Eleven Weeks

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It seems in the past week or so my "symptoms" have worsened, just when, according to my pregnancy books and sites, they should be lessening up a bit and I should be feeling good. Not. My skin has broken out worse than ever before in my life! Today, I've counted 10 zits on my face, when "normally" a breakout for me is one or two.

My fatigue is as strong as ever and the past few days I have found that despite getting to bed early I still struggle in the morning to get up. I have resorted to setting FOUR alarms at 15 minute intervals to finally rouse me from my sleep. Perhaps I am extra tired because I am not really sleeping well. Between midnight trips to the bathroom and crazy dreams that make me feel like I have been working all night rather than resting, I cannot say that I am awakening in the morning feeling refreshed. We have started keeping our two pugs out of the bedroom at night in an effort to make the room more restful (and to train them, in advance of the baby's arrival, to sleep on their own in the living room).

My appetite vacillates from voracious to absent and my nausea really kicks in around 4:00 p.m. so I try my best to eat the majority of my food by lunchtime. Staples are whole grain tortillas, low fat cheese, crackers, grapes, strawberries, low fat yogurt, OJ, high fiber cereal with milk (sometimes it upsets my stomach though) and occasionally, steak or chicken. Notice no vegetables! Despite my general love of all green veggies, the very smell of them these days turns me green, and not in a good way. I swear, I am consuming the diet of a 3 year old. I am praying that as the end of the first trimester draws to a close, that my energy will return, my skin will clear up and my appetite will normalize so that I can enjoy an evening meal of grilled chicken and broccoli once again!

Speaking of the end of the first trimester, we have our 2nd ultrasound appointment this week on Thursday. Technically I will be 11w2d. I asked if they were doing screening tests and got kind of a convoluted answer from the nurse. She said, yes they do screenings but didn't tell me which ones. So we shall see.

If everything goes well I plan to announce my pregnancy at work on Friday. I know it's a couple of weeks before the official end of the first trimester at 13w3d, but given that I am working a week-long conference next week that we're sponsoring, I want my colleagues to be aware of my pregnancy. Especially because it's a demanding schedule. We're scheduled from 7:30 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. each day with one hour breaks for meals. I am definitely going to need more downtime than that and already talked to the one person I work with who is also going and already knows I am pregnant. We're in charge of this conference, including the scheduling and we've worked it out so that I can have more breaks throughout the day. But I don't want my other colleagues to think I am slacking. I figure that if they know that I am pregnant, they'll know why I am not scheduled to be moving heavy equipment or why I'll need to take a 15 minute break at 4:30 p.m. or why I might not be at the evening events for the entire time. I am lucky in that I work for a 100% women run organization. I plan to ask my doctor for a note just to keep everything on the up and up, but I also know that the women I work with will be more than understanding and most likely, excited to know that I have a baby on the way.

Here's hoping I make it through next week in one piece! I already plan to have snacks on hand to keep my nausea at bay and my energy levels even keeled. You never know what you're going to get with hotel conference-style banquet food. Some sort of overcooked veggies and meat with sauce, not doubt. Blech! If worst comes to worst I plan to order room service and get eggs and toast or some other fare that is less offensive and more edible. We are going with business casual dress, so I can bring my Cole Haan - Nike Air flats and leave my heels at home. I am hoping I can get through the week without exhausting myself. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
Here's what's happening with our Little Being this week. From BabyCenter:

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Your baby, just over 1 1/2 inches long and about the size of a fig, is now almost fully formed. Her hands will soon open and close into fists, tiny tooth buds are beginning to appear under her gums, and some of her bones are beginning to harden. She's already busy kicking and stretching, and her tiny movements are so effortless they look like water ballet. These movements will become more frequent as her body grows and becomes more developed and functional. You won't feel your baby's acrobatics for another month or two — nor will you notice the hiccuping that may be happening now that her diaphragm is forming.

Eight Weeks

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Today marks my eigth week of pregancy (since getting a new EDD of 02.02.10 last week). Here's what the Little Being looks like:

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New this week: Webbed fingers and toes are poking out from your baby's hands and feet, his eyelids practically cover his eyes, breathing tubes extend from his throat to the branches of his developing lungs, and his "tail" is just about gone. In his brain, nerve cells are branching out to connect with one another, forming primitive neural pathways. You may be daydreaming about your baby as one sex or the other, but the external genitals still haven't developed enough to reveal whether you're having a boy or a girl. Either way, your baby — about the size of a kidney bean — is constantly moving and shifting, though you still can't feel it.

