The Unexpected

Maybe I haven't paid close attention, but before I got pregnant, I only knew about a few typical symptoms of early pregnancy.  There's morning sickness, of course -- which I knew didn't have to be limited to mornings, and didn't necessarily have to end after the first trimester.  And then I knew your boobs got bigger and very sensitive.  And I knew that during the first trimester, women tend to be very tired in the afternoons. 

Well, I got incredibly lucky with the morning sickness -- I had 3 or 4 incidents where, out of the blue, I would suddenly think I might throw up, but after a minute or two of some serious burping, I would be fine.  But my mom didn't have any morning sickness when she was pregnant with my sister, and I tend to take after her when it comes to women stuff, so I had been prepared for that.  My boobs didn't get a lot bigger, but they were definitely sore.  And I sure did want a nap in the afternoons!

But there are a bunch of other symptoms that no one warned me about.  In fact, in some cases, I wouldn't have even known they were connected to my pregnancy if it wasn't for my copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting.

Thirst
I knew that you needed to stay hydrated during your first trimester, but I had no idea how thirsty I would be all the time!  It got to the point where I made sure to walk around with a water bottle in my hand at all times, so I wouldn't be constantly looking for a water fountain.  I looked like some kind of eco-conscious fitness fanatic.

Peeing
Yeah, it seems like a logical conclusion that, if you are drinking all the time, you will be peeing all the time.  But I seemed to be peeing out twice as much as I was putting in!  I expected to have a tiny tank at the end of my pregnancy, but not at the beginning.

Gas
Yup, not only would I look like a water buffalo soon, I get to start smelling like one right away.

Stuffy Nose and Nosebleeds
Considering the time of year, I started thinking I had a cold, but a very mild one.  Then I noticed it seemed worse in bed, so I thought maybe it was allergies.  Then when I'd blow my nose in the shower in the morning, I'd often see a spot of blood, which is really strange for me -- I have never had a full-blown nosebleed in my life.  Turns out, all my mucous membranes are swelling and softening right now, as my cervix starts prepping for this kid to get here.  It's bad enough when my nose decides to get involved when I eat spicy food -- now it's got to try copying my cervix, too?

Popping Ears
Even though T has a CPAP machine now, I am still in the habit of wearing earplugs every night.  I noticed that one of my ears started making popping noises when I would yawn or swallow.  I worried that it was an ear infection, but there was no pain or pressure.  Shouldn't have worried -- apparently, my eustacian tubes are trying to copy my nose and cervix.  Not very original.

Being a Klutz
I had heard of pregnancy brain, but not pregnancy hands.  I find myself dropping things more often than usual, which should mean that my reflexes are bad, but somehow, I can often catch them as they are falling.  So I'm like some kind of klutzy Catwoman.

The Dreams
I had heard of pregnant women having strange sex dreams, but I wasn't prepared for the fact that ALL of my dreams have been weird.  I'm someone who has a lot of vivid dreams to begin with, and I tend to look to them to see what is stewing around in my subconscious.  But these days, I just assume that my subconscious is playing Mad Libs, because nothing makes sense to me.

Did you have any other unexpected symptoms when you were pregnant?

Homemade Christmas Present Idea

I have been neglecting this blog since I got pregnant, but I thought I would post something I made recently, in case anyone needed a quick, inexpensive Christmas present idea.  I made these as a housewarming present for my sister, who is a rhino keeper at the North Carolina Zoo.  You can choose whatever you'd like for your theme.

I was trying to come up with a practical housewarming gift that she could use, and I thought of kitchen towels.  But I decided to personalize them by using fabric markers.

The whole process was pretty simple.  I went online and looked for free clip art of rhinos (I went for free clip art because I wouln't be violating any copyright laws, and I thought I could find simple line drawings that would be easy to transfer to fabric).  I found 4 .jpg images of 4 different species of rhino:

white rhino

black rhino

Javan rhino

Indian rhino

The pictures had a lot of detail, but I thought I could get the outlines traced simply.  Then I picked up flour sack kitchen towels (a pack of 5 at Shopco was under $5) because they were plain with a smooth fabric.  I went to Michael's and got an iron-on transfer pencil, fabric markers, and picked up a plain apron that they also had in the fabric section.  At home, I had the rest of the items I would need: pins, an iron and ironing board, the printed rhino pictures, and some sandpaper.  I also printed out a simple sun from my Word clip art to use as my test subject on the fifth towel, which would be mine.

Supplies

The process was pretty simple, if a little time-consuming due to the amount of detail in the pictures I had chosen.  I would hold the printed picture up to the window on our back door so that I could trace the design from the front of the paper onto the back with the transfer pencil (if you have a light table, it would do the same job without making your arms tired!).  Then I would go over the tracing again at the table, to make sure I had a good, heavy pencil line.  This required a lot of sharpening of the transfer pencil, to make sure I had a good line all the way around that didn't get too thick.

 

Next, I would cut out the paper design with a tab at the top, and use the tab to pin the design on the fabric, printed side up.  Having the printed design visible on the front made it easy to see exactly where it would be lined up.  I followed the directions for the transfer pencil, using a hot, no-steam setting on the iron and running over the design for a few minutes until it transferred, being very careful not to shift the paper while I was ironing.  With the pin holding it in place, it was easy to carefully turn up one corner to see if the lines were dark enough, without shifting the paper, and then go over it some more if necessary.  I used the white rhino twice, once on a towel and once on the apron, which just required going over the lines on the back of the paper with the pencil a second time, to make sure the design would transfer to a new piece of fabric.

Ironing the transfer

When it was done, the pink transfer lines on the fabric were still often a little faint, so having the picture to refer to made tracing the correct lines a little easier.  I would then pick the color of marker I wanted, and very carefully trace over the transfer lines on the fabric.  Smoothing the fabric over a piece of sandpaper before I started helped keep it from sliding around and bunching up as I worked.  I did need to keep an eye on the tip of the marker, which would eventually start to wear down and shed, making my lines less crisp.  But I could just pull off the loosened fuzz once near the end of each picture and that seemed to work just fine.  I would then go over the main outline of the design one more time with the marker, to make those lines a little heavier than the details.

Finished rhinos with front and back of paper showing

I even found, with my test design, that it was easy to color in the design with a second color, which didn't try to bleed outside the outline.

My colored-in sun

I let them dry completely overnight, and then, even though the markers said it wasn't necessary, I ran the iron over the designs again for a few minutes to try and heat set the colors, so they wouldn't fade in the wash.  To be safe, I ironed the backside of the fabric to make sure the iron didn't smear the ink, and put a piece of paper between my ironing board and the design, but the ink didn't transfer to the paper.  I haven't washed mine yet, so I don't know how well this process worked.

Heat setting the ink



So there you go: an easy, homemade Christmas project!  Even with the amount of detail involved in the rhinos, I got all five transfers plus my sun done in a long afternoon.  I imagine if you had a simple design to work with, it could all go very quickly.  It does require a steady hand, but that is all: no natural artistic talent is required. 

Me and Princess Kate

The fact that the royal couple, William and Kate, are expecting a child is all over the news these days.  I feel a little bit of a bond with Kate Middleton, because we were thinking about kids at the same time, and now we're both pregnant.

I remember reporters asking the couple, on the day they announced their engagement in November of 2010, about whether or not they would have kids.  I remember that Kate quickly looked down and away, while Prince William fielded the first question, and my heart just broke for her.  As the interview continued, she said something about hoping they would have a large family, and I imagined that she was thinking the exact same thing that I was.

T and I had gotten married in June, and people immediately started asking us about kids.  I was 35 and while T and I had always talked about having kids, I was worried that it might not be possible for me to get pregnant.  While Kate was only 28, I imagined that she had the exact same fears as I did, especially considering the weight of an entire nation expecting her to produce a royal heir.

Then the waiting game began.  For both of us.  Once they had been married, tabloids were constantly looking to see if Kate was drinking water instead of wine, holding something in front of her tummy to hide it, any sign they could imagine of a secret pregnancy.  We couldn't start trying right away, because we had decided on a scuba diving honeymoon in February 2011, and you can't dive if you're pregnant.  Then they day after we got back, I was laid off from my job, and our plans were put on hold again.  In the shock of my layoff, we missed the COBRA window, and had to wait another year before I could be added to T's health insurance.  Even when I found a new job, it was part-time, with no benefits.  And then, very fortunately, in October of 2011, T got a new job with good healthcare benefits, we were both on his insurance right away, and we could get started.

Almost.  Since I had been using an IUD, I had to wait two months after it was out before we could have unprotected sex, just in case.  A friend had started just a few months before us, and she got pregnant with her third child quickly.  I thought, ok, in 2-3 months, we'll be all set.

But we weren't.  Every 28 days, like clockwork, there was my period again.  Once we hit the 6 month mark, we went back to the doctor.  They did a bunch of tests, mostly on me (T got to have some fun with a little cup), and while there was some concern about the shape of my uterus for a little while, we both passed every single test they did with flying colors.  I finally had a conversation with a nurse, as she gave me my last set of test results over the phone, where she said once again all of the numbers said I was very fertile.  I asked, if that was the case, then why wasn't I pregnant yet?  She said there was a possibility that we were dealing with "unexplained infertility," and that I should make an appointment to meet with the doctor and see what would come next.

Was Kate going through all this at the same time as me?  I don't know.  Listening to an announcer this morning on the news, he theorized that Will and Kate intentionally waited until the Queen's Diamond Jubilee was out of the way, and then until the home they will be moving into in April was in good shape.  But he made it sound like getting pregnant is the equivalent of turning on a light switch -- and, as you can tell, it's not always that easy.  Perhaps they were waiting, maybe they were also counting days and using ovulations kits, or perhaps she was going through some of the same tests as me, wondering if she was ever going to have the child that a whole country was waiting for.

Faced with "unexplained infertility," I started to prepare for the worst.  T and I had given ourselves a year to get pregnant, and then we were going to assume that the Universe didn't want us to have kids.  We only had 2 or 3 months left on that deadline.  So I started mentally preparing for it to be just the two of us, and the two dogs, from here on out.

And then my period didn't come.  And when I peed on a stick, two lines appeared.  I called the doctor, who said the pee stick was proof enough, and set up a 10-week prenatal appointment.  This didn't seem like enough proof, so I peed on a second stick, just to be sure.  And then came the weeks of trying to convince myself that I was really pregnant.  I didn't have any morning sickness, just felt extra hungry and tired, and couldn't tell anyone yet, because we wanted to tell my family in person when we were going to see them at Thanksgiving.  We did get to see an ultrasound at the first visit, but it was just a little blob with a flickering heartbeat.  We couldn't even hear the heartbeat, because of its position.  It still wasn't quite real.

We flew to North Carolina for Thanksgiving, and finally told my mom, dad, and sister over dinner.  Everyone started calling friends and family, and suddenly, with the news spreading like wildfire, it started feeling a little bit more real. 

Then, yesterday, I went in for a screening designed to check for spina bifida, Down's syndrome, and a condition known as Trisomy-18.  I told T he didn't need to take the time off work, because we had our regular prenatal appointment on Wednesday, and I thought it was going to be a pretty routine test.  But the ultrasound to check for the baby's nuchal translucency (the thickness of a fold of skin at the back of the neck, used to diagnose Down's syndrome) was far more than I expected.

Right away, there was a little profile on the screen, looking exactly like a baby!  All of my expectations for this came from movies -- mom and dad both look at the screen, holding hands, and then look at each other lovingly.  But in all of those scenes, the baby is just sitting there.  This little one was moving all over the place!  It was kicking and wiggling around, responding to the push of the ultrasound probe.  I could see tiny hands going up to the face, several times.  At one point, it flipped over and turned its back to us, like it was tired of being bothered by the papparazzi.  And while I was lying there, amazed that this little creature was actually inside of me, I didn't have anyone to give that long, significant look to.  It was just me and the tech, who was very friendly, but was pretty matter-of-fact about the whole thing.  She found the heartbeat right away, and for just a few seconds it filled the room.  At the end she took a few pictures and handed them to me, and then we were done.  Once she left, while I waited for the genetic counselor to come back in, I took a picture of the last frame that was showing on the screen with my phone, while trying to keep it together and not cry, and sent it to T at work.  Based on the little blob just a few weeks before, I simply hadn't been prepared for that!

And then I got home, to the news that Kate was pregnant and in the hospital with a severe form of morning sickness.  And there was that little bit of imaginary kinship again.  I'm sorry that she got my morning sickness on top of her own, and I know that she is a few weeks behind me.  But we'll be going through this pregnancy together.  And hopefully she'll have that same sense of absolute wonder the first time she sees her little one dancing around inside her.

And now it's not just real that I'm pregnant, but it's becoming more real that I am having a baby.  I know that sounds like the same thing, but there is a difference in focus -- as someone who is pregnant, the focus is on me.  As someone having a baby, the focus is on it.  And so last night we finally picked a nickname for this little one -- Peanut.

My cell phone pic -- Peanut's profile on the upper left