Dinner With The Uncles

Jeremy and I went to SF to have dinner with Kevin, Erin, Josh and Mia at Maverick. For whatever reason my stomach really got big yesterday so I was bustin’ a gut much to the pleasure of Kevin and the surprise of Josh and Mia. We had a lovely dinner with random proclamations from Uncle Kevin, such as:

"It’s not just 6 of us at the table!"

"There are more boys than girls here!"

"We got another Yoches in the house!!!"

We also got to run our current favorite baby names by everyone. They seemed to like the combo. I’m feeling good about it. Now, we just need to sit on it for 160 more days and see if we still like it.

When we left Kevin hugged my belly; everyone else just rubbed it. :)

What the ?!?!

Woke up to find that I have a bigger pooch than yesterday! can’t even button my pants today. What happened?! Time to bust out the Bella Band!

16 weeks, 5 days

Got a bit of a pooch starting to show.

Prenatal Visit

This one was a short one—did the usual pee in a cup, weigh in, and blood pressure check. I haven’t gained any weight yet, but I’m definitely getting bigger. My pants were noticeably tighter this morning--weird that I can be expanding, but not weighing more. He measured the length of my belly and confirmed that yes…I am getting larger. My blood pressure was a little high (not surprising given the stress that I’ve been under at work).

Next we listened to my heart beat and then the babies—racing fast. But the best part was he pointed out the kicking sound and let me listen for awhile. And although it’s too early to FEEL the kicking you could definitely hear it! After hearing just how much he was kicking I was glad I couldn’t feel anything--the little guy was definitely fired up about something!

Mother's Day

I woke up at my Mom’s house to find my first Mother’s Day present! She got me/Speck a cute little fishy-themed onesie with some cute matching pants and the most ridiculous Mr. Rogers style cardigan jacket.

Let the Shopping Begin

Now that we’ve gotten past the big nasty test and we know it’s a boy everything feels a little bit more real. I can now comfortably begin shopping for this new little person. So, I went to visit my Mom and we hit up some baby boutiques. The number of ridiculously cute (and oh so very stylish) baby clothes is sort of overwhelming. We bought a few novelty items like some adorable red shoes with little monkeys on them and some cool black shades before hitting up the more reasonable Babies R’ Us.

Whoever says there aren’t cute clothes for boy babies really hasn’t looked.

It's a BOY!!

Jeremy insisted that we call together incase the news wasn’t good. We had no clue what time the genetic counselor would be available to tell us the test results so we started calling at 8am and got voicemail.

8:15. Voicemail.

8:30. Voicemail.

8:45. Voicemail.

8:54. Phone rings! A woman answers. I tell her who I am and she immediately tells me that all is well and that our baby has all the right number of chromosomes. (I do the happy dance.)

And then she says, “It says here you don’t want to know the gender, is that correct?” I looked at Jeremy and smiled and knew that there was no way I could wait—even another 11 days (until our next doctor’s appointment). Besides that, Mother’s Day was this weekend. I thought it would be so fun to tell the Grandma’s what the gender of their fist grandbaby was ON Mother’s Day.

I blurted out, “Actually, can I put you on speaker phone so you can tell us together?” She laughed and agreed. As soon as I pushed the speakerphone she said, “Congratulations, you’re having a boy!”

I looked at Jeremy; we smiled to each other. I burst into tears and a wave of relief seemed to pass over his face. I grabbed the phone to hear more advice from the counselor regarding future possible tests but it was all a blur. I wrote down what she said, but it was just noise. I was crying the entire time.

I hung up and cried and cried and cried. Jeremy asked me if I was crying because it was a boy, which only made me cry more. “NO!!!! I’m crying because I’m so happy.” It was as if this huge weight had been lifted and suddenly the pregnancy felt more real. I was pregnant, the baby was fine and it was a boy. I suddenly had the ok to buy a pregnancy book or look at baby clothes or really contemplate names. It was all going to be just fine. :)

The Longest Night

I got out of a meeting a little after 5pm and noticed I had a voicemail from Jeremy. He said we had a message on our home phone from "a genetic counselor regarding our test results". I immediately called the number with shaking hands and a racing heart. I got voicemail. They were closed for the day! I couldn’t believe it…surely there was a number for after hour calls! I quickly called Jeremy and he said by the time he got home from work and called the number they had already closed so all he could do was leave a message.

