C’mon…you know you want bragging rights… Join the group and submit your guess at the due date (and perhaps weight and length??…remember we’re going for basketball player here) at facebook.com — Joshua and Joanna’s Baby Pool

I am awake for the 4th night in a row at 3:15 am. This is the 2nd night in a row that instead of lying there awake in bed I’ve decided to go downstairs and eat, read, drink, write on the computer, whatever…

Since I haven’t blogged in quite awhile I thought I’d update the world on the, shall we say, highlights, of this pregnancy.

Let me start off with saying that of course this is all worth it. I can’t wait to meet the little guy that keeps jamming his butt or foot or whatever under my right rib cage. However, any lady who says that they LOVED being pregnant, they never felt better but when they were pregnant, etc, is either lying, or has forgotten all the, ah, joys, of pregnancy.

I have to tell you, I don’t love not being able to move at night because I’ve walked wal-mart 1 too many times that day, I don’t love lying in bed with my throat burning because I ate –anything– that gave me heartburn, I don’t love waddling everywhere I go because I am just so HUGE…and then having everyone I meet saying, ‘oh, but you’re not big at all!’…oh yeah? You try carrying this thing around all day and then let me know how you feel.

But the climax, the pinnacle of this whole thing is the kidney infection that I got and had to spend 4 days in the hospital. That’s the best part. Yah.

So I wake up one morning with a suspicion that I have a UTI -Urinary Tract Infection-. I called my doctor, I went in to pee in a cup (something else I can’t wait to not have to do every single week of my life) and to get meds to treat the infection. As soon as I get home and take the meds I throw up. Then I throw up again. And again. So I call my doctor again and the nurse says that if I don’t stop throwing up or the pain gets worse on one side or the other to go to the hospital so that they can check via blood tests to make sure that it isn’t a kidney infection. BTW, kidney infections can cause early contractions so that’s why it’s such a big deal.

Well the pain started to get worse…fast…only on my left side. Then I couldn’t move, get comfortable, or anything at all because of the pain. So we go to the hospital. Hospital just says you don’t have a kidney infection (they don’t think) and to wait until I can keep food down and send me home.

After not sleeping at ALL that night I wake up the next morning throwing up again. Now this time it’s been 12 hours since I took that awful pill they gave me so I know it’s not because of that that I’m throwing up. So I call the doctor. My doctor wasn’t on call that day so I get the brilliant man who was filling in. HA.

He tells me that I’m just sick…that I have a virus. I say, what about the pain on my left side that isn’t getting better but is getting worse? He says it’s just a virus, just drink gatorade and forget about the meds until I can keep something in my stomach. So there I am…so sick, throwing up every second, in excrutiating pain that won’t go away no matter what position I’m in and I can’t even take the meds to make the infection go away because I can’t keep anything down.

Did I mention that all of these symptoms are symptoms of a kidney infection that no one so far was willing to diagnose me with? Yup.

So the next day comes and I call again because at this point I can’t even keep water down and I think I’m getting dehydrated as my legs start cramping up. Not a good sign when you’re pregnant!! The doctor is again the brilliant man from the day before and he says the same thing…you just have a virus. I’m thinking…I am NOT that much of a baby! If this was a virus, ok, I can deal with that but the pain on my side is BAD! So I start to get a little hysterical on the phone and I say that I think I may have a kidney infection. He says but the pain would be on one side only and more in your back…and I say IT IS! That’s what I’ve been telling you! And you know what he says? Oh…then you should come in the hospital right away.

GOOD GRIEF.

So I arrive and once he comes in to check on my by pounding on my back by my kidneys and I double over in pain…he admits me.

Let me just say that I REALLY hope that he isn’t the doctor on call when I go into labor. I think I’d rather have Josh deliver at home.

Seriously.

aug 31 08 004

Originally uploaded by harandra

Well, Josh picked our carrots today. I guess they just decided to grow wider instead of deeper…

Plus, our zucchini just keeps growing and growing. We’ve probably had about 20 so far…

Josh and Jack

Originally uploaded by harandra

Now just picture this pic with a little boy in his lap with a baseball. How cute.

