I didn’t have much prodromal labour at all. Saturday night, the day before Father’s Day, I started having contractions. Not super regular or intense, but definitely there. I managed to get lots of sleep though, and they had mostly petered off by morning. They did continue most of the day, but sometimes every 5 minutes, sometimes there was a half hour or more in between them, and they really varied in intensity but for the most part they were not at all painful or even uncomfortable.

We had rented a TENS machine this time, partly just out of curiosity what they are like, and I did use it a little bit and it seemed to help. It at least distracted from the contractions and I was able to sleep and nap.

That evening my family in Calgary Facetimed us on the iPad and we chatted with them. I was having contractions the whole time but never mentioned that to them. I went to bed early, wanting to make sure I got lots of sleep, just in case. I’d had lots of prodromal labour with Fiona so I wasn’t assuming I was in labour yet, but I didn’t want to make the mistake I’d made with Meredith’s and not sleep enough and end up exhausted and drained.

At 1am, the contractions were starting to get more intense, and I put the TENS on again and slept between the contractions and used the TENS during contractions. At 4am I woke Kris up and told him it might be a good idea to get the pool set up and go through the prebirth checklist we had made, just in case.

By 5am the contractions were becoming more intense and much closer together. We were debating whether to call the midwife yet or not. I really like both midwives but the one I clicked with best was only on call for a couple more hours, so we decided to give her a call and at least give her a heads up. I had a contraction while she was on the phone and she decided to head over. I was feeling really antsy for the pool to finish filling up and the relief I hoped it would provide. The contractions were still definitely bearable, but coming close enough together that I was looking forward to being in the water.

Fiona got up around this point, and Kris set her up in the TV room with a movie.

Finally the pool was full enough I could get in, and just like the last two times it brought instant relief. It wasn’t very full yet, and Kris started some pots of water boiling on the stove. The contractions immediately slowed down when I got in, though they didn’t change in length or intensity. When K, our midwive, arrived, I apologized to her and said I may have called her too early. She said better early than late, especially given how fast Fiona’s went, and quietly set up her supplies while Kris and I did our thing.

The contractions continued to get more and more intense, but not closer together. While I wasn’t going to complain about the breaks, I did wonder if anything was actually happening and how long it would keep on like this. I at one point asked K if I should get out and try and get them to pick up again, but she told me she called it the “rest and be thankful” phase and that things were definitely happening. So we just continued on like that. K was great, very hands off and leaving Kris and I just to do our own thing. Sometimes we chatted, other times we just waited in between contractions in silence. Fiona drifted in and out of the room on occasion. We had bought the girls some play dough and other activities to do and I pointed it out to her on the table, and she was thrilled to go and sit and start that. Around 7 Meredith heard me during one of the contractions and came downstairs. She asked if she could come in the pool. K suggested she could pour water on my back during contractions, which felt really good. Fiona joined her shortly after that and we went through a few contractions like that. Then the girls got out and over the next little while drifted between the TV, the play dough, and the room we were in, stopping to offer me water or juice, or frozen blueberries to eat. Meredith had told me beforehand that she wanted to be my doula, and she took the role quite seriously.

K at one point asked if I wanted to catch the baby myself. I told her Kris had caught Fiona, but that I wasn’t sure if I would be able to catch him or her myself. I remember with Fiona that the last thing on my mind was where my hands should be to catch her, I was so focused on the sensation of birthing her.

The contractions continued to get more intense. The baby moved with each one, which did not feel very good, and I joked in between contractions that I just needed the baby to go to sleep for a while. I started to feel a bit of pressure at one point, but got out to use the bathroom and the pressure mostly went away. While out of the water the contractions started coming much closer together again, so I was glad to get back in the water. Shortly after 8, the contractions changed. The pressure was still there, and the contractions felt lower, and more painful. I felt a shift in the baby and my body and where I was feeling the contractions. And though I was getting the breaks, there was very little build up with each contraction, with them instead coming on quickly and with very little warning.

