :)

15 Weeks: Baby Emojis

Text messages you get/send when your baby is the size of a navel orange. :)

At fifteen weeks my belly popped fo sho. Stretchy pants have been in full force since I stopped wearing maternity leggings non-stop (during the worst of the morning sickness). I tried to use the belly band and the hairband-through-the-button-hole tricks with my non-prego jeans, and while those did make them fit, neither was very comfortable. So I bought two pairs of new jeans with ginormous stretchy panels and I am much more comfortable.

Those were the first pregnancy-related clothes I've purchased this time around. Usually I start maternity shopping as soon as I find out I'm pregnancy, but all the bleeding that plagued the first trimester had me worried. I couldn't bear the thought of buying clothes and then losing the babe early on and not being able to wear them. I feel superstitious even writing that. But at 15 weeks, after that good ultrasound and the end of the bleeding that had me so worried (and with my belly insisting that we get some larger pieces of clothing) I did a lot more shopping. Nothing crazy, just filling out my wardrobe with a pair of gym shorts, a second pair of denim shorts in white, and a couple other stretchy/flowy things that will hopefully work with me through the addition of more and more belly curve.

Clothes are one of the few things I really enjoy about pregnancy. (I am alllll about my babies, but the pregnancy process is just not pretty for me from start to finish.) So it was fun to finally feel like there was a perk or two to enjoy.

Baby is still fluttering around, and I feel it more and more. We scheduled the gender-reveal ultrasound for April 11, so we'll know pretty soon what sort of clothes to pull out of storage and what kinds of names to work on. We have a few we're tossing around. Excited to see who this little person is. :)

The Third Doctor Visit.

Tuesday morning was our (baby's and my) third doctor visit. It started off with a nice long wait in the waiting room. Thirty minutes. Normally I wouldn't have minded, but I had purposefully not peed before I left the house assuming that they would want me to pee in their cup instead. Which they did, but not until much, much later! Anyway, suffice it to say I was keenly aware of the delay to my appointment.

We started off with an ultrasound, where the sonographer checked on the SCH they've been watching since all the scariness of week nine. My bleeding stopped in the middle of last week (thank goodness), and the ultrasound revealed that (yay!) my hemorrhage was getting smaller. We also got to take a peek at baby, who was very cozy and measured four days ahead of schedule. Already striving to keep up with the Walton standard. :)

Baby, please be less than 10 pounds.

The sonographer also grabbed a quick snapshot of the babe, who was in full glamour shot position with his/her fist under her chin:

After the ultrasound I had a quick doctor visit as well. They took my blood pressure (which the nurse told me was "practically non-existent") and then finally let me pee in the cup. I don't think I've ever been so enthusiastic about that. Then I met with Dr. Pollard for a quick talk about the ultrasound and to ask questions. (I'm not having Braxton Hicks, my cervix is closed, that weird belly pain is "ligament pain" as my uterus moves from my pelvis to my abdomen. #TMI)

And then I was out the door and bound for home, where everybody (hubs and sibs) passed around our new baby picture. :)

Stats (as of doctor appt):
Weeks pregnant: 14 weeks, 4 days
Baby's fruit size: Lemon
Net weight gain: 3lbs
Doctor visits: 3
Cups peed in: 3
Blood draws: 2
Ultrasounds: 5

14 Weeks: Welcome Things

Oh, hello there second trimester! I don't think we've had a more welcome guest in our home of late!

Another welcome guest? David Pearson, one half of our BFF-couple from the (somehow kind of long ago?!) med school days! He showed up on Saturday night, in preparation for some local fellowship interviews, and made a big impression on the kiddos right away. Especially with Juliette, who made a point of setting herself up near him wherever he might be.

We took advantage of some very welcome gorgeous weather and did some outings to Costco, and for a looooooong picnic at Triad park, where we met up with the Evans. The guys talked about doctor stuff and played some disc golf with one of Steve's co-residents who happened to be at the same park. Emily and I hung out with the kiddos at the playground and enjoyed the sunshine.

