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Friday, Mar. 15, 2002 - 6:31 p.m. - Pregnancy Musings
I’m finally working on uploading my pictures from my Virginia trip to Webshots. I’ll post the url once I get it done, and I also hope to write a bit about our trip in my journal for posterity’s sake. I find I’m already forgetting some of the names of places we went to and things we did. It wasn’t even all that long ago…. (sigh) It’s terrible how fast a person forgets things and times you think you will never forget at all. When we went on this trip, we were just gearing up for our IVF. So much has changed since then. It was a wonderful time and I’m so glad we made the trip when we did. Now with a baby due in September, who knows when we would have managed to travel to Virginia. I’m sure we’ll be out that way again since Michael’s brother will be stationed in Maryland next, which means the majority of the family is back east again, but traveling with a little one will be a whole new experience for both of us. One I am looking forward to even though I know it will be much more inconvenient. Each day I listen to my BabyBeat monitor and hear that wonderful “swish, swish, swish” and each day I’m grateful that I’m still pregnant and that my baby is still alive, and yet I still can’t believe I’m pregnant!! My breasts are definitely larger (my husband is getting quite the kick out of that) and my waist feels wider, but I’m not sure if my tummy is any bigger. As I’ve said before, I had a bit of a tummy to begin with, so it’s kind of hard to tell. I guess at 14 weeks I should be getting a bit of a pooch. I’ve been getting some funny sensations in my lower abdomen, but am not sure if they are baby movements or some other bodily sensation and that I’m only noticing it because I want to feel my baby move so very much. I know most 1st time moms don’t feel movement until around the 20th week – that’s still 6 weeks away for me, so maybe it’s just in my head. One time however, I felt the sensation as I heard the baby move with the BabyBeat so now I’m not so sure. Other than that, I’m feeling pretty much the same as I always have. My hunger is not as strong as it was a few weeks ago and neither is my fatigue. I can’t say all my energy has returned either, but I do feel more motivated to get started on the baby room. I still need to decide how exactly I want to decorate. It looks like my MIL is not going to come out and help us paint, but my mom says she wants to help and she is quite good at drawing so perhaps we can still pull of the idea I had. I want to go and check out some idea books for nurseries. Does anyone have any good suggestions on books or places to go for ideas?? Also, I’d like to stencil some words around the top of the room (like “Twinkle, Twinkle” or “Starlight, Starbright, first star I see tonight..”) but I’ve never stenciled before and am a bit nervous about how to space things out so that you end up even in the end. Any tips anyone could give me would be appreciated. Also, any unique baby product sites that you know of or like or recommend would be great too. I know most of the basic sits (Babies R Us, Baby Center, etc), but I’d like to find some with more unique items. I recently also received some emails from people asking about my heparin injections and how I manage to do them and asking if they are hard to do and so forth. Well, let me state here in my journal (for my reference in the future as well) that the heparin injections are really not a big deal after the first few times. I have learned that if I ice the site up a bit before doing the injection it doesn’t sting quite as much and doesn’t seem to bruise as much (though that isn’t always the case). Occasionally I get some really bad bruises and have to avoid that area of my belly for a while until the bruise starts to go away. I’ve found that shots toward the center of my belly (under my belly button) seem to bruise much worse than the sides. Also, be sure not to rub the injection site after giving the injection or you will surely get a huge bruise. The injection itself sometimes stings like a bad bee sting for a few minutes and other times doesn’t hurt at all, though I couldn’t tell you why the discrepancy. For the most part doing the heparin injections is more of an annoyance than a difficulty. Since I ice the spot before hand, do the injection slowly (another tip) and then ice the spot afterwards. The whole process does take a good 10 minutes or so. Oh and I usually don’t bruise as much if I lay down when I do the injection as well. It can be a pain if we go out someplace in the evening during the time I have to do the injection. I don’t particularly enjoy injecting myself in a public bathroom stall, but I’ve done it before. But because I don’t usually ice up before public bathroom injections, I usually end up bruising. But overall, it’s something that I gladly do for a baby and it isn’t as bad as it sounds. I’m not sure where I’ll give myself injections when my belly starts getting big – I think I heard you can do them in your upper thigh too. I’ll have to ask when that time comes. In the meantime, I’m a proud member of the “Bruised Belly Brigade”! I keep forgetting to mention my poll over on the right hand margin of my journal here. Only 11 more days to go before we find out (hopefully) if it is a boy or a girl so don’t forget to cast your vote!!! So far girl is winning by a very small margin (56%).
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