He's Real!

And by "real," I mean that I'm not the only one who can feel Little E anymore!

I've been pushing and feeling, trying to assess if he could be felt from the outside for a couple of weeks now, and after being wide awake with him at 3:30AM this morning to lots of strong movement, I was feeling pretty sure others could feel him too.

As J and I settled in this afternoon for the ridiculous amounts of snow the DC/Baltimore area is forecasted to get, I had him press his hand against my stomach and just wait.  The movement wasn't quite as strong as this morning, but I thought there was a chance. At first, J didn't believe me, but he kept waiting, and after awhile, he felt a soft bit of movement, before I even asked if he felt it.  And then, seconds later, there was a BIG movement.

J definitely felt that, and he jumped back in surprise.  While there's been jokes about there being an alien or something in me, we're both definitely feeling that Little E is becoming more and more real...not to mention that the clock is ticking, and we've got to prepare!

We've got a weekend full of house projects planned, with runs to the home improvement store already complete so the 2 feet of snow won't be an issue.  Last weekend we also worked on the house, although what started as an electrical project quickly escalated into a plumbing project, unfortunately.

Our house was built in 1962, and the only way we could afford a house in the incredibly expensive Marlyand suburbs of DC and Baltimore was to buy a fixer-upper...that means we have lots of mustard gold--toilet, tub, lineloum, sink...not to mention the velvet/foil mustard gold wallpaper we used to have in the dining room.  The previous owner was a yellow freak...our house is a pukey color of yellow even.

We've been slowly updating, and while our main bathroom still has lots of mustard gold, we did remove the nasty old wallpaper, moldy folding shower doors, and scary light fixture.  But removing the light fixture also meant we lost the only electrical outlet in the bathroom.  I embraced the rest of the mustard gold fixtures by painting the room a rusty orange and accenting it with orange and gold, which looks pretty darn good for a cheap makeover, if you ask me.  Now, while we were painting and patching the bathroom might have been an ideal time to install an outlet, but J didn't want to do it then.  So for the past two years, we've lived with an extension cord running through the hall from the extra bedroom to the bathroom.

That extra bedroom is going to be the nursery however, and in order to install an outlet in the bathroom, we needed to open up either the wall in the bathroom or the nursery.  Since the bathroom is painted, and we still haven't painted the nursery, that meant we wanted to do an electrical project in the nursery first, before painting.

Makes complete sense, and J has done lots of electrical work already, so it shouldn't have been a problem...until I was walking through the basement and noticed water directly under the spot where J was working on the outlet.

(BTW, I am always the one to find the water leaks in our house...and somehow, J seems to blame me for causing them just because I find them.  Definitely unfair!  It was good that I noticed the 30+ year old A/C had leaked from the basement into the family room (we live in a raised rancher, so half of the first level is a basement and half of the first level is walk out, and the family room and office), or when I discovered the wet floor in the power room spilling over into the office, or when I noticed the wet floor in the mudroom due to a copper pipe springing leak.  I tend to find the leaks, for some reason...and now that I think about it, that's a lot of water leaks for just 3 years in our house!)

So anyway, we realized that sawing through the drywall to gain access to install the electrical outlet had jarred the waste return pipe in the bathroom sink loose.  Nothing major happened--the seal just crumbled it was so old.  It's times like these we wonder why we bought a 50-year-old house...J was not amused.

So, THAT project has escalated.  The outlet is installed, but it took some time to figure out the plumbing solution, which is now project #1 for this weekend.  Once that's taken care of, we can finish prepping the nursery for painting, and that will definitely be progress!

Snowed in weekends are good for house projects!  And when we aren't working, we'll be enjoying the quiet time, eating homemade chicken soup, and continuing to prod my stomach for more evidence that Little E is real. Maybe it's because I don't have to shovel, and my work is flexible enough not to have to worry about the commuting in the weather, but I love the snow, and even after at least 4 good storms with decent (more than decent, with the December storm over 2 feet!) accumulation, I still love the snow!

Happy Belated Blogoversary to Me!

I missed it!  It was 1/24/2009 that I started blogging, but oh well, I'm close!  Happy Belated Blogoversary to me! ;)

This time last year, I was just in my first stim cycle, and believe it or not, just now, I had to go look up my history to find out if it was one of the ones we actually got to try, or if it was canceled.  I knew we got to try once, and the other three were canceled, leading up to our eventual IVF, but I couldn't remember!  If you had asked me what my E2 levels were for that cycle six months ago, I probably could have rattled them off to you.  Now, though, I'd rather tell you that Little E is as big as a papaya this week!

Now that I've refreshed my memory, that cycle was so exciting because it was my first with injects, but it was also so frustrating.  Coming off of failure to respond to Clomid, I was so afraid I wouldn't respond to anything, ever.  And it took a long time to see progress with the FSH--that was over 6 weeks for that cycle, total!  Of course, it ended in BFN, but that wasn't so hard for me to accept at the time...I was just thrilled to have Od.

Speaking of 'versaries, my 30th birthday is coming up next month.  Unsurprisingly, that is no big deal, since I've got Little E on the way; otherwise, I'm sure I would have put all sorts of unnecessary weight on that day as yet another benchmark of failure.  I feel so lucky to be here where I am.  I know so many people TTC with treatment for so much longer than a year, and even though that was definitely too long for me, I know it's short in the IF world.

Bump Progression

I've been a little delayed in posting these, so here's a progression of belly pictures.

 6 Weeks (10.05.2009)

10 Weeks (11.02.2009)...with Lucy (my cat and namesake for my online pseudonym), in the corner, checking out what's going on...

 15 Weeks (12.07.2009)

20 Weeks (01.11.2010)

And here's a frontal view, just so you can see the Hokie t-shirt; it says "Future Hokie, VT" with a down arrow.  J and I are both Virginia Tech grads.

22 Weeks!

Now that I regularly feel movement, and my bump is definitely out there, as I said in the last post, this is all becoming more real...which means we actually need to start preparing!  I know we've still got plenty of weeks, but I feel like any time after 30 weeks, you start running into the final days.  I guess because I know plenty of women go to their EDD or later, but lots also can go weeks earlier.  It's crazy to think you could have a month left, then everything changes and you're bringing home a baby when you thought you had four more weeks to prepare.

I'm not a procrastinator by nature, but I have felt that we've had so much time, and of course, the infertile in me still doesn't count on bringing home a live baby.  I know after two weeks, if anything did happen, there's a 50% chance of survival, so that's definitely another benchmark.

But I think it's time we finally start moving to prepare.  I've been doing a lot of researching using Baby Bargains, which has been a great resource.  Without it, I'm sure I would have been overwhelmed with what car seats, strollers, cribs, etc. are the best for safety and value.  Brand names you thought you knew don't mean much, and price certainly doesn't.  We were in a baby store just browsing, and I heard a man say he'd never heard of Britax, so it couldn't be a good car seat brand.  I thought to myself, then you must not have read Baby Bargains, as they rate it best!  As we were wandering around the store, just in sheer awe of how much stuff there was, we also saw many couples with the same book.

For progress, I've settled on the Giggling Turtles from Baby Gap for the nursery theme.  I got a great sale--I'd been waiting for a coupon code that didn't exclude Baby Gap bedding, but when I finally received one, it wouldn't work online.  I called Customer Service, and they tried to tell me because the coupon excluded "furniture," that included bedding.  I said that sounded like false advertising to me, and I asked to speak with a manager, and they eventually gave me the discount!  Yay!

We also started working on our registry, and that took some time, after going through the Baby Bargains recommendations, but we've also made good progress there.  Our next step is to start working on Little E's room.  It used to be my office, and we've already moved my desk out of there.  I still use the closet as my overflow and out-of-season clothes (we live in a 1962 house, so all our closets are really small), so I need to work on the closet next.  Once I clean out the closet, we'll be all set to paint it, and we'll do a green that matches the Giggling Turtle bedding, but I haven't picked out the exact color yet.  My sister and her boyfriend are coming to help paint, so we've just go to get that scheduled, but then we can knock that out in a weekend.

As for names, we haven't seriously thought about names yet.  We've casually entertained a few, but nothing really strikes us.  We're finding that we've always liked many girl names, but boy names, for whatever reason, seem to be harder!  We need to spend some time browsing through names to make some progress there.

We've had a crazy couple of weeks--I haven't been home any weekend since the first weekend in January, and unfortunately, I wasn't motivated to take down the Christmas tree that weekend, so it's still standing!  I've got a comp day for work today, since I traveled for work all weekend, and that's first on my list to do today, after I catch up on my blogs! ;)

Becoming More Real

In grad school, one of the books we read for a feminist theory class on the representation of female bodies was Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn by Barbara Duden.  Now, I read this book 7 or 8 years ago, but the one message I remember from the book was Duden's argument that it's recent medical technology that has really changed pregnancy: before the technological advances, women might suspect pregnancy due to a cessation of periods, but it wasn't until quickening (movement) that pregnancy was considered confirmed and official.  As an IVF grad, I'll be the first to admit my gratitude and respect for the advances in medical technology.  And I certainly admit that the process has led me to overanalyze and medicalize my body--all topics of discussion in this feminist theory course.

