Mmmm... Guac...

Just a quick post to update that I’m now at 16 weeks pregnant and I look like this:


I missed the 14 and 15 week belly pics… they just got away from me what with being so sick and all….



The baby is now the size of an avacado:
Which is good because – as my friend Michele pointed out – now we can make Guacamole! I’m excited because at 3.5 oz the baby weighs the same amount as a skein of sock yarn:

And yarn seems much more substantial than produce.

Lots of fun fiber and life related updates coming soon!

Mommy and Baby Socks

Yes… the headache is still here… but I have funner things to blog about right now.

So my friend Jennifer is pregnant with a little girl due oh… nowish. Of course the daughter of a knitter needed to receive some seriously cute handknit items. So I knew from the start I wanted to make her some ridiculously adorable booties. Because is there anything cuter than teeny tiny socks?

I also wanted to make Jennifer something special. I figured (and this was before I was going through it) that pregnancy must be hard so a little bit of luxury would probably be nice. And for me there is nothing in the world more luxurious than a pair of handknit socks. My goal became to knit a set of matching mommy and baby socks.

Sadly, though, I was only able to give her baby booties and a mommy sock. For awhile now knitting has made me dizzy. I only get through a little bit a time before having to stop. So the sock progress has been non-existent. I hope I can get the other one done before the little one comes… or at least before the cold weather sets in!

The mommy sock is a variation of the Hedra pattern from knitty. Basically I just used one repeat of the lace and stockinette for the rest. The other sock will be a mirror of this one.


The baby socks are the “Stay On Baby Booties” from the book Knitting for Baby.


I substituted ribbon for the i-chord tie because I wanted to be sure I’ll have enough yarn for the mommy socks, too.

The yarn I used is the most fabulous sock yarn I’ve ever worked with. It’s Creatively Dyed Luxury and it's a cashmere/merino blend. Cashmere socks!!! It’s very exciting.

Jennifer was excited, too:

I can’t wait to see them on her little pumpkin!

Oh and the mommy socks are here on Ravelry and the baby socks are here.

Hanging on by a thread

Ok – disclaimers – this is an entire post of bitching. If you’re not interested don’t read. It’s cool. I’ll post some shiny knitting stuff and pretty photographs soon. Also I just want to say that I do know how lucky I am to even be pregnant and relatively healthy. Despite the tone of this deep down we’re beyond thrilled. But right now… well… Let’s just say that there are people out there that claim that pregnancy is awesome and so much fun and just the bestest ever. I am so NOT one of those people.

This kid is kicking my ass.

The Thursday before last I was hit with a major migraine. And I still have it right now. That’s almost 2 weeks of solid headache and serious pain. I’ve been back and forth with my doctor (including one particularly frantic middle of the night phone call where I was debating going to the emergency room the pain was so bad) but the bottom line is this: I’m pregnant. Anything I take at this point is probably not a good thing. So I’m going to have to live through the pain.

I’ve had my blood pressure checked (btw when you doctor’s office says “go get your blood pressure checked right now” it’s a bit scary) and that’s fine. There’s no question – this is just a migraine. Most likely set off by all of that crazy weather we had. Big changes in pressure were always a trigger for me – and now that I’m pregnant all of that is just turned up a notch. Or twelve. But because I can’t take anything good I just can’t shake it. It’s always there.

So here’s what I’ve learned so far about migraines and pregnancy and over the counter medicine. In case you were wondering. Obviously don’t just take my word for it – ask your doctor before you do anything when pregnant:

• Normal Excedrin contains aspirin and caffeine. You can’t have aspirin at all when you’re pregnant. It causes all sorts of bad, bad things. So my normal migraine fix is OUT.


• Tylenol is perfectly safe in over the counter doses for pregnant women. However, Tylenol is bull shit. Most useless drug on the planet.


• Extra strength Tylenol is also safe in over the counter doses. And it kindof sortof maybe possibly takes the edge off a little tiny bit. For like 5 minutes.


• Caffeine is good and bad for people with migraines. Depending on your situation it can cause withdrawal headaches. In my case I’m not really worried about that because I was completely and totally off of this drug before I was actually pregnant in preparation for the long haul w/o diet coke or coffee. So I’m not going to be having a withdrawal to something I haven’t had in a long time. However caffeine can be good in that it can help get rid of a migraine. It does something with the blood vessels (not sure exactly what). That’s why it’s included in Excedrin and a whole bunch more over the counter medications (full list here).


• Excedrin-D (known in my household as Excedrin-BS) is a combo of Tylenol and caffeine. It has 65 mg of caffeine in it.


• According to my doctor it is safe to have the amount of caffeine that is in a cup of coffee per day during pregnancy. Which is approx. 150 mg.

