Insecure or Confident?

I was in line at Panda Express the other day getting me some delicious Kung Pao chicken. The place was totally empty except for a small group of teenagers in the corner. Since it was empty in there, it was pretty quiet, with the exception of the teens. I hear them start laughing so I look up at them…and they were all looking at me…while they were laughing. My immediate reaction is “why are they laughing at me?” Then, my secondary reaction was “they couldn't be laughing at me…I’m a cute little pregnant lady”. At that point I talked myself out of the thought that they could be laughing at me. But I still kept my head down as I moved through the line…just incase I had a “bat in the cave” or something like that. Teenagers scare me. I’ll do my very best to keep Thomas from acting like one someday!

Pregnancy Perks

Besides the obvious reason why pregnancy is so wonderful, it also comes with quite a few little perks. Most of them come from the thoughtfulness of my husband, but some come from the thoughtfulness of others.

1. Tom no longer allows me to take that long, cold walk from the store parking lot to the front door. He always drops me off at the door.
2. Pregnant Parking. Some stores actually offer parking spots that are for expecting or new mothers. Babies R Us (of course) and some Hy-Vee stores have this convenient little luxury.
3. Random strangers have told me to go ahead of them in the grocery store line. Very sweet.
4. Backrubs. Tom is usually pretty good about giving these out when they're needed.
5. Anytime anyone at work sees me carrying anything, they immediately take it out of my hands.
6. Tom gets mad at me anytime I try to take the trash out because that requires me to walk down stairs with my hands full. Not a good combination.
7. I can not count how many times a day someone will ask me how I'm feeling, how's the baby doing, when is my due date. I love talking about my pregnancy, and so many people give me the chance to do that everyday.

My First Unnecessary Hormonal Meltdown

Let me start off this story with a little background on dogs. I apologize if this part of the story makes you throw up in your mouth a little bit. It is very gross, but necessary to explain. Dogs have an anal gland in their rear ends that needs to be popped every now and then. Normally it will pop itself when the dog goes to the bathroom. But occasionally, if it does not get popped, it fills up and begins to leak out. The smell of this stuff is very foul. The only way Tommy and I can describe it is that is smells like “nickels”. It’s a very stout metal smell. A tiny drop of this stuff can contaminate an entire room. It is truly awful! Ok, you can wipe that nasty look of your face now cause the gross part is over.

Saturday night, me and the dogs decided to go to bed. Tommy was still watching TV, so we headed off to bed without him. I fall asleep. A couple hours later, I wake up to the smell of “nickels”. I was livid! I screamed at the dogs and kick them get out of my room (not knowing which one polluted the air in our room…they both got yelled at). I lock them out of the room, and I begin to change the sheets. Since the dogs had been on the bed, I assumed my blanket was where the smell was coming from. I am crying hysterically at this point. Throwing sheets and blankets down on the floor as hard as I could (disappointed cause the sound of sheets hitting the floor didn’t quite make the “mad” sound I was going for). Once the sheets were changed, the smell didn’t go away meaning that there was probably a tiny drop of this toxic stuff on the carpet somewhere. I couldn’t tell where so I doused the carpet with febreeze and then left the room to let the dogs outside. When I opened the door to let the dogs out I saw that there was about an inch of snow on the ground. For some unknown reason, this really set me off. I remember saying “what the f*%k is this all sh!t?” Now…I rarely ever throw the F word around… but apparently, the sight of snow made it necessary for me to cuss like a sailor. I had no idea it was going to snow. That’s enough reason to cuss and cry isn’t it?

Tommy had actually fallen asleep on the couch that night watching TV, so when I let the dogs in and they came running through the living room, Tommy picked his head up and sleepily says “what’s going on”? I yell “YOUR DAMN DOGS STINK”, and I stormed off to the spare bedroom to sleep. I laid there in bed and cried and cried and cried. Mad cause my dogs smelled, mad cause it snowed, mad cause Tommy wasn’t mad too, and mad cause all of these things making me mad were not rational reasons to be crying uncontrollably.

