Oh Hormones!

Goodness, pregnancy hormones are insane.  It’s kind of like the emotional turmoil of PMS . . . but lasting for 9 months!  I am definitely more hormonal these days.  It seems like even in just the past week or so, it has gotten worse.  You remember I mentioned that one of the early indications that I was pregnant was that I started crying at a Folgers commercial – well, today I started tearing up at a news story (can’t remember what).

A note to all of the non-pregnant people out there: pregnant ladies will take EVERYTHING personally.  If you are going to comment on her belly, there are really only two ways to do it.  Say, “It’s so cute!”  Or “You look good!”  Or, the best one I’ve gotten so far, “I can be having a bad day, but the moment you and your pregnant belly come into the room, it just makes me happy”  (said to me by our building receptionist . . . thanks Christina!)  Basically, give her some positive feedback.  And never, EVER tell her she looks “round,” “motherly” or “fat” (seriously, I’ve had people tell me this and I wanted to reach over and smack them!).  Here’s the thing: when commenting on a belly, you can’t win.  If you tell a pregnant woman she is “big” then she will think she’s gaining too much weight.  But then if you tell her she’s still so “small,” she’ll take offense and get a complex that she’s not gaining enough weight.

One weird, but positive thing about the hormones is this (prepare yourself, it’s going to sound super cheesy): Aaron almost always seems to make me happy.  Maybe it’s a weird evolutionary thing, but the moment he walks in the door, my mood automatically lifts.  Maybe it’s because he’s been so good about telling me that he’s glad I’m carrying his baby.  Maybe it’s that he brings me flowers now for no particular reason.  I don’t know.  It’s weird, but I like it. I’m not sure if this happens to other pregnant ladies, but I have definitely noticed a sharp uptick in my mood when my baby daddy is around.  He’s also really good about saying whatever I need to hear at that particular moment in time.  If I’m feeling too big or too small, it doesn’t matter, he can talk me back into a calm state.

I’ve discovered that one answer to hormone craziness (seriously, I wanted to punch someone and/or cry for most of last week) is exercise.  Yes, that laborious activity that most people seem to want to avoid like the plague, is my cure-all drug (it was before pregnancy too, so I'm not sure if that makes a difference).  I went to the gym the other night and felt SO much better!  I did a good half hour on the elliptical and then did a bunch of arm weight training, followed by a little stretching.  I will admit, I was a little jealous of all the people doing ab work.  I miss ab work!  I also took a yoga class from my good friend, Trevor.  He was great about giving me modified exercises to do.  My body feels so much better today!  I hadn’t realized how much tension I was carrying in my neck and shoulders until now.  I might write an entire separate post on how different yoga feels now than it did before pregnancy (hint: it felt like I hadn’t done yoga in about 5 years!)

Oh, and update on my last post, my dad sent me the profile pic of me in the green dress.  Here it is:

 Have a fantastic weekend everyone!!!

24 Weeks: Pregnant Clubbing

I am now 24 weeks pregnant, which equals roughly 5 ½ months. People who have been pregnant before know exactly what I mean when I say 24 weeks, but many of my friends and co-workers have given me a blank stare after they ask how far along I am and then get the answer in weeks.  I don’t blame them; I was exactly the same way.  The problem is that since there are slightly more than 4 weeks in each month, you can’t just divide by 4 (and if you did, then humans would be pregnant for 10 months, not 9).  I finally figured out how to calculate the months! I am due in early July, so that is month 9, therefore June is 8, May is 7, April is 6, and March is 5.

This weekend I went down to San Diego for a bachelorette party.  Not just any bachelorette party, but one of my best friend’s bachelorette!  (Yep, I will be a pregnant bridesmaid in April.)  Note to self: even though a pregnant lady can’t drink, it might not be the best idea to volunteer to be the DD for the bride for her bachelorette.  It will lead to a fun, but late night out.  I didn’t get in that night until 2:30am!  I can’t remember the last time I stayed up that late.  That’s late even for a non-pregnant Brenda!