I was so devastated. I couldn’t believe that somewhere on some piece of paper it said whether or not our baby was going to be OK and I couldn’t see it. We have to wait until the next day! It's gonna be a long night!

Boy or Girl?

To know or not to know before the birth? That has been the great question of late. The CVS test results will tell us conclusively if it’s a boy or girl. They’ll call us in 1 to 2 weeks so we need to make up our minds before the phone rings. Finding out the sex of your baby via a phone call isn’t exactly they way I imagined it would happen. I thought Jeremy and I would at least be together! I kind of had the idea that I would bring a piece of paper and an envelope to the next doctor’s visit and have him write down the sex and seal it in the envelope so we could open it later under more celebratory circumstances. This whole phone call thing is throwing me for a loop.

Regardless though, why should we find out beforehand?

Pros

• You can concentrate your naming efforts to one gender


• You don’t have to buy unisex clothes; you have more options beyond just yellow and green


• We can refer to it as him or her instead of “it”

Cons

• You don’t have the element of surprise...at birth. BUT, you still get the surprise, you just get it a lot earlier. :)

The “Broccoli Incident” or How I Learned I was Hormonal!

One of our favorite quick meals is mac n’ cheese with tons of steamed broccoli. Tonight Jeremy handled the preparation and served it up. When I got my bowl I noticed there was not a lot of broccoli left in the pot so I suggested we go ahead and divvy up the rest. I grabbed a spoon and proceded to carefully scoop out some for him and some for me. I knew I was moving a little slow, but the buggers were hard to grab on to!! Plus, I was trying to give him the ones with longer stems and save the short stems for me because that’s what we each prefer. At some point he could no longer tolerate my slow pace so he sighed heavily and left.

I called after him, “but wait, wait. I’m done now! I’ve got the last scoop!”

He was gone--already downstairs. He wasn't coming back and he wasn't even responding!!

I FLIPPED OUT.

I grabbed the rest of the broccoli and threw it my bowl and stomped downstairs. By the time I got to him I was sobbing. Uncontrollably.

In between my wails I managed to cry, “Why did you leave?! I had the rest of the broccoli all ready to be served!?”. I sat down on the couch and blubbered that kind of open mouth, snorting, deep short breaths that you expect from a 3-year old throwing a tantrum in toy store. I was a lost cause.

Jeremy was speechless and…very apologetic. About 5 minutes later I regained my composure enough to eat while Jeremy continued to apologize.

About 30 minutes later I said, “Ya, I don’t really know what just happened there.”

CVS Test Today!

Today was the big CVS test day. It’s one thing to take a test that will tell you the health of your unborn child, but it’s especially nerve-wracking to know the test will be uncomfortable and could potentially cause miscarriage. It sort of defeats the joy of being a week away from your 2nd trimester. Everything I read online about CVS said the potential for miscarriage increases with the inexperience of the tester, so make sure you go to someone who does more that 50 a year. That’s not very reassuring. What if the doctor had a sleepless night?! What if they were hung over? Or what if they were just having a bad day? There are too many what ifs. Thankfully when we arrived, we were both relieved to see the sheer magnitude of the waiting room and how full it was. This guy OBVIOUSLY did way more than 50 a year—he probably does 50 every two days!

First we went in for genetic counseling where a very nice lady explained the procedure in detail, gave us a list of possible side effects and then drew a family tree to determine if there were any genetic issues to be concerned with.

After that we went into a low-lit room. I laid on the table while Jeremy sat next to me. A nurse did an ultrasound from a million different angles and took a lot of measurements. There was a big screen TV above her head so we could watch. Much of it looked like weird undecipherable masses, but anytime she scrolled by the baby it’s image was quite clear and she would pause to show us. The first time we saw the little thing it had its arm laying alongside the head as if it was chillin’ out. It was so cute…we had to laugh. Yup, that’s our little laid back baby.

The test itself lasted only a minute, but it was extremely uncomfortable. Poor Jeremy’s seat was eye level with my belly—not exactly the bird’s eye view you’d want in a situation like this. I asked him if he was going to watch and he said, “no”. Instead we both watched the TV during the procedure, but it made me so uncomfortable I had to stop after a few seconds. Afterwards they checked the baby’s heart rate and zoomed in to it’s little head which was moving around…probably wondering what the heck was going on! I was glad to have the whole ordeal over with. Now we just have to wait 1 to 2 weeks for the results.