Snow Days at the perfect time!

Our school released staff, teachers and students early at 10:30 AM yesterday because of dangerous driving conditions anticipated in the afternoon and then it only got worse last night, so we had another "snow day" today, too.

These 4 snow days in January for our school could not have come at a better time for a pregnant lady in the non-glamorous sickly, tired days of her 1st trimester!   I feel thankful and, while I am indeed using some of the free time to catch up on grading and not just playing in the snow like others may think, I'm also taking advantage of these days to catch up on sleep and relax!

Today may have been a message for me to stay at home and not even get on the roads because I decided to drive to school (only 5 minutes away) this afternoon and get some work done and get rid of some cabin fever.  Although it was only about 4 miles from our apartment to school, I got stuck on one of the several hills that make up these 4 miles and ended up calling a friend plus getting help from 5 different strangers who helped to push my car out of the snow.  I hope the roads get better soon because if I can't even drive to school, an experienced driver in Wisconsin snow and only living 5 miles away, I don't know how my colleagues that live 20-40 miles away will make it tomorrow morning!

I'm looking forward to my next ultrasound appointment.  I got it moved up a little to Monday, Feb. 20th, so that I could go on President's Day when I don't have classes.  I'll be about 15 weeks.  I don't think I'll be able to know the gender by then, and I don't want to know anyway if the doctor can't be sure by then. 

Happy almost February!  Snow days are great, but I'm already looking forward to some warmer weather and a new, fresh month! 

Photo: 12 weeks, 1 day

As long as I'm feeling alright and in my work clothes and make-up, I asked David to take my "weekly picture" while I'm in the 13th week.

Even in my blouse, David said he sees the "bump," bloat or whatever you want to call it, when it gets caught and clings to my body but I don't know if he sees it just because he knows to look for it.  Even so, I might have to start being more discreet with my loose clothing now because I don't plan on telling anyone at school for at least another month!

12 weeks: 17 questions

1) How far along?  12 weeks, 0 days (according to measurements from last ultrasound

scan on Thurs. Jan. 23rd) The pictures here from the iPregnancy app on my phone say that I'm already in the 2nd trimester after having finished 11 complete weeks, but I've heard that the 2nd trimester does not officially start until after 12 or even 13 complete weeks.

2) Total weight gain? The short answer is 2 pounds.  I weighed 125 last spring before my first pregnancy, then got up to 130, and never lost those 5 pounds since then so my pre-pregnancy weight this time around was 130 pounds in November and I'm now 132 pounds.
3) Maternity clothes? Nope, but I can't zip up and button my jeans anymore, so I use a stretchy hair band to loop through the hole and around the button to keep them up!  I'm wearing a lot of leggings with long blouses, skirts or dresses to school now to cover up any potential bump popping up! 

4) Stretch marks? No, but I did buy some Palmer's Cocoa Butter formula massage lotions for stretch marks so I could use it before I even seen any!

5) Sleep? I'm still sleeping a lot. I mentally "shut down" by 8:00 every night, so I try to finish lesson plans and grading in the few hours that I am am able to work efficiently when I get home.  I go to bed now before 9:00 (fall asleep by 10:00), whereas I had always gone to bed closer to 11:30 or midnight as my pre-pregnant self.

6) Best moment this week? Definitely the 11 week, 4 day ultrasound appointment on Thursday, 1/23!  It was the first time that David had come with me to the doctor for this pregnancy. This was also the first time that we saw the little guy/girl moving around, and it had a strong heart beat of 166 bpm!

7) Miss Anything? I miss running and working out in general. I'm so exhausted every day from working with teenagers 8-4 that I only have enough energy left in the day to plan for the next at school.  I can't even imagine coaching track & field for another 2-3 hours every day for 4 more months like I've done in the past 6 years. I'm hoping to at least start walking or biking in the next few weeks when I feel less nauseous and gain more energy. My doctor even got nervous when I mentioned that I'm trying to get SOME exercise by walking Hank outside every day.  She asked how much Hank weighed, and when I said 110 pounds, she said that David should definitely be holding onto the leash and I can walk alongside Hank from now on.

8) Movement? I definitely don't FEEL anything, but we SAW the movement on the ultrasound machine last Thursday.

9) Food cravings? Watermelon, pineapple, orange juice, spaghetti and meat sauce, hamburgers, Starburst candies, Jimmy John's sub sandwiches, chicken noodle soup, Triscuit crackers and cheese and summer sausage

10) Anything making you queasy or sick? Salad and all vegetables (unfortunately), coffee

11) Gender? No, we don't know yet.  I can be patient and wait until August when "it" comes out to know, but it wouldn't be fun to look away from the screen at all our future ultrasound appointments. David definitely wants to find out ASAP. When the doctor knows for sure, I want her to put the gender on a paper in a sealed envelope, so I can give it to a local baker and have our parents or grandmothers cut open the "gender reveal" cake to find out first! I've heard you can find out gender anywhere between 15 weeks and 20 weeks, but at 18-20 weeks it can be confirmed.

12) Labor Signs? No, no, no, and I hope not for a while.

