Artoo's first trimester

To end my May blogfest, here's the breakdown of little Artoo's first trimester (and a bit beyond).  Future posts will have more pictures.  I will warn that this poor second child will likely not get weekly updates like Gabby did.  He's just going to have to get over it.  I'm going to aim for once a month.

We started trying to get pregnant in August, but were unsuccessful until February.  I had actually started tracking my ovulation, because the guesswork was driving me crazy.  It wasn't hard--you have to take your temperature every morning upon wake-up and enter the data into a tracking program (I used Fertility Friend).  A rise in progesterone after ovulation causing your temperature to rise, so a sustained temperature increase means you've ovulated. I also used ovulation predictor kits (OPKs) to track the surge in luetinizing hormone (LH) that happens right before ovulation.  We were finally successful!

The next part is basically just notes I made for each week of pregnancy.  It helped to keep me from feeling too overwhelmed when I was ready to tell everyone!

Week by week:

Week 4:  + HPT on Wednesday, March 5; didn't really believe it until Friday, March 7.  Symptoms:  very upset stomach/intestines (probably the hormones--I'm hungry, but pay for it when I eat), insomnia (excitement).  Made doctor's appointment for April!

Week 5:  Symptoms: still very upset intestines, exhaustion that hits around Gabby's bedtime, sore boobs.   Lines on HPT got darker.

Week 6:  Still upset intestines, and now some nausea.  No vomiting, thank goodness!  Boobs sore and definitely getting bigger, very tired, lots of allergies (but that has nothing to do with baby). 

Week 7:  More of the same symptoms.  Met with prenatal nurse this week, up 3 lbs; got all literature and made first OB appointment!

Week 8:  Terrible nausea one day--like had to go back to bed and rest.  Thank goodness it was a Sunday.  Sore boobs still--Gabby seems to always find them with her elbow nowadays.  First OB appointment.  Saw the heartbeat!  And little one is measuring right on time for a due date of November 15.  That's what Fertility Friend predicted by my ovulation date, so that was pretty cool.  Got a referral for the non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) and set appointment for May 1.  Nausea subsided later in week.

Week 9:  Nausea seems to be gone, now I'm eating everything in sight.  Otherwise, boobs are still sore, and I still have a rumbly tummy (but at least now it doesn't hurt anymore).  Spring break this week, and Brian took Thursday off so we could eat lunch at Bouchon (fancy French place) and shop in Napa!  I do miss wine.

Week 10:  Nausea is back, and it's affecting my whole GI.  Boobs are sore; allergies are terrible.  Starting to be very uncomfortable in all of my jeans (especially in the evenings), which means bump is growing.  Got my summer hours down to labs only, so I'm much happier about that (I was doing lab-lecture-lab like last summer, but that would have been 6 straight hours on my feet.  I don't think so.).  We have the NIPT on Thursday, and I can't wait to see the baby again!

Week 11:  Great appointment for ultrasound!  The nasal bone was definitely there, and the nuchal fold measured 1.45 mm (anything under 3.00 mm is good).  Both are markers for trisomies if absent/too big, so great news.  This one moved a little more than Gabby did during her NT scan!  Got my blood drawn for the NIPT (Harmony is the brand they use), and should have results in a couple of weeks.  That's when I go public, although my family, friends here in Sac, and work already know.  Symptoms, still gurgles in the intestines and sore boobs.  Otherwise, all is well.

Week 12:  Still waiting on Harmony results.  Boobs still sore, appetite is back, though.  Entering the magical second trimester, when all is right with the world.

Week 13:  Harmony results back, no Trisomy 13, 18 or 21!  And it's a boy!!  What do I do with a boy?  We're both really excited to have one of each, but would have been equally excited to have 2 girls.  It's really bothering me that people assume we were "trying" for one of each, or when they look at Brian and say "I bet you're happy" when they find out it's a boy.  We were only ever going to have 2, and the sex of this one wasn't going to affect that decision one way or the other!  It makes me wonder what they would say if this one were a girl--"better luck next time" "so sorry"???

Week 14:  Trip to Arizona!  I way overdid it and often had cramps and a backache at night.  They disappeared by the morning and were never terrible (and no bleeding at all), but I wasn't a pleasant person during them!  Congestion pretty bad (I realized it was a cold when Brian started the same thing), which made sleeping impossible (especially since Brian was up coughing a lot).  Gabby was not sleeping well either.  At any rate, I'm exhausted!  Second trimester seems to be smoother overall, though.  At least the nausea is gone, and my boobs are less sore.  I think he's having a growth spurt, though, since I'm now an eating machine.  Best of all, I've felt him move!  It's only when I'm sitting still (mostly in the evenings), and it feels like popcorn popping in there.  Very cool!

The inevitable pregnancy comparison:
I looked back at Gabby's first trimester, and it's pretty obvious that these are very different pregnancies!  With Gabby I had some GI discomfort, but never any nausea, and even the discomfort went away fairly quickly.  Artoo gave me some days of really wicked nausea that nothing but rest helped.  Gabby also decided fairly quickly that I wasn't going to eat some of my favorite things (lamb and ranch dressing come to mind), but Artoo not only doesn't seem to care what I eat, he demands that I add more types of food!  I've been really into meat, particularly salted meats (like bacon and salami), which I would never touch before getting pregnant.  I'm also eating more fatty foods than before (but trying to keep a handle on it, since I don't want to gain too much weight).  At the airport, I even finished off Gabby's macaroni and cheese with ham in it (if you know me, you know I hate all mac and cheese except Kraft, so this is big news)!  With Gabby, I was more into spicy foods and berries.  Berries don't even sound good to me at all now!  I am still the same emotional basket case that I was when I was pregnant with Gabby.

