Belly shot

Here I am at 5 weeks. Pretty flat at this point.

Here I am at basically 12 weeks (11 weeks 6 days). There is a bulge there. I was starting to notice a bump at this point, but still fitting fine in all my clothes.

Here is 15 weeks.

Here is today, 17weeks and 4 days.

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I find myself touching my belly all the time. It is a subconscious act, most of the time. Sometimes I'm massaging my muscles that get sore here and there. But sometimes I'm trying to see if I can feel the baby move on the outside, so I can have Jamaal try to feel it. I've felt the baby move only a couple times. I've read somewhere that the baby is sleeping close to 20 hours a day, so it makes sense that it is difficult for me to feel the little gummy bear.  

Last night I had a dream that I could feel my babies shoulder, arm and hand. And SHE held my hand. That's right, the first dream where I actually felt like the baby was a girl. I cannot wait to find out for sure so I can start buying clothes and registering for things. Here is a countdown:

Updates

I should really be packing right now. We are going to be leaving in 2 hours to go camping, and my clothes and things are not packed.

But instead I find myself here. :D

Hope you're okay with that.

Just a couple things I want to share:

1. On Tuesday, July 20th I felt the baby move very clearly. It was after work at about 3:50 or so. I was sitting waiting for my bus. I leaned back and relaxed, and felt the little one doing acrobatics. It truly felt like he had hold of a bar and was twirling around and around it. The sad thing is, that since Tuesday, I haven't sat down long enough to even begin to feel baby move again. I have a long car ride today, so hopefully baby isn't asleep. (now, though as I write this, I'm feeling little tickles. :D )

2. I'm truly starting to show. I really need to show pictures, but that will have to wait until after the weekend. I can no longer fit in my own pre-pregnancy shorts/jeans/capris unless I leave them partially zipped and unbuttoned. I bought a Belly Band from Target, to help hold up my clothes, and it works well. (it is not the one pictured here, and was about $10 cheaper.)

I went to the Supermall to buy some maternity clothes and found the cheapest, best selection at Burlington Coat Factory. My cousin informs me that Ross, also has some maternity clothes, (I thought she had said Marshall's, but the one in Supermall did not have one). I have not made it to Ross yet. I'll wait a bit longer before going again. I do still have some pre-pregnancy shirts that fit just fine. Mostly because of the style that they are. I like wearing really loose fitting clothes that are about a size too big, so they still fit.

And also, people are beginning to notice the belly. At work I still fit into most of my scrub tops. (Some have been retired, because they fit, but I cannot get into the pockets in the front, so, I figure, what's the point?) However, I "fit" in my scrubs, you can still see what could be a firm fat roll, or a baby bump. Most people don't say anything, but when I mention it, they let out a sigh of relief and say "I thought you looked pregnant." Scrubs are very unflattering things, you see. :D

3. Last night, I was up until 1:00am. I hope that it was worth it. :D I made two of the very first pies I've ever made independently! I have made many pies in my day, don't get me wrong. But there has always been a key person there to help: my mom. She has always been the pie Queen. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas season (back as far as I can remember) she has made the pies for my family gatherings. When most of my father's family moved over to the Spokane area, she still made pies, but usually fewer than before.

Jess and I, in high school, got together several summers to pick blackberries and bake pies. We made miniature pies for everyone in our families, and they all got to pick what filling they wanted. My mom helped us on the crust. She prepared it, and helped us to roll it out etc. I'm sure we eventually did it ourselves once she reminded us how to do it. (I've been watching her make these pies all my life, so it was always easier to let her do it for me.)

This summer, I made a peach pie using store bought crust. It was scrumptious. But even then, my mom helped with key steps: she peeled the peaches, she helped me with assembling the crust when I asked, she taught me the proper heating method that she uses (15 minutes at 425, then 45-60 minutes at 325), she basically walked me through the process.

Last night, I called her once to remind myself of the proper heating method, and to ask for the ingredients in the pies (because the cookbooks I have are terrible and don't have the ingredients for fresh peach pie.) That was all I needed. She had already taught me the basics, and without her there to lean on, I stood pretty well on my own. I used the recipe found here. I found it to be relatively easy to work with, in that it did not stick, crack, crumble or rip. It got the job done pretty easily. It just took a while for it to get soft enough that I could roll it. The recipe calls for the dough to be refrigerated, which is something that is new to me. But because it is made with butter, which softens pretty quickly at room temperature (compared to shortening) I understand why it should be kept cold. The beautiful thing about this dough is, you can make it, portion it out, store it in the fridge, and then prepare your fruit. If you are like me, it will take you an hour to peel every last apple and peach. Then, you have to cut them up. :D I used a carrot peeler to peel my apples, because I am awful with a paring knife, and it worked extremely well. If you pull, as you would with a paring knife, instead of push away as you do with a carrot, it goes pretty quickly. It took me about 3 apples to realize this. :D

I hope my pies taste as scrumptious as they look. Pictures will come...I hope.

