11 Weeks

11 weeks yesterday. Still getting really sick in car rides and late at night, or if I once in a while get a wonderful sleep in, I wake up terribly sick.

My first pregnancy obsession started. With Katie, every few weeks I had something that I'd get stuck on and go crazy over. Right now, it's painting her princess room and beginning to get it set up. I grabbed about 25 paint chips from the store and hung them up, I pinterested about 2,000 princess room ideas, and I am trying to figure out how to redo the perfect princess dresser. Slowly, I'm getting the current furniture out of the room.

I can't believe how big baby is already. Went to the store yesterday and held a lime, and tried to imagine a baby from head to butt being that big inside me already. I'm so used to thinking the baby is the size of an appleseed or blueberry in there that I forgot to actually apply these fruit sizes to my growing baby.

I have two days until my doctor appointment to hear the heart beat and hopefully get signed up for  dating ultrasound if I'm lucky.

Not much else is new. Pregnancy is starting to pick up speed now, it's no longer crawling by. In fact, I think I may start to freak out in the next few weeks as second trimester feels so different than first. First trimester feels so far away from the end, like it's a nice idea to have a baby but it's just an idea. Second trimester you actually start planning and getting ready for baby, not to mention start to panic over third tri.

At the same time, baby fever has hit me pretty hard, and while I don't want to go through delivering a baby again, I am excited over having a little tiny itty bitty baby again.

Ten Weeks!

Ten weeks! Finally, it seems like I'm getting somewhere. I'm now a fourth of the way through pregnancy, and about 3/4ths of the way through first tri.

I've been lucky to have Bill have off this last week from his second job. He spends his mornings lately doing dishes that I can't do, doing lots of laundry as I'm the worst at that, and helping out with anything I need. It's been lovely!

We were also lucky to have family help out with Christmas. I decided not to make a Christmas dinner as I felt too sick to spend much time in the kitchen and unless it's steak and mushrooms, Bill's a bit helpless with dinners. We had Christmas Eve dinner at his Uncle's house, who urged us to take some food home, and then we had Christmas Lunch at his mom's and Christmas Dinner at my mom's. Bill has been overly spoiling me for Christmas week and has been letting me eat out for dinners before Christmas so I didn't have to do more cooking than necessary.

I'm half way through week ten already (every week should be Christmas, it's the first time I didn't notice every day crawling by!) and baby is somewhere in size between a prune and a lime. The heart is developed, all internal organs are in there, eyes are fully developed, finger and toe nails are developing - how exciting to think of!

Today I did my medical and pregnancy history on the phone, which made things seem a little bit more real. Talking about details of last pregnancy really made me think of how I'm going to do all of that again!

I have a doctor's appointment next week to hear baby's heartbeat. I'm really excited for that, I think I'll feel a lot more relaxed afterwards.

8 Weeks

8 Weeks today! Baby is the size of a raspberry and one inch long. Baby now looks like a baby instead of a weird sea creature (makes looking at the weekly pictures much more fun! lol)

Had a lot of cramping through the night which kept me worried, and while I was shopping last night I kept getting dizzy and sick. When I didn't think I was going to be able to get out of the store without vomiting, I rushed to the soda aisle, grabbed a 2 liter of ginger ale, and drank a few sips. I carried it around the rest of the time sipping, which made it better. The dizziness stayed though and so did cramping, so I ended up forgetting half the stuff I needed and sent Bill back this morning for the rest. Once we got home, I immediately sat down and Bill took care of Katie and the dogs for the rest of the night. I still had a lot of cramping throughout the night, but it seems to be gone now. Which is good, as my wake up time today was 4:30 AM, and I woke up to a sick little girl. I've been toting on her all day and trying to get her better.

Vomiting is calming down, luckily. Last time though, it didn't get bad until 10 weeks. While I want to believe that I may be lucky this time, I have to remember that last time wasn't horrible at 8 weeks. But still hopeful!

7w,4d

I'm having a love affair....with food.

