Bump Watch 2008

I've been waiting for some semblence of a bump to show itself here. I mean, come on! I'm now 17 weeks and still not showing! (at least not to the public) My three other currently pregnant friends were all publicly showing at my stage (granted, one of them is having twins, so she doesn't count), so I've been waiting for Baby Dixon to make itself known. I'm also dying to feel the baby move and be certain that it's not my imagination or the round ligament stretching I keep hearing about. It's not painful for me though. It's more like a giant knot is adjusting in my belly. So wierd. I have to think it's the baby, but I have no idea!

So, M and I have unofficially started "baby bump watch 2008." So funny, he actually had to look at my profile while I was lying down to see if there is a bump there. Here's what he saw:



Yeah! There is actually something there, it's not just my imagination.

In other news, I am so excited for my next appointment (next week).... we may find out the sex of the baby. Woo hoo! Until then. . . .

Ambition

This weekend M was scheduled to complete his initial operating experience (IOE) with VA so I planned to be very productive and get a lot of stuff done. Some of which included: finally sending the pregnancy announcement email to long-distancers (done), going through the mondo pile o'crap that has accumulated on our kitchen table and throughout the home office over the past few months (done) and reorganize the office (not done). My very long, 2-day to-do list was comprehensive and very ambitious. Sometimes that backfires on ya though. Gotta say. I felt busy all weekend and I still feel like I barely made a dent in my list. In fact, going through the house doing some "light" spring cleaning, I added at least 4 more projects to the list.

I've heard about this "nesting" business for pregnant women. But I honestly don't think that's what's going on. I'm itchin'. We haven't moved in over 2.5 years, which for us is literally a record. I think we've accumulated too much crap and I can't take it anymore.

Other than that, I had a fabulous weekend. Got good sleep, had a great walk and talk with BT (who pointed out that we collectively couldn't remember the last time just the two of us hung out, besides lunches), and generally got shit done around here. I love that. Now if only I felt that way about the rest of my to-do list...

Cheers! Have a great week.

Gifts galore

I'm doing that thing again where I buy all my wedding, bridal shower and baby shower gifts at the same time. And make hotel reso's for weddings we are set to attend this year. It gets expensive! So, to make myself feel a little more balanced, I am checking out this list o' crap we can register for for our little one-to-be.

I haven't set foot in a baby store yet. And only went to a maternity store to buy a bra (I was told I shouldn't be wearing C-shaped underwire bras anymore?). So I feel ok hittin' the web to peruse for things that we might need down the road.

I also signed up on the crazy baby store for all shit under the sun hoping that I'd get a discount on all the baby gifts I have to buy this year. Nope. No discounts. Geez. It really is like the wedding business.

Off to shop!

Must catch up . . . .

I admit, I've been pretty lame on all blog fronts. I am actually not reading either of the two current reads anymore. Dumped them both. I have not posted in almost a week. And for some strange reason I haven't gotten up the motivation to even send out the baby announcement to the far-flung friends and family yet. Well, ok, we just did far-flung family yesterday. I feel terrible that we haven't shared the news! Last time we were busting at the seams. This time I almost feel like we've waited this long, might as well wait until we know the sex!

I vow to get it done this weekend. Maybe we'll throw in a belly shot with the ultrasound on our announcement to make up for the fact that we've been so lame in telling people.

At some point an announcement will be moot since I'll be showing. But it's mostly for the folks we don't see for distance reasons. Most everyone locally knows (i think?).

As for updates on the baby: The baby's heartbeat is very strong and now I can tell where on my stomach we'll pick it up. We used to have to hunt around for it and push on my belly pretty hard to get a signal. Now we could probably get one without even using the ultrasound jelly. So that's pretty cool. Whenever we feel curious as to what's going on in there, we just slap that Doppler on and give it a listen. Awesome investment.

The other day I thought I felt the baby because I pushed on my uterus and felt a hard bump. I was so excited, like "yeah! i got the head or butt or something!" But then at my dr. appt on Monday I asked her what that might have been and she asked, "well, did you need to pee?" Me: "yes." Dr: "did you go?" Me: "yes." Dr: "and did the bump dissipate?" Me: "yes, but i thought the baby just moved or something." Dr: "Oh, that was just your bladder that you felt. Sometimes it feels hard because it's so smashed up against your uterus." Damn. Wrong again.

I'm so anxious to finally feel pregnant. Get a discernible baby bump. Feel a kick. Something! But for now, we are happy to hear the heartbeat. But certainly anxious to find out the sex in 3 weeks!

Any bets? Guesses? Inklings? Send them along!

Yee haw! M's comin' home!!

