The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly

9/13/2015: 13 weeks pregnant

Jacob was in Oregon ALL WEEK for an ed consultant contract...

The Good

- This trip, his second, is great side income for our family as he's working, unpaid, to launch Urban South Brewery.
- No one got sick!  Historically, the kids have liked to get sick when I'm on my own parenting.
- We were so on top of things on morning one that we had time for a game before school!
 

- When it's only Mommy around to do everything, there is no reason for Cora to cry/demand Mommy be the one that does everything for her, so there were less tears on her part.  Poor Daddy!
- Cora: daily 3 hour naps and snuggles and books afterward.
- Jack and I (with at least some interest from Cora) are working our way quickly through Charlotte's Web.  Due to a deep literary discussion with an older friend at school, Jack now knows that the book is sad not because Wilbur dies, but because Charlotte dies.  We wait to see how this might happen.
- The kids were still alive, and cute, on day four!

The Bad

- Not.feeling.better.yet. :(  Come on 15 weeks!  (when I remember feeling better the last two times)
- Round ligament pain?  Back pain and soreness across my abdomen had me hobbling around on Thursday and Friday.  I remember this feeling from Jack's pregnancy but it came much later.
- Cora still loves school but it wipes her out, leaving several times where Jack and I watched her absolutely fall apart because of triggers like she didn't get to get out of the car door of her choice.
- Jack has gotten on a kick of answering questions by spelling two of the handful of words he knows.  "Y-e-s" = cute.  "N-o" = less so.
- We were pretty low on food by Friday.  I hope Jack enjoyed leftover sweet potatoes for the third day and, Cora, a hodgepodge of nuts, raisins, figs, and cheese.  Mommy bought herself a bagel with cream cheese for lunch, my favorite snack of the last few weeks.

The Ugly

- Oh Cora, if you are going to poop like this, you've really got to take to potty training!  She's majorly regressed in the potty realm.  She willingly goes at school, but also wets her pull-up, so not bad but not great.  For us, we can pretty much only get her to pee in the potty in the morning...after headstands and other stunts.  She's been saving up for a nightly blow-out poop that nothing we put on her contains.  There was lots of soaking clothes in the toilet and rinsing out disgusting cloth diapers.  YUCK!

- My house by Friday.  Once the kids were in bed, I just collapsed on my bed and never went back downstairs.  This led to a lot of dishes, crayons, toys, and assorted items by the end of the week.  Not my normal feng shui.

JOY

12 weeks pregnant: 9/6/2014

It is so nice to say to the world: we're having a baby!  This is very happy news for our family - all four of us :)

Jacob: New business? New baby? Why not?!  Baby Landry will be here before Urban South Brewery opens its doors and I, for one, am already appreciating the new flexibility in Jacob's days and think it will be well-timed during pregnancy and the early newborn days.

Jack: This child; oh my heart.  Now officially "four and three quarters", he can be so mature and kind sometimes.  He's been stoked about the baby news since we let it slip around 7 weeks.  The first night he wanted to make signs of "Mommy's having a baby" to hang in the fire station and police department. (And he did make some.)  He's the one who has told the most people; just yesterday, he saw a woman with a baby at the beach and he walked up to her and told her about how his Mommy is having a baby too.

He's also protective of me.  If Jacob is teasing me, he gets very defensive and says things like "Daddy, leave Mommy alone, she has a baby in her belly!"  He also said to me this weekend: "Mommy, you need to stop doing everything.  You need to get rest every day.  Having a baby is a lot of work!" 

Cora: Not one to let her brother get ahead of her, she also likes to proclaim "Mommy having baby!"  She knows the baby is in my belly and likes to give the baby tickles or in Cora speak "tittles" :)  Whenever the subject of the baby comes up, she says "Towah hold that baby!"  She knows the baby is too little to hold now but that she'll get to hold him/her when the baby is born.  She watched the video of Jack meeting her and she latched on to how he got to hold her and she's excited about having her own baby to hold.

And me?  The emotions that have come along with this pregnancy have been different than with Jack's and Cora's.  I now know what it's like to lose a pregnancy and that has changed parts of the first trimester.  What's been exactly the same (but I think, worse) has been the nausea and fatigue.  I've been chronicling my thoughts starting when we found out the news.

Baby Landry - due March 2015.  All four of us can't wait to meet you!

