Preggo at the Fair

26 weeks 6 days

We took a trip to the State Fair for a friend's birthday yesterday.  I came armed with a 2.2 liter water bottle, and my husband came prepared to buy me whatever food I required while we were there.  We scouted out a park and ride lot to reduce our walking back to the car at the end of the day, and I put on my comfy walking sneakers.  I knew I was going to be so sore after this excursion, but I needed out of the house anyway.  Besides, I love the fair!  I just couldn't go on any of the rides this year.

At first, walking around wasn't too much of an issue.  The fair was so crowded that often we were reduced to a speed that was comfortable for me anyway.  But then we ended up taking a wrong turn in the festival.  The map made it look like it looped back around to the rides, so we kept on the path.  It did loop around... all the way back behind the rides where fences kept us from rejoining the throng!  We must have added an extra mile by taking that long-cut.  However, the crowds were thinner back there, so hubby had to flag down the group a few times to slow down for the waddling pregnant lady.

Luckily, before we took this side-route, a friend and I took a detour to get deep fried cheesecake.  To the uninitiated, it doesn't sound appealing.  But I had the pleasure of trying one last year, and it heaven on a tray!  Just the mention of the state fair a few weeks ago made my cravings go into overdrive for deep fried cheesecake.  Indulging served to qualm my craving, but it also gave me the energy boost I needed to survive the scenic route.

We finally circle back around to the rides, and I find an eating area to sit down.  For the next hour or two, our group went off and rode rides, but someone always came and sat with me to keep me company.  I munched on a few corndogs and experienced the sensation of feeling loud music reverberating in my abdomen.  Baby was twitching a little bit, but overall he must have been rocked into a deep sleep from all the walking.  I wish I couldn't done a few rides, but having someone sit with me while my aching legs and feet got a break really made the time go faster.

By sunset, I'm just about ready for us to be heading home, but there was one more thing we had to do first.  I wanted to go on the ferris wheel, mostly because it was the only ride I could really go on.  5 of us ended up going on it.  While most everyone else in it was too preoccupied with our friend who was freaking out because she's afraid of heights, I looked out over the fair and all the lights on the rides and stands.  I thought back to an image earlier that day of a dad holding his probably 1 year old daughter and seeing her face full of amazement looking at all the flashing lights.  It's made me excited for next year and the years after when we get to bring our little boy to the fair.  It's a magical place for a child, and I couldn't wait to share it with him.

Naturally when I got home, my feet swelled, my back ached, and I was incoherently tired.  However, D got to watch baby kick so hard that my entire abdomen twitched and changed position.  I've never felt him kick so hard before!  I guess baby had a fun day too. :)

3rd Trimester, Here We Come

26 weeks 0 days

I've got a few days until I'm officially 3rd trimester, but I definately feel like I'm crossing that threshold.  Ever since the wedding, baby has been increasingly active.  It's to the point where his activity keeps me from sleeping soundly.  He's been hanging out low, so I haven't felt any jabs to the ribs yet (although I've gotten some ill aimed kicks to the hip bone).  He's definately rolling around for a good 10 minutes at a time before going to sleep for a couple hours.

I've gotten increasingly achey all over.  My feet hurt when I'm on them too long, a good walk causes round ligament pain around the bump, my boobs are going through a growth spurt (and already leaking), and my poor back gets the brunt end of the acheyness.  My acid reflux is barely contained by the Zantac (although there hasn't been anymore vomitting thanks to its help) and contributes partly to the sleep deprivation.  I just can't stay comfortable no matter how I lie or sit down.  Flipping sides in the night becomes its own affair as I'll occassionally pull something in the process or the movement will wake baby and get him kicking.  He hates when I'm on my left side for whatever reason.

I finally feel like I'm round enough for strangers to notice I'm pregnant.  They don't say anything because they don't want to be rude if I'm actually not pregnant, but I love getting to flaunt the bump.  However much I love the bump though, I'm going to love more getting to show off my baby. :)

Next week is the dreaded glucose test for gestational diabetes.  I can't eat at all that morning, and they have to draw blood an hour after drinking a glucose solution.  I'm expecting to also be told it's time to count kicks.  I don't think that part will be any problem.  I just hope I'm over this dratted cold before then.  Here's to hoping for a "boring" pregnancy without anymore scares so I can blog more about planned parenting styles than complications.

Wedding Part 3: One Big Party

This is the last of my series of posts about the wedding.

