It's a girl!

That's right.. a girl. I thought it was a boy this whole time but the doctor who did the ultrasound said that if they brought us a boy after delivery, then it's not our baby.. sounded pretty concrete to me!
We just got home from a week long road trip, I held up fairly well, if I do say so myself. Greg's mom even said she was surprised about the amount of energy I have. I am tired but I didn't feel unusually so, even with a cold! Walking around sometimes made my hips hurt a bit but I think it was good for me to get out walking so it was no big deal. The baby has definitely started moving around a lot more and Greg can finally feel her moving which is cool too!

18 Weeks Along and Counting

Everything has been pretty smooth sailing.. if it weren't for the fact that you can feel my belly getting hard, that we've heard the heartbeat (160/min!) and seen the baby twice, I'd tell you that you were crazy if you said I was pregnant! I keep waiting for something strange to happen.. can things really go this smoothly? We also received the alpha quad screen results back and they were negative! That means no chromosome disorders which is really good! I also feel like we're at a standstill- we did buy a crib so Greg can put it together before he leaves for Texas for Army training but I really want to buy something gender specific but I can't yet! Not until October 9th anyway.. less than 2 weeks away!

The second trimester.. or week 13

I'm waiting for the tiredness to ease up. I'm also waiting for some of the my taste for certain foods to come back. I'm hungry all the time too. Yet, my boobs have yet to expand by planetary proportions either so i guess a lot of things aren't really happening! Yesterday I swore i felt the cylon move but everything i read says it's too early for that, give it another 3 weeks or more, first timers especially feel the baby move later because of not knowing what it is that they're waiting for! i've gained some weight but all my clothes still fit so i'm thinking the weight gain is the extra blood volume, placenta, baby etc etc. I did order some maternity clothes though, so i'll be prepared for when I pop so to speak!

and on the diaper front, I want to go with bum genius 3.0 because they're one size fits all, velcro no pins and 2 different inserts to choose from. A lady at work says they're awesome and she's on her second kid with the ones she bought originally so they stand the test of time! I also read that you don't have to buy dreft for the diapers or baby clothes, that any fragrance free/sensitive detergent works but that dreft just smells good! so I don't know.. there seem to be a lot of ways to make things work out cheaper.

The Diaper Dilemma

So we have been having a debate on diapers. We would not mind going with a more “green” diaper, if not for the enviromental factor, but for the fact that sometimes green costs less in the long run or is more manageable. Then there's cloth diapers, these seem to be green and more cost effective, but also more labor intensive and not very friendly to people around you when you're out and carrying a fully loaded one. The last option is disposable, these seem to be cheap and when used you just toss them in the trash to sit in a landfill somewhere far away for the rest of yours and your baby's natural life.

First I looked into the green diapers. These are a cloth reuseable outer shell with a flushable insert. They seem to be easy to use and friendly to going out. The down side is that they seem to be on the expensive side. Whether its from the usual “green” mark up or because they don't seem to have caught on in general we may never know. The only one of these options we seem to find for this type is www.gdiapers.com they sell the outer shell for about $18 and the inserts in cases of a 40 count for $15, which breaks down to 35 cents a changing.

The cloth diaper alternative comes with a few options. There are pre-folded ones and interchangeable outer shells. Prefolded cloths run about 6 for $11 which comes out to $1.83 per diaper, but you can get multiple uses out of each. Interchangeable ones from bumgenius run for about $40 for two with extra inserts. So we're looking at about $20 a diaper but have multiple changings. Included we have to look at the special sensitive detergeant to clean them in which is about $20 for 50 ounces and cleans about 130 loads, or 15 cents a load. Another portion of this is the option for a diaper service. These are not found everywher and only one seems to be here in Columbus, OH. Bundle of Joy is the company here, www.bundleofjoydiapers.com the price is $76 per month for a weekly delivery of 80 diapers. Which comes out to 24 cents a changing. The best part is that you don't have to deal with cleaning them yourself either! Again the downfall seems to be that you'd have to carry around a vertible toxic waste dump if you were out and had to make a changing, which might only help if you got stuck in a long line.

The final option is the widely used diaposable diapers. The ease of just being able to toss out the toxins and not having the potential disaster of having them soaking in a pail until they get clean is the main draw. At a rate of 84 for $17, or 20 cents a changing they also look to be very economical. Then there is the landfill issue too. I think the recent debate says that they last for about 200 years before decomposing. Since they haven't been around that long I'm not sure how true that is. I also have no clue about that kind of stuff and not a huge drive to be influenced by it either.

In the end it looks as if we are going to go with a cloth diaper system while we are at home and since that will be saving money in the long run we'll be able to go with the gdiapers while we are out on the town partying it up.

As the weeks tick by...

So we're just begining week 11. We've been researching about diapers which will be posted when I get the time. In the mean time I have started to stress about my job outlook. Being only part time working and full time student, I have realized that this setup won't really be the best for the next 2 years until I graduate. I've started looking for a full time job and one that is in the healthcare profession, but have found only dead ends really.

