Week 12

Ahh, week 12, when everything is supposed to get better. Or at least start to get better. No more morning sickness, increased energy, better skin. I can't wait, because as of this morning I feel no different. I went to bed at 7:30 (come on, it was day-light savings time, that was 8:30 my time) and got up at 6:00. I guess I feel rested, we will see how 8:00 tonight feels. We are out of milk, so I had to look for breakfast alternatives and eggs are still out, as is the toast Mike bought me, so I am resorting to strawberry eggos and hot cocoa--definitely still pregnant. I have gained about 3 pounds in total, but about one pound was just yesterday, so I think that may go away. It probably had something to do with the chile cheese fries and BLT I had for lunch. Speaking of which, the weirdest craving I have had to date was a BLT. Not so weird? It is if you have never had one. How can you crave something you have never had? We had them the other night with turkey bacon, and they were pretty freaken sick. Yesterday I had the real thing. It didn't live up to my expectations either, and I kept almost gagging, but then I was okay again. I ate half. I didn't die. I guess the baby isn't going to be vegetarian.

As far as the pregnancy goes we are entering trimester II. I am not sure if this happens at the end of the week or now. I supppose it doesn't really matter. Although 1/3 if the pregnancy is still a week and half away, most people count this second trimester because of fetal development:

As you move into the second trimester, baby shifts into the growth and maturation stage. After weeks in the critical development stage, almost all of baby's systems are fully formed.

Your baby's crown-to-rump height is 2 1/2 inches, or about as tall as a squash ball. She may weigh as much as half an ounce. This begins the age when the fetus starts to look really cut in those womb pictures. If you had a womb camera, you'd be able to see your baby's proportions changing, with the growth of the head slowing down to let the rest of the body catch up. Arms, legs, and fingers are also growing out and tapering to look more like a newborn's, and your baby's posture becomes less curled and more upright.

Apparently my hips are also starting to widen. Oh god.

zzzz

I am so tired. I just want to crawl back into bed and sleep for another 10 hours. When will the exhaustion end? I thought I was doing better a few weeks ago, but that was short lived. I went to bed at eight last night, got up at 12:30 to pee, got up at 1:45 to eat toast and then finally rolled out of bed around 6:45. Even with the night time breaks, that is plenty of sleep, but all I want to do is sleep more. If Ella didn't wake me up, I am not when or if I would even get out of bed. I swear, the baby is already kicking my ass.

Peanut, Lime or Golf Ball??

I am now eleven weeks pregnant. The first trimester is coming to a close and I am getting more used to being pregnant, or at least obsessing about it less. I even sometimes forget that I am pregnant for a few moments, which I never thought would happen. Life is becoming more bearable or I am learning to live differently. The house is pretty much never clean. I sleep a lot more, and much better. Work is a distant second priority and people around me actually know what is going on. Some of these are welcomed changes, some less so, but it is all becoming more normal. I am seriously considering a maid, and a doula. I am getting more used to saying that I am pregnant out loud and finally I don’t have to fake drink at the bar because I successfully reached my second World Beer Tour. Essentially, life is becoming normal with being pregnant instead of life being about being pregnant; if that makes sense.

I still read a lot of information about fetal development and get updates about me and the baby. However, this week it seems sort of confusing. One site says the baby is the size of a peanut, another a lime, another a golf ball. WTF? I guess a golf ball and a lime are about the same size. A peanut though?? Not at all. I was so looking forward to having a lime. I mean, a lime seems like a decent size for a fetus. It seems real. I was so excited. A peanut is such a disappoint! Oh well. Here is what it says:

Your fetus currently enjoys a 1:1 ratio between body and head, and has skin so transparent that blood vessels show right through it. But fingers and toes are no longer webbed, and hair follicles, tooth buds, and nail beds are forming -- setting up a significantly more attractive future.

