I don’t really understand how milk can settle my stomach like it does. As a perpetual milk-lover before I got pregnant I got a little nervous with all the “milk turns my stomach” and lactose-intolerant stories of pregnant women. I figured, best case scenario, milk wouldn’t have a bad effect on me.

Instead I’ve gone even more crazy for milk. My breakfast, almost every morning, is a bowl of Cheerios or Rice Krispies with lots of milk. With a glass of milk on the side. And you know what? It almost always settles my stomach. This morning I was feeling a little bit gaggy, I had a bowl of cereal… all better now.

I feel very lucky milk is treating me so well!!

::

The baby carrier classifieds are a bad place for me to hang out. So many great deals on things. Some not-so-great deals too. It’s making it hard for me to make decisions. This morning I saw an all-black BabyHawk for a very good price. Now I’m wishy-washy about it. Den likes all black, and he likes the headrest. And he likes it’s not $100. But he’s still not sure about tying straps. He really wants something with buckles, but I know from looking that Becos (and ones like it) are around $100 or more. But then again, if it’s something that he’ll love, it’ll be worth the money. So I’m sitting here trying to decide if this BH is worth it. I might just pass and hope something comes up with a nice pattern for me (reversible so that Den could try it out). But the good deal is hard to pass up on something like a BH!

And yeah, I could buy it and then re-sell it if it’s not what we need. But, see, I’m a hoarder. I really hate to part with things! So I’m not so certain that would be the best approach. ;)

I did buy a Hotsling, though. Not the Zoie print… the Ana print (my other favorite). It was a great price, and the seller’s photo showed the print was even prettier than the stock photo. I had to get it. It’s more girlie than the Zoie print, so I’m just going to have to have a girl, right? (But it will match most of my clothes perfectly!)

::

I think I need a nap. -.-

Bras are good! I have gone from tearing my bra off soon as I get home from whatever outing (my typical mode of operation) to putting my bra ON soon as I wake up, just to sit in bed with my laptop. I find that my boobs are annoying me lots. It’s the same thing I always complain about – they’re hanging down lower and sitting on my belly a tiny bit, and that tiny bit is enough to drive me mental. So, bra. I like my bra.

However the caveat is that it’s my no underwire bra. My bra with underwire, while it does still fit me and it has more padding (so it, errr, covers up my huge pinty nipples now that it’s so cold out), drives me nuts. I cannot STAND the way the underwire digs into my chest/belly. So I think I’m going to have to get another 38C bra without underwire… or maybe a “sleep bra” for around the house? I still don’t wear one to bed though. Yick. I can’t wear anything to bed. maybe that’ll change too… but for now my only problem at night is how squashed my boobs feel when I try to lay on my stomach. (Yes it’s my boobs that are causing the problem, not my belly!) I guess they’re just more tender than they normally are! (Well, they’re probably growing again.)

::

I have been very sore today. It was one of those “weird” pains of pregnancy, I guess. I got to work and just started getting this throbbing pain in my left groin. Yes, my groin. It started up higher, like where my ovary is, and continued through my groin down my leg. It would hit, I’d wince, then it would go away. A minute later, same thing. It made cleaning very difficult, as you can imagine. I don’t even know what it was, a nerve or something? It wasn’t my uterus or round ligament pain. So I spent the day taking it easy and taking breaks in between moving around. Sitting down the pains lessened, but were still coming now and again. I was quite happy when Den suggested getting Subway for dinner, because I really didn’t want to be standing around making something!

::

So one of my due date groups on one of my forums (yes I have many) assigned us each a “buddy” from someone from the April ’07 playgroup. I got paired with a mama who is very crunchy… AP, cloth dipes, no vax, natural birth, and so on. She may be reading this too, so if she is – hiya! ;) We’ve only just started chatting but I’m excited. I do have friends on forums that are crunchy, but it’s cool to have a “mentor” of a sort, especially one who has stood in my shoes just a year ago. Even for questions that may seem simple like, “Is X kind of carrier going to be too hot in the summer months?”

