Very exciting. On Sunday, Joe felt the baby move for the first time! I've been feeling her moving around in there for the last few weeks, but I guess up until the weekend, the movements had been too small and subtle. I was really looking forward to the day when Joe could feel it as well, because even though all the books say that the small movements are something special between the mom and the baby, I wanted Joe to share in all that as well.
This whole thing has been about the three of us from the beginning. In fact, most days, I think Joe is way more excited about this whole baby thing than I am. He's been so involved in the pregnancy (ok, maybe not so much with the shopping part of it) that it just seemed so unfair that
I could feel the movement so much earlier than he could.
But Sunday night she was in fine form! For a couple of minutes there, she was just dancing away and Joe had no problems distinguishing her movements from the random gurglings of my stomach.

Feeling the need to immerse myself in baby stuff, I took a trip out to Roncesvalles to go to Macklem's yesterday morning.
Even though we are getting a lot of things from our incredibly generous friends and relatives (we have been offered a bassinet, a baby bjorn, and multiple strollers in addition to the crib, bouncy chair and diaper genie that are already in our possession) and don't need a lot of the big ticket stuff, I wanted to go and see what was out there.
It was great walking around there and having an upclose look at all the different car seats, cribs, strollers, and all the other things that a new mother apparently can't do without. It was also nice talking to the sales people about the benefits of the various brands and styles. Much better than at Babies R Us where, if you can find a salesperson, they barely know the stock. The store was pretty expensive, and I don't know if I would buy anything from there, but I won't hesitate to use their knowledge.
I checked out the stroller that my friend Mel just bought and suffered some serious envy. I had to agree with my friend Stef though when she pointed out that while that particular stroller was really good for 2 kids, since we only plan on having one, it might not be the best choice for us.
But now, I am obsessed with strollers. Even though we have been offered three strollers from various people, and we will most likely not be getting a new one, every time I see a stroller on the street I stare at it fixedly, trying to see how well it maneuvers and how comfortable the kid seems.
I would probably be doing this with car seats as well, but it's a bit more difficult to check those out without looking like a total psycho.

This will come back to bite me in the ass

Well, I'm just about at the halfway mark of the pregnancy and I have to say, so far, I am getting off really lightly. The worst I've had is some back pain and trouble sleeping which kinda leads to some exhaustion. Everyone keeps asking me how I am and I feel like I'm disappointing them when I say that I feel great. And I do! I wouldn't say I've never felt better (which, from all the stories that I hear, is apparently how all the pregnant women that aren't in pain/constantly nauseous/having massive gastro-intestinal problems/completely wiped out physically feel), I just feel absolutely normal. A little sleepy and constantly distracted, but nothing too far out of the ordinary.
I know that writing this is just asking for trouble and let's face it, the real hard stuff is still to come. I can still tie my shoes, get up from our couch by myself (and if you've ever sat on my couch, you know that that's a challenge at the best of times), eat full meals and take deep breaths, but I know that will change soon. Not to mention, I will be at my hugest at the height of summer. (Bad forward planning on my part. Why couldn't I be like my sister and planned a February baby?)
I guess I just wanted a reminder for when it gets bad that it wasn't always that way. In fact, right now, sitting here writing this and feeling her moving and kicking, it's fucking fantastic.

No question about it. The ultrasound technician was very confident as she said: "It's a baby girl".
Joe is over the moon. We are also over the moon about the fact that everything is developing normally and there are no scary shadows on anything. We saw the heart beating, the spine and the tiny hands and feet. And boy was she active. The doctor asked me if I had anything sweet to eat prior to the ultrasound, she was moving so much. I think it's more that I had just gotten off the streetcar and I'm really noticing that she gets agitated when I'm in a moving vehicle.

It's really crazy feeling her move so much. Sometimes I think it's just my stomach muscles contracting involuntarily, but then I realize that, no, it was probably her kicking me.

Oh, and yes, we have a name, and no, we're not telling you.

