The only really newsworthy thing that happened this week is that P can now feel the baby move when he’s really going nuts (which is pretty often).  I’ve offered to let other people feel but he seems to find that a convenient time to nap or chill out or whatever he’s doing inside my belly, so the only other person who has experienced his mad ninja skills is my midwifey friend who was trying to listen to him with my fetoscope the other day and instead got a bunch of kicks.

Here’s the last few weeks for comparison…

19 weeks

20 weeks

And here’s my picture from this morning (apparently it’s not as sunny today as it’s been the last few weeks!):

More belly, right?  I had a pretty intense braxton hicks (“practice”) contraction this morning, and for a bit afterward my belly was very, very pointy.  I think it was looking a little less extreme by the time I took this picture.

And because I feel like all my pregnancy pictures thus far have been all dark and kind of sad looking, here’s a totally random, but still sucky picture of what I wore today where you can also see belly (and my new favorite American Apparel skirt).  P promised to help take pictures of the belly and at some point he’s going to need to get on it because these self-timer pictures only go so far.

Yay belly!

The contents of this belly (which I’m really enjoying taking pictures of now that it’s affecting my downward view)…

Are 100% boy.  We all knew it, right?  His name (or at least what we think his name will be) is a secret until we decide it isn’t, but for now he’s Hatch.  Hatch like the New Mexico chilies.  Because there’s nothing like calling your kid a name that has to do with his place of conception to embarrass him later on in life.

I have to admit that I’m a little freaked out by being a mama to a boy.  Growing up with two sisters, I always had it in my head that I’d have girls.  Boys (in my limited experience with them) grow up and never call their moms ever again.  Is it possible to raise a son who is somewhere between total mama’s boy and my dad/husband/every adult male I can think of?

I’ve already had some reassurance from friends who have sons, but if anyone wants to throw out any other success stories (or husbands who speak to their mom’s as adults), I’d love to hear them.

And on a lighter note, I bought some cute fabrics (along with some terry cloth) to make baby things like bibs and burp cloths and maybe a baby shirt I can actually force myself to follow a pattern.

I’m 20 weeks today!  My belly is still pretty forgettable to everyone else, but increasingly obvious to me.  It’s insanely weird to think that there is a person living in me that is currently as large as a banana (at least according to the random fruit to baby comparison iPhone app). We have our second trimester ultrasound tomorrow, which is both scary (making sure that baby has all its parts in the right place), and exciting since we get to (fingers crossed) find out the gender.  I’ll let people know how that turns out sometime over the weekend, since we have it late tomorrow evening and I have to be up at 4am on Thursday.

Laundry has always been one of my more tolerable chores, but I’m absolutely addicted to washing and folding tiny baby clothes.  We visited my secret, super sketchy but packed full of good stuff, thrift store today and came back with a few baby things–the yellow jacket on top (reversible and incredibly soft), and the blue and white striped onesie, for a grand total of $1.50.  The other things in the pile are from my aunt.

While we don’t have our ultrasound for a few more days, I think everyone here is operating under the assumption that this baby is 100% boy.  I told my midwife that at this point, if the ultrasound tech says it’s a girl, I’ll be in denial until the baby is actually born.  But before we find out, I’m going to take a quick moment to lament the lack of cute gender-neutral baby clothes.  Is it possible to make a piece of yellow baby clothing without a duck on it?  As much as I was annoyed at the prospect of acquiring loads of overly gendered clothing (princess attire or outfits with dump trucks all over seem to be popular), I’m really looking forward to being able to buy clothing outside of the yellow duck, green frog category.  Although obviously I’ve already decided that if it’s a girl (not a chance in hell) that she can rock blue and green stripes.

Specifically bread with butter, bagels with cream cheese, pizza, and beans and rice with sour cream were my go-to foods.  I also popped sour candies (and citrus fruit) like there was no tomorrow.  As much as P made fun of me (and the name really is horrible), the Preggie Pop Drops were my favorite.  Strangely, pre-pregnancy many of those things would have made me gag (bagels, really cheesy pizza, sour cream).  There was a point early in my first trimester where I was at the cafeteria at UCSF and had a really intense desire for a bagel with lots of cream cheese, but was also pretty certain (based on my pre-pregnancy reaction) that it would make me throw up.  I ended up going with the craving, and it was the best thing I’d eaten in weeks.  So weird.