As can be expected the morning of a wedding, it was buy and hectic.  Yet I wouldn't necessarily call it as stressful as I feared.  Most everyone had their tickets, the bridesmaids knew what they needed to do to get ready, and the outfits were all sorted out. 

We got up at 6am (before the sun was even up) and spent the first hour and a half doing our hair.  Then we met my parents downstairs for breakfast.  We got to say a quick hello to other family and friends staying in the same hotel (with our hair all up in braids with flowers and circlets keep in mind) before we had to scurry back upstairs to finish getting ready.  My mom came up to snap a few pictures before I asked if she would go get us a luggage trolley for my bridesmaids' things as they were going to a different hotel that night.  It was only then, about 30-45 minutes before we had to leave, that things started getting a bit hectic.

My brother comes up to the room to bring up D's stuff and get our officiant so she could ride with D to the renaissance festival.  Just at that moment, dad called being all stressed out.  Apparantly my mom decided to go back to their room first in time to see dad all stressed out because his outfit wasn't fitting him properly somehow and that we should get our own trolley.  My brother immediately left and got us a trolley as it was really getting time to go.  We got most of the bridesmaids things loaded up, but our officiant's bags somehow got left behind in our room.  It worked out in the end though because the hotel was moving D's and my stuff to a different room with a king sized bed, and her stuff just got moved with ours and picked up after the wedding.

I load up in the car with the bridesmaids and make it to the festival with plenty of time to spare, probably just when traffic was starting to pick up.  We get to the festival, and my parents tell me that D is freaking out because he didn't get his VIP parking pass from my brother, and my brother had left my phone behind with me when he rushed off to get us the luggage trolley.  We ran my brother around like a madman that morning trying to distribute last minute tickets, and he somehow got the parking pass to D in time.  I probably won't ever know just how much effort he put in that morning, but I got to go in as soon as the festival opened and place the programs before cooling my heals before the wedding.

15 minutes or so before the wedding, a hoard of our friends dressed in full in-period garb came into the wedding area and told me D was coming and I needed to go hide.  So I gather the wedding party to go hide behind some bleachers only to realize we forgot to grab my dad.  A groomsman goes to retrieve him, and then we wait.  We're not sure if anyone is coming to get us, but our event coordinator apparantly took charge and got someone where we were to signal us.

After that time, the day went (mostly) according to plan.  Dad and I got our entrance complete with a trumpeter (noone knew where the other trumpeter was >.<; ) and honor guard with swords.  D was waiting for me at the altar with a single yellow rose, such a romantic gesture.  He even got on one knee to give his vows because he didn't do a proper proposal on one knee.  I only had eyes for him, but apparantly a lot of people were tearing up during our vows.  We exchanged vows and rings and a kiss, and we were married!  We proceeded out to signify the end of the ceremony.

We went back in for pictures, but the actors for the king and queen and their royal court came in and stole the show.  They mingled with our guests before leading us in a procession to the joust.  We got a special announced entrance as well as a toast from the king.  We got to sit on the main platform with the queen during the joust, and I got to hand out the medals to the winners of each contest.  It was a lot of fun, and I could tell our guests were enjoying the show too (although maybe I should've warned more of them to bring hats and sunscreen).

The reception ended up not being this big deal.  People drifted in and out the whole time we had it.  As a result, not everyone was there for milestones like the cake cutting, first dance, and throwing of the bouquet.  In the end though, it felt like this fun, informal party that people could enjoy coming and going as they pleased.  Even though not everyone got to be there for the keystone traditions, it still ended up being a great time.

The receiving of guests later that night at the hotel really rounded off the "weekend-long party" feeling.  Just like the reception people came and went at their leisure, and we wouldn't have had it any other way.  We were both so happy to see that everyone had a good time at the festival in their own ways.  But after all the excitement of the weekend, my readers can forgive me for taking nearly a week to just get back in a relaxed mood enough to feel up to writing all about it.

Wedding Part 2: Rehearsal Dinner Toasts

Prior to the rehearsal dinner, D has his sister arrange beforehand who wanted to give toasts.  As such, D's family in particular had some interesting, memorable toasts planned for the occassion.

D's dad planned out this entire funny presentation complete with embarassing childhood pictures.  It got the room laughing so hard that the restaurant closed the room doors on us because we were disturbing the rest of the restaurant.  Everyone had a good laugh at the pictures (some of which have now disappeared now that we're home), but his stories were not as memorable to my mind at least as what his mother had to say.

