Baby Kicking Videos!

As promised, here are the videos of James David kicking! It is really weird to see.

Kicking!!

I just saw him kick me!! Like--I saw my belly move from the outside when he kicked. Soooo cool!! As I am listening to other people who are as pregnant as me talk about their baby's movement, I am starting to think that the u/s tech was right and we have a super active baby. He kicks me pretty hard for multiple "sessions" every day, and I can feel him moving and kicking plenty of other times during the day as well. I know I JUST said a lot of this in the last post but it really is crazy.

In other news, a cat just jumped off my boob with full force directly on my nipple and it hurt SO SO SO bad. I've actually had ice on it for like five minutes and it is still aching horribly. OUCH.

20 Weeks Tomorrow

Tomorrow I will be 20 weeks pregnant, which is halfway through my pregnancy--CRAZY!!

But I have to say that on this vacation I really started feeling more pregnant. My parents, three sisters, Grandmother, and James all just returned from a week in Bar Harbor, Maine. It was unbelievable, I will try to post pictures later. We did a lot of hiking and it was so fun just to spend evenings with everyone, playing cards, doing puzzles, eating together, etc.

But I feel like my belly is really pregnant now, and James David is kicking me all day every day if I am still enough to be paying attention to it. I saw so many pictures and videos of me with this baby belly and it is hard to deny anymore that I'm pregnant!

I think it also finally hit my Mom, which was nice; she was in this state of disbelief before. My sisters, too, are getting really into touching my belly all the time, and talking about their "nephew" and stuff--it is really cool.

As for me--I still have trouble grasping that my child is alive inside me. I have the pictures from the ultrasound last week--and he is obviously a baby in there, but to picture that he is laying there inside me, I just can NOT wrap my brain around it--it is SO crazy.

Oh well, I have 5 more months to get used to it I guess!! ;-)

It's a Boy!!!

Make a pregnancy ticker

*The above picture is NOT of our ACTUAL baby but represents what he may look like at the time of reading. ;-)

Our ultrasound appointment was today and it was amazing!! Baby James was bouncing around like crazy, the ultrasound tech could barely get the measurements she needed because he wouldn't stop moving!

But we got a good money shot and he is definitely a boy!! I need James to help me convert our pics to an e-version I can upload, and then I will definitely share them!

But he is measuring 9 days ahead--I am thrilled because at 9 weeks he was measuring over a week behind so I was a bit worried about the little tyke, but he caught up and then some!! My midwife said vegans always have the biggest healthiest babies so I should have trusted her! Hehe.

Anyway, like I said, I thought it was a boy--and actually, I sort of feel like this next generation will be all boys (on my Dad's side). For those who don't know my family: My Dad has three brothers and one sister--those five had 11 girls and only 2 boys--so now if the pattern repeats itself, this next generation is another "mostly boys" generation, and should be like 4-5 girls and 20-25 boys, hahah!

But for now boys is winning--this will be the first one of the next generation. Keep tuned for pics of Little James. He has my cute button nose and adorable plump lips. :-)

About to go to my appointment!

Well in just a few minutes I will leave to meet James at his work and then head down to our ultrasound appointment to see our wiggly baby and see if it is a boy or a girl! (Hopefully, I think I will go crazy if it is being shy, LOL).

I'm not sure what happened to my poll over there on the side bar, but last I recall, girl was ahead by quite a few votes!

Me and James both think it is a boy--so those are our official pre-appointment guesses! But I will be very happy either way--I am just dying to know! Eeeek! Okay time to go get dressed!

James Held the Baby

So obviously James has been putting his hand on my stomach throughout the pregnancy, but last night, I was describing to him how I think it is down really low because I have this bulge right over my pubic bone--and I was saying that I think it is probably the head.

