So the cat is out of the bag, probably sooner than I would have liked. I told all of our friends at the surprise party on Saturday. I just couldn’t keep it in. Everyone was excited and shocked really. I could tell that some were more excited than others. None of our friends in the city have kids and only a few of them are married. It is definitely early for people to have kids for this area. I wonder how much our friendships will change. We won’t be able to do a lot of the fun stuff that we did before. No more carefree Saturdays spent by the pool drinking vodka Kool-Aid ‘til late at night. But there will be better rewards and I suppose that time in our life is coming to an end and that’s fine. My friend Emily will be leaving the country within the next year probably and she is the person that we hang out with the most.
DH also told people on Facebook, which I could have definitely waited for. I told people on Facebook since he did. I just hope nothing goes wrong and I have to somehow untell people. I’m terrified now. My appointment next Friday cannot come soon enough. What was I even thinking scheduling it that late?....My biggest fear is that we go and we don’t hear a heartbeat. I just wish we had waiting until we heard a heartbeat. Although I think my fears are completely unfounded, I have read to many m/c stories on the nest and the bump.
On to happier things, we’re off to NJ today for Thanksgiving. I’m pretty excited. We will be staying at DH’s cousin’s Sara and her husband’s Edward house and BIL/SIL are coming from FL. It should be lots of fun and the food should be delicious. The only thing I’m a little worried about is that I think Sara has suffered a miscarriage in the past and is still trying to have a baby. It’s sad. She sent us a nice message about the pregnancy. I just hope that too much baby talk doesn’t upset her. She’s really nice so I don’t expect a scene. I will try not to be too much of an AW and be considerate of her feelings.
I’m hoping to see my BFF Krystalyn over the weekend since she will be home in NJ for Thanksgiving as well. I haven’t seen her since August and we haven’t been doing a good job of keeping in touch. It’s sad but we both lead busy lives. She has a BF that she is with. I don’t think she really loves him, but she won’t break up with him until someone better comes along. I don’t really judge or care what she does with her love life. I like the guy, but it is not my business.
Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

Baby’s First Picture

So yesterday morning, DH and I went to my gynecologist for our first ultrasound. We got there pretty early because I wanted to get it done with as soon as possible so I could get to work and not be too late. Of course when we get there, the doctor isn’t even there. I heard over the phone that he didn’t know he had an appointment. Grrrr…I try not to be annoyed because the assistant is very nice and helpful. So the doctor gets in quickly within 10 minutes and sees me right away. Unfortunately in the 5 minutes between me peeing and the doctor arriving, my bladder has filled up again. So instead of getting dressed I pop over to the bathroom with my a$$ hanging out of the sheet! But whatever, I’m not overly modest and the nice assistant made sure that no one saw me. Then we got our picture. There wasn’t much to see. But there was a gestational sac and a yolk, which the doctor said was good. Based on the research I’ve done online and looking at my chart, it looks like I’m about 5wk4d, which means my due date is July 17th. I didn’t have a bunch of questions to ask but the doctor told me everything looked great and referred me to a couple OBs. I’m not sure if I’ll use any of them. I’m kind of tempted to get a female OB. DH was a little uncomfortable watching some guy stick something up my hooha. But I really don’t know much about finding an OB. I’ve been doing research online, googling names and reading the reviews. That’s been helpful. Also, we need to decide what hospital we want to deliver at. I’m not overly impressed with any of the hospitals nearby as far as their c-section rates go, but DH is reluctant to go to a hospital farther away. Also, a hospital farther away means that the OBs office would be farther away making it harder to get to appointments and balance working the in the city.
Lots of decisions to make and I guess we have plenty of time to make them, but it is rather overwhelming.

My confession is that I really don’t know tons about babies or a lot of stuff. I never had younger brothers or sisters. I babysitted some, but not babies. I’m learning from the book that I’m reading, Pregnancy: Week by Week, but there is still so much to learn.

Ok now that is out of the way, onto non-baby related topics (I guess this baby related a little). I have another confession to make. I’ve been keeping this out of my blog because I’m worried about being judged. But I haven’t stopped playing flag football. The truth is my team needs me. If I had bowed out last week or if I bowed out this weekend, then they would have to forfeit the game. We’ve been missing a lot of people lately and without me, they don’t have a full team. There are only two weeks left and I’m going to finish them out. Our game last weekend was awesome! We came back at the very end and won. I played decent defense. I was covering a girl that was a foot taller than me and I stopped her from catching a number of passes. We were the scrappy underdogs since we only had 7 (so no substitutes) and this team had beaten us once before.

