Bump it: 16 Weeks

Hey Everyone! I'm 16 Weeks along!

4 months I can't believe it!!

I am actually 17 weeks by now but I am about a week behind on my photos so I might have to do a double week post at some point soon :-).

So there are no illusions about my belly showing now! (although there are a lot of people that are shocked and are all like "where is your belly I though you were pregnant blah blah blah") I feel like the weeks are going by so quickly and even though I still have 5 months to go I have a feeling that the time will fly really fast!

Since I am solidly into my second trimester my fears of MC are somewhat easing up. I am anxiously awaiting some kicks from the baby for the added reassurance that the baby is healthy and active in between OB visits, I read that I should expect to feel fetal movement anytime in the next month!

The Jury is still out on my decision to have a doula attend the birth. The more I think about it the more I really want just Kyle there. I told the doula I met that I'm still thinking about it and she was very understanding. I do have quite a bit of time to mull it over I guess. 

Kyle was on his vacation between quarters (straight A's last quarter woop woop! but I'm not bragging about him or anything...) last week so we were able to travel back to San Diego to visit some friends and to attend my friends wedding. It was so nice to see everyone again, we were able to go out to dinner and hit the beach and spend time in fellowship with so many wonderful people! I had to stop by my old job to pick up some paperwork and I couldn't resist stopping into the ER and saying hi to everyone. I was really nervous that my hormones would completely take over my body and I would bawl the entire time because I miss my co-workers so much but Kyle went with me and was very good about moving me around quickly so I couldn't get too emotional. I was able to exchange hugs and belly rubs with all the doctors and nurses without completely loosing it.

I am still having really weird dreams but thankfully I'm sleeping more easily at night now. 

I was awfully lazy last week as far as my workouts go but I did do my Zumba Wii class today and I signed up for prenatal yoga which will start in two weeks. 

That's about it for this week. My belly's getting bigger and I'm starting to day dream about what my baby will look like and what their personality will be. I will find out the gender in two weeks!

Until Next time I remain a happy momma to be!

Bump it: 15 Weeks

Hey Everyone! I'm 15 Weeks along!!

BABY BUMP!!!!!!!!

I have been feeling really good and I think most of it has to do with the fact that I'm FINALLY showing! I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that I am actually creating life every  second of every minute of every day! (I shutter to think how messed up this kid would be if I had to actually consciously think about growing toes and making sure elbows bend and that the pyloric sphincter is where it's supposed to be etc.) Even though the sticks have all turned pink and I have had two ultrasounds complete with about 10,000 images of my little peanut. I never really "felt" pregnant. I know all you ladies who have terrible morning sickness are gonna want to vomit when you read that. (if you're not already, never mind....) Now that I have physical evidence It just adds another depth of reality to my pregnancy. Next stop: kicking! (should start up sometime in the next month)

I've been trying to keep up with my routine of working out and eating well and I have been sleeping more that normally. I have been trying to get up earlier and failing miserably, for the first day or so I was getting really frustrated because I had all these grandiose plans of practicing for a hour before breakfast and then I'd wake up at 9:00 (or 10:00...) totally frustrated and pissy. My poor husband had to feel my wrath when I slept in until 10:30 last Thursday and proceeded to be in a bad mood until well into the afternoon. That man has the patience of a saint I'm telling you.. I know I need to be more patient with myself and enjoy this extra sleeping; (because once I become a mom I will never sleep again!) obviously my body wants/needs the sleep, after all it is growing a person!

Notice the Hair?? I was so sick of my longish grown out layer locks I needed a drastic change. I do like it but the first few showers afterwards were very different. The good thing is that my hair no longer takes two hours to air dry (the bad thing is that those two hours were my e-mail, facebook-ing, blogging   hours) I hope you guys like it as much as I do!

Until Next time I remain a happy momma to be!