So he puts his hand on my stomach where I was describing and all of a sudden he got this amazed look on his face and he says:

"I'm holding our baby!"
And I was like: "Yeah dude, I know."
"But I really feel like it is there, like I am really holding a baby that is inside you."
I give him a quizzical look. "Yep."
"Wow, it's really a baby; wow, I am holding it."
"Yep, you are."

LOL! It was really funny but all jokes aside I was really touched by his sudden realization and connection. It makes it all the more special that he felt this before we found out the sex because I think now he definitely loves it already, no matter what it is.

:-)

18 weeks

So I think I am pretty pregnant now. Here's a few belly pics!

To-Do List

So it's pretty difficult for me to stay focused and motivated to get stuff done during the day--hence why I normally take adderall.

But I've had a lot of success using to-do lists to stay focused and for the last week or so I've been working off of this check-list and doing really well! Here's the list:

-Get up
-Get Dressed
-Brush Teeth
-Drink Tea
-Eat Breakfast

-Put in load of laundry
-Bring down load from upstairs
-Sort load
-Load dishwasher
-Unload dishwasher
-Switch over laundry
-Clean Kitchen
-Clean Living room

-Eat lunch
-Fold laundry
-Put away laundry
-"Do project" (I'll explain later)

-Make dinner
-Eat dinner
-Take walk with James
-Clean up after dinner with James
-Do project with James

So that's it! The project thing is like a list of other things I need to do--some of them are things that should be repeated regularly (vacuum different rooms, clean bathrooms, etc), and some are one-time things (paint heater in rental house, etc). Honestly "projects" can be anything--I have a separate list of all the projects and I try to get at least two done every day, but ideally I can get a lot more than two done, depending on what they are.

But this has been working really well for me!! In the last week I have pretty much kept my kitchen and living room pretty clean, and it gets cleaner all the time (since one project was cleaning off the top of the fridge, and another one was vacuuming it), I have consistently done a load of laundry every day, I've cleaned up after dinner (which normally we never do, we were always really bad about falling into a coma after dinner time), taken a walk every day for the past week . . . I've cleaned my downstairs bathroom, cleaned my laundry room (not completely, but it is way better) . . . and I think it has helped James to stay more motivated because after our walk we come home and clean up from dinner and then do more housework, instead of just going straight from eating dinner to watching TV to bed.

So I'm feeling really good about this and hoping I can keep it up, because as I had mentioned before, our upstairs is still super disorganized and crazy, and I really want to have it organized before the baby comes. But it definitely helps when our main living space is cleaner and more organized--it definitely leaves more room for the more difficult "projects", ;-)

OMG I think there's a baby inside me!

So as I mentioned last week, I've been feeling what COULD be little kicks here and there. (Or they could be gas bubbles). I've been leaning toward kicks a lot of the time when there isn't further gurgling and moving of the intestines. But it definitely hasn't been anything where I feel sure that it was kicking or moving.

I may or may not have mentioned that we have our own doppler machine, so we can listen to the heartbeat whenever we want (though we try not to overdo it, we might listen once every two weeks or so). But the last two times I looked for the HB I found it immediately.

So yesterday when our midwife was here, she tried for a min or so to find the heartbeat, but for some reason I just had this feeling that she was in the wrong spot. So she asked me if I wanted to try to find it, and after a few seconds, I found it pretty easily. My midwife was like: "The Moms always know where it is!" LOL.

But seriously, how DID I know where to look? I guess I do have a sense for where it is, though I couldn't find a logical reason why I should.

But just now I think I might have really felt it kicking or possibly even moving/turning a bit! Of course I can't be sure but it was little bumps just a little higher and to the other side from where we heard the heartbeat. So depending on how it is facing, that WOULD sort of be right where its feet could be!

I will have to keep an "eye" on this phenomenon and see if I keep feeling it in the same spot! Hehe! I'm so excited for when I can feel it move all the time.