Ultrasound today! I'm less worried this time because I can feel the little bugger moving around quite a bit.
It is a bit nervewracking still, because this is the ultrasound where they check out all the organs and make sure everything is developing correctly. I've been hearing stories from people about shadows on ultrasounds that turn out to be nothing and others that turn out to mean lots of surgery for the little one after birth. I'm trying to not obsess about it too much though. Instead I've been concentrating on the fact that hopefully we will be able to find out the sex of the baby today. I've been telling it for days to not be shy and show all. Hopefully I have an obedient child. If not, this will be the first of I'm sure many times that it won't listen to me.

All I do is dream

The wacky dreams have started, but funny enough, they aren't about the baby! For the last couple of nights I've had rather alarming dreams where Joe has mysteriously (or not) vanished.
The dreams are never about our relationship breaking down or anything like that. In fact, it's always pretty clear that we are just as close as ever. The circumstances are more that he becomes distracted and forgets about me, leaving me to fend for myself, or in one of the dreams, I leave the house where he's busy making dinner for me and when I try to get back to the house both the house and Joe are gone.
I suspect that it's my subconcious playing out my fears that once the baby arrives, Joe's attention will be focused on the baby and I will be pushed to the background. We've talked about this and he's assured me that this will not happen, but my abandonment issues run very deep.
I do find it strange that the baby never makes an appearance in my dreams. Joe has been dreaming of it though. From what he tells me, they are rather strange dreams where I give birth to a freakishly intelligent baby that can speak right away.

I'm not sure if what I'm feeling is what I think I'm feeling, but for the last couple of weeks there's been some sort of, well, whooshing feeling where my lower intestines usually are. I'm beginning to suspect that it's the kid moving around in there. And the other night, while Joe and I were talking to the baby, I'm pretty sure I felt a distinct jab. I've tried to recreate the circumstances to feel the jab again, but so far nothing. I"m starting to feel excited about it.

For Jen, the geekiest thing ever.

Just signed up for the prenatal yoga at the Miles Nadal JCC with Baby &Me Fitness. It starts tonight at 6:30. This should be interesting seeing as I haven't done any yoga for years, and when I did, I wasn't exactly regular about it. I was also thinking of doing the aqua fitness class they have going on Tuesdays and Thursdays but decided against it as I don't think I should jump into a heavy exercise regimen when I've been a couch potato for the last couple of years.

I'm feeling very positive about keeping up with this. I'm usually very bad at going to the gym or doing any kind of regular exercise, but I realized that was the case only when it had to be totally self motivated. I could never get it together to go to the gym on a regular basis, even if I was paying for it, but the free swim classes at the community center, no problem. Only missed one week! The difference was that before every swim class, they took attendance. People were expecting me to show up! I can't let them down! They know who I am!
That's why I like these classes, they're not drop in. I've signed up for 7 classes (it's 10 weeks, but there's passover and Victoria Day in there, so no classes for three of the weeks.). If I like it, I'll probably extend it for another 10 weeks which would take me into August.

Lately, I've been pondering that age old question 'cloth vs. disposable'.
I'd like to think that I am ecologically conscious and all that, but let's face it. I'm also incredibly lazy.
There are a lot of minuses in my book for cloth diapers. First, I don't really like the idea of a diaper service. I don't know what kind of chemicals they are using to clean the diapers, but I'm not sure I like it going on my baby's ass. Then there's the leakage problem, I don't think I have to elaborate on that. Then there's the fact that I have a large family that gets together a lot. If I went with cloth, that means carrying stinky diapers all over the place.

On the other hand, disposables... convenient, but-

Whenever I'm faced with a tough decision like this, I like to research the hell out of it. In the course of that, I came across these cloth diapers. I like them because it addresses at least one if not two of my big problems. First off, they are machine washable at home and they don't want you to use bleach. They also say, they don't leak. I'm not sure I would just take their word for it, but it is a two part system with a waterproof outer layer which should prevent some of the leaking.
I did some number crunching. They say that if you want to use the Fuzzi Bunz exclusively you should buy at least 24 of the small and medium sizes each. That totals 960.00, which is a lot of money. After a quick boo at price of disposables at Costco, it seems that they come out to approximately $60.00 a month. If the kid is going to be in diapers until it is at least, say, about 2 years old, that totals out to $1440. Of course that's stretched out over the entire two years while the cloth ones are a huge initial cash outlay. The slightly cheaper, but kinda eww route for the cloth ones is ebay. Believe it or not, people sometimes sell the used ones there!

