pregnancy - *Salty Mom* -

By Salt | January 13, 2012 - 5:15 pm | baby, blogging, pregnancy

I haven’t been over here in so long that I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t in anyone’s reader anymore and no one sees this post. It’s my bad after all. I’m the one who keeps saying that I’m going to blog and then…I don’t.

Anyway, recently I HAVE been blogging a little bit. Just not over here. I started up a new blog just after New Years where I’m talking about things that are specifically baby related. I mostly started it for my mother who lives in Northern California and will only be able to see her granddaughter a handful of times a year and also I thought it might be nice to keep all that stuff in one place in case B wants to read it when she’s older (while avoiding some of the more colorful moments I’ve had over here).

I figured I’d hold on to this blog though for the next time I have a good tequila fueled, almost-getting-arrested type story.

So if you are reading this and feel the need to keep up with me for the rest of my pregnancy and my journey into being responsible for a small human – which will be wrought with peril and mayhem, I’m sure – please visit me at Our Life With Betty. Someday soon I hope to edit it a little to make something a little more visually my style. Stock templates make me all twitchy.

By Salt | October 13, 2011 - 12:39 pm | baby, baby girl, pregnancy, Salty Mom

43 Comments

…I’ll get to that part in a minute.

First of all, this is one of those things that I want to document in full because my perinatal center is one of those that does not allow video taping. Oh how I WISH my husband could have filmed my reaction to finding out the sex of the baby on Monday. I can’t imagine a moment that I will ever experience that kind of emotion again for the rest of my life. Come to think of it, maybe it’s kind of a good thing M wasn’t holding our flip video cam, because he probably would have dropped it or thrown it across the room and destroyed it when the tech told us the news. Out of pure joy of course.

Going in to this appointment, I was VERY nervous. This was the BIG ULTRASOUND. The one where we get to see all the inner workings of my precious little person and make sure that all the parts are where they should be and functioning in whatever correct way they are supposed to. I spend a fair amount of time on internet pregnancy sites and so have been exposed to stories of a wide variety of possibilities that can be found in these ultrasounds. Basically, I scared the ever-living crap out of myself. You know the worst thing a pregnant woman can do? Google stuff. My brain knew that and yet…I still did it. I cannot blame anyone but myself for my pre-scan anxiety.

We get to the hospital and I’m practically hyperventilating into my bottle of Simply Orange that I bought on the drive over to get baby all sugared up for the appointment. (And it was working…I have been able to see occasional outside kicks for a couple weeks now and was watching my stomach jump around as we sat in the waiting room. CUTEST. THING. EVER.) My appointment was at 11am, but M and I were forced to sit and wait for an additional 20 minutes. I probably wouldn’t have minded so much if some rude cow wasn’t having a way-too-loud conversation on her cell phone in the middle of the office the entire time. Lucky for her, the tech finally called my name right as M and I were about to launch a hostile takeover of said phone.

So of course before we got started, I had to pee because when I get nervous I pee 11 times an hour whether I’m pregnant or not. After taking a few moments to compose myself in the restroom, I was up on the table with gel all over my tummy and the scan was underway.

OMG Mini was so much BIGGER this time than at 12 weeks! (Yeah I know…that’s what happens when a baby grows, but it was still amazing to see.) And so hyper! (I apologized profusely for drinking the orange juice.) The tech seemed to be getting all the shots she needed though; we saw the brain and the heat pumping away with all 4 chambers, the umbilical cord, and the spine, and everything looked so great and measuring right on track. We checked out the little face, and the little hands (we even got a thumbs up!) and the cute little feet. She took some ADORABLE pictures of my little superstar’s profile…

…and then asked us if we were ready to find out the sex.

Let me preface this by saying that going in to this appointment, I had been 100% sure that Mini was a little boy. I will admit that I was originally kind of hoping for a girl , but obviously first and foremost we wanted a healthy baby, so I started telling myself that baby was a boy to get used to the idea of having a son. I guess I did a REALLY good job of convincing myself too, because when the tech said:

“You are having a little GIRL!”

I screamed “OH MY GOD!” like 10 times and started weeping uncontrollably all over myself and M and the tech who was passing me tissues as fast as she could. That moment still holds so much emotion for me that I am crying a little as I type this.

Obviously I can’t say for sure what my reaction would have been if I had been told that my princess was a prince, but I can pretty much guarantee that there would have been nowhere near that level of shock. I am STILL in shock. I just cannot believe I’m having a little girl. My mommy intuition totally sucks.

So now we are in full girl preparation mode! We already had nursery ideas planned for either outcome and it’s so much fun to start working on it. I love being able to refer to her as a “she” now and use her name when I talk to her. It was all real before, but now it’s REALLY real…especially for my husband. Miss Betty already has daddy wrapped around her little finger. We just can’t wait to meet her.

By Salt | September 27, 2011 - 10:12 am | about me, baby, pregnancy

37 Comments

I have been putting off doing something like this for FAR too long. Here’s to hoping that I’m better at keeping a baby book than keeping track of what is going on during my pregnancy.

How far along: 17 weeks + 1 day. (160 days to go! OMG that is not a lot.)

How big is baby: According to the Bump, who likes to compare baby size to various fruit and veggie items, Mini is the size of an onion this week.

I sort of take issue with where The Bump might be getting their produce because the ones they have assigned to each week have tended to be freakishly small or large compared to the previous week. Like…a lemon is three times bigger than a lime and nearly the same size as an orange. I’d love to know where they are getting these steroid lemons.

Total weight gain: As of last Wednesday, 6 pounds total since the beginning of my pregnancy. I’m pretty sure at least half of those are in my bra.

Sleep: Is starting to get kind of uncomfortable. My hips hurt when I wake up. I guess it’s time to invest in one of those giant body pillows.

Maternity Clothes: I just got my first pair of maternity jeans yesterday and I don’t know what I ever did without them. I can finally give the finger to the stupid Target BeBand that I’ve been using to hold my pre-pregnancy jeans up. It’s nice that I can still kind of wear my other pants, but I will not miss that stretchy piece of fabric riding up around my waist every time I get out of my chair. I also got some awesome leggings. Now it just needs to not be 80 degrees outside so I can enjoy wearing them.

Food cravings : None. Food cravings went out the window after first trimester ended. I’ve just been eating pretty much the way I used to, except in greater quantities.

Food aversions: Fruit, but I hated fruit before too.

Symptoms: I’d love to be able to eat something and not get epic heartburn from it. A bagel with cream cheese is not supposed to give you heartburn dammit.

Movement: YES. OMG it’s the coolest thing ever and I can already tell I’m going to miss it when Mini is on the outside. It’s not constant or anything yet, but just about every day (usually in the evening) there will be a period of some fidgeting around in there and last night I felt a few distinct kicks in one spot (or really more like taps because the little feet in there are still so small).

Boy or Girl?: WE FIND OUT IN 13 DAYS!!! Let the betting begin….

What I’m looking forward to: Duh…finding out if Mini is a boy or a girl. I seriously cannot wait. We have a great name picked out for either situation and I want to start using it. Referring to the baby as “he-or-she” all the time is getting tedious and I feel like a crappy parent if I say “it”.

What I miss: Hot yoga. Or just any kind of strenuous yoga. I love prenatal, but it’s just not the same. I can’t move like I used to. I hope my body remembers how to do all my tricks after the baby gets here.

Next appt: October 10th. ANATOMY SCAN!

And of course my belly: