Where did these emotions comes from?

OK... yes, I'm pregnant.  With that comes a flood of emotions never quite seen before by myself or my husband.  But when I'm the one feeling like I'm getting a little too emotionally needy for my husband to handle, it must be pretty bad. 

I cry about everything and anything.  What's worse... it feels good.  I get these little sinus headaches if I hold in tears.  It's painful and makes me feel worse.  So here I am feeling all emotional and I want to cry about everything that I just let it out instead of holding it in.

But my husband doesn't like it when I cry, so he tries to make me laugh or say things to cheer me up.  This is so sweet and endearing.  He is doing everything in his power to make me feel loved and beautiful and happy during this emotionally trying time.  He is amazing!  Which also makes me cry... out of happiness.  Then he just hugs me real tight and tells me to knock it off.

I wish that I could control this.  It's pretty annoying.  At first, it was just sad movie scenes that made me cry uncontrollably.  Well... not even really sad ones.  I cried at the end of Twilight the last time I watched it.  For gosh sakes people, Bella was so worried that Edward would leave her in the hospital.  How could you not feel for her?

So if any of you have any suggestions on how I can control these waterworks, please let me know.  I'm running out of kleenex people!

Our little lime

I read my cousin's blog today that she wrote to her 6 month old son Jon, and it was so sweet that it made me cry.  It also inspired me to write about our little one... or to our little one.

This is our first pregnancy and everything is changing.  We found out we were pregnant 8 weeks ago and are so ecstatic!  At the time, our baby was compared to a poppy seed.  My pregnancy app compares the baby to fruit and vegetable every week.  Now, our little one is the size of a lime.  That's crazy!  A lime is so tangible...  so definitive.  The one ultrasound that we had was at 8 weeks and our little one looked like a peanut, or a lima bean.  No definite limbs, just a shape and a heartbeat. 

I wish I could see our little one now.  Arms and legs are moving and flexible.  Eyes are fluttering.  My pregnancy app says that if I press on my belly, the baby will feel it and squirm.  I love that!  I love that I have this weird, little way of communicating with our little one.

So here is what I would say to our little one:

I love you so much, and you're not even here in our arms yet.  Your Daddy is beyond in love with you.  He looks at me differently now.  With this sense of awe and love that I've never seen before.  When I touch my stomach out of comfort, he gets this little smile on my face.  If I seem to be in pain, he immediately asks if I'm okay.  Always checking on me and keeping tabs on my condition.

When we lay in bed at night, he rubs my belly and I know he is thinking about you.  We talk about you a lot.  What you are going through as you grow big and strong.  What you will be like when you get here and what we will be like once we are parents.  We talk about what to name you, and how excited we are to finish your nursery, and your Daddy keeps telling me to stop buying stuff for you because we don't know yet if you're going to be a boy or a girl.  Mind filling me in so I can get back to Babies R Us?

We talk to your Grandparents about you and I'm always sending emails to your Grandma about what new fruit or vegetable we can compare you to.  Your aunt is pregnant right now too and she is having a little girl, so you will have a cousin that is almost the same age as you!  You're going to love everyone when you get here and everyone here already loves you.

I've been pretty emotional lately with all of the hormones surging through my system.  I hope my constant crying and anxiety hasn't been taking too much of a toll on you.  I'm trying really hard to take care of myself and you.  I hope I'm doing a good job...  I'm not supposed to be able to feel you moving around for another month or so, but anytime you feel like jabbing or kicking me, please feel free.  I will relish in it like nothing else. 

We love you little one!

Crazy pregnancy dreams: Blog #1

My dreams of late have been very vivid and obscure... which should make for great blogging material!  I thought I would start posting regular blogs about my most interesting dreams and my own personal interpretations of them.  Then all of you can analyze them as well.  Who knows what we will come up with!

For the last month, I can't remember a night that I've slept straight through.  I get up about every 2-3 hours to go to the potty or to grab a glass of chocolate milk to fight heartburn.  I've read that this frequent up-and-down action all night interrupts my dream-filled REM sleep, thus making my dreams for vivid.  Also, since I'm awake so much during the night, I tend to retain more of my dream memories.

