Battle of the (Baby) Bulge

After years of trying to stay a certain weight and continue to fit into a particular size of clothes, it's an interesting twist to be OK with weighing more than I've ever weighed and not be able to even zip up most of my pants, let alone button them.

I had been able to wear my "normal" pants (with a few of them phased out) up until week 15. Then most pants started getting a little too tight and I used a ponytail holder to keep the button part together. But it was only a few days until I realized that strategy wasn't going to last and I had to move on to the Belly Band. A big thanks to my sister-in-law who gave me hers to use (along with a ton of other maternity clothes). The band is a stretchy fabric circle that goes over your normal pants and holds them in place, so you don't have to button them.

As we hit week 17, I started to think that the band wasn't going to last much longer either as zippers started to not go up very well. This kid REALLY hit a growth spurt!! Thankfully, leggings are back in style and I've been able to wear those kind of stretchy pants without fail, but yesterday I gave actual maternity pants a try.

Without further ado, I present the Baby Steinhoff-bump at 17 weeks:

It's hard to tell in this picture, but I find it hilarious that my rib cage is the same size, but then there's just this incline as you look down my torso :)

What will this baby look like?

While it's a pretty safe bet that Baby Steinhoff will have dark hair and dark eyes (though you never know what kind of recessive light-haired gene is out there in our family trees), it's still fun to think about what this little boy or girl might look like. Though the better question is how tall is he or she going to be?!? :)

Luckily for Baby Steinhoff, its parents were pretty cute babies themselves. Exhibit A:

That's me on the left and Chris on the right. That hat kills me every time!!

(Thanks to our parents for supplying such adorable pictures...and children)

And while I always have had dark features, Chris actually did have lighter hair when he was little, so it's possible our baby could too. Exhibit B:

Too cute :) His aunt Joyce sent this to us last week, saying she is sure this Baby Steinhoff will be just as cute as its dad. I agree!

Now, the baby can look like either of us all it wants, but I hope to God that some of the trends we both fell into (hello, we grew up in the '80s and '90s!) never, ever resurface.

Exhibit C:

May the bright "Bill Cosby" sweaters and the neon backgrounds that graced our school photo sessions never return in our child's lifetime.

Exhibit D: 

And please, please, please may glasses that take up over half your face never come back in style. Fingers crossed that our child gets its father's eyes anyway, so it won't even have to deal with glasses in the first place.

It will be fun to look back on our baby pictures and compare features once Baby Steinhoff arrives!





The making of a nursery

Our house currently has three bedrooms - ours, a guest room and one that pretty much only housed my keyboard and guitar. It was a pretty easy choice to make that the baby's room. It wasn't long after Christmas that Chris decided it was time to get started on the nursery. I believe this was for two reasons - one, he loves projects and has run out of other things to do around the house until he finishes the basement this spring, and two, to get the big stuff done before he gets really busy at work.

Since we didn't know the baby's sex and are probably not going to find out, picking out a color scheme was the hardest part. We looked online for ideas and came across a room that was one base color with a set of stripes around the top. We loved it and also decided that we were going to go with an ocean-theme for the decorations. This just made sense because a lot of our time is filled by fishing! We went to our local paint store and found a nice blue that didn't look to "boyish" and was named Watery, as well as a nice cream color to make the stripe. And away we (and by we, I mean Chris because he did it all) went!

He started with the cream stripe and then began taping around the edges of everything before starting work on the blue. He had to use a couple of different techniques to get his lines just right for the stripes and I was very impressed with his craftsmanship. *Note, that grey thing hanging in the middle is a ceramic fish my sister-in-law gave me a long time ago. We thought it was perfect to hang from the light fixture. Chris just has to watch his head when he goes by it :)

I didn't get any action shots of the actual painting since I was supposed to stay away from the fumes, unless we would have gotten some air moving through there. But here's the "after shot" of Chris taking off all his tape and hoping his lines came out OK.

And as you can see, the stripes look AMAZING! We've had people ask if it was a stencil or if it's wallpaper, but nope, it is all paint and some skilled measuring and taping done by my dear husband.

Now you may be wondering, what are you going to put in that big stripe? Well, the pictures we found online had artwork, shelves and a cool artwork piece with the baby's name on it. So we are stealing all of those ideas, but we'll have to wait until after it's born for that name one.

Chris got right to work some of the wall art. Not many people know this, but besides his talent in painting walls, my husband is also an extremely talented artist. We have three 2x3 paintings of his hanging in our house and a few things he did in high school art classes around the house too. So he started on the pictures of ocean creatures we wanted to put on the wall. We found a clip art image of some online, so he used those as a guide to then freehand draw and paint on canvases.

A fish, seahorse, crab and turtle. Chris also built and painted the frames.

A jellyfish, octopus and starfish. Chris also built and painted some shelves to go up in the stripe.

