First Trimester

Your comments on my last post each made me smile!  Thank you so much for each one!  Oh, and feel free to skip this post if you are not in the "hear about baby stuff" mood.  I've been there and completely understand.

Anyway, writing about being pregnant the other day made it seem a bit more real. I guess it still hasn't fully sunk in.  And it probably hasn't helped that during my first trimester, I had an almost OCD-like tendency of stopping myself from fully celebrating or recording every moment because I was so afraid of losing.  It was getting to the point where I was acting a little crazy. Like at six weeks, I started feeling the same weird, horrible, period-like back pains that I had before my previous loss, and I completely lost it with a co-worker, gulping out "I think I might be about to miscarry!" between quiet sobbing. I walked right by adorable gender-neutral bibs I would have loved to have bought, oddly thinking that dolling out five bucks on a baby item would somehow jinx our future happiness.  I waited until ten weeks to take my first picture of myself. When I never got nausea even once, I spent an hour Googling "no morning sickness bad sign??" and reading Yahoo answer boards.  Little tip:  Googling fears is never a good idea.

Now, though, I've decided it's time to record all the joy of this first trimester! First, I decided that I just had to tell my family in a fun way: customized fortune cookies.  They love a surprise, so I thought it would be different to reveal the news creatively.

  I bought a box of store-bought fortune cookies and printed out little slips of paper that read,

 Baby T (hopefully) coming in Fall 2013!

(Note that the OCD side of me just had to insert that desperate word "hopefully"...) 

Then, I found super easy directions (from here) on how to make customized fortune cookies online and spent a half hour fashioning about a dozen of them.   Lastly, I jazzed them up by following more online directions on how to make them fancy with chocolate and sprinkles.

This was taken about three weeks later, which is why they look a little gross now- ha ha!

Anyway, my parents stopped by on their way through town when I was barely seven weeks along.  While Dan and my dad picked up the take-out Chinese food, my mom asked me how I was doing with the baby stuff.  I, of course, answered in my best Eeyore tone: "Oh, you know, I'm plugging along" while thinking "Can. Not. Wait. Until. Dessert. Time. CanNOTwaituntildesserttime!"

After dinner, I put out the plate of cookies.  My mom broke hers open first.  "You are!?!"  I nodded and then she was tearing up and hugging and wooping.  My dad never had a chance to read his but didn't need to. Hugs, wooping, me recounting how I said "thank you" to the fertility doctor for doing the HSG which, I believe, was key in all of this, to which Dan joked to both of us, "Hey, I think I had something to do with it too!"  Ba dum ching. We all held hands and dad gave the most beautiful prayer.  I remember looking up and seeing my handsome husband's face streaked with tears.  I'll never forget that moment.

Telling my sister was hilarious.  She came in town for a wedding a week later, so I gave her a leftover fortune cookie saying, "It was Foreign Language Week at school and I know you love these, so I grabbed a few from the resource room."  She snapped hers open... and her face went completely white.  She looked completely aghast.

Me:  "What does yours say?"

Her: ...

Me:  "Does it say anything interesting?"

Her:  Uh...

Me:  "Um...It's true!  I am."

Her:  "Huh?" 

Me: "I'm pregnant!"

Her:  "YOU'RE PREGNANT???  EEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"

Me: EEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!! 

(Screaming, hugging, screaming)

Her:  "I was so upset!  When you said you got it from the resource room during Foreign Language Week, I thought some bitch at your school made the cookies because she thought you might get pregnant before then, and I was trying to think of how to lie to you about the fortune cookie message.  You told me about how some of the older teachers are always saying insensitive things, and I was about to cut somebody for this one!"

I told Bethany that her niece or nephew was the size of a rapberry, so the next day over brunch, she plucked a raspberry off her dessert and made me pose with it.  (Yep, the below photo looks like she's cupping my boob, but she's actually pointing at my non-existent bump.)

She has called him or her "Raspberry" ever since.  "How's my raspberry doing??"  "Has Raspberry kicked yet??"  Finally, I made the point that our little guy or gal is (hopefully... yes, there's that word again) much, much bigger now and demanded that she change it to Razbaby instead.  Bethany has never held back on her absolute giddiness, which was refreshing when I was sick with worry, but she obliged me anyway. 

Last weekend, she gave me the most perfect gift, simply saying,

 "This is for my Razbaby":

Not sure if you can tell, but that is a raspberry shaped teether. :)

In short, people have been so sweet and excited and amazing.  Just for fun, I thought I'd share this photo of two little gifts from one of my crazy generous best friends:

Is that video not pefect??

And I was completely over-whelmed by this last gesture.  When I finally entered week 14, out of the endless first trimester, my mom was smiling and handed me an enormous bag.  She had wanted to wait until I was in a slightly safer time zone, but she and my dad had decided to surprise me with 14 little presents:    one for each week.  They had known how I had been trying to temper my excitement to "protect" myself, but I guess they couldn't anymore.

There are no words for how generous and loving this was.  I'm still speechless.

