My work schedule recently got changed. E and I were working the exact same schedule, day in, day out. We had the same 3 days off, the same 4 days on. Which wasn’t bad for a little while, because we saved on gas, and got to spend so much time around each other, but then it got old.

It’s not that I didn’t love him anymore. I did, and I knew I did. But I was also very hormonal, and I saw him all the time. And all I ever wanted was just to have some time to myself, and some time together.

Then our schedule changed. We now don’t have any days off together. At all. All  of his days off, I’m working, and I just sit at home missing him on my days off. It’s awful. I miss dates. I miss those days where we just lounge in bed all day long cuddling and kissing. Did I really take those for granted?! Gah, I am such an ass.

But the time I do get with him is so very precious to me now. It just makes me realize how well we do work together, how much I love him, and how unbelievably lucky I am to have the love and adoration of such an amazing man.

Even when I am cah-razy pregnant lady, he is still so patient with me. He’s so sweet and kind. When I feel fat, he kisses my belly and tells me that it’s just his baby in there. He tells me I’m beautiful when I feel like the last thing from it. Even for his large physique, he’s just like a big ol’ teddy bear. And I cannot believe how much I love him.

And he is so diligent about going with me to my prenatal appointments. Even today, when he’d gotten all of an hour of sleep, he still went.

He sat there with me while she was poking, prodding, and scraping my nether regions.

And he sat there, in the chair right beside me when we first heard our baby’s heartbeat.

She put the lube on me, and presses the dopplar thing to my belly. There were some random noises, then BOOM. Baby’s heartbeat. I didn’t expect it would be that quick. She just found it so easily. And it was so loud and strong.

“You do not have a very shy baby.”

No, ma’am. If it’s our baby, it won’t be in the least bit shy.

And there it was, totally kind of exactly what I was expecting. You know.. you hear about what it’s going to sound like, just fast and a heartbeat. Alright,  got it.

But then I couldn’t stop smiling. There it was, my baby’s heartbeat. Inside of me. I was listening to my baby, right then and there. It was shocking, and so strong, and loud, and so very beautiful.

I teared up a bit, but kept my composure as the doctor finished her exam. But the smile remained.

I have an appointment with my father tomorrow. My very conservative, Christian father. And I talked to him today, and I am still smiling. The truth is, no matter what kinda way my father feels about my baby, it’s not going to change how I feel about it.

I love my beautiful, unborn baby. I love that by hearing it’s beautiful heartbeat today, my chances of miscarriage went down to 5%. I love that that’s my baby inside of me. Healthy as can be, and I just can’t wait to meet him.

Hello, precious baby Fetus!

You, my darling, are officially a fetus! No more of me making fun of you calling you a Quasimbryo. It’s QuasiHumanFetus. Which doesn’t sound as good, and isn’t nearly as funny.

This week has been pretty good. Thanksgiving last week was wonderful. Despite having terrible nausea the day before, I didn’t throw up anybody’s thanksgiving offerings. Which is always a good thing.

So, your father got lasagna from your grandmother Nini for his birthday. Your father demolished it in the span of about 3 days, but very thoughtfully saved the last piece for me. For some reason, I couldn’t find it possibly attractive to eat. Every time I looked at it, I wanted to throw up. Even now, talking about it, I want to throw up.

Well, I felt guilty. Because it’s not from your grandmother’s lack of making an amazing lasagna that made me not want it. It was just one of those pregnancy things. Pretty much marinara on the whole sounds pretty disgusting to me, and then you add in the LOADS of cheese, and beef. Puke City. Seriously. (Which actually sounds nothing like me. Pre-Pregnancy-Me never would have let those words come out of her mouth in reference to Lasagna, or any other kind of pasta)

So, after a while of staring at it, I decided to just quit being such a pansy, and eat the freaking lasagna. Before it sprouts arms and comes and punches me for leaving it to rot.

It still didn’t sound appetizing at all, but I decided, “Screw it. I’m eating it.” So, I did. I warmed it up. Ate about half of it, and decided that it was too gross to continue. An hour later, in a terrible display of stomach acid and undigested food resurfacing, it came back up.

Note to self: NEVER eat anything that you don’t want to.
2nd note to self: Especially if you don’t want to taste it a 2nd time.

Ugh. This pregnancy has taught me a few things. One, that Chinese and Lasagna? Are not good the second time around.

Other than that seemingly random bout of nausea, I’m getting headaches. Bad ones. So bad that I have to turn off the lights, and try and go to sleep. Even then, I have about a 1 in 10 chance of it going away. They only come about every 2nd or 3rd day, but when they do? They’re awful.

Oh, and getting up to pee in the middle of the night? Especially 2 – 3 times a night? No fun. I miss sleeping all night. That was fun.