Weird Pregnancy Dream

So I finally had a weird pregnancy dream last night. I dreamt that I was at my parents house and we were just hanging out, and suddenly I REALLY felt the baby move! And I looked down and I could see it moving all around in my stomach and kicking and rolling like crazy. Eventually, it was rolling so close to the skin that I felt like I could see it really clearly--little bony butt and head. Somehow it rolled out of my body, right through the skin of my stomach--LOL. This sounds gross and something that I should have panicked about, but in the dream it was super normal and I was just holding my tiny tiny 5 inch translucent skinned baby. My sister was there and she asked if we could see if it was a boy or a girl. So I held it up and we could definitely tell! (But I'm not saying what it was because I don't want to sway the poll I am taking!)

Anyway, at some point I realized that I could still feel a baby inside me, and that it was actually twins--the second baby came out of my belly too but I could see that it was underdeveloped compared to the first baby. I guess I think that this baby represents our next child (I don't really think I am pregnant with twins). Anyway, at this point I started to get a little worried about the babies chilling in the open air, so I put them back in my stomach--picture rubbing lotion into your skin--that's how I put them back, I just rubbed them into my belly. So then they were back in there safe and sound.

I was worried after this, and ran to the bathroom to see if I was bleeding but everything was fine.

So, super weird right!? It was cool though, to see and hold my tiny tiny little baby.

Book Response: Flowers for Algernon

Though I read this book some time ago, I unearthed it yesterday while finding a book for James to read, and as I saw it and looked down at it, I felt this rush of emotion and thought go through me as I remembered this book.

To briefly summarize: "Flowers for Algernon" is about a man named Charlie who is intellectually disabled (old speak=mentally retarded), and takes part in an experiment and operation which could make him smarter. The experiment is successful and as his intelligence grows, he changes as a person--his friends, his work, his life. As he ever more quickly surpasses the intelligence of the original designers of the experiment, he begins to do his own research and tests to determine if the intelligence is a permanent state. Is it? Read to find out. ;-)

Once I got into this book I could not put it down. Charlie's transformation and the repercussions that swept through his life were both completely unique and yet, universal. The idea of intelligence lost and found (and maybe, lost again), was something that touched me deeply, and seemed to shake me. When I finished the book I felt unsettled in the way a good book does--like I had looked into my soul and seen something true, unprocessed, and perhaps, uninvited.

I guess fundamentally, I felt like I was Charlie. We learn and we grow, but as we move ahead and onward, sometimes we forget what we leave behind and what it meant to us. At the same time, in a very REAL sense, I have had moments, days, weeks, months, in which my mind seemed to break into a different plane of understanding (often because of the practice and experiences with Yan Xin Qigong, a meditation practice that I study, albeit rather badly much of the time). While I have been in this altered state of consciousness, for lack of a better phrase, certain words, ideas, phrases, and readings have taken on new meaning. Where once there was flatness, things sprung suddenly into depth and there was so much more to see that there wasn't enough time to write down all my thoughts, to think over every thought. One thing would lead to three, and as I made my choices about which way to let my mind flow, there was some understanding that the road not taken would not be seen again.

But these states fade, often the understandings with them. Now sometimes I read back on things I had written during these times, or things I had READ during these times, and gleaned great meaning from, and I find that I cannot understand. Often, that I cannot even understand my own thoughts as I wrote them.

Am I alone? I'm not sure if it is the practice of Yan Xin Qigong alone that brings me to this place--I feel as if sometimes people who are very religious or practice other forms of meditation can also get into these places . . . but as I finished "Flowers for Algernon" and put the book aside, unsettled was definitely the word for my feeling. I was Charlie, unable to comprehend what I once knew, and sometimes, too ignorant even to miss it.

For this reason and many others, I would highly recommend "Flowers for Algernon".

Vote!!

Well, hopefully we will find out in a week or so if the baby is a boy or a girl!

What do you think? Look at the side bar on the right to cast your vote!!