Your baby is about 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 inches long and weighs about a third of an ounce, the size of a peanut. This is a big week for your baby's growth—she'll double in height. At the end of the week, her head and body will be roughly equal in length. This week also starts an active phase for her - she can turn somersaults, roll over, flex her fingers, hiccup, and stretch. You won't be able to feel her movement for another month and a half. She's floating in lots of amniotic fluid. Her limbs are developing from webbed paddles into arms and legs that have well-defined fingers and toes. Fingernails, toenails, and hair follicles are also beginning to form. Your baby's testes or ovaries have developed, though the sex probably won't be visible on a sonogram for at least another month. Intestines have developed at the place where the umbilical cord meets your baby's body. The intestines are now able to make constricting movements, though there won't be anything to digest until later.

30 Weeks to Go

It is actually a little bit early for this post, baby isn't 10 weeks until tomorrow. Actually, baby isn't 10 weeks until Wednesday or Thursday, but I have Monday stuck in my head. Ever since the first ultrasound tech told me the date of the baby in the ER, and it matched to my assumed ovulation date, I have it my head as Monday. So I actually count the baby as older than the doctor does, but the doctor won't change the due date unless it is actually a week off, and it is only three days, which doesn't matter to anyone but me. Whatever, I am 1/4 of the way there.

Your baby is now about an inch long and weighs five grams, or one-sixth of an ounce, roughly the size of a garden beetle. This end of the two-month mark is a landmark date for your baby. It's looking more human all the time. If you could look inside, you'd see a thumb tip-size translucent creature that's unmistakably human. Kidneys, lungs, genitals, and the gastrointestinal tract are all present, though far from fully formed. Your baby's bones begin to form in his limbs, a process called ossification. The floor plan for your baby's structure has been laid down, and the next thirty weeks will be about expanding and developing on this blueprint. If your baby is a boy, his testes are already producing testosterone. A Doppler handheld device can usually detect a fetal heartbeat by this point. Once the heartbeat is detectable, your chances of miscarrying in the first trimester are immediately lower: between five and ten percent.

Congratulations, your uterus has swollen to the size of a softball! Looking in the mirror, your shape has definitely changed: less waist and more chest. If you're over 35 or have a history of genetic disorders, over the next two weeks, your care provider may offer a test called chorionic villus sampling (CVS) which uses a sample of tissue to screen for hundreds of genetic disorders. This test is highly accurate, but carries a significant risk of miscarriage. Right now, your hormones may be producing emotional effects, that is, making you feel crazy, angry, sad, euphoric, and irritable, sometimes all in the same ten minutes. You may also develop little white bumps on your nipples, called "Montgomerey's tubercles" (named after the Irish obstetrician who "discovered" them.) These bumps secrete a white lubricant, which will help make breastfeeding more comfortable. Your weight gain may be picking up—though don't worry if you haven't gained any by now. Bottom line, if your provider isn't concerned about how much or how little you've gained, you shouldn't be either.

Abating?

Morning sickness--obviously named by a man who was never pregnant, is supposed to get steadily, or not so steadily worse, until week ten. That is when your hormone levels peak. Then it is supposed to get better and nearly vanish by week 13. I am in week nine and it seems SO much better. Like enough better that I would be worried, except I have no pain and that is a good thing. I am still more tired than I though humanly possible even though I sleep 10 hours a night, but I don't feel sick. I can drink water again. I don't have to eat immediately in the morning. I can eat most foods, although I still have some aversions and generally prefer things with less spices than normal. I can eat yogurt and thinking about things doesn't make me puke. Actually eating eggs may be a little rough, but I can think about them at least. Work is much easier. My pants are still tight and my boobs are still sore, but not feeling sick all of the time is sort of miraculous. I even managed to be helpful and do dishes tonight.

Week Nine--We have a fetus!

As you squeeze into your jeans and struggle to button your shirt, try enjoying the gain -- after all, when was the last time putting on the pounds was totally guilt-free? It's also probably time for some new lingerie. Your sore, bigger-by-the-minute boobs will feel so much better in a maternity bra.