Last weekend, we went and looked at furniture. We found a glider at HOM Furniture that will be a cream color to match the stripe, but it won't be in for awhile. We then went over to Babies 'R Us and found a crib and combo unit (dresser that can also be used as a changing table). We were able to take home the floor model of the combo unit and the crib came in last Friday. So it is really looking like a nursery in there!

 The view when you walk in the door. *Note, the glider will go in the empty corner.

And the view from the back of the room.

So even though we've got about six months left before baby arrives, we're sitting pretty good on having its room ready. We've got some bedding in mind and need to get the stuff for the changing table on top of the dresser, but we're well on our way! It's pretty cool looking in there and thinking about the person who will one day inhabit that space :)

One down, two to go

When we first found out we were pregnant, the second trimester seemed so far off. Now that we're at 14 weeks, we're ready to start part two of this journey. It's been quite a process, but I've learned a lot in the last few months.

Here are some of the things that I experienced, learned or was surprised by in my first trimester:

Exercise: Pre-pregnancy, I was usually running three times a week, about 6-7 miles or so at a time. I also alternated the running with using the eliptical machine at the gym and doing some light weightlifting three times a week. My doctor, baby books and the internet all say that if you've already established an exercise routine, it is OK to continue exercising throughout your pregnancy, but it definietly takes on a different form. The biggest change is that I just physically can't run as fast or push myself as much. Even if I wanted to, I don't think I could run 6.5-7 miles in an hour on the treadmill, which is what I was doing before. There are also rules about what your heart rate should be, how warm you get and staying hydrated. I am still doing as much as I can (I read today in "What to Expect When You're Expecting" that babies whose mother's exercised tested higher on intelligence tests!), but I know when to stop. It will be interesting to see if and when that happens.

Eating: I was really suprised to hear that the saying "You're eating for two" isn't really true...or maybe I was just disappointed I couldn't sit down with a gallon of ice cream and a spoon, guilt-free. Up until this point, I wasn't supposed to take in any more calories than I had been pre-pregnancy. But there were days that I was just hungry! I haven't had any major cravings for particular foods, but I can sense myself leaning toward salty snacks and carbs. I think that's mostly because I don't usually eat a lot of those especially during the day. Hey, what baby wants, baby gets, in moderation of course. I was also really surprised at the long list of what you can't eat and how I should really diversify my diet and not just eat the same old salad every day. But now, I'm supposed to be eating 300 more calories a day, which really isn't that much when you think about it. I'll probably start with few slices a bread and a glass of milk throughout the day.

Morning sickness: I was mentally prepared to have this symptom, but luckily for me, I really didn't. During week six, I was constantly nauseous all day, every day, but never threw up. I also had little desire to eat. That was short-lived and since then, there's been a few flashes of nausea here and there, but not too much. I will consider myself extremely lucky and cross my fingers that this doesn't show up later!

Fatigue: This has been the biggie. I think it's safe to say that for awhile I was sleeping in the living room chair by 8 p.m. every night. Chris would usually shake his head and say, "Just go to bed." I still get pretty wiped out in the evenings, but I have been able to stay up until 10 p.m. a few nights in the last week, which feels like a pretty major accomplishment.

My appearance: The last few weeks have been a pretty big eye-opener into what kinds of changes my body is going to go through. The baby is supposedly about the size of a lemon right now, which would explain why my stomach is starting to stick out and my pants are really tight. So far I've been able to get away with my normal pants, some being phased out, but I think that I'm going to have to move on to the Belly Band for help shortly.

As we move into the second trimester, there are a whole crop of new things to learn. Not just the increased calories, but no lying on my back for long periods of time (I got the weird looking pillow to help me do this while I sleep) and the most exciting thing is that by the end, we should start being able to feel the baby!

My how I've grown

When the nurse first told me about the test that is offered to pregnant women that checks for Down's Syndrome and other genetic disorders, she said it would be a quick ultrasound to get a measure of the back of baby's neck, but that you would at least get a peek at the baby.

Boy was she wrong! We got a whole 40 minute session with the ultrasound tech, mostly because they need baby in a very specific position to get the measurement and of course baby's don't cooperate very well sometimes. So we got to see Baby Steiny flipping around, crossing it's legs, opening and closing it's mouth, putting it's arm up and down (maybe even sucking it's thumb!) and turning it's back to us. She finally got the measurements she needed and we got some cute pictures of our darling little one.

We had an ultrasound done at 6 weeks with the reproductive specialist, who wanted to make sure everything looked OK before he sent us back to my regular OB-GYN. But at that time, baby was just a 4 millimeter blob, but it was still our little blob. But now, it looks like a real person in there!

See for yourself...

 Hello world! Here I am all curled up inside my momma.

Already turning it's back on mom and dad, oh boy!

Here's my pretty face! Can you see my little nose and mouth?

If you couldn't see them before, the nice ultrasound lady marked them here.