4. Today we will leave to go camping. I am still pretty nervous. Though I have made a sort of peace (I mistyped "peach" instead of peace...haha.) with it. I have decided that I will have fun if it pains me. I'm sure at times I will be not nice but I am going to try to be a good girl. It helped me to have Bret tell his friends that if they wanted a monte cristo in the morning they would need to bring turkey, ham and bread. I would provide the eggs and cheese. This way, if they don't bring it, I won't feel as bad for them as we are all scarfing down our beautiful, warm, sweet breakfast sandwiches. They can look on with all the longing in their eyes, and I won't feel a pang of guilt, because I warned them. I buy the expensive lunch meat, dang it! I cannot pay to feed an army! :D

Not completely symptom free

I realize that I am one of the lucky ones. I had no problems, to speak of, during the first 14 weeks. Last Tuesday, however, that all changed. The world's worst heartburn came to stay. As I got into bed, I felt the heartburn starting. I chewed some tums, and drank water. I propped myself up with pillows to try and help the reflux from making it up my esophagus, but to no avail. I grabbed the bowl I've had sitting next to my bed, and rushed into the bathroom. When the heartburn is that bad, I have no choice but to vomit, or else stay up all night long. I have to admit, it happened to me before last Tuesday, but I figured it was more related to what I had eaten during the day. Wednesday things weren't too bad. I ate okay. I didn't get heartburn at night, so I attributed the vomiting on Tuesday as related to what I had eaten again. Thursday, I was okay during the day, and then during water aerobics, I started getting heartburn.

I stole things from my mom's house that seemed milder to my stomach, like milk and cereal, and toast. And only ate a small amount before bed. I had some heartburn when I went to bed, but it was mild, and I was able to sleep through it. Friday, I woke up with heartburn. I had to go to work, so I bought a Zantac (they only sell single pills) from the gift shop, took it, and my heartburn was gone until about dinner time. After working a 12-hour shift, I went to the store to buy some antacid reliever. I was going to get Zantac, but the Pepcid AC was cheaper, and a similar drug, so I figured I would try it instead. (Of course I bought the generic Safeway version to save even more.)

I was able to eat Mexican food without heartburn, by taking Pepcid. :D I think I've found my helper.

Today I haven't taken any. I'm going to only take it now if I begin to feel the acid coming on. (or if I plan on eating something really spicy.)

Prior to being pregnant, I've had a night of bad heartburn that ended with me vomiting, so this is not a new thing for me. It is just more frequent now. GERD (gastro-esophageal reflux disease) runs in my family. My dad has it, my brother has it, and I'm pretty sure I have some as well. Guess what, it's a hereditary thing. :D Woo hoo.

I still consider myself lucky, even though I was pretty miserable last week. I know it could have been way, way worse for me.

Strip quilt back process

Remember this?

I am super proud of my progress. I thought this quilt back might take forever to piece, but I'm nearly there. I stopped only because I had a piece of pie to eat, and because I have to work tomorrow. :D You may or may not be able to read the center text. But the fabric I bought for the back, I thought might be wide enough, and if it wasn't I was going to piece some of it together, somehow. But after doing a few calculations (very crude guesstimating: when I had the quilt top laying out on a table I placed the fabric for the back on it to see if it would work if I had the salvage end running along the top of the quilt) I realized I did not have enough. I did have, however, a lot of the fabric from the quilt top left over. So the next question I had was how to lay it out. I could do something like the quilt back shown here (scroll down to near the end of the post). Only my squares would be an equal 2 inches around to coordinate with the quilt tops equal 2" rows.

This, I decided would be a little bit more work, and as I said before, I would have to add some fabric to the sides of the bottom piece of fabric as I didn't have quite enough of the polka dot to reach from edge to edge.

