Blessed

This past weekend was awesome. The best weekend I have had while pregnant. J and I decided to finally have the get away we had planned for early December, which we canceled because we found out I was pregnant. We stayed in a lovely B&B in Luray, VA. We had reserved one of their cottages, which meant we had an entire mini-house all to ourselves. Our cottage backed to a small farm with lots of cows. It had just been birthing season, so there were all these baby cows that were playing. It was really enjoyable to watch. We found some nice local places to eat, and breakfast was delivered to our door via picnic basket each morning. It was so lovely just to get away from all the busyness and just be with one another.

On Saturday, we decided to go to the Luray caverns. It was off-season, so we had a pretty small tour group, which was nice.

I think one of the funniest parts of the tour was when our guide asked if anyone has any questions. A little boy raises his hand, and you can just tell that the mom is so happy her son has taken an interest, so she's encouraging him to ask his question. His question: "When is the tour going to be over?" haha. J and I got quite a kick out of it. The poor mother was mortified. The rock formations were really cool, and a little creepy. But, it was amazing how big the caverns were.

I loved the drapery rock formations. So neat.

After lunch, we did the garden maze at Luray, which is essentially a corn maze with trees instead of corn. It was actually really fun to do, especially since nothing was crowded.

I was actually pretty tired by the time we got back on Sunday, despite how relaxing the weekend was. I was so happy we did the trip and J and I agreed that it was a lot of fun.

I am feeling... okay. I still have nausea, especially in the evenings. I threw up Sunday evening, but I had gone a whole week without doing that, so that was fine. I am kind of accepting this low level of nausea as a new normal for me. I was reading back through my journal on Sunday night, and I came across one of my prayers, dated 11/3/2013 (excerpt): "I pray that you would guide us in the decision to have a family. And I pray that direction would be made clear." My pregnancy started 8 days later. That just amazed me. As much as I have struggled through the past 19 weeks, we have been extremely blessed. God has given me strength and perseverance that I have never known. And I am finally feeling a few kicks. :) So, no matter what happens, even if I am nauseous the rest of the pregnancy (as some women are), it will be okay. I love the little life inside me. There is a ton to do before August, but I am so excited to meet this new member of our family. Our anatomy scan is Friday. I have been so nervous about it. Not because of the gender thing. But because I want our little baby to be healthy. And I have to keep remembering to just trust God through it. He got us this far. :)

Puppy Love

Hello! Can you believe it's snowing? Again!?! Ugh! I am SO over this winter. It doesn't help that my morning sickness pretty much started with the cold and lasted the whole winter. I think I have a mental association between snow and throwing up. Hopefully, this is the LAST one! As promised, I am back with a post about the stuffed puppy I have been making (and you can too!).

I showed you these in progress pictures in my last post.

I made the puppy using Haan Crafts. Here is the final result!

The puppy backstory: Back in December 2012, J's mom sent him home with a box of old stuffed animals from his childhood. When we were going through it, J exclaimed, "Puppy!" (this would be the puppy on the right in the picture below). Puppy was not quite finished though, and still had some straight pins in him. He was a home economics project back in middle school. I sewed him up (and fixed some less than quality stitching). Well, then I wanted to sew a puppy of my own (at $10/pup, the price is right). So, I sewed the puppy on the left (let's hold off on the judgement - J and I are young at heart). When I found out I was pregnant, I realized our kiddo would need a puppy of his/her own. So, I ordered a new kit from Haan.

The new puppy turned out quite a bit bigger than the other two (I guess I didn't use as thick of a seam), which has made us giggle a bit. The "baby" puppy is bigger than the other two. :)

Anyway, we love our new puppy and hope our baby does too!

As for how I am doing (if you are curious)... On the whole, I am doing better. I went 6 days this week without throwing up. I was a little disappointed to lose it again, but I wasn't all that surprised. This week (week 17), I have started craving meat. Considering this is supposed to be a food aversion, I find this a little weird. I am thinking it means I am low on protein. But, I have been eating a lot of eggs, chicken, and beef this week. It's weird, but carbs kind of gross me out right now. Except fruit. I am enjoying fruit at the moment (especially watermelon and bananas). I also really enjoy celery and milk (considering I never really liked bananas, milk or meat before, I find this all a little funny). I am continuing to workout nearly every day, which is nice. When the weather was nice, I would take some nice walks. Walking has helped with the nausea and my overall mood. It's nice that it's a little lighter later now. I did have a vivid dream that our baby was a girl. It surprised me quite a bit since I have been thinking it’s a boy. I am getting so excited for the gender scan. I wish it would be here sooner! I have felt some movement, but it's sort of feels like being tickled from the inside. Nothing strong yet. I do have an anterior placenta, so that may be why I don't feel too much yet. I'm hoping I start feeling more consistent movement soon though! Oh, and 2 nights ago, something a little funny happened. I was sleeping and must have had a nightmare (common in pregnancy), and I started screaming in my sleep. Well, this woke J up:

J: "What's wrong?"
Me: "There's someone in the hall?"
J: "Who's in the hall?"
Me: "Mimes"
J: "What?!"
Me: "Mimes" (I fall asleep)

When we talked about it the next morning, I could not stop laughing about it.