Eventually I began to calm down when I realized that my hormones had actually got the best of me. I’ve heard of this happening, but never thought I would experience it. I’m a pretty laid back chick. It takes quite a bit to get me worked up. Snow is not usually something that causes me to break.

I fell asleep and woke up again at 3:00am. At that time, I went and got my husband off the couch and then me, him, and the dogs all went to our febreeze scented room for a couple more hours of sleep.

The next morning, I had a good laugh at myself. I never knew I had crazy in me.

Bedding

Here is a picture of the bedding we picked out for baby Thomas. I wanted to post a picture because when I try to explain this to people, they get this awful look on their face and say "oh...that sounds nice". I know they all cringed as soon as I said the word "deer". I'm sure they were picturing a camouflaged room with dead deer heads on the wall. But I just fell in love with this when I saw it. Hopefully baby Thomas will too.

Baby Thomas is all hopped up on Caffeine

I am a pregnant caffeine drinker. I’ll pause while you take moment and gasp!!!!

I’ve read the books, and I know that caffeine is not highly recommended on a pregnancy diet, but neither is a box of Twinkies. I do drink caffeine, but I believe myself to be a responsible drinker. I crave Coke all day everyday. Before pregnancy, Dr. Pepper was my soda of choice but apparently baby Thomas likes Coke, so I allow myself one Coke a day. I don’t always drink one everyday, but I would say I have maybe 4 or 5 a week. And when I’m at home, I drink caffeine free Coke (which tastes just as good). So even when I do drink soda, I don’t drink that much. But every time I order myself a delicious glass of Coca-Cola Classic, Tommy says to me one of two things…”Be sure to spit out the caffeine” or ”If that boy comes out with 12 arms, I’m going to let him pop you in the head with every one of them.”. He always has a great way of putting things into perspective for me. You gotta love em’.

Long Story Short.....but still pretty long

I had quite an emotional day last Friday. I’m on my way to work in the snow. The roads are terrible so I was in no hurry. I was driving approx 10 mph for the most part of my drive because there was so much traffic. About half way to work (and an hour and half on the road) the traffic broke up a bit and I was now driving approx 25-30 mph. And then the guy in front of me slams on his brakes, which, of course, causes me to do the same. As soon as I hit my brakes, I lost complete control of my car. I’m starting to slide sideways, but then luckily (I’m not sure that is the best word to use)…the concrete median stopped me. Thankfully, I didn’t hit anyone and no one hit me, and thankfully, me and baby Thomas were ok…physically…but emotionally was a different story. I rationally ran a quick list of options through my head. 1. Call the police. 2. Call Tom. 3. Move my car from the side of the road so no one hits me. 4. Get out and look at the damage. After I was done with my list, I decided to call Tom first (who was traveling with work). As soon as I heard his voice, I broke down and all rationality went out the window. I was bawling! I couldn’t believe what I had just done and I couldn’t stop thinking about what could have been. Tom was very understanding and calming. He told me not to get out of my car, and to drive it to the next exit. I got off phone with him so I could drive…and I cried all the way to the next exit (which took about 10 minutes cause of the traffic). I parked my car in a parking lot and got out to look at the damage. It could have been much worse, but it wasn’t pretty. My bumper got pretty roughed up. There were some other minor damage to my wheel, headlight and fender. I called Tom again, and again, I couldn’t stop crying. I decided I was going to sit in that parking lot until I could drive again without crying. Tom eventually calmed me down. Once I got off the phone with him, I called work…and as soon as I started talking…I started bawling yet again. I told them I was not going to come in to work. Since I was crying so much I know I made the accident sound much worse then it actually was, but I really couldn’t control myself. Then I called my friend Kim and tell her why I wasn’t going to be at work. She got the worst of my hysteria. I couldn’t even make out words correctly when I was talking to her. I just couldn’t get out of my head “what could have happened”. My mind just kept replaying these vivid terrible thoughts. I was torturing myself. Finally, after talking with Kim, I felt calm enough to drive home. I white-knuckled the steering wheel (hands at 10 and 2 of course) all the way home. Once I got there, I fully focused on Thomas. I sat and monitored his movements just in case the accident (or my stress level) had shaken him up in any way. But he was just as bouncy as ever. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary with him, so at that point I finally started to relax a little. What could have happened, didn’t happen, so I was so very thankful. I know in a previous blog I talked about my improved driving abilities….scratch that. Now my walking and my driving require a whole lot of concentration. I’ve got some precious cargo on board and he needs me to be extra careful.