After a VERY. LONG. MONTH. without my husband and baby daddy, M is finally coming home tomorrow. And all because he passed his Airbus checkride! He's officially type-rated on the Airbus now. S-w-e-e-t! It was really funny, and oddly annoying, to talk to M after he passed and had a few drinks. (more than few really). Funny because he kept on repeating himself and saying how much he couldn't wait to come home, "i love you," etc etc. Sweet and cute, of course. And I totally think he should go get wasted after such an accomplishment, I know I did after I finished the bar (twice). But it was oddly annoying because [1] he's still not home yet and [2] he's partying and I can't. I know! It's so lame, but it's honestly how I feel. You got me pregnant, so I'm feelin' like you shouldn't go get to have the same life we had before with the partying and drinking when I'm stuck here alone, sober and carrying your child. (granted, I had just come from Bar Method with a close girlfriend who's also pregnant, but still, not quite the same).

Overall though I am THRILLED that M is done with his prison time in Miami. He's hated it. I've hated it. It's seriously sucked.

Thank you to the friends who went out of your way to make me feel not so alone during this month. besos besos!

Off to work again... for at least half the day:-)

Happy Friday!

2nd Trimester, woo hoo!

Finally! I can breathe a little easier. I'm 14 weeks now and officially in the second trimester, yeah! Besides that, not much else new to report. We have been a little more loose-lipped in telling people but still have not sent out the official email announcement yet. I am more on the "tell people as you see them" train right now, I love the surprise.

Seriously though, it's been pretty uneventful in the way of baby updates. Oh, except that I finally crossed over the 5-lb mark. I've gained a tad over 5 lbs thus far. Eek. But I still feel pretty good, with the exception of being super tired today. I blame it on the time change and losing an hour, but I totally had to take a nap at 6pm tonight. Couldn't make myself go to the gym for the life of me.

Anywhoo, have a great week! More later.

The test results are in . . .

In brief, the wierd dr. data I got on Monday where the doc said I was in the high range of normal is called the NT test and is done (in the Bay Area and in the LA Area only for California) as part of Integrated Screening. IS/SS is performed to test for the chance of the baby having Down Syndrome. I had the blood work done (as per the usual course) Monday and in conjunction with the NT test and results (on Monday where the doc gave me a scare)--BT was right. We had no reason to be worried. The results came back NEGATIVE! Yay!

All a positive would have meant is that in my case (because I chose to do Sequential screening instead of Integrated) if my "risk profile" came back anything under 1/50 they would say I was positive and that the baby had a 1/50 chance of Downs and I'd need to do an amniocentisis. (with Integrated, a positive would be anyone who was below 1/100). My results came back 1/125, which is great.

Of course there's no way to be 100% sure, but given the odds, I'm feeling pretty comfortable. And I'm definitely not willing to endure the risks associated with an amnio, which are significantly less than what they have been in the past. And even if I had to do one, I'm assured it's performed perfectly safely by CPMC and the Dr. who'd be doing it on me with a 1/1600 chance of miscarriage and 30 years of experience (thanks BT for asking how much experience Dr. O has and how many amnios he's performed).

So, for the non-pregnant ladies and the non-scientifically inclined, all this means is YAY! Everything is fine thus far. I'll do another round of blood tests in 2 weeks. That, in addition to my 14-week appointment coming up on March 17th (which will now actually be my 15 week appointment) is all good stuff because M will finally get to be there for those 2 events.

PLUS, and most importantly, he'll get to be there for the 18 week ultrasound (which is the 3rd part of the Integrated/Sequential screening tests) and when we'll get to find out the sex of the baby. YAY again!!

Consider yourself completely updated :-)

News!

If you're just checking in.... and want the latest news, try filtering out the posts by Pregnancy and all things Baby.

You'll see why :-)

Crazy week, will post more soon

Apparently arriving back from Miami at 3am on Monday didn't help me set up my week very well. As a result I feel like this week has been dragging me by the ear, I'm so not in charge. Like a mouse on a wheel, I tell ya. So, promise to update with photos tomorrow!

G'night all

13 weeks... oops!

Holy canoli! Here's the baby at 13 weeks:

So BT and I went to my first screening appointment today which included (among many other things) an ultrasound and WOW! First impression--man this kid can MOVE! The baby was throwin' punches and kicking around in there like crazy. It was a non-stop dance machine. Like a little private party in my uterus. Second--the news that I'm actually a week farther along than we originally calculated and expected! So I lost week 12 in there, but so what! I'm almost done with the first trimester. Woo hoo!

For me, it was like watching a movie of someone else's stomach. SO bizarre. I can't believe that all that is going on in there and I can't feel a thing. Other than being fatter, most of the time I don't even feel pregnant! Now I can't wait to feel the baby kick and move around. Should be in the next 7 weeks or so.