Me and My Clarinet: A History

What I get to stare at daily :-)

So I know that my blog has been dominated by pregnancy updates and photos (which I know you guys love to see over and over and over again haha) but my pregnancy, as important and life changing as it is, isn't the only thing that is going on in my life right now.   :-)

I started "playing" the clarinet in 1996. I remember clearly a group of older guys coming to my 5th grade elementary school cafeteria with all of the major wind instruments in tow. One by one they introduced themselves and played each instrument so we could hear what they sounded like. I was so impressed (as most kids are I expect) by all of the shiny brass and many keys and nobs of all the instruments. 

To be honest I don't remember the clarinet guys name; but I will never forget how mesmerized I was when I herd him play...

I had never herd something so amazing in my life. No other instrument in my opinion sounded anywhere near as wonderful and couldn't play nearly as many notes (a fact that my 10 year old mind was very impressed by). Now that I am an adult I understand that maybe this might have been because the musician in question was more talented and able to play more challenging passages on the fly but when I was sitting indian style listening to him I knew immediately that that was the instrument I was destined to play. So I went home and very seriously announced to my parents that I needed them to sign the form so we could rent me a clarinet and I could be in the band!

When I finally got my instrument after it was delivered to the school I was so anxious to get it together and start playing. My band teacher showed me how to put it together and how I needed to wet the reed (a brand new base ricco size 2!) I put the mouthpiece in my mouth and....

SCREECH!!!!!!!

I was so confused, why didn't I sound like that other guy? Was it broken? What was I doing wrong? My band director assured me that I would learn in time and when I herd every other kid with a clarinet making the same noise I felt somewhat reassured. 

Enter in hours and hours of screeching, duck calls and slowly (SLOWLY) learning hot cross buns. My parents remember with joy my first 5th grade band concert. During this a group of about 30 ten year olds emitted the most vile and ear piercing sounds; and was always met with thunderous applause. I surely hope I have the honor of doing so at my own children's first concerts (if they choose to learn an instrument please please please)

But I digress...

Fast forward to present day. I finally started to learn how to play (note the lack of quotes here) and faithfully stayed in the band all through middle school and high school. During my teenage years I also played in a local college community band and moonlighted several times with Navy Band Northeast. I actually considered going to music school my sophomore and junior year but has history tells us that was not my destiny.

I actually took a break from my clarinet for about 4 years starting my senior year in nursing school through my third year as a RN. I was starting my career, I moved across the country, got married and my instrument started collecting dust at the back of my closet. I remember just like it was yesterday when I cleaned out my closet in mid August 2011 I found it and dug it out of the old gig bag I stored it in. It has about an inch of dust on the case and I suddenly felt overwhelmingly sad. How did I get to a place where I hadn't even picked up my clarinet in years!? Unacceptable.

I vowed then and there to start practicing again. I brought in my horn to get overhauled, got myself into a community band and found myself a private teacher (anyone who knows me knows that when I choose to do something I do it 100%) I have now been playing consistently since then and when we moved the first thing I did was find a new clarinet teacher and an ensemble to play with.

I now sound better that I ever have and I have never been happier!

So now when I post about the things I'm working on you'll have a little history on how I got to be here..

Stay musical!!

Bump it: 14 Weeks

Hey everybody! I'm 14 Weeks along!

14 Weeks

I'm happily finally showing a little baby bump! I might be sticking it out a bit but I am amazed at how much my body has changed over the last few weeks. I have been keeping up with my workouts and I'm feeling like I have more energy every day!

The newest and fun pregnancy side effect that I'm experiencing is remembering my dreams. Usually I don't remember them at all (or forget about two minutes after waking up). For the past month I have been having really vivid dreams that I remember every night. I have read that this is a fairly normal side effect of pregnancy but it is still is weird for me. I have had a recurring dream that I'm in high school and late for my finals/haven't studied and it all seems so real that when I wake up I have to reassure myself "I already graduated from high school, I already graduated from college, I'm O.K.!"

