Belly Pictures

Here are a few belly pictures since I have been slacking on my blog writing. I will post some updates soon, especially about our gender reveal party!

Trick-or-Treat

We had our 16 week appointment this week, on Halloween! It is so reassuring to go to our appointments and get to hear our baby's heartbeat. Everything went really smooth and I even gained some weight (at my last appointment I was the same weight as my previous appointment). We were able to schedule our gender ultrasound for the day before Thanksgiving! I am beyond excited to find out what we are having. We are planning a fun gender reveal party for our family and friends the day after Thanksgiving. More details to come later.

Halloween is always a fun holiday and I thought about trying to find a cute pregnant costume to wear. But I decided against it because Halloween was on a Thursday, we weren't going to any parties, and it was a lot of effort trying to decide. I did see a really cute shirt with skeleton bones and a skeleton baby that I wanted, but wasn't sure where to find it.

Because of the awful weather we had Thursday night, trick-or-treat was postponed until Saturday. I was excited to pass out candy for the first time in our new house. I was sure there would be a lot of neighborhood kids and I was looking forward to seeing all of their costumes. However, we only had 6 visitors for trick-or-treat. Grady and Ziva didn't mind, because they went crazy every time the doorbell rang and we had to keep them in the kitchen with a baby gate. But I was a little disappointed at the turn out. Another down side is that now we have a ton of candy that I have been too tempted to eat. And I'm not doing a very good job of resisting. I guess I can use this pregnancy as a little bit of an excuse to indulge a bit.

Here is my 16 week photo. Happy Halloween!

15 Weeks!

So I am a little late on writing my 15 week post. But I am officially 15 weeks pregnant as of last Saturday. My baby is the size of a pear and can blink! I think it's bones are also beginning to form! How crazy is that?! Oh and I have been officialy in the second trimester for a week already!

This past weekend we went home to visit our families and it was my grandmother's 84th birthday! So the whole family went out for dinner! It was great to see everyone. It was the first time I had seen most of my extended family since telling them we were expecting. Of course everyone is thrilled and had a ton of questions.

All of this running around is making me exhausted! Between traveling, sleeping in different places, and working, I am pooped! I need about a months worth of sleep to catch up what I lost. It never bothered me much to sleep somewhere else, but now it's getting harder and harder. At my parent's house we have to sleep on a pull-out couch/bed. I think I woke up more tired that when I went to sleep. Not only is it hard to sleep on, but then my neck and my back get kinks and I am miserable for the next few days. Even sleeping in my own bed is a chore sometimes. Our dogs like to sleep on our bed, which I don't normally mind, but now I like to have some extra room for my growing belly and to stretch my legs.

The only way to relieve my back and neck pain is to see my chiropractor. I started seeing a chiropractor when we lived in Texas and it helped so much with my headaches. Once we moved, I stopped going for awhile, but last January I couldn't take my migraines anymore and started going again. It has made a world of difference. However, pregnancy causes even more headaches, and there are less pain killers that I can take. . . so my chiropractor upped my appointments from once a month to every two weeks. I was a little hesitant to keep going once I was pregnant, but I found out that it can help relieve pregnancy pains and make for an easier labor and delivery. (We'll see how I feel about that during labor and delivery). So every two weeks I go to get my neck and back cracked and it feels amazing for about 3 days. Then all the pains come back. My chiropractor suggested that I get a massage to loosen up my muscles. I would love to get a massage, but my insurance doesn't cover it and it can be expensive.

I also think that my recently busy lifestyle and the stress from my job is making me tense up more and then my pregnant body just can't handle it like it used to. I hope that after this pregnancy, I can get back on track with less migraines and aches and pains. So for now, I will be trying prenatal yoga (I bought a DVD over a month ago, but never opened it), and trying to destress with other means . . .any ideas?