Well, Den was talking to his mom on the phone yesterday and found out that his Gram – who was in the hospital last week – apparently now has Shingles. I heard from across the room as his mom said to Denis, “Keep Natalie away from her!!” Because, you know, Chicken Pox + pregnancy = bad. Apparently. So now I’m trying to research Shingles (herpes zoster) to if/how/when it’s contagious, because as it stands now Gram is saying she’s not coming to Thanksgiving. Which is really very sweet, but I don’t know yet if it’s necessary.

From the Wikipedia article: “Since shingles is a reactivation of a virus contracted previously—often decades earlier—it cannot be induced by exposure to another person with shingles or chicken pox. Those with active blisters, however, can spread chicken pox to others who have never had that condition and who have not been vaccinated against it.” So it seems that the incidence of Shingles is triggered by something in your own body, not by “catching” it from someone else – however, Shingles can pass Chicken Pox to someone who is not immune. (I will be continuing to research this.)

I am immune to Chicken Pox, if you’re wondering. Natural immunity. I never got the chicken pox – or at least not any actual signs of it, but apparently when my brother had it when we were children I managed to become immune. Which is a good thing, because they near freaked during immigration when they asked for the date I had chicken pox and I informed them I’d never had it. (They promptly sent me for a blood test, and my being immune saved my ass.) Since when is Chicken Pox an immigration issue anyways? I found that weird.

This part of the wikipedia article is about the varicella vaccine, and I think is pretty significant:
“prior to the vaccine, it has long been known that adults received natural immune boosting from contact with children infected with varicella. This helped to suppress the reactivation of herpes zoster.[16] In Massachusetts, herpes zoster incidence increased 90%, from 2.77/1000 to 5.25/1000 in the period of increasing varicella vaccination 1999-2003.[17] The effectiveness of the varicella vaccine itself is dependent on this exogenous (outside) boosting mechanism. Thus, as natural cases of varicella decline, so has the effectiveness of the vaccine.”

Nice, huh? So by eradicating chicken pox outbreaks (but giving everyone immunity, which basically means giving them the dormant virus) we’re causing far more outbreaks of Shingles. And this, unfortunately, is not going to be helped by an individual choosing not to vax, as the “immune boosting” would have been caused by normal outbreaks in the “herd” (society). One case of herd immunity being a bad thing, I guess.

For those who are wondering about the term “crunchy” or “crunchy granola,” in general it refers to the hippy-type tree-huggers, people who eat organic, recycle, usually very left-wing. In terms of parenting it refers to those mamas who do attachment parenting, cloth diapering, baby-wearing, co-sleeping, breastfeeding, etc.

I don’t really consider myself fully crunchy. I’m lax on the recycling, I certainly eat meat and dairy, though I do try to buy organic when possible (it tastes better and is better for you!). With the baby I do seem to fall into the typical crunchy categories… we’re going to be doing cloth diapering, co-sleeping, baby-wearing, breastfeeding, I want an unmedicated birth, etc. And it’s not that I suddenly one day said, “I want to be a crunchy mama!” and then tried to fulfill the various roles. I just, along the way, picked up one thing at a time because it seemed to make sense to me. Breastfeeding? I was raised with the “this is how we feed babies” attitude so I never even questioned that one. Wearing the baby in a sling/wrap? Makes sense to me. Co-sleeping? Makes sense to me (and even Den, who is FAR FAR from crunchy). Cloth diapering… okay, a lot of the reasoning behind that is my desire to recycle/reuse and use natural materials rather than disposables. But there is the aspect of “it just feels better!” (Trust me, I know this from experience – I use cloth pads, remember? ;) )

Oh, and I’m definitely very liberal. ;) If you couldn’t tell, LOL.

Oh, and for heaven’s sake, I work at a cat sanctuary. That by itself is pretty damn crunchy. (The people who work in that field are NEVER there because of the money – there is little – or a power trip – the cats still think they’re gods. They’re there because they believe in the cause, they want to give back, they want to help out. I wouldn’t be there if I didn’t feel like I was making a difference in the world, if I didn’t truly love what I did. I mean, there’s no glory in picking up cat puke day after day. None.)

::

Speaking of crunchy…

I joined a new forum a few weeks ago, and it has due date groups. The first thing I saw was a post about birth beads… the members of the group exchange beads, so that they each will have a necklace with one bead on it from each member. The beads are to be of natural materials only: stone, glass, wood, etc. For some reason this drew me in.

