5 weeks!

How Far along: 5 weeks!

Total weight gain: We're going with none. It may be 2 pounds, but I am skeptical. 

Maternity clothes: N/A, but C did take me shopping to buy a pair of shorts a few sizes larger than I usually wear (modeled above). They fit me nicely and they are so comfy in the hot weather.

Sleep: Yes, please. All that I can get. *Yawn* I must commend myself for not falling asleep in lab meeting or at my desk (yet)! No baby-gender dreams yet. I can't remember when those started with J, I think it was after my first u/s with him. Interestingly, in all the dreams where he was in utero, he was a girl, but in the dreams where he was born and I actually could see him, he was a boy. These dreams stopped once we had our big ultrasound.

Best Moment this week: Telling my mother-in-law and father-in-law, they are super excited! My mom not so much, but we'll discuss that another time.

Movement: N/A

Gender: I'm still leaning toward girl, but not so heartily.

Labor signs: N/A

Belly button: In

Cravings/Aversions: I'm still a huge fan of meat and salt. And sweet pickles. Ooh, and peanut butter. I was all set to have a peanut butter and honey sandwich for lunch, but didn't have peanut butter at work. It was very sad. French fries (and other fried foods) are so last week, though. I did eat a can of green beans mixed with most of a small can of sliced black olives tonight. HEAVEN. Dill pickles are (as usual) a HUGE aversion. Ick. Just smelling them is terrible. Not that I like them anyway, but I'm happy to know that I won't be craving them.

What I miss: Wanting normal food, wanting to be awake, and wanting to drink coffee. Sometimes it sounds good, but unless it's decaf it makes my nausea worse. Boo.

Stretch Marks: No new ones.

What is different this time around: At the moment just the cravings, and the fact that by about 1:00 I have a pretty obvious bump. I did take my belly pic this morning, versus last week's that was taken at night, and you can see the huge difference that the bloat makes over the course of the day.

What I am looking forward to this week: Morning sickness. NOT. Apparently my body has decided that 5 weeks is the magic number. It showed up with J at 5 weeks, and I consider it a small miracle that I haven't tossed my cookies yet today.

The First Hormonal Freakout

HP seems pretty happy for me to do EVERYTHING ahead of when I did with J. Including the stupid cryfest. With J, I was about 13 weeks, and C looked at me askance, and I got upset and started crying. We were supposed to be heading to his parent's house in just a few minutes, and my mascara started dripping down my face and onto my pink shirt. This made me cry even harder, and I recall saying something like MIL won't want to see me with mascara on my shirt, so I can't go. Nevermind that I could just have changed my shirt...which I did.

Today was a rough day. I just felt bitchy and hormonal all day, I had to drive around 4 parking lots at work to find a spot because they're doing construction in a couple lots so there are fewer spaces available. C woke up cranky which didn't help, because he was just snippy and jerky from the moment he woke up. I was just plain not in a good mood at all. My peach at lunch was just tart enough to make me gag, so no peach. My caramel Yoplait yogurt tasted gross (apparently HP decided that yesterday's was enough, and no more of that for us) so I didn't get to finish that. Then my commute home was an HOUR because of stupid traffic (usually no more than 45 minutes) and I had to stop at the store to get milk and some other things, and the stupid self checkout machine was not at all faster than the other way.

Anyway, by the time I got home and the dogs were whining at me and J was chewing on my shirt and got put in timeout within 5 minutes of me getting home, it was taking all my willpower not to kill anyone. So I gave myself a timeout, filled the bathtub with cold water to soak my feet, and sat there. After a few minutes C came in and asked if he could help in any way, and I started crying because I am crazy bloated and "none of my pants fit and it's hot and I don't have any shorts that button because I'm fat and I've gained 3 pounds in a week and I just want to poop!" At this point I started laughing and crying at the same time, and still lamented not having pants that comfortably button over the chub. I realize that the reason I've gained 3 pounds in a week (or less) is that I'm suffering from the common pregnancy complaint of constipation. I never had this problem when I was pregnant with J, but then, I also only wanted fruit (early on) when I was pregnant with him. Not salt and BBQ meat. *sigh*

I felt much better after I was done crying and got to eat some ribs with spicy BBQ sauce. Mmmmm, spicy.

