today was our first maternity appointment.  I’ve been an anxious wreck for days… so excited to see proof that this hasn’t all just been a figment of my imagination.

we went in there expecting to see our 6.5 week, blueberry-sized worm.  instead, we found a super active, big-brained humanoid measuring 6.5cm (2.5 inches) – that’s the size of an egg!  so… we’re actually 10.5 weeks, not 6.5 weeks.  holy cats!!! in the blink of an eye, I’ve got four less weeks of pregnancy than I thought.  we made a thanksgiving turkey, not a Christmas elf!  i’m still in a state of shock over this.  I was pregnant when we went on our cruise.  I was pregnant during all of the Christmas festivities.  I was very pregnant when I got my tattoo and when I was downing Nyquil by the bottle-full because I thought I had an after-Christmas flu.  wow.

the bright side of this, aside from having that much less pregnancy to go through, is that I’ve only got 2.5 more weeks until i’m out of the first trimester and, hopefully, done with all this nausea.  this also means that all the cards that I made announcing a September adventure are wrong… our official due date is 23 August.  how nifty would it be if the turkey decides to wait until daddy’s/great-granddaddy’s birthday  😀

my heart was racing and I was crying as I watched this teeny tiny person waving and kicking and turning flips in my belly!  I swear it turned it’s head, looked straight at us, and waved.  the itty bitty heart was flickering like crazy – 184 bpm!  it was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.  hubby said it definitely looks like a future ironman.  after seeing the two firing hemispheres of the huge brain, i’m sure it’s a genius.  and either way, it is the most beautiful tiny human I’ve ever seen!

look at the brain on our genius turkey!

TMI below the fold… the rest of the rant… »

24 Jan 2014

I have more good days now as far as nausea but there are still some days when food just makes me blech and the nights are always the worst.  I’ve had a couple migraines for which I’ve been hesitant to take anything until I ask the dr about it.  i’m still freezing to death most days which is just a crazy feeling for me.  i’m really hoping that the elf will continue to lower my temp and keep me cool through the summer but I have a feeling it is just going to be a super hot one.  It seems like my shoes are tighter so I guess my feet are already starting to swell.  the myriad odors in the elevators is nearly unbearable.  foods that I was handling fine are being rejected now… I was eating spinach omelets like crazy a couple weeks ago because it was about all I could stomach and when I had hubby make me one today, I gagged three times while eating it.  no more of those.  the elf still hates water… I get super queasy every time I drink some but since i’m a huge water drinker and a big fan of properly hydrating, i’m forcing the baby to deal with it.  it’s tough.

hubby actually left town this afternoon to do a mountain bike event with the boys tomorrow.  he’ll be back some time tomorrow night.  I’ve told him to enjoy it since this is likely the last big event he’ll be doing for a long time.  while we’re on our own tomorrow, i’m going to try to get some cleaning done around the house.  one of these days we’ll need to get serious about figuring out the nursery situation and all.  he’d better come home ready to honey-do.

I am just fascinated by what my body is going through already.  for about two weeks, I had a more extreme nausea than I’ve ever felt in my life.  luckily, I haven’t actually gotten sick (yet) but the nausea is pretty darned intense.  also, it’s way worse at night.  smells trigger a lot of it and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can’t smell.  grapefruit are the most vile odor I’ve ever encountered.  the last couple days have been better but I still feel awful at night.

I’ve lost two pounds, presumably because I haven’t been able to eat much.  Although I must have lost more than that because i’m pretty sure I’ve gained about three pounds of boob… holy cats, they’re huge already!  I have been trying my best to at least eat right when I can eat.  I’ve been trying to balance my nausea with a good mix of veggies, proteins, wheat, and calcium.  actually, eating well hasn’t been too big of a problem because sweets are sickeningly sweet to me and I just can’t tolerate them.  so much for my dream of living on pickles and ice cream for nine months!

they suggest that you snack-eat every couple of hours throughout the day…  I have no choice on that.  I go from horrid nausea at worse or general *blech*iness about food at best to spontaneous starvation.  seriously, there’s no middle ground.  I don’t get hungry, I don’t feel “I guess I could eat” – i’m either turned off by the thought of food or in absolutely desperate need of it RIGHT NOW.  I’ve never felt anything like it.

I am exhausted by everything.  I’ve been trying to get at least 45 minutes of moderate cardio every day by walking or biking and I usually make it through that okay but then i’m just wiped out after.  we went shopping the other night and I actually had to sit and rest for a while in the bedding section of kohls because I just couldn’t make it the rest of the way around the store.  I’ve been standing around doing practically nothing and suddenly i’m just out of breath.  it’s crazy.

can’t wait to see what next week has in store for me.

two different style tests, bought at different times = double confirmation!!!

holy cow! what do we do now?????

we’re going to be a MOMMY and DADDY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve wanted a tattoo for always. sadly, i’m highly practical and never could bring myself to desecrate my body unless it really meant something to me on a deeply personal level. I’ve had ideas over the years but, obviously, none of them struck me enough to make me go out and do it. fast forward to hubby signing up for ironman and committing to get the mdot tattoo. the pressure was on; if I was going to get inked with my hubby, I was going to have to find my muse. all year, I struggled with ideas. I came up with one that I was very close to committing to but then, when I was printing pix from our holy land trip last year, it hit me. while we were in England, we visited ely cathedral with our friends and there was a sculpture that I fell in love with.