We had a really good time, though.  It was St. Patrick’s Day, so all our pictures look very color coordinated – each of us wore green and black.  We started the evening at the Atoll restaurant at the Catamaran hotel in Pacific Beach.  Our plan was to hop on the Bahia Belle boat and then cruise the harbor for the rest of the night after dinner, but the weather Gods were not with us that evening.  The boat was not running due to inclement weather (i.e. it was cold and rainy).  Fortunately, the restaurant manager talked to the concierge to get some ideas for alternate places we could go.  He also comped three of our desserts at dinner for the trouble, which I thought was very nice.

The concierge recommended a place called Beachwood, which is a bar near the water in Pacific Beach.  We asked them to call cabs for us to take us there (that way we could leave our cars parked at the hotel and not have to deal with trying to find parking in PB on St. Patrick’s Day).  But then as we were standing around waiting for the cabs to show up, we realized the bar was only a block and a half away.  It would have taken more time for the cab to pick us up and drive there than it did to walk!

The PB crowd is interesting on any given day, but even more interesting on St. Patrick’s Day.  It’s full of frat boys, sorority girls, and people who were frat boys and sorority girls and never quite grew out of that mentality.  On our way to the bar, we passed 2 guys who apparently decided they couldn’t make it into the bathroom inside, and so were relieving themselves outside.  Once inside the bar, we weaseled our way up to the bar for some drinks.  I bought a drink for the lady of honor.  I will say this, it was weird walking through a crowd.  I’m used to being super small and being able to squeeze through crowds without any problems.  I’m still relatively small and was able to squeeze through the crowd, but I could feel my belly bumping into people as I was doing it.  It felt so weird!  Honestly, my belly bumping into people felt almost more violating than when a guy passed me and purposely copped a feel of the upper region.  I was wearing a padded bra anyway, so it’s not like he felt anything real there.  But I’m not used to my belly bumping into anyone or anything! 

I highly doubt that anyone other than me even really noticed the belly in that crowded club.  My bump is now to the point where, in most of my clothes, from the front, you can’t really see it.  Then I turn sideways and BOOM, there it is.  :)

And for those of you who want pictures, here you go:

Still looking pretty normal from the front.

 Boom!  There's the bump!

Ready for a night on the town!

My dad also took a profile pic of me in that green dress, but I don’t have that picture (hint, hint, Dad, I would like to see that picture.) 

23 Weeks: Time to Start Looking For Daycare

23 Weeks

Sorry I missed a blog entry last week.  I think the baby must be going through a growth spurt or something.  All week last week, it was almost like being back in first trimester with the hunger and the exhaustion!  It felt like no matter how much I ate, I was always hungry, and no matter how much sleep I got, I still would fall asleep on the couch by 9:30pm.  Hopefully this week will be a little better and I will be a bit more productive.

We have some long-term houseguests arriving this week, and I really hope that I can be a good host, and not just the “pregnant lady who does nothing but eat, sleep and work.”  One of Aaron’s college roommates is moving from NYC to LA with his girlfriend and baby, so we are letting them stay with us until they find a place out here.  They will be staying in our guest room/future nursery, which means I have to move all the baby stuff we’ve already acquired before they get here.  Fortunately, the timing works out pretty well so that I’m not freaking out too much about not being able to set up the nursery yet.  After all, we still have almost 4 months left.  Holy moly, I have less than 4 months left!!!