It is time to purchase the beads and, while of course I would prefer not to spend a ridiculous amount on some beads to send to people, I want something with meaning. So of course I went right to stone. :) (Which reminds me, I really need to find my amethyst. I’ve had it for years and years, I even purchased a little pouch for it, and for some reason I always kept it near at hand as it was soothing.)

In any case, I have chosen Sodalite:

“Very often, when our emotions are whirling about in our heads we are tempted to seize at any decision which seems to promise that it will reduce our distress. Sodalite helps us to resist such temptation.

This also means that it can help to quiet any doubts you may have about your ability to make a decision, i.e., it quiets the inner critic.”

Sounds like exactly what I need during labor, don’t you think?

As an added plus, it’s very cheap – and all I need to buy is one strand of beads to have enough for everyone. :)

Totally not baby related, but I’m irritated with myself. Also a warning that this is somewhat geek talk, so if geek talk looks like babble to you, skip down.

So this has been a nice night. Up late, as usual, on my desktop computer because Den is sleeping and I didn’t want to bother him. Puttering around doing nothing, and I got the idea to clear out some programs from my computer. I do this regularly (and so should you! Makes your computer happy and runs faster). And for some reason the idiotic Linksys wireless connection icon has been in my taskbar for the last few weeks, and I don’t know why, as I don’t use the Linksys program to manage my wireless. I checked online to see if anyone knew how to get rid of that icon and people said just to remove the Linksys program since you’re not using it. Excellent. Among other games and shit, I removed it.

You know that feeling you get right after you click a button (or let go of the car door) that you just did something really bad? Like the time I locked my keys in my old car while the car was running, I realized it the second that car door left my fingertips, when it was too late to grab the door. Same deal here. The moment I pressed the “delete” button I thought to myself, “Oh shit. The drivers.” Sure enough, it not only erased the wireless network management program – which I didn’t need – but also the goddamn wireless card drivers – which I very much do need in order to get on the internet.

Well fine, I’ll just reinstall them. Easy enough, right? Wrong. Guess what one disk is missing from my very neat, categorized stack of disks? Yeah. The network card driver.

So I’ll download it… on my laptop, of course, since the desktop is now internet-inaccessible. Go to do that… need the model number. Where’s the model number? On the network card, which is installed in my computer tower. So there I am, 3am, on my hands and knees with a flashlight, pulling the side panel off my effing computer tower, and using a freakin cosmetics mirror (I knew it would come in handy for something) to try to see the bottom side of my little network card. If I had to shut down the computer and pull the network card out just to get the model number I would have been pissed. Thankfully the mirror worked. It made my brain hurt trying to read backwards (another thing I wouldn’t recommend doing at 3am), but it worked.

Once I downloaded the driver it went pretty quickly, but holy mother, not how I really wanted to spend an hour in the middle of the night, you know?

::

Speaking of sleep? I’m sleeping like crap while Den is in the bed sleeping. Even when I’m tired and fall asleep at 11pm like a good girl, I wake up a couple hours later tossing and turning and unable to sleep. But soon as Den goes to work? I’m out, and I stay out all day. I don’t know if it has to do with the soft light in the room (why would that HELP me sleep?? I don’t know), or if it’s simply that I don’t have to worry about someone else in the bed – or deal with his snoring, which happens periodically through the night (not constantly, thank god, or I’d boot him to the futon) – but I sleep BLISSFUL while he’s at work. Well, usually… unless the dog decides there’s something worth barking at for half an hour. That can somewhat interrupt my blissful sleep.

At this point, on days that I’m not working, I embrace the oddness of it and choose to get a long, great sleep during the day rather than forcing it at night and waking up every 2 hours, restless and irritated.

::

Baby is awake, currently. I can feel it moving around in there, a couple little thumps. Someone described the early movements as feeling like little muscle twitches, and that’s it exactly. And that’s probably why I “wasn’t feeling it” for the past week other than that one big pop… it honestly just feels like a muscle twitch. The only time I notice it is when I’m laying propped up with pillows in bed. I guess it’s the “optimal” position for me, or else the baby just gets really active when I lay like this.