For BT, it was pretty impressive too. She and I were both completely not prepared to see that much action today. Being the science person she is, she got to ask all the pixel-ey questions and 'is that the nose?' and stuff, and quiz my genetic counselor on the ins and outs of the odds of this and that. I was SO glad she was there to interpret and humanize the mass amounts of data they threw at us today because without her I'd be in hysterics and completely freaking out.

When the doctor told me"you're at the high end of our normal range" and didn't preface it by saying, "You are farther along than we expected, so a higher number is explicable," or "You are in the normal range, although .." I, as most pregnant women would, started furrowing my brows and wondering, "well shit, what does that mean then?" So BT and I were both unimpressed by the data-lovin' doctor's bedside manner. However, scientifically speaking, we have little reason to be concerned. Of course, the little reason I do have is enough to have changed my mind about the course of screening I'll be doing now. But unless I get bad news at the end of this week (which even then still has a 99% chance of proving nothing is wrong according to BT), I am content with the awesome action show I saw our baby perform this afternoon.

And I can't wait to spread the good news at the end of this week with a lovely picture of our baby!

Since I'm drafting this in advance, by the time this posts, you will see the 13 week picture here:

Can you see the arms and legs? Belly and head? Crazy!

The Alienist

The other upside of a long flight in coach with a stupid movie Eastbound and a movie I've already seen Westbound is that I've finished my latest read, The Alienist. I must say, after a little rough patch in the beginning, it's actually quite interesing. It's set in the late 19th century (not typically my M.O. for books) and it's basically a murder mystery/historical thriller in which a team of unlikelies hunts down a serial killer. I appreciated how the author was able to truly integrate history of New York in the 1890s with a fiction that was actually engaging. And for the first time (sadly) I realized how incredibly difficult it must be to draft the first word, sentence, paragraph, page of a novel. As the author, you likely feel like your novel is thought-provoking, well-researched, engaging and thoroughly awesome... but how to start it to grab the average reader? I realized, when I finished this book, that I was actually engaged at about page 35 and that is quite awesome. I've said in the past, I give books 100 pages to get me interested. If they don't, I'm out. The fact that this book got it done in 35 pages is amazing and I totally appreciate it.

So, if you're in the mood for a well-researched, well-written and totally psychologically-driven murder mystery, this is a great find. It doesn't seem like it at first, but trust me, it is.

Happy reading!

American and now US Airways are on my s**t list

If you've booked a flight to/from Miami in the recent past, you'll know that the only direct flight options are on American. I hate American Airlines. They have sucked for so long my last good memory of them was getting a deck of cards and wings on my way to visit my grandma when I was like 9. True to form, they f**ked us royally on the way to Miami. My flight, which was scheduled to depart at at 12:30pm didnt end up leaving unti 4:45pm. Yes folks, that's over a 4 hour delay to the East Coast. Thus, instead of arriving at a reasonable 8:45pm, I got in at nearly 2am and the normally lazy bag handlers at any airport at 2am were even slower than usual... because there was only 1 of them and he only had 1 luggage truck. Yup. He had to clear out baggage for an A-320 full of people and bags by himself with one truck. F-in sucked.

I was totally hopeful that my experience coming home on US Airways/America West would be better. What was I thinking? There's a reason M has always called them America WORST. The flight out West was fine, we left on time and even though the pilot promised a 5-hour flight that ended up being 5.5 hours, we still landed in Vegas on time. I should've known it was bad news bears when I didnt see my flight listed on the Departures board. I hurried to the gate (after asking another dude wearing a Stanford Rowing shirt---yeah yeah, but he was a likely fellow passenger and wasn't ugly so whatever) and found that my in-bound flight from BWI was late, wouldn't be here for another hour and I'd be departing at 1:20 am instead of 11:50pm. US AIRWAYS YOU SUCK. Do not fuck with late-night flights on a Sunday night. It is now midnight and I should be sitting comfortably on my plane home. Instead, I'm listening to the non-stop nonsense of "Wheel of Fortune" slot machines, other slot machine noise and blogging furiously. Thank god they don't allow smoking in the airport anymore.

The only upside is free wifi at the airport. At least I will sift through some work emails that I absolutely will be too tired to do tomorrow since I am now getting in at nearly 230am, won't get home till almost 3am and have appointments and conference calls all day.

Again, I repeat--US Airways/America West and American--you lick. There's no weather in LAS, no flow, clear skies at SFO and perfectly fine weather in BWI. WTF happened?

I know you don't give two shits about a measley passenger complaint, but I still feel the need to rant.

ps--Girl in the white long dress who is still drunk and yapping at the gate agent behind her counter (they hate it when you get up in their space), you should know that you can't fly drunk and next time you try you might find yourself the unlucky recipient of an overnight stay in the LAS airport terminal.