So, I decided to make my life simpler. I would simply put the polka dot down the center of the back. Then I quickly decided to piece 2.5' strips of the fabric as I did on the front, then I would cut rectangles out of the fabric, and once that was done I would piece 4 of these rectangles (the 6" x 20" rectangles shown on the edges) together to make strips to go down the side of the quilt back.

This is where I stopped today. Next, all I need to do is piece the strips to either side of the salvage edge of my polka dot fabric, then trim it up. I'm thinking that I might add some bias tape to run down the seam between the strips on the edges and the center of the quilt; just to decrease clash. My mom has a bias tape maker, so I'll borrow hers to make the tape out of some of the sashing I used on the front. (Though for some reason this fabric is nowhere to be found, so I might have to buy some more from JoAnns.)

Finally, I get to quilt! :D (But to make this happen, I'll have to make a trip to Lowe's. Something I think I'll do on Sunday. :D)

But that, my friends, is something for another post. I hope this isn't too confusing. But I'm proud of my progress....

Kayleen, how is your quilt coming?

A work in progress.

In February (wow!) of this year I took a quilting class with a good friend of mine. I posted about it here and here. I finally pulled it out again. And all I've done thus far is add the teal polka dot fabric around the top. But that was all I needed to do to finish the quilt top. :D It is actually a bit bigger than I thought it would be, measuring about 50" by 72". So now, I'm working on the quilt back. Which is turning into a lot of math, calculations and planning. The fabric I bought for the backing I don't have enough of just by itself. So I think I'll have some of the fabrics from the front on the back. I just cut my strips, I'll begin piecing them later this week. I'll have to cut the stabilizer I bought, because it is about twice as big as I needed. But that's okay I can use the other half for a quilt about this size. :D

The quilt top draped over my couch.

A close-up of the corner.

The quilt top laying flat on the table outside.

Pregnancy Emotions

This little pregnant lady is beginning to feel left out a bit.

My MIL bought a house, and in the backyard was a trampoline that the previous owner did not want. Jamaal instantly told his mom he would take it. She fought a little bit; she was worried about safety, and wanted us to get a net first. Do you know how much trampoline nets cost? More than we want to pay. I never have jumped on a trampoline with a net on it. Never. Then she gets concerned about the baby. At which point, I roll my eyes and let her know that the trampoline will not be around when the baby is big enough to be getting on it. There are some very small holes on the trampoline, and it looks pretty old.

I would like to get a few jumps in, but of course, I can't.

I can get over it, I'm not really that upset about it. Though this is just one of the first things that made me realize that I'm beginning to feel left out.


Later this month we are going on an annual camping trip. Jamaal, his two friends (I also consider them my friends) and I have been going every year since our second year together.

But this year will be different. It is not just the 4 of us; one of the boys invited several other people.

Normally I would not be upset. Normally, I would say the more the merrier. But this year is different. I will be surrounded by a bunch of drunk people. And now, there will be a lot of drunk people that I barely know.

I was already nervous for the 4 of us...when I found out about the new additions I got really upset. I'll bring a lot of activities for me to do, and some alcohol-like beverages (diet ginger-ale with a sprinkling of cranberry lemonade crystal light).

And, if it is as bad as I think it might be, I'll leave to go to my Aunt's apartment in Olympia. Though I'm sure I'm just overreacting.

I know that I have something very special that is mine. I know that my connection with my child will be something no one else will have. I know I am so fortunate to be able to carry a child. To get pregnant so easily. I know I'm being selfish, bratty, and a little pathetic.

I just want it all.

My recent adventures

14 weeks and 1 day.


I am now well into the second trimester. I am still at that awkward stage where I am showing enough to not fit right in my tighter pre-pregnancy clothes, but I'm not showing enough to really need to wear maternity clothes either. Most of the maternity clothes I have, I got from a lady at work, and the ones I have tried on are almost baggy on me. They are, however, comfortable. I bought a shirt at Target that I thought was really cute, I didn't try it on, but figured it would fit okay. It turns out that I'll have the same problems while pregnant that I do when I'm not. The shirt was way too long, it could be a nearly inappropriate dress, if I wore things like that. :D It also is too big in the boob area, apparently my breasts are too high on my body for this particular shirt. I will be returning it when I'm next at Target. My cousin tells me that Marshall's and Ross have good, cheap options, so soon, I'll make my way over there.


I had a pretty exciting weekend last weekend...


First off, on Friday night I dreamed that I gave birth to a Westie. The doctor put him on my chest, and then the puppy proceeded to crawl with his front legs up to my breast, and began breast feeding. Don't judge me. It was super creepy.


