What are you looking at?

Green bean

That's the way we chose to describe the baby to Kara and Nathan on Monday during my first ob/gyn appointment, once my uterus was in clear view on the ultrasound screen. A very chubby green bean. Or maybe a Tootsie Roll. I could keep going here, but you get the point.

 

Everything is going swimmingly. I am properly fatigued and nauseated and as of today am currently 7w1d along in this pregnancy, which aligns perfectly with our date of conception. This gives us a due date of July 5, 2011, though I will deliver him earlier than that, since my history of two c-sections removes any discussion of how Number Three will enter the world. The baby looks good and produced a strong heartbeat of more than 140 beats per minute during the ultrasound. For the rest of the afternoon, Nathan kept saying, "Want. to. see. the baby's. heartbeat?" And once we were back in the car, he and Kara each had to have their very own picture of the baby to study and hold and crumble and very possibly eat. It was really quite adorable.

My doctor and I talked a bit about my sudden onset of pre-eclampsia symptoms with Nathan, and some baseline testing can be done at the time of my gestational diabetes test (around 28 weeks), but other than that, all we can do is keep a close eye on my weight, protein levels, and blood pressure, especially near the end, and be prepared to jump into action should there be a reason. I'm cleared to continue running, though right now curling into a ball on the couch and burying my face in a pillow is about all the exercise I can handle.

I'm still hella overwhelmed, which I think has a lot to do with how crummy I feel. I've lost interest in the majority of food, and all things chicken and pork, except for Chicken McNuggets, a craving I have been fighting for almost a week. Dairy products aren't sitting well, so not even ice cream is a comfort, but cheese continues to be my friend. I am ridiculously tired come dinnertime and usually crawl into bed immediately after the last child has gone down for the night. Uterine cramping is still going strong, mostly due to dehydration, I think, because I have always been terrible about drinking enough water even when I'm not gestating. All of this physical upset means that I am terrible about returning e-mails and phone calls and sitting about three pounds below my normal weight (in other words, no maternity clothes yet). It also contributes to my feeling of dread when thinking about what lies ahead; I am already obsessing over nursing and wondering how I can navigate that situation to produce different (i.e. successful) results (no advice, though, please!), planning our finances so that we can upgrade our family car when we are already squeezing every penny, and dreading the going-back-to-work routine AGAIN. I know! One thing at a time, right? Keep perspective, God provides, etc. But it's hard not to fast forward to next year when I already know this pregnancy will fly by so fast. Even if it feels like I'm inching along right now. I still can't believe I've known for so long--Sunday will mark the four-week anniversary of my first positive pregnancy test. Technology really is amazing.

I'm excited about next week, though--I'm taking off the entire week of Thanksgiving, thanks to my awesome vacation accural as a long-time employee (six years in June!). I plan to lay around in sweatpants the entire time, save for the one-hour photography session Luke and I will be scheduling to formally document our existence as a family of four one last time. And if I'm feeling good and motivated, maybe I can even get some ink onto the pages of Nathan's baby book. You're welcome, son. 

Six(ish) weeks

When I started drafting this entry last Wednesday, there weren't any signs of morning sickness to be had, so aside from some run-of-the-mill fatigue and uterine cramping, I was feeling well and therefore insanely optimistic. Baby number three = warm fuzzies of completeness! My family can take on anything! Who needs a savings account when you have love?

Then practically overnight I was nodding off during storytime and experiencing constant stomach upset and swearing off pork chops and coffee. Yesterday I couldn't stop worrying over my ability to divide my time among three children, and today I almost cried actual tears because Subway told me they were out of chicken and dumpling soup, so I suppose we have officially entered the Trimester of Sick and Raging Hormones.

And I really was doing so well. From the moment we suspected I might be pregnant, I've been telling Luke how much easier it will be for us this time around. For starters, we'll only have one baby to deal with instead of two, as Kara and Nathan are pretty self-sufficient as far as toddlers go - ability to play independently, (mostly) follow basic directions, operate utensils without assistance, and put themselves to sleep with (mostly) minimal fanfare. Kara is almost potty-trained and should be completely diaper-free come summer. (We recently tried underwear instead of pull-ups for bedtime, with mixed results, so we are going to try again in another month or two.) Luke is going to work on Nathan soon, who is already showing a vague interest, thanks to the example set by his sister.

