Decisions, decisions

I seem to have forgotten what life is like without constant nausea. I have vague recollections of exercising, going into my kitchen, cooking meals, enjoying food, standing for more than 10 minutes consecutively. But those all seem like dreams now. Being nauseous is the worst. I feel like I would be so much more excited about my new baby if I didn't feel so lousy all the time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm way excited! I just think I would be more so without the poorly named "morning sickness."

In other news, the doctor called and all is well and good in the baby department. All the tests I did came out with a big fat smiley face so hurrah!

As pregnancies go, at some point this child will have to come out and surprisingly enough there are a lot of options in this area: natural or epidural? hospital, birthing center, or at home? should I induce? Should I get a c-section? Midwife, doctor, doula or all three? And lots of other things I haven't thought of having never done this before.

SO to correct my ignorance I have been doing my fair share of research. Mama Birth is a great resource (the link is on the right sidebar) and I just re-watched two documentaries: Pregnant in America and The Business of Being Born. And I have to say, I'm leaning toward a home birth.

You may be thinking that I have some sort of pregnancy insanity but do a little research before you judge. The hospital is not your friend. They take patients. And quite frankly, when you're pregnant you don't need to be fixed, you're not sick (unless you're throwing up in your first trimester) and therefore you should be treated as a client and not a patient.

I believe that I should be allowed to labor for 30 hours if I need to and not have a doctor pressing me to get a c- section so he can be home for dinner. There are a lot of steps between the one and the other but you get my drift. A hospital is a business much like a restaurant. Restaurants want tables filled and emptied as fast as hospitals want beds filled and emptied. They can't make money if they're full.

Now that being said, I am not done with my research and my mind is not set. Obviously this kind of birth is not for everyone. What happens if you're birthing at home and something happens that could hurt mother or baby?? I guess that all depends on the midwife's skills and how close I live to a hospital. I think I'll get a midwife and a doctor and if my pregnancy is high risk I'll just take my midwife with me to the hospital.

Anyway, I am excited about all this and I'm excited to learn more and make the best decision for my family. And pray a lot about it. And soon enough I'll be doing research on whether to use cloth diapers, disposable, or EC (look that one up). I love research, It makes me giddy!

There's really a baby in there!

Up until this point I have had a sinking suspicion that I'm not really pregnant. That suspicion has only gotten stronger since we told our families that we're expecting. I was so nervous that now that we had made the announcement to the world, it would turn out that my body was just making those pregnancy symptoms since I wanted to be pregnant so bad. Well today, I learned that those three pregnancy tests I took weren't lying.

I had my first doctor's appointment today! It started off by the dreaded, "Here, pee into this cup." Of course the one time that I'm being asked to pee, my bladder is empty. Some how I mustered up a little something and in the process, peed all over my hand.  Does anyone ever do those things without getting pee all over themselves?? But that pee led my doctor to assure my that, yes I am pregnant.

I spent the rest of the day getting poked and prodded and probed. I feel so violated. I've been feeling sharp pains in my stomach which I read were due to my uterus growing, but the doctor seemed a little concerned, so she sent me to get some blood work and an ultrasound.

Unfortunately I had to get both the blood work and the ultrasound at two different places (also different from my doctor's office). But before that, my doctor sent me to get some possible remedies for this insatiable nausea. So instead of filling the prescription my doctor gave me, since I want to try and not use any drugs, I get to wear these cute little wristbands:

I'm lying. They're not cute. Mine are black and they look like sweatbands and I look like a tard and I'm not even sure they're working. They're made for sea sickness or motion sickness but in theory they should work for morning sickness too. The idea is that the little white plastic thing pushes a pressure point (acupressure) that relieves nausea. I think my nausea has gone from an 8 to a 3 but it's still not gone. We'll see if I'm able to go to work tomorrow.

The doctor also said that it's good to eat whatever sounds good to me, because I need food. And then she turned to Chris and said, "So give her whatever she wants."

So after our appointment, we went to McDonald's and I helped myself to a double cheeseburger and fries, which actually sounded good at the time.

Then we headed to get blood work, and after that the hospital for my ultra sound. I've never had an ultra sound so that was an experience all on it's own. For the most part the technician was looking at my uterus and organs and whatnot, nothing too interesting. Chris was absolutely enthralled which made her laugh because she wasn't looking at anything.

But then she turned the screen so I could see, and what I saw was the cutest little blob I have ever seen and a flickering spec that turned out to be the heartbeat.

There is it! My cute little blob!

Okay, I know there isn't much to look at, but to me it's incredible! That little blob is actually a growing baby, in my belly!!!

I'm just praying that everything is okay and that the doctor has good news when she looks at all my lab results. I want that little blob to keep growing into a cute, strong, healthy baby.