Exhaustion, dreams, and reality

10.5 weeks: 8/27/2015

Exhaustion

It hasn't gone away yet!  I'm very much looking forward to getting some energy back.  Saturday's trip to the dentist and a birthday party had me collapsing on the couch for 3 hours, falling into a deep sleep, and leaving Jacob alone to deal with lunch and naps (which actually never happened... Cora!!!)

Today, (my first Wednesday off work with kids in school!) I had a productive surge and I cleaned up the house (you know the real cleaning when you actually organize rather than just tossing things into a basket) for the first time in two months.  When Jack and Cora spent a week in SC a few weeks back, I had visions of major house projects.  I spent most of my non-working time that week lying on my bed.  Not a single project accomplished.

Dreams

Wow pregnancy dreams!  Can anyone else relate?  They are so vivid!  I've been having them from the very beginning of this pregnancy and I do remember them from past pregnancies.  You wake up to such clear memories of the dream.  And they are weird!  Sometimes disturbing, sometimes not.  This week I dreamed I gave birth to this baby, a girl.  That leads to my third point.


Reality

I've not been walking around anxious about this pregnancy (thank you horrible nausea and fatigue) but I've still not been thinking too concretely about an actual baby.  That has started to change.  Jacob and I heard the baby's heartbeat this week and that, combined with my birth dream, has helped make everything start to feel more real.  I have a name in mind for the little girl I think I'm carrying.  I have visions of what our spring will be like.  To me, the expectancy of the baby, birth, and the newborn period are such amazing periods and I'm so excited to think about experiencing them again.

At this point in the pregnancy, we'd already shared the news widely about Jack and Cora, but I'm keeping it close a few more weeks this time.  We're telling friends as it makes sense, but I don't feel quite ready to share far and wide.  I think that's the part of me that still can't believe this is our reality.

Knocked up (or rather out)

9.5 weeks: 8/20/2015

Is it possible you can forget how difficult something is?  I feel like I still have a good memory of Cora's birth, but even though I know I referred to the first trimester of her pregnancy as being "rough" and me being "really sick," I can only remember moments.

So either my memory is not that strong, or this pregnancy is a lot harder.  (And I'm honestly not sure which one; it would make sense, evolutionarily, that you might forget these things.)  Right now, I can only take it moment by moment.  Even thinking day-by-day is too much for me because then I get very overwhelmed by the idea that I might feel this bad for another month or more (!)

Where I spend most of my time (with children beside me)

It has now been four weeks of around the clock nausea.  And the last week and a half have been especially rough with big time exhaustion and the occasional headache and even one episode of blurring vision.

I feel like a big baby half the time, but as I toss and turn in the middle of the night with the nausea waking me up and keeping me awake, I also am just amazed that I might actually have forgotten I've felt this way in the past.  I know I had the same type of nausea with Jack and Cora's pregnancies because memories of those pregnancies bring back the same type of sick feeling in the back of my throat.  But was it this constant?

If you see us contemplating a fourth child with a rosy demeanor, you'll know I've completely forgotten these two months!

Mommy's having a baby!

8.5 weeks - 8/12/14

My initial plan was to tell Jack about the new baby after our 8 week ultrasound.  But I jumped the gun by about a week because it's easy to spill good news.  He was excited in the moment, but the heartwarming moment came that night when he announced that he wanted to put up signs around town that said "Mommy's having a baby."  He then proceeded to make one for both the fire and police departments :)

Besides wanting to wait until we saw a healthy baby on an ultrasound, Jack would also be heading straight off to SC for a week to "Grammy Camp" so I figured if he wanted to tell people, it would be better for him not to be in New Orleans right after learning the news.  With our early announcement, I knew  he'd probably spill the beans at least some...which he did:

• Amidst coloring during Children's Church class "Mommy's having a baby" Jack announces to my co-teacher.  No harm there, he didn't announce it anywhere else (like in front of church during Children's Time - it could have happened.)

• At a cook-out with friends: "My mommy has a baby in her tummy."  This was said at several points so that all our friends left learning our news.

• Once safely in SC, at my parent's church to someone he'd never met before: "My mommy has a baby in her belly."

I'm so excited he is excited :)  Cora will also say that "Mommy have baby" but she, of course, doesn't really appreciate what big news this is for our family.  Jack understands our family is growing and I love that he is happy about this fact.