More positives: I will give birth in the summer, a first for me, which will allow us to be out and about for the bulk of my maternity leave, once I've recovered from my c-section. Summer break means that Luke's parents and Dan and Samantha will have an easier time spending time with us while the baby is new. I have a couple of honest-to-goodness friends in the area to lean on for support, and we have a reliable baby-sitter at our disposal. My newfound commitment to eating less junk food and being more physically active during this pregnancy should hopefully better prepare my body to bounce back from surgery. We won't be house-hunting or planning a move this time, or making any drastic changes to our home, save for some new paint in a few rooms and reorganizing some furniture, so life should be calmer.

And yet, as I review our finances, and lament over still being so far away from family, and remember how hard it was to get back in the swing of things after the arrival of each child and how vulnerable I always feel in those early months, and how unforgiving the world seems, I get nervous and scared and wonder what the hell Luke and I have gotten ourselves into. I wonder if I will ever have free time again, if we will ever have money again, if we will ever move beyond this "coming into our own" phase and achieve the long-term goals we have set for ourselves.

It will be okay. I think we just need a little more time to adjust.

In the meantime, it's not too late to show off Halloween pictures, is it?

 

This was the first year we took the kids trick-or-treating, and to mark the occasion we let them pick out their own costumes at Target. We went two weeks before Halloween, so options in Kara's size were pretty sparse. Luckily, she was able to don something she liked - a firefighter costume, just like Grandpa (my dad).

 

Nathan was a puppy. He kept calling the ears his "puppy hat." Let the squeeing commence.

 

The act of trick-or-treating was somewhat complicated this year, as Luke and I were out of town that Saturday for my cousin's wedding reception, but one of the news websites said our area would be celebrating on Sunday night as it should be, so we thought we were safe, only after coming back on Sunday afternoon to carve pumpkins and deposit eight dollars' worth of chocolate bars into a bowl near the front door and after getting the children good and excited about visiting numerous strangers' houses for candy, we learned that the news website Luke had found was actually from last year, and that all local festivities had taken place the day before, while we were in Chicago. So we scrambled through dinner, threw the costumes on the kids, and drove twenty minutes to a neighboring town to fulfill their toddler fantasies. Ah, parenthood.

How number three came to be

I guess I can archive these past few years of drama regarding to three or not to three in my Waste of Time file, huh?

Thank you all so much for the congratulations and well wishes on this pregnancy. It's been a surreal few weeks around here, that's for sure.

For those interested, a timeline:

October 10
Let me preface this by saying the entire fall season has been a blur of activity for my young little family. Weddings, bachelorette parties, middle-of-the-night births, work trips, guy weekends - all of them took place one after the other, at least two and a half hours away from home. I worked one Friday in September and was out of the office six days in October (mixture of work and personal). We have certainly enjoyed celebrating these happy events and good times with our loved ones, but all that travel produced a constant undercurrent of fatigue among the adults in our house. Which does not exactly lay the groundwork for, ahem, proper romantic relations.

This particular weekend began with my returning from a corporate-related field visit to Clarksburg, West Virginia, at 10:30 p.m. that Friday, resulting from a 15-minute delay of my initial flight that caused me to miss my connecting flight, and of course the next couple of flights back home were either full or became full after passengers other than myself were rescued from Airport Hell via standby lottery. I missed Kara and Nathan's bedtime when I should have been home for their mid-afternoon snack. It was a long day.

The following morning, Luke and his brother drove to Sandusky, Ohio, to hang out at Cedar Point Amusement Park until Sunday afternoon. I had a wonderful time playing with my kids, but hot damn, I missed mah husband.

So that night, after the children were asleep and the dishes were washed and Facebook appropriately monitored, Luke and I cracked open a bottle of wine we had purchased more than two months ago and settled in for a quiet, relaxing evening. An evening that just so happened to end with me asking, "You do know what could have just happened, right?"

Luke nodded, shrugging his shoulders. Obviously the wine had lowered his inhibitions. (Not that I was complaining.)

