A Graduating Mama-to-be

I promised my mom I would write a post and brag - so here it is.

Last Wednesday I officially graduated from my Master's program. I wore the gown, shook hands with all the right people and walked off stage with a document that represents two of the most challenging years of my life. It seemed a bit strange for me since I defended my thesis back in September and have been out of school for awhile, but the ceremony really was a significant moment for me. It was also fun because my friend Lexy was also there and we are both preggo. Here we are:

 

The dress and gown are clearly not flattering on either of us. I swear I do not look that huge. 

Here's my mom and I: 

 

 

My mom promises me that one day my kid will graduate and I will demand that they pose for unlimited photo's. However, if they are pregnant and huge, I will promise my kid now that I will only photograph from the chest up. 

Being a bit different

This morning I had an appointment with the midwife. It was actually my last "every four weeks" appointment - now I start to go every two weeks!! My midwife was super excited to hear that we have hired a doula and had a million positive things to say about homebirths and waterbirths when I told her we were considering the options. Yes, despite my mother's email written in bold red writing stating "don't even think about not giving birth in a hospital," we are still leaning toward membership on Team Homebirth.

The most fearful part about my midwife appointments is stepping on that scale. We don't have a scale at home and so I never weigh myself between appointments. Imagine my shock at my last appointment at 24 weeks when I realized that I had gained 11 pounds in the previous four weeks. I seriously spent a good amount of time in the washroom fiddling with the scale settings, convinced that something was wrong. It had to be. It took me 20 weeks to gain my first ten pounds, how could it possibly only take four weeks to gain 11?? I mean, I realize it was after Christmas, but turkey and stuffing can only be blamed for so much. Anyway, after experiencing two growth spurts since my last appointment I was feeling deflated and had nearly given up on gaining a healthy amount as opposed to an ugly amount of weight. So when I stood on the scale today I was prepared for the worst. I was prepared to see that I have already gained the recommended amount of weight with 12 weeks left to go.

2 pounds.

Seriously. I have 2 pounds in the past four weeks and in the four weeks before that I gained 11. I have no explanation for this. I just think it means I'm allowed to have chocolate chip pancakes for dinner with extra syrup.

Anyway, the rest of the appointment went well. I'm measuring right on target, the baby's heartbeat is strong and baby continues to swim, kick and do everything possible to dodge the doppler. Besides more frequent headaches and the occasional sore back in the evening, I am doing well.

In terms of our preparation, I finally gave in and gave up on finding the perfect shade of blue and decided to go with the light blue. It goes well with the dark wood of the crib, dresser and glider and we can add just about any colour in there and it still goes well together. Kris did the edging this weekend, but we had a million other things on the go so progress is slow. As someone who always wants to take things to the next level, I would love to make the room more special by adding a mural, but we only rent and putting in all that time and money only to decide to move in a year would be pointless (right?.... ok, don't be shocked if something elaborate still happens).

This weekend I took a risk and posted on a message board the name we like for a boy and asked for advice on the spelling. I'm not going to share the name here because we want it to be a surprise. I thought that a message board would be a good way to get some input since we're stuck between two different spellings. WRONG. People were intensely mean about it. INTENSELY. Now, let me say that that the name is not common, but it's not unheard of either. In fact, it can be found in baby name books and its popularity is climbing. However, it's not in the top 10, or even the top 100. Sue us for wanting something different. Apparently people think that this should be a realistic option. Anyway, being the emotional pregnant woman I am, I had a total emotional meltdown complete with tears, red face and snotty nose. It wasn't just about the name, it was about every person who has second guessed a decision we've made about this baby. I realize that I've never had a baby, I don't know what I'm in for, I can't imagine the sleep deprivation, the pain of childbirth, the BLAH.BLAH.BLAH.

Then - midway through a sob I realized something. I'm not going to defend any of the decisions that Kris and I are making about the baby. It's our baby and our decisions. We're not teen parents. We don't inhale crystal meth. In fact, we're actually fairly mature adults who managed to put ourselves through three University degrees. We've made a home together. We have good jobs. We make good decisions.

So yeah, the names we picked out are different. Having a homebirth is different. Having a blue room for a baby without knowing the sex is apprently very different.