We were all sad to see him leave (in a rented red Ford Focus that we all laughed about) but it was so fun to have company for a few days. And it didn't mean we ran out of things to do.

While baby has been busy baking up to the size of a lemon and/or "[my] fist" (depending on which app you trust most), Steve and I have been busy filling out paperwork for our realtor, researching temporary apartments and military moves, and beginning to pack up the house. Steve brought home some moving boxes from Lowes over the weekend and we cleaned out our master closets of anything donatable, and packed up anything out of season or (for me) that wouldn't fit over a burgeoning belly.

Since I've been feeling better, our days have fallen into a bit of a schedule again, which has been really nice. Mornings I get to sleep in a bit if Steve is home (like today) while he takes kids to school. Then I get up and eat breakfast (a glass of milk and a croissant lately,), and work on whatever needs done (moving paperwork, budget, laundry, packing, dishes) until my little body needs a break. After the kids eat lunch I make Steve and I quesadillas, which we eat while watching a show on Netflix (lately, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or The Office). Then we take a nap (glorious nap!) until it's time to pick up Gracie from school. The afternoons I'm hit or miss, and by the evenings I usually have to lay down. Bedtime (for me) around 9 or 10 with some reading of Anne of Green Gables.

Baby has been kicking and bouncing away in my tummy, and I feel it a few times a day now. My bleeding has finally stopped (at least for the last few days) and that is so happy, too. So with more energy, morning sickness now receding into pretty much just the evenings (so long as I chew gum and take Zofran in the mornings), springtime weather sending the trees into bloom, and the slow settling of some of the many stressors (house under contract! Planning for temporary housing!), week 14 has been a most excellent and much needed sigh of relief.

Bears are smart.

Bears are smart, because they hibernate. For all of winter.

We'd like to do that. It sounds kind of genius. Because this week?

Ugh.

I think both Steve and I have felt at our limit for almost the entirety of 2016. For the past month or so we've been dealing with our concern for our little baby always on our minds, my persistent (though thankfully decreasing) morning sickness and inability to uphold my previous standard of housekeeping/cooking/grocery shopping/being a human, the stress of having a house on the market and of getting an offer (which--yes! YAY!) that, if it goes through, will leave us with the task of coming up with a few thousand bucks we don't yet have AND homeless in Winston for two months, lots of concerns for the unique struggles of several of our far-away and beloved extended family members, the budget (which suffers greatly when this mama is out of it), and knowing that we will be moving somewhere in July--but STILL not knowing WHERE.

We're not totally drowning in our lives, but we have felt like we're barely keeping our heads above water.

And Monday morning, we discovered that one of our kids had lice.

If it was a normal week, a normal month, a normal year, we probably wouldn't have lost our cool over it. But because it was the proverbial straw falling on a couple of already heavily-laden camels (that's us--watch out, we spit!), we both just kind of died inside. Like, each separately had conversations with Heavenly Father about how we were about to hit breaking point and please please please we needed some slack.

We did a round of Nix while surreptitiously checking the other two kids' heads and doing load after load of laundry. But alas--the super lice only kind of cared about the Nix, and we discovered the next day that the 5 hour ordeal from the day before wasn't done. Poor kiddo. We got an Rx shampoo from the doctor and went through the process again (though much quicker this time) last night and today, thank goodness, everything was clean and clear and our schooling kiddos were cleared to go back to life as usual.

Aaaaand poor Steve has had a string of night shifts this week, which means both of us sleep badly and he is just totally thrown off eating/sleeping/energy-wise.

We're exhausted.

My hair is channeling Mufasa's mane.

I'm wearing the exact same clothes I wore yesterday.

I stress-ate three packs of fruit snacks this morning.

And we've had pizza for dinner three (or four??? I can't remember Saturday...) of the past six nights.