My first trimester was not without a few horribly gross, scaring moments.  THIS IS GROSS—Those of you who pay attention to my Facebook know I may never eat a hotdog again after having parts of one lodged in my sinuses for days.  I’ve never been so thankful for sinus rinsing technology. –END GROSS TALK.

As soon as I hit my second trimester things mellowed out in the nausea department, but my weird (for me) food cravings have continued.  For example, I used to be super, crazy particular about sandwiches.  P wouldn’t eat sandwiches anywhere with me that I hadn’t been before because the chances were so high that it would gross me out and I wouldn’t be able to finish my meal (and then I’d be a whiny, hungry lady).  Since getting pregnant I’ve eaten and enjoyed sandwiches from all sorts of previously disgusting sources, including grocery stores and the ultimate bad sandwich–Subway.  P is loving this new development and we’ve been taking advantage of it as much as possible.

Today I bought string cheese and it was delicious.  Delicious!  I don’t think I’ve enjoyed eating string cheese since I was eight.

Luckily, I’m also increasingly craving less carb & cheese heavy foods like eggs, salad (a huge turn-off in my first trimester), and fruit–especially mandarin oranges.

It will be interesting to see how things continue to change.  I’m trying to be mindful about eating healthy, but at the same time I have no problem indulging my extreme cravings (the other day I needed buffalo wings, so buffalo wings it was).

My mom will be happy to see that there is an increasingly legitimate belly since she’s been harassing the rest of our family & friends for weeks, asking if I look pregnant yet.

P and I weren’t supposed to be able to get pregnant.  Some of you figured that out a long time ago, and some people continued to ask us for years and years when we were going to get on that baby-making train already (Hint–Stop asking married people when they are going to have babies.  Infertility is way, way more common than you think.  Plus, asking is annoying and none of your business)..  I won’t go into all the details here, but suffice it to say we have enough issues between us to warrant a group of highly trained medical professionals telling us we couldn’t get pregnant without IVF.  That whole ordeal made 2010 a pretty crappy, sad year, and I was more than happy to see 2010 turn into 2011, get into nursing school, and but the whole baby thing behind us for a good three years (that was the plan–finish nursing school, then figure out how we’d come up with the 30k+ it takes to either adopt or do IVF).

I’m no stranger to weird cycles and all sorts of random crazy stuff going on with my body, but I’ve been charting my cycles since 2008 and in early October I realized that something was up.  My period was nowhere to be seen and I was having frequent meltdowns about needing to have a baby ASAP (like I said, I’d put that way, way on the back-burner).

For anyone who has tried to get pregnant you get in the habit of taking pregnancy tests all the damn time–even months I knew, based on ultrasound and all sorts of other technology, that I’d 100% not ovulated and thus could not in any way be pregnant.  But since January I’d never had the urge.  Not even once.  I was done.  But after series of weird events (randomly starting prenatal vitamins 2 weeks early “because they are a good vitamin,” having weird pregnancy/baby dreams, and feeling pretty confident I knew exactly when I got knocked up) I couldn’t get thoughts of pregnancy out of my mind.  I decided, about 20 minutes before I needed to leave for class, that I should take a test.  Just to be sure I was being insane.  So I find a totally expired pregnancy test in my bathroom and take it.  It was (as we all know) very positive.  Like no waiting 3 minutes–I’m pretty sure the word “pregnant” popped up before I’d even peed on it.

So I figure that the test is expired and that I’ve somehow willed it to be positive.  Either that or I have a tumor that’s secreting baby hormones.  I didn’t have any more tests, and now had about 15 minutes left before I needed to get to class so I remember that ovulation tests can sometimes be used as pregnancy tests if you have enough baby hormone (HCG) in your system.  I find two non-expired tests and take them.  Both positive.  Even when I was trying to get pregnant I never got a positive ovulation test (See above, not being able to get pregnant, problem).  I throw all the tests in a drawer, take this really horrible picture of myself to document the anxiety attack I’m having, and run to class with my housemate (who I’m trying to make small talk with, without letting her know that I’m clearly having a psychotic break and/or have a tumor).

To make what’s becoming a very long story a bit shorter, on my first break from class I confided in a midwifey friend what had gone down that morning and she encouraged me to get myself to student health to take a non-expired test and stop driving myself insane.  One more test, and an appointment at Kaiser the next day for an ultrasound, proved that I was, indeed (5ish weeks) pregnant.  Not crazy.  And no tumor.  Or at least a very baby-shaped tumor.