D's mother begins with how D was over 30 pounds by the time he was 1.  This is why I have no hopes for a small baby, and I suspect by how quickly I get hungry again after meals that we're gonna have another eater on our hands.  She then tells how D refused to talk when he was little.  Our friends were aghast at the very idea!  D has been renowned as not only a long-winded talker but capable of putting people to sleep with his rambling.  Our friends' expressions alone was worth the story.  But she confirmed D's intellect from a young age with the story about how he had taught himself to read with the speak and spell toy.  D played with the toy for hours at a time, and his mom had no idea that he was learning how to read until he read her the entirety of 3 Little Pigs at age 4 at the library.  Now that's an impressive feat for any child, even for someone as advanced as I knew D was.

My parents' toasts contained the same message: how I was my own, independent person from a young age.  The subtext from my dad with that message is that despite what he had in mind for me, I had the perseverance to keep pushing for my own path.  I got the sense that he had made peace with that idea, that even if I didn't do exactly what he had planned, he could still find a way to be proud of my accomplishments.  Mom I think meant it in a more sentimental kind of way, that I've grown up to make my own choices.  Whatever their intentions might have been, I was grateful for what they had to say.

D's best man offered up an Irish blessing for us as well as saying how much he considers us to be good friends, that we were the kind of people who would drop everything to come and help him (which is definately true).

D's sister finished off the toasts by alluding to certain family stories she and D had growing up.  She only had to name the stories, and D laughed uproariously.  But she wasn't there to tell those stories.  She knew that D and I (and our baby(s) ) would be making our own stories we would be telling for years to come.  So she gave us a leather-bound custom engraved journal saying "The Silverman Storybook" where we could write our own stories.  We think it's such a neat idea to have a place for our family stories in writing.  A week later, I've already filled the first few pages with some of the stories from our wedding (although in less detail than what I've written in the few posts on here).  Although we have stories from our dating years, for it to be a family storybook, we wanted to start when our family began.  The ultrasound facepalm story will find its way there, but we have many years still to fill it with the stories we can share with our grandchildren and pass on as a family heirloom.

Wedding Part 1: The Costume Debacle

I'll start by apologizing for not posting wedding details right away.  I wanted to take a few days to unwind from wedding planning mode and really let it sink in that we are now married.  I wanted to write these posts because I wanted to, not because I felt like I had to.  It's important to me this blog feel fluid and natural, and I can achieve that by not making it an obligation.  I'm not posting pictures or names here for reasons of privacy, but if enough people really want to see them, I'll post a few.

If you're just here for the baby update, I will put one at the end of this post.  You can expect mostly baby updates at this point.

D's costume debacle

D had a personal friend make his costume for the wedding.  We went up to his friend's house the weekend before the wedding, and it apparantly hadn't even been fully put together yet.  I didn't get to see it because it was kept a surprise, but I didn't like what I heard.  Still, D was confident it would get done.  He arranged for his friend to drive by on Wednesday to drop it off.

So Wednesday comes and goes without so much as a phone call from his friend.  I offer that I could drive out to pick it up, but when D calls, he says it isn't finished yet.  It turns out his friend just got a new job and hadn't had the time to put the finishing touches on it.  The plan was made that his friend would drop it off down at the wedding site the following evening.  By this point, D is disappointed.  Honestly, it boggles our minds how people we depend on for big important parts of our wedding think they can just not tell us when complications come up.  We were completely sympathetic to the new job, but isn't it common courtesy to let us know?

Thursday, we have to be at the rehearsal, and D has his bachelor party that evening.  My bridesmaids and I come back home for the evening when D calls and says that his friend is going to come by our place that night to give us D's costume.  My bridesmaids immediately offer to stay up to wait for him as I'm pregnant and have trouble keeping my eyes open past 11pm.  They stay up until 2am, and they haven't seen him yet.  So they text D who tells them to go on to bed and he will tell his seamster to leave the outfit on the porch.  The next morning, the outfit was on the porch as promised, but I can tell my bridesmaids had stayed up late waiting for the outfit.  I'm so tempted by this point to look over the outfit, but I maintain the secrecy and keep it in the bag.