Ok, let’s talk about daycare.  This is one of those subjects that has caused me some freakoutage (yes, I just made up that word.)  Unfortunately, due to our location, we need to start looking for daycare NOW.  Los Angeles is one of those cities where people will sign their child up on a wait list for daycare while the kid is still in the womb (and sometimes even before they are conceived).  We’ve heard horror stories from friends who got stuck by waiting too long to sort out daycare (and by “too long” I mean waiting until after the kid is born), and I did not want that to happen to us!  Seriously, I had one friend who started looking while she was still pregnant, and she’d call up daycares and they would ask her if she was already pregnant, and they would say, “You’re a little late to the game.”  Fortunately, I haven’t experienced anything that extreme yet.  However, I am glad we are starting now because I have encountered several where they only have wait list availability now, but by the time we will need to start using daycare, they will have openings. 

We are looking at daycare in both Santa Monica (where I work) and the Valley (where we live).  Let me just say, Santa Monica daycares are crazy expensive!  There are several daycares that have amazing sounding programs, with all organic food, teaching the kids languages doing arts & crafts and all kinds of fun stuff . . . average price: a little over $2,000/month.  Back when I was a starving actor, I used to live on less than $2,000 a month!  The cheapest daycare I’ve found in Santa Monica is $1,300/month.  The downside to the “cheap” Santa Monica daycre: it has numerous spelling and grammatical errors on its website.  Is it bad that I judge a daycare for things like spelling and grammatical errors on their website?  I won’t even wait for you to answer that question.  The answer is “no.”  Here’s why: these people will be in charge of teaching my kid in her most formative years.  If my child doesn’t get a good foundation in the basics, how will she succeed in life?  I did find one daycare in Santa Monica that I really liked, and it wasn’t nearly as expensive as most of the other daycares in the area (not the cheapest in the area either, but at least there were no grammatical errors on its website).  It’s a French immersion daycare, run by two native French speakers, and they primarily talk to the children in French (though, obviously, they do speak English to the kids and parents also).  They were very quick to respond to my inquiry, and very nice when I spoke to them.  However, they don’t take kids under 10 months old.  They did offer to put us on the wait list now, so that when our kid is old enough, they are that much higher up on the list.  How LA are we?  Our unborn child is on a wait list for a French immersion daycare!

Yesterday, Aaron and I took a look at a daycare in the Valley.  It’s 10 minutes from our house, on my way to work, half as expensive as some of the cheaper daycares in Santa Monica, and they take kids from newborn – 5 years old.  I think the main difference in price is that this daycare is run out of the owner’s home v. it being a daycare center.  So the “facility” is significantly smaller than the centers in Santa Monica . . . because it’s a house.  It seemed nice, though.  The owner said that she usually separates the infants from the older kids for the most part, and they split the day with the infants inside in the morning and the kids outside, and then they’ll switch.  She said that all the infants get play time/tummy time, and when she feels they are ready to join the older kids, she’ll switch them to the “preschool program.”  She teaches them English, Spanish and French.  She has about 10 kids and 4 adults (3 helpers plus her), so that seems like a decent ratio.  All her helpers (one of them has been her mother-in-law) have been working with her since she started the daycare 13 years ago.  She cooks all the food she serves to the kids, and doesn’t give them sugary treats, which was important to me.  In fact, she said that if a parent brings in cookies or something for a kid’s birthday, she’ll package them up and then give them to the parents when they pick up their kid.  That way if the parent wants their kid to have a cookie, they are the ones to give it to them . . . and if you don’t want your kid eating a cookie, you can just not give it to them.  Also, she says they do not watch any tv during the day.  One of my big concerns about an in-home daycare (vs. a center) was that I had heard from other friends that every in-home daycare they visited, there was a tv and it was always on.  I don’t anticipate being a strict anti-tv parent, but I would like to try to limit tv time, especially when they are young.  The owner gave me the phone numbers for a couple of current parents, so I am going to call them to get their impression of the daycare before we make a final decision.  We’re definitely going to continue to look around, but it is nice to know that there is a place near our house that is affordable, has openings when we will need it, and seems like a good place.