Check and check. I can't wear my pants, I can't wear a bra that looks even remotely sexy and all I do is eat and sleep and whine. All of the time. I am even sick of me.

Baby's now the size of a green olive!
Your little embryo has now officially graduated to fetus-hood. Adding to the excitement, a Doppler ultrasound device might be able to pick up the beating heart. With basic physical structures in place and increasingly distinct facial features, baby is kind of starting to look like...well...a baby!

1st Baby Doc

We went to the doctor yesterday to have our first check up and see the baby. The baby is good--a few days later (or newer) than we thought. The doctor said the baby is 7 weeks 6 days instead of 8 weeks. No big deal now, but come May 23rd I may feel different.

The appointment went well. It was sort of review of everything I can and can't do, but it made me feel a lot better. My chances of having a miscarriage are down to 7% according to her, but I have read that they are as low as 2%. Regardless, that is a hell of a lot better than before. They weighed me and checked everything out. I have a fragile cervix, but it poses no problem for the baby, it just means I will bleed a lot more when I give birth and throughout my pregnancy. Awesome. I asked if it was an infection, and she said no, but still, it is scary no matter what. On the bright side I loved her.

On the down side, she will not deliver my baby. In fact, it will be really random who delivers my baby, and that is just how Kaiser does it, so I can't even find a doctor in my insuranace network that will deliver my baby. It is just random. In some ways this makes it better because when I am in labor and panicking I won't freak out that my doctor isn't there, since that is assumed from the start. It is just sort of weird. I am nervous that whatever Mike and I decide to do for our birth plan won't matter at all. I am worried that I will have to have IVs and continuous fetal monitoring and such. Hopefully at 30 weeks when we go to the hospital to preregister they will help explain that, since really it is mostly nurses and the doctor just catches :)

The only thing really on my mind about it is the genetic testing. I won't have an amniocentesis, I already know that, but Kaiser offers a blood test that could detect many defects and at our 24 week ultrasound they can also look for soft signs of Down's Syndrome, Trisomy 18 and Fragile X syndrome. It won't affect me anyway, I would still carry the baby to term. However, the doctor said some people want to know so that they can mentally prepare. I honestly don't think it is possible to mentally prepare for a baby period. The only concern I have is cleft-lip/cleft-palette. 2 of Mike's nieces have it and we would have to talk to a geneticist to find out our risk. I am sure it is pretty low regardless, but it does occur in his family. The only reason I would care is because I would want to find out about feeding. Since a baby who cannot nurse is significantly different than a baby who can, it would be worth it to know that ahead of time. I think. Maybe. Part of me just wants to assume everything is fine and go on from there. We will see how I feel in a few months.

After we went to the doctor we had lunch where I ate more than I have since I got pregnant, which was nice. Then we played mini-golf and went bowling--it was the best day ever. Mike accidentally hit me in the head with a golf club and it hurt like hell. I have a lump. It made me cry, but I was sort of shocked. It DID hurt, and it made my eyes water, but I cried like a kid does. I think it startled me and made my eyes water and then I cried because of hormones. It was so weird. I remembered what it felt like to be a little kid and cry when you get hurt--it was a weird combo of surprise and pain and just like having my feelings hurt that I got hit with a golf club. Ridiculous, but interesting. Our next appointment is 12 weeks, and we get to hear the heartbeat!! I can't wait.

Wow, just wow

So, in the last 24 hours I have completely hit every 1st trimester milestone.

I completely broke down over nothing. Literally nothing. I was so frustrated and so tired that I started crying when Jill asked if Mike and were getting married. I don't even care if we get married. Then I started crying because Mike was going to play golf in the morning. What? Yup. Because I can't clean the bathroom. So he can't play golf. Yeah, I have great math skills--totally hormonally unbalanced. Then I went to bed and woke up feeling emotionally just fine, like it never happened. You should read my text messages from last night though. Idiotic.