There is still my issue of carrying around the stinky diapers. I don't mind if I'm out for an hour or two, but if I'm out for dinner or something lasting a few hours, that's just a bit too gross for me. In my mind, the perfect solution would be to do both. Have the cloth ones for days at home and quick visits with people and disposables for longer trips. Does anyone know of someone who pulled this off? I'm afraid that the convenience of plastic will seduce me, and after spending a ton of money* for the cloth ones, I'll never use them.
What do you think? Should I give the cloth ones a whirl, or just revel in my planet killing laziness? I do still have a lot of time to consider it, but it's always good to have a head start.

*of course I'll be spending considerably less than the numbers I was throwing around above since the cloth won't be my only option.

Just got back from the doctor's appointment. Whew.
My blood pressure is still good, and we heard the whoop whoop whoop of the heartbeat, so I am reassured - at least until the ultrasound in 3 weeks.
He also said the screening tests came back beautiful and he didn't think we would need any more tests done. So no Amnio!
The whole thing was a huge weight off of both our minds.

So Joe noticed last night that right before every doctor's appointment I get very tense. I don't know how normal this is, but the fact is, I'm terrified that the doctor will have bad news for us.
There's no real reason for me to think this. Everything seems to be going fine with me, no spotting, no pain, no weird symptoms. Just a huge amount of free floating paranoia.
I'm telling myself that it will go away once I can feel the baby moving, but until then, I'm thinking of renting a fetal monitor for a couple of months. The one my friend Stef gave me is not very sensitive. Apparently you don't really hear the heartbeat with it until much later in the pregnancy and as my sister says, by that time you're getting kicked in the ribs all the time, so you don't need the reassurance as much.
The one thing I'm hanging on to right now is the fact that once my sisters got past the third month, there were no real problems with their pregnancies. I know that every pregnancy is different, but it does make me feel better that, genetically at least, there is a good track record.

After a bit of a bad week last week, I realized that it had been a very long time since I had just been by myself, doing whatever I wanted to. So on Friday night after work I took off to the Eaton Center to just wander around. Wow did I need that. I came back home totally revitalized. I keep forgetting I need me time every once in a while.

While I was out wandering, I did make one purchase. Long ago, when we first started talking about having a kid, I promised Joe that when I got pregnant, I would get him the Ray Harryhausen Sinbad Collection of DVD's. He saw them when he was really young and he really wanted to share them with any kid he had. (get them young with the stop motion animation we say!) As one of my friends at work says, with the two of us as its parents, this poor child probably won't be aware of any current entertainment for years! (except for Dr.Who of course)
I'd actually love it if my kid was like Mel's two year old that loves Miyazaki movies and Warner Bros. superhero cartoons. I would do the entire Warner's cartoon canon personally, I love me some Animaniacs.

Thanks for the support everyone. I know I'm acting irrationally, and these things are small issues in the big picture, but what can I say, it's irrational! I'm trying to take it one day at a time and not get too obsessive. It is difficult to think about anything else though.

In other news, we've been telling people left and right. Wednesday night I sprung it on Megan at the knitting store. She was totally gobsmacked. Unfortunately the picture I took of her face did not turn out at all. Sorry Denny.
I've also told my boss at work. His one comment was I was going to make one of the contract workers very happy!

So Sunday night, after a lovely evening with some friends and their adorable almost 1 year old,
we got home and I was suddenly overwhelmed by the enormity of what was happening. The amount of responsibility that we were taking on started to really scare me. There seemed to be an unending string of decisions that we needed to start making about everything. Some of them really important like birthplans, names, and whether to have certain tests done. Some of them not so much like what kind of stroller and playyard to get.
But since every question was going to affect my child directly, they all seemed to take on epic proportions. It was maddening. I was feeling paralyzed by indecison already!
Joe's advice was to just concentrate on each thing as it crops up, and I try to, but it's really difficult. I'm a list maker by nature, I like to have everything ready and organized in my head well in advance. But everytime I start trying to concentrate on one thing, I think of all the others I'm not concentrating on and I freak out that I'll never get any of it resolved. I just keep going around and around in this not very productive circle. It's starting to drive me insane and that's starting to drive Joe insane.

