"It's a Race!"

Yesterday Josh and I went to see our perinatologist (the high-risk doctor) and it went really well! Almost so well that I think it was a waste of time. It really wasn't, since we want to make sure everything keeps going well, but we basically sat in his office and he told us everything looked good and this was a mild problem as far as he was concerned. We probably won't even see him again if things stay the same! It's too bad though because he was really nice, very knowledgable, and looked and sounded exactly like Mr. Bean!!! I wish he was my cardiologist (who I will see more than once) because he isn't as old and smells better :)

Duh, duh, duh...

If Sam gets caught doing anything wrong, he/she is in trouble now because his/her fingerprints have started forming! Thankfully, Sam’s body is starting to catch up to the head. Now Sam’s head is only about three times the size of his/her body!

According to BabyCenter, the website we’ve been doing our weekly produce-comparison checks, Sam is now the size of a medium shrimp...That just seemed like an odd jump to us. We figure they are trying to let us know the actual length instead of weight at this point, but it just seemed like a step backwards to go from a lime to a shrimp... The pregnancy book we have (My Pregnancy Week-by-Week—I highly recommend it) has usually estimated a bit larger than the website, but for week 13, the book compared the baby’s size to a peach. That sounds like it’s moving in the right general direction! Either way, Sam is about three inches long and weighs about an ounce!

I am still feeling pretty great overall. I’ve started feeling more bloated, which I hope is not what I feel like when my bump starts growing because it’s just not a pleasant feeling, but I went to yoga with my mom last night and I felt wonderful after that! I will definitely be working that into my schedule once I get home :)

Random Fact

While I don't seem to have any new cravings, I do seem to enjoy drinking liquids out of a straw much more than usual...

Prego Pants Are Fantastic!!!

I decided that since I had my mom as support, I would investigate maternity pants. I don't think I technically need them since you can't see anything yet and I haven't actually gained any weight (yes, I'm very proud of that!), but I have heard from people how comfy they are so I thought I'd check it out. We went to Target and first of all, the store was a mess. That aside, they stupidly put the Plus Size section right next to the Maternity section. That causes a lot of confusion and emotional upheaval. Overall I'm doing ok with the whole gaining weight idea, but it still is a lot to deal with at times. While I am going to get bigger, it's for a different reason than just needing bigger pants! We did eventually find super cute pants and some cute new tops so the experience had a positive ending! The pants are SO comfy!

Roller Coaster

Yesterday was a totally out-of-the-blue emotional day as I was traveling from D.C. to Chicago. I have been reading this series of books and the family has a pretty old chocolate lab dog. I just knew that at some point in the series, they would incorporate the dog passing away. Well, that time is coming in the book I’m reading now. After figuring that out, I got all teary any time they mentioned the dog, even if it had nothing to do with him being sick and old! I stopped reading halfway through because I was worried they would have the dog die and I would be stuck on the plane hysterically crying! I just can’t bear to think about ever saying good-bye to Paxton! Thankfully, Josh informed me this morning, that will never happen. Phew! I also found myself getting slightly teary whenever I saw a family traveling together. Weird, huh? Yeah, that’s how this seems to work. I don’t know if I am so excited about us being that cute family one day traveling to see family or go on vacation, or if it just made me miss Josh even though I had seen him an hour before. Who knows? There don’t seem to be rules when it comes to the emotional side of this. Luckily, pregnancy kind of is a cover-all excuse at the moment for things I can’t otherwise explain :) I wonder how long that will last...

Exciting Stuff :)

It has been a VERY busy week! Sam helped my class create Arches National Park in our classroom and then joined us as we toured the thirteen other parks created in classrooms at school. It was a very tiring, but wonderful day!

Wednesday I had my first appointment with my cardiologist, Dr. Schwartz. He is possibly the oldest man alive, but I think that means he is a good cardiologist...He basically wanted to know why I was there after reviewing my records. I took that to be a good thing, although slightly unsettling that HE didn't know why I was there...After listening to my heart and checking out my EKG, he said everything looked and sounded the same. That's good! We are going to do a fetal echocardiogram once I'm about 26 weeks just to double check everything. To back up for those of you that don't know, I have had pulmonary stenosis since I was born. Basically it means that one of my heart valves doesn't open and close quite the way it is supposed to. I've been very lucky and it has never limited me or caused me to be hospitalized. I just need to take antibiotics before any kind of surgery, major or minor. There is no reason to think that anything will be wrong with Sam's heart, my OB just wants to make sure my heart comes out of this pregnancy thing as good as it went in. And, if it doesn't, to have someone around who knows what to do!

