12w5d - Looking back, looking ahead

Welcome, back, family members who have been shut out of this blog for a few weeks! We finally shared the news with both sides of our family this past week, so I can now come out of hiding (not that I managed to write a whole lot during the weeks I kept the blog private or anything).

First of all, I realized that I never followed up on my last anxious post! Oops. I went back to the doctor a week later for a quick, off-the-books heartbeat check. I went into the office with high hopes but few expectations, and even fewer emotional back-up plans in the event that we still couldn't hear anything. Dr. Locke asked me how I was feeling, and whether my belly had started feeling any bigger to me yet or not. And then out came the doppler.

It took about six seconds before we heard the glorious sound of that teeny heartbeat, galloping away inside my belly. I had scrunched my eyes closed from the moment I got onto the table, and once I heard that sound, I got a little teary, and a huge smile took over my face. Dr. Locke knew that this moment was more than just a perfunctory heartbeat check for me. So even after he'd found it and was satisfied with it (though we didn't count heart rate or anything), he didn't put away the doppler right away. He lingered, letting me listen and listen and listen. He asked me if I wanted to grab my phone and record the sound, but I didn't bother. I was content to hear it in my memory. And I didn't want to get off the table and risk little Owlet going into hiding where we couldn't find him again. I am so grateful that we heard something as early as ten weeks. It might have killed me to have had to wait until after 12 weeks to finally hear that sound. Every failed attempt would have been horrible.

So now, here we are just a week away from our next appointment. Here's hoping that Owlet is bigger and less prone to hiding so that we can easily find that heartbeat again next week. I'm not feeling particularly anxious or acutely worried right now, but of course I have those dull, nagging doubts that still creep into my thoughts.

I was so bloated so early with this pregnancy that I was sure I'd be huge for the duration of the pregnancy and that my belly would be so obvious. But I don't feel as big as I thought I would at this point. Logic says that my early pregnancy bloating has settled down and even dissipated, and that it's okay that I feel smaller than I did a month ago, because my belly is pregnancy belly, not water weight belly. I mean, I am also newly off all of my meds (yay!), and so there is good chance that some of the bloating came from the estrogen and progesterone supplements, and now my body is getting back to "normal" without all the extra extra hormones flooding my body.

Also, never mind that I was not showing even a little bit at this point in my pregnancy with Sam. And even though you theoretically show earlier in subsequent pregnancies, that doesn't mean that I am necessarily going to be huge at this point. And lets be honest, even if I don't feel as pudgy and bloated as I did before, the truth is that all of my pants with regular waistbands are starting to feel snug, and it is getting harder and harder to suck in my belly to prove the point, and even if I feel like my belly is soft and small when I lay down at night, it feels like a hard little balloon when I wake up in the morning.

Belly size notwithstanding, I am still feeling queasy most every day (I'm so ready for that to be done!), and I'm still exhausted a lot of the time, and coffee still tastes terrible, and I still have a general aversion to leftovers, and I'm craving and eating fruit like nobody's business. So my body is still pretty committed to feeing pregnant, which I should take as a good sign, right?

As far as sharing the news, we've talked to our families, and we have told a limited handful of friends/co-workers. Provided the news is good at next week's appointment, I will share the news at church council the second week in July, and then we will figure out how we want to go public. We were conservative in sharing the news about Sam, because we wanted to feel secure about the future of the pregnancy. This time, I'm (a little) less anxious about the viability of the pregnancy, and far less concerned with who knows or who we would have to un-tell if things went wrong. I mostly just don't feel the urgency to tell in the same way. Like...people will know when they know. They'll figure it out eventually, even if we don't say anything. ;)

Meanwhile, we haven't said anything to Sam yet. First of all, because he is not a reliable secret-keeper. Once he knows, we risk anybody and everybody knowing. Also, he knows that babies grow in bellies and then come out, but he doesn't have any sense of time whatsoever. So we don't want him to be confused or impatient waiting for this baby. I think that he's going to be excited, at least in theory. He ADORES his cousin, "Baby Teddy," and will forfeit whatever he is doing for a chance to hold him. He talked about Baby Teddy nonstop before he was born (although Sam was convinced that his name would be Charlie). Sam has been playing with his baby doll at home, and putting it down for naps, and sharing his toys with it. So I think that he is as receptive to the idea as we could ask for at this point. I'm sure he will be enamored with his baby sibling...but I also suspect that he will have an adjustment to make when he realizes that this baby isn't going away, and that it lives at his house, and that it is here to stay. But Sam is a sweet, loving kid, so I hope that the transition will be pretty smooth.

Speaking of Sam and transitions, this week is our first overture into potty training. Eep! We're probably a little late in starting, but that's okay. For me, the real deadline is December 26 or whenever this baby comes. I really don't want two kids in diapers. :)

This week has been all about getting used to the idea of the potty. He very quickly felt comfortable sitting on his little potty with no diaper, so that is a huge success in my opinion! We haven't seen any action while he sits there yet, but that's fine. We really just want to start by getting him used to the idea of sitting there; to normalize the process. And he already has started including potty time in his daily routine. He asks to sit there in the mornings when we are getting ready for the day and in the evenings when we are getting ready for bed. He has the order a little mixed up at this point; he seems to think that the potty is something you do at the end of a diaper change. So we need to start moving to a place where he understands that the potty is supposed to be an alternative to a diaper change. But that will happen in time. The plan as it stands is to try a no-pants afternoon this Friday. We'll see how that goes...

I think that is all the baby/toddler news around these parts for right now. Looking forward to next week's appointment - it is always nice to cross each milestone. Will be back here to update after the appointment!