Baby needs a new pair of shoes!

I'm in the midst of a FREAK OUT. Not just right this second, but for probably about the last week...

We are broke. I mean, brokety-ass-brokety BROKE.

Thankfully, we make all of our bills, but that's it.
There's no savings, and there's no emergency fund.

We don't even make enough to pay real rent, so it's a good thing we're living with my in-laws.

We're having a baby. HOLY MOTHER OF G-D.

I don't know what to do. Ironically, we can't bring in any more income, or we'll lose the Medi-Cal that we have for the baby.

Even if I could work, my doctor has said that I shouldn't, and my poor husband was trying to find a 2nd job BEFORE I got pregnant, and couldn't find anything to save his life.

Now, even if he could FIND something, he wouldn't be able to take it, because we can't afford to lose the medi-cal, but we also can't afford to not to bring in more dinero....

Ummm, yeah. Stuck between a rock and a poor place.

In an effort to try and do what we can, we consolidated all of our credit cards (all of which save for one, was in my name because of my husband's lack of credit history) and started what the company calls a: Debt Management Plan-DMP, which will reduce our monthly out-go of credit card payments by quite a bit.

We were hoping to put that money we "saved" toward an emergency fund and toward saving for the baby, BUT now we're terrified that my husband's car is close to death.

If the "CHECK ENGINE" light comes on one more time, I'm going to lose it.

We're hoping the car will at least eek out for another year....oh, please, little car, hear my cry!

But even with saving that bit of money every month, it still doesn't allow us to become financially stable enough to move out.

Especially with the credit consolidation now.

My credit history which I spent 10 years building, is now dust, and will be for the next five years.

I'm jobless, credit cardless, credit historyless, and pregnant.

Excuse me while I collapse into panic attack/coronary.

I went from bringing in a full-time income, having a great credit score and an established credit history to THIS, in a ONE YEAR.

I have never been this dependent on another human being (that being my husband) in my life. It's terrifying. I don't like it.


That is not to say that I blame my husband for any of it (and I'm so thankful that he doesn't blame me EITHER), or that I would change anything really, it just blows my mind how quickly things can shift.


We just don't know what to do.
We desperately want to find a way to move out of my in-laws house.

Not because it's a horrible place to live, but because we just want to not feel like failures, but at the same time, we know it would be idiotic to try and leave before we're truly stable, not just for our sakes, but for the sake of our child as well.

Until we can find a way to make a substantial second income, or be granted a miracle, we'll be camping here for a while.

Most of the people in our lives have been really supportive of our having to move in to my husband's parents, but then there are those that treat it like we ended up here because we were irresponsible assholes, who didn't try hard enough, which is really unnerving.

Worse than that though, are the people who assume that because we're living with the 'rents, who happen to be "comfortable" shall we say, that all of our troubles are over, our bills are being paid, our debts are settled, and now we're just lazy.

Yes, we live with my husband's parents, and yes, it is a pretty swank place to live, and yes, they have helped us, BUT they are NOT just handing out money to us like confetti...

Ummmm, I WISH.

Who wouldn't want someone to come in, fairy godmother-style and say: Don't worry! I've got this!?

But alas, that is not so.

They have their own financial ecosystem to maintain, thank you.

We pay are own bills, and on one income (particularly in So. CA), it's pretty tight.
We are not whiny and spoiled, I promise.

Some people just like to run their mouths...ahem.

If that wasn't enough, my husband's parents really want him to go back to school.
Which, in theory, is great.
I want my husband to be able to do that too, but given the current state of things, the idea of adding another mountain of student loans to the range of financial clusters we ALREADY have paralyzes us both with terror.

But that is another post for another night.

I don't have the strength for it now.....

Pregnancy is a pain in the ass.

I know. I KNOW. How dare I, right? I feel guilty for even typing it, let alone THINKING it....

but it IS. It's a pain in the ass.

There's the mind-numbing fatigue, the complete loss of your previous abilities to focus, remember and/or retain information, there's the copious amount of vomiting, plus gas and heartburn. And don't forget the peeing. ALWAYS peeing.

(I'll save the skin and bodily changes for my next post....Oooh, something to look forward to!)

I am so tired, that all I do is sleep.

Women who work/go to school while pregnant are now my new superheroes. I don't know how they do it! They deserve medals and parades.

The other day, it took me six hours just to get dressed, write an email, and put away 3 baskets of laundry. 6 HOURS, people. I don't have other children or a job, that was all I did all day...

And I was exhausted!

I have also become dumber. I can't remember how to spell things, I have difficulty paying attention, My husband has to repeat himself, it's a mess.

Oh, and the vomiting: There's no "glow," just shades of green and broken blood vessels all around my eyes and across the bridge of my nose. Food is the enemy and I've gotten to the point where I'm slightly afraid to eat. I've started picking foods based on their ease of regurgitation.

Gross, but totally true.

Next, we have gas and heartburn--

With the way I've been belching and farting, you'd think I was a trucker! My favorite part? I seem to have no control over any of it. I'll open my mouth to speak, and instead, out comes a loud rumbly burp. In the middle of a quiet restaurant, no less.

It's 3:30am and I'm wide awake with heartburn and and stomachache. Damn Italian.


Finally, there's the peeing. I probably pee every fifteen minutes. Going an hour between bathroom breaks is like marathon status.

If I cough too hard, I pee a little.
If I throw up, it's a sure bet that I will pee.
Good sneeze? It's over!

So I've started wearing pads 24/7...and it's early in my pregnancy still. By the end, I'm going to have to drop all pretenses of dignity and just give into Depends. Shudder!


Pain in the ASS, I tell you!

But that's okay. I'd go through all of this tenfold to have our baby.

It's always been said that you have to work hard for what you really want, so armed with my super absorbent pads, my prenatal vitamins and my chuck bucket, I say:

LET'S DO THIS.


That, however, does not mean that I won't bitch about it from time to time, no matter how grateful I may be for this opportunity.

I'm sorry, but peeing your pants while puking your guts out is  like salt in the wounds....just mean!

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!