I Think I Need More Milkshakes

OK, first for a little fun, one of my favorite songs: The Milkshake Song, by Angry Salad

I've never had trouble gaining weight before, that's for sure!!  Weight has always been a struggle for me, I've always been, or at least felt like, The Fat Girl.  When I had been so unhappy in my former marriage, I had gained 50 pounds (that, thank goodness, I lost in 2012).  I've been worried all through this pregnancy about not gaining too much weight, especially since there's a family history of diabetes and it started in my mom when she had GD with my younger brother. 

My goal is to end up at 15 pounds over my start weight.  My midwife said that with my weight, her goal for me was 20-25 pounds, but she didn't object to me aiming for 15 instead.  Besides, if I aim for 15 and gain more than I had planned, then I still end up around my midwife's goal, whereas if I aim for her goal and miss, I'm gaining too much weight.

But now I'm at 22 1/2 weeks and I'm still below my start weight by a couple pounds. I had lost 15 during the first trimester from being so sick, and I still haven't gained all of it back now that I can eat again.  Penguin's (no, we still don't have a name for him yet) been measuring on track at each appointment, but I want to make sure he keeps growing like he needs to.  I've been bouncing back and forth within a couple of pounds for the past couple weeks.  This past week I've been fighting off a nasty cold, and it's been messing with my appetite.  I realized at 5:00 this evening as I woke up from a nap that all I had had today was a Fiber One bar and three cookies. 

So yeah, I think I need more milkshakes.  I think I can handle that.

The Energizer J Keeps Growing and Growing and Growing and...

Not much in weight, fortunately.  I am starting to gain a little weight back, but at a reasonable weight...I've been hovering within 2 pounds this week that's up 2-4 pounds from before Thanksgiving.  I can handle that.  Even with the weight I lost in the first trimester, I'm trying to be VERY careful about how much I gain because I know I'm starting out overweight and there's a family history of diabetes on my mom's side getting worse every generation.  I was pleasantly surprised, though, that my midwife said I don't fall into the high risk category to be tested for GD before 24 weeks!!  She also gave me more leeway than I had been giving myself in how much weight I gain.  I've been aiming for only 15 pounds over my original weight, and she said I would be fine with 20-25.  She didn't tell me that 15 was too little, though, so I'm still going to aim for 15 so that if I'm off from that I still hopefully end up in the 20-25 pound range.

I am growing and changing more in clothes, though.  I still don't think I'm really showing, but at the same time, I don't know how much the BeBand is going to help with my current pants over time.  I was wearing my main pair of jeans on Saturday with the BeBand and I realized that when I pulled them up all the way, they were tight below where the zipper ended and thus below where the BeBand could help.  So we'll be starting to shop for maternity clothes in the next week or so.  Bear did at least find out about a maternity consignment store nearby, so we're going to try there first.

Not much of any more news about my mom.  She doesn't have insurance, so she's applied for a charity that has a cardiologist (since the one she's getting treatment from now does not) so she can try to get cleared for the biopsy. 

Skating Along Towards Winter

I haven't had the energy to post much of anything lately!  Even though I'm out of the first trimester now, I still feel tired all the time and like all my energy is drained by work.  It seems I've finally turned a corner on nausea over the weekend and was able to eat well on my birthday.  Good thing, since Thanksgiving is one of my very favorite holidays!  We had our 15 week appointment today, and Penguin is going strong, with a heartbeat about 140 bpm.  Next appointment is December 26, and for our Christmas present, we get the gender reveal if Penguin wants to cooperate!

The other big thing has been the wedding.  We had the public wedding on November 17.  It was rainy, but it held off to a drizzle for the ceremony, good thing since it was an outdoor ceremony!  Sister Bear (my friend Katie suggested that the kids need blog names, and suggested Brother Bear and Sister Bear.  Brother Bear is older, and there is a Baby Bear in the books, so, sold!) hadn't been too keen on the idea of an outdoor wedding, but I didn't really know how to tell her it couldn't be in the church because Mommy and Daddy are Catholic and divorced.

Oh, yeah, and we meet with the head priest at the church on Friday about getting both of our marriages annulled so we can get married as far as the Church is concerned.  Mine should actually be easy, since The Ex and I could not have children without means that the Church deems unacceptable.  We'll see about Bear's.

