Tuesday, October 28, 2014

28 Weeks

Alright. I had to delete my app that told me what size Baby Clark is each week. Mostly because it was giving me anxiety and I have enough problems with that all on my own without an app making it worse. Sooooo, that means no more really lame vegetable/fruit comparisons! I know you will all miss it.

I had my doctor appointment yesterday. (To which I'm now going every two weeks!) I am in the third trimester and my fundal (uterus) height is measuring at 30 weeks. Doc says this is ok, but since I've failed my gestational diabetes test by one point, we will keep a close eye on that to make sure Clark doesn't get too big. I have also cut out all sweets from my diet to help prevent that from happening. Which means I am eating lots of peanut butter sandwiches to help get me over my craving for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. (Dang you Halloween candy isle)


This Week:

Cravings: BLT sandwiches. I begged Dan to take me to JCW's last night and I got the biggest sandwich ever. The amount of bacon on that sandwich was crazy. And I ate the whole thing. I may or may not have still been hungry afterwards as well.

What part of bacon don't you understand??


Belly Button: All the way out, but only after I eat.

Wedding Ring: Still On! Woot!

Sleep: My body kicked off the third trimester with a bang last week by not letting me sleep. Like, at ALL. I would lay awake all night and finally drift off to sleep sometime between 6 AM and 8 AM. This may have also been exasperated by Dan's absence. He was gone all week on a business trip.

Signs of Labor: No thank goodness. I am getting Braxton Hicks more and more often, though.

Best Moment of the Week: I spent the week at my parents house while Dan was gone. My sister has this adorable/weird (mostly adorable)
bird who I would attempt to play with. The bird's name is Chadwick. Anyhow, Chadwick could tell when Clark was awake and kicking and would fly to my stomach. He would lean his head down and talk/chirp to Clark until he was kicked. Chadwick would then move to a different spot on my stomach and would do it all over again. It was ADORABLE.

Worst Moment of the Week:  Not sleeping. I love to sleeeeeeeep.

What I'm looking forward to: Pretty sure this one is going to stay the same until we move. I am looking forward to being in our house with all our stuff and my bed! I miss my bed...

Victories of the Week: Digging through boxes in the storage unit and successfully finding all my cold weather clothes. I have been freezing the past week.




Monday, October 13, 2014

3 Years

Dan and I have been married for 3 years! That is so crazy. It seems like we have been married forever, but then at the same time it feels like it was just yesterday that we were married at the Salt Lake Temple.

Look how skinny I was! Dan is always the better looking one.

I have loved Dan for a long time. We dated for 2 years before we were married and I didn't think I would ever love him more than the day we got married. Since then, my love for dan has grown and developed more than I ever thought possible. He is my best friend and I don't know what I would do without him.



Dan is so hard working. He works very hard to ensure that I don't have to work and so we can have what we need and want. I can't wait to see him as a father. He is a wonderful Uncle and loves babies. I cry when I think about seeing Dan hold Clark for the first time. I'm sure I will cry just as hard (or harder, I'm sure) when that does happen in a few months.

These girls love Dan.
Five years ago I thought I would never be happy again. I thought I had lost the ability to be happy. On my wedding day three years ago, I remember thinking about Alma. After having been forgiven of his sins he proclaims,


"Oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!"


I felt that same way. As though the strength of my misery (emotional, physical, and spiritual) was completely turned around and changed into complete joy! I can't tell you how great this feeling is. It is as though every cell of my body would burst from happiness.






I love you Dan and can't wait to see what happiness and joy the future has in store for us.

26 Weeks

I know, I know. I'm late with this update.  This week Clark's eyes open and he can see a bright light shining on my belly. He is as big as an eggplant (wait...wasn't he an eggplant last week too??) or about 9.2 inches long and weighs about 2 pounds.

This week:

Cravings: Sweets. I want all the sweets I can get my hands on.

Belly Button: Same as last week. Not all the way out, but not all the way in either.

Wedding Ring: On!

Movement: Still quite a lot of movement. I have started doing daily "kick counts" and he reaches 20 kicks or rolls very quickly. I have started to notice a schedule at night. He usually starts kicking around 10:30, 1:00, and 4:00.  Supposedly, this is when he will be awake during the night when he is born. If so, I'm already used to being awakened at those times, so that will be great!

Sleep: I feel like I'm back in the first trimester. I am ALWAYS tired. I sleep forever at night and then still take a nap during the day. Thank you to a great husband who works so hard so I can take naps!

