Leading up to week 21 of the pregnancy

OK, so I should probably actually use the blogging feature of this website in an appropriate manner. Joey and I are in week 21 of preparing for the new arrival! A brief recap of what’s lead up to the present (this will not include The Deed, thank you very much!):

Late last November/early December, I started feeling vaguely ill for a few days. This was like a persistant, low-level nausea, and started combining with alternating hot and cold flashes which had no rhyme or reason. Honestly, my first thought was “great, early menopause” (I’m 38). Joey was sympathetic but seemed a bit confused at his wife who would start out shivering with cold, the covers pulled up high, and end up kicking all the sheets off, sweating under the fan. So then I notice my period is a couple days late, which is really odd, considering I was on the pill. This gets me to thinking, and the possibility of “baby” pops into my head on December 10th, and at lunch, I mentioned to Joey that “Aunt Flo” is late… his initial response was “let’s take advantage of THAT” at which I had to prod him to consider WHY she might be late. Got a look back sorta like when I make a weird sound around the dogs, and then I think a little lightbulb popped up over his head. So, that afternoon, we swung by a pharmacy and picked up a home pregnancy test. During a commercial break in whatever we were watching on TV that night, I went to pee and took the test. 30 seconds later, it pops up with the word “Pregnant” in the window, so I took it back to the living room and handed it to Joey, who was like “what’s this”? He looked, paused and looked at me asking “are you serious?” “Well, it didn’t come out of the box like that!”

That illuminated conversation resulted in stunned silence for a few monents, and then we both realized that we had just changed our lives. After the initial shock wore off (and before the full reality began to creep in) we both got pretty excited, and Joey kept looking at my belly 🙂

Later that week I had to go to Lafayette for work for a week, and I took another test just to be sure, and it came back positive, too, so at that point we decided it was official enough to tell family. Fast forward to Christmas, and we are in Harrison with the Duttons. Joey picked out a horrendous photo of a baby’s body with Mr. Bean’s head on it, and put it in a frame, to give to his Mom, who had joked that she’ll just have to settle for hanging up a picture of Rusty (Joey’s dog) instead of a grandchild, on her wall of grandchildren. She didn’t quite “get it” when she opened the gift, but Joey’s sister Glenda immediately got excited and asked “is that what I THINK it is??”

At this point in the game, I’ve had only two instances of throwing up, and those were due to the large horsetablet prenatals I’d been taking in the morning. Way too much iron for a mostly empty stomach. Other than that, no morning sickness, just sore boobs. We hadn’t been to see a doctor yet, so were just guessing late August as a due date. January 2nd, we finally got into the OB/GYN (at St. Joseph’s Hospital, south end of downtown, 3 miles from home, where my brother Todd was born). Sure enough, there the little bean was, with flippers… wiggling about, and estimated at 8 weeks 6 days. We were given a due date of August 5th. For me, busy season began the next week, where I was off to Lafayette for a week, then back in Houston, then in England for 2 weeks.

The time in England was horrible, as I went over with a cold I picked up from my Lafayette coworker (trans-atlantic flights with headcolds are torture), and I really didn’t feel like eating much of anything. It wasn’t quite as bad as morning sickness, but what I could even stand to look at was somewhat limited. While there, I lost 9 pounds. Also noticed (TMI alert!) that the coughing I had often resulted in a bit of “leaking” pee every single time. Not cool! That continued for 3.5 weeks.

The second and third visits to the OB/GYN were pee in a cup, take a quicky ultrasound and listen for the heartbeat with a Doppler. Good and strong in the 150 and 160 bpms, and lots of movement. I did take an AFP blood screen in February as an early look at potential genetic defects (being of “Advanced Maternal Age” as the doctors so delicately put it), and everything came back normal, so we declined further testing or genetic counselling, pending results of the “big ultrasound” at week 20.

Which brings us to now.

Joey had only “seen” the baby at that very first doctor’s visit. Since late February, I’ve been feeling the little one moving around, especially late at night, or when I try to bend/fold myself. The first couple weeks of March, too, I’ve “popped” out. When I had the third visit, the baby was about 5″ long. Well, I didn’t expect it to have grown SO much, and I thought the hardness in my (disappearing) waistline was my guts and stomach being pushed up. Nope, that was the top of my uterus, we found out at the “big ultrasound” on March 18th!

More on that in the blog to follow…