So based on all of that – and more importantly on my conversations with my doctor – I have been taking the Excedrin-BS as needed. It helps. Kindof. But I can only take 1 little pill before going over my 150 mg mark. Which, btw, the doctor told me to ignore and take 2 pill doses if I needed too. Because the risk/reward here is worth it.

But see then there is the guilt… because what if? What if this caffeine causes a problem? What if I cause some sortof damage that could have been avoided if I had just sucked it up? But on the other hand me being this sick for this long is no good for the baby either. And there’s sucking it up and there’s being in so much pain you can’t move, think, or even breathe. When I can feel every single heartbeat pounding in my head and all I can think about is the pain well… there’s only so much of that one person can take. So I’m damned if I do damned if I don’t.

So yeah. I’m hanging on by a thread here. But we’re hanging on. And on a positive note at least the puking stopped before the headache started. So all I need to do is shake this migraine and I should be feeling fine…. Right?

A brief history of my bump

So at the beginning of this whole pregnancy thing I had a grand plan to take a picture of myself once a week. That way at the end we would have a cool slideshow that went from Jeanne to Giant. Right. It took us until week 13 to actually get our shit together and take one of these photographs. But before that there were some failed self-portrait attempts….Here’s my “bump” at 7 weeks:

I seriously honest to God thought I had a baby bump in that picture. But the fact that I could still button that jeans skirt kindof negates that theory. And this pic just cracks me up:

I mean really, now. What was I trying to prove? That I don’t have a 6 pack? C’mon.

My attempts at a bump picture got even worse with week 10:

I didn’t even drag out the tripod for that one. Also notice the continued wear of a jeans skirt? Although it isn’t buttoned so there’s some bit of a bump there… I actually had been doing the whole use a rubber band to hold up your pants trick since around week 8/9 when I tearfully made my mom go shopping with me because nothing I owned that was work appropriate fit anymore and this wasn’t supposed to happen so soon and… it was all very traumatic. But as my doctor confirmed – I’m very short waisted. There’s nowhere for this kid to go but out.

Should be interesting to see what I look like in a few months! Bets on if I’ll be able to walk upright?

Which brings us to now… and our first actual real bump picture:

13 weeks 2 days

I’m totally starting to look pregnant! Over Labor Day I went out and bought some maternity clothes (as opposed to normal clothes in a size or two bigger than I usually wear). That was WAY less depressing than just buying bigger clothes. My body finally feels like it’s growing a person instead of just a liquor belly and some doughnut flab.

I still refuse to weigh myself unless the doctor makes me, though. No use in getting hung up on that number when I’m still eating whatever sounds like it has a chance of staying down. Even if it’s cheese steak.

Not just cheese steak in that belly.

So hopefully I’ll continue this picture a week thing… it would be fun to see the progress…

In other pregnancy news - we had our second appointment yesterday. It went well. Quick, but well. I had a sonogram so we got to hear the heartbeat for the first time. The doctor warned us it might take awhile to find the heartbeat and not to freak out is she didn’t pick up on it right away....but then she found it almost instantly. 170 beats per minute. So I’m still growing a hummingbird - a very fidgety hummingbird. The baby kicked a bunch of times in the minute we were listening! They came though as LOUD thumps. Part of me can’t wait to feel them… and part of me is terrified because if this kid fidgets anywhere near as much as his father does I’m screwed.

And in non pregnancy news – is anyone going on the Yarn Shop Hop this weekend?

Random Catchup Post

Just a list of random because writing an actual coherent post kindof makes my head hurt right now.

1.) I am 13 weeks and 3 days pregnant. Yes, I’m still puking. Yes, I know that should have stopped by now. It hasn’t. But it’s less frequent so let’s move on.

2.) In other pregnancy news….Our kid is the size of a peach.

3.) My fantasy football team kicked serious ass this week. Like 120 points of solid ass whooping. I now in first place in my league. Matt’s in first place in his league too but his team isn’t anywhere near as awesome as mine is (120 points!!! Michael Turner is my hero)

4.) Vampires rule. If you don’t have HBO and haven’t seen True Blood you have failed at life. Go get it now and try to catch the pilot before the next episode on Sunday. It’s totally worth it. So far show is amazing – every bit as good as the books. Although I’m reserving my complete judgment until a few weeks from now when we get to meet Eric. Mmmmm… Eric.

5.) The new 90210 was AWFUL. As my friend texted me “The only use I have for this show is to find out who Kelly’s baby daddy is, otherwise it’s terrible.” I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the baby daddy will be whoever they can convince to make a guest appearance first.