Anyway, hope you are all doing well!

Organizing, rearranging and cleaning

Hello readers! Enjoying Spring Forward? I must admit it took me by surprise. I had a friend stay over, and I was super confused when she wanted to say goodbye at 8:30 when she said she would leave at 9:30. It took me another hour to make the connection. I am looking forward to some daylight in the evenings though.

I'll update you all with some pregnancy and house updates. I took this photo around 16.5 weeks (I'm now 17 weeks). I'm definitely getting a bump, although I've only gained a pound since my 12 week visit. I'm still heavier than I have ever been in my life, so that's a little weird for me.

 I'm still vomiting. That seems to be the question that everyone has. "Still?" "Yes, still." I'm going longer, though. I can go 2 days without throwing up. The third day isn't so great though. I still have a lot of nausea. But, I still have hope that it will get better. I have been tremendously touched by the people who contacted me after my last post. You all have encouraged me and helped me through this rather difficult time. I really love you guys!

J and I are in the process of getting the house in order. I have been slowly fixing things around the house. Like this hook for our bathroom that I had broken (I forgot to show the fixed hook but you get the idea).

And I patched up some cracks in the walls.

I'm also in the process of making a puppy for the baby. I'm going to dedicate a separate post to this once it's done though.

We (J) also did a fair amount of re-arranging in the basement. We are slowly moving everything from the baby room down to the basement. The big picture moved to the opposite wall from where it was.

And the TV stand was moved from the extra bedroom to the pool room, where our old TV now lives. I actually like this arrangement way better than the way we had it before.

This will be where the big bookcase will go.

J moved the white bookshelf from the baby room down to the extra bedroom.

This will be where the desk will go. (By the way, anyone in the area should feel free to volunteer to help J move the big bookcase and desk down 2 floors. We can pay you in beer). :)

I've also been making the house a bit safer for us. For one, I installed a new fire alarm/carbon monoxide detector down in the basement.

I also installed a carbon monoxide detector on the main floor and bought 2 new ones for the upstairs (since the ones we have currently are a bit dated). J has also been what I can only assume is the equivalent of nesting. He has been organizing and going through all his papers and random items that we moved here and haven't looked at since. It's really nice to have the house finally organized instead of having stuff in random places all over the house. We also realized there is a fair amount that we don't use and can either store in the attic (sentimental value) or donate to goodwill. We both went through all of our old college notes and got rid of stuff that we both thought we would never need again. Doing that freed up space in our bookshelves, which was really nice. Our joint goal is to have the baby room empty by the time I hit 20 weeks (in 3 weeks). Once we know the gender, I know I will want to start painting and getting the nursery ready. :) I'll keep you guys updated as we get the house in order. Last Friday, I finally got motivation to clean, and I cleaned the whole house top to bottom (which made throwing up on the bathroom floor on Saturday night even more frustrating). I figure this delays me a little while before hiring a maid... Until next time!

The Last 3 Months

Well, if anyone happened to view J or I's facebook recently, you know that we announced our pregnancy! J was pretty set on not doing it on Valentine's. We were going to wait to announce. We really were. We had settled on announcing on April 1st as a fun joke. But the thing is, I wanted to share it. I had survived 14 weeks of pregnancy, and I was ready to acknowledge this little life. The life that has a tiny heartbeat of his or her own. The baby that's already wriggling around inside me. A life that matters and, God willing, will take a first breath this year.

In case you aren't on facebook or visit this blog from elsewhere, this was our announcement.

The necklace was J's Valentine's gift to me. It's the shape of the baby's heartbeat. I love it. The ultrasound was from our genetics testing during my 12th week (everything's great).