My sister thinks I should post for posterity (and for family members not able to share in all the glory) all my pregnancy joys and, yes, woes.

Today is a woe. I HATE heartburn. It makes your throat literally burn. (i know, hence the name). I mean, i eat a cookie. ONE cookie and I sit in agony for an hour at least. Then I eat another cookie…they’re that good!

I made tomato sauce for tonight and I know that i will regret it since it has acid in it from the tomatoes and spiciness because that’s how i like my sauce. Sigh.

Also, they say not to sit if you’re pregnant in 1 position for more than 30 minutes for the circulation in your legs. I believe that would be a good thing to not do, but how can I help it when I have to get payroll finished??? So I get up to get a drink so that I’m not sitting for long periods of time (plus my legs do fall asleep) and then because I drank a thimbleful of liquid I have to pee. And then I walk back to the computer and I have to pee again.

I guess it is easy to not make yourself sit for more than 30 minutes. I’m lucky if sometimes I make it to 30.

Last night we had a thunderstorm and as some of you may recall, we have a scared little beagle living in our house. Harper is TERRIFIED of thunder, lightening, and fireworks. So as a precautionary measure (since i didn’t want to be getting up in the middle of the night when my dog starts crying behind the sunroom door) we let Harper sleep with us in our bed. This is never an ideal thing because 2 people and 2 dogs (Jack sometimes sleeps on the bed) manage to make even a king bed seem small and cramped.

So it began. Harper at first settled in and started to doze off. So did I. Josh was already asleep. The the craziest thing started. Harper started what I can only describe as ’snatching’ at imaginary bugs. I say imaginary because nothing was buzzing or flying around our bedroom last night. He did this for awhile before I finally got the bright idea to at least take off his collar so at least the constant snatching wasn’t also making jingling noises. I got so frustrated and I finally banished him from my side of the bed and told him if he didn’t stop then i was banishing him from the bedroom altogether. I’m not sure how much a beagle understands but he did go over and monopolize Josh’s side of the bed for the remainder of the night. I guess the thunder really did put the fear of God into him.

Anyway, here’s a video I took this morning as he is still doing the snatching. Anyone have any ideas why he’s doing this? Pay close attention especially at the end of the video as he really starts in on the ‘bugs’ during the last few seconds of the clip. Also, there isn’t a problem with the sound, you can faintly hear him snapping at things but I promise he wasn’t barking at all.

The girls in my small group refer to the odd ultrasound images of baby genitalia as looking either like a turtle or a hamburger for, respectively, boy or girl parts. Hence the title for this blog post. If you think about it, it’s a much nicer way of refering to the very different parts we all have, ahem, ‘down there’.

We visited the ultrasound technician yesterday (YAH!) for the long awaited ‘unveiling’ of the little peanut to see what kind he would be. And, yes, it is a ‘he’. Now I won’t ever feel guilty for referring to it as a he and not a she. As Josh put it, I don’t think any technician has ever seen a grown man cry before when seeing that it was, indeed, a boy. On the other hand, i don’t know who can see your little baby swim around and not get teary-eyed. I know i was mopping up my cheeks while staring at this little face on the monitor.

How amazing. I’m so excited!

Ok, so i’m beginning the journey. Since Deb suggested i write about it, here goes. For posterity.

Thus far it hasn’t been the romantic, ‘ah…a new life is growing inside me’ thing that i thought it would be. Well, not entirely. Aside from the morning sickness that is NOT morning at all it is beginning to be a bit wondrous. We went to the first doctor’s visit last week and got our first picture. The heart was beating (hence flash of light flickering) and the little peanut was swimming around. I’ll admit, it was much more amazing than i would have thought, if i had thought of it at all. I knew that we would get a picture, but what does that mean? I mean, i never thought, oh, so we’ll get to see the little peanut for the first time or anything.

Here ‘he’ is. Yes, i know, it may very well be a girl, but, oddly enough, i think of it as male in nature. Or little Mortimer, if you will.

Note the notes. For reference. For those of you without medically trained sonogramific eyes.

Yes, you guessed it. Joshua and I will be expecting our first baby around the middle of this November. We just officially announced it to the world, so, here you go. Yah!