24 Weeks!

Isn't it funny that my boobs are pretty much twice the size they were before I got pregnant, but in this picture, they look non-existent compared to my belly!

My New Favorite Pass Time

I know this may not look like much, but this is truly my favorite thing to do nowadays. When the remote bounces a little bit, that is baby Thomas moving around. One time he kicked so hard the remote fell off my belly, but I can't get him to do that again.

Thank You Angie!

I wanted to say THANK YOU to my friend Angie Carter, who walked me through Target last night explaining the dos and don’ts of all the baby items on the shelves….mainly the breastfeeding section. In the beginning, that section scared the crap out of me. But last night Angie helped me tackle that section with no fear. I was armed with my registry gun and I was scanning storage bags and nipple soothers left and right. I know what works, what doesn’t, what I shouldn’t waste my money on, and what I should spend money on. Thank you very much Angie for taking the time to do that.

Weight

I was a little hesitant about blogging about this since it kind of bothered me a little. But by reading my friends blogs (Traci & Cori) over the last year or so, it has taught me to blog the truth and nothing but the truth.

We had a baby doctor appointment yesterday…

Dr. Maynard: “Well, your weight has jumped up there quite a bit since your last appointment. But you won’t get a lecture from me cause in the last 4 weeks, there have been a couple “eating” holidays, so we’ll let this one pass.”

Me: “Yeah…eating holidays…let’s blame it on that.” (I did not mention the Twinkie and Nutty Bar incident.).

From my December 15th appointment up until yesterday, I gained 10 pounds which equals a total of 20 pounds in the last 24 weeks. The 20 pound total does not bother me, it’s the fact that 10 of it was acquired in the last 4 weeks. I understand this is what happens when you get pregnant and I’m not complaining one bit. I’m willing to put myself and my body through ANYTHING to have our happy healthy baby Thomas. I know I’m going to gain weight and I’m really not that worried about it, but I realized yesterday that I’m gaining weight because I’m eating the things that I want and not eating the things that baby Thomas needs. He could care less if I eat a box of Girl Scout cookies or a bar of cream cheese. He’d probably rather I ate some celery sticks or a banana. So, I’m going to try things his way for a while. I don’t plan to deprive myself of cravings, but maybe now I can just eat one Girl Scout cookie instead of ½ the box. My goal for my next appointment is 7 pounds. Wish me luck!

Stretch Marks the Spot!

I found my first set of stretch marks on my hips near my back. They are faint, but they are there. Apparently my hips were not prepared to get so big back there, but my belly and my ass planned ahead and are stretching themselves to the limit flawlessly. Way to go belly and ass!!!! Keep up the good work!

"I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can anyone ever just be whelmed?" - Alicia Silverston, "Clueless"

I’m starting to feel a little overwhelmed with the preparations for the baby. We still have so much to do, and I just realized that next week, I will officially be in my 3rd trimester. Yikes! I know it will all fall into place like everyone says, but it is not in place right now, so I’m starting to freak out a little.

Here is a look at what goes on in my mind on a daily basis:
Pick out and order baby furniture…I’m gonna pee my pants…finish registering…where do I sign up for birthing class…quit stressing yourself out…order baby bedding…pick out a daycare…pick out a pediatrician…don’t fall down…how do I learn how to breastfeed…why did I just yell at Tommy…where did that weird dream come from…is it too soon to eat again…is it normal for my back to hurt this bad…why is it so hot in here…paint the baby room…what if Thomas turns out to be a girl…will my face ever clear up…did I remember my prenatal vitamin today…is that a stretch mark…my feet hurt…and so on…and so on…and so on…

All of this stuff makes for a pretty exhausting day. No wonder I’m in bed by 8:00.

