For the most part, pretty straight forward appointment. Can’t remember my total weight gain but it’s not much — I’m up in total maybe 12-14 lbs. Not much.
Anyway, the big UGH is that I’m measuring large again—my fundal height measurement was 33.5. [sigh]
Not doing anything about it now, will wait to see how it is at my next appointment, but it’s likely they’ll have me go in for a growth ultrasound. I’m extremely wary of growth ultrasounds as they have a reputation for having a high margin of error. We did one with Natalie when I was 40 weeks along and I was told she was some ginormous 10 lb baby. She was born a few days later at 7lb 4oz.
Anyway, the big concern with getting a growth ultrasound is that they may associate a large baby with my GD condition, in which case they’d have me start taking medication to manage the blood sugar levels more (even though I’ve been managing it through diet fairly well). And by taking medication, I become “high risk” and would need to come in for twice weekly NSTs (stress tests essentially). Anyway, none of this has happened yet but it’s just something that could be in my future.
Otherwise, my only complaint: I’m starting to get itchy. That is, my belly, feet and hands get really itchy at times. It hasn’t gotten to the point where I am incessantly itching but I fear a replay of what happened in Natalie’s pregnancy where I developed this hormonally-driven itch that prevented me from sleeping for 2 days in a row, resulting in me calling the OB in tears and then finally being given a prescription antihistamine. Well, now I know better and have already given the OB a heads up that the itch is starting. I just hope I can see it coming before it gets bad. That was not a fun experience and I don’t want to relive it.
On the pregnancy front, I had to endure the 3 hour glucose test which was NOT FUN. The test involves fasting from the night before – then coming in, getting your blood drawn, drinking an entire bottle of this nasty glucose drink, then getting your blood drawn again 1 hour later, 2 hours later and 3 hours later. Ugh. I never quite understood why it was that bad (since I’d only ever done the 1 hour) until I actually went through it myself. Not only are you totally starving (and pregnant women are ravenously hungry all the time as it is) but the hunger coupled with ONLY drinking the glucose drink made me feel queasy. I brought my laptop and parked myself on the most comfortable chair I could find and thought I’d easily do work or read a book on my Kindle…but actually, the first hour or two was me just laying there with my eyes closed.
Unfortunately, the criteria for failing the 3 hour is testing outside the range for 2 of the 4 blood draws…and 2 of my 4 blood draws were outside, so I’m officially diagnosed with gestational diabetes.
I was surprised since with my first pregnancy, I passed easily. I’ve since learned that by virtue of being Asian, I’m at higher risk of getting GD, whaddya know?
Anyway, the diagnosis isn’t all that bad. It mainly means watching my blood sugar levels for the remainder of the pregnancy. As of now, there isn’t a need for me to take any additional medication or do insulin shots. If I can control it all through diet, I’ll be fine. The bad news is that the way I watch my blood sugar levels is by pricking my fingers and testing my blood FOUR TIMES A DAY EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR THE REMAINDER OF THIS PREGNANCY. Yeah, not fun. At first I was freaked out over the finger pricking part. I’ve been doing it for about a week now and it’s really not that bad. A paper cut is a thousand times worse in terms of pain. It’s moreso the annoyance of making sure I test within 1-2 hours after a meal (and don’t eat anything at all before testing) which is hard cuz’ I’m constantly snacking away or sipping on something.
As for a GD-friendly diet – it’s really not that bad. Mainly low carbs and sugars, high protein. If it weren’t for my food aversions (um, of beef, chicken, pork, fish…) this would be no problem. It’s not like I can’t have any carbs (in fact, my blood sugar levels remain surprisingly low with just 2 slices of pepperoni pizza!)..but I just can’t go overboard.
2. Boston marathon bombing – scary!
On April 15th, during the Boston marathon, 2 bombs went off 500 feet away from each near the finish line. Super sad and scary. What brought this to home was how I heard about it the first time — a Facebook message from my brother, Aaron, simply saying:
“im fine
if mom ask, cell phones are down
but i’m shaken”
Aaron’s office is on Boylston St, where the Boston marathon ends, and is situated pretty much dead center between the 2 explosions. He was fortunately okay but it was crazy scary.
What followed in the next 48 hours for him was pure chaos. He happened to have a nice camera on him and was taking photos all day of the marathon. After the explosions went off, he took pictures of Explosion #1 since he had a direct view of it and got some pretty amazing photos — . After posting them on Flickr, he got the attention of a lot of major media outlets, including CNN, ABC, Boston Globe, etc. His pictures were everywhere and reporters kept contacting him about his experiences and asking about use of his photos. He took a lot of pictures of the crowd and was hoping that crowdsourcing would help identify the bombers.
My 2 cousins are also in Boston—Eddric works at the Apple Store which is just a block from the 2nd explosion as well. Both cousins are fine too….but all in all, pretty scary stuff.
3. Pathfinder out, Infiniti in
For a few months now, we’ve been talking about replacing Matt’s old ‘98 Pathfinder with a newer SUV for both safety reasons and maintenance. I had pretty much narrowed down to what to replace it with when we we forced to make the decision sooner than later. A few Saturdays ago, there was a CRAZY hailstorm in Seattle that left the ground covered in hail, looking like it had snowed in parts. Matt was coming back from a Sounders game, crossing the University bridge when he lost control of it and got into a bad accident. Miraculously, he walked away totally fine but his car was completely totalled. It didn’t take insurance long to call it a total loss and we found ourselves needing to get a replacement vehicle within a week.
But as I said, it was a good thing that we just happened to be researching this already…and finally settled on the 2013 Infiniti JX35, a 3-row crossover SUV which will be perfect with the new kiddo along the way and to have when friends or family visit so we don’t always have to split into two cars. It’s a great ride so far and super comfy. This is now my car and Matt is driving my Audi, so I now have my version of a soccer mom car!
Hi there — man, time is flying. Just realized I haven’t pushed out an update in over a month. Work has been pretty busy and they we had to prep to go on our family babymoon vacation last week (Hawaii!!!! More on that in another post, but it was super awesome)
Anyway, I had my 26 week appointment yesterday. Total weight gain = 12 lbs, things are picking up! But I had 3 major bummers:
1. I’m measuring big, like 30 weeks big. Yikes. This happened with my first pregnancy but I was always measuring only about a week ahead. OB is going to just keep her eye on it and see how I’m doing next time I come in. We’ll get an ultrasound if we need to.
2. Had the 1 hour glucose test and FAILED. Wah! I passed this with flying colors in my first pregnancy so I was a bit bummed out to not pass this time. That said, there are stereotypically lots of false positives with the 1 hr test….so hopefully I can pass the 3 hour test no problems. But ugh, I have to find time to do a 3 hour test now. Furthermore, now I’m a little worried about whether or not I need to worry about gestational diabetes considering that I’m measuring big…hmmm….
3. My iron levels are low so I’m anemic, again. This happened with my first pregnancy so I’m not surprised, especially considering my food aversions which make me super dislike red meat (I know, I’m a carnivore, so sad!)….so that means taking iron supplements (gag!)
On the positive side….while in Hawaii, we had an awesome family/maternity photoshoot done in Kapalua Bay (gor-geous). I can’t wait to see how the photos turn out.
I love the Oscars. I look forward to it every year. Unfortunately, Matt and I don’t get out to see as many movies as we would like now with a child (cost of movies plus dinner plus parking plus babysitting makes for an expensive evening!). We normally would have seen every single Best Picture nominee…now we are lucky if we’ve seen half.
Anyway, I wanted to jot down some quick thoughts on last night’s Oscars:
Seth MacFarlane was okay. I thought he had a lot of good one liners…but some jokes obviously died from the beginning and I appreciated he recognized that. I didn’t realize he was such a good singer…and in retrospect, wished he had planned a bigger “about the movies nominated this year” song-and-dance performance that has always been a crowd pleaser for Billy Crystal…rather than his entire opening monologue being about how good or bad of a host he would be.
Yes, I thought about Quvenzhane Wallis was crass and crossed the threshold of just being satirical. I know they go for outrageous but I find that word particularly offensive, especially when used with a 9 year old.
Samuel L Jackson’s tux was horrible. Cotton velvet or velour or whatever that material was just doesn’t belong on the red carpet.
I’m sorry but I just didn’t get the emphasis on Chicago and Dreamgirls—those were extra performances where the time could have been better spent on takes related to this year’s movies or, just something else. Sure, I loved those movies but it just seemed random.
Really wish the Bond tribute was a bit more spectacular. Understand Sean Connery is hard to get to things like this but it would have been sweet to see all the actors that played Bond come out together….or at least have had Adele’s performance followed by Goldfinger.
Good for Ben and Argo.
Michelle Obama presenting Best Picture seemed…random.
Couldn’t Babs have sung “Memories” during instead of after the In Memoriam reel? Would have saved time considering the show went over 30 minutes.
Daniel Day-Lewis’ acceptance speech was way funnier than I expected. I guess considering the roles he plays, I just assumed he’s a super serious guy.
Yay for Waltz for supporting actor – thought he was brilliant.
I still haven’t seen a lot of great movies from this year: Lincoln, The Sessions, The Master, The Impossible, Life of Pi (although I wasn’t a fan of the book)…just to name a few.
I can’t believe how fast this has happened but we are 100% fully done with diapers. A few weeks ago, we stopped using diapers with Natalie at naptime and she didn’t have a single accident. All that was left was nighttime, which I had read could potentially be years before a child was nighttime trained, so we didn’t push it and have just been monitoring her.