I don't know if it's my medical background or just the woman that I am but I am already starting to obsessively think about my labor and how it's going to go. I have always (well since I was in nursing school) known that I wanted to go into my own labor experience with zero expectations. I saw and have herd about too many women who were "disappointed" in "how it went" or something like that. I know that I will have the labor experience that my baby and my body was designed for. So I am totally open to any option, but I do want the opportunity to try and labor naturally. I do not want any induction or Pitocin unless I or my baby are in danger for some reason. My OB is pro natural childbirth but I was also toying with the idea of hiring a doula as well. I actually contacted one and met with her last week and I was really impressed with her but she charges literally an arm and a leg for her services. I guess I'm a little hesitant to pay someone gobs of money to do a job that I kind of want Kyle to do. I think Kyle coaching me through labor just the two of us would bond us like nothing has before. 

Tell me a little about your birth experiences. Did you utilize a Doula? Did you not? Why not? I actually already know all the benefits of having one; I'm actually more interested in the people that didn't use one and why not? Do you think I can have a successful labor experience without spending the $$ for one?

Thanks so much for your comments!!!!

First Trimester Workout Regimen

First Trimester Workouts:

I have been pretty into fitness since college when I woke up one morning and realized that if I didn't start working out eventually my lightening fast metabolism would slow down and I would start weighing thousands of pounds. I won't go into crazy detail but for the past 5 years or so I have been working out regularly and three years ago I started to run (never ran before in my life...now I have three half marathons under my belt). 

Any-who I ran another 1/2 in August then I had a major couch potato attack and pretty much didn't do ANYTHING until I found out I was pregnant. Once the stick turned I had an incredibly selfish freak out moment "OMG I'm gonna gain SOO much weight with this yikes!" Don't get me wrong, I understand that this is all a part of the process but I would be lying if I told you that I was totally and completely fine with gaining 30ish pounds over the next 7 months. After I was done with my freakout I did some reading on nutrition and pregnancy and realized that I had a lot more control over this that I originally thought. I definitely got behind working out for as long as I can during my pregnancy, not only because it's good for me but it's good for the baby.

This was my routine during my First Trimester

1) Running:

So I used to average 10-15 miles per week when I was training; the kinda crappy thing about "taking a break" from running is that it's not so much a "break" as it's losing all of your conditioning. After about 3 months of zip, zilch, zero running I was pretty much back to 4-6 miles a week if I was lucky. I did do that a few times after we moved then there was Christmas then I found out about the baby. My doctor gave me the ok to run but I was feeling so tired and blah that I didn't want to push myself so I decided to re-do the 'ol couch to 5k program which I was very easy for me to do even on days when I couldn't stay awake for more than 5 minutes at a time. The pics are screen shots from the app I used way back when when I first started running in 2010. Check it out here. Trust me when I say if you are not a runner but always wanted to give it a shot this is the way to go; If I can do it ANYONE CAN DO IT!!!

2) DVDs

*Do you Zumba?*

I was actually doing a cycle of P90x with Kyle when I found out about the pregnancy and we were about halfway through and the workouts were getting pretty intense so I knew I couldn't keep doing that so I looked on amazon for a prenatal workout that I could do that actually was appropriate for people who were going into their pregnancy somewhat physically fit and I found Summer Sanders' Prenatal Workout and I tried to do it about 3 time a week. I like the fact that there is a different workout for each trimester; just when I was about to shoot myself from doing the same thing over and over again it was time to move on to the next trimesters' workout :-). It also gives you an "express workout" option which is nice on those days when I couldn't stay awake for more than 5 minutes at a time. The Zumba game for Wii was one I bought last year and has been a fun way to incorporate some cardio on days I don't want to run for whatever reason.

Things I liked:

I liked the variety and options for shorter workouts which kept me motivated on days when the last thing I wanted to was work out. 

I know that I'm doing what's best for my baby and helping them grow healthy and strong by keeping my body healthy and strong. 

My total out of pocket expense was only $9.99 for the Summer Sanders' DVD. Much cheeper than the $100 bucks a month I was spending on my old yoga studio in San Diego (but I do miss my hot Vinyasa Yoga....le sigh....)

Things I want to try for next Trimester:

I have herd cool things about prenatal Pilates so i'm going to try and incorporate that

I'm going to sign up for a Prenatal Yoga class at a local studio in a few weeks because I miss yoga (but I already said that right?)

