Lately

For Carly's 22nd birthday, we hit up the beach.  We went to St. George Island, of course.  Lindy and Cory came along and we grilled up some delicious burgers.  It was tons of fun.  Unfortunately, I don't have any beach pics, but Lindy does!  She's quite the photog.

After we got back, Jesse and I enjoyed a lovely Logan's birthday dinner with Carly and the Lor.  It was good fun.  Then we went back for cake!

This was the entry way to Carly's house.

Candid (HA!) shot of Carly blowing out the candles...

Me and the birthday girl.  Please excuse us.  As I said, we were at the beach all day.

Awesome party hat.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of Jesse or the Lor in their hats.

Carly is fabulous!

In other news, I'm in my second trimester!  Crazy.  But, the first trimester nausea seems to be hanging around still... Boo.  I haven't thrown up in a few days, but I have been pretty nauseous.  And I think I'm starting to get heartburn.  Fun times.  And leg cramps.  Woo!  

And, I still haven't been able to talk Jesse in to going to the Prenatal Experience THIS WEEK to find out if we are having a girl or boy, so it looks like it'll be like another month or so before we know.  I can make it...

My stomach has started to pop out!  Nothing like super crazy, but I think I look pregnant-ish.  Not just like I gained some extra weight.  Right??? haha.  Jesse took me maternity clothes shopping yesterday.  It was my Mother's Day gift.  It was totally fun.  I just wish Tallahassee had a better selection of places with maternity clothes.  Even the department stores that carry them only have one or two racks of random stuff.  But I still got some good stuff.  

I think that's all I have.  But here's a shot of me at 14 weeks with my belly totally poking out:

12 Weeks!

I'm 12 weeks!  Yay!  I was really hoping that 12 would be the magic number and that my nausea would hit the road.  I've been counting down the days.  I had a really good few days and even went a whole week without puking last week.  Monday I felt almost like a normal person.  Then Tuesday happened.

It was horrible!! I puked all day long, couldn't keep anything down, not even water, and could hardly get anything down in the first place.  I went home from work early, took a whole Phenergan, and went to sleep at 4.  I slept until almost 10, got up to eat and shower, and then went back to sleep for the rest of the night.  All-in-all, I got like 15 hours.  The next day I felt quite a bit better.  So I'm hoping that Tuesday was like one last blow-out before things improve.  Things have to get worse before they get better, right?  Right???

I had Jesse take a couple of pictures last night.  I'm pretty sure all the puking from Tuesday made my stomach pop out just a little bit less.  haha.  Oh, and after my last post, Jesse apologized and said he sounded like a jerk on my blog.  I promise, he's not a jerk.  He's actually very sweet and pretty much lets me do whatever I want.  Except go to the Prenatal Experience to find out the sex of the baby three weeks earlier than my doctor will.  He thinks it's a waste of money and there are so many other things we can do with the money.  We could buy diapers, new maternity clothes, blah, blah, blah.  I just wanna know now!!

 And yes, I'm totally wearing maternity pants.  I don't need to wear them yet, but they are quite comfy, and I also really need to do some laundry...

This morning I went in for this diagnostic ultrasound.  It's basically to see if your baby could potentially have Down Syndrome or Fragile X or some other chromosomal issue.  I guess some people use this to determine whether or not to terminate pregnancy.  This is not the case with me.  I will have/love my baby no matter what!  But I think it would be nice to be prepared if my baby was going to have a disability.  There can be a lot of medical issues and money involved.  Anyway, so far they said everything looks great.  The baby is growing as it should.  I have to get blood work done, but I'm not worried.  Also, I just really wanted to see the baby again!!  And boy was he/she wide awake and kicking!  Literally.  The baby kept kicking those feet up.  It was super cute!  Here's a few ultrasound pics.  Hopefully you can tell it's a baby.

 Baby has fingers!

 Sorry about the poor quality, I just took a picture of the pictures...


Well, that's about all I have for now!

11 Weeks

So, I'm at about 11 weeks now.  Hopefully only a week or so left of this nausea crap.  Being pregnant is weird.  So far, it's like having the stomach flu for five weeks.

I've had Jesse take a few side shots of me, because my belly is definitely poking out.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not delusional. I am fully aware that my baby is the size of a fig.  I will admit that what is "showing" right now is a food baby.  I went from eating very little fat, sodium, sugar, no meat, no dairy, etc. to eating whatever I can eat whenever I can eat it.  Often it's a meatball sub from Subway.  Weird, but that's one of the things I can usually handle.  Also, I basically feel sick if I don't eat constantly.  And I mean constantly.  If I go more than five or ten minutes without shoving something down my throat, I start to feel queasy.  This last week sunflower seeds have pretty much saved me.  I eat them all day long sitting at my desk.

