4 posts tagged “pregnancy”
My hopes that the baby would come far enough before our anniversary to be able to legitimately celebrate his birthday the weekend before our anniversary weekend have not panned out. With our luck, he'll come tomorrow, on our anniversary. But we could just celebrate it (his birthday, that is) the weekend before, anyways, I guess...
Actually, now that I've finally given up on working, I'm almost hoping he'll wait until 5/19 so that we can keep his birthday away from our anniversary, we can still make it to some festivities we have planned this weekend, and he'll be born before my OB leaves for Korea on 5/20. Of course, off work or not, there's still the major discomfort factor that makes me want to have him NOW, no matter what.
Thursday at work I started really feeling some Braxton-Hicks, and being in the car seems to make them worse. Over the weekend, I found that it didn't really matter if I was driving or just a passenger -- it seems to be something about the movement that sets them off. On Monday I worked from home, but I decided that since I was having rather strong, painful contractions whenever I was in the car, perhaps the 40 mile drive each way to and from work was not the best idea, and I officially began my LOA yesterday.
Given that I'd been feeling so many strong contractions over the past few days, I was surprised and disappointed to learn at my appointment yesterday afternoon that I hadn't really progressed much -- I'd only dilated another 1 cm or so. My OB does seem to think he'll come before she leaves on the 20th, but I'm not holding my breath.
In the meantime, I couldn't have planned a better time to be "on vacation". The weather here has been beautiful, and I've been getting a lot of knitting done. I should probably be out walking around since that should make things progress faster, but I'm enjoying relaxing a bit too much, I guess.
It's no secret that we're having trouble coming up with a name for our impending arrival. It would've been so much easier if he was going to be a girl as we already had a perfectly good (no, actually excellent) girl's name picked out. It would've been Jake's name if he'd been a girl and we still loved it by the time we knew #2 was on the way, so it had also stood the test of time (well, at least 2 years). It sounds good with our last name (not an easy feat and part of the reason we're having so much trouble coming up with another boy's name). And part of it would have honored 4 (yes, count them, 4!) family members. It is the name dreams are made of. I suppose I can divulge it now, knowing that we will never be using it. OK, I suppose that #2 could surprise us all and be a girl after all, but A) both the U/S tech and radiologist were pretty definitive in their determinations that he's a boy and B) the name would be the least of our surprises if #2 came out a girl instead of a boy. So, here it is...
Madeleine Jane
OK, so it might not be that amazing to many; in fact, I'm sure a lot of people actually hate it and think it's a bit old-fashioned. And that's exactly why we kept Jake's name a secret until he was born and why we'll keep #2's name, if we're able to decide on one before he makes his appearance, under wraps as well. But to us, it was perfect. Since Jane is the feminine form of John, it would've honored my dad (Anthony John), my maternal grandma (Janet, which is a diminutive of Jane), Eric's maternal grandma (Mary Jane) and Eric's maternal grandpa (Jack, which is a nickname for John). We actually could've even stretched it to include my paternal grandma (Mary) since it's a form of Magdalene (as in Mary Magdalene) -- OK, I admit that's a stretch, but still. Equal opportunity honoring of both sides of the family -- perfect!
Of course, #2 is a boy, not a girl, so we must come up with another boy's name. By this time in the pregnancy with Jake, not only had we chosen his name, but he had already earned 2 nicknames: "Voldemort" (dubbed by Heather because he was "He Who Must Not Be Named") and "Jose" (dubbed by my in-laws' friend because of my cravings for chile rellenos). I'm beginning to fear that #2 will be known as "Baby Boy O----", or "Baby to be Named Later", or just "#2" for the beginning of his life! It's not that we haven't come up with plenty of nice names, but that's it, they're generally just "nice". We haven't fallen in love with anything yet. And a lot of the names we are drawn to just don't work with our last name. In fact, I'd say there is one name I've fallen in love with, but it's just not an option with our last name. If I'd known we'd have so much trouble, I would've made Eric take my name when we got married! Of course, we could always just take George Foreman's lead and name him Jacob II...