However, even now, so many years later, I can't help but think back to this book, and really, to my background in feminist theory, as I experience this pregnancy.  I'm thankful for all the monitoring, first by the RE, and now, though less, by the midwife.  I'd be happier with more monitoring really.  You want me to come in weekly for u/s?  Okay sure!  I love seeing Little E.  The medical technology that exists today made this pregnancy possible, and I don't take it for granted--every little bit of living confirmation makes me happy.

So, I won't analyze my medicalization or monitoring of my body any further--I succumbed to that willingly when I first started charting my cycles.  But I can't argue with the fact that with quickening, it all becomes more real.

That's right, I've felt movement!  So exciting!  I actually felt the first little bit of movement Christmas Eve, but it was so quick, and it was the first time, so I wasn't sure at all.  Then, over the past two weeks, I've felt little bits now and again, maybe once every 2-3 days.

And then yesterday, Little E was jumping around.  I must have felt him at least 7-8 times throughout the day yesterday, and not just once at a time, but repeated times in an instance.

The repetition really helped me to truly believe that yes, this is indeed Little E moving around in there.  It's felt true to the descriptions I've read, kind of like a goldfish bubbling or swimming around in there.  And I'm loving it.

I no longer need to rely on u/s or dopplers for living confirmation!  That's a huge sigh of relief for me.  I didn't feel this huge level of anxiety today as I went in for my midwife appointment, waiting to hear the h/b.  All is well, she confirmed today, but I already knew that last night.

In other updates, I've gained about 6 pounds so far, gaining less than a pound since my last appointment 12/10.  That was a relief to me, as our home scale broke in the last few weeks, and I was worried all the holiday eating was going to put me over the normal weight gain this past month, but luckily, I'm still good.  Some books say 10 or so pounds is normal by now, but the midwife said I'm doing just fine, and the weight gain will come.  (I had to laugh to myself at that--I haven't been worried about not gaining enough...I never thought that'd be a problem for me...just worried about gaining too much or gaining too quickly.)  She did say that the holidays can do a number on people, but I'm good for now.

She reviewed the anatomy scan results and alpha fetoprotein b/w and NT scan results, and all are normal, so good news there.  Little E is measuring perfectly on track for my EDD of May 31, and there appears to be no risk of abnormalities, as far as they can see.

My urine test did come back with a protein level of plus two.  She said that's a little high, but my blood pressure is and always has been great, and I don't appear to have any other symptoms.  She had me do another urine test at the end of the appointment, and that came back with a protein level of plus one.  If it was still plus two, she was going to have me do the 24-hour urine test, but since it was just one, she said I should wait till my next appointment four weeks from now.

I asked if it could be related to diet, insulin resistance, or diabetes, but she said no--it's related to kidney function.  I also asked if waiting four weeks could be harmful at all, but she said it was fine, considering the low level and absence of other symptoms.  So, I'm not going to worry too much, but I might do a little quick research just to learn more as I don't know much.

I also asked about b/fing and PCOS.  I've read that though rare, women with PCOS can have a more difficult time b/fing.  She said they don't have any good research to support that, so we just have to wait and see.  She explained that pregnancy hormones essentially override my PCOS, and that the b/fing hormone, prolactin, also overrides PCOS, so the more I would nurse, the better it should be. 

I was a little worried about my PCOS, as it seems like my chin hair is RAMPANT, but that might just be because I haven't had a laser hair treatment since before the IVF cycle.  It's annoying, but I'll take it.  My acne is bad too.  So those two s/e combined just made me worry a bit more about b/fing, as I REALLY want the chance to do it, but I just can't know till I know, unfortunately.

Finally, I've been having a lot of abdominal muscle pain.  When I sit or stand still, it's absent, but as soon as I move, twist, or walk, it is like I did hundreds of crunches or strained a muscle.  I figured it's just my uterus growing, and she confirmed that.  I thought RLP was only sporadic (according to the books at least)--and this is constant when I'm moving, though the more I move, the better it gets, but she said it could still be RLP.  It's been bugging me the past three days, so I just move more slowly and avoid going up and down the stairs at work when I can, but it's nothing awful. 

Other than that, and continuing to deal with pretty regular h/a, I'm feeling really good!  And with Little E moving around now, there's more reason to feel great!  He just moved in fact!  I couldn't be happier.  :)

Another Bedding Option...

Here's a third bedding option, in addition to the other two from this post: instead of doing a set, and getting a quilt and a bumper I wouldn't need, I could do a "Very Hungry Caterpillar" theme.  This idea started with the poster prints for the classic book that I saw on Baby Gap, but found cheaper on Amazon.com (only $9.98). 