Side note: In nursing school we learned that if babies are placed on their mom's stomach right after birth they will make their way up mommies tummy to her breast and begin feeding. They have a crazy sense of smell and know it is what they should do. The study didn't say how long it would take the baby to travel...


So part of my dream was based in fact.


Saturday morning I packed up my car and left to go to Prosser for wine tasting/watching and hang out with girl friends. I made it just outside of Ellensburg when my car began to smoke. I thought it was going to go up in flames and take me with it. I started throwing my stuff out of the car. I was crying and panicking and on the phone with Jamaal. He remained calm (though was irritated with me) and made me open the hood and look for the culprit. There was no oil. The smoke was coming out from behind the engine and out from under the front right tire (it might have been also coming out the other side, but cars speeding past made it impossible for me to tell. He was confused by what I was telling him. It didn't quite make sense. We paid for roadside assistance through our insurance, so I hung up with him and called for a tow.


After an hour and half of waiting, the tow truck came. Jesse, dressed in khaki shorts and flip flops, put my car on a flatbed truck, and off we went to Ellensburg. Jessie, had offered to come pick me up when I told her I was stranded, and at first I thought I would just be getting my car fixed, then going home. The sooner the better.


But Jesse informed me that no auto shop worth going to was open on Saturday or Sunday. So I called up Jessie, and asked if she and Kristina could meet me in Ellensburg, and once my car was cured (on Monday) bring me back to Ellensburg. The girls were so kind to do so. When Jesse and I arrived at the auto shop in town that works on VWs, it just so happened that the owner came in to do some paperwork. I talked with him, and told him what happened and gave him the key. He said they would look at it on Monday and call me when they had a diagnosis.


I packed all of my bags. I had a small rolling suitcase and a small duffel bag, plus my purse. I had about a mile walk to make. But first, I ate at Quiznos (because the plan was to have lunch at Jessie's) and then hiked all the way to Starbucks. In flip flops. Dragging a heavy suitcase behind me. In the blaring sun. I was so thankful that I put on sun screen that morning.


I bought a Passion Tea Lemonade and a Mini Birthday Cake donut and sat down to work on some puzzles I had brought with me. I over packed a bit for an overnight trip, but it turns out, I actually benefited from having activities with me. :D


Jessie and Kristina arrived about 5-10 minutes after I had sat down. After a bathroom break, and Kristina bought a drink, we were off again. It was a nice ride to Prosser with some good conversation. By the time the three of us arrived in Prosser, it was nearly 4 pm. Most of the wineries close at 5pm. We went to one, the girls tasted some wine, then went to find a place where we could buy a glass of wine (or soda) and sit and sip. We found one, and did so. I was disappointed in my choice: a Dry Vanilla bean soda. It tasted like watered down cream soda. Thankfully, I had a single serving package of crystal light in my purse. I added a little bit of it, and it was drinkable after that.


We shared dinner with Jessie's husband at the local Mexican restaurant, and it was very good. Later that evening we walked to get some soft serve at the local ice cream place in town. It was warm out and pleasant to walk.


The next day the girls and I went into Kennewick to do some shopping, searching and ate lunch at Red Robin. This is where we parted ways. Kristina had to get back to Portland. Jess and I went to Costco, and then to our home. (Which I began calling it, since it seemed I might be there for an extended period of time. I told them that come December, they might want to get rid of me.) ;)


Once home, I took a nap, and Jess got in some much needed studying. After I woke up my mom called to let me know she was staying in Moses Lake overnight. She had been to a wedding on Saturday and to make the drive easier, she wanted to spend the night in Moses Lake, then drive home on Monday. I thought we would meet in Ellensburg, but after thinking about it, I realized that my mom would have to wait for me in Ellensburg with my two nephews, because Jess had class until 1100, so at the earliest, we would leave at 1130 or so. Jess was so kind to drive me up to a half-way point between the tri-cities and Moses Lake. My mom and nephews met us there. It worked out well. I am so grateful that my friend was willing to drive me all over the country side in a couple days.


Turns out, the heat shield in my car was getting too hot, and began to burn/smoke. The mechanic also noted that the oil was empty as well, so he had to add a little oil to the car. They bent back the heat shield so that it wouldn't get too close to the engine, and that was it.


My mom followed me home, and all went well.


It definitely could have been worse. :D