After seeing our baby on the ultrasound last week it's all the more real. Mr. Divasaur is hilarious, he keeps the u/s pic with him and looks at it daily. Sort of a replacement for the HPT+'s that he looked at daily until now. I think it's really cute. He's wanted to become a daddy for a while and he's SO excited that we're on our way to becoming parents.

After 8 Weeks my breasts are less tender and I haven't had any morning sickness in about a week and no nausea for about 5 days. I am hoping that sticks! I have developed some weird itchy patches behind my knees that I am treating with topical Benadryl Cream and hoping to get an appointment to see my GP for it ASAP. That said, I am still having food adversions and my fatigue has been overwhelming. In fact, part of my job requires me to to represent our company at national seminars and conferences for musicians and music educators. They happen about once or twice a quarter. This week I am in D.C. for "Music Week in Washington" and I am just wiped out.

Yesterday I had plans to meet some of the girls from an online chat board I visit and felt so bad that I needed to cancel our plans at the last minute. That is very unlike me. But I had gotten to my room to change and get ready to head out to meet them and just felt like I had been hit by a truck. I could barely stay awake. I tried to rest up for 30 minutes and it only progressed. So I had to cancel and felt just awful about it. I ordered up some room service (begged them to deliver items off the kids menu since I didn't want "adult" hotel-style sauced up food)...I got chicken fingers, french fries and a lemonade. I was starving but was almost too tired to eat.

One thing I have learned on this trip is that I need to prepare better now that I am pregnant. When I was out of the country last month for work I didn't know I was pregnant. But I remember feeling tired and hungry all the time. Some of that I chalked up to jet lag and being "off" my regular schedule. But in retrospect, some of that may be due to being knocked up. Lately I am used to snacking about every 3 hours and being on the road makes that really difficult. Case in point, I had breakfast at 6 a.m., lunch as Noon and dinner at 6:00 p.m. No snacks in between. So I guess that's part of my energy drain. Add that to this being my ninth straight day of work in a row. And an hour time difference between here and my home town. And just the energy drain of being "on" for a conference. Sunday night I couldn't sleep until Midnight and last night I made up for it by sacking out at 7:30 p.m.!

So I have to have a better plan for next month when I have a training seminar in Detroit. Unfortunately most hotels attached to conference centers don't have grocery or even convenience stores nearby for guests. So it's either vending machine snacks or restaurant food. I have to be sure I bring some granola bars, trail mix and find some fresh fruit on-site. Normally, I just power through these events, eat on the fly, rest when I can and recover once I get home. But now that I am pregnant that strategy just won't work. I have a month to come up with a new one. Until then, I plan to just do the minimum I can, eat as well as possible and rest up this coming weekend when I get home.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

So far the Poptart has made two return trips to London, but today if it's first big flight. We are flying from Scotland to Dubai to Bangkok, a total airtime of about 15 hours.

Hopefully all these inutero flights will prepare Poptart for the many transatlantic flights in his/her future! I will try to post, but if not see y'all in July!

Shiver me timbers!

Odd tidbit for the day: did you know that you can change your Facebook language to PIRATE? Give it a whirl, you won't regret it. However, I must warn you that you may adopt some Pirate-speak in your every day conversations... And it can be a little embarrassing to say the least. (ARRRRRRRRG, MATEY!)

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So, we're back from our vacation. It was nice to get away from home and reconnect as a couple. You know what I mean. Reconnect. (Bow chica wow wow!)

It's funny how much more enjoyable baby-making sex is as opposed to just regular-old sex. Am I the only one out there who feels the same way? I just get so much more out of it. I feel like there's a purpose to it all. Baby-making sex... well, it just turns me on. Forget the headache. Or the fact that I'm tired. LET'S FWP! And - oh man - is it ever GOOD.

I'm past my O-date now, and I'm in the dreaded 2WW. And I don't know if my brain is tricking me or not... But I feel pregnant. Just like with our first pregnancy (which ended in a miscarriage this past March).

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Case in point? I'm thirsty again. All the diggity dang time. I've got a mild backache. My brain feels fluffy and I feel totally worn out. Plus, I've got those tell-tale uterine cramps that I had last time. And I'm having mild nausea, just like I did last time. These last two symptoms - cramps and nausea - are the most convincing to me.

