There's always a first

Well, had our first unscheduled visit to the doctor for the boy today. Made it almost 13 months with no health issues, so this was the first thing to crop up. Brendan has had pretty loose, yucky stools for about a week now. At first I thought it might be related to something he ate, and then I wondered if it was because of teething (he's got a bicuspid that just broke through on one side, and he's been fussing with that side of his head the past few days). I also wondered if it might be a virus. Well, this afternoon the sitter called me and informed me that Brendan had a rash all over. I had noticed this morning when getting him dressed that it looked like he had a rash on his head under his hair, but I chalked it up to being dry (the winter curse) and didn't think anything else about it. But when I got home and picked him up, she showed me the rash. It was all over his head including the temples, down his neck, all down his back and his chest and tummy. Nothing really on his arms or legs. I've wondered a few times if he was running a bit of a fever--he seemed a little warm on a couple of nights--but not anything serious. Well, I took him to the doctor this afternoon, and she concluded it is probably a virus. I wonder if it's roseola, which is a fairly minor virus. Anyway, hopefully it won't be around much longer. The doctor said that if it doesn't go away in about 48 hours, we need to bring him back in (which would naturally be around Thanksgiving; yay!). He's a little whiny and crabby, but the rash doesn't seem to itch or bother him. The doctor said he'd be fine to go back to the sitter tomorrow, that he shouldn't be contagious. I just feel sorry for the little guy. I certainly don't want him to not feel good. Poor baby.

9 weeks and a little unreal

I'm at almost 9 weeks, and somehow it still doesn't seem real. I haven't been to see my OB yet (since I have to wait until she's back from her own maternity leave, so I don't really have official stuff to do or track or whatever. I mean, I KNOW I'm pregnant and all that. Missed periods, three positive home pregnancy tests, a positive blood test, and feeling weird (slightly nauseated, needing to pee all the time, etc.) is certainly indicative of pregnancy. But for some reason, it just doesn't really feel real. I've told a few people so far (teachers), but it's almost like I'm jinxing it somehow and I will end up not being pregnant after all. I don't know. It doesn't make any sense. It just seems weird.

Not weird in a bad way, just weird because it doesn't seem real.

Week 7, the unfairness of it all

First of all, who gave my OB permission to have a kid of her own?

Turns out, my OB, whom I dearly loved, has had a baby of her own (she got married partway through my pregnancy), and is on maternity leave until January. This is an inconvenience for me. I can't believe she didn't check with me on the off-chance that I might be unexpectedly getting pregnant while she might be out. It means that I either have to see another OB or wait until January to be seen by mine. Since this is a second pregnancy, I don't have the list of questions that I had the first time, so I'm OK waiting if they are. I'm supposed to get a call from her nurse in the next few weeks, to get me scheduled. So I'm probably going to be somewhere between 11 and 13 weeks by the time I go in to get my first appointment. Heck, by that point last time, I think I'd had my first ultrasound.

The next peeve I have is, why does my son FINALLY start sleeping through the night at the same time I start waking up at least twice a night so I can pee? UNFAIR! It's been a year and nine months since I had a good night's sleep, and now that I finally have the opportunity for one, since Brendan has managed to go pretty much every night since right after his birthday and either sleep straight through the night or put himself back to sleep without crying, I have to pee. That was the first symptom of pregnancy I had when I was pregnant with Brendan, and it has shown up with a vengeance.

The last unfair thing is that I STILL am having digestive trouble. I just wanna go potty like normal! When, oh when, will this go away?

Confirmation

Yep, I'm preggers.

I went to the same-day clinic and got a blood test, and they confirmed that yes, I am indeed pregnant. No idea about how many weeks along I might be. I just need to go on my original assumption, that mylast period was around September 19 or so, which puts me at about 6 1/2 weeks. We'll just have to wait until we get an ultrasound and get an estimate.

So, away we go...

Week 6, Part Deux...I think...