13) Symptoms? Lots of saliva in my mouth and still spitting in my "spittoon" at night, often light-headed so I try to snack a lot, haven't vomited in more than a week, but I get the worst "morning sickness" at night and just feel awful with a headache and feel nauseous but can't fall asleep even with my night-time anti-nauseau pill

14) Belly Button in or out? Absolutely in

15) Wedding rings on or off? Yep, still on

16) Happy or Moody? Hmmm, I'm doing a good job at masking my symptoms during the day at school, but David can tell you that I have been whiny at night sometimes when I'm not feeling well. I yelled at him in the living room from where I was in the bedroom to come see me, but he didn't hear me, so I needed to call him on his cell phone twice to "attend" to me. ;)

17) Looking forward to what? February 14th weekend, which is our "winter break" weekend for school with a 4-day weekend, when I will hopefully see my doctor for my 14.5 week appointment, and when my mom and Grandma Patsy come to Knoxville to visit!  It will also be when I may finally feel confident and it will be come "real" that this kid is really growing strongly inside of me!

Ultrasound Pic Comparisons

Below are the ultrasound pictures that we have so far from this pregnancy to see how he/she is growing.  

Dec. 13th (6 weeks measurement)

Dec. 20th (6 weeks, 4 days measurement)

Dec. 31st (7 weeks, 6 days measurement)

 

Jan. 23rd (11 weeks, 4 days measurement)

Due date (according to measurements on Jan. 23rd): 

Aug. 10th, 2014

New due date! Aug. 10, 2014

It's 10:45 PM and I'm SUPER tired, so I'm going to make this post short... but today was a GREAT day!

Instead of measuring at 11 weeks and 1 day like I thought it would based on the previous ultrasound measurements, the little fetus measured a little bit ahead at 11 weeks and 4 days so I was super pumped for that!

I'll write more this weekend... I'm pooped and I gotta get in bed before Hank takes my sleeping spot.

Here's the good stuff for now!

10 weeks 6 days

Well, it's almost the 11-week mark, and I have not written anything recently, so I stopped lesson planning early so that I could write something tonight.  I promise, promise, PROMISE that I will write more often in the 2nd trimester... I have just been feeling so light-headed, weak and tired in these last few weeks that I only have a small window of a few hours to do some work after school to prepare for the next school day before I just shut down physically by 7:30 or 8:00 every night.  I was feeling so bad last night (vomited in the morning and evening) that I called in a for a sub for my classes today, and I hardly ever call in sick.  The school secretary ended up asking David to sub for my classes, so although it would've been nice to have him at home to give me soup, a back massage and take Hank out for me, it was a win-win situation so I could easily give him my plans and he could make a few extra bucks, too!

There are so many things I could've written about in these past two weeks, and every time I think of something, David says, "That's definitely something you need to put on the blog!"  I'll write more often when I feel better.  Speaking of feeling better soon, I actually feel very relieved and feel great mentally if I am feeling so bad now because it just gives me more faith that things are "working" in my body and the pregnancy is going well.  Last spring, David and I specifically remember a point in my first trimester when my symptoms all of a sudden disappeared, and we're guessing that's when the baby died.

Here are a few details from our experience with my changing body in the last two weeks:

*I definitely have a "super sniffer" like Hank now!  My sense of smell is so strong!  If there's gross-smelling left-over food or empty containers in the garbage, I can smell it easily and have needed to take out the garbage to our apartment's garbage dump even if the bag wasn't completely full because it made me so nauseous.  Unfortunately, I can also smell the nasty farts by David and Hanky, too, right away.

*I have so much saliva in my mouth that I am constantly spitting out the excess saliva (in the most delicate way that a girl can) in the sink or out on walks with Hank or in my small garbage can at school when there are no students in my room.  You'll see in one of the photos below that I even have a large plastic container next to my bed that I originally kept there for any emergency vomiting situations, but David likes to call it my "spittoon" because that's why I have been using it for when I'm in bed.  I know, gross, but I feel like my tongue is drowning in my mouth with all that saliva!

*I had originally volunteered in December to chaperone the winter formal dance held by my school set for Saturday, January 11th.  However, when that Saturday came around and I started walking around in my high heels in the overly-heated dance room (full of students but also very heated because we had just returned to school that week after 2 "ice days" so everyone was still feeling the need to crank up the heat), I started to feel very light-headed.  I had already vomited that morning, but wanted to try to come because I knew there weren't a lot of chaperones signed up. Luckily, I was having a conversation with the school nurse, who was also chaperoning, when I started feeling faint and she knew about my two previous miscarriages, so I could whisper into her ear why I was feeling the way I was at that moment, and she immediately brought me downstairs of the country club where the dance was to let me rest and get blood back to my head.  I eventually went home early, and was thankful that I did not faint and cause a scene in front of my colleagues and students nor hurt myself. I have fainted a dozen times in my life, and once I cracked my two front teeth (which my dentist points out every time I see her but it's not obvious in public).  I can usually feel my body heat up in a sweat and my head feel light when I am about to faint like I've done in the past.