On the home front if there are any fathers-to-be out there I received a bit of information about the mood swings but had disregarded them until this past week. The advice was that avoidance was the way to go. I struggled with that for a bit. I now understand that it is actually good advice, or just that you should just accept that everything (I mean EVERYTHING) will be posed by heror in your mind, in a fashion as your fault. It might not be that way, or she might not really think that way, but that seems to be the attitude around just about everything. So really the advice wouldn't be to avoid but to take any comments with a grain of salt and understand that you are doing your best and there is only so much you can do. If you aren't trying that hard then I think you missed something in your relationship and you should try relooking at it.

10 weeks and counting..

So, my excitement on reaching 10 weeks is that my pants from the spring still fit! yay! that was my # 1 fear of reaching the end of a summer of wearing baggy summery pants and then needing to get back into my real work pants but they fit, even without a bella band! Other than that there's nothing to report, tired still, don't feel well overall but nothing too horrible, we have another appointment next week at the doctors. Yay for nothing good or bad to report, right?

And so it began...

I have to admit that we fell into a trap. Most things that I had heard about pregnancy was that it would take awhile before she would get pregnant. I know what you're saying: "but it only takes one time at the right moment." I knew that too however, everything I had read or heard said that it could take up to a year. With that we discussed that she would go off the pill and while we were waiting for nature to take its course; we would get our life together and ready for the addition to our family.

Then it happened, first month off the pill. She was two weeks late for her period. The first confirmation came when a pee stick barely showed a positive result. The next couple of days turned over about five different positive tests. While still in disbelief a call was placed to a midwife and the first appointment was scheduled.

The wait for the appointment was easy since I was in shock. Everyday I spent waiting for Mary to tell me in a not-so-obvious way that she began her period. The appointment went quickly there was a height/weight, an exam (which didn't look comfortable), and a blood draw. All the time everyone at the office congratulated us, on my count, about 500 times.

Still it didn't sink in...

The weeks leading up to the second appointment were spent telling our closest friends and our families. My mom promptly began crying in the parking lot of Home Depot when we gave her the phone call notification. Mary's mom was at work when we got a hold of her and she was in such shock that it seemed to me that she had thought it was a bad thing. (I was informed that I was wrong on this and she was just essentially floored by the news.) Mary's father, Greg, was told just before the yearly 4th of July picnic seemed to be in denial until the announcement was made at said picnic. Then he began strutting around talking about how Mary managed to "get herself knocked up."

The second appointment came and was the first Ultrasound. This was preformed internally and again did not look comfortable. We had guessed that the cylon would be about 9-10 weeks along and done our duty by reading absolutely too much on the entire subject. The doctor did some searching around to see how many cylons were growing. He only found one, which I still don't know what my reaction would have been if he had found more (probably something along a catatonic haze). The doctor measured what essentially looked like a blob on the screen that had a little bit of a fuzzy spot in the middle of it, which we were informed was the heart beat. The measurement put the cylon at 7 weeks. The Doc said congratulations, again, gave us a souvenir picture and left the room. So I guess we found out by the pee sticks at the VERY earliest that was possible. Thanks to technology I was able to take a picture of the picture with my phone and send it to both of our mothers. My mom said that that was the next best thing to being there.

I still don't think the shock had worn off by that point, but in the past few weeks it has slowly sunk in and I believe I have finally moved into acceptance. I have also been able to almost literally break my back painting.

Baby Cylon

So, we found out that I'm pregnant on June 17 via pee on a stick (or sticks, we bought several and kept getting the plus or digital "pregnant"). While we were planning on this, we assumed it would take us at least 6 months or so to actually get pregnant. May 11 was when I stopped taking the pill, so that date set me with a February 15 due date.. valentines baby? really, us? Everyone who knows us knows that we're not really sappy so a Vday baby for us would be kind of strange. We went to a midwife July 1 and while they did not actually tell me that I was "officially" expecting, I guess the pee on a stick was sufficient for them. Greg asked if them saying congratulations a million times made it more real.. not really, because they didn't actually do anything other than take some blood, a yucky internal exam and made me pee in a cup. They did however set a first trimester ultrasound date for 2 weeks later when I should be 9 weeks along.



At that appointment it made it slightly more real because i could now see the blob growing inside me, or the Cylon as we call it (reference Battlestar Galactica if you're not aware..) it looks like a blob though.. a blob with a flicker that's its heart beat. The doctor assured me that there is only 1 in there no more (thankfully) and told me that you're super fertile when you first come off of birth control - that would have been nice to know! ;)
I think the main reason it doesn't really feel real is because I haven't had morning sickness.. I am hungrier than usual and more tired though, and if i don't eat i feel ill and if i eat too much i feel ill. I crave orange juice which supposedly means it's a boy.. who knows, silly old wives tales.. the more people i tell the more real it is I guess, or the more i hear my dad walk around saying that i'm "knocked up" thanks dad.. love you too... ;) The ultrasound determined that I was in fact 7 weeks not 9 weeks (thanks again first month off birth control) and put my due date at March 1, 2010!