Today Zoë and I went to the library baby story time for the first time. I was really glad to get out of the house, but I have to say the timing of it could be better. It starts at 10am which is just about the time she gets sleepy after being up for two or three hours. A couple of the other moms there said they also had that problem. She's also still a bit young to fully appreciate it, but the other parents there are nice. I will try and make it a regular outing for the two of us.

Last week's doctor's appointment went as well as could be expected. The needles were a bit traumatic for everyone concerned but since they managed to do them while I was breastfeeding her, I think she forgot about it almost immediately. Joe and I still remain scarred though.
She weighed in at 9lb 9oz and was 23 1/2" long. No wonder she is starting to grow out of some of her sleepers. We also had to start buying the next size up in diapers. She had been wearing the newborn size up until earlier this week but they were definitely getting small on her. Thank goodness the cloth diapers we are using at home don't have such a small size range. The ones that aren't 'one size fits all' mostly go up to about a 15lb limit, so I have a bit of time yet until I have to buy more of those.

That's it for now, so I leave you with week 9 and 10 as well as a bonus close up. (in week 9 the sleeper she is a size 3-6mos which explains why it is so huge on her!)







(thanks to Stephanie for the last one!)

Before I go on to anything else, last night she smiled, on purpose, at me for the first time. She did the same for her Dad this morning. We just can't stop staring at her now, waiting for her to do it again!

Went back to the lactation consultant for a weight check this week. She is growing steadily now. She gained an average of 23gr a day for the week. As of Wednesday she weighs 8lb 6 oz.
What's even more exciting for me is that the last two days we haven't needed the ounce of formula at night to settle her. We are actually trying to get her into a better schedule. Up 'til now, she had been going to sleep somewhere between 2 and 4am, and getting up between 8 and 10am for a feed then knocking off for another couple of hours. This has been a bit tough on us, so these last couple of days I've been trying to get her settled earlier. I find that if I take her into the bedroom and feed her lying down, she goes to sleep faster, so I've been doing that starting at around 11pm. I think it's working. The two nights, she's fallen asleep before 2 am. Not much before, but still. She still sleeps a lot in the mornings, but all her naps seem to have moved up by a couple of hours. And she's a lot less fussy when we try and get her to sleep. I think when we were letting her stay up so late, she was getting over tired and over stimulated so it took a long time to calm her down.

Because of the cooler weather we have been occasionally getting, I am finally able to get her into some of the knitted things she has! She looks exceptionally cute in the hat Mel made for her!



Oh, and I wanted to mention the two very strange encounters I've had recently when we have been out for our walks. The first happened on election day. I was at my voting station staring up at the large flight of stairs I had to go up with the stroller when a very nice elderly woman came up to me and offered to watch her while I went inside to vote. Now, I like to think the best of people, but even I wouldn't leave my child with a total random stranger. Did she really think that I would agree? She seemed mildly miffed when I refused her kind offer.
The other encounter was much more bizarre. Vaguely mortifying and hilarious at the same time. I was walking with the kid around 4pm across College street in the stroller when she started to cry. She had been making some hungry cues right before so I put on the sling and popped her into it to try and get her to start feeding. No matter what I did she kept screaming. She was screaming so frantically that I could see the passersby checking me out to make sure I wasn't murdering her or something. After a little while of this, I realize that an elderly chinese woman (what is it with the elderly women?) was speaking to me. After trying to tell her that I don't speak chinese, she started trying to help me get the baby to feed. I mean, she was right in there trying to push my nipple into the screaming kid's mouth. I was actually too shocked to do anything. This is one side effect of breastfeeding in public that no one warned me about!

Due to a combination of my being late for the Doctor's appointment on Monday and the baby not being in a optimal position for a 3d picture, we did not manage to get a 3d ultrasound done on Monday. We are going to get another appointment for the ultrasound. We are determined to do this!!
We did get the sizing done though. It seems that even though I am still losing a bit of weight (back down to 159lbs where I started!) she is growing well. The technician said she was of average size and weighed about 3lb 4oz. They also told us how she is positioned - head down with her spine against my left side. I'm not sure if she is still positioned like that. She does like to move around a lot.
It did give me a sense of just how big she is in there. I don't know. I've always thought of her as sort of two dimensional, but for some reason, now I can picture the depth of her. It is a bit disconcerting to realize just how large she is now and how large she will become in the next couple of months.

The sugar test came back and I technically don't have gestational diabetes. The doctor is still a bit concerned that one of the three blood samples came back elevated though. So I have to see a dietitian again. It's a bit frustrating because I know what the dietitian will say - eat more vegetables and high fibre starches and cut down on white bread and high in sugar foods. I know this. I just maybe don't follow it very strictly all the time.
I really do think my initial high sugar reading was a result of all the leftovers from my birthday party. I was eating sugary desserts every day for three weeks before that first test. Thank god it's mostly all gone now.
I was also surprised yesterday that my weight went down again. Two weeks ago, I came in at 164lbs (up from 158lbs the month before) and now I'm back down to 161lbs. was that also due to my cutting down on the sugary foods?
And to end on an exciting note, in two weeks we will be getting another ultrasound. I've booked it as a 3-D one so hopefully we'll actually be able to see what she looks like!

I totally didn't talk about the Doctor's appointment on Tuesday! Partially because since I can feel her moving constantly, there was very little angst leading up to it, and because nothing really exciting happened during it. But there were some interesting things to note:

-I will be getting another ultrasound at 32 weeks (10 weeks from now) - hopefully we can get that one as a 3-d one

- the next appointment at 26 weeks will include glucose testing which means I have to drink tons of sugar to make sure I don't have gestational diabetes

-and last but not least, I did not gain any weight since my last monthly appointment! This surprised me to no end since I am definitely starting to show. I guess even though I'm not dieting, the eating plan my dietician has me on is a lot less than what I used to eat say, a year ago. Now that I know I'm not ballooning out of control, I'm being less obsessive about how much I am eating and just eating until I am full. Portion sizes are slowly going out the window. Especially this week!

After a month or so of not really believing I was pregnant, my body seems to have taken over, leaving me in no doubt of what is going on. In the last week or so, my symptoms have really ramped up. The nausea that seemed to go away for a bit has come back, I'm really tired all the time but when I go to sleep, I just can't seem to get comfortable, when I do get to sleep, I wake up way too early, and my moods are all over the place. I've been crying at the drop of a hat lately.
Not to mention the physical changes that my body is going through.

Even though I am only nearing the end of 11 weeks and not really showing, I had to go and buy some maternity jeans at Old Navy last night. My sister says it's because everything is moving around. But I had an appointment with my dietician this morning and it seems that I've gained four and a half pounds. That's about 2lbs more than I expected. I've been kinda beating myself up about this all day even though everyone says I should just relax and that as long as I'm eating well and not too much, it should all work out. But I can't help myself. In a weird way, I feel like I've failed myself or something. My goal is to stay on the lighter side of the weight gain curve, which in the first trimester is 1/2 lb a week and I blew it for the month. I started out almost 40lbs overweight and I don't want to use this as an excuse to balloon even more.

On the plus side, the maternity jeans are wonderful. There is no constriction whatsoever. I keep worrying that they are going to fall off!