One last note to finish up, I don’t usually get ooey-gooey, but I just want to brag about my awesome husband for half a second.  Since I got pregnant, he’s been really good about bringing me flowers “just because.”  These are the flowers he brought me Friday night. :)

21 Weeks

I am now 21 weeks pregnant.  According to What to Expect, my baby is now the size of a banana.  I’m not sure what grocery store What to Expect shops in, but wasn’t my baby the size of a cantaloupe last week?  Aren’t cantaloupes bigger than bananas?  Oh well, I guess it doesn’t matter that much – just knowing that it’s getting bigger is enough.

Aaron and I spent the majority of the day on Sunday getting one step closer to being ready for baby.  We picked up a bunch of hand-me-down baby gear.  So we now have a stroller, baby swing, and a really cool, sci-fi looking vibrating chair.  We are so fortunate to have such generous friends! 

Our haul.

From left to right: Stroller base, behind that (and barely visible) is a Moses basket, next to that is a Mamaroo (aka sci-fi vibrating chair), car seat, swing seat, diaper box full of books underneath a bumble seat (aka chair you can plop an infant in).  Inside the duffel bag is a bassinet.  The circular looking thing next to it is the car seat base.

Here is the stroller, the Orbit G2.

This stroller is one of those systems that has the car seat/carrier and a car seat base.  It is a lot easier to fold/unfold than the ones we were messing with at Babies R Us.  You can fold it up using one hand, which will be very useful.  The seat latches on to a circular base, so we can rotate the seat to face whatever direction is best.  For example, if we want to turn the baby to face us as we are walking, we can do that.  Then if we go to a restaurant and there is only room to have the stroller face in an awkward direction, we can rotate the seat so that it is not awkward.  Also, the circular base will supposedly make it easier for loading the seat into the car as a car seat because you can plop it in at any angle and then rotate it.  The one downside to hand me downs is that you have to work within the brand you are given.  We will need two car seat bases, and buying an additional base for the Orbit is expensive!  So I think we might still register for a jogger stroller system so then we have an additional stroller and car seat.  And besides, then we could just keep one stroller in each car.

I also wanted to show off the cool sci-fi vibrating chair.  

This is called a Mamaroo.  Basically, it’s a vibrating chair that has a bunch of different settings.  One setting is supposed to mimic a car ride, another a swing, another an ocean wave, etc.  You can also hook your ipod up to it and play whatever music you want.  From everything I’ve read, some kids really take to it, and others not so much.  It will be interesting to see what our kid likes/doesn’t like.

20 weeks

I am now 20 weeks pregnant – which means I’m half way through my pregnancy!  It’s all downhill from here, right? :)(jk)  According to “What to Expect” my baby is now the size of a melon.  I’ve gained 8 pounds so far and am now the heaviest I have ever been, and it’s only going up from here.   I won’t tell you my actual weight bc, frankly, it’s none of your business, and besides you all know I started out super small. 

I am finally starting to look pregnant to people other than just Aaron and myself.  Over the weekend, I had three different people say, “I can see your bump starting to show!”  I’m still not sure that a complete stranger would know I was pregnant and not just a little round in the middle, though.  Here, you can judge for yourself: 

Please forgive the cheesy bathroom photo.  This was one of the first times that I caught myself in the mirror and thought “Wow!  I look pregnant!”  It’s so weird looking down and seeing my belly protruding!

The funny thing is that I really feel like the bump has “popped” in just the past  couple days.  Weekend before last (when I was 19 weeks), some friends and I went around the city and did an urban ballerina style photo shoot.  It was so much fun!  And I was able to hide the small bump I had that weekend under my warm up outfit.  I also went to a friend's kid's birthday party and a lot of the moms there said, "You're 19 weeks?!  You don't look it at all!"  So it's kind of nice now, just a week later to be able to look in the mirror and actually see a bump.