Someone has some news

Our second child, little Artoo Romo (Romo 2--R2--Artoo--Star Wars!) is due on November 15, 2014!!  More details to follow.

Arizona trip

We took a trip to Arizona the week after my spring class ended.  We had fun, but there were some challenges that we had to overcome!

The first day there (a Tuesday), we did the Grand Canyon.  I'd been when I was in grad school (and when I was 3), but Brian never had.  We ended up having a good day.

It didn't start out as a good day, though!  Gabby acted like a 2 year old for the first hour there.

It is a spectacular sight, though.

Too bad I couldn't enjoy it at first.

She finally agreed to eat something.  That really helped a lot.

Slight view of the Colorado River.  You really need to see it in person if you haven't.

Friends again.

I did make Brian give me the camera so there was photographic evidence that he was there with us!

After we spent the day at the Grand Canyon, we made the 2 hour drive to Flagstaff (Gabby thankfully slept the whole way).  It was nice when we got there, but overnight a fire broke out about 15 miles away from the city.  The whole next day looked like this:

That's not a volcano

This was in the afternoon--in the morning, the smoke/ash were at ground level, and breathing was impossible.

We decided pretty quickly that we couldn't stay in Flagstaff.  Brian was already fighting a cold, and the ash was making his breathing (and coughing) worse.  Meanwhile, I am very much allergic to smoke.  We tried to go to the Lowell Observatory during the day, but the smoke was too bad for them to pull out the telescopes.   So after lunch, we went back to the hotel and arranged to check out the next day (Thursday--2 days early).  We decided to spend the rest of the trip in Phoenix, far away from the fire!  I will say that even though our plans were disrupted, we were still very lucky--we weren't evacuated and we didn't lose any of our belongings!

On Thursday, we headed out for Phoenix.  We made a couple of stops to break up the drive.  The first was Meteor Crater, about 40 miles from Flagstaff.  It's the first confirmed site of a meteor impact and the gold standard for all other impact craters.  We space nerds loved it!  Gabby was super well-behaved; she even made it through the movie (about 10 minutes) and when it was over asked for more!  We decided to do the hour-long rim tour with her as well, and she was a trooper.  The constant snacking probably helped!

Meteor Crater

There was quite a bit of carrying--not because she was tired, but because she was slow!

Her favorite part was looking at the rocks and playing in the dirt.

She was greatly amused by the wind (43 mph gusts!)

There's the snacking!

Here we are "at the bottom."  Really just a mock-up inside the museum.  Notice the 2 year old nose-picking stage we're in.  It was hard to get a shot in which she didn't have her finger up there!  And, yes, that's a baby bump.

We ate lunch at Meteor Crater, and then took a drive during Gabby's nap to Montezuma's Castle, a prehistoric Native American site between Flagstaff and Phoenix.  The name comes from the fact that the first Europeans assumed that the site was built by the Aztecs.  It was actually built by Sinagua culture (an offshoot of the Hohokam), and was abandoned well before Europeans arrived.

It's a pretty impressive structure set into the cliffside.

Up close.

Gabby was more interested in her "laptop."

FAR more interested!

She did finally put it down and agree to walk...for a minute anyway.

We convinced her that she didn't want to be carried using the cookie method.

We spent our last day of vacation (Friday) in Phoenix, where we went to the Children's Museum (much better than Sacramento's!), and the Science Center (about the same as St. Louis's).  This was by far Gabby's favorite day!  I have no still pictures from then, but here are some videos!  First, painting at the Children's Museum:

And now playing at the Science Center.  They had a screen where she could see herself and a bunch of tiny robots.  The robots (not very visible) jump around when she moves.  She spent at least 30 minutes playing in front of it (mainly because she could see herself on TV).

So we had a good time, but a very tiring time!  My tips for traveling with a toddler:  DON'T!!  But if you have to, get a suite (we didn't have one the first night and all ended up going to bed at Gabby's bedtime), make sure you plan snacks and mealtimes around their schedule, don't overload the day with activities, and don't mess with the sleep schedule!  Gabby is one of the easiest 2 year olds I know, and even she got really fed up with all of the disruptions (see the Grand Canyon pictures)!  

Spring pictures

I got extremely busy with school and completely forgot about posting Easter pictures!  So instead, I've decided just to post all of the pictures from this spring in one big post.  Enjoy!

Here's a video of Gabby being silly on a Wednesday at home with Mommy.  The screaming thing is her top volume (thank goodness!).

First, some pictures from our friend Robbie's birthday party.  They are really lucky to live near a great park in Sacramento!

She loves sand

A rare quiet moment

She really did have fun!

Phoebe was fearless on the merry-go-round.

Gabby was not!

The learned about zoo animals at daycare, and each got to pick out an animal hat.  Gabby chose the chicken.

It looked amazing.

Way better than on me.

She did love that I was wearing it.

This is cute, if you ignore my demon face!

Brian and I stayed up late and watched the total eclipse of the moon.  He borrowed a tripod from work, and got some really cool shots!

Going

going

gone.

It turned really red at full eclipse!

We also got to see some really good views of Mars.  And decided we're going to buy a better telescope!

We had Easter at the Berrys this year, and the girls did an egg hunt.  First, though, we did a hunt at home.  Our Easter bunny only hid about 5 eggs, and inside were fruit snacks!

We did have to remind Charlotte that she had to save some eggs for the little ones!

Gabby and Phoebe on the hunt.

Phoebe found one!

Counting her loot.

Our Easter girls!