Hello, Vulva Baby

Hush Puppy looks like a vulva today. He or she is developing blood cells and a notochord! More info at visembryo.com

 

I'm feeling icky today. Apparently the follicle that made HP (hahaha, Hush Puppy could totally be Harry Potter. Or Hewlett Packard) is cranking out the progesterone. I gagged a little on the peach I brought with my lunch, because it was too sour. The texture of my yogurt in the morning is no longer very appealing, though I can still eat it. And my soup yesterday was inedible due to the fact that HP reviled the flavor profile, so I went and got a chimichanga that was smothered in green chili from the cafeteria here. I gotta say, that was an infinitely better choice. YUMMY. 

Anyway. It doesn't seem to matter so much whether I have caffeine or not anymore (which I haven't been); I had cut it out because it seemed to exacerbate my nausea, but apparently just not currently eating makes it worse now. Oh, and chewing gum. I wondered when that would happen. I get about 3 minutes out of a piece of gum before it threatens to trigger the gag reflex. FWIW, Stride's mystery flavor tastes like that zebra stripe gum from when I was a kid. The pink and the purple kind, not the lemony one. I guess I'll go munch some more almonds.

Houston, We Have Neurulation!

  

Yay for neurulation and continuing gastrulation!! Grow, Hush Puppy, grow. Hush Puppy has earned this nickname for his or her constant wish for Mommy to consume greasy, salty, crunchy fried foods. Mmm, french fries and bacon. And spicy chicken sandwiches. And spicy stuff in general. I could so go for some spicy Pad Thai right now. Yes, I realize it isn't even 10:00 am yet. OMG and BBQ. I think we're having BBQ ribs for dinner. 

Also, cute big brother story! Last night J came up to me (I was sitting down) and he started poking my belly and saying "kiss! kiss!" so I stood up. All he wanted to do was kiss the baby. Awww. He loves Hush Puppy. Maybe we shouldn't tell him that Hush Puppy is the baby. He might want to name it that.

Hawtness. I haz it.

 

Apparently this baby just wants mama to be bloated. Hawt. I didn't even remotely need to do this (at all) with J until 16 weeks...*sigh* I guess lunch was too much for my chub.

Weekly Update!

I thought it would be fun to do these. No promises that I'll actually do it every week, but here you go.

Yeah...that's mostly chub with a fair amount of bloat thrown in for fun.



How Far along: 4 weeks today!

Total weight gain: None related to pregnancy.

Maternity clothes: N/A, though honestly, I'm giving my regular jeans a run for their money.

Sleep: Like a rock. Other than the nightmares last week, my dreams have just been weird and I sleep like the dead.

Best Moment this week: Other than finding out I'm pregnant, it's been watching J kiss the "baby" (aka Mommy's chub) and how excited he is that Mommy has a "baby ball" in her belly button. No matter how many times I tell him otherwise he keeps telling me that the baby lives in my belly button.

Movement: N/A

Gender: I swear it's a girl. I was not at all nauseous with J this early. So far this is very different than my pregnancy with him.

Labor signs: N/A

Belly button: In

Cravings: Salty and crunchy, so french fries and bacon. Also really, really want bread and butter pickles at the moment, but they will have to wait.

What I miss: Nothing yet, although it was nice not being uber hormonal.

Stretch Marks: No new ones.

What is different this time around: Everything! I've been either super hungry or feeling queasy since like 4 or 5 days ago. I felt *nothing* like that with J, and I am already craving things! WTF?!

What I am looking forward to this week: Just seeing what the week brings.


Did I mention that I had to unbutton my pants already today?!

The joys of growing a ball!

Little one, you are now gastrulating. That's really the most important thing you'll ever do, because you won't be able to do anything else if you don't gastrulate. Your big brother calls you a ball baby and wants to squeeze you. He already loves you very much. Keep on growing little ball!