The baby has definitely started kicking.  In fact, as I sit here typing, I can feel it (her?) tapping away on my insides.  J  It’s still too unpredictable and light for Aaron to be able to feel from the outside.  Lately our evenings will consist of us sitting on the couch watching tv and I’ll feel it kick and then he’ll put his hand on my belly.  And then we wait and wait and wait, so he finally moves his hand and then it’ll kick again 10 minutes later.  Hopefully someday soon, Aaron will have his hand on my belly at the right time and be able to feel it.

Our Valentine's Day

We like to keep Valentine’s Day pretty low key in our house.  Usually we’ll cook a nice dinner together, open up one of those bottles of wine that we stash away for a “special occasion” and maybe watch a rented movie.  If we go out to dinner, we’ll go out the day before or the day after to avoid the crowds.  This year is a little different (for obvious reasons).  So we decided it would be fun to spend V-day starting our registry at Babies R Us.

Because Valentine's Day was a weekday and we both had to work, we only had about an hour to go around registering for things before the store closed.  We arrived, checked in at the desk and were given what I like to call the “fun gun” (i.e. the scanner that you use to scan in items to add to your registry).  Much like when we were registering for our wedding, Aaron got to be in charge of the fun gun for the baby registry – I find it makes guys more willing to participate in the registering process.

Since we had limited time, we decided to focus on the bigger ticket items.  We started with the gliders (aka rocking chairs), mostly because we tested them out while waiting for the customer service guy to greet us at the registry desk.  We found one glider that we really liked . . . and then we looked at the price.  We added it to the registry anyway because we knew it would be a good starting point for research.  In fact, most of what is currently on our registry was scanned with the thought, “Well, at least we know we liked it in the store and we can use that as a research starting point.”  So, if you are planning on buying us a gift, don’t go running to the registry yet . . . it still has a long way to go.

After the gliders, we looked at cribs, and got slightly overwhelmed.  After wandering around that entire section, we found one crib that we really liked, but it had an attached changing table and was kind of expensive.  I would actually prefer it without the extra piece, especially if that could bring down the price.  I went online after we got home and found a crib that I think is similar, but without the attached changing table, and is significantly cheaper.  But I think we’re going to have to re-visit the store several times before coming to a final decision on crib.  I know we want one that can convert to a toddler bed – though it seems like that must be the “thing” these days.  It’s actually pretty hard to find a crib that doesn’t convert to 3 other beds.

Next we moved on to strollers.  Omg, it is so easy to get overwhelmed in this category.  There are so many different options for strollers!  Do we want four wheels?  Three wheels?  A travel system (i.e. one that has a carrier plus stroller plus base)?  Or do we just want a straight up stroller?  We have received so much advice from our friends on this that it’s hard to keep it all straight! (Though more advice is always welcome, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email if you have opinions in the stroller department – or any other baby gear department, for that matter.) 

We had just been to a friend’s kid’s birthday party and were admiring their 3 wheel travel system style stroller.  So we decided to pull out one of the 3 wheel, jogging type strollers and see how it feels to push it around and test it out.  It must have been super amusing to the Babies R Us employees to watch us, rather obvious first time parents, in the aisles trying to figure out how to fold and unfold this stroller.   At least I know we were laughing about it!

Aaron testing out the stroller.

I swear, the smaller the infant, the bigger the gear!  Those simple, lightweight strollers that are further down the aisle won’t be available to us until the kid is significantly older.  By the time we finished looking at the strollers, we were running short on time (and I was running out of steam), so we quickly strolled by the high chairs and decided that would definitely require a different trip, same with bouncy seats.  I think we put an infant swing on the registry, though honestly, I can’t remember at this point.

I will say this, registering with Aaron is fun.  We both have our opinions, and they can be strong and  we can be stubborn, but we always have a good time.  I feel like you learn a lot about your partner when choosing items together.  We don’t really shop that much, so this is our opportunity to go out to a store and make a joint decision.  At the very least, we both came away from the experience knowing that we both agree on green as a good, gender neutral color.  All in all, I think it was a very good Valentine’s Day. :)

18 week ultrasound

On Monday we had our 18-week ultrasound.  It was at 8am, because that is most conducive to our work schedules.  So we schlepped our tired selves to the doctor’s office – me without the ad of any caffeine.  The whole way there, Aaron was complaining that there was a “6” on the clock when he woke up (he got up at 6:59).  We checked in at radiology and sat down in the waiting room.  The radiology waiting room is definitely different than the OB waiting room.  It’s not nearly as warm and inviting.  Though the nurse who checked us in was very nice, the other people in the room didn’t seem nearly as happy to be there as the women in the OB waiting room tend to be.  However, we didn’t have to wait for long.  I will say this about Kaiser, if nothing else, they certainly don’t seem to make you wait around very long.  I have yet to finish more than 3 pages in my book every time I bring it to the waiting room with me!

Once called in, we were shown to the ultrasound room.  Apparently the way Kaiser does ultrasounds for low risk pregnancies is that an ultrasound technician administers it and then the doctor reviews the images and goes over the results with us.  I think we got a little spoiled at our last ultrasound.  Because there was such a time crunch on it, they sent us to a private, high risk, doctor, so it was a doctor administering the ultrasound and he was able to tell us everything he was doing as he was doing it and reassure us that everything was fine.

Today, the tech told me to lie down and then she squirted warm jelly on my belly and started doing the ultrasound.  I couldn’t see anything on the screen because of my angle.  All I saw were grey blobs.  I kept trying to crane my head to see, but all that resulted was a headache at the base of my neck.  The tech was super quiet for the first 5 minutes or so.  All she said was, “Let me know if I’m pressing too hard.”  Finally I couldn’t take the silence any longer, and I asked if everything was ok.  That’s when she informed us that she couldn’t actually tell us if everything was ok because it was the doctor’s job to review the pictures and go over everything with us later.  But of course, the one thing (aside from knowing our baby was healthy) we had been excited to find out today was gender.  We had already been asked three times that morning if we wanted to know.  So now I was afraid that the tech wouldn’t even be able to tell us that.  I asked if she would be able to tell us gender today and she said, “Yes, but I haven’t been able to see it yet.”

She asked us if they were able to see the gender at the NT ultrasound.  Here’s a little piece of info that we hadn’t made public knowledge until now.  The doctor at the last ultrasound told us it was a girl, but he also said it was really early and not to go buy a bunch of pink just yet, to wait until we got confirmation at the 18 week ultrasound.

Finally, after much poking and prodding, the tech at this ultrasound said, “It does look like it’s a girl.”  But she didn’t say it definitively.  As you know from my last post, I want things for sure before I count on them.  But, like the tech said, it’s never 100% sure until the baby comes out.  We definitely did not see any boy parts during the ultrasound, but the baby wasn’t being super cooperative.  It had its legs together and straight out – like a lady would do.  J  I think we are sure enough that it’s a girl to start focusing on girl names (though still keeping our list of boy names just in case) and we will probably start calling it “her” occasionally.  And, if it turns out it’s a boy after all, that’s ok.  As long as it’s healthy, that’s all we really care about (though it would be really nice to be able to decorate the room with my old pointe shoes).

We finally got the ultrasound tech to open up a little and start chatting with us as she was taking all the pictures she needed, which helped to ease my mind a bit.  Then she turned the screen so I could see.  We got to see the heart beating again, and saw the arms and the hands and the legs.  The best part of all was seeing the baby move!  Its little arms were flailing all over the place!  And based on the position the baby was in, those “gas bubbles” I was feeling last week, were definitely not gas bubbles after all.

Here are some of the pics:

Like I said, we got spoiled at the last ultrasound with the clarity of the pictures.  This was my first over the stomach ultrasound, and this is more what I had always expected ultrasound pics to look like: grey, blobby, and alien looking.  But I really like the first one, where it looks like it's waving - you can see all the bones in her hand!