Monday, January 28, 2013

H3: The First Trimester

Right, so I'm pregnant. Again.

Friday November 9th I was cleaning out my bathroom cabinets and found some old pregnancy tests. So of course, I decided I better take one right away. Honestly, I have no idea why. I wasn't having any pregnancy symptoms, had only had one period since having Miller, and wasn't even late for another yet. Surprisingly, the stick slowly turned pink. So I promptly chugged a bunch of water, and peed on another one which was an even darker positive.

I then immediately texted my friend Beth (I think she's been the first to know about each of my pregnancies:) that "my eggo is preggo."

I was going to wait awhile to tell Jerad and was even kinda having fun being the only one (aside from Beth) that knew, but then he did something that ticked me off (said he was too tired to load the dishwasher or something like that) and I almost snapped at him how exhausted I am doing all the errands, working full time, handling the vast majority of household chores and cleaning, all while  taking care of a 2 year old, baby, and being pregnant etc etc... so I decided to tell him before I let it slip the "wrong way."

I started thinking up cute ideas and ways to surprise him with the news and then was realistic that since he might not be excited at first, I probably shouldn't spring it on him with some elaborate plan and it'd be better to let it sink in. I knew he would eventually be happy, but it was going to be a surprise and he still wasn't completely sold on the baby #3 plan.

So I did the mature thing and Monday morning around 6:00am as I finishing getting ready for work, I put all the positive pregnancy tests on the back of the toilet and sent him a text message screen shot of the due date calendar saying "your baby is due on or around July 21st" with a message that said "Sorry Charlie ;)"


 

Then I left and figured he'd see it when he got up for work in the morning:)

He ended up seeing it before I left and stumbled down stairs with his phone (he hadn't even noticed the positive tests) and said "is this some really weird way of telling me you're pregnant?" To which I sort of stammered "oh. Yes. Late for work, see ya tonight!" But then he was so cute and so sweet and so excited about it (or did a really convincing job of faking it). In fact, I think he was even more excited about this one than he was with either Marshall or Miller.

Baby #1 is scary because you just don't really know what to expect or how it will change your life, baby #2 you worry about the logistics of being pregnant while caring for another child, then taking care of two at once (and Marshall was only a year old when we found out I was pregnant with Miller), and if you can love and take care of and afford another at all... but #3 I guess he just figured we knew what we were doing and what to expect by now.

Since we found out so early, I was sort of in denial for awhile. I wasn't having any symptoms, and we had a bunch of holiday parties and activities to keep me distracted. With each pregnancy I've gotten progressively nauseous and this one I started having morning sickness around 7 weeks. No one at work knew I was pregnant yet and getting up from my desk to dash to the bathroom and throw up multiple times a day was not fun. For weeks 7-10 the only thing that I could stomach and keep down was things like bread and crackers. Which was unfortunate because we've been mostly gluten free for the past 9 months or so, so suddenly eating wheat all the time made me feel sluggish and like crap. Which sucked but was still preferable to feeling nauseous and throwing up all the time.

However, around 10 weeks the clouds parted and I started feeling better. Which was great because I was actually able to enjoy Christmas and taking the kids out of town to the snow for Jerad's brother's wedding!

The difference in having Jerad around has been amazing! In retrospect I didn't realize how hard it was having him out of town for the majority of Miller's pregnancy. For the majority of this first trimester I was able to sleep in and nap at least two times a week which was heavenly. Friday's when I'm home alone with the kids I made myself (not that it took much convincing) lay down and rest/sleep while they took their afternoon nap, and I tried to get in at least one weekend nap as well. On the weekends Jerad would get up with the kids and make them breakfast and I would get to sleep in till 8 or 9. After the kids would go to bed there were quite a few nights where instead of vacuuming and cleaning I'd just peace-out as well. Jerad started taking over some, then eventually all of Miller's night wakings.

In other words, I had a pretty restful first trimester! Which is good because guys, my body is tiiiired. By the time this baby is born I will have been pregnant, breastfeeding, or BOTH for 3 years and 11 months straight. While working full time outside the house. Its not easy. But it is worth it. I'm so excited to meet baby #3! We'll find out the gender in about a month, and so far we're both hoping it's another boy. When he/she is born Marshall will have just turned 3, and Miller will only be 1.5, so having three boys so close in age just seems extra fun. Not to mention we already have everything we'd need.

In just another month we'll know! I have a list of names for both genders, but we haven't agreed on anything yet. In the meantime I'm just calling it "H3."

That catches us up through the first trimester.


And just for fun:
8 weeks. We'll call this the "before" photo since it's the earliest one I took.


13 weeks





I think since my body has never really had time to recover from being pregnant, it just falls back into "preggo mode" really fast. Now at 15 weeks I'm already bigger than most of my friends at 20+ and getting "are you sure there's just one in there?" comments. Oh well, I can deal with being huge since so far the kids have all been so adorable:)

I need to do better...

... with this whole blogging thing. On the one hand I feel like its such an effort, my laptop is broken which makes getting photos on here hard, and no one cares anyways, waa waa waa etc. etc. etc. But *I* care and honestly I have such a crappy memory I need to write things down so that I can go back and remember later. So, I plan to spend this week catching up and be diligent about documenting the kids and this pregnancy over the next year!