This weekend one of DH’s friends and his girlfriends will be in town so we’ve been tidying the place up. Another confession, we only really clean when the place gets really dirty like once a month and when people come to visit. We NEVER have people stop by randomly and our friends rarely come to our place because we live far from them. DH and I are content for the most part with our messiness. We keep the place clutter free as much as possible but deep cleaning like mopping floors, cleaning off counter-tops, etc, we don’t do that frequently. I’m debating whether I want to tell our local friends this weekend about the baby. I really do want to tell them but I can’t decide. I’m worried that the flag football thing might cause a problem. I don’t want to tell my team because I’m worried they won’t let me play anymore. But whatever, I’ll figure that out.

I’ve been going through ups and downs over the last couple of days. Every now and then, a wave of panic goes through me. They consist of a wide variety of worries which include: what if something happens to the baby, oh crap we’re having a baby our lives are going to change forever, what if DH and I fight a lot because we’re exhausted when we have a baby crying all night, I don’t know what I’m doing with a baby…..

I figure these are all normal worries that come with parenthood but I think they have been affecting my sleep. I’ve been waking up an hour or half-hour before I’m supposed to get up and then the worries start. Usually I sleep just fine. But it’s weird, I think it has to do with that now I’m not just responsible for myself, I’m responsible for another person: a completely helpless person that will depend on me for a long, long time.

On to happier news, DH and I are going to my gynecologist on Tuesday (my next Friday appointment had to be moved). I’m not sure if I’m going to get a sonogram. The lady mentioned something about that over the phone. But I know they don’t usually do those in the beginning if there is no history of miscarriage or no spotting. I hope it’s covered by insurance. It would be wonderful to see our little sea monkey on the screen (DH and I are calling the baby that for now). I’ve been reading my pregnancy book, which has been very interesting and informative. I have a hard time putting it down. There are a lot of worrying things in there, but I suppose it’s good to be informed.
Another piece of good news is that I’ve been doing some research on Leave Donation and I’m pretty sure that I can qualify for leave donation. I figured it out and I’ll have about two weeks of annual leave around the time the baby comes, which is not enough. I have plenty of sick leave, but I can only use it for a certain amount of time I think depending on if I have a vaginal or c-section birth. Well the leave donation program means that other federal government employees can donate leave to me even my sister (who is in the military). She has a ton of leave because she’s in Iraq and doesn’t use leave very often. She even joked the other day about giving me some leave. So I think I can get some from her. I hope I might be able to get some other leave from people in my office. I work with a ton of older federal government employees who have tons of leave accrued over the years. So if I could get the 6-weeks maximum that I can get donated for maternity leave plus whatever leave I have. I hope that I might be able to have a 2-month maternity leave, which would be great! Although I could take 3 months off, I wouldn’t have enough leave to cover it and going leave without pay is not something I really want to do. Although we have the money in savings to do it, I make a lot more money than my husband and it would hurt us a lot.

I think we’ve decided that we’re not going to try to buy anything next year. The baby kind of decided that for us. We will have probably about $20K saved up by the time the baby comes and we need to keep that for an emergency. Also, we love our apartment and neighborhood. We’re not ready to leave yet. I’m planning on taking the Foreign Service exam next year at the end of the summer. So, we really have no idea how long we’ll be in the area. Lots of things are up in the air, but DH and I are just trying to be flexible and do what it best for us and our little sea monkey.

Another tidbit of good news is that we sold my car yesterday. It was the first car that I’ve ever had just as my own (my sister and I had always shared one in HS). It needed repairs that we weren’t willing to make and it wasn’t worth it dumping more money into it. We sold it for $600, which was less than we offered for, but a fair price. We’re a one truck family for now. It’s a pain a little bit because it’s a two-seater truck. So, we can’t drive people around and when we go grocery shopping it gets very tight. We’ll buy a new one eventually before the baby comes after we build our savings a little more.

OMG I’m pregnant!!