So that’s the beginning of where we are now.  I’ll continue to try and get everyone up to date as I have time!

January

I spent January interviewing for nursing schools.  A totally crazy, stressful month, but I did get a Portland trip out of it (and got to meet up with some friends for a post-interview drink). Though honestly, after the hell that was 2010, interviews didn’t seem half bad.

February

According to my flickr account, all I did in February is garden and hike.  So hiking it is (this picture is in Folsom).

March

I found out that I got into nursing school at UCSF (and a few other places, but decided on San Francisco).  I’m still not really sure how that happened!

April

At the end of April we went on an amazing camping trip with friends to Indians (near the central coast).  It’s a beautiful area that I would love to go back to sometime soon.  Maybe next year?

May

May was totally insane.  In preparation for our move to the bay area, and renting our house, May was the month of home renovations.   Looking through pictures of my house makes me miss it a whole, whole lot.  Then I had my 28th birthday, we ran a half marathon, our friends got married, and we moved (all within a week)!  This warrants more than one picture…

June

I started my nursing program in June, but before it started my mom came to visit and we spent a week doing super touristy (surprisingly fun) things that I never did when I lived in SF after college (Fisherman’s Warf, Alcatraz, etc).

July

July was insanely busy with school, but we did manage a trip up to Redding to enjoy the summer heat (and some drinking & pool at Red Rock).

August

In August Paul and I went to Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco.  While I’d heard bad things about it, we couldn’t resist several of our favorite bands playing two blocks from our house (Ana Tijoux, Black Keys, Girl Talk, etc).  And I have to say, I didn’t regret going at all.  Girl Talk was probably my favorite show I’ve seen in years and years.

September

September was awesome.  I had the majority of the month off so my sister and I took off on the road trip that I talked about in my last (forever ago) post.  Paul met up with us in New Mexico at the end of our trip for some farming and, since his flight home was cancelled due to monsoons, ended up driving home with us.  Later that month we had our 3rd anniversary.

October

October was a strange month.  After a fun Hardly Strictly Bluegrass weekend with the family, I found out that I was pregnant (yes, pregnant).  After years of actually trying and lots of money & meds not working, somehow the stress of nursing school + a little bit of a summer break = baby.  Totally scary, but really awesome.  My mom, sister, and I were scheduled to do a 1/2 marathon and while I wasn’t technically suppose to be doing strenuous exercise at that point, my mom and I walked the whole damn thing.

November

The last week in November (right before I finished my quarter), we went up to my parent’s for Thanksgiving and then moved to our own place in Oakland (having a baby with roommates seemed like a bad idea).  We like to do everything all at once.  I also finished up my first trimester and decided to stop being totally paranoid that something was going to go wrong with the whole pregnancy business (so far so good).

December

I had most of December off from school so I spent it being super lazy (blaming it on my pregnancy tiredness), setting up our new house (pictures to come), and finally going to New Mexico to spend Christmas with Paul’s family. I can’t remember the last time I had a white Christmas, so my sadness about being away from my family was somewhat tempered by my excitement about the snow (tons of it!).

No promises, but I’m going to try and update more often now that the pregnancy news is public and I’d like to have parts of it documented on here!

Things to do while on summer break from nursing school:

1) Go somewhere warm.  Summer is a joke in SF and I’ll be honest…I think some chemical change happens in me when I heat up.  I’m a much happier, nicer person.  My sister and I went all over the southwest: SLC, southern Utah, northern AZ (Navajo Nation), ABQ.  And then we met P in Southern NM and Arizona.

2) Take silly pictures.  We were all but promised we’d see big horn sheep on a particular hike and when it didn’t happen, this is the result…

3) Make donuts at least twice.  We put chopped apples in ours and rolled them in pumpkin pie spice and sugar.

4) Play on a farm.  P’s cousin has a farm in NM and we spent a day helping (or we’d like to think we were helpful) getting ready for market the next day and playing with the farm animals (Amish horses, goats, chickens, and cute farm dogs). And making and eating dinner during a crazy summer monsoon.

5) Visit friends and family.  I just got back from a whirlwind of visiting my family (and Hazel) and seeing a friend in Sacramento who I miss a whole lot living in SF.  A relaxing end to break.