4 and 10 weeks belly

Four weeks and Ten weeks. Pretty self-explanatory

Maternity Clothes

My mom wants a post about the maternity clothes I have so far. I had bought myself a pair of pants and a sweater. I don't wear the pants yet because they are too big, but my normal pants don't button very comfortably any more either. I could go buy a pair of oh-so-fashionable low rise jeans like many pregnant women wear, since they go below the baby bump, but every time you sit down your butt sticks out of the pants. So they are out for me. What I'm currently doing is doubling a thick rubber band through the loop and hooking it on the button. Then I zip the zipper about halfway.

The thing is, I need extra long shirts to modestly cover the half unzipped pants. I have a few, but not enough for all week. So last weekend I was planning to go buy some longer shirts. But, Friday night I got home and found a package from my Aunt Nancy! As a "Congratulations on the Baby" gift, she sent me two pretty maternity shirts and a rockin' tote she had made for me in Niger. What an answer to prayer! Now I have five shirts that are appropriate for work that also cover the zipper and I have room for my belly to grow. I will shop the second hand baby stores for used maternity wear now. I found a really nice shirt for 5 dollars that was about 40 brand new!

This is one of the shirts from Aunt Nancy. It's a brown and white pattern with smocking on top and a tie in the back. Sorry the pictures on some of these aren't great...the lighting in my bedroom is bad for pictures.

This is the teal one

This is the sweater I got from Motherhood Maternity

This is Nathan modeling the sweater! Hahahahah! He didn't know I was going to put it up here. You can't really tell from the picture but he had a 9 month pillow belly and was waddling with his hands on the small of his back. It was hilarious!

Then there's me wearing the teal shirt (that's the real color) and the shirt with the sweater unbutttoned. These are from Sunday morning before church. It was my week to sing to I was trying to dress up. I ended up not wearing the sweater though because it was warm.

That's it! I will try to put up pictures when I get new stuff.

10 weeks 2 days

According to babycenter.com, this week: He's the size of a shrimp-- a little over an inch or so long, crown to bottom — and weighs less than a quarter of an ounce, your baby has now completed the most critical portion of his development. This is the beginning of the so-called fetal period, a time when the tissues and organs in his body rapidly grow and mature.He's swallowing fluid and kicking up a storm. Vital organs — including his kidneys, intestines, brain, and liver (now making red blood cells in place of the disappearing yolk sac) — are in place and starting to function, though they'll continue to develop throughout your pregnancy.If you could take a peek inside your womb, you'd spot minute details, like tiny nails forming on fingers and toes (no more webbing) and peach-fuzz hair beginning to grow on tender skin.In other developments: Your baby's limbs can bend now. His hands are flexed at the wrist and meet over his heart, and his feet may be long enough to meet in front of his body. The outline of his spine is clearly visible through translucent skin, and spinal nerves are beginning to stretch out from his spinal cord. Your baby's forehead temporarily bulges with his developing brain and sits very high on his head, which measures half the length of his body. From crown to rump, he's about 1 1/4 inches long. In the coming weeks, your baby will again double in size — to nearly 3 inches.

I also read in another book that the brain is developing 250,000 neurons PER MINUTE now, isn't that crazy!!!

Usually I get my weekly photos on i-am-pregnant.com but I didn't like the one for week ten so I used google images to find it. What came up on my screen were heartbreaking, graphic images of little 10 week old aborted fetuses It’s not like I haven’t seen those kind of pictures before—I have. But they seemed even more heartbreaking to me now because that’s what I’m carrying inside me. The pictures I put up every week are great, but I don’t know if they are pictures of real babies or if they are wax models. These pictures are obviously real babies. I am not going to put them up here because they are very graphic, but you can find them if you really want to see. They have perfectly formed little fingers and itty bitty toes. Their heads and torsos are still a little out of proportion, but they still look like teeny humans. It makes me cry to see them, murdered because their someone didn’t want to be inconvenienced. I distinctly remember when my dad told me about abortion, and how it was done. We were driving along the road and it was just us. I was either 10 or 11, the year we were in the States and I went to public school, and I was asking him because girls at school were talking about getting them. When he told me what they did it made me so sick I almost had to throw up on the side of the road. Then when I was older I saw this picture somewhere.


This doctor was doing a spinal surgery on this 21 or 22 week old fetus. Legally, he could’ve aborted it, but he chose to heal instead of kill. I don’t mean this post to be morose, but seeing these pictures really hit hard. May God give my baby health and enough time in my uterus to grow and be healthy. And may Obama not pass the health bill, or at least not the part about abortions.

Hormones, anyone?