My Little Peach

This post was written when on October 15th, 2013:

I cannot wait to find out the gender of our baby. I am officially 14 weeks pregnant and have 6 more to go before our gender ultrasound. We have only had one ultrasound and that was at our first appointment at 8 weeks. Here it is:

According to all of my pregnancy app updates, our baby should be looking more like a baby and not so much like a blob. Even though we don't get to see our baby every visit, we get to hear the baby's heartbeat and that is amazing. It still amazes me that there is a baby in my belly. I am starting to show more, but I just feel like I am fat. I know other people that say they didn't start showing as early as I did and this makes me nervous that I am going to gain a ton of weight and be huge later on. A cashier actually asked me when I was due today and it totally threw me off guard.

But anyway. . .  according to my pregnancy apps, our baby is the size of a peach. It is exciting to read the developments of my baby. Apparently it can make faces this week. Of course all of it's organs are becoming fully developed as well.

Here is my 14 week belly picture!

Hangovers

This post was written on October 7th, 2013:

My life style before pregnancy consisted of going out and having a few drinks on the weekends, or enjoying a glass of wine with dinner after a hard day of work. I didn't think it would be hard to transition to not drinking, but at first it was a little difficult. Not because I was addicted to alcohol, but because social drinking was my lifestyle and I needed to change the way I thought about my weekend activities. After a few weeks it became easier. It was hard when we were keeping my pregnancy a secret and we would go out with friends who typically saw me drink. I tried to hide it by ordering virgin drinks, but it was pretty obvious. Once we spilled the beans to everyone, the pressure was off and I felt like I could enjoy myself more, even when my friends were drinking around me. Every once in awhile I will miss having a glass of wine with dinner, but overall it is definitely worth the sacrifice for my baby.

After a few weeks of not drinking, I started to ponder the idea that pregnancy symptoms are similar to hangover symptoms. It really hit me when we had some friends stay with us for the weekend. Followed by a night of heavy drinking, to my amusement, my husband and his friends woke up the next morning extremely hungover. Not only did I get to enjoy listening to them the night before making ridiculous comments and watching them act like fools, I got to relish in it the next day too. However, the night took a toll on my body as well. Staying out late after a busy day, made me feel like I was hungover! I was exhausted, my body hurt, and I felt sick to my stomach from not eating first thing in the morning. I tried to regain my strength, but all I wanted to do was sleep all day. So like the good pregnant woman that I am, I listened to my body and slept pretty much all day. It did help some, but I was still feeling the effects of my too busy weekend into the work week.

So even though, I have not had a sip of alcohol in 13 weeks, pregnancy can make you feel like you are hungover, especially if you try to do too much and don't listen to your body. So I have learned my lesson and have tried to take it easy, but there are going to be times when I am busy and do have to get a lot done, and will probably feel hungover.

I forgot to take my 13 week belly picture. . . I was going to take one of just the chalk board with a cute saying, but I've been busy and lazy. So maybe it will get posted on here. :)

Pregnancy AKA Whose Body Is This?

This post was written on October 1st when I was 12 weeks and 3 days pregnant. I had some technical difficulties getting it to post.

The idea of having a baby is the only GREAT thing about pregnancy. My ideas of being pregnant were ones that involved shopping for cute maternity clothes and decorating a nursery, not feeling so exhausted that I couldn't get out of bed. No one warned me about the extreme fatigue, breast tenderness, or constant feeling of nausea. Ok, ok, so a few people warned me, but I thought that would never happen to me! My pregnancy was going to be symptom free and wonderful. . . .NOT! But despite all the awful pregnancy symptoms, I am so excited to become a mom and meet my baby! Only 6 more months to go!

Since we were trying to have a baby, I was very aware of my body and certain symptoms. Every month I would wait anxiously until I could take a pregnancy test. Actually we were really lucky that it only took a few months. I had taken a pregnancy test on the first day the little fine print on the package tells you there is a 64% accuracy rate. It was negative. And actually I didn't "feel" pregnant at all. I felt great! Better than normal around that time of the month. Matt and I were headed home for the weekend and since there was a possibility I could be pregnant, I didn't want to drink but didn't want to look suspicious in front of our families and friends. So without telling Matt, and literally right before we were walking out the door, I slipped into the bathroom, graciously peed on a stick and. . . . surprise! It was a very faint line, but a line none the less!

