So what’s up with this pregnancy?

Week 22. According to some sources, we’d be in the NICU range right now. Since we have some great regular hospitals with NICUs and a magnificent children’s hospital really close by, it makes me feel a little less freaked out. Although we’re shooting for 40 weeks (or at least full term, which is 37)–at least there’s the knowledge that there are good doctors close by.

So what’s the real scoop? I’ll lay it out for you: Ideally, we’d like this baby to be born somewhere between August 1st and August 28th. That would hit the ‘full term’ mark– and assure that my doctor is back from vacation–and keep me UNDER 41 weeks. Since I want to try and VBAC–and avoid another surgery, the doctor won’t induce me (choir of angels sings!)– however, she will schedule surgery for 41 weeks if I don’t go into labor by then–otherwise the baby will likely be too big and add too many risks for me. One of my nieces has an August 26th birthday, would be kind of neat to deliver on that day — when we called and told her, and she thought that was the best early birthday present. Lol. You’d have to be in our family to appreciate it — my brother and his step daughter share a birthday, my mom and SIL share a birthday, and my husband and dad are only a day apart (and share one 3/4 years– leap year, you know!).

Other than that, my expectations are pretty low–I mailed in a flyer to get more information about cord blood storage– we wanted to do that with Keeley, but in all the confusion of her birth, it wasn’t possible. This is a free service and is akin to organ donation, it’s available to anyone, worldwide. We still need to tour hospitals and decide if we want to go back to the hospital we delivered her at, or another one my doctor attends. Quite frankly, going back to the same one spooks me out, just, too many bad memories, but if it’s the best alternative, that’s what we’ll do.

I am not sure what else to convey, we aren’t finding out the sex, so it’s a surprise. Matt called it last time, but refuses to make one, as of yet anyone, right now. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be wrong? Lol. There have been a couple of people already asking if it will be a boy– as if that would make our family ‘complete’, and another girl wouldn’t. Guess who that annoys? Yeah, me. I love Keeley. Would I love a boy? Sure. Another girl, of course! After all, we DO have all those pink clothes! Although, in fairness, we do have plenty of gender neutral clothes, too, and on purpose! The first 6 months or so we have mostly yellow and green clothes from our baby showers. Awesome! Since this baby is also ‘near’ Christmas, we can ask for assorted clothing in more gender neutral or boy designs (if we need it) for the baby for Christmas in 6-12 month sizes, perfect timing! Then hopefully we’d be able to squeak by until birthday time again! We already have plenty of toys, so I’m confident that we’ll be set at least for the first year.

I plan on breastfeeding again, and I can tell that my body is already making the prep. Stuff that weird-ed me out the first time I understand as natural and no big deal. I’m still trying to convey breastfeeding to Keeley, the only real ‘baby’ themed books we have only show bottles. We always said there was ‘milk’ in the bottle and nothing more than that. As it is, I found a book that discussed ‘will you still love me when the baby (insert animal here) comes?’ asked by various tiny animals (kitten, bunny, mouse, etc)– and ends with a little boy and his obviously pregnant mother and asking if the big kid would still be loved or not when the new baby comes. It took a few weeks, but I managed to get through it without crying. Since it was borrowed from the library, I sent it back, but I may need to find some similar ones as well. I’ve been reading pregnancy themed books as well. History and background, and even one now about IVF that was botched when the parents got pregnant with someone else’s eggs– and carried the baby to term and gave it up. I only have about 40 pages or so left. It’s interesting.