*****************

The final vote (though I think a lot of people voted after the official announcement, ;-)

Boy: 28 Votes (50%)
Girl: 27 Votes (49%)

Weekend Accomplishments

Wellll, our weekend wasn't QUITE as productive as I had hoped, but I guess I forgot to figure in how much time we were spending feeding the cat, and how exhausting it would be!

We had him on a 12/3/6/9 feeding schedule, and we agreed that we could skip 3 am. But that meant someone had to stay up until midnight to feed him (I think Fri night we both stayed up and Sat I passed out at 8:30. :-/). And then someone had to get up at 6 am to feed him. James got up Sat morning, then went back to sleep, and I did 9 am, and we switched Sunday. But both days we both crawled back in bed until at least 10 because the whole thing was exhausting.

So, we got a late start every morning, in the first place.

We also just had SO SO SO much piled up laundry, dishes, and problematic issues (our basement flooding, etc), that it took a lot of effort to get through so that it appeared to make any kind of dent. But in the end I guess we got a lot done.

James cleaned out and fixed the gutters (hopefully addressing the flooding problem), and wet-vac'd the water in the basement, did a TON of laundry, and cleaned out this mouse nest that we discovered in our dried beans drawer (how a mouse could survive in this house is beyond me--maybe because he didn't really have to leave the drawer for any reason?) I cleaned the entire kitchen (including the top of the fridge that had been accumulating crap and dust for months) and most of the living room, matched the socks, and made pea soup. And it was damn good, I might need to do a separate post about it.

We also managed to go on walks both Saturday and Sunday and Saturday we (well I) also went swimming!

James made cookies last night, which is a semi-accomplishment, except that it is somehow impossible for him to clean up after himself, so the kitchen I struggled to clean is now a mess again. :-/ But hopefully with only a little effort, I can return it to its clean state.

So I guess we were fairly productive, considering the cat, and I definitely feel like I am in a better place to move forward from here--not as overwhelmed at all (even though we did not TOUCH the upstairs and it is still completely insane, but I'm trying to work through that, LOL).

Kicking?

Okay, so it is possible that once yesterday and a couple times today I have felt little kicks from the baby!! I will be 17 weeks on Tuesday, so it is definitely "about that time"! I am really excited to start feeling it move all of the time.

We have a midwife appointment on Thursday, and after that, she will make the appointment for our "big ultrasound" when we find out if it is a boy or a girl! I am really hoping that we'll be able to get our ultrasound for next week (18 weeks), since the week after that, we'll be vacationing in Maine with my family. It would be really fun to find out before our vacation, so I'm hoping it all works out!!

Cat Update

So today for the first time, we tried giving Tonio a can of soft food.

HE WOLFED IT DOWN LIKE IT WAS THE ONLY FOOD IN THE WORLD!!! WOOOHOOO!

So the odds are very good that we can get the feeding tube out on Tuesday!! Yaaay!! It has been an exhausting couple of days, let me tell you.

Crazy Cat Issues!

Holy Crap, this is a story. So for those who didn't know before, we have three cats of our own--Monty who is about 4, and was a barn cat before we adopted him as an adult, and Odin and Loki, who are 1.5, and we got as rescue kittens when they were just five weeks old last fall.

Now our good friend Anna found this really affordable condo in this family-friendly complex in a great neighborhood--only problem is that they don't allow pets. So she needed someone to take her two cats for a year or two while they lived there and tried to save up money for a house.

So we got the cats--Sofia who is long haired, and 2.5, and Tonio, who is short hair, 1.5. We kept them inside for almost two weeks--first in their own room and then we opened the door. Sofia seemed to fit right in and start acclimating, but not Tonio--he was so scared of our cats that he didn't want to leave his room.

Finally we let them outside for the first time, and I hoped that this would cheer up Tonio. Instead, we didn't see him again for four days and I was so worried. We finally saw him outside the window but when we tried to get him in, he ran away. The next day, same thing, finally on the third day (this was Tuesday night)I got him to approach a food and water bowl and grabbed him. But it was obvious from close up that something was seriously wrong with his mouth--it looked like it had been ripped open (and it had been like this already when we first saw him on Sunday).