We were so overwhelmed with excitement I don't even know what we did next. There was some jumping, crying, and screaming before we rushed out the door to visit out families. We were so happy that we were able to tell them that day!

However, there was already one pregnancy symptom brewing . . . breast tenderness. I already had this every month anyway so I didn't think much of it. Well..... pregnancy breast tenderness gets a ton worse than regular monthly hormonal breast tenderness. I couldn't sleep on my stomach for weeks and forget about changing clothes..... TORTURE! But once I was in my 8th week it started to get better, but hasn't totally gone away.

For a few weeks I felt like I had a lot of energy and was bouncing with joy. Then around 6 weeks it hit me like a ton of bricks. Just getting out of bed was a chore and forget being productive at work. My brain was foggy and I struggled to stay awake (not being able to have caffeine makes this a ton worse than I could ever have imagined). It took all my energy at work, that I usually fell asleep on the couch when I got home. Then I was in bed by 8:00 every night. I must say that this gets better too, but I still get tired if I try to do too much. Just going to the grocery store wears me out some days.

Another pregnancy symptom that I haven't had too much of is mood swings. I think that I have been pretty good about this, but I am sure if you ask Matt, he will tell you something different. I have been know to cry at lame commercials and watching Ellen puts me over the top! Matt will walk in on me balling my eyes out because someone won a 50" television. Then I start laughing because I am crying at the most ridiculous things, and then I am laughing and crying. That is just too much. I will admit that I have been a little more argumentative and defensive at times. And I don't think these emotions are going anywhere soon.

I have been one of the lucky ones that has not had much morning sickness. I had a little bit here and there but never actually got sick. I know some people who probably spent the entire first trimester with their head in the toilet who hate me right now. I did get nauseous when I didn't eat enough but as soon as I ate I felt better. Now what I was going to eat was a different story. I have the strangest food aversions.  I didn't want to eat vegetables, but only wanted pizza, macaroni and cheese, and anything starchy. This made meal planning difficult, especially since my aversions changed every day. But luckily, this seems to be getting better too.

I will be moving into the second trimester soon, and I am excited to get rid of some of the first trimester symptoms, but I am sure more symptoms will pop up.

School's in Session

It's hard to believe that it is almost the 2013-2014 school year and that I have completed one entire year as a school psychologist. I am not going to lie when I say last year was a rough one, probably the roughest that I've ever had, and there were days that I felt completely overwhelmed and unprepared. There were some days that I didn't want to come back to work and could not see the light at the end of the tunnel. Even though it was rough, I learned a lot about myself, the school district, and my capabilities. I am excited to say that I know this school year will be better. I know what to expect and I know how to prepare for it. Of course there will always be challenges and things that pop up that I am not prepared for, but hopefully being prepared for other things, can help minimize the stress (which usually looks like me running around like a chicken with its head cut off)!

Even though it was hard coming back to work and getting in the swing of things, I have already compiled a list of my evaluations for the year (significantly less than last year) and started working on social skills lessons for several groups that I plan on conducting. I have revamped our forms for Functional Behavior Assessments and Behavior Intervention Plans to make the process quicker and easier. In the next few days we have some trainings, which I am not too excited about, but at least it will get me out of my office (that I share with 8 other people and leaves little to the imagination in terms of confidential conversations). I plan to begin working on background information for my evaluation reports this year and as soon as school starts, I will begin testing students like my life depends on it. Actually, my life does depend on it, since this is where my paycheck comes from. If I get a head start on testing, I should be able to spend more time in classrooms, conducting consultations and working with students that need additional assistance. This will all make for a happier, calmer school year, that I know I will appreciate as well as the teachers and staff that have to put up with me.

With that being said, I feel like I can take on any challenge and am looking forward to positive changes this year! Bring it, 2013-2014!