Pregnancy Check-in (Jan 11th)

[kh826]

This is our weekly check-in for expectant families!

Congratulations to all who have recently received BFP's! Jump in when you're ready and let us know when you'd like to be added to the roster.

1. General overview (examples--answer what you like: How many weeks? First baby/, second, etc.? Do you know the sex of the baby?

2. Appointment Updates (recent appts? ones coming up?)

3. General symptoms/rants/concerns/exciting things?

Due Date List
amandflo - January 16
cetcar - January 16
kh826 - January 22
daisyflower - January 26
wittyandwaiting - March 28
honigbiene - April 24
crazyaunt84 - May 15
bexincanada - June 1
mahler5 - June 9
Stringy - June 9

Kona - August 14
Esquette - August 16

QOTW: Have you decided on parental names for you/your partner/spouse (Mommy, Mama/Momma, Baba, Daddy, Laddy others.... letting the baby(ies) decide as they get older)? If this is not your first child, how did the parental name game work out with your older kiddos? Was it easier for you and your partner/spouse to decide what you wanted to be called by your LO(s)?

[kh826]

1. 38w3d
Baby No. 2
Team Green!

2. Next OB appointment is this Wednesday.

3. Feeling super pregnant.

I think baby dropped this weekend. I definitely feel like I am carrying lower, and J said last night that she thought baby looked a lot lower.

Swelling has been a big deal since Thurs/Fri of last week. It's definitely worse at the end of the day or when I have been on my feet for a while, but some amount of swelling in both my legs/feet and my hands (and I think in my face too - yuck) seems to be with me all the time now. I no longer wake up in the AM feeling like all swelling went away over night.

I feel like I have to pee urgently almost all the time (and most of the time it turns out I don't when I get to the bathroom). I think it is mostly the baby's position -- snuggling my bladder.

Mild contractions and general cramping seem to come and go. Usually more so in the late afternoon and evening will I feel contractions and cramping. Nothing consistent or strong, but enough to remind me that my body is working on getting ready. I will be curious to see if I am dilated at all at my appointment on Wednesday.

I'm definitely waddling. Yesterday we went to the grocery store (J decided to come - she usually stays home), and I had a hard time keeping up. I had to keep asking her to slow down. I feel like the lower position of the baby is making it hard for me to walk at my normal pace.

That's about it at the moment. I keep waiting for signs of real deal labor, but nothing yet. Last time around I experienced a "bloody show" and lost my mucous plug (sorry, TMI) about 3 days before labor kicked into high gear. So I am waiting to see if/when that happens this time. I know every labor is different, and I am trying really hard to not expect this time to be just like last time, but it is hard to not compare...

QOTW: This was actually a pretty easy decision for us. We both knew that we wanted distinct parental names that we would use from the beginning. We both wanted to be some derivative of "mom" but we wanted our names to be "different enough"... I didn't feel super strongly beyond that. J felt strongly that she wanted to be "Mommy," which I was fine with. After some thought, I landed with "Mama" for myself. I think overtime as our kids get older J will become Mom and I will become Ma. We are both good with that. For a little while William called both J and I Mommy interchangeably, but he has since differentiated and he now always calls J Mommy and calls me Mama. He will correct people now if a stranger in the store refers to me as Mommy "No, this Mama" -- it's pretty cute. He clearly gets it now, which we both feel good about. We won't push our kids if they decide as they get older that a different parental name feels like a better fit (I don't think), but for now this works for us.

Dosey has less of a choice in all this from day 1 since we are already established as Mommy and Mama and that is how we identify with William (and friends and family know that and refer to us that way as well). Of course that isn't to say that he/she will have no voice in the matter down the line, but our current parental names are well established, so it is likely that Dosey will just have to go with that!

[crazyaunt84]

Holy cow, how did it get to be Monday already?

1. 22w1d with my boys

2. We have a repeat a/s and OB appointment on the 21st. Definitely won't have insurance coverage for that, and now looking like we won't have insurance coverage for February. The Marketplace claims they didn't receive the paperwork I faxed on 12/28, so I resent it on Friday. They DID receive it Friday, but said they needed 14 additional days to review it and open our enrollment eligibility. This means that IF they adhere to their own time frame, I may have a few days to enroll by Feb 1, but if anything goes askew, I won't be able to enroll until February and coverage won't take effect until March 1. Seriously, I'd like to punch the Obamacare people in the face. Nothing like politics to make a system completely inefficient.

3. The babies are super active, and I love feeling them move around. C can quite regularly feel baby B when he's active and she got 3 or 4 really good punches from him last night. I have a feeling that baby A has an anterior placenta, and I want to ask about that at our next ultrasound. I suspect it because while I feel movement, it's has been much less frequent and much less intense - almost like someone is poking me through a pillow. Having said that, he's getting much stronger and last night for the first time, I felt a faint kick from the outside. It's reassuring to be able to feel them both and tell who's who.