Before I get into the interesting stuff, I first want to point out that Brendan managed to survive his first year of life! He had his first birthday about a week and a half ago. We didn't have a huge shindig; I mean, the kid won't remember his birthday for a few more years now. My husband's parents came up from Wyoming, my dad drove all the way from Nevada, and my best friend flew up from San Diego. So the party was certainly respectable. Brendan got lots of presents, more than he'll surely ever play with. But I guess that's how it is supposed to be. And he got to smash some cake, which is always a good time. It was my first attempt at decorating a birthday cake, you know, REALLY decorating it, and I think it turned out pretty well. It didn't hurt that my friend had taken some cake decorating courses. So fun was had by all, and I officially have a toddler. Heck, he doesn't even toddle; he sprints. At his 1-year checkup, he measured in at 22 lbs 9 oz, and 30.4 inches tall. He's right around the 50th/75th percentiles, so he's where he should be. He still only has seven teeth, but I think he's working on some more. Still doesn't say much in the way of recognizable words. I've gotten Mama out of him a couple of times, and he seemed to be saying "duck" the other day when I prompted him. I really hope he starts speaking a bit more soon. At least he loves books. That's always a good sign. He's a wild and wonderful kid (most of the time), and I'm glad we've all lived this long.

That said...

It appears that I may be pregnant again.

Let me start by saying that I have been taking oral contraceptives since Brendan was about 4 months old or so, and I have not missed any days. I am on a pill called Jollivette (or something like that), and I do know that it is a very low dosage of hormones (due to my blood pressure). But I haven't had any problems with it. My period has been a little irregular, but I've chalked that up to the fact that it is a 28-day cycle of pills rather than a 21-day cycle with 7 days of placebos. I've always taken the 21-day cycle pills, and my period would then fall during the week of placebos. But with the 28-day cycle, my period seems to drift a little bit, either a few days before the last week, or a few days after, or right in the middle of that last week. Still not a big deal.

So, anyway, the last period I had was somewhere in the neighborhood of the third week in September. I have no idea exactly when it was. I'm basing my calculation on that estimate of my period having been in the last week or so of that 28-day cycle. I know I did not have a period during the entirety of October. I went through an entire pack of 28 pills, and had taken 8 pills in the next pack before finally coming to my senses and taking a pregnancy test (or three). Also, I wasn't feeling very good--I've had...let's just call it "digestive trouble" for weeks now, which is very unusual for me. And all of a sudden I had a couple of days where I was overcome with nausea out of the blue, just for a few minutes. When I was pregnant with Brendan I had very little morning sickness, and this definitely reminded me of it.

So, the thought had already sort of wandered through my mind, that there might be a slight possibility that I might, just might, be pregnant. When I mentioned to my husband that I wasn't feeling good, he said, "Well, do you think you might be pregnant?" And I said, "Well, perhaps, yes." So I picked up a box of First Response pregnancy tests. I think these are the kind I used when I found out I was pregnant with Brendan, but I'm not sure. In any case, I peed on the stick, let it sit for three minutes, and checked it. And sure enough, there were two lines in the window. One was a bit fainter than the other, but the test instructions said this was possible, and it was undeniably there. (I got the same results the next evening, after a day of not taking my birth control pill, and the next morning as well.) So, according to First Response, anyway, I'm pregnant.

I am withholding total reaction until I get a blood test to verify it. I'll probably try to go to the walk-in clinic on Friday after school, to see if I can get a blood test without needing an appointment.

But if I truly am pregnant (which I suspect I am; I've started waking up in the middle of the night to pee, which was one of the first signs I had last time), I'm probably about 6 weeks along. That means, according to Baby Center, the little bugger is about the size of a lima bean. Cool.

My husband and I have talked in the past about having a second child. We had figured on shooting for a due date around the time of Brendan's second birthday, so that I could take the time off at the end of the semester. But, while I don't know if I'm really prepared for having a 20-month-old who will undoubtedly still be in diapers AND a newborn at the same time (actually, I can answer that question emphatically: NO, I AM NOT PREPARED IN THE LEAST), from a work perspective this should work out well. My due date, from my calculations, should be around June 25. School will get out June 1. That gives me just over 3 weeks of time in the summer before my due date. And that also gives me 8 weeks of summer after my due date that I won't have to work. I'm hoping I can schedule some maternity leave at the very beginning of the school year, maybe 6 weeks (I have no idea what my options are, since I am not a tenured employee). That would put the baby at 3 months old before I have to go back to work. I wish I didn't have to go back to work at all, but I know that isn't an option, due to our finances. Oh well. But that will have been good for bonding with the little bunion. I hope.