Gaining 2 lbs. in four weeks when you gained 11 lbs. in the previous 4 weeks is definitely different.

Having a great family is awesome

Before I begin this entry, I need to make two shout outs to my lovely family members. First, to my Aunt Joyce who wrote me a very kind email to assure me that I was not totally insane regarding the paint colour. Apparently she recently had a similar experience. So either being nuts about paint colours runs in the family or it's actually a common issue. Either way, I'm still on the search for the perfect colour.

Next shout out is to my mom (who now reads the blog and DID indeed have a bird about me considering having a home birth). Yesterday while I was laid out on the couch with the worst migraine of my pregnancy thus far, I opened my email to find the best news. My mom is giving me her car for a graduation gift (I finished my MA in September, but the ceremony is next week). This is such a HUGE deal since I've been in a total panic about how I would ever manage to get a car seat in the back of my two door toyata, nevermind the stroller in the tiny trunk. Kris and I have been mulling over the possibility of buying a new car, but with me about to go on maternity leave and having to start paying my student loan back, it just didn't seem financially possible. My mom lent me her Honda CRV at Christmas time to bring back our gifts and I have been steadily falling in love with it ever since. I thought that next week when my mom came for my graduation I would have to end the love affair, but now it looks like it will continue!! This is beyond awesome. BEYOND.

In other news, I haven't updated about our past weekend and since there were some exciting baby events, I thought I should. On Friday Kris and I interviewed another Doula, and even though she charged less, we both felt like we had a better connection with Doula #1, Monique. So we decided to hire Monique and are now officially Doula-fied. We have our first prenatal appointment with her in a couple weeks and we're both looking forward to it. I think this is going to be a really great support for us.

Saturday morning we decided to search out a large Babies R Us so we could register before my baby shower. There is a BRU in Kitchener, but it's on the small side and we wanted to see the things we were adding to the registry in person, rather than having to guess by just looking online. We also wanted to go to Ikea because we know the dresser we want and are hoping to find it in the "as is" section. If you've been to my house you know that it's furnished almost entirely from the Ikea "as is" section and kijiji/craigslist. So Kris renamed the day "Yuppie Saturday" because apparently this is what he thinks yuppie's do on a Saturday.

We headed to the Ikea in North York to find a very disappointing "as is" section. We did see the dresser we want which just reconfirmed the fact that we want it. We'll wait until the room is painted (if that ever happens) before we buy it. After we went to the car and realized that I forgot to write down whether the BRU address was located on Lawrence Avenue East or West. Instead, we punched BRU into the GPS and took the closest route. We drove for about 30 minutes, at which point we commented that GPS always takes the strangest routes. We were out by an old train lot with truck stops and no stores in sight. This is when we realized that we had driven to the BRU DISTRIBUTION CENTRE!!! There was really nothing to do but laugh, so laugh we did.

A little further driving and we figured we were in Vaughn and so headed to the Vaughn Mills mall (second largest in Canada) because it has a BRU. However, I cannot walk into a wall without doing a full tour, which Kris was very unimpressed about since the place is HUGE and packed solid with people. By the time we got to BRU we were both exhausted. Thank goodness we had a list and registering took 20 minutes and then we could be on our way home.

Sunday was another busy day since it's usually spent cooking Kris's meals for the week (he works out of town Monday to Thursday). We hit up the grocery store, threw some ingredients in the slow cooker, visited his parents, came home and threw another recipe in the slow cooker and headed out for a Haiti relief concert at the River Run Centre with our friends Stuart and Michelle. Kris and I only managed to stay for the first half since we were both exhausted and I had heartburn like I've never had heartburn before. The University of Guelph choirs performed and the baby either LOVED them or HATED them. Tickey was kicking up a storm every time they hit a high note, making me giggle and my belly jiggle.

Since then, Kris has gone off to work and, like I mentioned, I have had a terrible migraine for the past couple days. A snowstorm started up this morning which explains why, since my migraine's tend to be triggered by changes in weather. What makes them more challenging than usual is not being able to take anything for them, besides tylenol which really doesn't do much. I took yesterday off work which, thanks to gravol, passed in a fog, but I'm back at work today...for now.