13 Weeks and the Bump.

You guys. I am THIRTEEN WEEKS today! THIRTEEN! That means in one more week, I will OFFICIALLY be DONE with the wretched first trimester!!!

Though the end of the first trimester doesn't mean my little body officially understands that it's time for us to stop feeling nauseated and start eating vegetables and hamburgers, it does mean that we've gotten what is (to me) the most grueling, lonely, and self-worth-doubting portion under our belts. I want to cry when I think about how I felt three or four weeks ago. Honestly, I can't think about it. It is too heavy.

But hooray. Thirteen weeks. Baby is working on getting fingerprints and vocal chords, and is almost 3 inches long from crown to rump--about the size of a peach! It is kicking hello right now. So hello from baby. (Maybe it's ears are burning since I'm bragging about it's many feats of growing.)

Thanks to the arrival of the stretchy pants in the mail (hooray for mail order!) and to feeling better in the mornings, today I got dressed, braided my hair(!), and took my first official belly picture of baby #4. :)

Steve had his first day back at work after his week off. He was done at 3. It's 5, and he's still not home and hasn't called, which indicates that either (a) it was very busy and he will be tired or (b) he caught an interesting case at the end of his shift and opted to stay a little late. I'm hoping for his sake that it's the latter.

We got an offer on the house already. It's very low, and came from a rental company. They didn't even send someone by to take a look, just dropped an offer on us sight-unseen. We've been negotiating, but I'm not sure if we can hit a number that will work for them and not put us in financial-limbo for the next couple of months.

One good thing about having been so sick for the past few months is that I have let go of my worries about EVERYTHING that isn't totally immediate. Which is very, very unlike me. I've always got a plan. It's my safety net. But I actually said to Steve yesterday as we discussed potential temporary housing options between closing and moving, "Well, there's nothing we can do about it now. We'll just deal with it when it comes."

He laughed and said, "Welcome to the other side. How does it feel?"

It definitely doesn't feel ideal. But its kind of the only way to cope for now. :)

After school today I played the ultrasound video from yesterday for the kids (mainly Gracie). She brought her Goldfish cracker snack over and stood by the sectional, watching baby move and exclaiming over how cute it was. Juliette and Charlie came over, too, and when it was over Charlie asked me to play it again.

Though Juliette insists that she herself is a baby, and doesn't seem to willing to sacrifice that title no matter how I praise her for being a "big girl," she has been really fascinated by the ultrasounds since we first showed her the gummy bear sonogram a few weeks ago. Today she sat beside me while I baby-blogged and asked repeatedly, "Wanna see baby?" Which means, Hey Mom, let's look at the latest ultrasound picture!

So we looked at the ultrasound over and over, and every time she smiled and declared it "so cute" and told me, "That's the baby!" She was even able to identify baby's little body parts--head, tummy, back, foot, and hand--in the ultrasound. Takes after her daddy, I guess. ;)

12 Weeks and Kicking.

The closer I get to the end of the first trimester, the more light there seems to be at the end of the tunnel. :) Hitting the 12 week mark last Friday (baby fruit size: "large plum") I noticed that I was feeling less queasy in the mornings (evenings are still not as great) and throwing up MUCH less. YES!!!! Down from 3-4 times per day in the early weeks, to 1-2 in the later weeks, and in weeks 11 and 12 each incident was several days apart.

The intense depression that accompanied being incapable of doing/enjoying most of the normal things my life entailed before pregnancy also began to lift. I'm still not back to normal, but I feel like "normal" (well normal-ish, anyway) is something that might actually be possible again someday.

I've started getting dressed again. Just feeling well enough to get dressed, make the bed, and drive the kiddos to school (without wondering if I'm about to embarrass myself in the drop-off line) is a balm to my soul. Really. Not exaggerating.

