Our House

Okay, so half our house. I've been promising these photos for more than a year! I took these back in November just before I changed the decor to Christmas. I meant to post them then but it just never happened. Here is the downstairs:



Kitchen



Living Room- the cut-out above the couch looks into the kitchen



Dining Room- opposite the living room. The front door just just to the right.

I'll try and post upstairs pictures soon!

Christmas 2009

The ridiculously late posting of these photos makes me so embarrassed I almost don't want to post them... but here we go. We spent Christmas in NM with my family. Nearly two weeks of relaxation and good company. We had a great time. Here are a few pictures of Christmas morning.













And a couple more from that trip:



Bathtime fun with Aunt N.



She's feeling a need for speed



The End of 2009.

Joy

My favorite thing about pregnancy is feeling the baby move. In fact, it was the one thing I really missed when Zoe was born. It was so awesome to meet her and hold her and kiss her cheeks, but I really missed feeling her move. I'm happy to report that as of yesterday I can feel, not just flutters, but little tiny baby kicks from baby #2. So amazing!

P.S. I know my posts have been about pregnancy a lot lately. I am working on a couple other things to come soon.

Long Weekend

Friday morning found me early as Love was bustling around our room getting ready to leave for breakfast before work. He kissed me goodbye and I got up to go to the bathroom. Once there I realized I was having vaginal bleeding and rushed downstairs to catch him before he left. With shaking hands I called the doctor on call and reached the answering service who said they would page him. I crawled into bed next to Love to wait for a call back as alternating thoughts of hope and graphic miscarriage played in my head. He held my hand but we said nothing, afraid of our emotions...afraid to speculate. After about 40 minutes of this, I decided I couldn't just let those thoughts have me and went and took a shower. After an hour passed by I called the doctor back to discover that it was now my doctor on call and the other doctor hadn't bothered to call me back. They paged my doctor and he called me in two minutes. My only hopeful sign was that I didn't have any cramping so my doctor told me to come in right when they opened and they would do an ultrasound to check on the baby. We got Zoe up and got out the door saying little to each other, but trying to act normal for her sake. My blessed in-laws were called and asked if they would watch Zoe and of course they said they would. What would we do without them?

We got to the hospital and sat for a short while in the waiting room until they called us back. They took us straight to the ultrasound room and I was instructed to lay on the table. I tried to calm my heart as I braced myself for bad news. When the technician found the baby it was really still, which was alarming. The last time I saw that little one it looked like a peanut. Now it looked like a baby and it wasn't moving. Suddenly the baby kicked just as the tech pointed to the heartbeat. She turned on the sound and we heard the most beautiful, quick little heartbeat. Tears sprang to my eyes as I reached for Love's hand and saw that he was crying too. She checked the baby's length and it was right where it should be. Feeling relieved we let her explore to find the source of the bleeding as we watched our baby kicking around. She discovered a small separation of the placenta from the uterus and explained that was the source of the bleeding. Surprisingly this is fairly common, and we were told our separation was tiny. We were given a couple pictures and told to go to the waiting room until my doctor could speak with us. The doctor confirmed what the nurse said, told me to take it easy for a few days and it should heal on it's own. Also, not to do anything strenuous for a week to ten days. We left feeling so much lighter than we did as we walked in. I walked in thinking it was the end of a pregnancy and walked out relieved and happy to have caught a glimpse of the baby growing inside of me. I spent the rest of the day resting at my in-laws' home and the rest of the weekend taking it easy as Love took charge of Zoe and the house and let me rest.

I'm feeling much better today, though I've been reminded just how fragile life can be...and what a miracle each child is in our lives. I'm hopeful that we'll get through this pregnancy and deliver a healthy baby in six months. I keep praying we will, anyway.

The Coveted Coke With Lime

Today marks 14 weeks into this pregnancy and I woke up feeling the worst I have in weeks. This doesn't bode well for the supposed break from nausea in the second trimester. Still, I will hold out hope. I had to take the evil glucose test- where they make you drink the orange drink- at my last appointment. It made me feel like I was on speed (not that I really know what being on speed feels like but I would imagine it would be something like that). I didn't have that feeling when I took the test with Zoe so I'm not sure what that means. I haven't heard back yet on the result. I'm pretty much counting on having gestational diabetes again though. I figure if it turns out that I don't have it, I'll be happy about it of course, but if I do, then I expected it so no big deal. I will admit to indulging in several guilty pleasures this week just in case I have to do without them for several months. I was thinking the other day about this thought I used to have as a young girl. I'd see these women in hospital gowns sitting outside the women's center in wheelchairs smoking and I'd think to myself, "Why, after giving it up for so many months, would they go right back to it?" I spent a few years as a smoker- which of course makes me a hypocrite to my younger self- and I still didn't understand it. It wasn't until I was pregnant with Zoe and having to deal with gestational diabetes that it came to me. Every time I had to say no to that roll, the sweet cream ice cream with raspberries, one too many grapes, or the decadent chocolate cake, I would say to myself, "Just a few more weeks and you can have it back." At the time, Coke with lime was my ambrosia- if you will- and my mantra was, "This sucks but as soon as this baby comes I'm going to have a giant Coke with lime!" Those women probably spent their whole pregnancy avoiding cigarettes by telling themselves, "As soon as the baby comes you can have one." It's sad, really, but it does get you through.

Now, being on a diabetes diet did wonders for my weight gain. I lost all of my pregnancy weight within 10 days of Zoe's birth. I didn't feel weighed down by the food I ate, I didn't have problems with constipation, upset stomach, or many of those common pregnancy symptoms while on that diet, but it was hard! I had to plan every meal. I had to know how many carbs was in everything I ate. I could only have a specific amount of carbs for each meal and each snack. I had to know that there was about 1 gram of carbs per grape. Worse, when I was hungry I wanted to eat "right now" not have to prepare something. Not only was the planning and the patience hard, but it was rough on our wallet. Protein and produce is much more expensive than boxed snacks and pasta.

Then came the time when dieting and "exercising" wasn't enough to keep my sugar levels in check and they made me start taking insulin. I am afraid of needles and every day I had to "pinch an inch" on my sides and inject myself with insulin. I cried the day they told me, not just because of the needles, but because I felt I had failed. The whole time I was dealing with diabetes I was thinking, "I'm not really that out of shape, I'm not overweight, I'm not a health-nut but I watch my portions and I don't eat a ton of junk food, why am I even dealing with this?" I felt I had failed my body by not taking care of it the way I was supposed to. I swore that I would live healthier going forward.

When it was all over I did keep up with many of the principles of the diabetes diet...but as Zoe had gotten older and my life has become more busy, I have become lazy. It's so much easier to eat a hot dog with her than try to make myself a salad (not that she actually eats a lot of hot dogs...she probably has a much more balanced diet than I do). I'm home a lot more now so I'll get hungry and get a snack. I live in the middle of nowhere and, since winter hit, I haven't really done much in the way of exercise. As we speak, I'm staring gestational diabetes in the face and eating a dove chocolate. Apparently I have learned nothing. Because no matter what, I love sweets, I like carbs, and yes I try to balance them with proteins and fresh veggies, but I fail a lot of the time. I'm sorry, but Coke with lime is delicious! If I have gestational diabetes again, I will certainly do everything I can to keep myself and this baby healthy...just like I did with Zoe. I may have an opportunity to use a treadmill soon, and I bought a pregnancy yoga video...took me longer than I planned. I have the desire to be more healthy. If I can't escape gestational diabetes this time, maybe I can become more healthy and beat it next time...or at least avoid getting type 2 diabetes later in life. Maybe this time some habits will stick. I hope they do.