THE BIG REVEAL!!

Jillian - Pink or Blue????? 

Tomorrow is Baby A's big reveal!  What do you think?! My guess has been blue from day one.  Eric is on team pink.  Less than 24 hours to go!

This is a pic of the adorable invites my sister created and sent out!

 

We had our 20 week ultrasound and appointment yesterday and all looked good with measurements, etc.  Baby of course was sleeping and had its rump down, so after most of the measurements, I took a bathroom break and jumped around a little bit and politely asked the baby to cooperate. :)  Lucky for me, little babes is already a good listener woke up and moved and the ultrasound tech told us she was "sure" of the gender.  She wrote it down and sealed it in 2 envelopes (one was off to the bakery and one for us to keep). 

 

We have not looked yet.  The suspense is killing me.  Knowing myself all too well and my very strong emotions, I think Eric and I will take a private moment to ourselves tomorrow before the party and find out the news.  That way we can process the information (we will be THRILLED with either a boy or girl...just praying for a healthy baby) and focus on everyone else's reactions when we cut that cake tomorrow evening. :)

 

Lots more fun pictures to come... But I'll leave you with this adorable profile for tonight!

 

Eat More, Sleep More.

Gina- Turning a Corner

I just started week 16, and I can honestly say I feel so much better! I am definitely having some weird body changes that I never knew I'd have. Some I can't even mention in this blog for fear that my brother or grandma may be reading this. I have a question for moms out there... do your boobs continue to grow or is that just in the beginning? If so, I am totally screwed. I maxed out the sizes at Victoria's Secret, so now it's on to online ordering for me. This news especially is hard, because I had a breast reduction many years ago. Which leads me to my next question...Will I be able to breast feed since I had a reduction? I sure hope so. I mean, I really hate working out, so how else will I lose the extra baby weight?!

Jillian and I braved the heat and went to the State Fair this past week with our baby daddies. It was so hard to pass up the Minnesota wine booth and the beergarita stand, but I took one for the team (by team, I really mean my fetus). I gained a pound in 1 day! Weight gain is welcomed by me, since I am still 6lbs under my normal weight. I am sure it'll sneak up fast and I will regret saying that. Especially since I have a wedding dress to squish into in 2 months. Anywho, I ate a corn dog, corn on the cob, fried meatloaf, fried pickles and a pretzel dog. All of which were shared with Charlie or with Jillian. I didn't even feel sick! I am definitely feeling better. Wahooooooooo!

Here are some pics from the fair:

Corndogs....YUM!



Boys enjoying the craft beer experience



A staple at the fair... CORN





Jillian - In the land of SNOOGLE

I have recently found myself tossing and turning and waking up rather uncomfortably at night.  I am now 19 weeks pregnant and I am supposed to be sleeping primarily on my left side.  How does one change their sleeping habits you might ask?  As a full-on back sleeper, I had to find a solution to this problem. 

The snoogle.  It has taken over our bed, invades my dog's space (he growls when it comes out each night), but it TRAPS you on your side and makes sleeping much more comfortable as your growing belly makes regular old sleeping much more of a chore. 

It's a bit of an eye sore... but there are so many uses for it! Just check out this diagram:

Okay, so that's a blurry picture, but my point is that the SNOOGLE is totally worth it!  I ordered mine off of Amazon and it came with a grey, washable cover.  Even this lady agrees with me:



:)

One Down, Two to Go!

The First Trimester

Gina -  Pregnancy is Puketastic!

I was about 5 weeks pregnant when I found out the news and I thought then that I was feeling crappy. Little did I know what the next nine weeks had in store.

Instead of gaining a few pounds like many women do in the first trimester, I lost about 8. The constant nausea really took a toll. So much that I was given a prescription for Zofran and told to take as often as every 6 hours. Even the dissolvable medication made me sick. For those few weeks, the only thing I wanted to eat were grapes and peanut butter english muffins. I also craved Icee's. I know that's not a healthy option, but I was to the point that I needed to eat or drink anything that sounded good, just to take in the extra calories.

During my 9th week, something very scary happened. I was rear-ended while I was at a complete stop by someone who was going about 45MPH. My car was pushed over the median and into oncoming traffic on a busy highway during rush hour. Somehow I managed avoid hitting anyone coming towards me. All I could think after the hit was, "Oh crap, my baby!" Fortunately, my airbag did not go off. I had lots of burning on my abdomen from my seatbelt and headed to the hospital to get checked out. Thankfully everything turned out just fine. The doc said the baby was so well protected in my pelvis and that it was a good thing I wasn't further along. The only thing I had to deal with was a crappy rental car and some bruising on my belly. I thank my lucky stars it all came out ok.

At 12 weeks, I had to head back to the ER to get IV fluids, because I was so dehydrated. I learned pregnancy wasn't as easy as I had hoped it would be. Poor Charlie! Poor me!

The one good thing about this stage of my pregnancy is that Charlie and I finally got to hear the heartbeat of our little one. It was such a reassuring sound and made my heart melt. In fact, it made every crappy day and every morning spent in front of the toilet completely worth it. Check it out for yourself... How amazing is that?!

I keep hearing that I'll start to feel better in the 2nd trimester. I really hope so, because 6 more months feeling like this would be miserable for me, Charlie and everyone else that has to be around me. My poor co-workers have dealt with me puking in doggie poop bags long enough!


Jillian - Fearful Mama-to-be with a very busy schedule...  