I LOVE food right now. It's my whole life. I go insane with cravings, like if I can't have them I obsess over them, I wonder how long it would take me to walk to them, and I scrounge for quarters to see if I have enough money laying around to sneak some snacks without pulling from the bank. It's terrible!

Morning sickness has gone to the next level now. Spent midnight vomiting into a trash can (made it to the toilet. Did I need to puke there? Nope. Went downstairs to get the ginger ale to try and settle my stomach. My nose was assulted by the smells of fresh food from the fridge. The smells punched me so hard in the nose that I spun around and vomited right into the trash can. This morning, I couldn't go near the kitchen. I waited until Bill came home and took the trash out for me before I could go anywhere downstairs. I couldn't bear the thought of seeing that again. Gross!

But even with the vomiting, I'm still hungry and craving constantly. Last pregnancy, I was never hungry. I had no appetite. I figured it was because I was always sick. Seems like my taste buds are dragging me right through the sickness and still trying to find victory. They're fickle though. One day all I want is this one certain  food. I obsess, I plan, I finally get it the next day, and then it's repulsive! I bought ham, made an entire menu around it. I wanted ham and only ham for days. Went to cook and it felt sick. Thought about it and felt sick. Pulled a whole ham out of the oven and ten minutes later I was ordering a large stuffed crust pizza (with pepperoni and mushrooms!) with a side order of wings from Pizza Hut. Today, thankfully, I'm able to eat the ham. In fact, ham subs really settled my belly. Doesn't mean I'm not onto the next craving that I'm dying for - Olive Garden's gnochi soup and those hot, buttery, salty breadsticks! Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

7w, 2d

I'm definitely feeling this pregnancy more and more every day...and night. Last night was rough, I stayed awake for hours after everyone went to sleep, just laying in bed and hoping I wouldn't throw up. So far, I haven't actually thrown up, just gagged and felt like I was, but it seems like it gets closer every day. I also had to get up, three days in a row, to go to the bathroom with my bladder ready to explode, and to lower the heat every night because I get SO hot, which makes me really sick.

 All the possible pregnancy symptoms seem to be coming into play this time around. I avoided quite a few last time, but everything seems intensified for this pregnancy. Even though it's difficult and hard to keep on top of things, it's also a relief. We never got to hear the baby's heartbeat and it was so small that there wasn't much to see. I'm glad that baby seems to be growing healthy and on track with my symptoms growing and pregnancy happening like it should. We're going to decline the further testing this time (last time we got the ultrasound part just to see the baby, but I don't want to blood work and the actual reason for doing it doesn't matter to us, so it'll be skipped) which means I won't see baby again until around 20 weeks. Heartbeat will be heard in the beginning of January though, so only a few weeks more.

7w, 1d

We saw the baby a few days ago! Well, sort of. Baby was so tiny it was hard to see much, and no heartbeat yet. But the doctor said everything looks on schedule and healthy, so that's good. My mother and Katie came along as well, but Katie missed her first peek at her first sibling, as she slept through the whole thing (which was for the best, and she enjoyed celebrating the good ultrasound afterwards when we went out to eat!)

After the scan, we went to Babies R Us to find a cuddly stuffed animal for this pregnancy, just like I did for Katie. While I was showing my mom one of the animals, Katie leaned over in my arms, grabbed a stuffed animal, cooed and hugged it tight. She had grabbed a gender neutral lion and did not want to let go! Since this baby is our little lion cub, it fit perfectly. Katie picked out the first thing we ever bought for baby!

I'm so exhausted every day, morning sickness gets worse by the hour, and my nipples are so sore they're starting to bleed. Yikes! Can't wait for the next few weeks to fly by. Luckily Christmas is a good distraction. Hopefully I'll be able to fully enjoy the holiday without much difficulty.

Baby is now the size of a blueberry, has most of it's organs forming, and is causing me to bloat insanely. I feel about five months pregnant! Definitely don't have the abs of steel I once did that kept all the pregnancy inside for 6 1/2 months, but at least this time I'll be able to look pregnant.