Today Sam went on yet another field trip! We had a chance to sneak preview a brand new IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon...in 3D! It was awesome! We also played on the Mall and went to the Portrait Gallery. It was a wonderful end to a fun week, but exhausting!

The best part of the week was telling my class today that I am pregnant!!! They were so cute and SO excited! While they are really looking forward to having a second Fourth Grade baby, they were a bit nervous at first that I would have to leave before the end of the year to have the baby. Once I assured them I was sticking around until June, they were on board! It will be really fun to share this with them (I think!). A couple girls did ask whether they could pat my tummy and I said no for now. It's not big enough for me to feel like there's anything to pat!!! Before we went back to school we all took a celebratory ride on the carousel on the Mall (did anyone else know about this?)! It was SOOO much fun! I haven't been on a carousel in forever and Sam seemed to thoroughly enjoy it!

Ahhh...on to Spring Break :)

With a Lime, Please!

Sam will spend his/her last week of the first trimester about the size of a lime! Sam now weighs about half an ounce and is two inches long from crown to rump. Apparently if I push on my stomach, Sam will squirm in response. We just won't be able to feel it.

In terms of me, I am feeling more pregnant than last week. No sooner had I announced that I wasn't sure the doctor knew what she was seeing because I had felt GREAT all week, than I started feeling not so great. Still nothing horrible. But, my back hurts A LOT and the down side of living in a milder climate is that allergies arrive sooner :( I also miss my energy. Josh informed me (very gently) that in about six months I still won't have any energy. LOL! It will all be worth it!

I got my first box of hand-me-down maternity clothes which was kind of exciting. It's really hard to predict how big I will be getting and in what areas. I did buy my own beginning preggers shirt this weekend! It looks cute now and there is some room around the tummy to last for probably the beginning of the summer. Yay!

Don't Steal a Pregnant Lady's Food!

AHHHH!!!! This morning I was running a little late and I set my cheese toast on the coffee table while I fed the dog and let him out. After we went out, I went downstairs figuring he'd follow me to get a drink of water and when he didn't, I ran back upstairs to see what had caught his attention. He had already devoured both pieces of toast!!! I couldn't believe the little rascal! This caused several problems. #1: I HATE the heels of bread and that was all we had left :( #2: I only had one piece of muenster cheese left, meaning I had to split between the two slices of bread I didn't even like :( What a way to start a Monday! Luckily, this is a pretty good Monday: St. Patrick's Day (it's still exciting even though I won't get my Shamrock Shake until Friday...) and there's exciting stuff going on at school. Josh has already learned the important lesson of not stealing food from his preg0 wife, but apparently he and Pax need to have a little "chat" later ;)

Seriously?!

I didn't think pregnancy brain would get THIS bad so early! Please note the time of this post--that's right: 5:40am EST. Somehow I managed to change the time on the actual clock when I was setting the alarm clock. That means that the alarm actually started going off at 4:30am instead of 5:30am. It wasn't so bad until I started thinking about who I could commiserate to and realized that it was 3:30am in Chicago and flippin' 1:30am in Cali when my alarm started going off! My friends span the whole country and that just made me sad that I'm in the latest time zone and I was up so ridiculously early! ARGH! Well, I hope Sam is ready for a long, but productive day :)

How Big is a Fig?

In my second to last week in the first trimester, Sam is now the size of a fig! Raise your hand if you've ever eaten a fig...right, that's what I thought. At least I'm educating myself on the sizes of different produce :)

Sam is about 1 1/2 inches long and almost fully formed! That is SO hard to believe! I read that Sam is starting to kick and stretch and I just can't wait until I feel that! Our pregnancy book had a great quote in it for this week. It was something like: If you think you feel the baby kicking, you don't. It's either gas, or you are further along than you thought you were! HA HA HA!

We also read that Sam's movements are so effortless, they look like water ballet. That's also a very funny image. So much about pregnancy is funnier than I thought it would be! Some stuff is so gross that you just have to laugh (like the mucus plug--EWWW! No one told me about that--I don't know if I would have signed up if I had known...)!