Back to the pictures.  I had Jesse take some, and the first time he said, "are you sure you don't want to suck it in?"  Sweet, I know.  So I've got a few pictures where I'm wearing stretchy pants and my stomach looks huge.  Then today I thought, "hey, let's try taking the pics in regular clothes, i.e. jeans."  He kept telling me to put my arms next to my side and stand up straighter, and was apparently using "special angles" to basically make me not look so fat.  So, those pictures look like I'm really sucking it in.  So I'll post two pics. One of me looking fat at 10 weeks, and one of me sucking it in hardcore at 11 weeks.  I'm leaving out the uber fat pictures we took last night where I look 16 weeks pregnant, at least.

Since the day I found out I was pregnant, I was convinced it would be a girl.  Jesse felt the same way.  But for the past few weeks we've both done a complete 180.  I'm convinced it's a boy.  Jesse is leaning toward boy.  I have had a couple dreams where I've given birth and it was a boy.  And then I look at cute pictures of young Jesse and I really hope it's a boy!

I want a little boy who looks just like that!!

Also, I added Hanson's first CD to my playlist on Spotify.  It's still awesome. And I still know every word... ha.

I'm pretty sure that's all I have at this point.

Details

Warning: this may contain too much information.  Read at your own risk.

To make a long story short, I have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS).  I've basically known since I was a teenager, but none of my doctors ever took it seriously.  This past year I finally made an appt. with a real gyno, just for an annual check-up.  I brought up my concerns and she ordered an ultrasound.  The ultrasound and blood work confirmed the PCOS.  I went on with my life. 

At the end of January I was going on five months without a period.  I had always been very irregular, but had never gone this long.  I called to make an appt.  A nurse called me back and said, "so you haven't been taking the Provera Dr. Price prescribed you?"  Um, what!?  I had no idea.  And my appt. was the beginning of November.  Don't get me started on the doctor situation.  So I went in to see the Nurse Practitioner (after my original appt. with her got cancelled) and took the Provera.  I was supposed to take two a day for five days.  I took two pills and started.  We believe our (mostly) vegan diet contributed to this.  I had a 2-3 week follow-up appt. that was actually more like 4 weeks, with Dr. Price.  They called and cancelled and pushed it back another three weeks.  So that becomes a 7-week follow-up (and two cancellations in like less than two months).  To see if the Provera worked and where to go from there.  This was the first time I actually cried about it all.  It's hard to realize that your body isn't going to get pregnant on its own, but when the doctors start to fail you, it feels pretty hopeless.   I decided not to take the pills again, and to wait until my next appt.  Man am I glad I didn't take those pills again. 

In March I started routinely taking pregnancy tests on Saturdays.  My boobs had been hurting, which really wasn't an indication of anything, since I'd had all kinds of symptoms before.  For the past six months or so I went through cycles of symptoms that meant a) I was ovulating, b) I was about to menstruate, or c) I was pregnant.  Unfortunately, it was always d) none of the above.  After more than nine months of negative tests, I wasn't really expecting much.  That first Saturday that I took a test, it was negative.  Jesse constantly reminded me that it can take a "normal" couple a year, but every month just felt so long.

The next week, I was surprised that my boobs had still been hurting all week long, but still didn't think anything of it.  Saturday morning I went to the Relief Society activity.  I actually spent a good amount of time explaining all of my PCOS problems to a few people.  I went home, Jesse and I watched Season of the Witch (which was Nicholas Cage-tastic!), and then I said we should go to the gym.  We had been eating a vegan diet for a few months, but I knew that exercise was where I was really lacking.  And with PCOS, diet and exercise are really the only things you can do on your own. 

As we were getting ready for the gym, I decided to take a test.  It was the pregnancy test that came with the ovulation predictors.  I left it alone for a minute, and when I went back, I saw two faint lines.  I showed it Jesse and he said, "yeah, babe, it looks like you could be ovulating."  My reply, "that is not an ovulation test!"

I didn't want to get my hopes up and thought that maybe the test had been exposed to too much air or something, so I took another one.  And another one.  And another one, for a total of four.  And then the next day, I took one more, just to make sure I hadn't imagined the other four. 

It's hard to see, but there are two lines on all of them.

This all happened about a week and a half before I was supposed to go in for my follow-up.  So I called the doctor's office and they made me an "orientation" appt.  Then I had my first ultrasound this past week and the doctor determined that I was 8 weeks and 4 days, due on Nov. 22nd.  Thanksgiving, and my sister-in-law, Kourtney's birthday.  Also, two days before my birthday, and a day before my niece's birthday.  So this baby is bound to share a birthday with someone in the family.