Cloth diapers? Of course. Was there any doubt? In fact, we plan on cloth diapering from day 1, diaper 1, if we can manage it. Why spend money we don’t have to? Our initial plan was to use some of our ‘credits’ that I’d gotten from doing reviews or writing articles. One of them got cancelled– the company couldn’t meet their demand–they BEGGED people to ‘bank’ their credits and not turn them in. Suckers, like me, thought it would be fine to do so, let the company get on their feet, etc.– yeah, so the $65 worth of free diapers I should have gotten is now $0– they offered a coupon to us, but that’s not quite the same. I do have some credits at other places, in fact, Cotton Babies surprised us with $25 worth of credits– notice their information on my sidebar? At Christmas time– right when we found out we were pregnant–just for having the information listed there. Awesome. At the same time, they had decided to discontinue their all in one (similar to disposable, with no ‘extra’ work to it) diapers for $9.95 apiece! Since they are a local company and offer free base shipping, I ended up with THREE teeny diapers for around $5! These were our ‘gateway drug’ diaper– so easy to use, and perfect for nighttime changes where you can barely get your eyes open! I only had 3 to begin with, so now I have SIX! This means I can have half a day with really easy changes if I want! Since I HAVE been writing articles for other places–I do have some credits. If you were following along with my previous blog, you’ll realize that Keeley was only part-time cloth diapered as an infant–she was 3 months old or so by the time she was into CD’s full time. This means that we DO need to add to our ‘stash’ (sounds so addictive doesn’t it?) — in order to CD the new baby full time from birth. Yes, we even plan on taking them to the hospital with us. As of now, we have 20 diapers that would fit a small baby. That would probably get us to around 1.5 days –but then we’d need to wash. Depending on how the new baby is born, and how long we are there, that might get us back home, or Matt might need to take them home to wash them. No biggie. As far as washing them goes, we got our water softener (cleaning) system installed in perfect time! We never had issues with Keeley’s diapers until we moved here into desperately hard water territory. Therefore, the soap was spending all its time bonding to the minerals in the water and not washing out the urine well. We had some minor rash problems due to this–but that is all resolved now, and I’m SO grateful!

Keeley is in her big kid bed and loves it! We need to get her moved upstairs, though. That means the upstairs needs finished. We want her new room to be special and not make her feel shunted out of her room just because the baby is coming. Then we need to paint the nursery and such. Let’s face it, the whole downstairs of the house needs painted, minus the laundry room. Decorations, furniture, it all needs figured out. I’m getting a bit anxious about all of that, but there’s not much I can do until the room is prepared, so I’m hanging in there.

I’m more concerned about staying healthy. I’m thinking we might FINALLY be turning a corner in the ‘illness’ category. With Keeley it lasted until 20 weeks. I went over that this time. It’s only been the last couple of days that I haven’t felt green on an every few hours basis. I still need to eat a little bit every couple of hours or I feel starved. That’s no fun. On the other hand, I weighed 159 post Christmas (cookies, food, whatever). I lost back down to 155 in the first few trimester, and then rebounded. I’m now up to about 161.5– that’s according to our home scale. The doctor’s office says more than that, but they agree on the general numbers, so overall, that’s only 2.5 pounds–and it’s all baby, you can see how rounded out I am. The baby itself is a pound by now. At my ultrasound at the end of last month, it was 10 ounces, which is in the 50th%ile range. Generally speaking, we should be a 1 lb or 1.5 lb baby by now.  Now I’m trying to only eat when I’m hungry or NEED to and not have too many extras, but I did make cupcakes yesterday. Matt took half of them to work, so we just have a few in the house, and Keeley will have them, as well as Matt, too, so there’s not much chance for me to cram my face full! Lol! Veggies have not sounded good at all, but I’ve stuffed them down when I remembered to cook them. Keeley eats fruit almost every day, so I try and eat what she is, or some other type of fruit once or twice a day- if not then I drink juice, too. Once again, milk sounds horrid. Meat smells terrible when cooking. I was off of the smell of coffee and tea for quite a while, but it seems okay as of late. I couldn’t even drink hot chocolate this winter. Bummer. I’m still pretty much at the ‘nothing sounds good’ stage. I eat whatever’s available that doesn’t turn my stomach.

I’m finally getting some kicks. First it was flutters or popcorn pops and now it’s a good healthy ‘whap’. Unfortunately, it’s also pretty low so most people can’t get a good feel on it–or they’d be down my pants, literally. Matt has only felt one or two. That being said, the baby only kicks a lot when I’m hunched over– pressing down I guess, or laying in bed. By then, Matt is sacked out– and doesn’t seem interested in waking up to feel the baby. For him, it seems to be a ‘been there, done that’ sort of pregnancy. Not that he isn’t excited in his own way, but it’s definitely not the same as with Keeley when he wanted nothing more than to put his hands on my belly just to feel that kick. Now, Keeley’s around, so, he plays with her and, well, baby and I are kind of chopped liver. Not that he’s not busy with work and just wants to relax when he comes home, or work on outside stuff, but it’s easy to feel like you’re just an incubator and housekeeper sometimes.

Life is pretty normal, otherwise. I’m glad to be having another baby. The movement really makes me feel connected, and it will hopefully be easier this time around, being more prepared and having some experience now. We know what we DO want and what we DON’T want. The rest is logistics.