Penguin is OK!!

I got in to see the midwife and have an ultrasound, and Penguin is just fine, and we got to hear the heartbeat!!  Not ectopic, not a blighted ovum or chemical pregnancy, amniotic sac looks good, measuring right on track, and has a heartbeat.  And we now have our first baby pictures.  I never thought I'd see an ultrasound for MY baby.

The midwife said I shouldn't have played kickball yesterday and put me off of exercise for a few days.  And far worse, no sex for four weeks, which feels like forever!!  Still, it's worth anything for a healthy Penguin.

Scared

I'm having a little bit of spotting.  I know it's normal to, but I'm still scared.  I called the doctor, and the doctors were across the street at the hospital, seeing patients during lunch.  The nurse said she'd beard the first doc to walk back in the door to ask if the wanted me to come in.  Bear had me cancel my 12:30 client and wants me to cancel my 2:00 client as well (my last 2 of the day).  I know I'm overreacting, especially since it's light, but damnit, I've never done this before and it's scary!

Progress and Stress

Sure, we can go with rhyming for our post titles, why not.

To start, Bear and I are going to the courthouse on Friday to get hitched for insurance purposes before doing the "real" wedding in mid-November.  His HR department has assured him that my insurance will be active Tuesday of next week or so.  Based on that, I called the OB/GYN recommended by a former coworker yesterday, and now I have an appointment for an ultrasound and initial appointment with a midwife on Wednesday, October 9, which is the day I hit 8 weeks.  Bear's taking the afternoon off work to come with me, and I feel better about having gotten it scheduled (and avoiding further lecturing from a friend of mine).

On the stress side, money.  Both money for having a "real" wedding while I'm struggling to get more hours at work and panicking today at the realization that because I'm a contractor instead of an employee at all 3 of my jobs, I get no maternity leave.  And there's not really a hope of that contractor status changing with any of them because of the way the mental health industry is structured in Georgia.  Basically all of the jobs are contract jobs so that the employers don't have to pay benefits or vacation or insurance or even a steady salary, it's all based on how many clients you can see.  I don't want to have to, say, give birth and then go back to work the next Monday, but I may have to, I may not have a choice! 

So yeah, I'm stressing.  Bear's telling me not to push so hard, especially since I pushed myself last night to the point where I was shaking and had blurry vision, trying to unpack and move more things around in the apartment.  But I have to push so hard, because if I want any kind of maternity leave, it's going to come form pushing myself so hard now so that I have money saved.

Holy Crap, Is This Week Real?

I got a nice little surprise on Tuesday!

No, Bear did not propose simply because of our BFP, although we are hurrying up the wedding because I'm currently uninsured.  He had ordered the ring a little bit ago, and we had expected it to be delivered anytime between September 11 and 20.  The timing sure works out, though!

Apparently the ring came in Monday, but he led me to believe that it hadn't come in Monday or Tuesday.  Tuesday afternoon, we were getting ready to go downtown to look at a couple possible wedding venues, and Bear asked me if I was ready to go and if I had everything I needed.  I said I did, and he said, "no, you don't," pulled out the box, and got down on one knee.  Apparently, I looked shocked!

Bear told the kids on Wednesday, and they asked to be ring bearer and flower girl!  The 6 year old also asked me if she could help me pick out a dress.  :-)

However, between the insurance issues and not trying to send the message of "we're getting married because I'm knocked up," especially to my Mormon stepfamily and to the people that are friends with both us and our exes, figuring out the timing of the wedding is tricky.  If we get married in the courthouse, we get married in a group with whoever else is doing it that day, like a bunch of Moonies.  NOT appealing.  But it would get the job done quickly, and we can get me on his insurance within a day or two of the ceremony.  If we wait, I can't make a prenatal appointment without going to a pregnancy crisis center or whatever, because it's just too expensive out of pocket.  If we do the courthouse Moonie thing and then have a real ceremony and reception later, which we may be looking at, there's the risk of me showing by then and it also then looks more like a shotgun wedding.

Also making it fun is that we can't have a church wedding without it being a random church.  Bear is Catholic, and his marriage, while not originally a Catholic marriage, later became one.  I've been confirmed Catholic, but I identify much more as Methodist.  However, I haven't really become involved in a Methodist church here because I've been going to Mass with him.  So even the one I've visited a couple of times would feel random.  At this point, our best bet seems to be a judge that's in the Knights of Columbus with Bear.

But I'm fretting and stressing about all this.  It's easy to say "screw em," but these are people whose opinions I care about.  And I already took flak from some of the Mormon cousins for getting divorced in the first place.  I don't want to be the cousin they look down on, like some of them do our other cousin who had a shotgun wedding.  And I don't want people thinking we only got married because we were stupid enough to get knocked up, when we have wanted to be married to each other for months and desperately want what we're now calling our little penguin.

Stunned

Bear was right.

I've never seen one of those before, at least not mine.  This pic doesn't include the first three I did because they were freebie ones that expired in 2011.  The directions were pictoral and didn't say how long to hold it in the urine or how long to wait.  They also had a second line on them, but I didn't trust it.  Bear wouldn't let me go to WalMart at 3:30 this morning when I realized those were all I had, so I used those three first and, when they were positive, put a lid on the container I was using while Bear and I raced to WalMart for fresh tests.  On this one, the second line turned blue immediately.  Forget "results in 2 minutes!"

I'm shocked  I didn't think I could get pregnant.  But I'm also really scared.  I know how many pregnancies end in miscarriage, and I'm so afraid.  I'm trying to relax and appreciate that at least right now, in this moment, I am pregnant.  But I am still really guarded, because I know it's a LONG road from here to a take home baby.