We originally wanted to keep it a secret longer, especially since PCOS can mean higher risk of miscarriage and high-risk pregnancy, but it was getting hard to hide.  I haven't been throwing up a lot, but I have been sooooo nauseous all day long.  And after the ultrasound, we felt good about it.  The doctor said our baby looks perfect and that he/she has a really strong heartbeat.

Ok, so much for a short story, huh?  Believe me, that was a condensed version.  Anyway, I'll leave you with a few pictures from the ultrasound of our little gummy bear. 

 This is the baby's back

What Have I Been Up to Lately?

Drinking Ginger Ale straight from the bottle...

 Forcing Saltines down my throat...

Popping pills...

And, most importantly, growing a baby!

Flashback

I have a real treat for you today.  Or I had nothing current to blog about.  One of the two.  Anywho, here's some super sweet old school pictures of me.  Not to brag or anything, but I was super adorable as a young child.  Most of these pictures will reflect the extreme cuteness.  One, however, is not so cute.  Okay, I'll just post the pictures now and you can see for yourself.

Here I am the first summer after my birth with my grandparents in Indiana.

My mom was super stylish.

Ready for church.  Check out my mom's ginormous hair.

I love this one because Krissie literally looks like a tiny old person.  The way she's standing, her outfit, her hair, the giant glasses...

This was Scottie Bear.  I believe my dad won him for me at the fair.  I later changed his name to Jessica.  I'm assuming that was the case in this picture, since he's wearing a dress.  Eventually, I changed it back to Scottie.  But I'm sure he was forever confused about his identity.

How cute is this? Seriously.  Don't I just look like a sweet kid?  Yes.

This is when I played T-ball.  I've never been good at sports, but at least I looked good in my flower shorts and ruffled socks...

Krissie looks like Michelle from Full House.

Look at my long, skinny chicken legs.  Yikes.  I eventually grew normal human-sized legs...

 Here's when we looked like boys.  When my dad got home from work and saw our hair cuts, he said we looked like little Dutch boys.  This was at Seaworld.  Shortly after this picture, Krissie and I decided we had to sit in the splash zone for one of the shows, even though it was like 50 degrees.  We got drenched and cried all the way back to the car.

And just for kicks, here's a few pictures from Jesse's childhood.  Brace yourselves again, he was also super cute!

He was a naked cowboy!

I think this one looks like a Baby Gap ad.

He eventually grew into his hair.

2nd grade.

And my favorite,

3rd grade! Apparently he really wanted to wear his suit for picture day.

In conclusion, Jesse and I are going to have some pretty darn cute kids.  How could we not?  

Also, I don't want you to think I'm full of myself.  Shortly after these cute pictures I got glasses, stopped brushing my hair, started breaking out, and started wearing baggy t-shirts.  It wasn't pretty...

Homework Shmomework

Not much has happened since my last post a week ago.  That's probably why I don't blog that much.  Let's see.  Jesse and I finally forced ourselves to go to the gym yesterday.  And I didn't die!  yay.  I just wish I had more time during the week, but with work and school taking up all my time, it's really hard to find the time and motivation to exercise.

Technically I'm supposed to be doing a little bit of homework right now.  I told Jesse to do one math problem and I would do one section of my Classroom Management Plan.  And, I'm blogging.  But the plan is due tomorrow, so it must get done.  Also, I can hear Jesse in the kitchen.  So he's not doing his homework right now either...

We "planted" our green onions in water like Pinterest told us to do.  They grow crazy fast.

 This is after about a week.

  This is what it looked like yesterday.  I'm not really a fan of green onions, so they don't get used much...

Also, we put up a nice shelf in the living room to hold the projector, Wii, and Xbox.  It looks pretty sweet.  Jesse made the shelf with a big piece of wood and some moulding, and then we painted it.  We had to do a little rearranging to make it all work, but I like it.

 I did my best with what I had.  I know the decorations don't look awesome, but it's hard to work it in with all the electronics.  Plus Jesse added some speakers and a big bass box thingy.

It's a lot more spacious now.  Here's the view from the living room looking into the kitchen and dining room.

Anyway, I don't think I really have much else to say and I really need to get this assignment done...

Oh, but I did think this was funny yesterday.

I told Jesse to stop playing with toys and do his homework.  He was actually wearing the Wolverine mask at the time.  He told me he was getting his helicopters (he has three) charged now so that he could play with them when he wanted to later on.