Wee N' Weigh

Today was my first prenatal appointment. I'm 9 weeks 5 days. I knew it would be the usual pee-in-a-cup, get weighed, give an updated medical history, use the doppler and go have seven hundred vials of blood drawn first appointment. My main concern was that if we didn't hear the heartbeat on the doppler, I might have to wait another month for my next appointment to confirm this pregnancy. This would be stressful in and of itself, but we were planning on announcing this pregnancy soon (as I'm starting to show), and that would mean four more weeks of trying to hide my expanding waist (and enlarging bra size).

My appointment was with the PA (who I need a cute pseudonym for, since I see her often -- I'll think about it). All went as expected (although I've gained four pounds already), even when she told me, "Don't panic if we can't find the heartbeat. It's still very early and you have an retroverted uterus, which can make it even harder to find it." My response was, "I'm just warning you that I am probably going to panic if we don't hear it, because I've been worrying about this pregnancy since before it started."

Then, of course, they couldn't find it.

The PA had a student with her, so the student ran the doppler across my lower abdomen (okay, pushed it hard against my lower abdomen), while the PA tried to move my uterus up and forward (Uh... she did this internally, for those of you who can't figure out how she'd do that). No dice.

Finally, the PA said, "I'm just going to send you for an ultrasound." And aren't those the words that any infertile wants to hear? (Well, they're on the list of words, at least).

In contrast to the office staff of just about every other health care provider I have, the staff at my OB's office is incredibly nice and accomodating. The office manager called and had the ultrasound place fit me in right away, as soon as I could get there.

The upshot: There's only one baby, it had a heartbeat, and it measures according to date. And it looks a little like Gorignak, the rock monster from Galaxy Quest.

Procrastination/Irony

Instead of updating my own blog, I've been visiting the blogs I read and feeling irritated that they haven't been updated. Yeah. Umm, okay... that makes sense.

So, in a effort to update my own blog, I thought a short, topic-specific blogroll was in order. Here is my list of Spring Due Dates Blogs -- April, May and June* -- that I check up on (in no particular order):

Murphy is a Bastard

The Vicious Cycle of Cycles

Vacant Womb - No Vacancy!

Tales From My Dusty Ovaries

Uterus x2

Life as a Sandwich

Our Dance With Infertility

That Was the Plan

Waiting on Two Pink Lines

Just When I Thought I Had It All

Conflicted

Flotsam

Baby Twiglet

Infertility Loss... and Life

Just when I thought I had it all

Having Faith

Topcat

Fatty Pants

Mrs. Ca

Southern Comfort

Mrs. Spock

Strings and Sealing Wax and Other Fancy Stuff

slackermama

Just Relax and Try Again

A Single Woman's Journey to Motherhood

Infertility Sucks!

Still Passing Open Windows...

Slaying, Blogging, Whatever...

Mommin' It Up!

fun. crazy. life.

Digital Negatives

Healing Arts

Corrie Haffly

Baby Anderson

Anna's Parapraxis

Life Thru IVF #2

Mama Loves Papa

Mom? Me?

Crossrhodes

Jen's Belly Blog

Baby Island

Chicky Chicky Baby

misszoot

Waiting for Another

A Tale of Two Mamas

Adventures in Parenting

jumping out of trees

Mommies in the making

Nothing Heavy

RaJenCreation

Waiting on Two Pink Lines

Jen's Belly Blog

Beaten but not bowed

Life on a Back Road

The Razzberry

The Sawyer Saga

Are we there yet?

Thwarted Repeatedly

It's Taking a Village

Smart As Allison

The Baby Bug

The crazy life of Jodie

I Don't Want Sextuplets

Angela's Daily Struggle

Teatopia

we are fambly

What to Expect When You're NOT Expecting

At This Point, I'll Take an Evap - (Nevermind, not anymore!)

This list was complied by my own searching and blogrolls of other blogs I read, as well as some help from Babes in Blogland and The Stirrup Queen's famous blogroll.

Note: I'll be back later to add links to those who don't have them. Some of these are saved on my favorites on my home computer and the stupid firewall here at work blocks Babes in Blogland because it thinks it's por(no)graphy.