We drive down to the town where we are getting married.  This is a day before the wedding mind you, and D has arranged to do a fitting with his seamstress mother to make sure his outfit looks alright.  D later told me that his mother took one look at the jacket his friend made and cringes audibly.  For those who know how to sew with patterns, let me explain the problem.  The pattern for the sleeves consisted of two pieces for each sleeve, one front and one back piece.  In his haste, D's friend had sewn 2 front pieces together and attached it as a sleeve then 2 back pieces together for the other sleeve.  I did not see this atrocity, but I understood right away what a disaster that was.  To make matters worse, D had grabbed my sewing machine but forgot the power cord!  I felt so bad hearing about how she spend the afternoon hand stitching the seams back together to turn the coat into a vest.  Luckily, D called his sister who brought a sewing machine so his mother could finish the vest in a better manner.

D's mother really saved the day!  She rescued his outfit such that it looked like it was on purpose.  It wasn't exactly how he imagined, but D still looked like a dashing renaissance groom.

Reassuring Answers

23 weeks 6 days

We went to the doctor today about vomitting blood early yesterday morning.  I hadn't thrown up since then although the nausea was still pretty constant.  Luckily we got seen pretty soon after we arrived.

Much to our relief, my symptoms describe a bad case of acid reflux.  It means the blood is caused by stomach acid induced bleeding in my esophagus.  She described how during pregnancy that the muscles at the top of the stomach don't hold the acid in as easily.  We discussed a few options for medication, and we decided that we wanted to try over the counter antacids before we tried stronger anti-nausea medication that would make me sleepy.  She also suggested eating a milder diet with no fried or spicy foods.  We got some Zantac on the way home, and I'm going to stick with bland stuff for the rest of the week.

I was really happy with the doctor visit.  She was informative about the condition and medications, but she also put our minds at ease that this wasn't something serious (without making us feel like hypocondriacs).  She gave us the practical advice to go into the ER if I vomit a lot of blood, but talking to her made me feel like we were working together to solve this problem, not just being handed a prescription to blindly take.  Her checking the baby even though this issue wouldn't have affected him helped put me at ease even more.  I kinda hope she's the one on call when I go into labor.

So far, the Zantac has helped, but the real test will be when I go to bed.  Luckily I have a car and a cell phone should it become something more serious.  I'm going to take it easy foodwise and try not to overexert myself.

Wedding Update

We are less than 5 days away from the big day!  I've got a list of what all I need to pack (which I'm starting on tomorrow), most of the big complications seem worked out, and we've had a few moments of appreciating together the step we are about to take.  The weather is wonderfully mild these days too.  We ended up with extra tickets, but I put out a general announcement on facebook for people to claim them.  I'd prefer them to go to people instead of being wasted.

I'm going to be away from my computer after Friday, and I've got packing and last minute confirmations to do this week.  As such, unless there's a noteworthy event before the wedding, don't expect another post here until after the wedding.  Cya on Sunday!

A 2am scare

23 weeks 5 days

For the past month, I've had nausea in the evenings, especially after 9 or so.  I had read on a pregnancy forum about how some other women were having problems with milk and had similar symptoms, so I'd been trying to cut down on my milk intake lately, including yesterday.  I started feeling kinda off yesterday afternoon, but I didn't think it was more off than how it's been lately.

Sure enough, when 9pm came around, I got the nausea.  I tried napping in the recliner for a while, and it did help me push down the nausea enough to get some sleep.  At 1am I decided to try going to bed, but it just got worse while laying down.  By 2, I couldn't hold it in anymore and had to throw up.  It was all bright red tinged, and I knew it was blood, a good amount of it by the looks of it.

D had only just gone to bed, so he got up with me.  We were both scared to death that there would be something wrong with the baby.  I called the pager number for my OBGYN, and the doctor reassured me that I would be more lightheaded from blood loss before I lost enough to actually affect baby.  She advised that if I threw up again the same morning to go to the ER, but she said if I didn't lose anymore blood that I could get an appointment on Monday.  We were relieved that baby wouldn't be affected, but I had trouble getting my stomach to feel calm enough to even lay down again.

D did some google searching, and the cause could be anything from esophagus damage to a stomach ulcer.  He stayed up with me so I could have some company while we waited to see if I would be sick again.  I sent him to bed about 5:30am, but it took me another hour or so before I felt safe enough to try laying down.  I got maybe 3 hours of sleep on the couch, but even that wasn't consistant enough to feel much rested.

My stomach still seems to not be ready to make up its mind to calm down, but I was able to keep down some egg biscuits for breakfast.  We have to travel today to check on D's wedding outfit, but I'm going to take it easy once we get there.  I'll post again after the doctor's appointment tomorrow what they say about this.