It is SO cool though. When I feel something I stop what I’m doing in the hopes of feeling more. I knew I was looking forward to feeling something, but I didn’t really expect to feel so emotional over it. Every time I feel little baby kicks (which has been only about 3 times now) I get this rush of relief – baby’s still there, still okay. And then a rush of maternal emotion… just feeling so amazed and so thrilled and so excited that I have a baby there inside me.

::

I asked on TBW forums about soft-structured carriers and someone said their DH loved their Patapum. Brand new they are around $70, but they’re listed on TBW used for $55. I showed Den and he said, “Yes! That’s exactly what I want!” So, I think that’s the winner for him. He said any of the three colors offered is fine, but I’m going to hold out for black, since it’s the nicest to me. ;) Not like I don’t have time to sit and wait for something to come up used.

Den said the hotsling I bought was ugly. But what does he know, he hates all patterns. He’s such a man. lol

Okay okay, sorry, 18 week pic is up! ;) Thanks for the reminder, I forgot to upload it here!

::

The baby sure is moving today. Late last night I had my hand resting on my belly – which I do quite frequently – and baby kicked. And I swear to you I felt it in my hand! A little tiny nudge. I feel like the baby’s gone from 0 to 60 in one week! I wasn’t feeling anything, now it’s kicking pretty hard! Today is the first day I’ve felt anything in a position other than laying in bed… I’m at work sitting at the desk and I felt a pop. How cool!! I just love it! Sure takes any anxiety down by a big notch when you can feel it moving around. :D

And I am also so freakin’ excited about Friday, when I will get to stop calling baby “it”!! 4 days to go! Not like I’m counting or anything…

::

Of course, to remind me that life is not all sunshine and roses (we wouldn’t want that, now would we), I sprung a HUGE zit right beside my nose. -.- It’s one of those big red sore ones. Owwie.

My emotions, I’ve noticed are really polar. I have good days and I have bad days, and nothing in between. I’m either feeing super happy and lovey with the husband, I’m patient and laughing and calm…. or else I am totally irritated and ready to flip my lid. I wonder if that’s a symptom of the pregnancy hormones or if it’s just me. :lol:

It’s kind of weird that the things I worried about most are small issues. I really worried what pregnancy would do to my depression and my acne… and both are honestly not much different from before. Minor differences, but certainly not the huge issue I was fearing. And then I got totally blindsided by other things, like this persistent nausea. It really never entered my mind that I’d be one of those having bad morning sickness, much less having it past 18 weeks. And yet here I am. Just goes to show you that you can’t fret too much about the future!

::

Every other tuesday I have a work meeting in the evening. Tomorrow is, I believe, an off-week, so I’ll be heading up to Babies R Us for one of their little free seminars. In two weeks they’re having a breastfeeding seminar, which I’d like to catch as well.

While I’m at the mall tomorrow I’m going to pick up a new bra or two. Due to the increased size of the boobage and the increased size of the belly I am having some issues with boobs sitting on belly. It drives. me. CRAZY. So, I wear my bra all the time now… that nice Hanes bra I bought at Target for cheap. It doesn’t have underwire. It’s comfy. My other bras, however? All have underwire. My boobs still have not grown enough that I need a new size… but I just can’t wear them anymore because of the underwire! So I’m going to try to find a sleep bra that fits, just to wear in bed when I’m on my laptop.

I’ll have to echo what Kristen said (although she said it far better). Mel has been nominated for an award, and she SO deserves to win. So all you have to do is click here once a day and vote for Stirrup Queen.
VOTE: http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/best-medicalhealth-issues-blog-1.php

::

Totally random comment, but – do not sleep while Law and Order is on the TV. Weird fuckin’ dreams man.

For someone who used to refuse to take any medication, at all, I am now up to six – count ’em SIX – pills per day. Granted half of those are vitamins of one sort or another: my prenatal, the B-6, and the Expecta (DHA). I started taking the B-6 when I started the Unisom, as it was recommended that I take them together, but at this point I think I could scrap the B-6 and I wouldn’t notice a difference, it’s the Unisom that does it. But I figure there’s no harm in taking B-6 (my prenatal doesn’t have any in it), so I continue on.

