Pickles

Yesterday I sliced up two cucumbers and mixed them up with some water, white vinegar, and salt.  Refrigerator pickles, a summer favourite. 

And today I have done something I have always wanted to do, as I can use pregnancy as the excuse.  I drank the pickle juice.  Not all of it, but near enough.  It was life changing. 

...Huh...

I was enlightened the other day by a well wisher who knows a bit of my history.

Apparently those early miscarriages I had were because of the sex of the child in the womb.  As in I am never meant to have the opposite sex to the current resident.  Based on anecdotal fact (a step daughter had two boys for 6 pregnancies, so clearly those 4 that failed must have been girls). 

I am losing my pregnancy game already, because what do you say to that?  Challenge accepted?  What about hermaphrodites?  Are you insane??  I think my response was "...oh..."

Going public

We have done it.  We have gone public.  On Facebook.  I tried to announce without being obnoxious, and if I have infertile friends in real life who want to stab me right now, well, I don't know who they are so guess I should watch my back.  The rumour mill will flow along, and in a day or so the entire town will know, without me having to do more than type a few sentences.

Of course, it kind of is a miracle that it hasn't really gotten out more.  I told maybe 7-10 people.  I know one of these people (one I actually trusted) opened his mouth and told a mutual acquaintance, who at least congratulated me quietly and acknowledged that he would keep it a secret when I threatened to kick the leak.  Also, my mother told coworkers and family back home.  But I expected that.  She has an insanely big mouth, especially when it comes to good news. 

I didn't really want to announce it.  I was a little superstitious about it at first.  And I sort of like having it known just among close family and friends.  But it is not something I can hide forever.  Maybe another two weeks if I am lucky. 

So, now that it is out there in the wide wide world of real life, I know what is going to happen next.  I will get interrogated.  I will hear the horror stories of every other woman's experiences.  I will be given advice on EVERYTHING!  Some of this will be helpful, I am sure.  I am new at this, after all, and those who have been there first have valuable experiences and insights.  HOWEVER...some of it will be less than helpful.

To that end, I am going to win this pregnancy.  Yup, that is right.  I am winning it.  For every labour horror story told, I will one up the ante ("oh, she was in labour for 78 hours?  well, I know this woman who was only in labour for 2 but when that baby shot out it actually ripped her a new asshole...seriously.  She couldn't poop for ages after").  For every nosey question, I will ask one of my own (...I will have to think of a few...maybe I will just turn it back on them..."when you were pregnant, <insert nosey question>"  which should be fun if some man is the one asking).  For every piece of less than helpful advice, I will offer some of my own, on etiquette.  And heaven help anyone who invades my bubble to touch my belly (once I have one that doesn't just show my love of beer)...I will bite back my aversion to being touched and touch theirs back!

Clearly, I know how to make and keep friends.  And my own sanity.  Oh well, let the games begin.

(in a few weeks...I am actually working on my own right now and probably won't see anyone I know for a while...I have time to research)

Conversations with a Moose

The Moose is putting Rawhide on TV.  I am on the sofa reading. 

Moose:  "How bout rounding up some steers?"  (steers pronounced as stairs, or near enough in the Kiwi accent)

Tiggy:  (still reading book)  "Go ahead, there are some stairs just behind you."  (points vaguely in the direction of the stairs)

Moose:  (giving the smile that says Tiggy is so gonna get it)  "I said steers" (still pronounced stairs) "as in...baaaaaaahhhhh"  (sound is vaguely like a sheep).

Tiggy:  (puts down book)  "What?"

Moose:  (louder and more confidant)  "Baaaaahhhhhh!"

Tiggy:  "...I didn't know stairs sounded like sheep."

Moose:  (thinks for a minute)  "Moooaaaaahhhhhhhh"  (if you could cross a sheep and a cow, this is the sound you would get).

Tiggy:  (picks book back up).  "Sounds like a cow in sheep's clothing."

Moose:  (sheepish (ha, see what I did there?))"I'm not a farmer."

Tiggy:  "Obviously."

And the great tragedy is not that the Moose will have to learn what sounds animals make along with his child, but that I missed the opportunity to make good old fashioned kiwi sheep shagging jokes!

Second Trimester

Whether the second trimester starts at 13 weeks or 14 weeks, 40/3= 13.3, and today is 13 weeks 3 days so I am calling it.  I am starting to feel a little better too.  Less nausea less often, and a bit more energy.  That said, I should confess, I have pulled a sickie from work today so I could stay home and sleep.  I like to tell myself that it is because I worked so hard the past few days.  I could barely move last night when I finally pulled myself off the couch where I had been doing some work on the computer (yes, vineyard work can involve computer work for a lucky few, and that took me up to a 10 hour day...bah).

I've done a little housework, but mostly I have been puttering around on the interwebs.  I should be napping.  Or cleaning.  Oh, shit.  I was going to bake a cake for the Moose...and he will be home within the hour.  Guess I will get onto that. 

But first some ultrasound pics from my appointment two days ago:

The face/head in the middle picture freaks me out.  Made me wish I had said no when the tech offered a 3d pic really.  Stuff of nightmares.  The bubs was really wiggly so it took forever to get the measurements they needed.  But the scan was "perfect" according to the midwife and I am within normal parameters for Down's Syndrome.  I will have to wait a bit more to get the actual calculated risk. 

