"It looks like a foot..."

There really isn't much to update this week - same old stuff, different week!  I'm still nauseated all the time, and my sense of smell has helped contribute to that lovely side effect on a minute by minute basis!  The recliner I'm sitting in right now had something spilled on it (hubby won't 'fess up!) that smells God-awful, but no amount of Febreeze will get rid of it!  I think Adam might have done this on purpose to have total control of the recliner for the next 7 months...sneaky!

The mood swings are a little better, but this may be a better question to ask Adam!  I'm crying over everything though.  Pamper commercials are the absolute worst, and there is a Special Olympics one right now that makes me bawl every time.  Maybe all this crying will help me from having to pee so much...or is that just wishful thinking? :-/

I had some more spotting in week 7, but the nurses seem to think everything is still okay!  They said some women just have unexplained spotting during the first trimester.  I told a few friends this and they in turn told me they knew someone that spotted all 9 months...if that's the case with me, this is going to be a VERY long pregnancy!!

We had an appointment the day after I started spotting, so that was comforting.  We got to see the little peanut again and hear the heartbeat, which is now at 147!  Below is the sonogram picture we took home from the appointment.  I can see it right away, but it took others some convincing (i.e., my mother: "it looks like a foot"), but if you look closely at the blob (baby!) to the left of the inside of the sac, you can see at the top: the head, complete with eye, nose, and chin!, the two little arm-nubs sticking out, and then at the bottom, the 'tail'!

This past Friday (May 27th) I was 8 weeks, which means the lil' peanut is now the size of a raspberry! 

                           
Your baby is growing like mad, putting on about a millimeter every day and continuing to straighten out in the trunk. Though you can't feel it yet, baby is moving those little arms, legs and (now only slightly) webbed fingers and toes like crazy. 


Quick side note: completing a baby registry for showers is crazy-overwhelming!  I haven't started it yet (way too early for that craziness!), but my mother-in-law wants to buy our stroller so I had to let her know which one we wanted early on in case there are sales.  Just trying to decide on a stroller was much more stressful and time-consuming than deciding on dishes or bed sheets like we had to for our wedding registry!  We spent four hours at Bed Bath & Beyond when we did our wedding registry, so I can only imagine the hours that will go into this!  Just thinking about it makes me want to cry! ;)

Week 6: Symptoms x 100,000,000

I can barely keep my eyes open long enough to find my computer, let alone write a blog posting, so this might be short and sweet!  Obviously the pure and utter exhaustion has fully set in!  I come home from work and nap until dinner and then usually go to sleep for the night shortly afterwards.  I've also become quite the light sleeper as well...just ask my husband who has been forced to sleep in the second bedroom on an air mattress the whole week due to his snoring...poor guy. 

Speaking of poor guy, the mood swings are also in full gear...have to love those raging hormores :-/  The tiniest thing gets on my last nerve these days.  For example, as I'm sitting here typing this post I have my windows open and all I can hear is this SUPER annoying woman (or man?) laughing outside, and it is possibly the worst laugh I've ever heard...ever.  I'm about half a second away from yelling out the window to tell her/him to knock it off. 

And the lovely nausea is here 24/7 now.  I haven't thrown up yet, knock on wood.  But I did find a semi-cure to keep the spins and God-awful feeling at bay - http://www.biobands.com/ - I HIGHLY recommend these to anyone with morning (all day!) sickness or motion sickness - they're amazing!  I only take mine off to shower now.  It works using accupressure - not sure if that's what's actually doing the trick or if my brain just thinks that's the case; either way...I'm in love with this ugly little bracelet!

Oh, and I'm peeing.  A lot.  Like, all the time.

I almost forgot!!  We got to hear the heartbeat last week!  Since I'm still seeing the IVF clinic for my appointments I get to do things more often and earlier than most normal pregnancies - no complaints here!  We got to see the little peanut again...looking more like a grain of rice this time though!  And the heartbeat was a strong and healthy 112 bpm!  We have another appointment this upcoming Monday and we'll get to see and hear the heartbeat again! 

As of tomorow I'll be 7 weeks (time is CRAWLING!!).  I forgot to post the fruit/food picture for week 6, but it was the size of a sweet pea...how cute!   Below is the fruit of the week this week! :) 

                                                  
                          
Baby's brain -- both hemispheres! -- is growing fast, generating about 100 new cells every minute. Arms and legs are emerging as joints start to form, and a permanent set of kidneys (baby's third!) is now in place.

Hard to think that it's only the size of a blueberry...yet I swear I'm already showing; that's not fair!  I'm sure I'm just bloated from another lovely symptom of pregnancy: constipation...ugh.  I can't wait to actually get a real baby-bump so people can stop looking at my bloated stomach and wonder to themselves, "is she already showing, or was she always this fat?!"

Well, I'm off to squeeze in a small nap before the husband gets home with dinner!  I'll probably dream about 'going Sybil' on my obnoxious neighbor!

And the worrying begins...only another, ehh...rest of my life, right?!

I honestly can say that I didn't think this would turn into a pregnancy blog so soon after I started it as an infertility blog!  I'm not complaining though!  I wish our luck and ease through this process to anyone out there going through the same thing.  I've heard so many stories of it going both ways (as we all have! "my aunt's neighbor's cousin's daughter..." Ugh.) and I wish all of you only the best in your journey!

All that being said, I'm doing well and am currently 5 weeks 5 days preggers!  I'm feeling pretty good other than not being able to sleep more than 3-4 hours a night, my back aching all the time, exhausted 24 hours a day, my hips throbbing (not sure why that is happening so early!), my overactive sense of smell that has started triggering my gag reflex (although I think anyone would gag at left over Little Caesar's pizza in the trash!), and the nausea that comes and goes as it pleases.  Yeah, other than that, I feel great! ;)  I'm just thankful I haven't actually puked...yet. There is nothing in this world I despise more than vomiting.  I would take a migraine headache for a week straight than ever having to puke again.

