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In the last couple of weeks of my first trimester I was a tad on edge, just trying to hang on and hope and pray that this baby would continue to grow and develop and make it to the 12 week mark. We had been feeling pretty confident that this baby would be fine after seeing it's heartbeat in the last two ultrasounds, but I was still not going to feel completely safe until we hit the 12 week mark. I think we had started to announce our pregnancy after our 3rd ultrasound. We had wanted to wait until we knew things were looking good, I didn't want to go through what we went through when we had our first miscarriage.
Before our first miscarriage we had told lots of people, who had told people, that we were pregnant but the news of the loss didn't travel as far. For several months we would get the occasional, "How's your pregnancy going?" "How are you feeling?" or "How is the baby?" followed by confused stare while I tried to figure out if they ment Sweet Pea and hadn't realized she's not at all a baby anymore or if they were referring to the one we lost and hadn't heard about it yet. When I was faced with telling someone (that had never gone through a miscarriage) that we had lost the baby, I knew they wouldn't know what to say, I knew it would be awkward, I could imagine that they felt uncomfortable and helpless in not knowing what to say, and I never really figured out how to respond to them. Usually they would say something along the lines of, "I'm so sorry" which is a completely appropriate response, but then what was I supposed to say? "It's ok" cuz it's certainly not! Go into the whole story? Nope, not enough time, not a strong enough emotional fortitude to tell the whole thing over and over again. I usually went with something along the lines of, "Thanks, it was really rough but we're getting through it." No response really seemed appropriate.
Anyway, back to the "present", sort of. When I finally made it to the 12 week point we were so excited! We knew there was still plenty of room for things to go wrong, but we felt pretty good about it all at this point!
On to the good ol' journal entries...
April 18, 2006 12wks 5days
I had my 2nd OB visit today and baby is still going strong!! I heard the heartbeat with the doppler and it made me so happy to know we've made it this far and nothing is going to stop this baby now! His or her heartbeat was in the 150's, wonder if it is a boy or a girl. [Sweet Pea] has been really cute about that since we told her we were having another baby - she REALLY wants a sister! When Mary (my mother-in-law) asked her a couple weeks ago, "What if it's a boy?" Sweet Pea said, "Then you can keep it." Tonight at bedtime she brought me a little girl baby doll and said as she handed it to me, "A baby girl instead of a baby boy." How cute! I asked what it was for and she said, "To snuggle with in bed when you're sleeping." Could she be trying to convince me to have a girl? :o)
Finally the pregnancy we've all been waiting for! This is indeed my pregnancy with Izzy! (blog nickname also Babydoll)
May 9, 2006 15wks 5days
Things are still going well. I'm still throwing up from time to time, but at least it's not 3 times a day anymore. My belly is definately out there now! I pretty much just wear sweatpants and my stretchy black maternity pants because my maternity jeans and khakis are too tight in the legs now. Sometime soon I need to go get some new mat. clothes.
So I have a pretty bad cold now, and it's made me extra tired. The most exciting thing is that I could start feeling movement as early as 16 weeks, which is only 2 days away! With [Sweet Pea] it was more like 20 weeks before I felt her kick, but with 2nd + pregnancies you can start feeling movement between 16-18 weeks.... I can't wait!
May 24, 2006 17wks 6days
I started feeling the baby move two days ago! It sort of feels like tiny little bumps. Feeling the movement is definately my favorite part of pregnancy! I still have this cold, and when I cough sometimes I throw up. Once in a while (usually in the AM) I throw up without even coughing. So far I've gained between 3-5 lbs (probably would have been more had I not lost so much weight in the first tri and had been able to keep food down!). At my OB appt last week the heartbeat was still in the 150's.
My pregnancies with Sweet Pea and Babydoll, well all of them really up until my very last one, were pretty horrible. They were filled with all sorts of miseries, but the one part that I never got sick of was feeling them move! It is an amazing feeling. When you can't see this baby that you love, but you can feel them moving - and when they get big enough see them moving too - it just gave me such a feeling of connectedness, like I could hold it in my arms if it weren't for that layer of skin, muscle, and uteran wall. After having 3 children, I can still feel baby bumps, the memories have become so vivid that I can almost feel them again.
Coming up I'll skip some stuff, breeze through months, so I can get to the birth, finding out if it was a boy or girl, and the very unexpected feelings that came up after she was born. I'm really curious to find out if anyone else experienced those same feelings because they shocked me!
Click HERE for part 8.