Still not much in the weight gain department. Up a total of 6.5 lbs, and will continue to bug the doctor about this at our next appointment. I'm definitely growing though and the bump seems gigantic. Symptom wise, my feet haven't been too bad the last week which is a nice reprieve. Sleep is becoming elusive though as I can't get comfortable or stay comfortable so I'm up several times a night.

We didn't get the cribs put together this weekend, but we both worked some crazy long hours. I keep telling myself to calm down - they'll be up before the babies come.

QOTW: We've had this discussion many, many times and finally settled on "Mom and Mom" or whatever variation of those happen to evolve. We had many options on the table and ultimately decided that although C is definitely the more masculine figure in our home, we'd like the boys to fully acknowledge her role as Mom in whatever way that takes shape. As for variations on "mom", the boys will figure it out and we'll go with the flow!

[cetcar]

1. 39 weeks 2 days pregnant with our first. It's a girl.

2. We have an appointment this Thursday. I imagine I'll be checked and we'll also talk about the next steps for if we go past our due date.

3. She's feeling lower, last Thursday she was somewhere between -1 and 0. Occasionally it feels like she's poking something down there and I'll feel an internal pinch. It's strange and not entirely comfortable. Sometimes I feel ready, other times not so much and pretty scared/worried about labor and delivery and afterwards. I cried a couple times over the weekend, CET has been so supportive. Lately I'm having a hard time mentally preparing for the idea of labor. I think I'm coping by making freezer meals and keeping busy. It's more of a distraction...

Periodically I'll feel like the wind was knocked out of me which is new.

Her nursery is coming together. The last prints for the walls came today. We may still order a stroller blanket but may wait until we've named her and have it embroidered.

QOTW: We haven't settled on what we want to be called. We're thinking one of us will be Mommy/Mom and the other Mama but who knows. Once she is here, I think we will naturally fall into a pattern of what we're calling each other.

[kh826]

cetcar - I remember feeling really uneasy and nervous at this point in my last pregnancy (heck to some degree I feel that now b/c I have no idea how/if this time will be different, and that gives me some anxiety). So, please know that what you are feeling is totally typical, and it does not mean you aren't "ready." The mental preparation has always been the hardest part for me. I personally am not a "meditate" kind of person. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about things spiritually or connecting with my emotions. I am a "doer" and a Type A personality through and through. I need reliable action and experience to feel ready and prepared. I also tend to focus on tasks I can control in order to feel ready (packing bags, doing laundry, cleaning, etc.) -- at any rate, my point is that I am right there with you!

Please know that we are all here to support you, and we know that you will do a great job! I was SO pleasantly surprised by my last labor. It was truly nowhere near as bad as I had feared/imagined it to be beforehand. Everyone's experience is different, and there are no guarantees that you will have the labor and delivery experience that you want/have mentally prepared for, BUT there is something to be said for the fact that many thousands of people give birth every day. In all different sorts of settings with vastly varying degrees of medical technology, intervention and support. You can do this! Your body was made for this! And when it is over (and it will be over at some point in the near future - I promise), you will have the most amazing gift at the end and every single second of the process will have been worth it.

So, deep breaths, think positive thoughts, focus on the fact that you CAN and WILL do this, and know that we are here for you every step of the way to provide support and/or listen to you vent, or answer questions, etc.

Keeping you and CET in my thoughts! I can't wait to hear once your baby girl has made her arrival!

[wittyandwaiting]

29 weeks today with a super active baby girl! 

I meet with my midwife tomorrow and also have an appointment at the GD clinic on Friday; I've decided to quite sulking about having GD and just deal with it.

This little lady is becoming so active lately and I'm loving it although I sometimes wish that she wasn't such a night hawk. I'm so amazed that this little lady started with a beta of just 7. 

QOTW: DS already calls me Mom and calls C by her name so at this point the plan is for C to take on some variation of Mama but we'll see what LO decides.

I am so tired, this is pretty much me today:


I'll post an update after my midwife appointment tomorrow.

[esquette]

1. General overview: 8 weeks 6 days pregnant with our first little nugget!

2. Appointment Updates (recent appts? ones coming up?). I actually have another appointment on Friday! It's my real "intake" appointment at the OB. We'll do the long nurse-chat thing, with health histories, etc. (I have the donor profile all printed out to just hand to them, so they can stick it in the chart, if they want.) I think we even get another ultrasound, to make sure the nugget grew in the intervening 11 days. Sweet deal.

3. General symptoms/rants/concerns/exciting things? Feeling crappy. Still no vomiting, just... aggressively mediocre. I can't wait to tell some more people at work, so that they get why I'm such a tragic lump compared to my usually effervescent self. I am known for my boundless energy, and all I want to do these days is nap. Which is apparently frowned on while working?

It's also killing me not to tell my mother. She's gonna go bananas, so we have to be in safe territory, but still. Tonight she was like "Well, when are you going skiing?" and "How's the exercising going?" And I wanted to say "Well, I had to sit on a giant stack of dog treats in Costco yesterday, because I felt so terrible from walking for 20 minutes that I thought I might die. So, not so much with the running." 3 more weeks.