I like to tell everybody that I’m in the fun part of pregnancy. The part where I’m only suffering terribly and it doesn’t feel real yet that I’m pregnant. I don’t have a bump. I don’t feel any kicks. I just throw up and have headaches and have to pee pretty much non stop. Even if I JUST PEED FIVE MINUTES AGO.

Ohh! Ohhh.. and The Mood Swings. I don’t even think mood swings is a fair way to put it. I don’t think it is clear enough on how crazy I have become.
I have mood swings that make me want to convince your father that I’m possessed. “No really! It’s not me. It’s a Supahnat-u-ral foarce that’s makin’ me act this way. It’s not my fault, REALLY!”

When, in reality, he knows this. He’s been so good with me. Patient, when I can see on his face that he kind of just wishes he could press mute for like FIVE minutes.

As far as you go, You’re as big as an olive this week. AN OLIVE. We have them at work, and I took one out, and showed Daddy how big you are. Like, LOOKIE! HERE’S OUR BABY. He grabbed the olive and ate it.
Which whatever, I totally did it too.

You can bend your arms, and wrists, and you have leetle toes and I can’t wait to nibble the hell outta them. I can’t wait for you!

We’re getting to experience the funnest part of pregnancy. The BEFORE WE FIND OUT IT’S A BOY OR A GIRL part. Which is it? Boy? Girl?? Boy? Girl?? Ahh.. Everyone keeps telling me it’s gonna be a boy. Which, I think obviously means you’re gonna be a girl. I think people are stupid. But then I go back, OOOH!  A boy?? Like, a boy that I can dress up like a little man. MY little man? Oh, okay. I’d be so happy with a boy.

But I just can’t wait to find out.
I think we should start taking bets.

It’s Christmas time! This is the most exciting part of the year for me. I LOOOVE Christmas. It makes me happy, and makes everything a little bit better. Daddy and I put up the Christmas tree yesterday. It’s still sitting there, completely undecorated. But it’s up! YaY! For Christmas!!

And, the cutest part of our tree? Will be the little ornament on it. The one that your father and I bought for our Very First Christmas Together! It’s a little bear, and it says ‘Parents-to-be 2009‘. (You’re actually probably about the same size right now as the bear that’s on it.)
I saw it, and just knew it was perfect. Your daddy thought so too. Just like you…

I can’t wait for you… Only 213 more days.

Love forever and ever,

Mommy

(Okay, fine. So the Raspberry beret was a bit corny. I don’t care.)

Hello in there, My Beautiful little Raspberry/Gummy Bear/Kidney Bean!

This week is going just fine so far. I’ve pretty much (knock on wood) haven’t had any nausea in about a week. It was weird. I decided not to mention anything last week, because every time I do, it comes back. WITH A VENGENCE. But I’ve felt fine, for the most part. Still, keep pork away from me. Literally. EW. EW EW EW EW EWWWIE. I literally don’t even like to look at the stuff.
(I wrote this, and literally got sick that night. And the next morning. And I can’t seem to keep anything down. This is awesome. It’s like some weird pregnant joke the universe is playing on me. )

Basically I can sum up how I feel perfectly, or at least Amalah can:

Nauseated but hungry. Tired but unable to sleep. Pudgy but not pregnant-looking. In pain from a variety of complaints and suffering from a weakened immune system but forbidden from taking most over-the-counter remedies. Moody and cranky and irritable and weepy.

And you can totally add paranoid, emotional, hormonal. Ugh. When people ask me how I’m feeling, I literally just tell them that I’m fine. When really, all I can think about is how exhausted I am, and how much I would loooove to be in bed right now. Except the bed is kind of my enemy right now. I feel like I’m spending more time in it trying to go to sleep, instead of actually sleeping like I want to sooo bad.
Or, Did I throw up my prenatal vitamins this morning? Should I take some more? I think I should google it.
Or, sooo hungry. Hungry. Everything sounds good. But EW. I don’t want to throw anything up. I think I should eat… but nothing sounds good enough to risk having to taste it a second time.

Okay, wanna hear a really silly story of nesting? Of course you do.
I’ve tried to keep my nesting urges on the down low. I just have tried to suppress them. Mainly because I hate this apartment, and cleaning or bettering it would be a waste of time.

Case and point: I was at walmart the other day when I happened upon a grout brush. For 98 cents. FRIGGING AWESOME DUDE. I nabbed it, and brought it home. Proudly showed my new, ingenious find to your daddy, and he looked at me and said, Oh. A grout brush, like the one we have under the sink in there? And I said… It’s not as good as this one. Because… Well, IT’S JUST NOT, OKAY?!

Well, I was taking a shower and I couldn’t wait any longer. I mean, this grout is EW! Almost as EW as the sea green tiles that it surrounds. I probably should have sprayed something on it, and let it sit overnight. But I didn’t. I was in the shower, scrubbing my grout. For like an hour.