So Wednesday morning, I brought him into the vet for an emergency visit, only to discover that he was missing like half of his tongue. It looked like it had been cleanly sliced (the long way). It was CRAZY. So they had to keep him there overnight on Wednesday, suture his tongue closed, and install a feeding tube.

On Thursday evening, James and I reported to the Vet's office to learn how to feed him through the tube. Basically, every 3 hours we have to give 5 mls of water through the tube, then 15 mls of formula, then 5 more mls of water. Twice a day we also have to give pain meds and an antibiotic through the tube. Since you can only give like one ml every minute or so, this whole process takes about a half hour.

So needless to say, I feel crazy, LOL! Luckily my friend Anna (his owner) is paying the bill. She came over last night to see him and she feels bad that we are going through this and I feel bad that he got hurt on "our watch", but oh well, these things happen with cats.

So that's our crazy cat issue!

Overwhelmed

So I feel like my life is totally insane right now.

Some of the big things are getting worked out--I'm pregnant, I have a plan for what to do with school and career, I have a husband I love.

But it seems like all the details are water running through my fingers and I look around in a panic.

I wrote before about cleaning/organizing our bedroom and upstairs. I'm glad we got started on this immensely insane project (don't even get me started on why this is so difficult), but now, being in the middle is just making me feel crazy, that nothing is set--my books which may be connected to my soul are strewn in piles and I already know that we don't have enough bookshelves.

Okay, now I want to get into why this is so difficult--I have trouble throwing things away. There, I said it. I don't have as much of a problem "letting go of things"--when my sister moved into an apartment for the first time, I made her a care package with dishes, silverware, etc. I like giving things away--I like recycling broken things, I like donating to Salvation Army. But when I am staring at, say, a ribbon or an old CD, I feel like a WWII survivor is suddenly being channeled into me and saying: THINK OF ALL THE USES OF THIS ITEM!! DO NOT THROW IT AWAY.

I know that some men's trash is another men's treasure, but to me, everything seems like a treasure--if something is broken, fine, throw it away (unless it is electronic and should be recycled), but if it is simply superfluous, unwanted, unneeded, I just FEEL the fact that TONS of people around the world WOULD want or need the thing and the idea of filling up a landfill with it just turns my stomach. I've also been known to cry upon discovering, say, an over-ripe pineapple. I feel the waste echo through me like a sin.

James is no saint in terms of this either, and he as well as myself has things like: boxes of old notebooks, boxes of old CD's and video games and broken stereos, etc.

So when we speak of cleaning and organizing our upstairs rooms, these boxes of crap that are still leftover from my annexing of James' office (he could not keep it clean or even usable so now it is the guest room) need to be gone through and to do a proper job takes hours of concentration on ONE box of stuff. So I am significantly overwhelmed by this task, though I(we) already made a lot of progress, to be honest.

Other overwhelming things include:

Our cat emergency, which is badly deserving of its own post.

Our laundry. Nuf said.

Food: My stomach has been off for a few days. I'm thinking the oil or vegan butter I used to cook stuff at my Mom's house might be rancid. I can't think of what else it might be. But all I've eaten today so far is 1.5 apples. :-/ Hopefully I will start feeling hungrier soon.

My internet life/world:
- I am the CL (community leader) of two message board groups on i-village--so I'm responsible for responding to people and being "there", especially at the beginning of the month where I have to set up new buddy threads for people . . . details details, but considering I don't have a job, it is something I try to take seriously. One of the boards I CL for has about 20-40 regular members, the other one has over 100--so it is a pretty serious task to stay on top of them.
- I am pretty into reading blogs. This is something that obviously doesn't really matter to anyone else, but when I am behind on reading my favorite blogs (and writing in my own blog), I definitely get a sense of disorganization and as if I am behind/slacking off or something.
- Facebook. I try to keep up with my news feed. But I was so busy this week, I am not going to go back and read every SINGLE thing for an entire week.