So, Mike came home and cleaned like crazy because he is amazing and I had a breakdown. I woke up honestly confused as to why he wasn't playing golf and why the toaster oven and microwave were spotless and the coffee pot disassembled in the dishwasher. Until I read my text messages. God I am crazy. So I had a yogurt drink and started to help clean. About an hour into it I felt awful, so I sat down and drank some water, and then puked. A lot. Including my prenatal vitamins and omega 3 fish oil pill. Yeah, puking obviously made me puke more. Milestone 2 met--I guess everyone pukes their prenatals a few times. So then I ate 1 saltine. Just one. Why you ask? Because it tasted like ass. I didn't know saltines could go bad. They do. Both packets of them. Mike even tried one and spit it out. It was awful. Finally we went to Einstein's to get a bagel. It was lame. There was hardly any cream cheese. So I went to order more just to find out that one little to-go ramekin of cream cheese costs $1.50!! So I just bought a tub for $3.00. It was ridiculous. So I put more cream cheese on my bagel and took the rest home, which I pretended to eat on Ritz, but really just licked off the same one over and over so Mike wouldn't judge me. He went to play golf, so now I am just eating it off the knife. Which I think also counts as a crazy preggo thing.

Finally, I also bought a be band. It is amazing. I love it. I wish I would have known about these years ago, it would have made Thanksgiving so much better. Plus it makes eating cream cheese off a knife feasible for my waistline.

What is up with baby?

As your baby enters its second month of development, weighing no more than a chocolate chip or a berry. It's about five to thirteen millimeters long (less than half an inch), and weighs less than a gram (0.8g), or less than one-twentieth of an ounce. The human blueprints are already visible. Your child still has a tail but is also beginning to form a digestive tract, lungs, nostrils, hands and feet, and a bump of a mouth. The liver, tongue, and lenses of your baby's eyes are forming. There are beds for your baby's fingernails, and the buds of teeth are forming in the gums. If you could take a picture, your baby would look more like a baby and less like a reptile. The baby's nerve channels and muscles are connecting, and the body can wiggle when the cells communicate. In just two days, from days thirty-one to thirty-three, the brain becomes one-quarter larger. If you were to have an ultrasound, it would be able to detect the beating heart, which shows up looking like a tiny flashing light.

Week Seven

Today starts my seventh week--I think. Hopefully the doctor can measure the baby and give me a definite gestational age and a more reliable due date. One more week and we get to hear the heartbeat and see it flutter!!! I am much more confident in my pregnancy than I was two weeks ago, mostly because I feel like shit all the time. Somehow, that is a good, comforting thing. My sciatica is killing me, although I am not entirely convinced it is pregnancy related and I think could just be a coincidence. The morning sickness is here full force (or I hope full force, I don't want it to get worse). Nothing sounds appetizing, I hate ice cream all of the sudden, raw meat and eggs make me puke and cooked veggies do the same. Grocery shopping has also become the bane of my existence. The smells made me gag three times and I don't want to buy anything because I don't want to eat anything. I just went up and down rows (with my butt hurting) looking at food and feeling disgusted. Fun times. All I want is white food. So weird.

Baby's now the size of a blueberry!
Baby's brain -- both hemispheres! -- is growing fast, generating about one hundred new cells every minute. Arms and legs are emerging as joints start to form, and a permanent set of kidneys (baby's third!) is now in place.

Why hello uterus

I am not completely sure if this is actually a pregnancy symptom, but it sucks and I am pregnant, so lets blame it on the baby. I have this intense pain in my butt. Yeah, like kind of in my hip, but more centered on my right butt cheek. It is acute and my best analogy is adding ice water to an exposed cavity. It doesn't happen when I stand on it necessarily, but any time weight changes, which is all the freaken time in case you weren't sure. Walking Ella almost made me cry, and speed walking with my kid today (we were very late for an interview) made me get light headed. I read online that you can have sciatic nerve pain because your uterus grows and presses against it. But come on! I am six weeks pregnant, how big can my uterus be? It hurts so bad, and when I sit down or lay down after it hurts, it sort of feels like a joint that needs cracked, except there is no joint and as soon as I move at all I get sharp, excruciating pain. And my uterus still has to grow, a lot. Maybe it will move or something. Or maybe it has nothing to do with my uterus. Regardless, I have morning sickness (at night it seems) and pain like never before. Awesome. I am tempted to call in sick tomorrow.