But, then, I think part of me is tricking myself. I would be so very, very early along if I were prego, unless I ovulated around day 10 or so (which is possible, I suppose! I guess there are merits to charting, although I'm still not ready to go there.). I couldn't possibly be feeling all these symptoms yet, could I? Probably phantom symptoms, I tell myself. Yessss, just phantom symptoms.

But I'm not going to lie to you. A huge part of me is convinced I'm pregnant right now. If I'm not KU? Well then, shiver me timbers. Arrrrrrrg!

Happy Birthday Mr. Divasaur!

Today is my husband's 32nd birthday. I made it home from abroad just in time to celebrate. Yesterday, May 21, 2009 goes on record as one of the longest days of my life, literally. I awoke at 6:00 a.m. in a city thousands of miles away and 18 hours ahead of my home time zone. The day was not with out its challenges. Firstly, the flight we were scheduled to take at back to the U.S. at 6:00 p.m. was severely delayed. Thankfully, my colleague was contacted on her cell phone by the air carrier and she managed to rebook us onto a different airline altogether. That plane was jam packed and departed at 7:30 p.m. therefore causing us also to rebook all of our connections in the U.S. I am so grateful that the original airline contacted her, because they didn't call me nor did they originally know I was also on the same itinerary until she mentioned it to them. Yay for having lovely coworkers!

Thank goodness we had also secured a late check-out from the hotel so we weren't forced to kill time all morning. I actually ended up catching that psychedelic Beatles musical "Across the Universe" on T.V. as I dozed in and out of a nap. I think it made me have some trippy dreams of my own. Off to breakfast and I was starving, despite having had a nice steak dinner the night before...a rarity for me...I am not much of a beef eater, but it sounded really good at the time. At breakfast I had yogurt, prunes, dates, fresh fruit, eggs Benedict and hash browns. That's a lot! But I was hungry and knew it might be my last decent meal for the next 24 hours.

We checked out at 2 p.m. and took a cab to the airport. Tried to check-in as the woman over the phone had told my colleague to do: "take your itinerary to the new airline carrier's desk and they'll have all of your information." Not. As if it could be as simple as that. After much run around, three different service desks between two companies, we finally made our way through travel security and to the international gate. By this time it was 5:00 p.m. and we were hungry for some lunch. Our only option? Burger King! In a foreign country no less! I never eat fast food. So this was a double disappointment for me. I ordered the least offensive item on the menu... chicken tenders with BBQ sauce and made the most of it.

We killed time and were thrilled to load onto the plane at 7:00 p.m. Less than thrilling was that it was completely packed (having since acquired additional passengers from our originally booked flight) and I was relegated to the center seat in the center of the plane. Never in my life have I sat in the center seat. In 30 years of travel! At 5'9" and on the amazonian side of female proportions, this was sight to be seen, I am sure. Not to mention that my colleague to my right and the unknown stranger on my left immediately sacked out leaving me essentially trapped in the middle for the duration of the 12 hour flight! The seat in front of me reclined so sharply and violently (at least 80 degrees) that the mini-LCD screen that was embedded in the back of it nearly clipped me in the nose! Misery definitely was re-defined for me in that 12 hours. For a moment I almost entertained an anxiety attack. This must of been some odd repayment of the extraordinary trip over which included an entire row of seats to myself, across which I spread out and slept 8 hours! I didn't sleep at all on this trip home and the movie menu was the only thing that kept me sane. I watched "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "The Other Boleyn Girl" and read OK! Magazine which a nice young lady had offered me.

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The meals came and went and were uneventful aside from the fact that smell of them almost got the best of me. I stuck to the dry roll with a bit of cheese and the juice offered. The rest went untouched. Thankfully I had tucked some dried fruit and nut mix into my carry-on and with the act of a Chinese contortionist I managed to retrieve to from the space beneath the seat in front of me. We arrived in our first U.S. point of transfer 11 hours and 45 minutes after our departure. We cleared customs rather swiftly, the only delay being the wait to locate my second bag, which someone had pulled off the carousel and conveniently forgot to place it back on again. We made our way to the Domestic terminal and found a palatable lunch along the way. We boarded the plane for our 4 p.m. departure back towards the middle of the country. Another transfer and a short flight north and we touched down at 11:05 p.m. back in my city. My exhaustion was overcome by elation and in no time I could spot my dear hubby waiting for me just behind the security gates.

We got home just before midnight and fell into bed soon after that. Home just in time for my sweetheart's 32nd birthday. I was glad to be in my own bed, next to my man. I slept a good five hours before our menace of a cat awoke me in her usual fashion. I stumbled out of bed, found my way in the dark to feed her (which is customary at 5:00 a.m. regardless of how many time zones I have just traveled through that day) and made my way to the bathroom. Something came over me and I decided to PIAC. I had an internet cheapie since ordering PreSeed and because I hadn't charted this 2WW since the morning I had left for my trip around the world, I was curious. Or perhaps it was women's intuition? Because within seconds I saw two pink lines. One much fainter than the other, but it was there! I was thankful that I had PIAC because I then ripped open the foil on the remaining FRER I had left over from last cycle and dipped it in the cup. Within seconds, the two pink lines came up! Success! I am pregnant! I capped the FRER and made my way back into bed. I placed it in my honey's hand and whispered, "Happy birthday Daddy." After the longest day of my life, I am now having one of the best and most unforgettable.

Off the Chart

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I am traveling half way around the world tomorrow for work and will be away from home for six days. I have decided not to pack the BBT and just go off the chart until I get back. Upon my return home, I will still be able to temp for three more days before AF is due, so I can get a good idea if my temps have dropped or not. Speaking of dropping, today is 5DPO and my temp dropped to just above the coverline this morning. Could this be a sign of implantation? Maybe. Or maybe not. We shall see. I anticipate my temp going back up tomorrow. And from there, who knows? My trusty BBT will be tucked away in my nightstand while I am sleeping 7,620 miles away. (yep, I looked it up. Don't you just love Google?)

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It actually feels very liberating to know that I won't be a slave to the BBT each morning at 4:45 a.m. And with limited internet access, I won't be able to obsess over my chart either. So I will be blissfully ignorant, if only for a week. And I can chalk up any phantom symptoms to being jet lagged! If only I could take a major trip every time I am in the 2WW! Here's hoping that after I get home, I'll have some news.

Holy Bloat!

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I am 4DPO (FF didn’t quite agree with my CBEFM and moved my O date to CD26 rather than CD25, which is fine since we had good timing either way) and I am trying my best not to read into any phantom symptoms. My breasts are a tad tender, but they were also tender last month during the 2WW. I have an increased appetite, but maybe that’s more related to stress than anything else? Or perhaps it's from eating so restrictive these past 5 months. One “out of the ordinary” sign is the major bloat I have going on today! I woke up and had a noticeable difference in my abdomen. Up high too, between my bra line and my belly button. It’s so weird! It’s not particularly painful other than my pants are fitting tighter today around the waist than normal. Could be related to that increased appetite I just mentioned! But seriously, I am drinking just as much water as I usually do. In fact, I remember during the last 2WW I had frequent urination which I don’t have at all right now. Just this bloated belly. I hope it goes away. It's not flattering in the least. We’re having asparagus with dinner tonight, so perhaps that will do the trick!?

On a side note, this Saturday I depart for a trip halfway around the world (literally) and hope that it will be a good distraction for me during this 2WW. I cannot believe that I am flying for 22 hours just to be in this foreign city for 3 nights! Normally, if I travel that far, I am there for 3 weeks! It’s such a short trip because I am traveling for work— we have two meetings to attend and then we’re coming straight back. The plus is I will get a ton of miles for my own use and I will have an extra long Memorial Day weekend out of the deal. Also, our dollar is strong there so I hope to get in on some great shopping deals!

I have been Googling like mad to see if this lengthy travel could affect my LP and, so far, I haven’t found a thing about it. Most say that travel can delay O but that the LP should stay the same regardless. We shall see. If I am “late” I should know by Memorial Day (May 25). I return home on May 21, so I’ve decided not to even bring the cheapie HPTs because I promised myself that I would not test early. I will wait until 15DPO to POAS since my LP is consistently 14 days. And hopefully it’s true that travel has no effect upon the LP.

I don’t even think I will temp while I am gone because even though FF says traveling through a few time zones should only affect temps the first day after traveling, I am pretty sure that for a 17 hour time difference it will have a greater effect. Plus I know that I will be dog tired and I don’t want to have to get up at 4:45 a.m. just so I can have a pretty chart. I am way more interested in two pretty pink lines. And no about of temping will determine those (as I witnessed last cycle with high temps for the entire 2WW). So I will wait. At least I will be distracted by this trip. I hope.