*Things that turn me off now: ALL vegetables, salads, coffee, chocolate, mint gum, mint toothpaste (which makes me dread brushing my teeth every day)

*Things that I feel comfortable eating or sound appealing to me: fruit (apples, grapes, pineapple, oranges), spaghetti and meatballs, white toast and butter, cheese and crackers, hamburger meat, Starburst candy, soup

In the meantime, David and I anxiously await our next ultrasound appointment on Thursday morning, January 23rd.  It will be the first appointment that we both come together during this 3rd pregnancy of this year, and I should measure about 11 weeks, 1 day.  We'll see if the due date changes at all based on new measurements Thursday.  Since I've been feeling so light-headed, have been vomiting and my stomach is even showing a little bloat lately, and all of this more so than last spring with my 1st pregnancy, we're feeling optimistic that this little kid is going to stick this time!

Speaking of bloat... I hesitated to take any "belly pictures" at this early in the game, but David made a good point that I need to start "somewhere in the beginning" to show progress from the beginning to the end.  First, there's "not much" there and I've heard that you can't even call it a bump, but rather just a bloated stomach right now.  Second, although I feel much more confident with the pregnancy this time around, I'm still a little anxious about it all until I have some good pictures and good baby kicks in March and April.

Soooooo, below are a few 10-week photos from two different school days last week when I felt well enough to stand up and was dressed appropriately in my school clothes.  :-)

Much-needed "Snow Days"!!!

The effects of the "polar vortex" led to incredibly cold temperatures everywhere in the country, including down here in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Some people laughed that my school in the Southwestern part of the U.S.A. called off classes on both Monday and today, when we were supposed to start the 2nd semester after a 2-week winter break.

However, we had some heavy rain followed by the dip in temperature on Sunday night, so we had ice everywhere Monday through Tuesday, without the plows and other resources of the North to make the roads good to drive on again, so we rightfully had classes called off, just as the schools in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois did.

And, no, I didn't JUST sleep these past two days as a teacher without school.  I had to alter my lesson plans and revise homework assignments and test/project calendars to accommodate our new schedule minus these two days of the 2nd semester.

ANYWAY, that being said, I was incredibly thankful to have an extra two days living and "working" at home because I am still feeling very light-headed and nauseous as I enter my 9th week of pregnancy tomorrow.  I am getting a little nervous about returning to school tomorrow and moving around more than I have been these past two weeks as I begin teaching in the classroom and interacting with high school students.  I have a bucket under my desk, an "escape plan" toward a toilet if I have a little extra time to run outside of my classroom and will bring plenty of saltines and hard candy to put in my desk drawers to help me survive each day until February 1st, which marks the end of my 1st semester.

My doctor gave me some day time anti-nauseau pills and some pills that will also make me sleep soundly in the evening.  The anti-nauseau night pills are called Promethazine.  They day-time ones are called Ondansetron (which is generic for Zofran), and they are "melt-in-your-mouth" tablets that taste like cherry.  They've been helping, and I will probably need a refill before I see my doctor at my 11 week appointment on Thursday, January 23rd.

So, here it goes… wish me luck as I return to school during this not so glamorous period in my pregnancy.  Don't get me wrong… The worse that the morning sickness is, the better I feel mentally about a strong baby growing rapidly inside of me.  I'm just hoping to feel well enough to have an enjoyable month of school and keep all this a secret from my students (who are more observant that I might think) for as long as possible!

Happy 2014 and Happy 9 weeks for me tomorrow!  Getting closer to the end of 12 weeks!

IHOP mishap!

Mmmm!  So, I learned something valuable today in my early stages of pregnancy… Make sure that you know where to find the bathroom in the restaurant if you're dining out!  David and I went out for breakfast with Ryan and his girlfriend, Amanda, to the IHOP restaurant in West Knoxville.  I had already enjoyed my scrambled eggs, hash browns and crispy bacon and had just started my strawberry pancakes.  I was hungry and probably would've eaten it all…until I started feeling like all this delicious food would not stay in my stomach for much longer.  Little did I know that our restaurant booth was right next to the bathroom.  As I said "I'm feeling sick" to David and took off in the other direction of the restaurant, David, Ryan and Amanda tried to yell to me, "Sam, the bathroom is over here!" and so I turned around as fast as I could, now in the correct direction toward the toilets.  With my hand over my mouth and some of "it" escaping from me already, I pushed open the ladies' door and stuck my face in the toilet to get virtually all of it into the bowl, but some workers ended up needing to clean the stuff that fell on the run to the bathroom.  And I want to especially thank Amanda for following me into the restroom and cleaning up the little that was left on my jacket and my shirt.  Ryan let me wear his jacket until we reached the mall where I bought a new shirt and threw my one with vomit in the trash.

So, today was another milestone: my 2nd puking of my pregnancy for a girl who NEVER pukes in her life when sick from a cold, hangovers or anything!  It was such a good breakfast, too, so I hated to see it all go to waste in the toilet.

To finish this post with a quote from my witty husband, David: "Not IHOP… more like IPUKE."