Signs of Labor: Nope, but I have felt my first few Braxton Hicks "practice" contractions. No pain, just tightness.

Best Moment of the Week: Going to my doctor appointment and hearing Clark's heart beat. I love it! If I could have a monitor on him all day I would so I could listen all day.

Worst Moment of the Week: Finding out that I failed my 3 hour glucose test by one point. I have been banned from eating anymore sweets for the remainder of my pregnancy. (Hence the craving for sweets this week) However, I have been noticing a very adverse effect when I eat sweets (dizziness, faintness, and extreme hot flashes), so I am not as inclined to eat them as I was. Even cereal does this to me. Good thing I love eggs!

What I'm Looking Forward To: Next week I enter the third and final trimester! I am looking forward to holding our sweet babe and counting finger and toes. Also, our house loan is finally getting summited to USDA tomorrow, so the count down to moving into our house is on!

Victories of the Week: Possibly (most likely) having a middle name picked out for our babe! For some reason we could never agree or like a middle name for longer than a week. Let's see how long this one holds out for!


Friday, October 3, 2014

Moments of Happiness

This is an adoption related post. Just FYI. 

After placing my first child for adoption in 2009, I have almost dreaded being pregnant again.  Not because I hated being pregnant (which I did), but because I knew it would be different.  I knew that the next time I would be pregnant would be when I was happily married and that my situation and everything surrounding the pregnancy would be, well if not totally perfect, pretty dang close to perfect. I felt like I didn't know how to do a "happy" pregnancy.  I felt like I wouldn't know how to share my happiness with my husband. I felt like I wouldn't know how to be proud of my pregnancy.  I knew how to be sad, and lonely, and ashamed.  That's what I knew and I was scared. I was also afraid of how my family would react. Deep down, I knew they (and I) would be very happy and excited, but all I knew was the disappointment and shame, so that's what I expected. (PS. thank goodness for the aptly name "Sara" oil from YLEO. It has gotten me through a lot of pain and suffering related to Sara's adoption)

Fast forward to June-ish 2014. I have been happily married for 2.5 years. My husband, Dan, and I had been discussing for about a month about starting a family. We had just got back from a trip to Hawaii and my period was late. I cautiously took a pregnancy test. We couldn't be pregnant so quickly. Seeing those two little lines was like I had been hit on the head with an anvil. You know, in cartoons with the little birds singing in circles around your head? I was in shock. Very very VERY happy shock. I quickly called Dan over and made him look at the test.  He looked confused at the test and then looked at me questioningly. Yes, we are pregnant!! We were thrilled! This was the first of many moments I had where I thought to myself: This is what it is supposed to be like. (Go ahead and hum "So this is Love" from Cinderella. I did.)

Going to the doctor and proudly proclaiming that I was pregnant was yet another moment. Again with telling not only my family, but also Dan's family and having a joyful, hopeful, and not an all-together tearless reaction was another. The ultrasound (with my husband there!) was another. Having Dan WANT to feel his son move and kick is another. Having strangers comment on my belly and say how great little boys are (without any judgment on my young age) is yet another. 

All of my fears from after placement have been dashed away. If I think too hard on it, I will cry. And I usually do. I know I will be a complete mess when he is born. I won't be afraid of bonding too much. I won't be afraid of people showing up and ruining things. I won't be alone. Ok, ok. I wasn't alone, per say, during Sara's birth. But I will have my husband, the father of our baby, there beside me. 

Ok. This is probably going to come out strange. But I feel like Clark is my first child. Yes, yes, TECHNICALLY Sara is my first child. But she is Matt and Evige's second child first and foremost. This is not to say that I love Sara any less. Or that I love Clark any more. I am not quite sure where I'm going with this. But when people ask me if this is my first child, I say yes. Without hesitating. Unless, of course, the question has some medical reasoning behind it. Then I say something like yes, and no, and then I explain. But yes. Clark is my first child. 

And I can't wait for all the rest of "firsts" that will come with him. 

Why is first such a weird looking word?

Week 25

I am officially 25 weeks along! Only 14 to go, before we meet our babe.

Clark is the size of an Eggplant this week, or about 9 inches long and about 1.7 pounds. This week he is packing on fat to fill in his wrinkly skin and his nostrils become unclogged. Also, the next three weeks are when he is supposed to be the most active.  I can't wait to feel more of his acrobatics!


Here is more of what went on last week:

Cravings: Milk milk milk and milk. And lets not forget the banana cream pie shake! I made one out of desperation on Sunday.  It was alright, but not the same.