For awhile, she was waking up with a wet diaper overnight perhaps 2-3 times a week. When she did have a wet diaper, it was often not that saturated—that is, I used to always have to have a super absorbent bulky nighttime diaper for her…but during this stage, I could put her in a regular diaper and she never went crazy.
Then about 2 weeks ago, I counted and realized that she had woken up with a dry diaper for a full week. Based on that alone, we took the plunge and put her in undies overnight. Incredibly, she hasn’t had a single accident since and it’s now been about 1.5 weeks of this.
Coincidentally, around the same time, both for reasons of preparing her to eventually move rooms but also because of the PT’ing, we removed the front of her crib and converted it to a toddler bed so that she could get out of bed if she needed to. For awhile, anytime she needs to go (and she still does this), she asks us to help her and we take her to the bathroom. But now, she’ll often just go by herself.
In fact, it’s pretty frequent that she’ll wake up from her nap or in the morning and just quietly get out of bed, walk to the bathoom, and pee all by herself. School has taught her how to wipe and she’ll just flush the toilet. Pure awesomeness. I mean, that’s just amazing.
We are in awe of how fast this has all happened, and super excited too!
Next with diapers – give them a good strip so they’re freshly absorbent for baby #2…and also sell all the super girly diapers we have and use that money to get new boyish diapers (or at least this gives me an excuse to satisfy my fluff buying addiction!)
I finally came out public (that is, made it Facebook-official) today with the super exciting news that we are expecting a baby boy this summer!
The announcement photo was inspired by Pinterest of course and pretty easy to put together.
So yes, I’m pregnant again. Things have been going really well with this pregnancy and has been exactly like my pregnancy with Natalie – which is why it was a surprise to learn it was a boy this last week! (not that pregnancy symptoms are necessarily a factor at all in determining gender) Basic symptoms:
No morning sickness, in general
Food aversions, again – mostly to meat. Ugh. Super annoying. My diet has consisted of lots of carbs and veggie items..though I’ve figured out a way to sometimes consume meat by saturating it in sauces that mask the taste…like, I can eat a meat lasagna. I’m concerned about getting anemic again but so far my bloodwork has shown my levels to be fine. If I can avoid taking iron supplements, I will!
I *think* my smell sensitivity is worse. The cafeteria at work just makes me gag and I don’t remember it being this bad last time around.
Was super tired in my first trimester. Energy kinda came back in my 2nd trimester, although my insane cold really put a downer on it. Now, my energy is pretty good but I definitely hit a major lull in the evening around dinnertime. Doesn’t help that we have a crazy super energetic 2 year old who just makes me tired from talking to her.
My belly bump is just starting to show although my weight gain so far is a measly ONE POUND. Ha Ha. I had to have Matt bring down my box of maternity clothes over the weekend as my regular jeans and pants are starting to get uncomfortable, even though I wear mostly low riding pants. The full panel spandex of the maternity jeans are sooooo welcome right now.
I just started feeling the baby move last week..and can even feel a kick externally with my hand at times. So exciting.
No particular cravings in particular although I’ve taken to snacking on apples and grapes more than usual…and I’m helping myself to eating sorbet and ice cream in the evening when I rarely normally do. Love my Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby!
When we first told Natalie, she didn’t quite get it. In fact, her reaction was “oooo look! and I have a baby in my belly too!” (lifting up her shirt) It was amusing. But now that my belly is starting to expand, we think she gets it more now. She was also much more engaged in the ultrasound last week, eager to see the baby on the monitor (as opposed to the 12-week ultrasound when all she cared about doing was playing Hello Kitty on my phone)
Milestones are creeping up faster this second time around, probably because we’re so busy with Natalie. We’re also not as worried about baby preparations as we’ve kept most of our baby gear (and quite frankly, at this point, we only need boy clothing! Most of Natalie’s clothes are way too pink and frilly) The only major house thing is eventually moving Natalie to another room so we can reuse her existing room for “to-be-determined” (Matt’s choice of words for this child). We haven’t bought anything yet but the plan is to get Natalie a new bed and furniture so she can have a “big girl room”. I’ll need to remove the existing pink/brown/white wall decals in the nursery and redecorate with more boy-like decorations. May even consider painting both the nursery and Natalie’s room . We’ll see!
This has been a miserable 2 weeks of illness in the family, particularly for me. First, I got food poisoning. Had a weekend to recover. Then Matt was sick for a day, and then Natalie ended up missing 4 days of school due to a fever. Turned out to be just a cold. Well, my 2 days of staying home to watch her resulted in me, in turn, catching her cold. I went back to work briefly on Thursday but by Thursday evening, I was starting to feel congested.