Legendary Blue - The Case of Curious George

Like most weeks as of late, this one seemed to fly by in record time. It was the last week of my second trimester and the week that Kris and I celebrated five years as a couple. Well, our anniversary was marked, but with him working in Cobourg and me round and perpetually exhausted in Guelph, it wasn't much of a celebration. It was also the week that I tried to track down the perfect shade of blue for Tickey's room. It is a problem for me. I imagine something or see it somewhere and I can think of nothing else until I find it. So I saw this picture online:

 

And I was hooked. I HAD to have that colour for the baby's room. The best part was, the website actually told me the exact brand and shade of blue that it was painted. Legendary Blue. Since the closest paint store that sold the brand was half an hour away in Kitchener, I decided to go visit Kris's mom who has a thousand different paint wheels. Surely I could find a match. Hmmm...not so much. After pouring over a thousand shades of blue, we gave in. The next day I went to Home Depot and picked up every paint chip sample and, feeling ENTIRELY CONFIDENT that I had found the colour, happily went home to compare. I was WAY off. Way, way, way..... somehow I ended up with every shade of the sea, but nothing remotely like the photo. Finally I just drove to Kitchener to pick up the brand, but when I got to the store I realized that the paint chip was NOTHING like the photo. I had hit a roadblock. A big, giant "there's-no-way-this-colour-exists-off-the-internet" roadblock. 

And then, after countless hours of staring at the above photo, I had an epiphany. It was the small picture above the crib that made me realize. The blue on the walls was CURIOUS GEORGE BLUE. I drove up to Chapter's, found a Curious George book with the most beautiful blue cover, drove to Home Depot, got them to colour match it and took home a sample. 

Today Kris painted the sample on the wall and guess what? It's still not the right colour. Obviously we are just not meant to paint the nursery this colour. But LOOK AT IT! It's the most amazing shade of blue EVER. I do not know how our child is supposed to sleep in a room that is not this colour. It just seems cruel to make him/her sleep in a room that is any other colour. 

So now I am back to square one. Do I continue on my path to find this shade? Will our baby end up sleeping in a room with 43 sample shades painted on the walls? Do I just give up and go with a different colour? If I do this, will I convince myself that our baby would cry less and sleep more if I'd just found that perfect shade of blue?! (yes.)

Someone please tell me they have a solution - and remember, drink a glass of wine and chill out is not an option.

Double Digits

Do you see what this ticker is telling us? We are officially in the double digits! Not only did this past weekend mark the start of the last week in the second trimester, but also put the number of days to go to less than 100. I'm not quite ready to give up the second trimester since it has treated me well for the most part, but every passing day does make us another day closer to meeting Tickey and we are definitely excited about that. Confirmation that we are definitely getting closer also came in other, less wonderful ways, this weekend. 

For starters, I discovered my first stretch mark. I thought I saw something developing late last week and despite the fact that I've read a thousand times that lotions won't help, I rubbed myself silly with the stretch mark cream my mom got me for Christmas. Obviously it didn't help because Sunday morning I was pointing to the mark, screeching at Kris "Do you see this?!", followed by a mix of screaming, hyperventilating, and eventually, laughing. Yes, I know, they are something to be proud of - battlemarks of my pregnancy, blah, blah, blah. I can only take refuge in the fact that they will one day fade (supposedly). 

My belly also seemed to grow overnight from Saturday to Sunday. I have been growing at a pretty steady pace, with a growth spurt right after Christmas that took me from "is she pregnant?" to "that woman is pregnant." For the month of January there wasn't much of a change in my belly size. That is until Saturday when Kris noted this, putting a curse on the steady growth because by Sunday morning there was a noticable difference. Unfortunately for those who are obsessed with pregnant bellies, I will not be posting monthly pictures of my growing belly. We'll take one set of maternity shots in a few weeks and I will post those, but that's about the extent. If you don't get to see me that often, you're just going to have to use your imagination. 

Also this weekend, Tickey became noticably stronger. The cute little kicks became forceful jabs that actually had be bending over in surprise and waking me up at night. I'm still loving feeling the baby, but am a bit worried that I am harbouring a baby of unusual strength!

