My Favorite (Pregnant) Things

No more cranky-pants for me! I'm making a list of some of my favorite pregnant things. I'm guessing this list will expand and or change the farther along I get. Isn't that a great thought!

So, here goes!

-Apples! The only time I can eat raw apples is when I'm pregnant. (I'm allergic to them all other times) Crazy, right? Well, I'm totally taking advantage of this nice little change by having an apple or three every day! So yummy, so juicy, so wonderful! (All you people without allergies have no idea how good you have it!)

-Ice cream. I enjoy ice cream all year, but when I'm pregnant I REALLY enjoy ice cream. To be more specific, I enjoy Culver's frozen custard with Twix, Snickers, caramel cashew, Turtle, etc. pretty much anything with caramel and nuts with a little bit of chocolate is so good! Along with their custard I like...

-Crinkle cut fries. There is just something about those bumpy ridges on the golden fried potato goodness. Yumm.

-Mexican foods. This pregnancy seems to be craving Chipotle's steak burrito or bowl. Load it with brown rice, black beans, lots of tomato salsa, a touch of sour cream and top it with cheese. Oh, so good!

-Pasta. I have no idea where this one came from. Various noodles with sauce, tomatoes and basil, butter and salt 'n pepper, sautéed veggies... I could go on and on.

I think that's most of the current list. I still wouldn't call any of these "cravings," just things I really like right now. I intend to enjoy all of these things and many more during these next 8ish months!

Miracles are wonderful things!

Rest and Relaxing

After Thursday's upsetting events, I woke up Friday morning and felt better. The bleeding had calmed down to light spotting and the cramping backed off from painful to just mild cramps. 

I decided to go into work and explain that I needed to take it easy. My boss was wonderfully accommodating to my request. I managed to only lift a couple of kiddos and sit a lot while watching my kiddos. 

I'm happy to report that the spotting has stopped altogether. I'm still mildly crampy, but its no longer uncomfortable. I'm totally okay with cramps. That tells me something is going on inside me and that is exactly what we want!

Shawn works all weekend and I amazingly have no plans for today. I told my girls that we can have a day of movies and books and hanging out. Hopefully, with a very light weekend I will be back to normal pregnant instead of cautious pregnant.

Grow, little miracles!

A Bump in the Road

Today was an insanely emotional day for me. I tend to be an early riser, so I decided to kick off my day with some prenatal yoga. This was a great way to start my day.

I went to work and went through the day with my munchkins. They presented their usual challenges, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle.

Then, my day changed drastically. On my break I decided to go see my 2 year old. 

On the way to her classroom I noticed something unusual happening. I was feeling rather crampy and then I noticed a feeling of leaking. Hmm. I doubled back to the ladies room only to discover that I had started bleeding. Not spotting, bleeding. Not enough that I would call it like a period, but enough to completely freak me out. 

Since I was at work and didn't have the Clinic's phone number on me, I shot an email to the nurse. A minute later I received a phone call from the nurse. After explaining to her what was going on with me, she said that this may be a normal symptom for this pregnancy.

That being said, Dr D wants me to be on pelvic rest until things calm down. Basically, they want me to limit my lifting to only what I have to (I have a two year old who occasionally needs picking up for random things), limit activity, limit stress as much as possible, and try to put my feet up as much as possible. I'm hoping to avoid bed rest if possible, so I'm try to obey doctors orders.

After a couple of hours of light work, I finally was able to go home and lay down.

I sent B & R a text asking one of them to call me so I can tell them what's going on. Can I say how wonderful they are? Seriously, I've been so upset and crying all afternoon and they both just reassured me that whatever happens everything will be okay. Big sigh, no more tears.

Thankfully, after hanging out on the couch all afternoon and evening the bleeding has pretty much stopped and the cramping has toned down a lot. I did send B & R another text letting them know things have calmed down. 

I'm still trying to decide what to do with work tomorrow. I think I could manage to sit more and I should be able to limit my lifting. 

Tomorrow is a day that I know will be difficult for me anyway. September 20th is my dad's birthday. I miss him daily and his birthday is all around difficult. Nerves and hormones mixed with my dad's birthday could make for an interesting day.

For now, I'm going to be happy that the bleeding and cramps have chilled out, I'll take my nightly medicines, and then go to bed with my heating pad on my leg. I'm going to get up in the morning and listen to how my body is feeling and make decisions at that point. And tonight I'll go to bed praying for a miracle.

"Are You Sitting Down?"

Those are the exact words that I heard from the nurse this morning. Yikes!

Yesterday I had another blood draw to check for my hcg level to be doubling appropriately. "Normal" doubling time is usually every 48-72 hours (basically, an hcg level of 200 should double to 400 every 48-72 hours, etc). Let's look at my history, shall we?