Still no weight gain...although I haven't been on the scale for a few days so I can't guarantee that (the beer belly is very pronounced however).  Also, I am a bit worried that I am not eating enough.  I had been cutting back for so long before getting pregnant, and so I feel like I am eating more now, but maybe it still isn't enough considering I have a very physical job.  I suppose the only way to figure it out is to calorie count for a few days and see what I am actually getting.  People who know I am pregnant and those who don't keep telling me I have lost weight.  Eh, I am probably doing fine and am just paranoid.  I eat when I am hungry, which is all the freaking time now.  I am so food obsessed.  A few days this week I could have worked more than eight hours in the vineyard, but I ran out of food and had to go home to eat something (my workday's food is about 3-4 pieces of fruit, yogurt, a museli bar and a sandwich...the museli bar is the addition since pregnancy).  But I do have a problem with juice and fizzy drinks.  I am addicted.  I drank 1 litre of tomato juice on Sunday.  And polished off the cranberry juice Monday.  Sometimes I am good and pick the sparkling water to be my fizz of choice, but I have had more soda than I ought to and that needs to end now.  I miss beer.  So.  Much. 

Um...did I have anything else to say?  Probably not.  Better go make that cake before I forget again.  Banana cake since I have a shite load of bananas in the freezer.  Yum. 

Good news

We still have a heartbeat!  A strong and clear one at what looks like 160bpm, though with the midwife's handwriting it could be IbO.  Serious chicken scratch.  Anyhoodle, she wasn't concerned with my brief spotting, and said that I won't be miscarrying with that heartbeat.  Of course, anything is still possible, but the chances are so low that I am not going to worry about it.

And other good news: we can have the house sprayed for spiders (midwife approved).  It is time to do that again.  How do I know it is time?  Oh, the monstrous white tail spider I killed the other day.  The biggest bloody white tail I have EVER seen, and we get quite a few of these little somewhat poisonous bastards.  I have killed bigger spiders in the US, and WAY bigger ones is Aussie, but not here.  And worst of all, I nearly touched it before I realized it was a spider.  It was hiding in disguise and underneath a stack of newspapers.  Clearly a scout for a much large force of spiders preparing for battle.  Well, spiders, consider yourselves warned: the Geneva Convention does not apply to you, and I am going chemical on your 8-legged asses. 

Ack.

Went to the loo last night, and guess what?  Blood.  Oh goody.  And not just old brown blood (although there was that), but also some pretty bright pink blood.  Just on the toilet paper, but more than all the other spotting I had around week 5 combined.  A few days before I passed one small black clot, but since it wasn't followed by more I didn't really worry about it.  Until last night. 

And it isn't just the blood (which seems to have stopped and may have just been a one-off...a non-sexytimes related one-off), but also some cramping.  Not too severe, but enough to make me nervous.  Thankfully that seems to be disappearing now too. 

I know this just happens sometimes, and it doesn't really mean that something is wrong, but now that ultrasound on the 13th of January can't get here fast enough.  The risk of miscarriage is low, I know that.  Odds are more than good this pregnancy will continue.  Lots of women have bleeding, and the cramping could just be an expanding uterus (pushing that beer gut out).  I have already rationalized the fear away.  But that first moment of seeing that blood, my heart nearly stopped and all I could think was oh fuck.

Happy New Year

I managed to stay awake until 9pm last night (pretty good since I had been up from 4:30am).  It has been a few years since I have been to a New Year's Eve party, or even tried to stay up to see in the New Year.  On that note, I have no resolutions, no thoughts really on the past year...it is really just another day.

When I was a child (and even a bit older) I used to think the holiday season so magical, so romantic and glamorous.  Fancy parties and presents and special foods.  And fun.

I still enjoy the holidays (mostly having two days off two weeks in a row), but really they are just another couple of days.  Next year, hopefully with a 5 month old, we will start some new traditions, maybe bring some magic back into it.  The holidays of my youth really weren't anything fancy, in retrospect, but they were certainly special. 

I spent much of the Christmas holiday sleeping or reading.  My sister sent me a Snoogle and I love it.  LOVE it.  Mr. Snoogs and I are inseparable.  The mother in law was up over Christmas.  She is in her mid 80s, can't see very well and is a bit hard of hearing too.  She is friendly and kind but not very talkative and spends most her time sitting quietly.  This long weekend it is just me and the Moose, and I intend to get shit done since I spent last weekend doing nothing.  If I can bear separation from Mr. Snoogs. 

So I am sitting at 11.5 weeks or so today.  And not feeling much different really.  I had gone off food over Christmas but I am hungry again now, now that I have missed out on chocolates and Christmas cookies and other good Christmas foods.  Still no weight gained, but boy howdy is my beer gut looking rather magnificent.  Before I would bloat up for a few hours, but the tum would always return to normal, and I could suck it in.  Now, not so much.  Now, I have a FUPA.  Oh well.  I think anyone who knew we were trying will be starting to suspect soon, but strangers on the street will just think I loves me my beers.  My mom sent me some maternity jeans and a top, but I had best hope that I am all belly because there isn't all that much extra room in the thighs of those jeans.  Maybe if I start wearing them now they will stretch with me.  The jeans I normally wear are Levis 525 perfect waist, since they don't gap in the back (I have a booty), and they stretch a bit and will accommodate the beer gut a bit longer, so I don't really need to be in the maternity jeans just yet...but maybe in a couple of weeks.

Next week I've got a meeting with my midwife, and the week after is the next ultrasound.  After that, we may go "facebook public".  As it is now, we have told quite a few people, but we told them to keep it on the down low for now, so who knows how many people actually know.  I don't care if people do know, but it is nice not having questions and advice hurled at me, and I suspect that will happen soon.  Not sure if we will do any sort of funny announcement, but maybe...probably not.  I am nothing if not lazy.