Week Six

This week the baby is the size of a pea. I have no idea when this week though, since it doubles in size like every day :) I think it is super cool that we have the technology and the medical expertize to know that the baby is doing at six weeks, when it is the size of a pea.

"Growing like crazy, baby is starting to sprout eyes, ears, nose, cheeks, and chin. Those little hands and feet -- still webbed like paddles -- might wiggle by week's end, the heart is beating (almost twice as fast as yours!), and blood is starting to circulate."

My next doctor's appointment is at eight weeks exactly, so even if it is miss dated I should be able to hear the heartbeat since it will definitely be in the seventh week if not in the eighth.

I felt kind of yucky yesterday, although I think it had more to do with only eating 1/3 of an amazing black forest cake and goldfish crackers all day than anything. This morning I feel a little bit nauseous, but I am not convinced it is morning sickness since I still feel hungry, I think I just ate like crap yesterday and am feeling the affects today. Plus, I am drinking coffee, so I can't have morning sickness I don't think. Although smells are bothering me WAY more than they used to and walking the dog has become a game of "don't puke" in the morning. On a side notes, Mike is leaving for the week. I won't see him until Saturday. It seriously makes me want to cry and have a breakdown, which I am blaming entirely on the hormones since I am not usually that crazy. This is what it says about my pregnancy in week six:

"You've probably stumbled on the truth by now: Thanks to your surging hormones, morning sickness can (and does) occur morning, noon, and night. As you feel yourself turning yet another shade of green, just try to remember it's for an amazing cause -- that rapidly growing baby inside your upset belly!"

Will it ever be easy?

I got more test results, still waiting on the Rh results. My hCG levels are raising, they are still in the super low end of normal, but they did double. I know from reading a lot of other people's pages that they actually triple in 48 hours a lot of times, and mine definitely aren't doing that. However, the doctor said they did double and that is good enough. I was reading about it and it could mean that I am less pregnant than I thought I was, like conception happened later, but I really don't think so and that is not what the ultrasound showed. I am not sure why they are low, hopefully it is just how I am. The normal range is sort of ridiculous, and as you go up in months, so does the spread. Hopefully next week I break the 10,000 mark. Hopefully I am Rh positive and I won't have to get RhGAM shots since I am sort of over having needles poked into my arms.

I am also still having some mild bleeding. Nothing like last Friday, but "normal" is none, so it is still worrisome. The doctor said I may just bleed and they may never know why, which isn't comforting at all. But as long as I am not having cramping and bleeding (like last Friday) a miscarriage isn't imminent, could still happen, but not right then, so I will go with that. It sucks because until we hear a heartbeat there is no way to be sure. Lots of babies grow at this stage and then the heart doesn't develop. Come on little heartbeat. I just with I had high hCG levels OR no bleeding, having both makes it more scary. On the bright side, low hCG means no morning sickness, and the cyst on my ovary doesn't hurt as much. Although, I would almost be happy to have morning sickness because it would mean everything is getting better. Morning sickness can be a good indicator of pregnancy.