So as I'm sure you've noticed, the blog picture this week is a positive pregnancy test.  Yes, I had my positive results confirmed by the doctor's office through a blood test...and yes, I went out and bought a home pregnancy test after that!  I have been waiting forever to see one of those damn things turn positive, you better believe it that I proudly walked through Fertile Myrtle Target and bought one!  As soon as I got home I took it and it turned positive immediately!  Even though I knew it was going to, I still was a little nervous, but so completely and utterly excited to see that 'up and down' line form!! 

We had our first ultrasound earlier this week as well!  You can't see much - just a black spot.  We said it kind of looked like a peanut, so that's where the nickname for this blog and our future baby came from!  That black blob is just the gestational sac, so no baby yet, but we'll hopefully see the lil' peanut in our next one.

And what would becoming a mother be without freaking out and worrying to death?!  I began worrying the minute I heard I was pregnant, but nothing prepared me for what happened yesterday, to say the least. I had been cramping all morning and when I went to the bathroom that afternoon I saw the one thing no pregnant woman EVER wants to see...blood.  I flipped.  I called the doctor right away and they got me in for the next morning (today).  I wanted to be seen at that very moment, but seeing as how they were only 30 minutes away from closing and I'm probably not the first woman that has called them hysterical, I decided I could probably wait until the morning.  So after a very long night with no sleep we went in this morning and everything looked great; the gestational sac doubled in size since Monday and my hcg levels are now over 5000.  They think the spotting might be from my progesterone supplements irritating my cervix, and the cramping might be implantation cramping still.  So I'm just taking it easy and relaxing for the next couple of days.  Unfortunately, I am all caught up on True Blood now, so I'm extremely bored!

I'm going to try to update at least once a week so everyone can keep up on my progress and so I can vent about all my lovely symptoms I'm having!  I'll also include what size the baby is compared to a piece of food and what stage of development it's at (this is from thebump.com)...thanks to my girlfriend Stefanie for the idea that I stole from her blog! :)  So this week, our little peanut is the size of an apple seed...how cute!

                        
"Your embryo (looking kind of like a tadpole) is starting to form major organs (heart, kidney, liver, stomach) and systems (nervous, circulatory, digestive). Baby's presence in your uterus triggers production of hCG (the hormone detected by pregnancy tests)... which triggers production of other hormones like estrogen and progesterone... which trigger all those great symptoms you've probably been noticing!"

So again, thank you for all the kind words and wishes on here and my Facebook page!  Keep it up, because if this spotting keeps up I'll need something to keep me sane and grounded!

Drum Roll Please......

I haven't been able to sleep lately; surprise, surprise, but last night I was actually able to get some solid z's.  I was having a crazy vivid nightmare (not about vampires as one might think!) so when I woke up I made myself stay awake so I didn't fall back into it...looking back, reading news updates about Osama Bin Laden probably didn't help with falling back asleep peacefully!  When I finally did conk back out I had a dream that I dug through my bathroom trash and found that useless pregnancy test from a week or so ago.  I re-peed on it and it turned...positive!  I woke up pretty soon after that and just knew I was pregnant.  I haven't had any 'feelings' like that this whole two weeks, actually quite the opposite. I figured there was no way we'd get lucky enough for this to take the first time. 

I woke up this morning almost sick to my stomach with anxiety.  Every time I thought about getting that phone call after I went in for the blood test my stomach just dropped.  The nurses at the office commented multiple times about how pale I looked (I told them I'm always this pasty, so not to worry), but I think they still thought I might follow suit with my husband and pass out, as they were asking me questions to keep me distracted as the needle went in...I love my nurses :)  They said they'd call me as soon as they got the results; just a few hours....which felt like DAYS!

I kept myself occupied with a girlfriend of mine after the appointment, as I knew I'd go insane if I just went home and did nothing (this might have been a great opportunity for my house to be cleaned though!).  We were at lunch when I got 'the' phone call.  I think my nurse enjoyed teasing me a little bit with, "Hi Jade, this is Carla....with the doctor's office....I have your test results.....(very long pause, or so it seemed!)....you're pregnant!"  With a mouth-full of french fries, I immediately starting crying and semi-hyperventilating.  Carla told me that I could call her back later because I was probably going to forget everything she was about to tell me with the details regarding my levels and appointments. She was right...I called back about an hour later!

So I'm 4 weeks along, 5 weeks on Friday the 6th!  The math on that doesn't make much sense to me, but I'm trusting the doctors know what they're talking about!  So that puts our due date at January 6th.  We'll find out if we're having one or two sometime next week hopefully, once they do the first ultrasound, and then we'll hear the heartbeat(s) the following week!  A possible clue to there being two:  my hcg levels are pretty darn high; 283.  My nurse told me when she was pregnant with her son her levels were 38.  So I asked if that was a predictor to twins or not, and she said it's possible, but she's seen women with high levels have a single as well.  But...my crazy 're-pee-on-an-old-pregnancy-test' dream last night must have included a pregnancy test from the future, because it showed 2 positive lines, and in my dream that meant it was twins...so we'll see!  Maybe Adam should head over to a casino in the near future ;)

Thank you all again for the support and kind words on here and my facebook wall!  I knew I had great friends and family, but you've all proven yourself to be quite an amazing bunch!  Adam and I really appreciate it and love you all dearly!  I suppose I'll be changing the name of this blog soon, as I seemingly beat infertility...so yeah....Screw you, infertility...I WON!! :)