Finally, Kris and I interviewed a doula this weekend and are pretty confident that we're going to hire her. We're supposed to interview a couple more this coming weekend, but hit it off well with Monique. Not only will having a doula take some pressure off Kris to be the all knowing birth partner by providing us with support during the labour, but she'll also help us prepare and provide some post partum care as well. After meeting with her we talked more about the possibility of having the birth at home, something we hadn't given much thought to before. We knew that we wanted to stay at home as long as possible before going to the hospital, and the doula will help us with that, but having the extra support has made us rethink going to the hospital at all.

My mother is going to have an absolute bird when I tell her this. She still asks me when I'm going to see a "real" doctor (as opposed to the midwife).

And to end this post, I offer you the cutest picture imaginable....
We've been trying to keep Munchie out of the baby's room for fear that he would make himself at home, but he snuck in there this weekend and did exactly that.

The Insanity of ME

First off, many, many thanks to all the folks who have expressed excitement about Baby Ellery Krahl and reading about our pregnancy. Kris and I are very lucky to have such a great group of friends and family and we plan on abusing your kindness to no end once the baby arrives and we need babysitters, cleaners, cooks and general shoulders to cry/vent/freak out on.

Also, I need to share the fact that we call Baby Ellery Krahl "Tickey." This stems back to the early days of our pregnancy when I told Kris that the baby was the size of a tic tak (thank you google). Despite the fact that our baby grew out of that stage in a week and moved on to fruits and veggies (currently it's the size of an eggplant....so much better than the week it was prune), Kris continued to call the baby Tickey after the tic tak and it just grew on us. I strongly hope that we drop the habit once the baby arrives and has a real name, but this is coming from the couple who call their cat Munchie, Muchachi, Munchkin, Munch, Bubbie, Bub, Buble (his actual name is Beckham and neither of us can recall the last time we said that name out loud without referring to David or Posh..err, Victoria). We also call Kris's brother Kyle, Karl. Apparently names mean very little to us.

With that out of the way, I thought I would share with you how preparing for Tickey has cast a glaring spotlight on the total insanity of my personality. Last weekend Kris and I were lounging around and I commented how bizarre it was that I went through 6 years of school without having a concrete idea of "what I wanted to be when I grew up." I knew my strengths, but never really drew a concrete line between them and a profession. Now that I'm a social planner, I can't believe that I didn't figure it out. I've always been a planner. If I wake up in the morning and don't have plans, I literally get a headache by the early afternoon. I HAVE to have plans. My mind does not stop planning. At work, I plan the work of others - that's my actual job. At home, I make meal plans, weekend plans, budget plans, etc. I just don't stop planning.

After I got over the 18 weeks of morning sickness, I realized that we had a lot of planning to do. We had to make a birth plan, a budget plan, a plan to get a new car, a plan to decorate a nursery, a plan to buy an enourmous amoung of "stuff." It's the part where "plan" and "buy" come together in the same sentence that makes my life extra tricky. See, not only am I a compulsive planner, but I'm also a shopoholic. If I didn't come up with a PLAN for buying things, our house would quickly turn into a giant nursery filled with every baby product I found. So I made a plan.

I researched every "list of stuff you need for a newborn" I could find (and there are a lot). I started to panic about the number of different opinions we were hearing. A trip to the local baby store to learn about strollers suddenly made us feel as though we were in the market for buying a Land Rover when we'd never even ridden a bike. This is when the researcher in me came out. I researched every stroller, I watched every youtube stroller video, I read stroller blogs, stroller reviews, and compared stroller heights, weights, baskets, brakes and more. I finally settled on a stroller that cost nearly as much as our rent. The same thing happened with the crib. I suddenly realized that I would need to quit my job and set up permanent residency in front of the laptop if I was going to invest this much research in every baby product. This is when I found the Baby Bible, aka the Baby Bargains book. It told me everything. EVERYTHING. Now I have a spreadsheet with the product, price and where to get it. Yes, that's how insane I am.

People say that if you're laid back, you'll have a laid back kid. As much as I try, being laid back is just not in me. Kris IS laid back, so lets hope the baby ends up somewhere in between. I'm not sure he can handle living with two of me. Then again, the baby is due dangerously close to my birthday, making us both Taurus. Honestly, Kris knows this, and I think it terrifies him.

