Hello week 7, again.

Week 7 has come in with a vengeance. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I ended up having to get the doctor to call in an anti-nausea medicine to keep things down. First it was out with the oatmeal, then the ginger ale and saltines and finally the Popsicle. Thankfully today, I kept down toast, nilla wafers and finally some very yummy mashed potatoes courtesy of Super Husband/Future Super Dad, Stephen.

Despite the miserable feeling of keeping nothing down and being even more fatigued because of it, we've had some fun times talking about baby's upcoming arrival. Saturday evening, as Stephen and I have decided we want a jungle/Lion King themed nursery, Stephen got a kick out of thinking about a future Christmas card on the edge of a lip in the Palo Duro Canyon holding our child out like Simba. We were thinking about channeling our current President for inspiration.

 If you've never heard Stephen's opening scene impression before, trust me, it's pretty dead on. Add this fun little musing to sitting with the Wells who have confessed to thinking about the Lion King as Stephen presides and he had a pretty hard time holding it together presiding on Sunday morning. I looked over at Megan and asked her if she made a face, but really I think he tickled himself and refused to look at us. <Which if you've ever seen me get tickled in church, that was a well played move on his part.>

The next night we mused a little more...Always keeping adoption in the back of our mind for our family, I confessed to Stephen that I now understand why the biological argument of loving a biological child more has absolutely no ground. As far as I'm concerned, biologically speaking this kid's not doing itself any favors. I'm throwing up, and if not, I feel like it, I want to do nothing but sleep, my skin is breaking out and thanks to this medicine I'm getting more constipated by the minute! (TMI!!!)...I mean kid, get yourself together because right now, having someone do the hard work next time sounds fantastic!

Ok ok, momma breakdown aside, we are looking forward to our little jellybean. It will be fun to see if it gets my pale white scotch-irish freckled skin, or Stephen's tan European skin. <For the sake of yearly Friedrich family beach trip, I'm hoping for his skin! That or between the two of us, we'll buy stock in sunscreen.> His blue eyes, or my hazel, his static mohawk baby hair or my next to nothing blond hair from when I was little. His structured nose or my bulb of a nose that wrinkles when I laugh too hard, his height or my....lack there of.

So despite the rough week, we're still very excited to what's to come, both so I'll feel better, but also because I can't wait for this little trouble maker to make it's way to the world!

First meeting, hello Rice.

Today, we had our very first meeting with our tee-niny little grain of rice. That's right, our baby is the size of a grain of rice which means we really are around six weeks pregnant. If you're calculating from our previous emergency room data, that means we really were only about three weeks pregnant at the hospital.

There were many great things confirmed today. One, although we couldn't really see much, we did figure out that our rice grain is in the right place (as in my uterus and not my tubes). Two, we saw the littlest flicker of a heartbeat thanks to my doctor's expert positioning skills with the sonogram machine. Three, our new due date is June 10th.

We were a little dissapointed that we're two weeks later, but decided it sounded more than it really is because it pushed us into a new month. On the other hand, both families will officially be out of school, so we're hoping this means family can get into town in ample time to be here for Baby Friedrich's grand arrival.

On the other side of things, this mom is so thankful to have seen proof of life today because so far, pregnancy is nothing to be excited about. Pregnancy fatigue is a different kind of tiredness that I never knew exisisted. If gives me new prospective for people who deal with chronic fatigue and how easy it is to get discouraged with it. Although I haven't yet thrown up, I feel like I should probably 80% of the day. I have to say, so far the only good thing about pregnancy is the sex that started it. (Sorry if that's TMI for the family members, but it's no secret how babies are made - and if it is, you're too young to be reading this...:-)

All in all today's appointment was a good thing because I saw proof of life that will make this all worth it in the end. It's hard to believe we all started so incredibly tiny. In theory we all learn about it in anatomy but seeing that little bitty heart beat that lives inside my tummy makes gives a totally different perspective. My little grain of rice is so cute already!

In other news, Happy 30th Birthday to Uncle John!

My brother who hates that he's turning thirty will be an uncle of a 4 month old on his 31rst birthday, so I promise unclehood to be the best part of his thirties!

Two Tennesse Texans and a...Texan?

Say WHAT??

Well, that's pretty much what our response to the ER doctor  was when he told us we were pregnant. Oh, it wasn't that we weren't trying, we were. It's just that was the second visit to the emergency room for ovarian cysts and 2 blood test at LEAST 4 urine tests, an ultra sound and a CT scan from doctor's offices and let's not forget to mention Stephen and I could buy stock in Target's "up and up" brand just because of the number of pregnancy tests I'd used.