And Steve and I have been able to hang out in the evenings, again. For a while I had to go right to bed or I would (you guessed it!) throw up. But now, as long as I eat a big bowl of rice after dinner to settle my stomach, I can usually hang out for two episodes of Person of Interest, and/or until almost ten. And we've been sleeping in the same bed again for a couple of weeks, which--hooray! I missed him. He's my bestie.

It turned out that the beginnings of really feeling better came none too soon, because while I was in agony and despair on the sofa over the last few months, I apparently forgot to pay the utility bill for so long that we got a letter threatening to cut our water off.

I opened the notice just in time to pay it.

I also have about 30 overdue library books, which the library has sent me multiple notices about. I should get a bill for those this week--hopefully I remember to turn the books in before then.

Aaaaaaand I didn't fill out the paperwork (due at the beginning of February) to renew the kids' insurance with the state. So they almost lost coverage altogether. I was lucky to get in touch with the nicest caseworker ever, who told me if I could get her all the paperwork by 2/29, she would be able to save me. And she did. I have some thank you notes to write to lots of people for helping this trimester, starting with her.

Steve had the week off. He'd originally scheduled this time off so I could go visit my BFF Suzi (who I haven't seen in 3 years!) in Arizona. Buuuut then we found out I was pregnant, and we rescheduled because we knew I'd be all-day sick and not much fun as a house guest. :)

So instead he spent the week working on final touches to get the house ready to sell. (We are BAWLING inside about this.) He re-dug and finished out a beautiful french drain in the back yard (a project he has been dreading for literally a year) with the help of some co-residents, Ann and Dennis, who came over to lend a hand. He and I deep cleaned and staged the house on Tuesday morning to prepare it for the photographer.

And then March 1st, it went on the market.

We don't know where we're going yet, and it makes me heartsick every time it hits me that we're leaving this sweet little home. But we didn't even know where Winston was when Steve got accepted to med school here almost 7 years ago, and it has been wonderful. We met kindred spirits. We really became our own family here. And I'm excited to see what Heavenly Father has planned for us next.

...I just a little bit wish I could pick up our house and transplant it wherever we are going. :)

In baby-related news, I've been feeling kicks since week 11! I totally thought I was crazy (I have never felt one earlier than week 14) and didn't tell Steve. But the days passed and it became more and more clear to me that the little tap-tap-tap I feel when I'm sitting on a step, with my knees up by my chest, is our little bun. I feel it pretty regularly now a few times a day, usually bumping against the spot where the seam of my stretchy preggo pants hit. (I bought some stretchy pants because the regular ones hurt my abdomen--and because I wanted to wear something that wasn't leggings!)

Steve and I also got to go to our 12-week ultrasound together. Baby's measurements were good (yay!) and we got a good 10 minutes of baby-watching. It was amazing to see how much it had changed since we had our first scan at almost 9 weeks. It went from a little gummy bear with little stubby arms and legs to a full-fledged little person with long legs kicking around. It wiggled and bounced and moved its arms and legs. Steve was transfixed. :)

Almost-9-week gummy bear:

12 week scan--totally baby looking!

From this angle you can't see how long its little legs and arms are, but I was shocked to see how big they'd grown!

The hemorrhage was about the same size, but according to the tech (and my ultrasound-knowledgeable hubs) it looks like its starting to clot. (Which is good, because clotting is part of healing.)

We rounded out the visit with a blood draw, at which point I was very thankful for good phlebotamists. I know I've done this pregnancy thing 3 times before, but I'm still not the biggest fan of getting my blood drawn, and feel very wussy about it in my head. Though I think I hold myself together well enough, minus a little bit of overly enthusiastic conversation which I use to distract myself from the NEEDLE. :p

Stats (as of ultrasound):
Weeks pregnant: 12 weeks, 6 days
Baby's fruit size: Large plum
Net weight gain: ? (Didn't check)
Doctor visits: 2
Cups peed in: 2
Blood draws: 2
Ultrasounds: 4