I needed to pee again around 8:20 or so, but really didn’t want to get out of the pool at this point. Every time I moved it seemed I would have a contraction, whereas sitting in the water there was still a break between each one. K and Kris encouraged me to get out, and helped me into the bathroom. I had several contractions right on top of the other while on the toilet, then managed to get back into the pool, where they slowed down. However, though I was still getting breaks in between, they got super intense. Kris says it was at this point he and K both noticed a change in my demeanor. Rather than the quiet chatting or joking we had been doing off and on between contractions, I was focused inwards. The contractions were intense and I had started to tell Kris I couldn’t do it anymore. I was dozing and concentrating on the baby in between contractions.

Then around 8:36, a particularly tough contraction came on. I was vocalizing pretty hard and suddenly I felt a huge shift inside and I felt that unmistakable pushing urge. I said that out loud, and out of the corner of my eye saw the midwife jump up from where she was. As I said it, my water broke, and suddenly it felt like the baby was right there, already just about out. The whole speed and suddenness of all these sensations was overwhelming to me, and I felt a bit frozen, sitting with my hand down like I was holding her in. The midwife was trying to get me to shift positions so I could actually birth her (Kris said the position I was in at the time there is no way she would have been physically able to come out) and her and Kris helped ease me back. As soon as I was, I felt like she was coming out my bum (and yelled that out quite loudly) and then suddenly I felt the “ring of fire” and then her head was out. K told me to put my other hand on her, and I felt her turning under me. The older girls had run into the room and I could vaguely hear them commenting excitedly on everything they could see. The whole thing was quite surreal. And then she was out, and I had caught her myself, and at 8:38, one contraction and less than two minutes after my water had broke (including having to shift positions), I was holding her on my chest.

The girls jumped in the water and were exclaiming excitedly, telling me they had seen everything and how neat it was to see her head come out and all her hair. They came in close to see her and Meredith said “Mama, she is so cute!” She seemed surprised. We had watched a few birth videos and in one the baby had come out covered in vernix, and I think that was the one that had stuck in Meredith’s mind when she thought of a just birthed baby. We checked and saw she was a girl. The older two couldn’t stop grinning, and we all sat in the pool and admired the new baby for a bit. We noticed I was bleeding into the pool quite a bit, and then I felt the gush of the placenta detaching itself and Kris and K helped me out of the pool (the second midwife hadn’t made it for the birth).

I had a contraction that felt almost as bad as labour contractions and had to put my hand on my belly and make sure there was no extra baby in there! The placenta itself came out pretty easily, but there were trailing membranes that had torn a bit and quite a bit of blood. K thought it might be because of how fast everything happened at the end. The second midwife showed up right around this point and we chatted and admired the baby. We joked about the second midwife not making it for the birth, and K pointed out it was probably good we called her when we did, because if we had waited to call until things had changed, she likely wouldn’t have made it at all either. K teased the membranes out and then Meredith and Fiona cut the cord and the midwives set to checking the placenta over and showing Meredith and Fiona how it worked. I wish I’d gotten some pictures of the placenta and the membranes. K gave me some shepherd’s purse tincture to help with the bleeding. During all this, I put the baby on my chest to see if she was interested in nursing. She latched on pretty quickly, and had a beautiful latch right away. She pretty much nursed the entire morning except the brief break while I showered and she was weighed.

Meredith came over and asked if she could help name her. The girls had wanted to call her May/Mae if she was a girl pretty much right from when they learned I was pregnant. Because of that, we had considered Maeve as a first name, along with a few others, and Guinevere seemed to be sticking as a middle name. A couple of weeks prior to having her though, we had thought maybe we should consider Guinevere as a first name. We all really liked it, Kris and I are fans of the King Arthur legends, and we each have a sister named Jennifer (and Guinevere is the Gaelic form of Jennifer). We all agreed, and Meredith asked if she could call her Mae sometimes still.