6.) I’m a bit obsessed with the Large Hadron Collider. It’s fascinating. And it worked! Crazy. Makes me want to be a physicist. The most hilarious article I’ve found on it is here:

The 5 Scientific Experiments Most Likely to End the World

7.) Despite my best efforts to kill it my garden isn’t doing too terrible. Since for the past few months I’ve been asleep or puking going outside in the heat to weed and water was not on my priority list. So we have a pathetic amount of homegrown produce this year – It’s sad, really.

But my flowers are actually surviving quite well. Especially the sunflowers:


Zinneas:

And Cosmos which are as tall as the sunflowers!:

My Dahlias are blooming like crazy:



And I’m pretty sure my morning glories are too although I haven’t been outside in the garden in the morning at all to enjoy them … I’m hoping that next year I’ll be able to get back into the garden thing.

8.) We went camping last weekend with about 30 of our closest friends. It was SO much fun. But I’m going to try to write a whole other post on it… that may or may not happen.

9.) I have been feeling well enough to do a bit of dying… so a shop update and new colorways should be coming soon!

10.) Dexter continues to be Sultan of the Couch.

And that’s about all I’ve got for right now…

Details and Pictures!

Thanks so much for all of your well wishes!!! And can I just say how excited I am to finally tell you guys? Having something that huge going on in my life and not being able to blog it was really weird. Glad that part of this adventure is over now. So to answer some of your questions…

1.) How far along are you?

As of today I am at 12 weeks and 3 days (according to the voodoo that is pregnancy math). So according to some of the books I’m now in the second trimester… although according to others I still have a week to go so who knows.

2.) When is the baby due?

My official doctor sanctioned due date is March 15. The Ides of March. Which makes his very geeky parents happy. Also all of my friends have taken to calling him/her Caesar which is pretty hilarious considering it’s hard to rule the entire Roman Empire when you’re only a few inches long.



Other fun potential birthdays:
March 9: Matt’s b-day
March 17: St. Pat’s – which would make my Irish grandma very happy
March 22: My brother’s birthday

Overall I think March is the perfect time. While it means I’m out for ski season this year I won’t ever have to be huge when it’s hot out. Let’s just hope that there’s no big mid-March blizzard this year!

3.) How have you been feeling?

Pregnant. Yucky and pregnant. I’m hoping that I’ll get the second trimester energy burst soon and that the puking will stop but so far none of that has happened. I spend most of my time either throwing up, asleep, or knocked out with a migraine that I’m not allowed to take anything good for. Also knitting makes me dizzy which makes coping with spending most of my time on the couch just about unbearable. I’m starting to come out of it a little bit, though. At first my after work naps were 3-4 hours long. Now they are only an hour or two. And some days I can survive without napping at all! So perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel…

4.) Is it a boy or a girl? Will you find out?

Ok even though we have had an ultrasound we can’t find out yet. The pieces parts are just too small to see. We won’t be able to find out until our next ultrasound at around weeks 18-20 (sometime in late Oct).

We go back and forth on the finding out/not finding out thing. On one hand it would be nice to know… but on the other it just doesn’t matter. Happy and healthy is what matters not boy or girl. On one hand it would be fun to be a surprise but on the other it will be a surprise no matter when we find out. The big sticking point is that everything – even the big ticket items like strollers and cribs and stuff – seems to be geared towards either a boy or a girl. That makes us not want to know. Because – God willing – this will not be our only child. And it seems completely ridiculous to rebuy everything for the next one because it’s not the right color. So we’d much rather stick with neutrals for just about everything. But I’m afraid that once we tell everyone “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy” suddenly the floodgates of pink or blue will open. And we’re really not down with that.

We do have a little time to decide on this and I’m sure whatever conclusion we reach will be the right decision for us.

5.) How was your first ultrasound?

So. Much. Fun. So much fun. Once we got over the “is everything ok?! please just tell us everything is ok..” thing, that is. And so far everything is great. Check it out:

That’s our kid!!! It was taken on August 20 – so two weeks ago. I’m sure they’ve grown since then…

At the ultrasound the baby was doing a little happy dance, squirming around like crazy. At one point he/she stopped dancing and waved one arm at us as if to say “Hi guys!” and then went back to their bouncy little dance. The doctor got a shot of the baby waving at us – and even added a little caption to it:

Heh. Nice to prepare the baby for the inevitable captioning that will happen on this blog.
How about another shot:

At this point the doctor commented on how long the baby’s arms are. So our baby is fidgety with long arms? Doesn’t sound like anyone I know at all… or you know...exactly like Matt.

Here’s where they measured the baby’s heartbeat:

It was 184.6 which sounds insane but apparently they start out that fast and slow down later.

And one last picture for good measure:

Blurry but adorable.

Ok I think that about catches me up. Hopefully I’ll be back to the blogging/knitting world soon!