Belly button: It's doing this half in half out thing. The top is an outie, but the bottom is still an innie.

Wedding Ring: ON

Movement: Clark is moving a TON. He is getting pretty good at kicking me through his anterior placenta. (the placenta has attached itself on my tummy side, rather that on my sides or back. So to get me to feel anything, he has to kick pretty hard.)

Sleep: It's...alright.  I had an unfortunate experience at the hospital this week that has left me in some considerable pain, so shifting and turning from one side to the other actually makes me call out in pain.  (more on this later) Other than that, its been good!

Signs of Labor: The short answer is no, thank goodness. If you want to read about my scary hospital story, read on.
Tuesday at about 10:30 PM I felt like my water had broken. It felt EXACTLY like it did when my water broke with Sara. So, I called my dr.'s after hours number and was instructed to go to labor and delivery. Dan and I are living in Alpine while we wait for our house, but we are planning on delivering in Provo. So we had to decide. Do we go to American Fork hospital because they may just send us home, or do we drive all the way to Provo in the chance that my water really had broken and they refuse to let me go home? In the end, we decided to make the trek to Provo, just in case. Once we got to L&D, I had to have a few tests done to figure out if, in fact, my water really had broken. This included a vaginal exam. WORST. EXAM. EVER. It pulled out tears and a cry of pain from me and a concerned look from Dan. And also a bit of blood. In the end, my water hadn't broken and we were send home. But Wednesday was a one-floor-day. I could not move very far or very fast. Thursday I was feeling much better, but did way too much and re-injured myself by running, so today- Friday -I am once again having a one-floor-day. No stairs for me. Hopefully I am feeling good enough to go to the BYU game later, but we will see.

Best Moment Of The Week: Being able to leave the hospital with Clark still growing and healthy. And also, hearing our babes heart beat for 2 hours straight while waiting for test results in the hospital. He hated those monitors and would kick them. The nurse had to fight with him to get it to stay on. :)

Worst Moment Of The Week: Thinking that my babe might be born at 24 weeks and that he would have a very rough time of it out of the womb.  Stay in babe! And stop making momma worry! (good luck with that)

What I'm Looking Forward To: Buying baby stuff! I'm feeling antsy. I think it might be a mad rush at the end to get everything.

Victories of The Week: Keeping a baby in me! Wahoo!

I planned on taking a "bump" picture of myself...but it just didn't happen. I shall try to remember to take one soon.








Baby Mortimer Post #2 or Microscopic Colitis is Ruining My Groove

What in the world is happening to my body?? This isn't just normal pregnancy complaints. It has got me monthly appointments with my GI doctor, an endoscopy, an ultrasound of my leg and abdominal organs, the discovery that my body is giving signs of malnutrition, and strict instructions from my doctor to eat more calories. I tracked my calories for 6 days. I normally eat almost 2,000 a day. I am to eat 7-9 times a day with boost, ensure, or the like in between.  The problem? My Microscopic Colitis is at it again.

Here is a quick course of MC 101:

Basically, I have microscopic inflammation in my intestines. It causes chronic diarrhea, nausea, and joint pain. All medical information on this is over 40 years old. And most of it is wrong. It is looked at as an "old person" nuisance disease, with no treatment other than to just deal with it. I probably know more about MC than most GI doctors in Utah. When I go to a new doctor, I have to explain what it is, as it is not very common. (That, or it is just mis-diagnosed in most cases)

So, what have CAN I do about it?

I was treating it with oils before I got pregnant. However, the oils I was using (ginger, lemongrass, Di-Gize, and others) and the amount I was using them is not safe while pregnant. So, I'm just biding my time and wading through my flare-ups. And trying to eat more.

My endoscopy came back good, with a small sign of acid reflux. No celiac.  I was half convinced that was part of the problem.  Well, back to the drawing board. My doctor wants to do that procedure where you swallow the camera-pill, however, it has to wait until Clark is born. If that comes back clean, then the next step is a CAT scan of my intestines.  Sounds expensive.

My biggest concern is that this can affect Clark. I read a medical study that found a correlation between uncontrolled Ulcerative Colitis and preterm birth. Now, UC and MC are worlds different, but Sara (my little one who I placed for adoption 5 years ago -- read my adoption story HERE) was born early. Exactly four weeks early.  I worry little Clark will be born early as well, and that he will be too small, or not developed enough, or whatever.

My next Baby Mortimer post will be about my feelings of being pregnant after choosing to place my first baby. There will be tears. Lots and lots and lots of tears. (your's may be because of my terrible writing, but whatever.)