So I guess I owe a blog entry on this. I would have written sooner, but work has actually been really busy lately and homelife has been busy as well.
Here’s my story: I thought I would wait until Sunday to test, but I wanted to know before the weekend started whether I was pregnant or not to know if I could drink or not. So Thursday night, I had a hard time sleeping because I was thinking about testing all night. I woke up around 7:30AM. DH and I both had the day off and he was feeling pretty sick from a cold so he didn’t get up when I got up. I just hung out and watched Project Runway on DVR and a few other shows I had on there. Actually in the middle of Project Runway, around 8:30AM, I decided I couldn’t wait anymore. I had to pee. So I told DH that I had to pee and that I was going to test. He said one word from bed to indicated his consent “pee.” So I did it and went back to watching Project Runway. I went back in and I literally said “Oh My God” when I saw the two lines. The lines weren’t faint or disputable. It was a damn awesome bright second line. It felt like it screamed “Hey, I’m pregnant!” DH heard me and knew what that meant. He called “Are you pregnant?” as he was getting up. He got up and looked at it and gave me a big hug. I couldn’t stop laughing and crying a little.

We were excited and nervous and excited all at the same time. But we just went about our day. I had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for that day so that worked out really nicely. I was happy that I was able to get a blood test so quickly (I heard the results on Monday and they came back positive too). It was neat being able to tell the doctor that I thought I was pregnant. I asked him if it was ok if I ran a 5k on Sunday and he said that would be fine. The rest of the day passed uneventfully. I did manage to run 3 miles which was the last day for our training regiment. DH rested in bed to try to get better. That night we met up with my friends Emily and Matt to help Matt move his stuff into a moving van (he’s moving into Emily’s studio apartment). It was really hard not saying anything, but I wanted to wait to tell our friends in DC. I’m not sure why but I just do.

The next day, I took another pregnancy test because I figured I didn’t really need them and I wanted to make sure the day before wasn’t a figment of my imagination (although I did keep the test hanging around just to stare at it). It was positive again with a beautiful second line. So we decided ok lets tell family because I wouldn’t be able to keep it in if I spoke with them (my parents bring up grandkids every time I talk to them). We first called my parents on Skype. It was fun to see their reaction. Of course they were thrilled and they seemed to know right away (everyone did, it kind of ruined the surprise). My sister called on Skype right at the end of my conversation with my parents so of course we told her then. She seemed excited as well. Then we told MIL, FIL, BIL, and SIL, that morning. Everyone was very excited. I have a feeling that SIL was kind of jealous because she’s kind of been half-trying for a while. Saturday night we met up with our friends from NYC who had just moved back to the DC area. They’re a 30-minute drive and an even longer Metro ride away. We went to their new apartment which was nice. Our mutual friend David lives right by them so now we’re always going to be obligated to go to Maryland where they live. We were hoping they would move to VA but that didn’t happen. So we went to a diner that served pretty fatty, greasy foods. Of course, I’m still doing the pescetarian thing so I ordered a fish and chips, which was pretty nasty. But I definitely felt like puking afterwards. That leads me into pregnancy symptoms. I’ve gotten some nausea (mostly after eating), sore nipples here and there, abdominal pain, and a little bloating. So we managed to give the excuse of having our 5K tomorrow morning to avoid drinking.

Sunday morning was the 5K. We got there really early because we were worried about finding parking and being late. But we got there with plenty of time and ended up just sitting in our car for a while. DH was still feeling sick so I was going to have run solo L We all lined up and DH went to the back since he was going to walk. It started and everyone was passing me, which was fine except for the biotch who hit my elbow with her fist when the race first started. It felt pretty good at first. After the first mile or so, my nipples were on fire! They hurt a lot, but I kept going and running. I was passing some people who had started off fast and were running out of gas. The last half mile or so was tough because I started sprinting too early. But I made it and I was really proud. I finished with 29:40 which is not that great, but it’s a start. I wanted to try to train up for a 10K next, I’m not sure I will be able to do that, being pregnant and all.

DH and I have started making plans in our apartment to fit the baby in. We will have to turn the office into a nursery and move most of our office stuff downstairs in the storage room. I think house buying will have to be put on hold. We shouldn’t rush into anything and who knows where we will be in a couple of years. Lots of decisions to make!