So you can imagine that while I was writhing in pain from bursts ovarian cysts and they asked me if I was pregnant I shot them several dirty looks. We had been trying and I had already resigned myself that to go through this much pain, there's no way I've held on to a baby (not to mention this is two weeks post menstrual. <if that grosses you out, you may not want to read for the next nine months - or - ever.>) I had grieved over this "not being our time" and we weren't going to try till later after Christmas, because who wants to be in the final trimester of pregnancy in the dead of a Texas summer in hundred degree heat? So amidst my pain and our frustration at no one really taking my abdominal pain seriously, I think we both blinked and let our mouth hang for a little bit when the ER doc dropped the baby bomb.

Naturally, we were both a little scared because pain and pregnancy this early in the game are not good things. So as we were wisked off for yet another round of ultrasounds, we were told that a blood level would be run.

<Fyi, I'm leaving out a lot of detail about what Friday night/Saturday morning looks like in the BSA ER, like the shirtless guy that got beat up in the parking lot because he was running a way from people "he didn't know why" were chasing him, the cop detail that surrounded him, and the stabbed lady that was later intebated when we got back from ultra sound. If you want to hear about that exciting bit you'll have to ask, there is way too much else to tell.>

It took forever to hear back from anyone, as you might imagine in the ER at that time of day, so in the mean time prayers were said, Fernando Ortega tried his best to lull me into an ER room sleep, and we waited, somewhat impatiently to hear the confirmation of this so called "pregnancy".

The Doc came out and told us our  hCG level (pregnancy hormone) was a 99 <Great, out of a 100, right?> To which we were clueless what that meant. We were explained that it was a low number which could mean I was miscarrying, so we wanted the number to grow. By the way, this girl who was two weeks late was only 2 weeks pregnant, explain that - especially given the ban from sex we'd been put on since all this cyst stuff started? <Don't worry, I will.>

Now, stop right there because a girl dreams about things when she's little - one is getting married. After that, she dreams about how she's going to drop the baby news to her parents and suprise the heck out of them that they're finally getting grandbabies. Now forget all that because I ended up freaking out and calling my mom and laying it all out there. If anyone knows what becoming a mother is like and the emotional rollercoaster, it's well...mom. And at the end of the day, this new mom just needed her mommy. <Yep, totally feeling capable of raising my own child, why do you ask?>

As any good mom would do, my mom kept calm and told me a bunch of things I can't remember that seemed to comfort me and offered prayers, and because that meant so much, Nancy and Jim were soon called in on the prayer chain as well.

By Monday, the number of our hCG (which we later found out would be in the hundreds of thousands by full term...so much for 100...) had jumped to 321.4. We felt a little more confident exchanged hugs and tentative congrats with each other but still felt mostly too scared to be excited. We weren't really sure what that meant and the whole 2 weeks pregnant thing freaked us out a bit.

Tuesday morning, we arrived at our new OBGYN office (which is another store in itself), to a friendly new NP who threw all kinds of "swag" at us immediatly. Pre-natal vitamin samples, a tri-mester by tri-mester journal, FitPregnancy magazine and a whole other host of "welcome to Parenthood" propaganda. Like it was just assumed we new we were having a baby and everything was going to be ok.

Through the course of the apointment, we were assured that my ovarian cysts were likely just an unfortunate event that occured right around the time I was supposed to find out I was pregnant. Since the pain was subsiding, the risk of a tubal pregnancy was down and by all accounts, we are 6 weeks into a healthy pregnancy.

What? Six weeks, yes. OH, yeah you see, the medical community measures to the point of conception or something like that. The REST of the world including the OB world measures pregnancy from the date of your last missed period, August 20th. Which if you do the math, by the time this hits the world-wide-web, we are 7 weeks along.

I think it took us a couple days to really soak it in, and I'm not entirely sure it has at this point. After talking about when to tell everyone you always hear "wait till 12 weeks to make sure you don't niscarry". Well, quite frankly, my baby has lived through radiation and narcotics for pain at this point, so I'm pretty sure he/she is as strong as ever, but I also just can't seem to understand the reasoning. If I miscarry this child, I certainly don't want to have to grieve about it by my lonesome. What's the need for secrecy, especially since miscarraiges are so common, we're talking 20% of all pregnancies!

Now that all the excitement is starting to settle in, we're getting used to the idea, and Stephen is doing fall youth gathering next weekend, we have decided to tell the congregation. Because I just couldn't wait any longer.

I'm not sure what that will be like. I do know from my wrist problems that everyone and their uncle from tim-buk-tu has a cure for this or that. I'm not terribly looking forward to that part, or the judgement that may come from choosing this over that, the rolled eyes when we mention cloth diapering or any other thing people may find naive. I am NOT at all looking forward to the fact that suddenly people feel it's ok to touch a pregnant womans belly because when I got pregnant my personal bubble seemed to just dissapear. But mostly, I'm really looking forward to this incredibly supportive congregation that loves us, cares for us and will be JUST as excited as we are.

And so as the chaos of the baby annoucnment is about to insue, I have three things to say.

1. THANKS BE TO GOD!
2. Sorry Mr. Cat, you're about to become a little less cute in this house hold!
3. May 27, 2013.