Knitting

Funny how being pregnant can bring out all sorts of domestic tendencies (and fantasies). I learned how to knit as a child but have done very little of it in my adult years. Last Christmas I decided I wanted to get back into it and put a few knitting books on my wish list. It took being three months pregnant, however, to finally make me pick up the needles. These hats are my first creations in more than ten years. I used the Umbilical Cord Hat pattern in Debbie Stoller's Stitch 'N Bitch book. I'm also working on the Big Bad Baby Blanket from the same book. Loving it so far!

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Anticlimactic Follow-up

As usual, I was worrying excessively over something silly. Today, when my boss was handing out pay stubs, she asked me how my workload is, "now that we've loaded you up." I told her I could use some more work, actually, and she said she'd think about what she could give me. I thought, "Uh-oh, I'd better tell her before she makes any decisions!"

So I screwed up some nerve and went to see her in her office a little while later. I know she could tell I was nervous and she was SO nice! She said it's great news and must have said congratulations about a dozen times. Apparently my fill-in will start two months before I leave and stay for two months after I return (if I return, she said, adding that she very much hopes I do). By the time I return (if I return), this person will have spent several more months working on my projects than I have. That'll be a bit weird.

I'm going shopping tomorrow. I might buy my first maternity items, since most of my pants are now leaving welts on my belly after a day at the office. I'm not loving this in-between stage. I hate all my clothes and struggle every day with picking out an outfit.

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Work Worries

I started a new job in June. My six-month probation doesn't end until mid-December, when I will be about 20 weeks pregnant. I don't feel comfortable waiting that long to tell. I've set 16 weeks as an arbitrary deadline, but there's a problem. I'm extremely short on work and need to ask for more. I told the boss a while ago that eventually, once I've gotten the mess I inherited cleaned up, I will need more work, so it won't come as a surprise. But I don't want to bring that up that until I spill the beans about my impending leave (one year in Canada), since that info will likely determine what kind of work the boss will want to give me.

I'm so nervous about this. Today the boss was in her office most of the day (rare) and I tried to talk myself into going in to talk to her. Instead I talked myself into waiting until next week. I'm such a coward. I got all shaky just thinking about it.

I sort of feel embarrassed and guilty, like I accepted the job under false pretenses. Won't they assume that I must have been trying? Or will they believe that I got knocked up accidentally? I'm not sure which assumption makes me look worse. Why do I even care? Yeah, that's right, the new girl's pregnant. And proud of it! I'm such an idiot. LOL

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Small Milestones

Today is a doubly good day: it's my birthday (thirty-first, in case you're wondering) and also the official last day of my first trimester. Woohoo! We had a low-key celebration. Keith and I went out for dinner and then ate a little cake at home.

I bought some clothes (sweater and a couple of camisoles for layering) today, as a little birthday present to myself — NOT maternity, but I should be able to wear them for a few weeks (months?) yet. A friend sent me a gift certificate to a maternity store, and I have a shopping trip planned with another friend in a couple of weeks. You can bet I'll be buying maternity then!

In the meantime, the elastic-through-the-buttonhole trick should get me by. I did that for the first time today, and it was great. I'm in that awful "I feel fat!" phase and hate how I look in all of my clothes.

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NT scan and first ultrasound pics!

Yep, I had my NT scan today (ultrasound to screen for Down's syndrome) and everything looks great! The NT measurement was perfectly normal, at 1.2 mm, and the heart was racing away at 177 bpm! If you subscribe to certain gender prediction myths, you'd swear this baby is a girl.

I learned that I have an anterior placenta. According to the doctor, this means the baby's movements will be muffled and less distinct than they otherwise might have been. This makes me a bit sad, although ladies on the Nest have reassured me that they still felt plenty. I hope so!

The only bad part about today was the bloodwork. They did the initial bloodwork for my OB at the same time as the NT stuff, and together they required 10 vials! My poor vein stopped producing partway through, and the tech kept pushing my wrist down to further straighten my arm and pressing my skin around the needle to squeeze out a few more drops. It seemed to go on forever.

And... I finally got ultrasound pics! Here they are. Keep in mind that these are photos of printouts, so not the best quality. Also, apparently my bladder wasn't as full as it should have been, so the images weren't the best to begin with. Oh well. I can still see my baby!

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First OB appointment

It was a good appointment! But first there was the wait. Our appointment was at 11:30 and, after some Jennifer confusion — there were three Jennifers in the tiny waiting room at the same time — we didn't get in to see the doctor until 12:45. Is this normal? Cuz it rather sucked. But I digress.

The doctor is lovely, really very nice. She asked the usual questions about medical and family history, explained her practice, took my blood pressure and weighed me, and finally got to the good stuff. She said she wanted to try to hear the heartbeat. She warned us that at 12 weeks it could be a bit early to be able to detect it with the doppler, and she wouldn't even try it if she didn't have the ultrasound machine there as a backup. Well, sure enough, she couldn't find it, so we had a quick abdominal ultrasound. The image wasn't very clear, because my bladder wasn't full, but we were still able to make out our little baby kicking around. I couldn't see its heartbeat, but the doctor assured us it was there and that everything was good. Keith thinks the baby looked like a turtle on its back. Nice!

I have decided to go ahead and do the NT scan (nuchal translucency; a test for Down's syndrome), so I will be having another ultrasound sometime in the next two weeks. I hope I will be able to get some great pics then!

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Telling the Family

This weekend Keith and I drove to my hometown (in a rented Toyota Matrix — nice!) to visit my family with the intention of sharing our news. I was feeling weird about it, kinda wishing we could have waited until after my first OB appointment, but I also really wanted to tell them in person, so this weekend was it. I didn't want to just blurt out the news. My original ideas all involved an ultrasound picture, but alas we didn't get one, so I came up with this:














Last weekend at Thanksgiving, I dragged Keith outside to pose and made his brother take pictures of us. This was my favourite. I added the text and printed up a few copies, along with about 100 other family pictures. The idea was that I would casually say, "Wanna look at some pictures?" and hand over a pile, with this one stuck somewhere in the middle. My mom got it. Surprisingly, my grandma also got it, only because she immediately saw the word "baby" at the bottom. Almost everyone else was confused, looking for someone hiding in the bushes. I didn't think it was that subtle! LOL (Oh, I should add that when I printed them, the due date line got cut off. But still!)

Anyway, it was fun. Everyone was thrilled for us. Apparently my grandpa had said just the other day, when talking about having dinner with us on the weekend, "Wouldn't it be great if Jenny told us she's pregnant?" Hmm, maybe he's a little psychic! Or maybe he has some sort of intuition, because I was pregnant last time I saw him — just not ready to share yet.

Big symptom of the week: FATIGUE! I'm so sleepy. In fact, I think I'm going to have a half-hour nap right now before House starts.

First OB appointment in six days!

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