I'm a Bad Mom Already :(

I had my second doctor's appointment on Wednesday and I already feel like a bad mom! Because of my heart problem of pulmonary stenosis, I need to be followed by a cardiologist and Dr. Hibshman had given me a referral last time. Her nurse asked me this time if I had gone. Oops! Not only had I not gone, but I had forgotten to call for an appointment AND lost the referral sheet! Pregnancy brain strikes again! LOL Needless to say I got a new referral as well as one for a perinatologist and am good to go. I'm seeing the cardiologist the week before Spring Break and the perinatologist at the end of my break. The cardiologist will follow me thru my whole pregnancy as well as afterwards and will most likely be at the hospital when Sam and I are in there. The perinatologist, as best I can understand, is mostly helping to make a game plan since I will be considered high-risk. Better safe than sorry! Other than all of those logistics, I got A LOT of blood drawn and got another good report! I am now on the normal four week schedule for a the next few months :)

Sam's First Field Trip!

Sam and I survived his/her first field trip yesterday, and it was a big one! We took the whole Fourth Grade to Jamestown for the day. 2.5 hours there AND back (on a super-comfy coach bus, thankfully!) and about 4 hours walking around the Settlement. It was a gorgeous day and we had a wonderful time! I didn't feel so hot on the way down. I noticed when we went to Covington a couple of weeks ago that I am more sensitive to the motion of vehicles than I used to be. For instance, reading in the car has never bothered me, but it did then. Yesterday I think it was a combination of a lot of excitement in the early morning and a lot of action on the bus. After a "short" nap I was good to go :)

The "important" people at school now know I'm pregnant which makes life SO much easier! It was so hard going to work each day to be with people who actually spend more time with me during the day than Josh and not be able to talk about it. I am thinking of telling my class right before Spring Break as well as the rest of the faculty. I don't think it will ever get old telling people that we are having a baby!

Double Digits

I am entering my tenth week! Yay! We just found out that Sam is about the size of a kumquat (how many of you had ever seen that written before?)! What a fun reference! I also found out that the reason I referred to Sam as a "she" last week (as so many people pointed out) because the website we are checking weekly switches between using the pronouns "he" and "she" week to week. Week 9 referred to a "she" and this week it refers to a "he." Our baby can now bend it's limbs, has some peach fuzz hair, and is growing fingernails. Sam has also almost successfully completed the embryonic period and is entering the fetal period. Next doctor's appointment on Wednesday and she said she might do another ultrasound! It would be fun to have the most up to date pictures to take with me for Spring Break :)

P.S. This might be too much information, but my uterus has gone from the size of a small pear to the size of a large grapefruit. Yikes!

Finally! A Watch Dog!

I think Paxton definitely has some clue that things are changing. He has NEVER been a lap dog and before we moved to VA, rarely wanted to even sit next to us on the couch. Yesterday afternoon, I flopped down on the couch and he jumped up next to me and laid down with his whole front legs on my lap almost across my belly. He just sat there looking around like, "Yeah. No one is getting in the way of what is happening here!" It was SO cute! It really was like he was protecting Sam already. Works for me :)

Pregnancy Brain

Pregnancy is wonderful--you can blame EVERYTHING on it! For instance, Saturday I headed to Walmart, the library, and the grocery store. Josh told me the title of a book he wanted right before I left and I had already forgotten by the time I got to the library and had to call and check with him again. All week long I kept calling my kids at school by the wrong names...I only have ten kids--shouldn't be that big of a deal...And, I gave the most pathetic spelling test on Friday because I couldn't put any words to use in coherant sentences. The kids just thought it was funny. It kind of was :)

Friday was also the day that the kids found out that their old teacher, Mrs. Stein, had had her baby! It was pretty weird watching them be so excited knowing that in the near future I will get to tell them that I am pregnant too! Must be something about the classroom...;) I'm planning to tell my division director and teaching partner right before Spring Break, but I am tempted to tell my teaching partner sooner since we are taking a super long field trip this Thursday. We are going to Jamestown which is three hours each way. I figure I'm going to need some serious snacks to keep me going...Probably sleep the whole way back on the bus...At least I can be assured that since he's a guy he would never dare ask me if I'm pregnant.

We are still really enjoying this time. We got to tell a few more friends this week and everyone is REALLY excited :)