Oh, and I forgot to tell y'all how telling The Ex went.  It actually went well!  He said that he was happy for me, and it didn't actually seem like "let me just say something nice to get her off the phone," because then we ended up chatting for an hour more.  This from the person that said he didn't want any more contact with me after we got engaged.  Whatever, I'll take it and go with the flow.  I'm just relieved that it wasn't painful.

Wishing I Still Had My Fat Pants

Today was the first time I had to unbutton my jeans and go around with them that way (with my shirt pulled down, and Bear suggested I tie my fleece around my waist to keep it all together).  I didn't keep much of anything as I lost 50 pounds in 2012 because I was so proud of myself for losing the weight and didn't intend to ever need the larger clothes again.  But now I wish I had kept more of it so that I had more transition clothes for before I'm ready for maternity clothes (or able to afford maternity clothes).  I might need to get one of those bands to hold unbuttoned pants up.  I did have gas, so I don't know how well the pants will fit when I don't, but they did feel kinda tight on Saturday, when I didn't have gas, so maybe it was more than just gas, maybe I am starting to actually show a teensy tiny bit or something crazy like that.

So now I'm looking at maternity clothes on Target and Wal-Mart's websites.  I thought I'd never have a reason to do that.  Wow.

Sharing the News

We told the younger child this week while they were with us.  I hadn't thought we'd be able to keep the secret until the wedding, not with the older one knowing and being so excited about it.  And the way ended up being somewhat paved by the 6-year-old herself while I had her alone for the weekend.  One of Bear's concerns was that she had not yet learned that people could have a baby without being married.  But she ended up asking me exactly that over the weekend.  And not because she suspected I was!  She asked because "well, I want to be able to have kids someday, but I don't ever want to get married!"  So we ended up getting into people having kids together without getting married, people using a friend to "provide the guy part," and going to a doctor "to get the guy part."

The kids are both thrilled and excited, and they keep asking if I'm ok and if Penguin is.  When we saw them yesterday along with their mother, the younger one said goodbye to Penguin too when they left.  I felt kinda bad for their mother with that.  But not as bad as I would have if their mother hadn't been pumping the younger one for information over the phone about the wedding and about Penguin.

Now for the next big hurdle: The Ex.  I'm scared to tell him, scared of him never wanting to speak to me again and thus completely cutting me off from contact with MY cats that I let him have.  He already said because I got engaged to Bear that he doesn't want contact and asked me to step back from an event we had been running together (that I had been getting needed income from but that I wouldn't be able to do next year because of Penguin anyway), but he was willing to still allow some sort of contact with the cats.  I have one friend that is also friends with him that sends me pics and updates when she visits him, but I don't want to put pressure on her to be the Official Cat News-Bearer.  But also, The Ex was an ass to her over the weekend because he had a date that didn't go well and she was happy at an event they were both at with her new boyfriend.  So on the heels of that, I'm even more nervous than I had been.  But I feel like I need to tell him before the wedding, since the kids and their mother know and since we're starting to tell more people, even if we're not making the official announcement until closer to Christmas.

So yeah, we'll see how this goes.

Still Standing

Penguin still has a heartbeat is measuring right on track, and they haven't been able to identify any reason for the sporadic spotting, although Bear and I are supposed to abstain until I go two weeks without spotting.  Um, yeah, about that....

Penguin was waving his or her hand in front of his or her face during the ultrasound, it was so cute!  We wouldn't have actually gotten another ultrasound until 20 weeks, just heard the heartbeat in the exam room, but someone had coded today's appointment in the scheduler as a "confirm pregnancy" appointment instead of a normal monitoring appointment, so we got lucky.