September 1st: two 5 day embryos transferred
September 10th: 1st hcg level is 350
September 13th: 2nd hcg level is 1390

Which brings us to yesterday's draw and my phone call this morning.

The nurse from the Clinic called this morning. She greeted me with "Are you sitting down? You probably should be for this." Holy cow! What's going on in there?

All good news. My beta hcg is at 7,343, which is a doubling rate of 40 hours.

Holy cow! Did I say holy cow? If not, then HOLY COW! That is a wicked high number!

She went on to explain that everything looks good and that she is sending over orders for the ultrasounds to be done in a couple weeks. She did mention that she would bet I'm carrying "at least two" but that she doesn't like to speculate on things like this.

It took me about a half an hour to calm down after that little bit of news. My co-workers were really amused by my reaction and very supportive. I absolutely couldn't do this without their support. (Thanks, SonShine!)

My hubby was amusing when I called him. I told him what the level was and his reaction was a "Well, all right then!" He then repeated the number back to make sure he heard correctly. :-) He's pretty excited, too, and I'm glad he's such a support for me as well.

I chatted with B & R a bit this morning. They are so excited about the news. I teased them that they needed some recovery time after the news from the nurse. :-)  We are going to try for a morning ultrasound so they can be here for it and then fly out that night.

I was asked today how I'm feeling and if I'm feeling like there's "more than one in there." Honestly, I am feeling pretty good. I am still thirsty for really cold water, but its not out of control. The morning sickness I am experiencing is pretty mellow, too. Some days are better than others, but I haven't lost my cookies. Whatever food cravings I was having have gone away, however, food aversions are still in full swing (totally can't do yogurt...). Honestly, food just disinterest me right now. This is pretty typical for me. My last two pregnancies were kind of like that, where I could have cared less about food and just ate because that is what you are supposed to do (and because baby needs it). I'm not cramping, still just "twinges" every once in a while.

Thankfully, I am not super emotional yet. I am waiting for this one to kick in. There is no way I can be on this many meds with a growing pregnancy and not start crying over a dog food commercial (hey, the puppies are so cute and really bring joy to their owners as they play fetch! Don't judge.)

I am feeling fatigued in the evenings, but I think that is pretty normal for most people. I get up at 5am, at work by 7am where I am pretty actively involved with kids until early afternoon when I go home to run errands, clean, make dinner and care for my family. Most people would be tired at 7:30pm, right? So, I can't really blame exhaustion entirely on pregnancy. Maybe a little, but not all.

Anyway, I am good. We have a healthy pregnancy on it's way. In 12 days we will get to see this miracle... or two.  I can't be much happier than I am right now.

Waiting for the Phone

Today was another beta test. Once again, the lab's STAT is taking forever. It's now 6:40 pm, I was drawn about 1:30 pm. News flash: 5 hours is not STAT. 

Sigh. I can wait for tomorrow for the phone call. 

On a positive side, I've had a pretty good day, nausea wise. Just a little bit of queasiness this morning, but nothing bad at all. Totally doable. I didn't even nosh on ritz!

I am noticing that after I get home from work I've got about a two hour burst of energy where I usually start a project (or four!). Today, I did some laundry, cleaned the kitchen and washed dishes, picked veggies from the garden, canned 4 quarts of tomatoes, and made homemade mac n' cheese for dinner. I also finished mixing and canning the yogurt I started yesterday. Like I said, it's a crazy burst of energy.

After this energy burst comes the pop! Then I'm exhausted and fighting to stay awake (Shawn's at work so I'm home alone with the kids. Otherwise I would so be asleep!). Tonight, the pop happened about 6:15. Yawn! 

Anyway, aside from wanting to hear the beta results, I'm doing really well. Nothing to complain about here!

Waiting to hear about a miracle.

Reassurance in Blood

On Friday I had another blood test to check the level of hcg. Long story short, everything is good.

Short story long, I wasn't able to go to the lab until my lunch at 1, so by the time I was actually drawn it was 1:30. The labs were ordered STAT, but as everyone knows, one person's definition of STAT can be very different from another's. This lab considers 4ish hours to be STAT... hmm.

Unfortunately, our clinic is on the east coast, which means a one hour time difference. By the time that the labs came through the clinic was closed. This meant that my IP's and I were not able to get the results on Friday. Or Saturday. Grrr...

I'm a fairly patient person, however, this time the waiting was driving me nuts! I tried to reassure B & R that everything is still okay as I was still experiencing morning sickness and haven't had any "bad" symptoms, but of course we all were waiting to hear the number.

To try to expedite things, I signed up for the online test results from the lab. A few minutes later I received a message from them! I quickly logged in and proceeded to have a heart attack. I looked to the results list and read that my hcg level was in the normal range and at a 10. My heart sank. How could this have happened? I had gone from a 350 to a 10? Nothing had changed that I could tell. What on earth?

