I forgot one thing I wanted to mention. I was surfing the news sites earlier today and ran across this article. It's a Mom Movie Day at a local theatre. It's during the day on Wednesdays. I will definitely keep this in mind for when I'm on maternity leave. It will be nice to have something to do during the day or something to look forward to. Or am I being silly that I'll actually have time to do something like this...

I've added a link to the archives over there on the right. I noticed that older entries were scrolling off the bottom. So, there ya go. Knock yourselves out.

So, I've told my boss (for whom I do 80% of my work) and my other boss (for whom I do 20% of my work) the good news. Boss A (the 80% one) congratulated me and wanted to know if I was coming back. I said the plan right now was yes, I would be coming back, although I didn't know when. Kris and I need to decide if we're going to do the standard 6 week maternity leave or if we want to use my 3 weeks of vacation to extend that or if we want to go a full 12 weeks and take some of it without pay. He said there was plenty of time to figure that out. Boss B (the 20% one) said congratulations. I told him I rescheduled my appt next week to work around training and he said in the future, we could work training around my appointments. I thought that was nice, especially considering this training is a big deal to get done. After next week's appointment (provided all goes well, crossing fingers) I'll tell other people at work and our extended family. You guys will be free to talk!

On the health front, everything is going well. I've been able to keep almost everything down lately. I don't know if that's due to being farther along or just keeping my stomach with something in it at all times. It feels like I'm eating all the time but that's also when I feel best. I'm still sleeping a lot more too. Last night I fell asleep at 9pm on the couch. Of course, I woke up a bunch of times during the night but I blame that on the dog and her noisiness. The only other thing going on is my poor face. My facial dermititis (spelling?) is back. My skin has been really dry lately and I'm not sure if that's because of the winter air or pregnancy hormones. Either way, my face is taking a beating. The redness and itchiness is back. Once again, it's around the lower half of my mouth. It's quite attractive. (did you get that sarcasm?) I'll ask the OB next week if there's anything I can safely take to make it go away. Last time, the dermatologist put me on some pills (and I can't remember what they were) but I don't think those are safe for pregnancy. I hope something is. I hate feeling like a freak walking around with this yucky redness around my mouth. Ah, the joys of pregnancy. :)

Because I can be completely irrational at times, I have this desire to take another home pregnancy test. I know. I'm completely crazy. There has been no spotting, no unusual cramping, no (rational) reason to think I'm not pregnant and yet I have this desire. Not even the puking can convince my irrational mind that everything is all right in there. What if I just have the flu? Yes, because vomiting at various times of the day for weeks on end is "the flu." What if I'm just late? Yes, being four weeks "late" is completely normal too. What if I've miscarried but my body hasn't gotten the message yet? Well, I guess on this one there is a small chance it could be true. Maybe this is where the irrationalness (is that a word?) is coming from. (Nice grammar, eh?) I'm sure when I finally go to the doctor on the 6th, things will click and I'll be less irrational (notice I don't say rational, just less irrational) but until then, things are probably going to stay this way. Hey, you in there, you okay? 8 weeks pregnant today and all signs point to go.

I've been having a ton of dreams lately. They are all very strange and none of them have included a baby until last night. I had my first dream about our baby. The odd part of the dream was that I could take the baby out of my body and show it to people and then put it back in to continue growing. Very strange! In the dream, my mom and I were discussing the different features of the baby and who they resembled. The most interesting part of the dream to me, though was that in the dream, the baby was a girl. I don't know how well "mother's intuition" works at this stage of pregnancy or at all but I wanted to capture that part of the dream for posterity. Hmm, are we having a baby girl? Oh, and the baby had a full head of beautiful auburn (reddish-brown) hair.

Well, I had to change my appointment after all. The training has been moved back to the first week of February. Luckily, I was able to change it to that Friday, the 6th. My training is supposed to be over by noon on Friday so the 1:30 appointment I made should be no problem. If the training runs over, I'm just going to have to leave early. The schedule says noon so I'm out of there at noon. I want that appointment to be here already though! I want some reassurance that everything is okay. I want to hear a heartbeat. I want to be able to tell people!!!