I'm feeling really guilty that I've been so busy/distracted during this second pregnancy and definitely haven't been as excited about it. All of which has added up to not recording the highlights and milestones the way I did when I was pregnant with Jake (or pretty much at all, for that matter). So to assuage my guilt, I'm going to document a few highlights and milestones so far:
1. As of yesterday, I'm officially halfway there! Well, I'm actually hoping I'm more than halfway there since I'm really hoping he'll come early. As early as possible and still be safe. I'm just remembering how uncomfortable I was with Jake by the end. My due date is 5/28/08 which means 5/14/08 is full term. Of course, with our anniversary being 5/15 and one of my closest friends from college's wedding on 5/17, my official stance is as soon after 5/17/08 as possible!
2. My due date also happens to be my late grandma's birthday. For this reason, my mom's hoping he's born on his due date. But I'm really hoping earlier!
3. I'm huge! Even though my weight has matched exactly with my weight during my pregnancy with Jake, I feel so much huger than I was at the same time point with Jake, and I have pictures to prove it:
Funny -- you can actually see the evolution of our fireplace in the background! Anyway, I can't remember exactly when I had to start wearing maternity clothes with Jake because it's one of the few details I didn't record, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't anywhere near as early as this time around -- I had to pull them out a few weeks ago! And my belly button didn't pop out until after my 24th week with Jake, and this time it popped out at about 14 weeks!!! Yuck! Guess everything's already all stretched out. How sad.
4. Eric felt the boy move for the first time Monday night. I've been feeling him since about week 15 (I felt Jake for the first time at 16 weeks).
5. Arguing over Choosing a name for #2 may well make up for the lack of excitement of not having a shower, getting to choose a nursery theme, or getting to pick out new clothes, nursery items, etc (definitely don't need any more of those!). When deciding on Jake's name, I don't think we even tossed around any other ideas -- we both loved Jacob, and Thomas is Eric's middle name, so it was an easy process. It may have made it a little easier this time around if we'd come up with some other possibilities with Jake, but it's like we're starting from scratch. And we haven't been able to agree on anything!
6. With Jake, I was really hoping for a boy because a) I definitely always wanted a boy and b) knowing we were planning on having 2 kids, I really had a strong preference that the oldest be a boy. So, as horrible as this is to say, I think I would've been truly disappointed if he'd been a girl. But this time around, although I was hoping for a brother for Jake, I truly wouldn't have been disappointed either way. It's just icing on the cake that Jake will have a brother.
7. I haven't started having any cravings yet. With Jake I was eating chile rellenos like there was no tomorrow, and that had definitely started by this point in the pregnancy. I was really kind of looking forward to having an excuse to eat tons of something I wouldn't normally eat tons of, but without the cravings, I really don't feel like I can legitimately do that!
Going back to work this morning was made a lot easier when I tried on some normal, non-fat pre-pregnancy slacks for the first time and they actually fit!!! It's amazing -- the weight seems like it's been melting off through no particular effort on my part. In fact, I don't think we could've eaten any more unhealthily while out in NY over the holidays. I kid you not, for the 10 days we were gone, we had 2 servings of green veggies, and one of those was when we went out to lunch! As yummy as my Mom's midwestern/New England/Italian cooking may be, healthy it is not. It got to the point where I actually had to request a green veggie (I'm not sure I've ever done that in my life!). But I guess I've just gotten spoiled with all the good fresh produce out here in Cali.
I am a bit disappointed that no one back home (except for my best friend, of course) seemed to notice that I'd actually sort of gotten my figure back, even if I am still about 15 lbs heavier than normal. But then again, other than my parents, none of them actually saw me very pregnant or still carrying a lot of the pregnancy weight, at least not in person. But they theoretically have seen plenty of pictures...oh well. When I came into work this morning my coworkers commented and complimented appropriately :)
I never thought losing the weight would be this big a deal, though admittedly I haven't really been working at it all that much. I guess I was just naive and really thought that since I hadn't ballooned up during my pregnancy (except for my belly, of course) that I'd be back to my normal size really quickly. Ha! There are so many things that people don't tell you about pregnancy, birth, and the aftermath -- or maybe you just don't pay attention to a lot of stuff until it becomes an issue for you! But that could be a whole other post in and of itself...