Wow. I was irritable last night. I haven’t been that irritable since I was on the Depo-Provera shot, which is why I know that it’s hormones and not me. (If you or anyone you love is thinking about getting the Depo shot, talk to me first and I’ll tell you why in the name of all the is Holy you should NOT) I’m talking about the kind of irritable that puts you so on edge you feel like the irritation is crawling under your skin and trying to come out your fingertips. Literally. It started when I went to bed around 10. Nathan was already asleep, since he’s been working nights and sleeping days. He was sleeping in the middle of our King size bed. I asked him a few nights ago to please sleep on his side of the bed instead of the middle, because I need to sleep with a body pillow to be comfortable right now and there wasn’t room for the 3 of us all on my side of the bed. Well last night I was trying to sleep wrapped around the body pillow with Nathan right up against me and I was irritated. Now the reason I know this wasn’t me is because I typically love to have him sleep next to me. But all I wanted was space. I think part of the problem was that I was feeling sick to my stomach and every time he touched me I felt like throwing up. Then I started getting claustrophobic, there between him and my pillow, so I give up some comfort and kick the pillow to the floor. Finally , a little space. I drift off to sleep. Next thing I know, Nathan’s phone is blaring out some rock song on the nightstand RIGHT NEXT TO MY HEAD!!! In a daze I hit at it, thinking it’s my alarm. It falls to the floor and stops ringing. I doze back off. Then it starts trilling notes to signal a voicemail. I think I said a dirty word in my head. I pick up the phone and listen to the voicemail. It’s one of Nathan’s supervisors, so I tell Nathan to call him. I fall back to sleep. A couple minutes later the phone rings. Now he’s talking and I can’t sleep. I want to claw him. He hangs up, and I go back to sleep. The phone rings again, same routine. At this point I have a horrible mean nasty thought: “I wish my husband would have to go to work tonight so I can have the bed to myself.” Almost no sooner do I think that than he tells me he has to get up and go to work. He puts his arm around me to cuddle for a minute (another thing I usually love) and I find it all I can do to reciprocate with my hand on his side. Every time he moves the bed moves and my stomach revolts. The irritation is trying to bust out my fingertips. I want to scream, “Don’t touch me! Just leave so I can sleep!”

“Wow,” I hear you saying, “What a little twirp she is!” Yes, I’m not proud of the way I felt about things last night. BUT, here’s the good part. I realized that my poor husband wasn’t actually doing anything wrong except for breathing. I realize that pregnancy can make you very irritable at times. And so, with the rational part of my brain still working a little, I held my tongue. I did not snap at Nathan. I was not mean or irritable to my sleeping husband. The only thing I said to him was that his supervisors owed me for half an hour of missed sleep and three wake ups. I told him I loved him. I gave him a kiss and a hug. I thanked God for self-control, and fell asleep. At this point I can’t always control if I feel sick or irritated. But I can control how I react to those feelings. I’ll blame the crying over stupid commercials on tv on pregnancy. That won’t hurt anyone’s feelings. I’ll blame my forgetfulness on Pregnancy Brain—I really can’t control much of that one. But if I snap at my honey because I’m irritated, or I hurt his feelings then that one’s on me. I’m sure that I may not always catch it before it spews out of my mouth, but with God’s help I’ll do my best. I really don’t want to be one of those pregnant shrew ladies like we saw at the maternity store last weekend.

First Baby purchase

My mom told me a while ago that when she was pregnant with me, and feeling sick and tired, a friend bought her some bibs. She said they helped remind her what is was all for. I thought I would do the same thing, so when I was at Walmart Friday evening I went looking through the baby gear. Obviously we don't yet know Baby's gender, so I had to get something neutral. I found this adorable little pair of baby booties.

They are sooo incredibly soft. And it really does help. I have them on my nightstand and I look at them and touch them and think about someday putting them on a teeny little baby and it makes me feel better. When I'm tired or sick or sore or getting up to potty in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!!!! I see them and it doesn't seem so bad. I also think that dream I wrote about a few posts down is a gift from God. The dream re-plays in my head and I feel the emotions again and it makes things seems worthwhile.

9 weeks, 1 day

This week our baby is the size of an olive! According to babycenter.com, Your new resident is nearly an inch long — about the size of a grape — and weighs just a fraction of an ounce. She's starting to look more and more human. Her essential body parts are accounted for, though they'll go through plenty of fine-tuning in the coming months. Other changes abound: Your baby's heart finishes dividing into four chambers, and the valves start to form — as do her tiny teeth. The embryonic "tail" is completely gone. Your baby's organs, muscles, and nerves are kicking into gear. The external sex organs are there but won't be distinguishable as male or female for another few weeks. Her eyes are fully formed, but her eyelids are fused shut and won't open until 27 weeks. She has tiny earlobes, and her mouth, nose, and nostrils are more distinct. The placenta is developed enough now to take over most of the critical job of producing hormones. Now that your baby's basic physiology is in place, she's poised for rapid weight gain.

I had a very PB moment yesterday. (PB is pregnancy brain.) I stopped to get gas as I was on E and managed to get the cap open, the pumper in the tank, the 89 button compressed, and was standing there holding to handle to pump gas. It wouldn't pump anything, so I kept releasing and squeezing the handle. Then I realized I had my bank card in my other hand, and hadn't paid for the gas. DUH! Hahaha. I had to laugh at myself.