Well I hope this inspired all you other mom's to be 

(and other lovely ladies) to get up and get moving!

Stay Sweaty!

First Trimester in Review

Well I made it; I'm successfully in my second Trimester! 

I have been thinking about the last several months and how much my life has changed. I moved to a new place, couldn't find a job, found out about the pregnancy, adjusted to the news of the pregnancy and spent most of January sick and exhausted. Now that I am in my second trimester I am finally feeling better and I'm starting to have more energy. On a side note I'm finally starting to show a little bit!

I have been having quite the internal struggle as far as my employment goes. Ever since I was 16 I have had some type of job. I have always prided myself on being an independent woman who can take care of herself, on being on equal footing with my husband in all aspects of life (including financially). Now I have been transitioning to a different role; when we moved and my husband started grad school I figured I could easily transition to a RN job in this area:

well there were no jobs...

then I found out I was knocked up...

This caused me to start thinking about my life in a different way. For the last 10 years I have either been in school full time or working full time or some combination of the two. For the last 4 years my husband and I have enjoyed being husband and wife, but we also were both working full time and went through 2 deployments (over a year of separation total over that 4 year period) so we didn't see as much of each other as we wanted to. Kyle would have duty on the ship once a week and wouldn't be able to come home, and when I worked I didn't get home until after 8pm.  Then he would be at sea for weeks (or months) at a time. Now he's a full time student; he comes home every day; we have dinner every night, we spend every weekend together exploring our new town and we get to just enjoy each other's company. To be completely honest it's like we get a second honeymoon period, it's been such a relaxing break from our 100 MPH life in San Diego.

So naturally I started panicking

I should be working, I should be contributing to the family. I don't deserve to just kick back and do what I want all day long, I should should should....

The funny thing was that I was the only one saying these things to me, so I kept looking for work and was only coming up with full time night positions that would mean I would spend less time with Kyle than when we were in San Diego, not an option. Plus oh yeah, I have a baby on the way.

My mother said something that really got under my skin the other day. She told me "I think one of the reasons you're doing this to yourself is that you're enjoying yourself and you're feeling guilty about it." Once I herd her say that I realized that she was 100% right. I was feeling guilty about how happy I was feeling. I have been able to cook all the meals I have been cataloging for years, I get to workout 6 days a week, I'm eating really healthy and I have the time to take care of my body and the baby growing inside me. I guess being so happy kinda scared the s*it out of me.

I guess for me my first trimester was just as much about self discovery as it was about morning sickness. I am still in the "transition" period but as my belly gets bigger I think I will feel better about my decision to put my career on hold and to focus on my family. I know that in three years when Kyle is a department head and is working 14 hour days and is at sea all the time I will look back at this period in our married life and be thankful that I took full advantage of this time.

Ok enough of my babbling

14 weeks down, only 26 more to go........

Bump it: 13 Weeks

Hey everybody! I'm 13 weeks along!

13 Weeks

I guess you can kind of see a little "micro bump" but I still don't feel like I look very different (except for the fact that my prego boobs are definitely here lol). Kyle says that I try to stick my belly out when he's taking the picture and maybe I'm doing that without realizing it. :-) I'm actually starting to get a little concerned that I haven't gained very much weight at all yet. My doctor told me that It's pretty normal to only put on a pound or two over your entire first trimester and that I'll start putting on more weight in my second trimester (which is next week holy moly!) but I still worry that the baby is getting all the nutrients it needs. All I can really do is keep on eating well, exercising and taking my prenatal every day. 

I've been feeling SO MUCH BETTER over the last week and I have had a lot more energy; however there is still the occasional day that I am completely drained in the afternoons. At my nuchal translucency ultrasound the tech predicted boy and ever since then I have been having these really vivid dreams about baby boys. I don't know if it's because of what the tech said or what but I'm starting to think pretty definitely that's its a boy; I'll actually be pretty surprised if at my 20 week US they say it's a girl! Kyle and I are starting to play around with names but we're not anywhere near coming close to choosing one yet. 