At this point I had already filled a pad, but the bleeding seemed to have slowed way down and K helped me upstairs for a quick shower while Kris snuggled the baby and they weighed and measured her. She was 7 pounds 14 ounces and 52 cm long, my biggest baby (and yet, even still preemie outfits fit her better than newborn ones!). The midwives helped Kris clean up, and meanwhile Guinevere had latched back on and continued to nurse. The bleeding had finally slowed way down, and the midwives asked me to try and take it really easy for a while, and then they left, and our little family of five was left to admire our baby.

The girls love her. They are constantly kissing her, wanting to hold her, and just admiring her. Even still, a week later, every time Fiona comes to look at her she exclaims about how cute she is. Physically, recovery has been really easy. No tears, and though the after pains were pretty intense the first day and night, they had pretty much disappeared by the next morning and I felt pretty good. This was almost a bad thing though as it’s hard to remember to take it easy when you’re feeling really well! I did find if I did too much I got tired easier than normal and was reminded of the importance of resting and eating enough on day three when my blood pressure spiked a bit and I was seeing some spots. Rest and food had me back feeling pretty good again, and Guinevere and I have had a pretty low-key week otherwise. I am lucky that Kris is able to take parental leave this time around, and he has taken on the task of entertaining the older girls, feeding everyone, and basically assuring that I’m able to rest as much as possible.

One week later and I’m feeling good, and we are very much in love with this new little person in our lives.

I would like to finish all three of these, though I’m not sure what a realistic goal is. I can finish a spread in one session of working if I get a good chunk of time, but that doesn’t happen a lot. A full double spread a week is probably realistic, which means over a year to finish what’s left on all three of them. Anyway, here are some of the ones I’ve been working on recently for Fiona’s (click for bigger images).

I might change some of the backgrounds and/or paper still, but I’m just glad to be getting something done! I am using this “My Sweet Baby” collection to do the book and bought a cute scrapbook I’ll eventually put the pages into.

I spent most of today editing a video. Originally it was supposed to be a pregnancy, birth, and beyond video, set to music with no dialogue. But it got long and I liked a lot of the dialogue, so this is just a birth video. I might change the first dialogue box eventually. The midwives didn’t actually show up until about 10:20, and the first clip of the video is only about 25 minutes before the baby comes, just to give an idea of how quickly it went. I’m going to work on another one that would be more along my original idea too, and will be a little more censored. This particular one has nudity, yelling, etc. Watch at your own risk.

(You need a browser that supports html5 to see this. So basically not Internet Explorer.)

We went to try and lay down, but though the contractions stayed quite far apart, they were suddenly quite intense again after my water breaking and so we didn’t actually sleep, but we dozed for an hour or so until Meredith woke up at 9 (she had slept the whole time until this point, straight through the night except for stirring once and was settled easily back to sleep by Kris!). We got up and the contractions started again almost immediately. Kris called the midwife to ask her if it was okay to use the same water that had been in the pool all night now that my water was broken, and she said it was fine. I was having a contraction while he was on the phone and she asked if she should come. I said something along the lines of “I don’t care, whatever you want” lol. Kris emptied the pool a bit so he could reheat the water, and meanwhile my contractions were quickly becoming more and more intense. I’m not sure when they started coming right on top of the other but it wasn’t long afterwards. I couldn’t believe how fast it went from every 8 minutes to transition. And it was very intense/painful. Meredith’s labour had been painful, but in a different way. Lots of back labour, but not nearly so intense. Probably because it was longer. I was very loud, way louder than with Meredith. I’m sure the neighbours heard lol.

Through this Meredith was standing by the pool feeding me frozen grapes (thanks to Paxye for this idea, they were the perfect labour food), stroking and kissing my head, and doing her own thing quietly. She apparently asked Kris to watch a movie at one point and he told her I didn’t want the TV on and she said “oh ok Daddy” and went and found something else to do.