I promise that this blog won't become only about baby stuff!   It just feels so good to finally talk about some of the joy of that whirlwind first few weeks.  It crawled by at the time, but now I can't believe I'm into the second one already...

The post I've been waiting a long time to write

  

Over the past year, I've listed to Mumford and Sons' wistful song "I will Wait for You" more times than I care to admit.  You know the one?  The frantic banjo strumming... hot, scruffy, British men at first crooning... then almost crying out an equal parts heart-breaking and triumphant promise:

Cause I will wait, I will wait for you

And I will wait, I will wait for you

 

Those lines really resonated with me.

I've played it on my iPhone non-stop, a soundtrack to my life during every tearful call to my mom, every nightmare pastel baby shower, every "Do you have any kids?" query from other teachers, even the infamous daycare football party. 

It was a waiting game for having a kid.  This is not unusual, I know.  Many of you probably have a similar story.

Of course, the waiting began much earlier than this year.  Dan and I started trying for a baby in late 2009.  Fast forward a mortgage in ovulation tests and a year and half later, I finally saw a plus sign.  And then I was crying in the shower after my miscarriage six and a half weeks later.   Fast forward another few months just to gather my sanity, and we began again. 

I started to listen to this song, imagining singing it to a child that did not exist yet, month after month, fear creeping in.  Even Dan's usual sunny attitude was being chipped away, with him finally breaking down on New Year's Day.  We kept changing our strategies: let's try every day!  Or every other day! Or let's set an alarm for 4am! Or how about I keep my legs up!  Or everyone is telling us to relax so break out the wine!  Or I'll get a new timing app! Or I'll drink pomegranate juice! Or I'll drink cough syrup! Or let's both change our diets!  Or let's buy PreSeed! Or let's buy a different brand of ovulation kits! Or you should get tested!  Finally, I resolved to can the old wives' tales and see a fertility doctor, a decision that was a long time coming.

But I'll kneel down, Wait for now, I'll kneel down, Know my ground

And I will wait, I will wait for you


Today, I listened to it for the first time in sixteen weeks and smiled and teared up a bit and hugged Dan a little tighter.  As you may have guessed, I'm pregnant, finally into my second trimester. I just can't believe it in some ways!
*
 Sometimes, I felt kinda alone through all of this, and I realized afterwards with all the insensitive commenters in my life (mostly at school, never on this blog), there were also so many people rooting for us: friends, family, and even on this tiny blog.  That's another post for a different day, but thank you for anyone who has commented or commiserated or even written a private message on my Facebook. It meant so much!
*

This is probably an overly emotional post.  Most people just post an ultrasound photo and call it a day. I haven't gone through anything compared to others who have suffered through infertility for years and years, through IVF, through endless heart-break.  Even though my doctor labeled me otherwise, I guess I was never infertile.  Not really.  I just had to wait and wait. 

Yet even that was truly difficult.  Perhaps you've been there too.  Waiting and waiting for something: to be noticed, to get that proposal, for a career you love, for a baby.  Does it sound insincere that even though I probably have never *met* you, I hope that waiting ends soon?  And that I'm sending out good thoughts??

It feels weird to finally write about this now, when it has been going on for sixteen weeks, but we were just too scared of losing again to throw it out there on the interweb.    I'm still not going to announce it to everyone at my school or Facebook.  I figure that we will gradually tell people that really know us, and the others will catch up if it matters to them. But it feels great to finally say it here!  Yes, we are still scared, but if something were to happen now, I would need to write about it.  And besides, there's so much joy I want to share.  Just to document these past few months, several posts are coming. 

I've been listening to a new song lately: The Beatles' "It won't be long"!  It's my new favorite.

Proscietto Pie Recipe

Sorry, I meant to post this last week!  For anyone wanting a seriously cheesy and delicious meal tonight, this is what I made Dan for his dinner to celebrate his dad in my last post. 

When I say it is cheesy, I'm not playing around:

Tomato pie:


1 frozen deep dish pie crust

1 c of shredded mozzarella cheese

1 c of shredded chedder cheese

4-6 slices of provolone cheese

About 3tbsp. Fresh basil ( cut up)

1/4lb of thin sliced prosciutto

2-3 tomatoes (can also do one large.....depends how tomatoey you want it)

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 of a medium onion


Preheat oven to 350. Thaw frozen crust and prick sides and bottom with a fork. Place crust tin on cookie sheet and bake in oven for 5 minutes.

Saute the onion in a pan until it becomes translucent (can use butter or olive oil for this step, though I just used cooking spray.)



Remove pie crust after 5 minutes and place mozzarella in the bottom. Add basil and prosciutto, then tomato slices, salt and pepper, cooked onions, chedder cheese, and top with enough provolone to cover the top.

Place cookie sheet with pie in oven on the lower rack and bake for 30-35 min until top is golden and melted.

*note: The amounts in this are pretty approximate. If you want more or less cheese or tomato or basil or something, feel free to ad lib.

Pair with a large side salad and you're in business!