So other than the vitamins there’s the Unisom, like I mentioned. Of course there’s my SSRI, which I’ve been on for years (though I will be asking them to possibly change which one I’m on, due to breastfeeding concerns). And now…. Colace.

Oh yes. I’ve been fighting it for weeks now, just waiting for my body to get back to normal. It’s not happening. The pregnancy hormones have changed things and I need a little help. So many of my pregnant friends have been singing the praises of Colace, so here’s hoping it does the trick.

::

Baby is getting more active by the day, I swear. I can’t believe how often I’m feeling flutters now. It really makes me wonder if the reason I wasn’t feeling anything was because I didn’t recognize it. Now I know what it is, I’m noticing it a lot more frequently. Baby was awake last night when I woke up after those crazy dreams, and apparently this morning it’s awake again.

I really thought I’d be a bit more freaked out by the movement, at least briefly. I’ve been waiting and waiting for that, “OMG there’s an alien in my belly!!” moment, but it hasn’t happened. I thought for sure when I felt it kicking that I would have a momentary jolt with reality and it would feel “weird”. Instead it’s felt completely right. More right than I’ve ever felt before. How do I explain to relatives and friends who ask how I’m doing that, yes, I’m puking a lot still and not able to eat very great… but that I feel better than I ever have in my life? Yes, I have the oily skin, and the dry hair, the aches and pains… but it’s all part and parcel of this whole package and the good outweighs the bad by so much it’s not even funny.

Yesterday I was writing about my feelings on breastfeeding on a forum. I had a few realizations while I was writing, about my expectations going into this pregnancy and into motherhood and breastfeeding. And it’s funny for me to say that I always knew I would love being pregnant, because for most of my life I didn’t even think I’d have kids! Last night I was laying in bed wondering how much my expectations of pregnancy have affected how I feel right now. I hear people talk about labor and many times the opinions they have going into it are reflected by how they feel when they come out of it. There are a few who go in thinking it’s going to be horrible and come out saying it was easier than they thought. But you know what I mean. Walking into a situation with a firm belief that either, “This is going to suck!” or “This is going to be wonderful!” does have an impact on how you perceive what’s happening to you. So with this pregnancy, did my firmly held belief that pregnancy would be wonderful lead me to this place now? An interesting thought. Obviously having a belief that I would not have morning sickness did not help me avoid it or even give me a lighter version of it. But I bet it’s helped me see it in a different light, and to overlook it as an inconvenience. My experience of pregnancy does not center around my nausea.

When Den and I started IF treatments we did talk about how far we were willing to go and what treatments we were willing to consider. We both pretty much agreed that we were willing to do whatever invasive treatments we had to, for as long as we had to, in order to get pregnant. Den’s line in the sand was that we had to use his sperm to get pregnant – to him that is the ultimate. I was never sure how I’d feel about using donor eggs if it came down to it. But I knew I wanted to be the one to carry the pregnancy. Now that I’m pregnant I know the answer: I would not care if it were my eggs or someone else’s. It’s my child, either way.

::

The alien is still kicking. I’m looking forward to it getting more noticeable, but at the same time I could see how it could get hard to sleep with someone awake in there! :D

Today I found out my brother’s dog has cancer. The vet’s given her 6 months to live.

I am in shock, I think. This isn’t just “my brother’s dog”…. this is a family dog, whom I lived with before moving out right before my wedding. The whole family is… trying to deal, I guess. I haven’t talked to my brother or my dad – their mode of coping is to shut down and retreat into themselves, so I’m not surprized or put off by it. My brother has to be dealing with a lot… it’s his baby.

I feel like we were so cheated. She’s only 3 years old. And I know and accept that our pets will never live as long as we want them to, but to be handed a death sentence at 3?? She is supposed to have so many more years ahead of her. I was worrying about how she’d react when they lost Oreo, my first dog who is now 12. Instead it looks like they’ll be losing Tessa first. It just seems so wrong. My child will never get to meet her.

Tessa is a Rotti/Lab mix… and you will never meet a sweeter dog. She’s scared of strangers, but if you are family she is utterly devoted. She’s a snuggly, cuddly dog with big, deep brown eyes. I could never resist giving her a big hug and cuddle, and caressing her soft, silky ears. My dad says the same thing… she’s just a big cuddle-dog. And she loves it too.