I’m not sure what time it was when the midwife and her student showed up, but I was very close to pushing. The time was actually kind of perfect as Kris and I had had all night to do our own thing together, but when it got really intense and difficult for me (and just when he was wondering how he was going to do things like reheat the pool when I refused to let go of his hand), they showed up. The midwife listened to a few contractions and commented that it sounded like there was a little lip of cervix blocking the baby. I have no idea how she would know that from listening to me! Anyway, she asked if I wanted her to check and potentially hold it out of the way a bit. She did mention that she certainly didn’t have to and it would get out of the way on it’s own if she left it. I had originally told her I didn’t want to be checked at all, but at this point I was feeling like I wasn’t coping very well and I remembered how much I enjoyed pushing with Meredith. I asked her if she did that if it meant I would push sooner and she said yes, probably, and I was like “do it, I want to push!” (I also made her reassure me that she’d stop immediately if it hurt or I wanted her to, which of course she did.) It ended up making the next contraction better and there was a lip, that the head managed to slip past.

The contractions really slowed down at this point, but when they came they were intense. I was yelling very loudly with each one and saying things like “I don’t want to do this anymore”. I had made clear how much I was looking forward to pushing, but when the pushing started I hated it this time for some reason. I really enjoyed pushing with Meredith. Anyway, once I started feeling pushy there was no stopping me lol. I wanted her out of there. I only pushed for 9 minutes and then she burst into the world and Kris caught her and put her on my chest. Meredith came over to check her out and then climbed into the pool with us. We sat and rested for a few minutes and then checked and saw that Meredith had a little sister.

My only real regret about the whole thing is that the water had got cool in that last little bit and I’d been too out of it to remember to mention it and they hadn’t noticed. Her cord was a little short. It wouldn’t have been a problem if the water was nice and warm but because it was so cold I was having a hard time keeping her out of the water enough that we could wrap her. I also couldn’t easily have gotten out with the cord still attached. She was nice and pink and noisy when she first popped out but after about 10 minutes in the tub she had gotten quite quiet and was turning a bit blue. We tried to wrap her up on my chest but I just couldn’t keep her out of the cool water and agreed to cut the cord. I had wanted to wait until the placenta came out to cut it but it had been 15 minutes at this point so I agreed that I was okay cutting it a little sooner. Meredith ended up being the one to cut it, and we tied it off with a braided tie I had made (I had actually made two just in case and am wearing the other around my wrist now ).

They took her while I got out and decided to give her a little puff of room air, which worried me a bit seeing them put the little mask on her, but the midwife assured me it was mostly precaution and that she was just fine. She pinked up really quickly with the air and started squalling. Because I hadn’t pushed for long she was still a tad gurgly but nothing that concerned the midwives at all. I didn’t want the oxytocin shot, and at about a half hour after she was born my placenta hadn’t come out. I was lying on my back with Meredith nursing and holding the baby on the other arm, so she asked if I was willing to squat or change position to see if gravity would help the placenta out at all. I don’t think she was worried about it yet but wanted to be proactive. The placenta came out pretty quickly after I changed positions. Kris passed her back to me and she started rooting and latched on and nursed like a pro. I actually am amazed at how well she nurses; her latch is pretty much perfect already and she’s got a powerful little suck. I’m kind of glad I’m used to a toddler nursing already lol.

Meredith was fascinated by the placenta and the midwife showed her how it worked and how the cord attached to the baby (and where). About an hour after she was born they weighed and measured her. We all guessed how much she would weigh and everyone else was guessing under 7 pounds. I guessed 7lb 6oz. She ended up being 7lb 8oz so I was pretty close. (Maybe even right on if we had weighed her before she nursed. )The midwives left soon after that and Kris and I talked about names and settled on Fiona Siobhan pretty easily. We made our phone calls and have pretty much relaxed and just enjoyed our baby the rest of the day. Unlike Meredith’s labour, where I hadn’t slept in about 27 hours and so slept that whole day, I was feeling pretty good and only had a short nap in the afternoon when Kris and Meredith went out for some food.

We will be EC-ing with her as well, and we’ve already caught one pee and one of her meconium poops today, which is kind of neat.

I’ll post more pictures when I get a chance, but here’s one of Fiona. I was right when I had checked myself, she has tons of hair! It’s so strange to not be pregnant and that I have another little baby. Very surreal, but I’m loving it again. Meredith adores her right now and wants to hold her and touch her constantly. They were both nursing and looking in each other’s eyes while doing so, with Meredith’s hand stroking her head. I wish Kris had been around to get a picture. I hope Meredith continues to enjoy her so much as she realizes how much time and attention she will take up for a while.