Anyway, there's no sense in getting too worked up about anything. While this is unexpected, it isn't the worst thing that could happen. I mean, I'm excited about it, but terrified as well. I have a hard enough time being patient with Brendan. I just know that it's going to get worse before it gets better. Oh well. The other challenge will be my weight. I haven't lost anything. I weighed in on Monday at 232.8. That's slightly more than ten lbs less than my heaviest pregnancy weight. I can't afford to get any heavier. My back is constantly hurting, and both my feet have plantar fasciitis. I really need to lose some weight. I think that will be something that I will talk to the OB about when I go in for my first appointment.

We haven't said anything to anyone. Of course, we need to wait until we know I'm actually pregnant, and I'd like to wait until I'm about 14 weeks along again, which would be the end of the first trimester, if I recall correctly. That means 8 weeks of waiting. At least we don't see a lot of people regularly. *So if you are reading this and you know me, please don't say anything to anyone!*

But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's possible I'm not even pregnant. Not likely, but possible...

So many milestones, so few posts

Wow. I didn't realize my last post to this blog was back in August. Eek. I've been so busy with school and not losing weight and the baby and not losing weight and...well, you get the idea.

We're six weeks into the school year, 1/3 of the way through the semester, and I have yet to find a good rhythm for getting lessons planned and work graded. I tend to go in about half an hour before school starts and spend that time and my planning period (the first hour of the day) getting materials ready FOR THAT SAME DAY. While I have a general idea of what my classes will be doing from day to day, I rarely if ever have everything prepared ahead of time. That's going to make it really hard to ever miss a day if Brendan is sick and can't go to daycare, or even if I just need to stay home myself. I really have to do a better job of planning. Also, I've let ungraded work pile up. Thankfully, it did not get noticed by the students or their parents, because until the past week or so no one had access to the online grading system. But now that the portal is open for them to view, I need to do a better job of staying on task.

I need to do a better job of working out, too. Only this past week did I start walking to school, and only two days of the week. I have been told by one of the maintenance guys that I can keep a bike in the boiler room if I want, but I don't know where the boiler room is, and I'm a little embarrassed to ask. I don't know why. If I can figure it out, I'll walk on regular days and ride my bike on Tuesdays and Thursdays, since I'm supposed to stay after and work with the newspaper on those days. But I'm running out of time. I had hoped to be below 175 lbs by the time my brother gets married in May. Now that's only 7 months away, and that means I need to lose like 9 lbs each month. I basically need to stop eating. *sigh*

But on to the boy. He is walking. Heck, he's RUNNING. He has seven (and a half) teeth. He's working on eating chunkier foods, although texture seems to be a problem with him--too many chunks and he barfs. It isn't pleasant. He's almost a year old, two weeks from tomorrow. We're going to have a family birthday party for him, with my dad, my husband's parents, and one of my best friends in town. I thought about having a party for little kids, but we don't know many people, especially not with kids Brendan's age. The sitter who watches him during the day watches three other kids, but I don't really know any of their parents other than to say "hello" when we drop our kids off and pick them up. I might make some cupcakes and take them to the sitter the day after his birthday; the other kids, the sitter, her husband, and her two teenaged girls might enjoy them. I may send token invitations to my sister-in-law and her family, my brother-in-law, and my brother and his girlfriend, even though I know they cannot attend. I don't want anyone to get their feelings hurt. But I'll make a cake--I'm thinking Winnie the Pooh, although I've never decorated a cake before (my friend has, maybe she can help)--and I'll make a cupcake for the boy to smash to his heart's content. I wish the weather was probably going to be warmer; I'd make him eat his cupcake out on the porch in the back yard. But our weather finally got fallish this week--temps no higher than mid-60s for the next ten days--so I doubt it'll be particularly warm on his birthday. Oh well.

Oh, the boy also said what I'm considering to be his first "Mama". He babbles stuff like that all the time, but this morning when I went to get him out of his crib he said, "Mama" and reached up for me. I think that counts.

First day of school

Today's weigh-in: 237.0

I made no progress over the summer with my weight loss. Hopefully the school year will improve things. I plan to work out at least three mornings a week before school, and also ride my bike or walk to work most days.

We'll see.