I wanted to share on the blog about this because I guess I need an outlet to share my story. This pregnancy has been super rough on me so far. I've been keeping a log week-by-week. But, if you don't feel like reading all of that, the gist is intense all-day nausea and vomitting. Morning sickness is a misnomer. I have had the equivalent of a stomach flu 24/7 for 2+ months and counting. I have thrown up to the point that my legs are weak and I'm sweating and crying. I have had nausea so bad that I cannot think, cannot focus on anything else. It has been debilitating and humbling. I have had to live one day at a time, trying to focus on getting through that day versus getting through the next _ weeks of hell. Because that's what this has been for me. It has been the hardest thing I have ever had to go through. I have never felt so miserable or isolated in my life. To hear from the doctors, "I'm sorry there's nothing more we can do for you without admitting you to a hospital." Being sick longterm wrapped me in a cloak of depression that felt never-ending. To keep hoping and hoping for relief... it has made me so compassionate for those who struggle with sickness, day in and day out. It's so hard. During one of my worst weeks, my mom came down. And while we were so appreciative of her making food for us, the best thing she did for me was to hold me. It let someone in, and allowed a little bit of light into the darkness. 

So, let's start from the beginning. The pregnancy wasn't exactly planned. We had been talking about starting our family, but weren't quite there yet. So, it was a bit of a surprise for us! I had been feeling off the week after Thanksgiving. I didn't think it was that, but when my period didn't come, I wanted to make sure. Well, when that second pink line showed up, I started hyperventilating. I went to the store and bought 6 more tests. After taking another 2, reality started sinking in. J was quite shocked. We are happy and excited, but it took a few weeks to get adjusted to the idea of the whole thing. I had one week (one!) after I found out and before I started getting ill. The nausea started week 5 and vomiting started week 6 (which was Christmas). 

Without further ado, here's a log of what's been going on with me (mostly unedited).

Week 4 - Meet with doctor. Hormones look good. I’m SO hungry! I’m hungry all the time! I must eat something. My boobs hurt. I’m tired.

Week 5 - If I don’t eat, I get nauseous. I’m waking up in the middle of the night and have to eat. My boobs hurt. I’m tired. I’m overly emotional.

Week 6 - Nausea has transitioned to gagging and throwing up. I’m in bed/on the couch most of the day trying to control the nausea. It doesn’t always work. This is also Christmas. Worst Christmas ever. Nausea lasts all day, but gets better around 5 or 6 pm. Our parents are thrilled by the news. I get out of cooking over Christmas. I rest most of the day and sleep 9 hours a night. Luckily, I don’t have to put on pants very much. Chicken noodle soup helps. I have developed a food aversion to water. My boobs still hurt, but this is so normal that it doesn’t even bother me. We leave my parents house and I cry for 3 hours for no reason.

Week 7 - I have discovered the joys of gatorade and fruit juice. I don’t feel quite as dehydrated. I still don’t feel like doing much, but I’m starting to get used to the constant nausea and it doesn’t have me flat on my back anymore. I’m pretty grateful that I have had 2 weeks off from work. Joe and I were driving to MicroCenter. I drank a juice box on the way there. I threw up said juice on the way home. I welcomed the new year by throwing up my breakfast.

Week 8- first ultrasound! We saw a heartbeat. That was awesome, though internal ultrasounds are uncomfortable. I'm 3 days further along than we thought. Figuring out a work plan. Still lots of nausea and vommitting and super tired. Sometimes I feel okay for a bit. Peppermints are a lifesaver.

Week 9 - I’ve never been so tired after sleeping 9.5 hours. Everything feels like a chore to me, even surfing the web. I got enough motivation the other night to clean the toilets. I feel like a shell of who I used to be. I think J is getting tired of this. I am too. After a month of feeling crappy, it feels like it will never end. I want to be helping with house projects, but I can’t seem to have enough energy to do anything more than a few minutes. Oh and have I mentioned that our kitchen sink seems to get the majority of my stomach acid these days. The smells in the kitchen… Ugh. Week 9 is the worst I have ever felt. My boobs might require their own zip code soon. I am currently living through hell. Oh, and I have high blood pressure! I’m so thrilled to be adding that onto everything else.