Pregnancy is still going so smoothly, I often forget I’m pregnant. I can’t believe I’m in the third trimester already. It’s night and day from last time, when I spent most of the pregnancy nauseous, puking, or with terrible heartburn. I have gotten a little bit of heartburn, but so far nothing major. I also spent a lot more time thinking about being pregnant last time, whereas this time I have a two year old to distract me and life goes on as normal. The baby does move a lot now though, and I definitely love that part. Meredith loves when the baby kicks her while she’s nursing, and will often pop off and talk about how the baby is going to nurse too on whichever breast she’s not on. (I find this really cute, because I’d never mentioned that the baby would need to nurse too. She figured it out on her own.) She’s also started bringing me little bits of food and putting it on my belly and telling me it’s for the baby. I’m really curious how much she’s really internalizing about me being pregnant. Obviously she at least partly gets it, if she’s figuring out things like that the baby will need to nurse. She loves to look at and hold other people’s babies and nurses/potties her own dolls. I guess we’ll see in a few months!

Her room is mostly finished now. She chose blue, and was pretty insistent from the first day I asked her what colour she wanted that it would be blue. Occasionally she would mention purple, but that was rare. I got some blue paint and some purple paint to try out in the room, and was doing the purple paint first and she said “No Mama! No purple. Blue room.” So, blue it was. I’m quite happy with the colours. There’s a little more that needs to be done in there, but it’s coming along. I want to either paint all the trim white, or replace the baseboards with white ones, but the white paint I have is oil-based which isn’t recommended for pregnancy. I have a good friend who’s offered to paint them as a Christmas present, but she’s really busy too so not sure if it will end up happening.

Meredith adores the room. She talks about it all the time and likes to go in and touch the walls. A couple of weeks ago she wanted to nurse in her bed and I wondered if she was going to fall asleep there. She didn’t, but I wonder what I would have done if she had. Likely brought her back into our bed with me. She still rarely sleeps through the night so I prefer her to be with me where it’s easy to just nurse or cuddle her back to sleep. Plus she still wakes up and looks for me, even if it’s just to wake up briefly to put her hand on me. If I’m not there she will wake up the whole way and call for me. I think I may start putting her down in her room for naps though if she seems interested.

Speaking of sleep, I’m pretty comfortable where we are at as far as night nursing. In the beginning of the pregnancy she always had to nurse back to sleep; sometimes it would take her 45 minutes or longer each time. I worried that with a newborn who would likely wake her up each time he/she woke up, both would want to be nursed back to sleep every single time. I really didn’t want to night wean her though. I opted to try for plain old honesty. When she is settling in for a long nursing session in the night and I am really tired or the nursing is uncomfortable or painful (which luckily for me hasn’t happened often), I will ask her to please keep it short this time and then we can cuddle instead. Most of the time, she’s quite happy to just have a quick nurse and then roll over and we’ll cuddle until she’s asleep. The times she nurses longer there’s almost always a reason, such as illness. Prior to pregnancy, she really had never fallen asleep on her own without nursing, now she does quite often. In fact there were a couple of nights where she didn’t ask to nurse at all, and just cuddled into me when she woke up. I think that was the few days my milk dried up and she wasn’t nursing much during the day either. Then my colostrum came in and she’s loving that lol. Back to nursing frequently during the day and usually at least two to three times overnight too.

Anyway, so much for this being a short update post. I do have more to post in the next little while, if I get a chance. I’m still reading lots of blogs. They’re in my RSS feed on my e-mail though and I haven’t commented much lately. But I’m really enjoying reading all the posts and seeing the Christmas baking and crafts being done, and hope to share some of our own holiday activities too.