There's a woman at work who is leaving in March. She's been very unhappy here since she came back from maternity leave last June. She tried to switch departments and they wouldn't let her so she decided to go back to school to get her masters and rejoin another company later. I'm so sad to see her go. I really like her! It also worries me that the company won't respond to my needs about maternity leave and workload when I get back. I have some other fairly new moms around here to talk to about their situations though. It seems to be working out fine for them so I can only hope it does for me too.

7 weeks today!! Yay! I haven't updated in the last week because there hasn't been much to tell. I'm still having terrible morning sickness. I go from being severely nauseous to really hungry and back. I can't hardly keep any food down. I think it is partly due to genetics (my mother had terrible morning sickness and lost 20 pounds before gaining anything when pregnant with me, her first) and partly due to the prenatal vitamins. I always feel worse after taking them. I just try as hard as I can to keep those down though. I mean, how am I supposed to keep this baby healthy if I can't keep food or vitamins down! Moving on from the unpleasant talk...

It looks like I'm going to be able to keep my OB appointment on the 4th of February. I was worried that I might have to change it due to some training I'll be going through at work. The training is 4 weeks long broken up into 1 week segments and the first segment was supposed to be the week of 2/2/04. I found out today though that the first segment has been pushed back to the end of March. It's a good thing I procrastinated on changing my appointment, since now I don't have to. I think I'm going to wait to tell anybody at work until after that appointment. I want to hear the heartbeat and make sure everything is going well before I announce our news. A couple people at work know and they are keeping it quiet for me and I think others might suspect something is up. I don't want to say anything officially though until then. At that time, Kris and I will tell the rest of the family too.

Today marks six weeks pregnant! Only 34 to go! (Ooh, that doesn't sound so good - let's not say it that way yet.)

I think the sea bands are helping. Yesterday, I only threw up twice and today I haven't thrown up at all! Of course, I tried 3 times but nothing came up. I'm still having low-level queasiness throughout the day but it's not something that stops my normal activities. I just slow down in the evenings and take it very easy. My problem now is I go from feeling awful from being nauseous to feeling awful because I'm so hungry which makes my stomach feel bad. I eat although I'm afraid I'm going to throw it all right back up and then go back to just feeling nauseous again. It's a viscous cycle I tell you!

I'm just going to hope that all this feeling bad means the baby is growing healthy and strong. Did you know it's tiny, little heart is already beating?! And it's about 1/2 inch long now! Amazing. Truly Amazing. Only four more weeks until my first OB appointment where I'll hopefully get to hear the heart beating!

Don't worry - this won't turn into a how many times have I puked today blog. I want to document all that's happening with this pregnancy and unfortunately (fortunately?) morning sickness is a part of that and not much else is going on yet.

More and more people are finding out about the pregnancy which in turn only freaks me out more. I'm afraid of miscarriage and having to tell all these people bad news. That would just be so hard to do. Please keep praying that the baby is all right in there and grows healthy and strong.

So, I woke up this morning with a bladder infection, puked three times and then went to the doctor before coming to work. I didn't get in until 10am. For my pharmacist technician sister - the doctor put me on Cephalexin 500mg for two reasons - 1 - the baby of course - and 2 - my history of hives with penicillin. We're taking a small risk here that I'll have a reaction to this medication as well but it was the safest thing for the baby - or so the nurse practioner says. Krystle - you can verify that for me, m'kay? I just got back from getting the presciption filled. I haven't eaten anything yet today. The cracker I nibbled on this morning sent me straight to the bathroom and I didn't have anything at work that appealed to me. I bought some Gatorade and fruit juices when getting my prescription filled. Hopefully I can keep that down. Oh, I also bought Sea Bands as they are supposed to help with morning sickness and motion sickness. Here's hoping!

I added some picture to the photo album (click link above.) There kind of bad quality because of lighting problems I was having. I couldn't use the flash because of the mirror but when I didn't, they came out dark. Oh well. I'll have to try a different location next time or something. I know it's silly to take belly pics at 5 weeks but I wanted a starting point for comparison. Although if you didn't know that I have always and will always have a poochy belly, you'd think I was pregnant anyway!

Guess what has set in? Nauseousness! Yep, I knew I spoke too soon (way too soon) earlier. Luckily it's only a low grade icky feeling and I haven't thrown up yet. If I can keep busy and keep my mind off it, I feel better. I guess we'll see how work goes tomorrow!