A bit of background... Part 2

Before we went to our first doctor's appointment, I had a dream, that we were having twins... Maybe that's more of a nightmare ;-D So, with all of those comments and then my dream I was worried that the ultrasound was going to show more than one baby!! The doctor was really good about describing what we were looking at during the ultrasound and he confirmed that there was only 1 baby. He then said that he needed to look at other structures and when he panned around he said, "Did I speak too soon?" My heart flipped - it looked like I there was another beating heart!! But then he said no - it was the same one just at a different angle...thank goodness! Although, it would've been really cute to have the 'twin sheets', but one baby is more than enough! Nelson has a very sensitive stomach… He sometimes has to leave the room when we watch ER because it’s making him ill! He actually felt nauseous during the ultrasound! I think that it was more that he only had an apple to eat that day and not the ultrasound and the thought of twins. It was also determined that the due date would be January 21, 2005!! This is one of the 8 week ultrasound pictures. It is upside down because I think it’s easier to see that it’s a baby. The cool thing about this picture is that the umbilical cord looks like a little halo at the back of the baby’s head… Our little angel!!

After this ultrasound I felt much more confident about the pregnancy and I began telling more people about the pregnancy. I suffered some morning sickness, but I never got so nauseous that I threw up. It was the strangest thing to learn to eat when I felt sick. The worst part was it was like my internal organs were already rearranging and my stomach couldn’t hold as much food. Because of that I couldn’t eat as much as I normally do and I lost about 6 lbs during the first trimester.

The pregnancy went very well. I never really felt any different than I normally do. In the mornings I would have to feel my belly just to make sure I was still pregnant because I felt so normal. I kept working in the lab doing experiments and writing papers. I was doing ridiculous time course experiments where I had to take pictures or harvest cells every 3 hours for 24 hours. On those days I would stay at school overnight (because I live so far away) and sleep for a few hours between time points. I started feeling the baby move when I was about 17 weeks along. As the pregnancy progressed those movements got MUCH stronger and MUCH more often. Toward the end you could see his foot just about sticking out of my belly!!! Looking back maybe I should’ve not kept such odd hours and Xander would be a better sleeper now… interesting thought. Before the 20 week ultrasound we had talked about whether the baby was a boy or girl. We were 60/40 for a boy. I always wanted to have a boy because I feared that I would have a girl that was all prissy and into pink and I wouldn’t know what to do with her. I liked little boys clothes better and just hoped that it was a boy. But truth be told I actually was ok with the idea of it being a girl… which really surprised me. I truly just wanted a healthy baby; I was fine with a boy or girl. When the technician said that it was a boy I looked over at Nelson and he had the goofiest grin on his face. It was the same goofy grin that he had when he tried on the wedding ring that would become his. Men are so silly sometimes. ;-D

Here’s a picture from the 20 week ultrasound.

It was pretty funny that just before the technician captured this image the baby was sucking his thumb and as he was pulling his hand away from his face he had his thumb and forefinger out making the loser sign. Nelson and I joked that we thought that it wouldn’t be until he was a teenager that he’s be calling us losers. ;-D Now that we knew it was a boy we started thinking about what we were going to name him. We came up with his name pretty quickly and easily, but we decided that we didn’t want to tell anyone until he was born. We wanted it to be a surprise. That really annoyed some people. Anyway, Nelson is named after his father but with a different middle name. Around his family he goes by his middle name. We wanted to continue the tradition and so we named the baby Nelson but with a different middle name to distinguish between all the Nelsons. We call him Xander. We like the name Alexander because he can choose from so many nicknames, one of which is Al, which is one nickname that my dad has. So he is sort of named after both grandfathers and his dad!!

The next big event of the pregnancy was the 4D ultrasound that we had when I was 29 weeks. It was on my birthday, too! Because the placenta was anterior it kept getting in the way of the pictures, but we did get 2 really cute ones. You can really see how tightly packed he was in there. Xander had his tongue sticking out the whole time. Surprisingly, he wasn’t very active during the session. Here are those pictures…

The remaining weeks of the pregnancy I finished writing the rough draft manuscript to my second paper, working on my presentation for a committee meeting where I was given the go ahead to write (and do some more experiments… that’s another story), and starting to figure out what I needed to include in my dissertation. We also had a baby shower given by the people at my school (the church baby shower ended up being after Xander was born), professional maternity pictures taken (I’ll post those another day when I get them scanned in… they turned out AWESOME), toured the 2 hospitals that I could deliver at, at took a childbirth class. Nelson was able to make it through the birth videos without getting sick or leaving!!! We also decided that we would like to have a doula at the birth and she was the greatest!!! I’ll talk more about that in the birth story…

I think that this sums up the pregnancy pretty well. I’m sure that I’ll think of other things as time goes by and I’ll post them when I do. It really was an uneventful (up until a few days before delivery) and rather easy pregnancy!! I really enjoyed being pregnant except for the EXCRUCUATING heartburn and horrible taste I had in my mouth the first and third trimesters… Thank goodness for milk for the heartburn and Dubble Bubble bubble gum-- it was the only thing that got rid of the bad taste, but they were thankfully gone the instant I delivered Xander.