The first pregnancy dream I would like to share with you is about our vast solar system.  In this dream, I am in outer space.  However, it's more of my presence than my physical body.  Everything is very scaled down and close together, like I could reach out and touch all of the planets.  I am traveling around to discover life on other planets, and find it on Neptune.  Yeah!  I'm so very excited that Earth has made a new friend in Neptune and my immediate thought is to "move" Neptune closer to Earth.  

So I watch in my dream as the planet Neptune floats through the solar system, edging closer to Earth.  However, Neptune goes a little bit too far and ends up next to Venus.  Since it's too hot that close to the Sun, the planet starts to turn red.  I, of course, freak out.  I believe this is the point in the dream when my husband claims I was crying and moaning.

I convince Neptune to move back toward Earth, but Neptune has other plans.  Neptune, while he is excited to be "friends" with Earth, has decided that he wants to check out Jupiter.  I plead with him and explain that Jupiter is a big, gaseous giant and he will be swallowed up and destroyed if he goes anywhere near the planet.  (I remember having a "memory" in my dream about a satellite that had been sucked into Jupiter's gravitational pull and it exploded.)

So as Neptune starts bouncing closer to Jupiter, I start screaming "NEPTUNE!!!".  At which point my husband wakes me up.

Interpretation:  I didn't personally decipher this dream, but my husband did.  Neptune is my sister, who lives far away (only about an hour).  I wish that she lived closer, but obviously not too close (as my dream implies).  So Neptune heading toward Jupiter was like my dream subconscious warning me that while it would be great to have Neptune close, disaster may result.  Neptune could also be a metaphor for my parents, who live in the same city as my sister.

Nesting

No... this isn't some new fangled thing like planking and owling where people go around contorting their bodies into the shape of bird nests.  Although that would be pretty amusing...  I'm talking nesting as in the instinct that pregnant women feel toward the end of their third trimester.  The baby is coming and soon-to-be Mother's start feeling the urge and/or need to clean, sort, organize, reorganize, color coordinate, and generally prepare the home for their baby.  

I'm not talking about installing a baby gate in the hallway and putting outlet protectors everywhere.  I'm talking about pulling all of the clothes out of the dresser drawers and refolding and reorganizing them back in different places.  I'm talking about going through that mish-mashed collection of toiletries and hygienic items stowed away in that tiny hallway closet, throwing out items you will never use, and then putting them all back together in order of height inside cute little boxes with cute little labels.

Nesting is a bitch of a symptom.  So why am I, at a mere 9 weeks, feeling the nesting instinct?  My theory is that I'm a ridiculous neat freak.  Organization is my middle name.  Perfectionism is my nickname.  I can honestly see myself nesting for the duration of this pregnancy.  In fact, I kind of nest on a regular basis.  Most people just experience this in March or April and attribute it to Spring Cleaning.  I "Spring Clean" about once a month.  

So here is how my day went:

First, I did the dishes.  No big deal, right?  Well that involved getting the Cascade dishwasher tablet out from under the sink.  Once I was down there, I realized that the bottom of the cupboard, where we store our cleaning products, looked a little shabby.  So I pulled everything out and cleaned the cupboard.  Then I put it all back.

Next, I decided I was hungry and should maybe eat lunch.  So I grabbed a paper plate and plastic fork out of the far right cupboard.  But the odd assortment of plastic utensils floating around the cupboard in bags and boxes made me dizzy.  So I organized that.  Then I decided to take a look at the adjacent cupboards, just for fun.  What's the harm in that?

So then I organized the spice cupboard and reorganized the cupboard where all of our coffee mugs are.  While in that cupboard, I found a collection of empty spice bottles that I was saving for... who knows what.  I probably had some ridiculous crafty idea and just couldn't let them go.  Well, they are in the trash now!

From there, it all went downhill.  I ended up cleaning and reorganizing all of the kitchen cupboards.  I moved things around and now my husband probably won't be able to find anything.  But I'm happy!  And isn't that what's important here people?

Hormones

Since I don't truly know who my audience is comprised of, I'm taking the risk that someone will read this blog that hasn't heard the news...  We're expecting!  My life will practically revolve around this pregnancy for the next few months, and then my child after she is born, so now is as good a time as any to begin blogging about it.