I actually didn’t realize this was nesting until I was reading a similar story about another girl doing this same thing. I finally admitted that maybe it was a leeettle crazy to be busting out the grout brush during a shower. Whateves…

The best part? You can’t even tell that I touched them. They look almost the exact same. Double Ew.

Big shout out to Daddy here! He deserves huge thanks for taking me ALL THE WAY to Springdale yesterday. Why? Because in the middle of my nap, which was going very well, surprisingly enough, I woke up. I wanted Chicken Fried Steak and Mashed Potatoes. I wanted them so much that they woke me up. And he took me there, even though he was oh so tired too. I love him. (He’s at work right now, and I’m missing him a lot too.)

But pretty soon, I’ll remember why all of this is so incredibly worth it. When I hear your heart beat for the first time. Feel you move for the first time. Or when I see you for the first time. Or when I finally get to find out if you’re a boy or a girl.
Or when you’re finally here. And I can hold you in my arms. And I can look into your beautiful eyes. It will be oh so worth it. I know this very well.

But you will never be closer to me than your are for these next 8ish months. I am going to cherish them, because you are literally a part of me right now. We are one, and there is something unbelievably beautiful about that.

I love you so much, my baby.

Mommy.

• This whole, I’m SOOOO TIRED I DON’T WANNA MOVE OR THINK OR EVEN GET UP TO PEE (Even though I have to pee sooooo bad. All the time. Every 10 minutes.)
  And then when I want to go to sleep, I can’t sleep. What. The. Eff. Seriously.
  Is this some kind of effed-up pregnancy prank? Is it some form of pregnancy torture? I am TOTALLY not cool with it.
• I actually had to kick my dog out of sleeping in bed with me. Why? BECAUSE SHE KEEPS WAKING ME UP. (She’s a burrower, and she’ll burrow underneath the covers. Cold nose + Burrowing = QUIT TOUCHING ME RIGHT NOW)
  And you know what’s worse than not being able to sleep? Being woken up because of stupid ANIMALS.
• I love my boyfriend.
• Like seriously. More and more every day.

• Oh… so tired. Sooo wish I could sleep.

Okay.. I think that’s all. Nothing profound today. Did you catch the sleepy part? Mmmhmm…

So, tonight, I was goofing off at the computer by myself..
I’m home alone tonight, since boyfriend and my schedules got changed, we no longer have days off together. Plus-side? I get waay more me time, which definitely leads to ‘I miss my boyfriend, I can’t wait to see him and not be a bitch to him this time’.
Downside? We don’t have any days off together anymore and therefore no date nights, or cuddle nights, or let’s go out to eat nights…

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Sitting at home, alone. Doing what anyone would do in my situation. Look up pregnancy websites. (My pregnant situation, not my home alone on the internet situation. Geez… The porn watching came later.

I stumbled across yet another due date calculator/pregnancy week-by-week site. Except this time, when I plugged in my LMP, I got a day by day countdown type thing. With, what appeared to be, an in utero photo-like thing. Like real looking pictures of what a 7 week/8week/etc, old baby looked like. INSIDE.
Up until now, I’ve pretty much had only crappy drawings or computers depictions of what my baby looks like now. And I call them crappy because they don’t make it very easy for a girl, who has yet to even see as much as an ultrasound picture of her baby, to believe that it’s actually in there or to even imagine what it looks like.

This time it was all real looking. I’m coming up on week 8 on Monday (my previous calculations were way off. Again. That whole thing is so effing confusing) And a baby in utero at week 8 has a HUGE melon, but it also has like itty bitty fingers, and toes. It’s even got a sort-of nose! And –
Oh my god. I have one of those inside of me. I have one of those inside of me! Like FOR REAL. IN. SIDE. OF ME.

And I started crying.

My inability to feel much elation about the pregnancy up until now made me feel like I didn’t really want the baby. My inability to even feel like it was actually going to happen and wasn’t just some crazy awesome dream that I would wake up from or some EFF’d up version of the flu made me feel like I wasn’t really going to love my baby the way I’d always dreamed that I would love my baby.

But I cried.

I’ve even been having some trouble crying lately. Things that normally make me sad, don’t. Things that would have me crying ALL THE TIME, won’t. I just don’t cry ALL THE TIME like I used to. I thought that there was something wrong with me.

But he/she is really in there. With little fingers and toes that I am going to nibble forever once it gets here. He/she’s in there. Growing up a storm. Waiting to kick me in the rips. Waiting to come out into the world and blow us all away with how perfect he/she is.

And I cried.

I cried the happiest tears I’ve ever cried in my life. I am so happy. Scared and nervous? Totally. But totally 100% happy too.

Even now, I’m crying and I can barely see the screen. And when his/her daddy gets home in an hour or so, I’m probably going to cry again.
I love him. So much.
And he loves me.
I think he’s perfect and wonderful and amazing.
He thinks that I am perfect and wonderful and amazing.

And we made a baby together.

And I already love it so much that it makes me cry.