A couple things I am more aware of now that I'm pregnant:

1. The speed limit. I believe that I have become a somewhat better driver. (Except for that minor accident I got into early on in my pregnancy...that doesn't count).
2. Intersections. For some reason, intersections make me nervous now. Every single one I go through, I have a brief and terrible thought that someone will run a red light a hit me.
3. Cussing. Before, when someone cussed, I never thought anything of it...but now, every cuss word stands out to me.
4. Other pregnant women. Tommy owned a motorcycle when we first started dating. I learned, as an unwritten rule, while you are out for a ride, you are to wave at every other motorcyclist you see, and they wave back at you. I thought this was really silly. I drive a Honda Civic.....I don't wave at everyone else who drives a Honda Civic, and they don't wave at me. But now I kind of understand. When I see a pregnant woman, I literally want to throw my hand in the air and wave it back and forth. I want to talk to her and ask her all the basic questions that I get asked. And I want to rub her belly.
5. My bellybutton. You could probably measure out a cup of water in my bellybutton right now. I'd like for it to pop out soon so I don't start losing things in it, like my keys or my cell phone.
6. Strangers. Now that I'm showing, lots of random strangers talk to me. It's actually very sweet. I think that pregnant women give off a sense of kindness and approachability. It's almost like we are wearing signs that say "ASK ME ABOUT MY BABY". I love the attention and I will jump on any chance to talk about the handsome little man growing inside me.

I've got a confession to make....

There is no easy way to say this, so I'm just going to blurt it out.............I ate an entire box of Twinkies and and entire box of Nutty Bars in a matter of 4 days. There, I said it. But in my defense, I was home on vacation with nothing to do but eat. Needless to say, Twinkies and Nutty Bars are no long allowed on the grocery list.

Oh, and for those of you who are counting, go ahead and add another mark on your "Melissa busted her ass again" list. Remember sliding down your stairs on your butt when you were little? I'm pretty sure that is exactly what it looked like to the tree trimming guy who was standing at the bottom of my stairs waiting on his check. Only I'm not little by any means, and my slippers flew off both of my feet and hit him. He was mortified....I just stood up, laughed uncomfortably and said "don't worry, I do this all the time". He asked me 100 times if I was ok, and after reassuring him that I was a pro at this whole falling down thing, he took his check and was out the door.

We're Back On-line!

I have been on vacation for the last 2 weeks so I haven’t been able to blog. We recently found out you can get this thing called “the internet” installed in your home. We had never heard of such a thing. We thought “the internet” was just a luxury you can use at work, but apparently this convenience can be brought right into your own home. I know…..sounds crazy right? But, it’s true. We hope to have it installed in the next few weeks. Man….what will they come up with next…..running water…..electricity…..who knows. :-)

The last few weeks have been great for me and baby Thomas. The first week we did what Tommy calls “The Cannonball Run”. This is where we drive to approximately 10 different houses, spread out all over Missouri, in a matter of 4 days. It is very stressful but always worth it to get to see all our family over the holidays. But once baby Thomas is old enough to understand Santa, our “cannonball run” days will be over. We plan to stay at home on Christmas day, open all our gifts and lounge around in our pj’s playing with new toys.

Thomas got lots of clothes and gifts for Christmas, which was such a nice thing to receive from our families. I didn’t expect any gifts for him at all, so it was a nice surprise. Last week I went through and washed all his tiny new clothes…which for some reason really opened my eyes. This baby has been a part of my life, my body and my thoughts for the last 22 weeks. But when I pulled his little tiny clothes out of my dryer and began folding them, he also became part of my home. It was so neat to actually see traces of a tiny little person in our home. It somehow makes me miss him even though he’s never physically been here. But his endless karate chops and sidekicks are a constant reminder that there is no need to miss him…cause he is right where he should be.