I then noticed a note next to the 10 reading "see comments." So, I clicked on the comments. Nothing happened. I clicked again. Nothing. Click, click, click... nothing. AHHHH!!! (Yes, I actually did yell that, much to the amusement and concern of my children.)

In my frustration, I quickly scanned the results page for anything that could help me. I finally found what I was looking for. The date of the test read "February 8, 2013."

Big sigh. These were my previous transfer test results. This is not my current result that I am waiting for.

Once, my heart started beating regularly again, I signed out and tried to relax. Worrying will not help me get the results any sooner.

This morning while I was making breakfast, I received a call from an unknown number in CT. Of course I answered it! It was the nurse from the clinic. She was sent my results and wanted to let me know that my repeat beta was 1390! Holy cow! I think I must have giggled for about 10 minutes in shock! (I wrote down the number while I was still on the phone and my hubby started giggling, too!) I told her that I would like to call B & R and let them know what the results are. She was more than happy to let me do that as she had a million things to do on her Sunday. (Also, she called me at 8am my time and I KNOW B & R would not be awake yet. B & R, you are welcome for the uninterrupted sleep this morning!)

After about 40 minutes of waiting with a big ol' schmucky grin on my face (ask my hubby, he will tell you how giddy I am!) I couldn't take it anymore. I sent them a text saying " Good morning! Call me when you wake up. I have the beta results!" 20 minutes later (see, I knew they weren't awake yet!) I was able to tell them the awesome news. What a way to greet a Sunday morning!

I think we all are breathing a bit easier now that we know things are going the way they are supposed to go. I will have another repeat beta on Tuesday (my boss has already informed me that I will not be able to leave until my lunch at 1) but at least we will not have a weekend to contend with this time. Once we get awesome numbers this time, too, we have to wait another two weeks to have the ultrasound to listen to the heartbeat and find out how many are in there!

I love being the one to share this incredible news with B & R. How cool is it that on Tuesday I was able to give them the "official" news that they were going to be parents? And today I was able to reassure them that everything is going well with their pregnancy. I really enjoy bringing happiness to others and I can't think of a nicer thing to tell someone that they're going to have a baby. How cool is that?

Miracles make me smile!

Opinionated Baby(ies)!

Ever since I first met these two embryos, they have shown me that they have their own opinions and aren't afraid to let me know! (see previous posts if this doesn't make sense.) Apparently, even with pregnancy symptoms they are showing me who's boss! (B & R, take notes!)

 I've written about random symptoms that I started having in the past two weeks, however, in the past 2 days they have been kicked up a couple of notches! (I'm not complaining, just taking note of the experience.) Here's what I'm noticing from these two opinionated embryos:

-Morning Sickness. From the moment I wake up (usually around 5am) until sometime between 9:45-10:15am I have pretty decent queasy stomach. I sip my chai and water and take small bites out of Ritz crackers to keep my stomach "down." If things are really bad, I also nibble on a string cheese, which sometimes helps.

-Food aversions. Sigh. I love to eat. There aren't many foods I don't like... mushrooms, olives, cooked tomatoes to name a few. However, I now have an intense dislike for strawberries. Hopefully, this one will go away! I love berries any way I can get them. I also have noticed that I am having trouble with gooey textures. Summer squash is high on this list, unfortunately. And Greek yogurt is another iffy food. Again, the texture. 

-Food cravings. Lately, I NEED to have kosher dill pickles. This isn't much of a stretch for me as I do LOVE my pickles, however, now I need 8 pickles to make me happy. (I canned 6 quarts of pickles on Tuesday, so hopefully that will help with this particular craving.) Along with the pickles, I seem to be on a trail mix and Air Head kick. Hmm...

                                       My third jar of pickles and second bag of Air Heads.

-Fatigue. Last night I was eating dinner with my kiddos when I noticed just how tired I was. Like, struggling to stay awake kind of tired. After dinner, I put my kids in jammies and they crawled in bed with me to watch Gilligan's Island until their bedtime. After they were in bed, I went back to my room and promptly fell asleep.  Sheesh! It was only 7:30! I was fine when I woke up this morning and have been okay all day so far. We will see how I do tonight with dinner, dance class, and then bedtime. And, tonight is one of the nights my wonderful hubby has to work, so this mom is on her own with the kids for the night.

Thankfully, the cramping has pretty much stopped. I get "twinges" every once in a while, but that helps me know they are there and things are working as they should. Nothing out of the ordinary there!

I think that is all that I am physically experiencing right now. My coworkers are all making guesses on how many babies are inside and can't wait to hear the results in a couple of weeks. So far the guesses range from 1-4, with 2 being the most frequent guess made (B, don't worry, only one person said 4!).

Sometimes miracles come in ways we don't expect. :-)