We did have to tell the 9-year-old and bring him with us to the appointment.  Apparently their school says kids can't come back after being sick until at least 24 hours after they throw up, and he hadn't kept lunch down the previous day, so we had to go back and get him right after dropping him off and dropping off their costumes at their mothers. (They did a little trick or treating with her and then came over to do it with us since it was our day with them.)  He was excited and happy, though he did ask Bear whether Bear would still love him and his sister the most.  However, later he expressed some concerns to Bear, especially about how it would be crowded and where Penguin would sleep (it's a two-bedroom apartment, so he already shares a room with his sister).  He also said it felt really fast, which is something I've been worried about.  We're not telling the 6-year-old yet.  As part of The Talk, the 9-year-old has gotten the "sometimes people aren't married when they have a baby" part.  The 6-year-old has not gotten that part yet, and so we're still going to try to hold off on telling her until after the wedding.

I did tonight have the first crash meeting of baby brain and pregnancy clumsiness.  I've got the 6-year-old on my own all weekend because Bear is taking the 9-year-old on a Cub Scout campout.  Families are welcome (and I really wanted to go because it's on a ship!!) but the 6-year-old has decided she no longer likes campouts (or anything where she could get dirty except cooking), so we're staying home.  I was making dinner, and as I was draining something, the hot water splashed out of the sink and onto my stomach.  I could have more easily gotten my shirt away from my skin, but it also splashed onto the waistband of my skirt, so the hot water was on there for a good minute before I could get it away from my skin.  I've got 2 nice lines of burns on my tummy now that the initial redness has faded, and there's a small blister on the top line.  I've been a first aider long enough to know what to do for burns, and I'm doing it, but I feel really dumb.  Maybe it's a good thing that on the night I didn't make the dinner I made tonight, I was thinking of ordering pizza since we have a coupon.  Apparently I can't be trusted in the kitchen!  I'm also really glad that my stomach still looks just fat instead of pregnant since I had to walk around with it hanging out while I held a cold wet washcloth on it.  I'm very glad I wasn't hurt worse while Bear is 5 1/2 hours away.

So scared

My oldest friend, who had been infertile with her ex-husband, had gotten pregnant with her new boyfriend a little over a month before me.  She had told me before I was pregnant, or knew it, and while I was thrilled for her, I was also hurting, wondering if it would ever be me, especially since that made 2 close friends of mine who had been infertile with exes and then gotten pregnant quickly with boyfriends.  She told me that she knew it would happen to me too.  I told her last night about the Penguin...and found out that she lost her Meatball at 8 1/2 weeks, although she didn't find out until 11 weeks, which was 2 weeks ago.

I got online tonight to write this post, and I checked my reader.  Hidden Infertility and I started following each other in September's ICLW because we were within a week of each other.  She found out on Friday that she lost hers.

I'm so scared of losing the Penguin.  Before Mass on Sunday, I got a call from my ex and found out that he's decided since I got engaged that he no longer wants any contact and wants me to step back from the event that we had been working on together, including right after we separated and right as the divorce proceedings were happening, without any problem.  I also found out that some people who had been my friends have been really badmouthing me and Bear for being together.  My self-confidence is pretty shaky at the best of times, and I was feeling like I wasn't worthy of anything.  And then the homily was about sin and confession and all, and all I could think about was that my baby had been conceived in sin even as he or she was conceived in love, and I started being afraid of him or her being taken away as some sort of punishment.  I don't tend to believe that God works that way, but I was feeling like I deserved punishment, and that melded with the fear that had been lurking in the back of my mind anyway.

I whispered to Bear how I was feeling, and he told me that he had already been thinking about asking the priest to pray for me and the baby, if I was ok with it.  I told him it depended on how he felt about it, since it was much more his church, he's the one that really knows the priests, not me.  So after Mass, we sent the kids to go use the restroom (we're not telling them yet, although Bear almost changed that and told them over the weekend since I had been too nauseous to go along on a Freecycle pickup) and went to talk to the priest.  He prayed for me and the baby right there, but I'm still wondering what he thinks about it, since according to the Church, Bear's still married to his ex, and the priest doesn't even know about the courthouse wedding we had.

I'm getting scared about everything now.  I was less nauseous today, and instead of being happy about it, I was scared that maybe I was less nauseous because I've lost the baby and don't even know it yet.  I really wish I still had my appointment tomorrow, even as much as I know I need the money of working tomorrow afternoon, because I want to see the baby again and hear the heartbeat and know my baby is still alive inside me.

Tomorrow, I hit 8 weeks and therefore have a fetus.  Or do I?

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.