Week 10 - I’m not noticing any improvement. I have vommitted every day since reaching the 10 week mark. Often multiple times. One change I have noticed is that I am producing more when I throw up, I have less time to make it to the bathroom, and the retching has become more violent. I’m not confident this will ever end. I feel stuck in a monotony of feeling bad. I want some semblance of life back. I threw up my medicine this morning. It was my last pill and there's snow on the roads. I coughed in the shower last night and threw up. I brushed my teeth and threw up. I ate cereal this morning and threw up. I just wish there was an end date to this. I looked back at some old pictures today. I can’t believe how young and beautiful we were when we got married. And carefree. Even this past summer and fall - so carefree. The things I worried about then seem a little absurd to me now. I feel so extremely fat. I have never been this heavy before and it’s not doing much for my self-esteem right now. I was so thin before. I wish I could just time-travel back a few years and have a night out with friends. Why did I spend so many nights at home? Maybe it’s just because this was unplanned. I thought I had more time to be young and uninhibited. And it feels like I have lost all control of my body. I always knew that this would be hard on me after struggling with body image and eating disorders, but it really does kind of suck to feel bloated and not being able to cut back eating because that leads to nausea and vomitting. I just want to relive some of those times back in my young twenties again. I know you can’t go back, but it would kind of be nice to. I’m happy about having a kid, but I’m scared to death. I worry about the baby and how it’s doing in there, but I also desperately want some relief from this sickness. None of this is coming out right as I type. I can’t seem to actually express what I’m feeling right now. I always have been in control of circumstances. And I’m not. And from what I can tell from other’s experiences, that gets worse before it gets any better. I feel disassociated from the baby. Like I know there’s a reason I don’t feel good, but I’m having a hard time mentally associated the sick part with the state of being pregnant. I just hope this is all worth it.

Week 11 - I have had 2 days where I actually started to feel better. Actually, it feels like things are overall improving, just very slowly. I’m still tired all the time, even after sleeping a lot. I’ve gotten irritable for seemingly no reason. I’m still barfing quite a bit, but I do feel some relief after doing so. Nothing is appetizing to me at all. I eat stuff to prevent vomitting, but I don’t enjoy what I eat in the least.

Week 12 - Will this ever end?? I’m so over this. Also my pants don’t fit. Considering how frequently I throw up, how did that happen? And I’m still sleeping so much. I just want to feel better again! What does that even feel like? You remember that song, “and then I got high”, I feel like replacing “got high” with “threw up” would represent my life pretty accurately at the moment. I’m working again. It feels a little weird. Good, but weird. 2 of my facebook friends announced their pregnancies on facebook. Neither of them got morning sickness. I’m a bit jealous. We saw the baby today at the NT scan. Baby was doing headstands and the tech couldn’t get the picture she wanted. It took 2 hours, apple juice, jumping jacks, singing and dancing for the baby to switch to the right position. Baby is stubborn just like the parents. I’m still measuring 3 days ahead.

Week 13 - If anything, I feel more nauseous and am throwing up more than weeks 11 and 12. My throat hurts from all this. My teeth ache when I brush them. My gums bleed. I thought this was supposed to be getting better. I’m scared that this will last the whole pregnancy. It’s terrifying. At the end of this week, I swear I felt the baby move. That was awesome.

Week 14 - I’m in the second trimester!! What?! But, seriously, I thought this was supposed to come with the reward of no nausea and getting my energy back. Apparently not. Fingers crossed that the nausea actually does start to go away soon. My throat was sore for an hour last night after I threw up. Not to mention that I kind of would like to do things again. Conversation of the night: Me: “Well, I guess cleaning up puke off the floor is good practice for parenting, but it’s so gross.” J: “You puked on the floor?” Me (grabbing paper towels and Clorox): “No, I puked everywhere”

So, that brings us up to the beginning of week 15 (which is where I am now). I keep feeling like I might be better, but then I jinx it. I was thinking this morning, "wow, I'm feeling almost normal." I threw up 30 minutes later. Tonight, I thought I had to burp. Nope. Thank goodness I was by the sink. I think the major improvement in the past week has been the end of my water aversion. Trying to stay hydrated when you find water disgusting is challenging to say the least. I did everything I could to avoid having to get IV fluids at the hospital. That was my major goal every day. Most of the time, I watered down fruit juice or decaf iced tea. An addition this week has been headaches (which make throwing up feel like I'm dying - yay!). Apparently, that's normal.

And just so you all know, I did try all the suggestions. A list of things I did to help: crackers (developed an aversion), goldfish and pretzels (did help), Unisom (helped at night, too sleepy during the day), B6 (didn't work), Zofran (maybe helped? hard to tell), ginger ale (developed aversion), ginger anything (yuck!), crying (actually did help, took the focus off the nausea and was worthwhile. not sad crying, just hormones, made me feel way better), eating frequently (did help), protein (helped when I didn't have an aversion to it), Benadryl (helped, but made me fall asleep), walks (helped, but the weather was too cold most of the time), decaf lattes (this helped weeks 13+, but I had an aversion to coffee prior to that), Seabands (did nothing except make my wrists hurt).

I promise this blog will not become a pregnancy blog. But, there will be updates. I'll try to make my next ones shorter, but I have tried to cover 15 weeks in this one. :) 

And now for some FAQs! (If you are still reading)

Are you finding out the gender? Do you know the sex? Do you have any guesses?