I actually made some progress with this over the last two days and this morning. Yesterday I did most of the work I needed to do on the message boards (though there is always more to do, I did the essential "new month" things). I also caught up on Facebook. This morning, more catching up on Facebook, including going through all my notifications. I also went through most of my blogs this morning--I am almost totally caught up--plus I wrote one blog and this is my second.

So I'm actually feeling slightly less crazy because my internet world is getting a little more organized. Hopefully this afternoon I will be able to work more on the upstairs rooms.

Number Two

It's weird, but we were trying so long that not only am I super excited to have this baby, I am super excited to have another one after him/her! I find myself extremely jealous of people with one year olds and 18 month olds who are also pregnant and due around the same time I am . . .

Since we FIRST started trying over 3 years ago, I feel like my vision for what I want my family to be has "aged" when there isn't a real baby here aging--so now when I picture our little "what could have been family" we already have our SECOND baby.

Perhaps I am crazy for already thinking about number 2--but I love my siblings so much, and I want to have several children. We'll see what happens with my fertility. We will be exclusively breastfeeding (barring any issues), and lactational amenorrhea is a pretty effective birth control.

But I have known people who got their periods (and thus their fertility) back at 6 weeks postpartum, and I have know other people who didn't get their period and fertility back until almost 2 years postpartum (they were still breastfeeding)! I think the former would be a bit too early for me and the latter would be later than I would have wanted.

My Mom said she always got her period back about 5 months postpartum. I think that would be perfect. I guess the plan right now is to start trying for our second when our first is 9 months old, aiming for a 18 month-2 year gap. So that means we would start trying in . . . August 2011. I can't wait to have two little ones!!

But for now I will be excited for my one little one! First things first!

Productivity

So over the weekend, and since Kate has been here, I've been trying to stay productive and work on (really) cleaning the house.

So we've cleaned the kitchen (a couple times), but we also planted the garden on Saturday, and James and I SERIOUSLY cleaned our room on Sunday. This included moving EVERYTHING out of it, and changing the bed to a different spot--getting rid of one dresser so we can fit the new dresser for the baby in our room, etc. Part of this was also picking up and sorting ALL the laundry (basically in the whole house) and getting a good start on washing some of it.

Today, I continued the cleaning by going through all the clothes in our room and sorting into: Winter stuff (and stuff that is too small for me) in storage, and stuff that fits is in season on the shelf--I took out a few things for Salvation Army/Fabric Pile.

And THEN I took out all the baby's stuff (I have been hoarding little items for years) and put it in the dresser. Now that I have it all in there, I realize I hadn't gotten as many things as I thought, LOL! which is good because I know a lot of people will get presents for it in terms of clothes.

One thing I still do want to get is a nice supply of newborn T-shirts and receiving blankets--I figure that will be the main clothing stuff we need for the first month or two (along with cloth diapers).

I also discovered a hoarde of "maternity" clothes I had been setting aside for a couple years--things that were too big for me, either that were my own old things or things other family had given me. So now I have plenty of pants and shirts (At least for another month or so)--a couple of skirts, some dresses--I'm going to try to get by without buying anything else but in the fall I might need to get some "real" maternity pants/skirts for when my belly is really big.

Anyway, now all there is left to do on the clothes is pull out the box of summer stuff, go through it in the same way, sorting things that fit and are in season from things that don't or are wintery--then I can put ALL the winter/ too small stuff away and be done.

Our room isn't completely arranged still--we have to rehang all our art and bring all our little things back into the room, but it is getting there, and it was nice to start completely fresh, and start setting things up for the baby. :-)

Goals for the next couple days:

-Finish stuff above
-Wash more laundry and also go through it
-Start arranging library/guest room (sort books)