UPDATE COMPLETE!

*And, no, not that April, May and June!

What I got*

Of all the things I dreaded or outright feared when I was pregnant the first time, it was often a surprise what I got and what I didn't get.

What I feared, but didn't get:

• Morning Sickness
• Stretch Marks (Maybe because the Monkey came six weeks early?)
• Placenta Previa (I started with a low placenta, so this was a concern)
• Gestational Diabetes
• Pre-eclampsia
• Breech presentation
  
• Hemorrhoids
• Postpartum Depression

What I got instead:

• Swollen feet (up a whole size!)
• Sciatic nerve pain
• Carpal Tunnel
• Ulnar Neuropathy
• Bell's Palsy
• Restless Leg Syndrome
• Premature birth

My friend H2, who also happens to be my general practitioner, jokes with me about how I got all the "weird" stuff. Yes, if pregnancy could take a strange turn, that was me. Of course, I did things like call her at home on a Saturday morning to tell her I thought I had diagnosed myself, over the internet (and she hates Dr. Google!), with Bell's Palsy. Which I had.

What will it be this time around? Stay tuned to find out.


*Not the answer to the famous question, "What'dya get?" which we all know is "I didn't get nothing... I had to pay fifty dollars and pick up the garbage."

They should start playing the lottery

"It won't take much for Jenna and William Cotton to remember the birthday of the newest member of their family. Daughter Kayla was born Tuesday, which was Oct. 2 — the same date her brothers were born on. Ayden Cotton arrived on Oct. 2, 2003; Logan was born Oct. 2, 2006."

"The odds of a family having three children born on the same date in different years are about 7.5 in 1 million, said Bill Notz, a statistics professor at Ohio State University."

Couple gives birth to third Oct. 2 baby

I have tried to like Wilco

I got an email newsletter recently from one of the many local music venues informing me that Wilco is coming to do a show and I can't miss it. They seem like an obvious fit for me. I have eclectic taste. I like lots of indie artists. I like the Folk scene. I like Alt-Country. I listen to Ryan Adams, Whiskeytown, Old 97's, Rhett Miller, etc, etc. Why not Wilco?

I memoed Wilco on Sirius many months ago, so I could familiarize myself with them and maybe pick an album or two to get. Maybe the issue is that Sirius tends to get stuck in a groove and then will play only the same one or two songs of certain artists. (I took the Indigo Girls off memo because all Sirius ever played was "Galileo.") But none of the Wilco songs I heard struck me. Not stayed with me. I was underwhelmed.

Then last night on an episode of The Bionic Woman, the soundtrack included the song "What Light," which I immediately identified. I liked it a lot better as the backdrop for the scene than I had the times I've heard it on the radio. So now I'm wondering if I could come to like Wilco.

Bumpwatch 2007

Six weeks pregnant today, but already I'm starting to get a belly. It's just a little one, and not enough that anyone would really notice if they didn't know what to look for. However, I'm genetically blessed to have a flat stomach by nature (I've got other faults, so simmer down), and that makes it easy for me to notice that I can no longer even suck my stomach flat.

During my first pregnancy, I was able to hide it until into the second trimester. Superstitious by nature, we wanted to keep it secret until we heard the heartbeat (which we are also doing this time). But even then, I kept not wanting to tell people. I was probably fourteen weeks pregnant when we went out on our friends' boat with a group of people. What tipped the women off wasn't seeing my pregnant belly in a swimsuit -- you could still barely tell -- it was that I wasn't drinking beer and that my breasts had gotten noticeably larger. The school year had ended right at 12 weeks. I was just starting to have to do the rubber band trick on my jeans. I told only a very few friends on the last day of school and as a result, everyone else was shocked when I showed up three months later with a gigantic 25 week belly.

This time however, I'm concerned that I won't be able to hide it until the end of the first trimester. My first appointment isn't until ten weeks, so that's my first goal. I'd just like to get that confirmation before people at work start noticing. I work with mostly women and they seem to be pretty sharp about that sort of thing.

In the morning, my waist looks almost normal, but by evening, I'm very bloated. I'm glad I started to take belly pictures at four weeks. It will be interesting to see the progression.