This morning Nathan and I were about to head out the door for church, all I had to do was fill up my water bottle. I turned on the cold water tap and got sprayed all across the stomach and chest. While I was drying my hair Nathan had tied the sprayer handle down so that when the water came on it would spray out instead of come out the tap. He was standing there laughing at me so hard! I tried to get mad at him but it WAS pretty funny. I told him I was going to leave it for the next person, so we blow dried my shirt and went to church. We were sitting in the sanctuary waiting for church to start when his sister texted him, "You a$$". We were both cracking up, and about five minutes later she texted him and said, "I just did it again!" She left it on and got Justyn with it too. Too funny. So we got home from church and, being preggo, I had to potty AGAIN. I sat down and felt something funny, so I jumped up and they had saran wrapped the toilet!! It's a good thing I had to go before Nathan did because he wouldn't have seen it!

Dreams

For the last several weeks, I guess since the pregnancy hormones have been really strong, I have been having dreams several nights a week. And I’m not talking about your normal, run of the mill dreams. I’m talking about dreams in vivid color, perfect clarity, minute detail. These dreams are very similar to the dreams that are a side effect of the antimalarial Mefloquine (which were never bad for me). I don’t mind the dreams. They aren’t frightening, just entertaining, and sometimes they help me make sense of things I’ve been thinking about. Well last night one of my dreams was about my baby.

I dreamed that I’d just had our baby, and it was a boy, and Nathan and I were leaking tears of joy and counting all of the little fingers and toes. I held him against my chest and rocked him, and then my dream cut to the next scene and I was breastfeeding for the very first time. I was holding Baby in the football hold while he suckled and all of a sudden he looked up at me with his beautiful round eyes and the world receded and I felt the most incredible rush of emotions that I’ve never felt before. It’s hard for me to describe but maybe “real” moms will understand, if this is something that you really feel. I felt this intense unconditional love like I’ve never felt before; different from the way I love my husband, and mixed in with that was intense joy and thankfulness, incredible protectiveness, and more unknown emotion that I can’t even put words to so I will call it the “mother emotion”. Maybe you moms can tell me if you felt anything similar when you looked at your babies or held them or bonded with them. I think I might’ve just gotten a taste of what a mother’s love feels like from the mother’s end.

Now the funny part about this dream and all of the dreams is that I can always feel the emotions, and I can feel and see any actions that I’ve felt or seen before, but if the action is something I’ve never experienced, my mind skips over it. For example, I’ve never felt labor, so labor wasn’t in my dream. I was pregnant, and then I had a baby. Too bad it isn’t really that painless! I’ve never breastfed so I don’t know what it feels like, so in my dream the baby was just there. I could see him latched on, and I could feel myself holding him, but I couldn’t feel the feeding. Isn’t is incredible the way your mind works? The dream left me with lots of warm fuzzies.

Here’s the other thought that I’ve been chawing on. I’m sure that this thought is not unique to me; that many pregnant women have had it before, but this is me being truly honest. I’m pretty sure that God made us be pregnant for so long so that we have time to adjust psychologically. When I first found out I was pregnant, I wasn’t thrilled. We hadn’t wanted to have children for several years and while I didn’t pray for a miscarriage, in the back of my mind (where I wouldn’t admit it even to myself because I felt so horrible) I kind of wanted one. Then on October 3rd, the day after our first doctor’s appointment, I started to bleed. And I got scared that I was going to lose my baby. And I realized that I didn’t want to lose it, that I might not have planned for it but that didn’t mean that I didn’t want it. I think that was about 5 weeks. Well the bleeding stopped after 2 weeks and I was glad that I still had the baby, but still not really excited. After all, I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t bond with it. I couldn’t see it. I was sick, and tired, but there was no visible reason for it.

Fast forward to this past Tuesday, when we had our sonogram and got to hear Baby’s heartbeat for the first time. This is the first day that I’ve been truly excited about my baby. I’ve been happy, but not excited. But I tell you, seeing the little kidney bean squirming around down there was the most exciting part of my pregnancy to date. And hearing its heartbeat?! Oh my! I was thrilled. I looked at Nathan with a huge goofy smile. The sickness and tiredness and fainting and scarred face is all for a reason! There’s a little human in there, a part of me and my husband and a reminder of the love we share for each other. It became suddenly real to me. Now I feel the emotion clogging up the back of my throat. Now I feel pregnant. Now I’m excited about it. And I can’t wait until my baby is developed enough so that I can talk to it and sing to it and read to it. I’m eager to feel it poking me and to be able to poke it back. I look forward to the day I’ll hold it in my arms and rock it and sing to it and love it.

I refuse to feel guilty about my first emotions. I think that they are very common, especially in moms who didn’t plan to be pregnant. I think that a majority of women feel these feelings, and are afraid to admit they do because they might be castigated. I think they are fairly normal. I know I have another 8 months of roller coaster emotions to go, but I think that’s part of the point of this long pregnancy. I think God designed it that way for a reason.