We were excited to see this little one on our ultrasound and to know that everything looks normal.  After a few days of seeming to feel better, my nausea has picked up and it is no fun.  I look very much forward to feeling better and being able to enjoy food again!!!

Early pregnancy

7.5 weeks - 8/6/2014

Last week was a difficult one with constant nausea that was leaving me pretty down.  I have a prescription for Zofran but would really rather not take any medications if not necessary.  So Jacob (motivated by his down, on the couch wife) did some research and most articles suggested trying non-medical remedies first.  So we got some vitamin B6 from the Vitamin Store and played with the dosage over last weekend.

Either the nausea is chilling out some on its own, or the B6 is helping!  I still feel nauseated through most parts of the day, but it's like the volume has been dialed way down and I can tolerate this level of yuck.

The hardest part of this early pregnancy nausea is the balance between needing to eat (and also knowing the nausea is worse on an empty stomach) and NOT WANTING ANY FOOD.  That's not true, I'm sure if you named 100 foods at any given moment, 3 or 4 would sound good.  They'd just likely not be in my kitchen or already prepared.

Jacob is so very practical so seeing me BUY prepared food is a hard one for him.  And timing up with our new one-income lifestyle, it's especially hard for him.  But I've asked for lenience for the next two months till I get past the constant yuck. 

Yay for Yucky

6 weeks - 7/27/14

This week, I had a nightmare that I'd miscarried again and that brought back my anxieties.  (Is it just me that dreams in Technicolor clarity during a pregnancy?  All my dreams are so vivid.)

Like I'd actually put a picture of myself here!

So I've continued to keep our news quiet.  But I'm feeling more relaxed again, thanks to the onset of around the clock yuckiness since Thursday.  This is what I remember pregnancy feeling like and why it just felt weird to feel so good earlier this year.  I just feel "bleh."  I've started becoming picky about what sounds good to eat, but I'm still wanting to eat as it seems like I feel better when I'm eating.  (That could be dangerous.)

I'll take it!  The nausea is reassuring and, combined with no spotting, is helping me start to think we might be on our way to a third baby.  Which is so exciting!

I have an appointment with a midwife tomorrow and plan to schedule an early ultrasound this go-round.  I was so laid back at the start of Cora's pregnancy (and also so horribly sick) that I opted out of any early ultrasounds, but I know I'll want one this time.

I'm celebrating every day forward and continue to pray that I'm pregnant with what will be our healthy third baby.

....pregnant...

5 weeks - 7/20/2015

I am pregnant again.  I feel incredibly fortunate to have conceived again so quickly.  It was hard to miscarry and I know it will be hard to let go of all anxiety in these early weeks of pregnancy, but it would have also been very hard to wait months to become pregnant again.  So I feel really fortunate.

I waited a few days past my missed period to take a test, because I didn't want to get my hopes up until I was clearly pregnant.  I'd been having signs of pregnancy but I was worried I was reading something into nothing.  Turns out I wasn't.

I've been trying to put into words how I'm feeling these last few days.  "Excited" isn't right.  Which is weird, because I want so much to bring another baby into this family.  But excited feels carefree, and I think a miscarriage pulls away the innocence and naivete of finding out you are pregnant.

In April, the positive pregnancy test meant NEW BABY, coming in January, but probably, closer to Christmas.  Now, I have an understandable skepticism that this positive test means an actual baby.  I'm feeling more hesitant; hopeful, but cautious.

The best description I can come up with is "subdued happiness."  My mom was in town, so she learned right away of our news.  But the idea of calling my dad to tell him didn't seem right.  I mean I'd just called my parents all excited a few months back.  There will be plenty of time for excitement; right now I feel happy to be where I am, but don't want to dive in fully.

I am surprised that I'm not a raging ball of anxiety.  I'm really not that anxious.  I remember I'm pregnant sometimes and forget at other moments.  I don't feel weak or delicate and I'm continuing to have the peace I'd come to about a month ago.

I'm already nauseous which is a comforting feeling since I never really got there in the spring.  I feel several pregnancy symptoms and they are nice to have back around.

And I've realized again, how quickly a pregnancy becomes part of your present and your future.  As soon as I knew I was pregnant, I looked up my due date, which of course populates the next eight months of my calendar with what my life might be like.  Finding out the sex in the fall, a majorly pregnant Mardi Gras...

Nothing would make me happier than to get to walk through all those moments and meet a healthy, third child in mid-March.