Quickly I did the math regarding my September visit from Aunt Flo and measured it against the average length of my cycles (32-34 days), and as we turned out the lights I confidently summarized, "Well, my last cycle was before Gina's wedding, so it should be here any day now. I'm sure we're probably safe."

Only the longer I thought about it, the less confident I felt. Since Luke and I have consisently used protection since Nathan was born, I don't make a conscious effort to track my cycles; i.e., there were no helpful Xs on the calendar for me to verify this now-critical piece of information. Then I remembered that, in fact, I had NOT gotten my period before the wedding, but after, vividly recalling my thankfulness to Flo on the morning of September 19 for staying away from my two-hundred-plus-dollar bridesmaid dress. 

I eventually changed my stance and told Luke, who could barely keep his eyes in his sockets by this point, "If we had been TRYING to have a baby, we couldn't have picked a better time."

Obviously, that was not the case with Luke's urology consult (November 3) (which has since been cancelled) (of course).

Meanwhile, the opening scene from Look Who's Talking was being re-enacted in my uterus.

October 11 - October 20
For almost two weeks we were stuck in The Land of Not Knowing, hashing out next steps if it turned out I was pregnant, and me preparing myself for the news that I wasn't, because I so, so wanted another baby and I knew this was my only chance to realize this dream. We have been so cautious for so long that it was a miracle this random fluke even happened at all. We were not trying, and would not be trying. It was now or never.

I looked for cosmic signs that another pregnancy was meant to be, like our recent financial overhaul and the last-minute decision not to sell our carseat. The brand-new, twice-used Ergo carrier sitting in Nathan's closet begging to hold a child who wouldn't scream and flail about angrily because "I wanna walk, Mommy." Also, our track record for accidentally conceiving children.

Then again, we were living a wonderful life with the family we had right now, and it was so much easier for us to get around, and I didn't miss night feedings or nursing anxiety or c-section recovery or taking almost a year to resume my pre-pregnancy weight. We had exciting plans for the future. Financial security was in sight. I was going to visit another continent, even, to help Molly get her precious baby next year. And one day, we would be foster parents, and possibly even obtain our third child that way. Another baby would be like taking two steps back, right? Life is good, I told myself. I will be okay.

October 21
That week I confided in several people about my maybe baby, with varied responses. That Thursday afternoon, I finally told my coworkers, and because a number of us have been experiencing random bouts of baby fever since the summer, they were super-excited; to the point that they eventually convinced me to run to the pharmacy and take a First Response during lunch.

I only took it because I was sure it would be negative. Even if I were pregnant, it was too soon to tell. Wasn't it?

"I'm not even late yet," I warned them as I headed to the bathroom. "It's only Day 32."

On a related note, did you know that a home pregnancy test can now be accurate as early as six days before your missed period? When Nathan was conceived, they were only at five. Slowpokes!

Two minutes later, I was running downstairs with two pink lines and one shaky left hand.

They were all so surprised I didn't call Luke the minute I got the positive, but I knew the news had to be shared in person. So I left work a few minutes early and cornered Luke in the kitchen once I was home. He was at the sink, washing dishes.

"I told the girls at work today about maybe being pregnant," I said, hand in purse searching for my precious evidence. "They were so happy, they wanted me to take a test."

"Did you tell them it was too early?" he asked, his own hands submersed in dishwater.

"That's what I said, but they told me that now you can get a positive reading from a drugstore test six days before you miss your period!"

"Yeah? So do you want to--" He stopped short after turning around, slowly taking in the white stick held snugly between my fingers. His eyes grew wide.

"Oooh."

-------

Baby number three was definitely not part of our current life plan. Many adjustments will have to be made. Like, no more Africa next year (which I am so, so sad about, but Molly has been great), and a major vehicle upgrade, and money for prenatal visits and hospital bills and maternity leave. I will have to prepare myself to once again dance with nursing and hopefully, finally, make it my bitch. Plus, navigate all the insecurities that go along with mothering a brand-new person AS WELL AS adjust to being outnumbered by an army of children under the age of four.

And yet, just try to wipe this silly grin off my face. Just try.