And finally, my mom and dad's favorite one. Just a little wave hello! You can see my fingers!!

The ultrasound lady said everything looked good. We saw the heartbeat and she measured baby. According to her measurements, we're back to my first due date of July 26 (It got pushed back to the 30th based on the measurements at the 6 week ultrasound). So I guess we can just expect baby sometime at the end of July.

Chris and I both agreed that seeing that ultrasound was the most amazing experience we've ever had. But I'm thinking we're going to have a lot more of these types of experience pretty soon. I for one can't wait to feel that little one doing all those moves! Funny to think that he or she is already flipping and kicking in there, but I have no idea.



"You can't always get what you want"

I of course do not want this to be a sad, "poor me" post, but if we're going to have a blog about Baby Steinhoff, I should probably say a little something about our year-and-a-half journey to get to this point.

When we got married, we had a couple friends that said, "Don't have kids right away, travel and enjoy each other for awhile." We agreed that we weren't ready for kids right away, but we knew that we wanted them eventually. After a two-and-a-half years, we started to discuss the possibility of expanding our family. I was training for a half-marathon at the time, so after the race seemed like a good time to schedule a doctor appointment and start the process.

I went off birth control and knew that it might take a few months for my system to regulate itself after being on medication for a long time, so when nothing really happened for a few months, I wasn't concerned. I read online that if three months passes, you aren't pregnant and your system isn't doing what it's supposed to, you should call your doctor. I did and he wasn't too concerned either and put me on some medication to kind of "kick-start" my system. That didn't work, so we started the conversation that I might not be ovulating, which means that I might have trouble getting pregnant. My doctor told me that this happens to a lot of people (and in the following months, I started hearing about a lot of people in similar situations) and that there was nothing in my medical history that would be causing this, so he felt pretty sure that we could find a solution.

I started a regimen of pills and would go in each month for a blood test to see if they got my hormone levels to a point where I ovulated. It was usually a "no," but we had one month where I was pretty close to the correct level, so I felt like I was making progress. After a few more months of pills and tests and no baby, the doctor felt he needed to look into things a little more. I had a procedure done where he checked my tubes for blockages (there were none) and did an ultrasound to make sure everything looked ok (it did). I took a different medication that month and still nothing, so at that point, my doctor decided it was best to pass me on to a reproductive specialist.

Chris and I met with the specialist, who went over both of our medical histories, family histories and talked about what we've been doing up to that point. He looked over everything and said that he saw no apparent reason this should be happening to me, and if my only problem was that I was not ovulating, he could make me ovulate.

The specialist decided to keep me on the same medication I had taken the last month, but changed up the dosage. I went in for a blood test later in the month, and not only had I ovulated, my numbers were above average. I could hardly believe it! He told me that if nothing happened in the next few weeks to take a pregnancy test and call him with the result either way.

I got to the date that he had set as a deadline and nothing had happened. I didn't let myself get my hopes up (I was still just really excited that I had even ovulated at this point), but took the pregnancy test per his instructions. As the two lines appeared, I was extremely shocked. I called the doctor and he had me come in that afternoon to confirm the results. His test came back positive as well, so I guess I could really believe it was true. And now 8 weeks later (we were 5 weeks at that point), we're well on our way to a baby!

I wanted to share the story for two reasons - one, it helps me to talk about it and two, to hopefully help anyone else who is going through the same thing. It can be a little overwhelming and scary, just because so much of it is unknown and out of your control. I found it helpful to hear from others who were going through similar situations.

In the end, we just followed the process, knew that we weren't in a rush (we kept telling ourselves that even if it took us five years, we'd still only be in our early 30s) and the doctors always reassured us that especially since we were both young and healthy, there were plenty of options.

At one point through this whole ordeal, I heard the Rolling Stones song with the lyrics, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need." I thought that this summed up our situation quite well. We had to wait a lot longer for a baby than we had originally had planned, but in the end, it was a learning experience, made us more patient (mostly me on this one) and will give us an even greater appreciation for the little baby we'll get in July!

13 weeks

It's hard to believe that I am 13 weeks today and the second trimester is almost here! It really does seem like just yesterday I was staring at those two lines on a piece of plastic, not really believing it could be true. But here we are - happy, healthy and ready to keep growing!

Here's the latest baby stats:
13 weeks today (1/22/12)
Heartbeat heard loud and clear by mom and dad (and Dr. Wust) on 1/16/12
Size (according to the internet/baby books): 3 inches long, or about the size of a medium shrimp
Mom's pants: Fitting pretty tight, but not completely out just yet
Dad's projects: Painted the nursery, painted decorations for the walls
Next appointment: A quick ultrasound and blood test as part of a sequential scan (for Down's Syndrome and some other things) on 1/25/12, next full dr. appointment 2/20/12

While July seems pretty far away yet, I have a sneaking suspicion that the next seven months are going to by quick!