QOTW: I'm mama! That's what the cats "call" me. Also probably mom/mommy. Sweetie still needs a name. None have fit, and it distresses her. She's been thinking "dad," but just as female nouns are wrong for her, so two are the male ones. And we haven't loved any of the standard gender-neutral options. Sigh. We have 7 months to figure it out, I guess.

[kona]

9 weeks 2 days with baby #2.

We are going to an open house tonight at the midwife that we are considering. M and I agreed to make a decision after the event. I'm getting nervous now that the midwife won't be the right thing either. Why is it so hard to find a place that doesn't treat a pregnancy as a medical condition? I realize that there are real complications that can occur. Maybe I am just looking for something that doesn't exist, or at least not in our area.

I told my sister that M was pregnant...through txt. It was kind of an off handed comment. She was asking about a vacation that we had planned and I just told her that we weren't planning on going anymore because M was pregnant. I kinda got the reaction that I feared. Oh well. We are going to wait till at least the end of the month to tell the rest of the family.

QOTW:
I am mommmy and M is mama. Though O can't really say mommy right now so I am mom and M is mama. We felt pressure to 'pick names' because the family didn't know how to refer to us. Lame, but M kinda fell into mama early on in the pregnancy and mommy seemed to work for me. O definitely knows the difference and will ask for us by name depending on who she wants.

[cetcar]

kh826, Thank you for all your support, advice, and sharing how you felt/feel. It's really nice to hear I'm not the only one. I think I've been keeping busy and ignoring the mental preparation part. But seriously, your message meant a lot, it made me teary.

[cetcar]

I feel like it's been a while, maybe 2 months? since we last did it. Any interest in doing HDBD tomorrow?

[crazyaunt84]

Jan 12, 2016 11:16:10 GMT -5 cetcar said:

I feel like it's been a while, maybe 2 months? since we last did it. Any interest in doing HDBD tomorrow?

Count me in!

[kh826]

Jan 12, 2016 15:24:38 GMT -5 crazyaunt84 said:

Jan 12, 2016 11:16:10 GMT -5 cetcar said:

I feel like it's been a while, maybe 2 months? since we last did it. Any interest in doing HDBD tomorrow?

Count me in!

Same here!

[bexincanada]

Excited that there will soon be a couple more little ones here!

1. 20 weeks today.

2. We had our anatomy scan today and it's a .............. girl! That part was pretty anti-climactic as we didn't have a preference. It will at least narrow down the name search. It was amazing to see how much the little bug has grown!

3. Overall good. We've had a whirlwind of a week. We got quotes back to finish the basement (it was partially done when we moved in) and the contractor we went with had another project get delayed so he squeezed us in. We had 36 hours to move a bunch of boxes and things upstairs, pick out laminate and tile, on top of work. It's been pretty chaotic (got flooring samples at 10:30 last night for this morning's install.) I'm now enjoying that I can lie down instead of spending my evening moving heavy boxes and shoveling snow. It smells of sawdust which has me a little concerned. The project is expected to take 2-3 weeks, not healthy to be inhaling all this stuff but we wanted to get it done before baby gets here.

[healz413]

esquette, a growing number of not Mom, not dad folks are using the parent name Baba. I don't know if your sweetie likes that. But she could google it and read about why other dykes/butches/gender queer/trans/etc folks have chosen it.

[kona]

We went to the open house at the midwife group on Tuesday night. I think it's a good choice. We spoke to one midwife for awhile who answered a bunch of questions in a manner which I was pleased. It's still a bit 'mediciney' for me but I don't think my ideal really exists. It's also a larger practice than I anticipated so you really don't know who will be with you when you deliver. I think M liked it too, she still has her reservations though. She wants to decide today so we can move forward with where ever we decide. Fingers crossed that we make the right decision.

[crazyaunt84]

PSA: Big huge giant clearance sale at Motherhood Maternity!! They've got tons of stuff on sale with an additional 40% off at checkout.

I just picked up this dress for our baby shower for about $12!!!

www.motherhood.com/Product.asp?Product_Id=93165579003&MasterCategory_Id=MC3

[mahler5]

We are 19 weeks. I haven't felt the baby move that much. I know I did for sure last week, and there have been a few times since then but not a lot. And sometimes it's just hard to tell. I think I have an anterior placenta like last time. It makes me a little nervous though.

We have our anatomy scan in two weeks and are going out of town next week. I wish they would have scheduled it earlier but I think my doctor was out of town.

I'm still feeling much better. Rarely nauseous and in a better mood.

I do feel like I need to cut back on sugar badly though. I have been eating way too much of it . Before I couldn't eat much anyway, but now I am making up for it and putting on the pounds.

QOTW- we tried me going by "mommy" and L going by "momma" but I would end up calling myself momma sometimes so it got confusing. She will call L "Lala" "momma Lala" and sometimes just "momma". She calls me "momma Sara" "mommy" or "momma". It generally works. I think it didn't help starting out I wanted to be called "momma" but let L have that since she really hated "mommy". So I would call myself "momma" on accident because that would be how I always referred to myself around the dogs etc. I'm sure it will work it's way out. It's cute when she uses our whole names, although it sounds a bit formal at times.