The Daddy? Who? Ohhh, yeah.....

I love my husband. He really is the best husband I could ask for.

Sure, he's kinda (okay, IS) a slob-- clothes will make it to the front of instead of IN the hamper, and I think his relationship with his Xbox sometimes borders on cheating, but even so...he is amazing.

Because while there are things that make me want to strangle my husband from time to time, when I really evaluate them all, those things don't really matter.

Why the sudden gush of sentiment?

I was thinking about this blog, and all of the things that I think about in reference to the pregnancy, etc., and it dawned on me that I had not talked about a crucial part of this whole process:

The father.

What's he doing during all of this? Is he excited too? Is he concerned with being a good parent? How does he feel about me as his wife, now that I'm pregnant?

It's the answers to the questions that make me so incredibly grateful that we've been able to make it through various trials to being married and expecting a child.

He's so excited to be a father. He's also scared to death, because he just wants so badly to be a good one. He can't wait for it all to begin.

In the meantime, he's in awe of this whole process.

We received an expectant father's book as a gift, but he's way more interested in all the books I'm reading, because the changes my body is going through both fascinates and worries him.

He comes home from work, and this is what (almost on a daily basis) I hear:

"Hi, honey! I missed you...how was your day? Did you eat? Have you had any weird pains? Do your boobs hurt? Can you feel the baby move yet? Do you feel good? Are you sure? Do you need a nap?"

It cracks me up.

He worries like a mother hen.

He is perfectly confident in my ability to be a mother, but he is so freaked out that the pregnancy is going to kill me or something. Seriously.

He told me, that THAT is what he thinks about at night. My dying in childbirth, and how if that happened, he would fall apart.

If it weren't so sad, I'd laugh, because it's just so over-the-top, but he's genuinely afraid.

He's always worried about me like that. Even before we got pregnant.

A cold is the plague...
A headache? Obviously, a brain tumor.
Random Bruise? Bone Cancer.

He's a bit ridiculous, to say the least, but I've come to realize that he just wants to make sure that he has done everything to take care of me.

He's been SUCH a peach during the pregnancy so far.

He holds my hair back while I puke....and tells me I'm beautiful.

11:45pm and I want a sandwich? He's alllllll over it. Even though it's probably not going to stick...

He doesn't begrudge me for taking up the ENTIRE bed because of weird positions I've taken to sleeping in whilst he clings the edge.

He doesn't make me feel bad for not getting anything done, he applauds it. Haha.

His main goal is to make sure that I am happy, comfortable, and loved.

I know he'll feel that same love and devotion for our child.

What more can you ask for in a husband and father than that?

The laundry to be put away, would be nice....

but I'm not greedy. :)

The Cat is (all the way) Outta the Bag....

So we finally told my husband's grandparents, aunt and uncle last about the baby last night.

They were sort of the last hold-outs as far as telling because we wanted to wait til were were further along, and with all of Nana's health issues, we wanted to wait for a time when she was feeling at least slightly better.

They all took it in stride. I think my husband was disappointed that they weren't more excited, or ebullient rather, but I think that to them, it was kinda a given.

Maybe?

His Nana was like: I knew you guys would have a baby soon!

Don't get me wrong, they were happy for us. It was a demand, not a request that we come home for Christmas...hopefully the baby will be old enough to travel.

It's so funny, because initially we wanted to not have ANYONE know until about now, but it just didn't work that way...

We told his parents, who tried to keep it a secret, then we told my mom who couldn't keep it a secret if her life depended on it, and immediately told everyone who would listen, and then my husband and I were so excited that we told some of our close friends, and it just spread like wildfire from there.

So yeah, we kinda blew it, but oh well!

It's harder to keep in happy news, I've noticed....

We hoping that once we know what the sex of the baby is, we can send out formal announcements to everyone, maybe with a maternity photo...

So yay! The family knows!

On to another topic:

WHY IS IT SO DISGUSTINGLY HOT?

I'm sitting here in my underwear, and I still feel like I'm melting.

...and on that note of TMI, perhaps I should end this entry.





PS. Thank you to all of you who left such loving and supportive comments on my last blog. Sorry that it was such a "debbie-downer," and I really appreciate the awesomeness from you guys!

Paranoia, Party of 1? Paranoia, Party of 1, your table is ready....

I am a plan for the worst-and-hope-it-won't-be-that-awful kind of a person. Some might say that because of that, I am a pessimist...

Maybe I am, but I prefer to think I'm more of a realistic optimist.

I want and hope that the best will come out of a situation, but know that if you don't plan for the alternative, you might end up on your ass.

Pregnancy has put this tendency of mine into overdrive. In the bad way...

This is me at night, lying in bed:

What if that half a margarita I had the night before I found out I was pregnant gave our baby fetal alcohol syndrome?

What if my inability to keep food down leads to malnutrition and causes our baby to have developmental delays?

What if my mom is right, and we DO have twins? And they're conjoined?



What if...and it just keeps getting more and more ridiculous.