Bartenders

Every Sunday night Mike and I go to Old Chicago for dinner and beer. We rarely miss going and it has always been a good way to end the weekend and get ready for the week--no need to cook, super relaxed and our time together. Well, you don't go somewhere every week for years and not get to know, well everyone, in a restaurant. We are actually pretty good friends with the bartender. Mike plays golf with him, we BBQ with his family, pretty normal friend things. The problem is, I am pregnant, and our whole relationship with this person (and a few others) depends on beer consumption. Depends may be harsh, but it would definitely stand out if I just stopped drinking. We have even joked with him before that he would find out we were pregnant before most people. However, with all of the dangers with the baby lately, I really don't want to tell him about it until the second trimester. I don't want to tell anyone. But we still have to go to the bar and have dinner, it is our thing. So now I go and get a beer (I don't actually order it, I just sit down and it appears) and Mike secretly drinks it while drinking his. He has to drink twice a fast because otherwise it takes him too long to finish his, which looks suspicious too. Tonight his tactic was to take large gulps of mine when no one was looking. This made it look like I really liked my beer and resulted in a refill. So Mike had to down four beers in an hour, which cracks me up. Normally I am a little jealous that he can drink and I can't, but now it is that he HAS to drink, and I can't, which seems almost fair.

Return to the ER

Yesterday we went to the Great American Beer Festival for Mike's quarter century birthday. Yes, he is the baby, I try to not think about it most days. Anyway, aside from it being awesome for everyone who was not DD, I had a particularly uncomfortable day. As soon as we got to the festival, I noticed some spotting and increasingly severe cramping, which of course I looked up immediately on google. Essentially it said it is not a good thing, but it is common. Not normal, but not super critical. However, as the night progressed it went from spotting to actual bleeding. I was torn between telling Mike and ruining his evening and not telling, but as the night progressed it became clear to me that I wasn't going to be able to just ignore it. So, instead of staying out drinking all night and being DD for four drunk frat boys, I took them all home.

Of course, upon arrival at anywhere with an internet connection, I immediately looked up what first trimester bleeding could mean. The data was terrifying. First of all, 50% of all pregnancies end in a miscarriage, usually in the first trimester. Now, this goes back to science actually making life suck. A lot of those happen in the first few days of pregnancy and it used to be that your "period" was just a few days late, when in actually conception happened but implantation went awry. However, not that you can find out you are pregnant 5 days sooner, you can also find out you miscarried 5 days sooner, which is to say at all. Moving on with the stats. About 20-30% of women bleed during the first trimester after you take out implantation bleeding, which happens to more like 50% of women. Some of the reasons are known, and some aren't, but 50% of women who bleed eventually miscarry. The reasons that are known also suck: miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, STDs, etc. By the middle of the night the bleeding was bad and Mike and I agreed I would go to the doctor in the morning.

So, after sobbing uncontrollably for a good hour I fell asleep. Kaiser opens at 8:00 on Saturdays and has an Urgent Care center at the Westminster office. I was so relieved that the ER was not my only option. So I called the emergency nurse to have a phone consult before my appointment. The nurse was helpful and walked me through a lot of information. At the end of the phone call, she told me to go, immediately, to the ER. She said not to drive and not to speed, but to get my husband to take me to the hospital and to arrive there within the hour. Her words were somewhere along the lines of, we don't know what is actually wrong, but if it is ectopic, it can be life threatening and we have to rule that out before we can do anything else. Terrifying. I woke Mike up and told him the news and we headed to the ER. Neither of us thought it was that severe, but essentially it is one of those things you have to do. Like an appendicitis, you don't put it off until Monday. So for the second time Mike took me to Good Samaritan where I answered all sorts of things that I have never said in front of another person before. Being pregnant really decreases privacy.

The doctor saw me, they took a crap ton of blood and took away my hot chocolate (so that if I did have to have surgery, I wouldn't be full). I love this hospital, and most of the people there, but I really didn't like my nurse because she didn't seem to have a clue. Like, she asked me if I had a tampon in. What? I am pregnant! Anyway. Also, the IV dude sort of sucked and used some sort of huge needle. I am not exaggerating. I told the nurse that it hurt and I told the doctor I didn't need the IV because I wasn't having a problem with liquids, but no luck, they left the bastard thing in the whole time.