But I'm farther than I've ever been, farther than I thought possible.  And whatever happens, I have that now.

One final thing: a HUGE thank you to Lisa!!!  Your comment gave me comfort that I really needed when I looked at my phone before testing this morning.  So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Then Again, Maybe Not

Um, I still don't even have any spotting.  And my intestines have gone back to normal.  I'm having some aching in my hips and sides that Bear thinks may be signs of my body starting to change.  He didn't want to tell me what he thought when I said where I was aching, because he didn't want to get my hopes up when he knew how hard I was trying to guard my heart.  I was wincing enough from them early in the evening that he had me lie down with the heating pad for a while.

I didn't test today, because at the last minute Bear had to leave earlier in the morning than I did and I didn't want to test without him.  But we both agreed to test tomorrow.  I started getting those aches I mentioned above in a different spot of my pelvis tonight and I showed him where a few minutes ago, and he just gave me a level look.  I looked back at him, and he told me I was shaking.  I went in for a hug and he told me I was trembling while he held me.

I'm so scared of being hurt.

Is anyone out there, listening?

Well, I Did Say I Wanted an Answer...

Thanks, Friday the 13th, and thanks, body.  I hate y'all very much too. 

I don't have spotting yet, but since I developed the IBS, I've noticed a change in that part of my body every month a day or two before AF comes.  That change came this morning.

How do I feel?  Crampy and grumpy.  Other than that, very proud of myself for locking down the possibility of hope as well as I did.  I learned my lesson well when I had been trying before with the ex.  It's nowhere near as bad as it would have been if I had allowed myself the weakness of real hope.  I was right.  Telling myself it's utterly impossible helps.

Late? What is this "late" you speak of?

AF was due on Wednesday.  I've been under a lot of stress lately, but this calendar year stress has been making it come a couple days early each month, not late.  I've been having some cramping, but I haven't been able to tell if it's PMS cramping or if it's from my IBS, since I regularly have cramping in the same areas from that.  No spotting of any type.

I'm sure AF is going to come any day.  Bear has hope, if nothing else because it would be funny as hell  if God made it happen this month, while I'm juggling 3 PT jobs trying to get enough hours to make ends meet.  He asked me this afternoon, prefacing it with an apology if I was offended by it, to take a prenatal vitamin.  (He had hidden the ones I came across from before, at my request.)  I wasn't offended by it, but I had him get it and bring it to me, because even though I know now where they are, dealing with the bottle just feels fraught to me.  But I took a vitamin, because I really ought to take a vitamin more often anyway, especially since I've been under a lot of stress and not eating that great.

(As a side note, one of my friends pointed out long ago that the word "fraught" really can just stand on its own.  As that friend said, things are always "fraught with danger" or "fraught with peril," nothing's ever "fraught with puppies" or anything like that.  So you can just say something is "fraught," and that suffices.)

I didn't test today, and I'm not testing tomorrow.  If I don't have anything by then, I'll test Saturday, but we have the kids today and tomorrow in the mornings.  I don't want to deal with the mechanics of testing or with the emotional response one way or another while they're here.

Aside from taking the vitamin Bear gave me, I'm not doing anything differently at this point.  I'm trying to drink a little less Diet Coke anyway, because I know I should, but I don't drink coffee.  I can't afford alcohol at this point!  So, nothing to do differently.

Well, except for check every time I need to go to the bathroom for spotting.  Including going when I just barely need to go, to check.  Because I don't want to mess up my underwear, so I want to get what Bear calls "toiletries" in place as soon as I have spotting.  That's why.  Really it is.

Edited to add: Bear and I just realized that today is Friday the 13th.  Well, that makes this more fun.  :-p  And for the record, if I'm just late from stress, I really with AF would hurry the fuck up and answer the question.

What Would You Say?

This question is part of the GRAB(ook) Club, an online book club open to anyone and everyone. This month's selection was The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. 

I had not gotten around to reading the books or seeing the movie yet, but my 11-year-old sister got the ok from my stepmom last year to read the first book.  However, my stepmom would not allow her to read the rest of the books at this point.  At one point while I was reading it, Bear expressed surprise that the 9-year-old didn't see the book lying around and ask again to read it.  Apparently he was asking a lot to read it last year, and several of his third grade classmates were reading it.

Now that I've read it, I definitely don't think that he's ready for it.  He's reading Harry Potter again, but the violence there is much less direct.  People are killed, but aside from Dobby, no one gets a blade in them.  The good guys are using Stupefy and Expelliarmus, not trying to figure out when they'll have to murder an ally or feeling blood spray over them.  The institutional governmental control in Harry Potter, especially in Order of the Phoenix and Deathly Hallows, opens up questions and discussions about prejudice and oppression, but they're imprisoning Muggle-borns, not killing them on-screen or making them kill each other.

So, I have a couple of questions.  I'm looking more at about the 8-10 year old age group here, both because I haven't known of kids much younger trying to read it and because I don't know how old the kids are that the rest of y'all are interacting with but my older one is 9 and I know Mel's two are in that range.  If you were talking to a child in this age range about the books, what would you think if they asked to read them?  And if they read the books and wanted to talk to you about them, either because you're their parent OR because you interact with them for another reason, what would you most want to discuss with them and why?

After you answer my question, please click over to read the rest of the book club questions for The Hunger Games.  You can get your own copy of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins at bookstores including Amazon.

I hate those days when I feel like everyone can get pregnant except me.