"The Important Folks" delayed this blog

I can remember setting this blog up sometime during my first trimester. Kris and I were holding onto the biggest secret and I could barely wait to start blogging about our first pregnancy - but we wanted to make sure we'd told "the important folks" first. At first, the list consisted of our immediate family, but once we'd told them we realized that our family consisted of more than just mom's, dad's, brother's, aunts and uncles and grandparents. At 12 weeks we shared the news with Steve, Emily, Krysten and Jonathan and a trip to Kingston a few weeks later for a conference gave Kris the opportunity to tell John and Mike. A planned venture out to the Sugar Bush to tell Val and Dennis and Lauren kept getting postponed until we finally managed to catch up with Dennis on his birthday and by then I was 20 weeks along. I broke the news to Janelle a few weeks later and by that point, had succumbed to telling "my boys" (Kyle, Brandon and Greig) via email (I'd much rather have done it in person - but trips to the UK and Vietnam aren't in the budget and Kyle Brown can only be tracked down after dark - a time I rarely see anymore). In the meantime, we'd shared the news with co-workers and friends in Guelph - "the important folks" and more.


So now here I am - 25 weeks a four days pregnat (or 6 months) and writing my first blog entry. Perhaps its better that I'm writing now, rather than during the first 18 weeks when I maintained a daily schedule of throwing up, sleeping and struggling to make it through a day of work. Everyone told me the morning sickness would end after my first trimester, but weeks 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 proved them all wrong. Since week 18 I've been feeling better -minus a trip to the ER where I discovered that not only do I have a round ligament, but I'd pulled it. I'm sporting a nice sized belly and if you're lucky enough to see me in person and give it a rub, you'll probably be treated to a solid baby kick. 


Things we know about the baby - the baby is very, very active. During an ultrasound at 22 weeks the technician told me that she'd been in the business for 20 years and our baby is one of the most active she's seen. This led to me googling "does active baby in womb mean active baby when born?" (trust me, this is not the strangest thing I have googled since becoming pregnant - in fact we joke that our baby will be raised in part by google). Our baby has all the right parts - fingers, toes, four chambers in the heart, two sides of the brain, chubby cheeks, little nose and round belly. Our baby is expected to make its grand entrance on May 9th (Mother's Day!). 


Things we don't know about the baby - the sex. Unsure of whether we really want to know (ok, Kris does not want me to know because he thinks I'll go shopping crazy and he is very right), we asked the ultrasound technician to write the sex on a piece of paper and sealed it in an envelope. We do have names picked out, but have only shared those with our mom's. Trust us, they are awesome. Clearly I grew up with a unique name and Kris grew up with a common name (although spelled in a unique way), so we've weighed the pro's and con's of each and come up with names that are unique, but will not require spelling 8 letters every time they introduce themselves along with an explanation of where the name came from (not that I'm bitter!). 


Things that I do not enjoy about being pregnant - lack of maternity fashion. I've been forced into buying a wardrobe worth of maternity clothes since I have to dress semi-professional at work and would rather not spend my weekends in sweats. Thyme Maternity and Old Navy just don't cut it. I cannot wait to get back to shopping at R&W Co. and Jacob. Every now and then I force myself to fit into a non-maternity shirt, but it doesn't always work out. Example - today I wore a sweater and was greeted by a co-worker with "Really Randalin? Horizonal stripes?" I also do not enjoy the fact that I cannot sleep on my stomach. I am a stomach sleeper and so sleeping on my side has proved to be nearly impossible. At this point, I don't have much of a choice but to try and so this means waking up 40 times a night to try and get comfortable while dreaming of days gone by where I slept comfortably on my stomach. 


Things I like about being pregnant - honestly, there is nothing all that fantastic about being pregnant. I am convinced that women who say they love being pregnant are all liars. There are, however, some cool things. Like this morning I woke up to our cat sitting on my stomach, meowing at me to get out of bed and play with him and while he was standing there, the baby started kicking at him. That was pretty awesome. I also enjoy shopping for baby and thinking of nursery ideas. Nursery blogs and baby websites have taken over my celebrity blogs - now that is saying something. 


I'm going to try to update this blog as much as possible. I want to share the experience with those who are far away and who I don't talk to all the time, and I also want to have a record of this pregnancy so I have something to remember this time in my life by. Perhaps I'm a little late in getting it going, but it's better late than not at all.