Yes, we are finding out. No, we do not currently know. That is determined at the 20 week ultrasound (in 5 weeks). My current guess is boy, but it's a 50% shot I'm right. haha. We are happy with either! Healthy baby is way more important.

Are you excited?

Yup, and probably have no idea what we're getting into.

Was this planned?

Nope! But we were on the track anyway. So, we're pretty happy with how it worked out.

Have you felt movement?

Actually yes! My body is super sensitive, so I feel a whole lot of things. I have felt a little movement. Nothing like a definite kick or anything yet though. More like flutters. And I'm not always 100% it was movement and not something else. But, it's made things so much better.

I hope you all had a great (finally warm) weekend. We were able to see friends, go on a walk, and try to get this house clean (something that's been neglected until recently). We are starting to get stuff out of the baby room and come up with a plan. :)

Countertops, Knobs and Snow

Happy President's Day (almost)! I meant to do this post on Valentine's and say Happy Valentine's, so I hope you all had a nice one. J and I celebrated a night in. We had planned that beforehand, but it turned out to be a good idea considering all the snow we had this week (not to mention the new season of House of Cards)!

We woke up on Thursday to this scene.

J did the shoveling (what a good husband!). We actually really need a decent snow shovel. This was our first real snow since moving into our house and our small shovel turned out to be quite challenging. I'll have to pick up a new one on our next visit to Home Depot.

You can really tell how deep it is in comparison to the chairs.

Crazy. We finally dug ourselves out completely on Friday once it had warmed up a bit. We borrowed a shovel from our neighbor's, which helped tremendously. The plow truck really plowed our cars in, which meant a lot of snow moving to get the cars out.

Let's back up to the week before... (I am late with this post). We got our countertops installed (finally)! It is so nice to have them installed. I was so pleased with how well they were installed. I opted for no backsplash for now, although I may tile one in at some point.

A close-up of the pattern. We chose Cambria, which is a Quartz surface. Since it's manmade, it needs almost no upkeep. The actual surface looks slightly lighter than this. It has reddish flakes in it as well, which go really well with the cabinets.

I also finally installed the knobs onto the cabinets, which make the doors loads easier to open. I don't really have many steps here, since it mostly involved some measuring and hole drilling.

Now, all we have is a little more plumbing and finishing work and we can call this project done! (My dad is planning on helping with that, it may be a few weeks before we get on that).

More soon...

Basement Lights

Hi everyone! I hope you all are having a great weekend so far. I actually finished this project a few days ago but have been a bit lazy this week (which seems sort of typical these days).

My last post, I discussed hanging the cabinets for our basement minibar. What you probably can't tell from the picture below is that the space was feeling a bit dark. We had to remove the light that was previously there because the cabinets needed to be hung where it was located. I did some experimenting with what I wanted to do about the lights.

I had originally wanted to put in recessed lights above the ceiling, but I was convinced this wouldn't be possible. Here is a cross-section of the area above the ceiling. The vent really prevents the recessed lights since it is only about 4" above the drywall.

I looked into putting a light on the back wall, but the light would have really been blocked by the upper cabinets. One idea that could have worked would have been to install a ceiling light using a single box nailed into the support stud. But I would have had to cut out more drywall than I would have liked to make that work. (Really in hindsight, I should have ripped out all the drywall when we started this project, but live and learn, right?) I went back to the recessed light idea. I measured the distance between the vent and support stud. I could do 3" recessed lights. It would be tight, but I could do it. So, that is what I did. 

The holes were 3 1/8" in diameter. The fixtures barely fit through the hole.

Old circuit box. I took a picture so I would remember how to wire it.

The recessed lights housing. The housing was 6" tall. The housing barely fit. I got lucky.

Wires from the power and switch. I'm not going to get into the wiring. I basically followed the wiring that was done for the switch before.

The first test. Insert sigh of relief here.

I daisy chained the first one to the second. The first box had a lot of wires in it, which was hard to deal with (I always struggle with wire wrapping), but it all fit.

Once I knew my daisy chain would work, I secured the first box into the ceiling using the clips. The 3" clips were much easier to deal with than the recessed lights we did in the kitchen. The housing was super light even with the light installed. Because of the stud, I could only install 2 of the 3 clips, but it seemed to hold pretty well, so I'm not too concerned.

All three installed. The last one was daisy chained from the second. I could have conserved a bit of wire by going right to left, but it's not a huge deal.

The lighting is so much better now, and I love the new recessed lights.

This project is nearing completion, and I am pretty excited about it. We also had the countertop company come and measure. Our countertop is going to be installed this coming Friday! How exciting is that? Once that is done, there will be some finishing touches work, but then we can cross this baby off the to-do list! It only took 5 months...