To be honest with ya'll, I have been pretty miserable this last month.  Once the symptoms finally hit me, I couldn't shake the fatigue, frequent urination, stomach cramps, and 24/7 queasiness.  I've been emotional about everything from my much-to-early weight gain to the song playing on the radio.  I really want to enjoy this pregnancy, so I've been trying to just shed off this funk and start being positive about everything.

But today, I thought I had a breakthrough.  As I drove to a seminar this morning, an old Backstreet Boys number 1 hit came on the radio.  I found myself bouncing in my seat.  My head started bobbing and my fingers tapped the steering wheel.  As I picked up on those old familiar words, I started singing along softly.  About halfway through the song, I was belting out that tune like I was trying out for American Idol.

Backstreet Boys

Backstreet Boys

Everybody (backstreet's back)

Everybody

Rock your body

Everybody

Rock your body right.

Backsteet's back alright!

Oh my god we're back again

Brothers sisters everybody sing

Gonna bring the flavor, show you how

Gotta question for you, better answer now

Am I original?  Yeah!

Am I the only one?  Yeah!

Am I sexual?  Yeah!

Am I everything you need?

You better rock your body now

Now throw your hands up in the air

And wave 'em around like you just don't care

If you wanna party let me hear you yell

Cuz we've got it going on again

I was doing so well!  And then... my hormones took over.  The next song on the radio was the theme song to the movie Armageddon, "I don't want to miss a thing" by Aerosmith.  So what do I start thinking about?  Bruce Willis dying, of course!  He takes A.J.'s place to save the world.  He leaves his little girl behind so that she can be with A.J. and start a family.  And then Liv Tyler puts her hand on the television screen as it goes to white noise and static... "Daddy?  Daddy!"  (I'm a daddy's girl, so that didn't help the situation.)

I immediately start crying as I pull up to the next stop light.  (I started crying again as I picked the clip above from You Tube and watched it.)  I'm sure the guy in the truck next to me thought I was completely nuts.  Nope.  Sorry guy.  Not nuts.  Just pregnant.

A birth like no other

I’m not sure why I decided to write about this today…  I really enjoyed reminiscing the other day and I was trying to think of another fond memory to write about.  Since my little sister is expecting baby #2, I got to thinking about the day that my niece Emma was born.

My sister was scheduled to be induced on Monday, February 16, 2009, so she arrived at the hospital about 8:00 p.m. the night before.  I took the 16^th off work and planned to drive up first thing in the morning.  My lack of experience with pregnancy and induction had me worried that she would give birth before I could drive the hour to the hospital that morning.  Boy was I wrong…

I believe they broke her water that morning to see if she would start dilating, but that didn’t work.  I arrived about 9:30, sweating and panting, expecting my niece to be crowning, but everyone was calm and collected.  I presented my sister with a special “Mommy” charm bracelet as a gift and then we all proceeded to sit around… for hours and hours and hours.

Eventually they gave her Pitocin and that sped things up.  The contractions were getting pretty bad, so she opted to get her epidural.  Her boyfriend was a needle-phobe and couldn’t stand to watch it happen, so I stayed in the room and held her hand while the anesthesiologist stuck a huge needle in her back and she turned into a happy girl again.

By late afternoon, there was quite a crowd.  Me, my Mom, my Dad, my sister’s boyfriend, his sister, and his Mom.  Around 6:30, me and my parents headed out to McDonald’s for dinner while my sister and her boyfriend had some alone time.  Around 8:00 p.m., the doctor arrived and said it was time to start pushing.  It didn’t seem so bad at first, but after awhile, I started pacing the halls.  This was a small hospital and there only seemed to be one other woman giving birth that night, so I wasn’t in anyone’s way. 

At one point, my sister stopped panting like the doctor was ordering and started making funny moaning and screaming noises.  That was all my Mom’s poor heart could take.  She took off down the hall to get away from the emotional stress of hearing her baby girl give birth.  By now, I’m sitting in the hallway across from my sister’s room with my head in my hands.  Have I mentioned before now that I’m a very anxious person?

Finally, at 10:28 p.m., my beautiful niece Emma was born.  After another hour, we all got to go in and see them.  That’s when I got really emotional… because my sister announced that her name was Emma Nicole.  Really?  I started crying… because my middle name is Nicole too!  And then my sister said that she chose that for her middle name because I meant so much to her.  Cue:  A ridiculous blubbering mess!

The End!