Pretty soon I went to ultrasound to check for the location of the pregnancy. The x-ray tech is quite possibly my favorite person right now. They did belly ultrasounds, which was fine, but they couldn't see anything. Then came the totally awesome inter-vaginal ultrasound. Fun times. She took a ton of photos and told me she would explain them later. That is when I got the best news, she could show me exactly where the baby was in my uterus. At four weeks we could see it, actually 4 weeks and 5 days, which is exactly where I thought I was, which was awesome. Not much of a baby, just a small dark dot, but it was there. I also have a cyst on my ovary which makes it tender and can cause some cramping, but also raises my progesterone. She went through all the scans with us and talked to us. Apparently I have a Y shaped uterus, which is abnormal but not dangerous. So the baby nestled into one side of the Y and the other side of the Y could still be unaware that I am not pregnant and could be sloughing old cells like a normal period. It doesn't hurt the baby, but it can lead to bleeding throughout pregnancy. She was awesome. At the end she told us that she isn't actually supposed to tell me any of this, but often in the ER they don't go over it with you and you have to wait until you see you OBGYN to get any information. I am so glad she told me, because that is exactly what happened.

I went back to my room and had a pelvic exam (with Mike in the room, how is that for awkward) and a catheter to extract urine. Super fun times--apparently I have a small urethra. That shit hurts. Then we waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually they came in and told me my urine was fine and my ultrasound showed my pregnancy was in my uterus so it was safe. They also said my cervix was closed, which is good because it opens when there is impending miscarriage. All good. I did have an infection that I remember reading about, but they can't treat it until I am past my first trimester. It causes cramping in the lower abdomen. That was it. Nothing about my ultrasound or anything. I am SO GLAD the x-ray tech told me. The doctor told me that if I am going to have a miscarriage, I will have one. There is nothing they can do about it, and nothing I did to cause it, it just is. It is predestined genetically at this point. She told me could definitely still have one, but it is not impending nor guaranteed and I can carry the baby to term as far as my blood work and other tests are concerned. I have to back in to track my beta levels of hgc. Finally the shitty nurse took out my IV and informed me that indeed the needle was really big and that was why it hurt. No shit. I never actually had any fluid, just an empty IV for four hours. Regardless, the shitty nurse gave me my discharge papers BEFORE they got the results on my creepy infection, so my diagnosis was pregnancy. $100 for piece of mind was totally worth it.

It took me a long time to research the infection because I didn't know the name and I couldn't find it. It wasn't on my discharge paperwork because the shitty nurse wrote it up before I was actually discharged. Essentially it is from having the ph balance off, which is the result of pregnancy or an excess of semen which changes the ph. Whatever. It is essentially Mike's fault, but so is the baby, so I am good with it. :)

Who knows?

As of today, I am finishing my first month of pregnancy. One down, eight more to go, and to be fair, half of the first one doesn't even really count. So, who knows? Well, all of you. We have told my mom (I want to tell my dad in person, so that will be about 8-9 weeks), Millie, Rachel and I think Ella knows. Mike is telling his parents tomorrow--so that brings the count to 5 people and a dog. Oh, and everyone at my dentist office. I had to get my teeth cleaned today, this was scheduled two months ago, but I had to tell them I was pregnant because of X-Rays and other treatments. It was SO NICE to tell people. People are so into it. Everyone asked about the due date and if it was my first and on and on. It made it more real for me and it made it fun and happy instead of so scary. I am sure I will get over people asking as soon as I am showing, but for right now, it was awesome. We are waiting to tell siblings and other close friends and family until after the first trimester, or at least the first sonogram when we can hear the baby and make sure everything is okay. It will be a slow process of telling people because we both want to tell people in person. It is hard not to tell people.

EDIT: I am uploading pictures that I took months ago (I am 20 weeks now). I remember thinking that I looked so pregnant, and that everyone would know. I had even taken out my belly ring because my stomach was stretching and it itched and got caught on things. Although the baby was microscopic, I was bigger in these photos than I was prior to being pregnant, thanks to early pregnancy bloating. It is about the same as having a period for 3 months, with added nausea, in case anyone wanted to know.