I didn’t go to work on Friday, Monday or today (Tuesday) and I highly doubt I will go in tomorrow. I have the worst cold. Already went to see the doctor — ears are fine, unlikely it’s the flu as I really haven’t had much of a fever (minor, low grade briefly). I’ve just been super congested and it’s moved from my head to my chest with my sinuses still under pressure constantly. I can’t count how many tissue boxes I have gone through and I’ve just been in pajamas nonstop. I can’t even be a somewhat productive sick where I can work from home a bit — I’m so knocked over that all I can do is zone out on a couch or the bed.
I’m hoping the worst is over and I’ll wake up tomorrow feeling less congested and on the road to recovery. For now, I feel like I’ve missed out on so much work (during a crazy crunch time part of the year) and done absolutely nothing. I don’t even have the energy to fold laundry or even upload pictures online. I’m just tired and congested and sick and tired and congested…whine whine. I think this is seriously the first time I’ve gotten sick from Natalie. What is it about picking up a cold from your child? — it’s like they have an advanced strain that only people born in this millennium can handle. I’ve been knocked over sideways and hope this ends soon.
Well I’m at home today with a sick Natalie. Blargh. I got violently ill on Friday with what I thought was food poisoning, but then both Matt and Natalie fell ill yesterday. I came to pick her up from school and she was just sitting on the floor holding her puppy with a fever and crying. Poor girl. Now I wonder if it was more of a stomach bug of some sort.
Anyway, I’m happy to say that potty training is still going really well. We’ve been sending her to school everyday in undies and there have been several days in which she’s come back wearing the same pair. She still has an accident here and there but it’s overall great. I had to really test her ability to hold herself last week after school — there’s at least a 20 minute commute between school and home (and can be longer with traffic)…and last week, in the middle of the bridge, she declared she needed to poop! Yikes! I asked her if she would hold it…and then she’d pause and go “I’m holding it! Yay!” It was kinda funny. We did that a few times and I had no idea if she actually was…but sure enough, once we got to our destination, I whisked her off to the bathroom and she did a good job holding it for at least 10 minutes. Not bad! (I think holding pee must be harder)
We have yet to really test the waters by taking her out to a restaurant or just doing our usually family outing downtown somewhere and needing to find a public restroom. This is all new territory!
**Warning–TMI post all about potty training. If you don’t want to read about poop or pee, skip this post**
I can’t believe I’m saying this considering the state of my mind when I wrote that last post on Friday, but…potty training may be turning around! We decided to just go for it this weekend with potty training, and if it didn’t work, then back in diapers on Monday. We planned to just stay at home all day, watch Natalie like a hawk, and keep her in undies except for naptime and bedtime (sorry, too scared to go there right now). I scanned over a PDF of the “” method that my neighbor gave me and took a few basic principles from there (definitely not all — like we did NOT: throw away diapers, use undies during naptime or bedtime…), but these were the key things we followed:
Don’t plan on or time regular potty sessions (i.e. every 30 min) — I think there are other methods that do that. We had attempted that during the week and noticed it was making Natalie rebel and annoy her to use the potty when she knew she biologically didn’t need to go
Instead, just pay attention and the minute they seem to go, whisk them off to the bathroom and put them on the potty….even if they completely wet themselves before hand. The key is to associate peeing with physically going to the potty.
No punishments — it’s okay if they wet themselves. Just clean them, reassure them it’s okay and give them a change.
If they do successfully go in the potty, celebrate like it’s the most amazing thing in the world. Give them a reward if you like (we have “special tokens” — i.e. m&m’s)
Always change them standing up
Don’t ask them if they need to go. They probably won’t know the right answer. After going to the potty enough times at the time they pee, they will just start to connect the dots. They may or may not tell you ahead of time they need to go.
The method calls for undies all the time, even naptime and bedtime, so the child doesn’t get confused. We just weren’t ready and told her it was just for when she goes to sleep…and it hasn’t seemed to be a problem…and sure enough, everytime she woke up, she had a pretty wet diaper. Whew.
Anyway, this weekend has gone surprisingly well. Saturday morning there were definitely a couple of accidents..but by afternoon, she remained dry in her undies until bedtime…and we were able to catch her or anticipate her going ahead of time. She had pooped first thing in the morning in her diaper so we weren’t sure about that…..until Sunday morning, right after breakfast when she yelled at me that she needed to poop and I swept her up and off we went! We went all day Sunday in undies without a single accident. Unbelievable.
Tomorrow will be interesting since she’ll be back at school and the attention won’t be as concentrated. We are hoping she expresses interest again in going with the other girls when they hit the potty. We certainly think this weekend she has renewed interest with mommy and daddy jumping up and celebrating with high fives everytime she went.
Our next challenge, of course, will be naptime and bedtime–though I’ve read that many children are day potty trained for awhile before they are night trained, so no rush I hope? She is still in the crib (we unsuccessfully atempted toddler bed for all of 24 hours)…but want to get her into a toddler bed soon, so maybe that’ll help with nighttime.
