Here I am at 22 weeks along (5-1/2 months for those non-week counters) and I still haven't taken time to sit down and record anything. This pregnancy has been night and day to my experience with Harrison and I think I had to get through the hardest parts of it to be able to process everything and write something. So, let's start at the beginning.
I got my positive pregnancy test the day we got back from a weekend at Ben's dad's shore house, on Memorial Day and I was honestly in shock. I had been nauseous on the drive home and my armpit area was killing me but I thought my period was just starting or I tweaked myself picking up Harrison. We had been trying for 9 months and if we didn't get pregnant by the end of summer were set to start on Clomid. I was over the moon and in complete disbelief. The following week we spent a week at the shore with his mom's side and told everyone because, well it was impossible not to. I threw up on that trip and had some spotting which scared me but ceased up once I rested.
My whole first trimester was ROUGH and looking back I'm not quite sure how I got through it taking care of a toddler (lots of TV). At my 8 week intake appointment the doctor put me on Unisom and B6 and it was a total lifesaver for my nausea. Once we got that settled, we got a call that we had a positive flag on our genetic blood work screening which required a second round of blood work. It had to be flown to a lab in CA and took a week to get back. I don't remember much of that week except crying every day and barely sleeping. The flag was for trisomy18 which is a life-threatening condition to baby (most don't live past a year). The flag was caused by my maternal age and low placental hormone levels. We finally got the call back that baby's chromosomes are normal (thank God) and everything was okay. We are still watching the growth of baby which has been stressful but nothing compared to thinking we could lose him. The one positive that came from all that blood work was that we found out the gender at 13 weeks - another baby boy! From that point on, despite being tired and moody, everything has been much smoother. Baby looked good at his 20 week ultrasound and we get a bonus ultrasound in the 3rd trimester to make sure he's still measuring okay. I'm just grateful to be coasting along in the second trimester with all of that stuff behind us.I'm feeling much better (albeit tired and grumpy, yay hormones!) but ready to talk about the fun stuff:
I felt him move much sooner than Harrison and he hasn't stopped wiggling since. I saw him kick from the outside at 18 weeks and Ben felt him at 20! This baby is sitting much lower than Harrison did which means I jumped into maternity pants much faster, I showed much faster and I'm peeing all. the. time - ha! The nursery is pretty put together since I channeled all my anxiety into painting and nesting and telling myself this baby WOULD make it and be here in February. I already dug out H's old baby clothes and hit some mother's markets so we're pretty set on the clothing front (yay for seasons that overlap). I splurged on a glider this time around and we need a few things like a sound machine and monitor, but other than that, I'm happy we have a lot of what we need. We plan to go the cheapie Ikea crib route this time since H is still in his crib and I have no plans on kicking him out. We have a few names we like but not much is sticking. We agreed that we'd head to the hospital with a solid list of 5 and once we met him we'd make the decision.
Phew, I think that's everything! Harrison will be 2-1/2 next week and it's also our anniversary month. Before we know it the holidays will be here and I'm looking forward to nesting in January until baby boy gets here. Despite this pregnancy being harder, I am so thankful for it and trying to savor this time as a family of 3. I can't believe we'll have another little boy in 2019!