Things are still moving right along. I occasionally get mild heart burn, but other than that this has still been an extremely uneventful pregnancy. I’m not complaining at all lol. A few more weeks to the third trimester. We’ve pretty much decided on two girl’s names, though we won’t decide which one for sure until the baby’s born probably. Funnily, neither of them were on our list before I got pregnant this time. Boy’s names are once again harder. We have about ten on the “short” list still. That’s better than with Meredith’s pregnancy though, where we could barely get a short list at all that we were both happy with.

I guess I’m nesting. I’m still doing some major decluttering and reorganizing, especially upstairs though over the weekend we reorganized our living room too. It feels much more spacious the way we have it and Meredith’s toys don’t feel so cramped. Her room is starting to actually look fairly empty. I have the change table set up so I can start putting some baby stuff away on it. I need to sand and paint her bed and finish getting rid of the stuff that’s left, but compared to how it looked when I started it’s looking great. I’m not going to post any pictures until it’s done though, the before pictures will be too embarrassing without seeing that I really did get it done. I’m excited about it. We plan to use it as a space where Meredith can keep things she doesn’t want the baby to get into. She can nap/sleep there if she wants but I don’t plan to push her into that at all, I just want her to have the option because she’s such a light sleeper and I’ve read some kids actually prefer their own room with a cosleeping new baby. I may set our crib up there too and if this baby will actually sleep out of arms I have a feeling he/she may end up being put down more often for naps, so that I can spend some one-on-one time with Meredith and won’t have to be constantly asking her to keep her voice down. I haven’t decided about that though, as it would mean when the baby is sleeping she wouldn’t be able to go up there, and I also really loved having Meredith nap in the mei tei on us and didn’t find it too disruptive. But I didn’t have a two year old at the time either. I’m not really a fan of cribs though (we only have it because my mom bought it for us after I told her we didn’t want one), so more likely if baby goes down for naps it will be in our bed like Meredith does now.

I’ll end with a picture from Halloween. My talented friend Kyre made the shirt and it turned out perfectly. (Check out her site to see the gorgeous cake she recently made for a birthday party.) I got a lot of comments on it when we were trick-or-treating and I’m sad I only get to wear it once. Meredith was Nemo, which was perfect for her as she loves the colour orange and she adores fish (it’s her favorite part of the zoo when we go). She loved Halloween and still talks about the candy and balloon she got that day, even though she really doesn’t eat much candy besides Smarties. Kris and I ended up eating most of hers while she chose to eat healthy things like eggs, bananas, and avocadoes, even though we left the candy bucket out. She would open a bag, sometimes have one or two, and then give the rest of it to one of us. I think just the excitement of everything was really neat to her though.

I did a bunch of organizing, decluttering, and moving  of stuff last week and felt fine afterwards. Then suddenly the next afternoon my back started hurting, and it still hasn’t gotten any better. I’m not sure what I would have done, as I was careful about what I moved and how I picked things up and have never had problems with my back like this before. I don’t think it’s pregnancy-related at all yet, but being pregnant probably doesn’t help. I have a chiro appointment set for tomorrow and I can’t wait. I’ve been trying to take it really easy but if anything my back is worse today than it was yesterday. Maybe because yesterday it was feeling a lot better so I probably didn’t take it as easy as I had been. I’m really hoping the chiro helps. It usually does. I can barely walk today without pain, whereas up until now it’s mostly been just bending over and getting up from a sit or from lying down that’s been painful.

The worst part is, because I had started the decluttering, the rooms I was working in had boxes and stuff pulled out. But I haven’t had a chance to go back and finish, so some of them look worse than before. Oh well, hopefully the chiro will help and I’ll be able to finish up sooner rather than later, though I’ll take it even easier just in case. My dishes have been piling up too, even though I’m trying to get at least a load a day done. Anyone want to come do my dishes?

Here are some belly shots from last night. Excuse the funny cropping on some of them, Meredith wasn’t wearing pants as usual and I don’t want to post nude shots on the internet or on Facebook.

Notice my belly button sticking out already? lol It didn’t do that until much closer to the end last time.