Since we got the ultrasound done on Friday, we've made a start at telling our friends the news. I can't believe how much fun it is. Everyone is happy and excited for us of course, but a big reaction is shock. Joe thinks it's because we've been together for so long that people assumed if we wanted kids, we would have had them by now. It's going to be really fun at knitting on Wednesday night because I am apparently the dark horse in the baby sweepstakes at stitch and bitch.
One unexpected side benefit of starting to tell people is getting stuff! When I told my friend Stef yesterday, she immediately started going through her closets and pulling out things she used during her pregnancy last year.
In addition to a crapload of maternity clothes, she also lent us a fetal monitor and microphone. These things are the coolest. We can't hear anything yet with the monitor (trust me, we tried), but we did use the microphone to talk to the fetus. Stef says that when she was pregnant, she used to sing the ABC song to the fetus, and now, the song totally chills her son out. So we're planning a steady stream of the Doctor Who theme and Blur. With maybe a smattering of Cole Porter tunes.

The proof

I woke Joe up at the ungodly hour of 7:30am this morning so we could make our 9:15 appointment at the Women's College fetal assessment clinic for the nuchal translucency screening. We were really excited about the ultrasound, but we were unprepared for just how much it affected us.
I thought it would take a little searching around to see the fetus clearly, but as soon as the technician put the sensor on my stomach, there it was, doing a little dance. Joe was just riveted by the images. I was thrilled that there was actually something there and it wasn't just all in my mind.


The technician says the neck looks good, and the brain looks good. We'll know more after the blood tests come back. In a couple of months, we'll get some 3d ultrasound pictures!

Until tonight I was thinking, 'well, at least I don't have any food aversions'. But at Stitch and Bitch tonight, someone bought in cupcakes with gummy worms on them. I wasn't in the mood for cupcakes (which should have told me something right there), but I grabbed a loose gummy worm. It must have been the concentrated sugar hit. Instant queasy. That's when I realized that for the last little while I haven't really been interested in anything sugary. I mean, I've had a candy or two, but I used to crave chocolate bars all the time. Now, not so much. No dreaming of cake like I usually do when I'm hungry at night (and I'm always hungry at night these days). I still like fruits and juices and the like, but I seem to be off straight up sugar.
It's really interesting how the pregnancy is affecting my eating habits, but I have say, my stomach is starting to piss me off a little. I just wish it would make up its mind. If I'm even a little bit hungry, I get queasy. When I eat, I feel bloated. Why can't I find a happy medium?

Well the appointment was a bit anticlimactic. We weren't able to hear the heartbeat (there wasn't time to try as he had to go and deliver a baby), but the doctor said everything seemed to be in the right place and was the right size. We go back on Friday for the Nuchal testing ultrasound. Joe is really excited about that.

Also saw a very interesting documentary last night on hothousing babies and toddlers (they weren't in favour of it), which gave rise to a really great conversation with Joe about child rearing and how we wanted to approach it with our child. I'm glad we agree. It would suck to find out at this point that we had completely divergent views.

Today's source of anxiety

After getting through the nerve wracking experience of telling the family on the weekend, I can concentrate on the first appointment with the obstetrician this afternoon. Hopefully he will be able to hear the heartbeat, thus giving us the first bit of concrete proof that something is growing inside me. 'Symptoms' and 'test results' are all fine and good, but God knows I've thrown up many times in my life without being pregnant.
I am happy that I (we?) apparently enter the 2nd trimester today. That means that the nausea should go away (please!) and the risk of miscarriage gets significantly lower. And it drops even more if we can hear the heartbeat.

Oh. A note about doctor vs midwife. Joe and I chose to go the obstetrician route because my age and my high blood pressure bump this pregnancy into the high risk category. I know that for some people I hang out with, this decision will horrify them, but honestly, a midwife would probably end up referring me to an ob/gyn at some point anyway, so why not cut out the middleman.