In the first several weeks of my pregnancy, I was a very busy bee.  I took a trip with my college girlfriends to North Carolina, said goodbye to downtown Minneapolis and moved out of the condo we had owned for 6 years.  We moved in with my parents for 3 weeks and I also celebrated my 31st birthday before we closed on our new home in South Minneapolis and started settling into our first "house."  

Needless to say, it was a whirlwind of events.  In the early days, I was feeling pretty good (besides my extremely sore boobs).  I suffered from nausea pretty much the entire first trimester, but I never actually threw up.  It was around 9 weeks that I first started spotting.  We were at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre catching a performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and I'll never forget the fear that swept over me when I went to the bathroom and realized there was blood in the toilet. 

The bleeding was contributed to a Subchorionic Hemorrhage that around 20% of pregnant women are diagnosed with.  A much lower number experience the type of spotting and bleeding that I had, but luckily most of these hemorrhages are absorbed by the body as the pregnancy progresses.  My spotting/blood continued for the next 6 weeks on nearly a daily basis. The 4th of July was an especially scary day for me and I will spare you the gory details.  I had an almost paralyzing fear of miscarriage in the first trimester and this prevented me from really "embracing" the fact that I was pregnant and also prevented Eric and I from telling anyone outside of our close inner circle about the baby.  My OB/GYN was great and I ended up having 3 ultrasounds in the first trimester and I also went in 3 different times besides that for fetal heart tone monitoring.  Each time I heard that sweet little heartbeat it was such a great relief!   

At my 14 wk appointment, I finally got to see this sweet profile that actually LOOKED like a baby!! :)  It put everything into perspective and made the crappy first trimester totally worth it! One down.... 2 to go!!!!

From the Beginning...

Jillian and Gina - Welcome!
Thanks for reading our blog! We are both so excited to share with you our completely opposite and quite funny stories of being pregnant. Jillian is due on January 19, 2014 and Gina is due February 19, 2014. We are best friends who grew up together, roomed together in college and are now going to become mamas together. We hope you find this blog informational, reassuring and most importantly, entertaining. Here it goes...


Gina - What the What?!

So, my story and my BFF's story about how we became pregnant are totally the opposite! Keep in mind while reading my posts, that I am extremely excited to have a baby and it's something Charlie (my fiance and the guy who knocked me up) and I are really looking forward to. Happy reading....

It all started when I started feeling sick to my stomach. I had diarrhea and didn't have an appetite for a few weeks, yet I was SO bloated! I decided I probably needed to make an appointment with my doc to see what was up. 

It was Friday, and I scheduled my appointment for the following Thursday. In the meantime, my boobs were feeling really sore and I was EXHAUSTED! About 4 weeks prior to this, I decided to go off the birth control pill. I had been on it for about 15 years straight and we both knew we wanted to try to have kids right after our honeymoon scheduled for November, so we decided to go off the pill and be careful around my fertile time. It was our hope that having been off the pill for a few months would help us have an easier time conceiving. 

Thanks to the advice of my BFF, I downloaded the P-tracker app for my phone. It tracked when I would get my period and when my fertile days were. I wanted to avoid having sex around my fertile days for the obvious reason of not conceiving a baby. I didn't realize that I should have regular cycles before relying on this app. Instead, I just calculated that last date of my period and didn't think anything of it...until all my symptoms starting coming together. 

Before I went to my doctor, I decided to take a test, totally thinking it would be negative. I mean, there was no way I could be pregnant, right? WRONG! 4 positive pregnancy tests later,  we learned we were going to have a baby. It also was the day I learned I was going to be a 5 1/2 month pregnant bride. OMG! All the questions started running through my head. What will our parents think? Will my wedding dress fit? Should we postpone our wedding? Am I ready for this? Is Charlie ready for this? And a million more...

Jillian - Timing is Everything!

Opposite is right! :)  

My husband, Eric, and I just celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary.  We weren't in a hurry to start a family for the first few years.  We wanted to make sure we had spent plenty of time together as a couple and that we had everything planned out.  My type A personality figured that as soon as we started tying to conceive, we would make it happen!

A year long lesson in patience followed...  I learned a lot more than I has anticipated, like how to track my ovulation, pee on sticks to find out my #1 and 2 most fertile days during the month, eat the right foods, stand on my head, etc. :)

I set up a fertility appointment with my doctor last October.  I underwent blood draws, a procedure to check if my fallopian tubes were clear (one side was blocked, but they were able to unblock it during the painful procedure) and finally started on my prescription for Clomid.  Clomid is a fertility drug  that forces you to ovulate every month, therefore increasing your chances of conception.

4 more months of negative pregnancy tests and surprise periods followed.  At the end of February, my doctor doubled my dose of clomid and the next week Eric and I were off on a week-long vacation to Florida.  I figured the relaxation, sunshine and care-free days would most surely produce the baby we were longing for.  I was feeling very confident this time.  I thought I felt different as the date of my period approached.  Fast forward to the PINK concert that I attended with my sister, cousin and close friend for my sister's birthday at the end of March... We were singing, dancing and then I ran off for a quick bathroom break and came back doubled over in tears.  My period was a week early and it was HEAVY.  It felt like a complete blow to my confidence (and bloated gut).  I set up an appointment the very next week with my OBGYN to discuss my options.  She told me I had one more round of clomid to go until they would no longer allow me to take it (it is not safe to take this medication for more than 6 months) and if it was her, she would try Artifical Insemination along with this last dose of clomid and give it all we had. 

I'm happy to report that we took her advice and the next month brought tears of joy, not failures. :)