Under normal circumstances, I am a pretty logical, level-headed person.

Now, I am just a crazy person who is developing a fear that our baby will be born with 4 legs or something.

I just, like every other mother on the planet, want my child to have the ability to do/be anything and everything it wants.

I don't want them to miss out on anything.

As a child with a disability, I missed out on a lot of very basic things:
I couldn't run or participate in PE
I couldn't ride a bike or rollerskate
I couldn't take dance or sports, and I was kept inside a lot.

You add braces and a walker to the mix, and it just doesn't bode well for childhood activities....

Then as a teenager, things normalized quite a bit for me physically, after surgery, PT, and Rehab, but there were little things to be missed, like high heels and most shoes, to big things, like driving...

I'm so afraid of my child having to miss out on things like that as well. Granted Cerebral Palsy is not hereditary, so I'm not fearful that my child will get it, but will rates of things like Autism and Down's syndrome climbing, I worry a lot.

That being said, it wouldn't change how we feel about the pregnancy, or how feel about our child. We have already declined to do an amniocentesis, because the results wouldn't change our minds about having the baby, even if there was something scary.

So why obsess in the middle of the night?

I just can't help myself....


I blame it on the hormones. I'm allowed to do that now, right?

Eating is Experimental these days...

Food and I are not friends these days. We're not even acquaintances.

NOTHING stays down.

Have you ever been extremely hungry AND nauseous at this same time? It's a special brand of suck.

I just keep telling myself that it will pass, and that I'm actually happy to have vomitorama, because it's an indication of normal pregnancy....yes, that's it....

C'MON week 13!

Crisis Averted!

I haven't updated this thing in really, almost three weeks, and it has been a LOOOOONG 3 weeks, let me tell you!

It all started when my OBGYN told me I had to go to a specialist--to have an early ultrasound b/c my doctor wanted to make sure that we were dating the pregnancy correctly (he was assuming 6-7 weeks)...

My appointment was on the 1th of March, so off to specialist we went!

The ultrasound did not go well...

While doing the US, the doctor abruptly pulls out the "probe" (I don't know what the technical term is) and tell me that she could not see a fetus present, and that at 6 weeks (which is what my sac was measuring), she should be able to see something, meaning there's a good chance that the pregnancy isn't "viable" (I hate that term). She tells me to go back to my OBGYN. That he'll discuss it further with me.

Walks out.

So there I am with my husband, sobbing b/c I have NO IDEA what's going on, and I go back to my OBGYN and I'm told that I need to have my blood tested 3 times over the week to see if my hormone levels are rising.
I'm told if they are, then they'll do another US, if not, then they'll schedule me for a DNC...

and that's ALL they'll tell me.

I'm pretty much hysterical at this point. Already having had miscarriages, I was already desperately afraid that something bad was going to happen. This was like my worst nightmare coming true.

Over the next week, I go through all of the blood tests, and I finally find out at like 5pm on that Friday that my hormone levels are going up!
Time for another ultrasound.

Did I mention I'm a basket case? Yeah, pretty much.

FINALLY my follow-up US appointment comes on the 1st of April (Hey, what better day to get life-changing news then on April Fool's day, right?), and I'm reallllllly nervous, but I'm trying to stay positive...

I had decided that I was not comfortable seeing that specialist again, so this time around they sent me to a radiology facility to have my US.

My mother-in-law and I get there, and I'm SO trying to hold it together.

This woman comes into the room and right away she says that she will NOT be able to give me the results of the screening b/c she is not a doctor, but just an ultrasound technician.

Before she even finishes her sentence, I burst into tears. The thought of waiting even an HOUR more to know whether or not I'm going to be a mother just sounded like sheer torture!

I kind of choke out what happened the first time and she apologizes profusely, and tries to reassure me, but there's nothing she can do, so we start the ultrasound...I'm still crying, but trying not to, and failing.

All of the sudden, she turns the screen around to us, and says:

"there's the heartbeat, it's strong. That's all I'm going to tell you..."


OH MY GOD! That woman became my total BFF in that moment.

But my real BFF right then was my mother-in-law.

Apparently, while I was in the bathroom changing for the exam, my MIL told the tech what had happened, my history, how upset I was, etc., which is why she must've taken pity on us, showing us the heartbeat.

Love my MIL!

The moral of this story is that the doctor says that everything looks normal, the baby's heartbeat is healthy, and that I am officially at 9 weeks!

They think the specialist missed it because I was slightly less far along than she thought...which is what I suggested to her in the first place, but let's not get into that....

We are so relieved and excited! I can't even fully express it!

Unfortunately (sort of), during this whole waiting game, morning, afternoon and night sickness has reared in vomit-y head, and food has become the enemy.

I have tried to lose weight 80 million ways to Sunday.

I have been on every diet/exercise plan known to man.

What did I need to do?

I just needed to get pregnant. Irony?

Perhaps.

Pregnancy should become the new fad diet. I've lost ten lbs in a month.

To top it all off, I have a nasty cold.


Ah, pregnancy bliss!


Yay!