Hello heartburn!

Not only can I only eat 60% of what I could previously, but now each of my feedings is followed by what feels like a heart attack, painful sensation above my heart, or heartburn.

First hemorrhoids, now this! Oh, fun! (not that I'm complaining!!)

~Jem

18w1d: 1st Baby Bump pic + U/S

As promised, below is my first baby bump picture from week 17, along with a very fuzzy u/s pic. 

18w0d

(Today's post will be all about pregnancy. If you don't feel like reading about that right now, I completely understand. Hope to see you again soon.)

17w0d: Happy ICLW

If this is your first time here, welcome to my humble blog! 

I've been blogging for over two years, and have been TTC for as long with the help of medical science. We were lucky enough to get pregnant with our Hail Mary donor sperm IUI, after 3 fresh IVFs, and 1 FET, using Mr. Jem's. 

I'm 17 weeks pregnant today and am LOVING the second trimester. It's amazing and wonderful in so many ways. Gone is the nausea and fatigue. Gone is a lot of the paranoia and fear that this pregnancy will fail. Okay, gone for today. It helps that I finally broke down and bought a prenatal doppler so I can hear our little baby girl's heart beat. Yes, we did CVS testing in the first trimester (as I'm of advanced maternal age) and wanted to know the baby's gender. 

So, I'm just happy to be pregnant. My skin is amazing. My hair is growing like crazy and is curly and so healthy. Emotionally I'm great too, if not a little reactive. Overall I feel like a million bucks. My pregnancy is going very smoothly and for that I'm very, very grateful.

That's my update. I'll share a baby bump picture next time.

~Jem

16w2d: butterfly kiss?

This morning I felt a pulsing in my lower abdomen, like a heartbeat... hmmm... could this be the "butterfly kiss" of first movement that my OB said to look for?

Suddenly a ray of hope!

Question: for those of you fortunate enough to get this far, what did your baby's first movement feel like?

~Jem

P.S. I didn't find a good picture of butterfly kisses, so I thought I'd leave you with cute bunnies.

16w1d: Paranoia

Good morning. The past week I've been feeling like a million bucks, but today worry set in. I don't have my next OB scan until Wed of next week and I'm feeling paranoid. My belly has popped out in the last week (my hairdresser said I look like I've just had a big meal, but I think it's more than that), but my mind keeps going to a bad place - "What if she's not growing anymore? What if something has gone wrong?"

I started on new prenatals and since then my digestive system has slowed way down. And I've lost my appetite (which is NOT normal for me). I'm having to force myself to eat lunch. I'm just not that hungry. I'm hoping it's because the baby is taking up real estate where my stomach used to be.

I never did buy that doppler... might go buy one today. I need some reassurance.

~Jem.

15w2d: post vacation motivation

Hi,

Wow, it's been quite a long time since I last posted. Since then I have been on a short holiday with my mother and aunt - road trip from the SF Bay Area down to Palm Springs. We stayed at this lovely spa. The weather turned quite cold and stormy one day, but we snuggled up, read, laughed and just enjoyed the company. The trip in the car was a bit long; had to stop every hour for me to get out and walk around and keep the blood flowing. Had some serious round ligament pain when I got back. Luckily I took an extra day off and rested on Monday.

Only pregnancy news: I'm busting out of my pants. Literally. I lost a button yesterday and broke down and bough maternity pants. Very exciting. Makes it very real.

~Jem