This could set the tone for the nursery, and then I could just do coordinating solid colored sheets, or if I were feeling really ambitious, I could sew some accessory pieces, like the crib skirt and curtains.  There just happens to be some fabrics available, such as here,   Now, yes, I do have a sewing machine, but I'm just in the beginnings of learning to sew.  I've only, with the help of my mom leading the way the entire time, hemmed one set of curtains, made a set of decorative pillows, and hemmed some table runners.  All of that involved straight seams and some zippers only--nothing fancy.

Of course, having a project like this could give me a reason to learn and build my skills, so that could be good...I haven't done anything since the last sewing session because I haven't really had anything to do, and I haven't started any projects.  This option would make everything unique and it should be cheaper, too.  I also like the fact that it's a classic children's book...

Hmmmm, when I'm feeling ambitious, this sounds like a good idea...

It's a Boy!

We had our anatomy scan on Monday, and everything looks great...and it's a boy! Those pictures, though, were the only pictures we got.  We were pretty sure it was a boy before the tech told us--it was definitely very clear.

However, he wasn't being very cooperative with other pictures. The tech was able to see the limbs and such, and she could take a look at the organs, but it was difficult at times.  I got up, walked around, and came back a couple times, but no luck.  I had also made sure to have a good sugary breakfast--a fruit and yogurt smoothie and a bagel, but all of that didn't help.  He was sleeping and no amount of jiggling or movement would wake him up or convince me to move from his face down position.  So, while we have a very good picture letting us know he's a boy, we don't have any good profile or face pictures.  With all the good news though, I guess I'll take that!

It's finally starting to feel like all this will end with a baby, which is hard to believe.  But that also means, we've got to start doing things to prepare--like paint his room, get a crib, and figure out child care for the fall (as people have already been telling me that the lists are already starting, which is crazy!).  To that end, we're touring one child care center next week, and I've started thinking about the paint color.  We're thinking a bright, fresh green, but in order to finalize that shade, we need to pick out the bedding.

I've got two good options for the bedding right now: one from Baby Gap, called "Giggling Turtles."  This seems to be our favorite right now, though it is a bit pricey, and we know we won't use the bumpers due to the hazards, and the quilt will not go in the crib.  Baby Gap gets an "A" for quality from Baby Bargains (which is my new favorite resource, btw!), so in addition to being my favorite for style, it's my favorite for quality, though it is definitely more expensive, so that's a good reason to look at the second choice, below.

The second choice (which I don't really think is "second" anymore...rather, it's neck-and-neck) also happens to be a water theme, called Calypso, made by Kids Line, from Buy Buy Baby.  Again, we wouldn't use the bumper, and the quilt could be a wall hanging or for floor play.  Kids Line gets a "B" from Baby Bargains, with a warning that the sheets tend to shrink.  So if we did choose this set, we could go with it, but get some higher quality fitted sheets from Gap that won't shrink.  I like that this set brings in more colors, and I especially like that it brings in the reds and oranges, in addition to the greens and blues.

Which one do you like more?  Any suggestions?

It's fun but overwhelming to start to look at this stuff!  It's annoying that all these sets seem to come with bumpers, even though it seems you're not supposed to use them anymore.  The quilts too, can be used as a wall hanging or for floor play, but not for in the crib itself.  It'd be better if they were all available in separates!  I know some stores do have this, but I do like the idea of having an overall theme to tie it all together, and I like these themes best so far.

As for cribs, we already have a desk with a hutch and a short dresser with a hutch, from my old bedroom set that my mom gave to us.  I'm thinking we'll put a pad with a ridge on the dresser to use as a changing table, which means a crib and probably a chair are the only furniture purchases we'll need to make for the room.  We'd like to get a crib in a stain to match, but that's not so easy, as I'm learning that many cribs are not available as floor models for browsing, and it's hard to tell the true stain color online. The furniture we have is an oakish stain, by Bassett, lighter and browner than cherry, but darker than natural or honey--that also doesn't seem to be easy to find.

I haven't even thought about all the other stuff we'll need to research and make decisions on, or starting a registry!  There's a lot of research and comparisons to do for that, for sure!

In the meantime, J. and are just enjoying our week off, being lazy after a whirlwind of holiday activity with our families.  We've been sleeping in, taking naps, and doing generally nothing productive...if you consider online browsing productive, then I've been a bit productive today.;)  Last night, we had a good night with two other couples in the neighborhood--it was a relaxing way to start the new year.  I said it in my last post, but I just can't help being reflective again, that it is amazing what a difference a year makes.  I never felt like it was possible to be here, and now, 2010 seems like it will be our year. :)