Our family will have a great big hole in it when she is gone. We will make whatever time she has left the best we possibly can for her. I’m going to make up a “care package” for her, full of toys and bones.

Dearest Tessa, I’m so sorry. It’s so unfair.

::

I had plans to go to one of those free seminars at BRU this evening, and I almost decided not to go on account of feeling so upset. But Den said I should go, and I figured that getting out of the house would do me well. I was the only one at the seminar, so that was a little weird… though, being typical me, I just really felt bad for the person running it, that no one else showed! I did get to sit in a glider for the presentation, and I must say I love those things. Of course the one I was sitting in was a $400 glider (yikes!!), but I hope to find a cheaper model that is similarly comfortable.

Then I went to buy a couple more bras. I compare it to sticking hot pockers in my eyes. Yet again she measured me at a 32DD. o.O I wear a 38C. I KNOW I am not a 32 band size, no matter WHAT she measured me as…. I am convinced they are simply on crack at Motherhood Maternity and do not know how to measure, because I had to try on a ton of sizes to find that, you know what, I fit “best” in a 36D (and the band was on the last rung, so I know, logically, I should be wearing a 38C – the size I own now). So I bought a 36D soft-cup bra and a size small sleep bra (though now I wish I’d bought the medium). Next time I’m going to JC Penney and Target.

::

I am having second thoughts about the girl’s name we picked out. See, we have two girls names, and I’m starting to get sad that we may not get to use our second choice. I know Den has mentioned on occassion that he’s considered “switching” the order too. The reasoning behind my feelings today are totally silly, I guess, but regardless. I’m sitting on the fence. I do like “Kailet Amber”… I love the name Kailie, that was what I wanted (though spelled differently). I am worried, however, about giving my child such a weird first name. We aren’t shy about sharing our name choices, and we’ve gotten a whole slew of different responses. But it’s not the “You’re crazy!” responses that worry me, it’s the “Ummm, how do you spell that?” or the “How do you pronounce that?” Do I really want to give my child a name that people are so baffled by? I don’t know. It’s my husband’s choice, and he absolutely loves it. Our second choice name is “Catherine Elizabeth.” Again we compromised… I would much rather have it spelled Katherine. I love the nick name Kate. It’s a classic, gorgeous name, it flows beautifully, and it has some hidden meaning to me.

But, I figure it’s REALLY not worth fretting over until we find out if we’re having a boy or a girl. If it’s a boy his name will be Devin, no question. And… I admit it, I think I want a boy a teenie tiny bit more than I want a girl. Probably because I’ve felt so strongly all along that this is a boy, it’ll be a bit of an adjustment if it’s not! (I’ve always wanted a girl, so it’s weird that I feel this way now.)

Just a few more days until we find out.

I didn’t get around to mentioning it yesterday, but our cat got sick. All night. I was worried, didn’t get much sleep. First thing in the morning I took him to the vet’s office, where it was discovered it was actually worse than I thought and he was hospitalized for the day. He had/has a urinary blockage…. crystals. For those of you who don’t know what that is, basically his urethra was completely plugged and he couldn’t pee. It’s somewhat common with male cats, and it can be fatal. So yeah. Good sized vet bill, but it’s a good thing I took him in when I did.

He’s home now, been sleeping all evening. He has special food to try to help disolve the rest of the blockage that they couldn’t remove, and I’m to keep a strict eye on him to make sure that he’s urinating. So far all he’s done is sleep. The sedation really knocked him out…. and considering he couldn’t sleep all night last night due to pain he must be really exhausted. :sigh:

Needless to say, I napped for a couple of hours, punctuated my multiple phone calls – hubby at work so I could let him know what had happened, the vet to give me an update and instructions – and I wasn’t exactly relaxed for the day.

The interesting thing is that the baby was very active all day. I even felt it moving around while I was trying to nap, laying on my stomach as usual… not something I’ve felt before, for sure. I couldn’t decide if it was reassuring or annoying.

This week was looking to be a wonderful week, just trying to pass the time until my ultrasound. Well I haven’t really thought much about my ultrasound the last day. Nothing like some major medical issues with family members (as our pets are our family) to take your mind off things for a while. Not really what I would have chosen. :sigh: