Pregnancy catch-up

You guys were all so sweet with the congratulations yesterday. It's so interesting how much social media has changed since my last pregnancy--then, I was on Twitter but it wasn't as big as it is now, and the blog was the main communication portal. This time the blog was more like the vehicle to say more than I could ever fit into 140 characters, but most of the communication about it happened on Twitter.

Anyway, sorry for pulling the traditional stop-blogging-in-the-first-trimester (though in my defense, I did actually start blogging less frequently before I got pregnant... wait, that's not really a defense) on you, and honestly, I don't think I'm going to suddenly start blogging every day or anything, but now that I can talk about everything that's going on in my life, I'm hoping to post at least a little more often.

So! Pregnancy! Let's do a brief catch-up on the last 15 weeks. My pregnancy with Callum was super easy after I got over the month of miserable morning sickness, and so far (knock wood), this one has been very similar, except even easier because I avoided the morning sickness. With Callum, after a month of feeling seasick nonstop and throwing up multiple times a day, I realized that my lap-band was making things worse, and had it emptied, which pretty much fixed the morning sickness instantly. So, this time as soon as I started feeling sick around 7 weeks, I had my band emptied and... bam. All better. It was amazing. (Also, I'm slightly annoyed that I suffered so badly with Callum for a whole month for no reason, but whatever.)

So! First trimester extreme fatigue, smell aversion, bloating, and so forth, but at least I wasn't puking! Did you know that everything is SO MUCH BETTER when you aren't puking? Because it is! And now that I'm solidly in the second trimester, the fatigue has been starting to lift (thank goodness, because it turns out when you have a toddler it's much harder to indulge in a two-hour daily nap the way I did the first time) and I've been feeling mostly pretty good. And am really looking forward to this next part.

I've also been much less anxious this time around. Obviously I still have my moments of wondering if everything is OK in there (currently in one of those as I'm nearing a month since my last visit and would like to just get a quick listen to that heartbeat again to make sure all is well) but generally I've been able to trust that things are probably fine, and not worry about it constantly, so that's been pleasant.

Also, don't laugh at me, but I swear (I SWEAR) that I've been feeling movement since 10 weeks. That's insane, right? With Callum I felt movement starting at 15.5 weeks, which seemed surprisingly early for a first baby, especially since I had an anterior placenta and am not a skinny person, so I was dubious if it was really movement for a long time, but it just got stronger and more frequent until there was no longer any doubting. And the same thing seems to be happening this time (and also at 12 weeks they told me my placenta is "developing posteriorly" this time), except it started much earlier. At 10 weeks I felt some distinct fluttering, and in the weeks since it's only gotten stronger and more frequent. At this point I'd say I'm 95% sure that it's baby movement, but not yet 100% convinced.

Also, we do plan to find out what it is, if the baby cooperates, at our ultrasound next month. I'm kind of torn on what I would prefer. A girl would be great, of course, but I also love the idea of brothers, so really, we can't go wrong. Torsten, on the other hand, has a slight (he claims) preference for another boy. So we will see. Like last time, I have no real gut feelings or guesses at all. In fact, trying to visualize this baby as a boy or a girl feels weird and strange to me. But maybe that's some sort of self-defense mechanism because with Callum I assumed it was a girl (not because of any maternal instinct or anything but because I grew up with a sister and it seemed like everyone in my family had girls, so I just figured that's what we would have). And then when the tech told us that it was a boy I felt really disconnected for a minute, like she was talking about someone else's baby, because I'd been thinking, to an extent I wasn't aware of, that it was a girl. So! This time I'm apparently trying to avoid that, even though it was no big deal last time because it took me literally one minute to go from, "Wait, THIS baby, MY baby?" to "OMG A BOY THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER."

Last thing... Callum. At 28 months I don't think he's quite ready to grasp the concept of a baby growing in my belly who will eventually come home to live with us (though he could understand the more concrete aspects of that idea), and he's certainly not ready to grasp the idea that it will be another five or six months before this happens, so we haven't tried to explain it to him in detail. But we have bought some books about new babies and becoming a big brother to try to familiarize him with the general concept, and we do talk about how there's a baby in my belly and ask him if he wants to be a big brother (he almost always says yes, but he has no idea what he's agreeing to), and we told daycare about it so that they can help him adjust to the idea too, and then when it gets a bit closer and he's a bit older we'll hopefully sort of move naturally toward telling him about it in more detail. But mostly I'm just really excited for him to be an older brother. He is incredibly patient and laid-back (gauging with a toddler yardstick here, of course), and he really likes babies, and I can just see how he'll be such a beautiful big brother, which isn't to say that I don't expect the transition period to be challenging for him, but just that in the long term I'm really hopeful that this will turn out to be a great sibling relationship. And if you guys have any suggestions about how to make the sibling adjustment period easier, or books you liked, or anything like that, I'd love to hear them (he'll be about 2.75 years old when his sibling arrives).

So, there's a brain dump of what's been going on in my head during the early part of this pregnancy. Mostly we're just really excited. A BABY! I still can't quite believe that we get to do this all again.