The appointment went really well. We pretty much declined all prenatal testing, including ultrasound, which she didn’t even blink at. I told her I want a hands-off birth this time. She’ll be there for support and probably to entertain Meredith, but I don’t want to be checked or anything. She thinks that’s great and doesn’t foresee any issues whatsoever. She says if I can push a posterior, sunny-side-up baby out in 44 minutes, I can push an anterior baby out no problem. The good news is, she thinks the placenta is positioned better this time, so less chance of a posterior baby. One of the reasons I really liked her the first time was because of how upbeat and positive she is. She really believes that women are made to give birth and has a real positive vibe surrounding her. I’m really looking forward to having her at my labour this time, because I think just her presence there will be really calming and positive. She’s the type of person I would want there for support and as a friend anyway. She actually was at Meredith’s birth, but only for the last twenty minutes or so. She was the back up midwife (all home births here must have two midwives, or at least one midwife and a trained “baby catcher”). There was nothing really “wrong” with my last birth, and I view it as a very positive experience, but I’m more educated and knowledgeable now, and I’m really looking forward to this one. We got my third choice midwife for Meredith’s birth, so it’s nice to know exactly who will be there this time.

5 weeks and 6 days

6 weeks and 4 days – what a difference in just 5 days! This is in the morning when we just got up and hadn’t eaten yet, so not bloat. I thought maybe it was twins (but I’m measuring right on so I doubt it). I just woke up one morning and thought, wow, a belly! And it never went away.

9 weeks and 1 day – obviously not actually a belly shot but you can see my belly peeking out there

14 weeks and 5 days – I think I’m definitely at that stage where people start to wonder if I’m putting on weight or pregnant lol

Still 14 weeks and 5 days, but my hands are covering it a little bit in the one above so thought I’d include this one too.

Meredith wanted to be included in the pictures, and when I squatted down to be on her level for one, she thought she should squat down too.

Last pregnancy, at six weeks when many of the moms in the due date club I was posting in were already complaining about fatigue and morning sickness, I was still feeling great. I remember saying to Kris that it seemed like I would be one of those lucky women who wouldn’t get symptoms, but that to get a little bit so the pregnancy would feel more real. Then seven weeks came and the morning sickness hit and I was throwing up every day until I was twenty-two weeks along. When I started feeling nauseous at six weeks this time, I thought “uh oh, it’s going to be even worse this time”. There were a few really bad days where I felt terrible, but I’ve only puked the one time (in the car, so it was as much the fault of motion sickness), and otherwise have had many days of feeling mostly normal. Weird! I’ve been tired, but not the passing out on the couch every night exhaustion that I had last time. Last time I had a little bit of spotting, but again, nothing this time.

I did crave fast-food burgers a couple of times right in the beginning, which is really weird. I don’t eat fast-food burgers ever, so the fact that I wanted one so badly was strange to me. And last time, I never had any cravings to speak of. In the first half, I mostly ate carbs, but that wasn’t because I was craving them. It was because I couldn’t keep anything else down. This time, I’ve been craving apples and other fruits, and eating lots of veggies and good whole foods. Much more like how I wanted to eat last time.

I think perhaps I’ve felt movement already a couple of times, but I’m not sure and it’s still really early. I felt a little swipe and then a tap a few nights ago, but later in the night I had some gas so it could have been that. I’ve felt tiny flutters a few other times too. We went swimming and I was crouched down walking through the water (you know how you do in shallow water if you want to keep your upper body still under), and I could feel a little hard lump where my uterus is, so that was kind of neat.

For the most part this pregnancy has been a non-event so far. For some reason though, it feels more real than last time. Maybe because I’ve done it once and I know that there really is something in there. Or maybe because I’ve been feeling well enough to actually enjoy the fact that I’m pregnant and get used to the idea, instead of spending most of my time trying not to throw up or pass out.

I really can’t wait until my first appointment though. I didn’t schedule it until I’m already 16 or 17 weeks along, I can’t remember exactly. I know about prenatals, eating a good diet, exercise, etc. I don’t really have any questions or concerns. The only thing I’d love is to be able to hear the heartbeat, but I’m just trusting that everything is okay.