Jonathan Clarke's massive cast-aluminium sculpture "The Way Of Life" inside Ely Cathedral which "reminds us that life is far from straightforward. Along its many twists and turns Christ travels with us from darkness to the light of the cross."

and just like that, months after my baptism, I knew I had found my tattoo. so last night, my hubby and I finally got inked! I had been warned by everyone that I know that foot tattoos are super painful. either mine was simple enough or my pain threshold is high enough that it really wasn’t a big deal at all. I would rate it at a 3 on a 1-10 pain scale. it probably went up to a 4 for an hour or so when I started walking on it but still nothing like I imagined. it was an interesting experience and i’m so excited about the result.

From inked!, posted by J’Lynn Holloway on 1/09/2014 (13 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher 2

finished artwork

i’m afraid i’m getting my hopes up over nothing but I feel like there have been definite signs of pregnancy this month. I have a hard time believing it since “trying” was very difficult last month with fertile time falling over Christmas.  however, tmi below the fold… the rest of the rant… »

huge two month whirlwind.  ironman, Jamaica, thanksgiving in Alabama, cruise, Christmas in Orlando…  it was exhausting.  we had two great vacations that were wonderfully relaxing but I definitely don’t want to do that again.  holiday time vacations add to holiday stress.  my Christmas shopping didn’t get finished until the last minute (unless you count shopping for our local friends which didn’t happen until this weekend) and I never got to make any Christmas cookies.  not that i’m complaining… like I said, fabulous vacations and really nice holiday visits with family.  sadly, my nephew decided his gift to me was the flu so now i’m lying in bed, freezing to death, and feeling like all of santa’s reindeers just trampled over my body.  here’s hoping i’m feeling better by Tuesday so that I can ring in the new year bowling with our friends.

for those curious about my lips… i hate them.  quitting chapstick (carmex) was a terrible decision.  it is completely not worthwhile.  it’s been almost three months and my lips continue to get sloughy.  they are never soft and smooth.  at least when i was slathering them with carmex eighty times a day, they were always kissable.  now they just annoy the tar out of me.  i’m probably going to get some of the burt’s bees crap or something that they consider to be “good” for your lips and start using it.  being a non-user is just not worth it.

scheduling a dr appointment while you’re out of the country and have no internet or phone access is quite difficult.  my instructions from my last appointment were to email the nurse to let her know when my “day 1” began so that she could schedule my hsg procedure to determine if my tubes are blocked.  turns out an all-inclusive, luxury resort is not inclusive of internet.  I managed to get online Monday and emailed her and asked for the procedure to be set up for Thursday when we get back to town but I was not able to get back on for a reply.  Wednesday, when we got to the airport in Jamaica and I had internet access and found emails to the basic effect that the procedure hadn’t been set up yet,  I frantically emailed with her until our flight left to try to get everything scheduled for the next day.  when we got to the Atlanta airport at 20:00, I was relieved to find a nurse still available at the surgery center so that I could confirm everything and go over my pre-op interview.  I was not happy to find out that I was going to be put under… I didn’t think it was going to be that big of a procedure but since this was all very last minute and I was lucky to get it all set up without having to wait another month, I didn’t make an issue of it.  yesterday, hubby took me in for the procedure.  they gave me an anesthetic that only knocked me out for about twenty minutes.  apparently the hsg took less than ten.  the dr explained that they didn’t find any tubal blockage but he did find cervical stenosis… a bunch of scar tissue most likely from that stupid, horrible leep all those years ago which had effectively closed all but a pin-hole in my cervix.  that could definitely keep me from getting pregnant since hubby’s swimmers don’t have much access.  the dr was able to dilate the cervix again and we’ll cross our fingers for a thanksgiving baby.  c’mon turkey!

in the morning, we take off with our friends to celebrate the end of ironman with an all-inclusive week in Jamaica.  it’ll be us and two other couples so it should be lots of fun and the unwind is definitely needed.  we’ll be trading off 36 degree mornings here for 91 degrees there… hubby is thrilled but i’d rather my open-window weather anytime.

it’s been a teary week.  while it was a fantastic weekend, I was faced with the harsh realization that he’s doing much worse than I thought.  for all these months, he’s been feeding me a bunch of upbeat bs over the phone.  it’s so hard to see just how weak he’s actually gotten.  I feel like it’s time to start preparing but I can’t imagine how I can possibly ever say goodbye.