I guess because of my medical background I have already started to think about the delivery and how I want it to go. Ever since I became a RN I was planning on having a midwife for my pregnancies but since there are NO practicing midwives in my area that have hospital privileges I had to choose an OB-GYN. I'm OK with it because the OB I found is really "pro" natural deliveries and tries to lean on the "less invasive" side of things which was very important to me. I also decided that since I can't have a midwife I want to have a doula. I only know a few people that have had a doula or labor coach but I think I would feel really good having someone there who is experienced and can take some of the responsibility off of Kyle/my family. I know Kyle will be very supportive during my labor but I don't want him to be responsible for everything. So I'm going to start looking into doulas in my area and hopefully we will find one that works for us.

Until next time I remain a happy mama to be! 

13 Week Nucal Translucency Ultrasound

This Wednesday I went to the University of California San Francisco Satellite Prenatal Diagnostic Center for my Nuchal Translucency Ultrasound. This is a test performed in the first trimester to screen for risk of genetic abnormalities (like Down's Syndrome). The risk of these issues increase with maternal age and since I am fairly young (26) I didn't think I would even qualify for the screening; however at my first OBGYN appointment I was informed that there is a state-wide initiative to offer these exams to all pregnant women in California. I think they are using the data for research and since I am a great supporter of medical research and development I agreed to participate.

The week before I got a little nervous about how I would feel if the results showed a high risk. Kyle and I talked about it before I agreed to the screening about what we would do based on the results and I do believe that having knowledge to prepare is better than being surprised/unprepared but I was still obsessively worrying about it. There are no guarantees in life but I found peace in the knowledge that GOD will bless us with the perfect baby for our family and all I have to do is take care of myself and give this baby the best environment to grow in. 

At the clinic I got brought back pretty much immediately and the tech who was very professional and knowledgable started the ultrasound (abdominal, not trans-vaginal yay!). The images were breathtaking. I still can not believe how much my little one has grown and developed over the last three months. I was able to see the heart beating, the hemispheres of the brain, all the bones of the spinal column and I could even count the fingers and toes. They were pretty calm (probably because I did my Zumba workout right before I went to my appointment) and the tech was able to take her measurements right away. 

If you want to learn more about NT Ultrasound and what it measures check it out here   

Afterward I was able to teleconference with one of the UCSF genetic counselors who went over all of my results. All of my blood work and the ultrasound measurements were will within normal limits and I was so relieved! Again I understand that it's not 100% guaranteed and we won't know for sure until the little one comes but It was very comforting just to be able to see the baby again.

I've included a picture for you guys to check out.....

My Little Peanut at 13 weeks

Until next time guys! 

Bump it: Then and now.

So now that my pregnancy is out in the open; (I posed it to Facebook last week so now everyone and their mother must know about it haha) I can finally start posting my bump photos. The first trimester is very repetitive and I don't look very different but I wanted to take some photos now so I can see how much my body will change over the second and third trimester. I started at 8 weeks because before then  I really didn't see the point lol.

8 Weeks	9 Weeks

10 Weeks	11 Weeks

You know I just noticed that weeks 8-9 and 10-11 have the same hair which happened completely by accident. (Also I am missing my wedding rings in the 10 week picture, whoops! Must have taken the pic right after doing the dishes) I am entering my second trimester trimester this week and I am finally starting to feel better. I was pretty nauseous  for the first two months but I know that I had it easier than a lot of other women. I have been keeping pretty active and still running (although I'm averaging about 6-8 miles a week instead of 12-15) and I have a prenatal DVD that I am using (more on that in another post)

Since I'm 12 weeks this week here is my 12 week belly shot

12 Weeks

Ugh I know I need to cut my hair (and I'm missing my wedding rings AGAIN sheesh I need to stop taking my photos after dishes). After I saw this picture I immediately called and made an appointment to get my hair cut. I'm thinking about going shoulder length and making it a lot shorter, however I do enjoy being able to braid my hair. It was actually a side braid that caused this frizzy "I just stuck my finger in a light socket" look (eww)

Until next time I remain a happy mama to be!