Also, if you could make me want something other than salty, crunchy fried food, I'd appreciate it. I'm a little sick of craving bacon and french fries.

HolyShit.

There's like this little ball of cells in my womb. It's a lot surreal still. Wow.

WTF, embie?

You're the size of a friggin poppy seed. I know you wanted bacon and watermelon and had to settle for some mediocre sausage and honeydew, but please let me stop being hungry + queasy. Your older brother was much nicer than this to me at this point. Pretty please? I'll try to get some french fries at lunch for you.

In other news, you're at Carnegie Stage 5 now.

http://www.visembryo.com/baby/5.html

I LOVE visembryo.com. It is awesome.

J's Days as an Only Child Are Numbered.

And due to end somewhere around mid to late April of 2011! 

Here's the onesie I picked up on my way home from work to tell C. I was 99% sure of a BFP, since I'd gotten a really, really faint line a couple days ago, so I thought this would be cute for when I got a definitely positive pee stick. Please excuse the messy counter around the shirt, this was taken in the bathroom right after J's bath.

Poppy Seeds

Wow.

-9 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

Three

The number of times J has peed in his potty this evening, while watching a movie. I don't think he's quite back to 100% after being sick last week (had a fever and just wasn't a happy camper) so he's watching Ice Age II while I play on the internets and make dinner. Anyway, apparently just removing the pants of this child makes him use the potty. A LOT. Now if only he'd start telling me all the time when he needs to go potty...

The Shettles Method, and Fun with Numbers

If you've been reading a while, you may know that C's family makes boys. Pretty much exclusively. In an effort to produce the first girl in this generation of the family, we're trying the Shettles Method. We got a copy of How to Choose the Sex of Your Baby through paperbackswap (have I mentioned that they ROCK?! Also, if you sign up, please mention "ckolak" as your referrer. I'm not sure if I get any benefits from it, but I'd like to find out). Having read TCOYF, most of the book wasn't really new to me, but the methods for gender selection were. Anyway, we figured it would be worth a shot to try for a girl, since if we "fail" we'll get another boy, which we'd still be happy with. We've been planning on having 2 boys and then adopting 2 girls anyway. Anyway, HTCTSOYB just outlines the history of gender selection methods around the world, and how Dr. Shettles arrived at his conclusions, as well as scientific support for his methods. From a scientific standpoint, the book and it's claims are pretty sound. It is more detailed than this, but it boils down to having sex up to 3 days before ovulation (or maybe 2 days before) for a girl, and one day before through two days after ovulation for a boy (which held true for us when we had J).

I figured I'd see what I found by surfing around on Fertility Friend's chart gallery for "pregnant with girl" versus "pregnant with boy" charts. I found that out of the 232 charts that I examine(116 for girl, 116 for boy), most (92%) of the babies were conceived with sex 1 day before through 2 days after ovulation, regardless of gender. However, the percentages break down thus: 

116 girl charts:

103 conceived with sex between one day before to two days after ovulation (89%)

4 conceived with sex 4 days before ovulation (3%)

2 conceived with sex 3 days before ovulation (2%)

7 conceived with sex 2 days before ovulation (6%)

116 boy charts:

111 conceived with sex between one day before to two days after ovulation (96%)

1 conceived with sex 4 days before ovulation (0.08%)

1 conceived with sex 3 days before ovulation (0.08%)

3 conceived with sex 2 days before ovulation (2.6%)

More girls were conceived by sex several days before ovulation, such that:

of 5 total babies conceived by sex 4 days before O, 4 were girls (80%)

of 3 total conceived by sex 3 days before O, 2 were girls (66.6%)

of 10 total conceived by sex 2 days before O, 7 were girls (70%)

Also, of the total babies conceived by sex the day before to a couple days after (214 of 232): 48% were girls, and 52% were boys.

Interesting, huh?

I realize the numbers were very low for charts listing sex 2, 3, and 4 days before O, mostly because those I looked at included a lot of charts where sex was had every day for a week including the days before and after ovulation, so there's no way to tell which of those times really "took" so to speak.