Comparing pregnancy at 17 weeks with Sam and baby boy #2
However, the election and my blogging hiatus hit and I forgot about this goal. I remembered about it recently and was truly entertained to reflect back on my thoughts from my pregnancy with Sam vs. baby boy #2 So, here's the next installment.
Black font = 2008 blog.
Blue italics font = 2010 thoughts.
Posted Dec 23, 2008 4:05pm
19.5 Week Update - No News About the Gender, oy vey!
The big news is that we have no news. We had our 19.5 week appointment today - we were quite excited to be able to find out the gender. But, surprise surprise - the baby wasn't cooperating, I think its legs were crossed. It is shy and stubborn! Sam is still quite stubborn (gee I wonder where he gets that from), but he is definitely not shy! In fact, he frightens me sometimes with how comfortable he is around strangers. We were recently at a playground and he ran up and gave a Korean grandmother a huge hug - a woman who was a total stranger!
We were frustrated, but the good new is that the baby is doing very well and healthy. We were able to find out the sex of baby boy #2 very early (15 weeks since we have so many more ultraounds). It is approximately 10 inches long from head to heel, about the size of a banana. As I jokingly say, it is "half-baked" now that we are just about 20 weeks along (pregnancy is 40 weeks for those who may not know). We really don't care if it is a boy or a girl, we're just anxious to know. My grandfather Papi used to refer to a baby in utero with an unknown gender as "shim" - very Papi-esque for those of you who knew him. We ended up naming Sam for my grandfather Papi. Papi's name was Steven - hence Sam. His Hebrew name was Avraham which is Sam's Hebrew name. Papi was an amazing person and had a tremendous influence on my life, I even did a blog about him in October: Remembering Papi with our Annual Chocolate Ice Cream
But, we go back again Jan 6th at 1:45pm, we will have a big discussion with the baby before then to make sure that he/she is behaving that day! Everything is becoming much more real these days, the baby is moving around regularly and is quite active - but mostly when I am sitting still or laying down. Just when I'm ready to go to sleep, the baby decides it is time to play! This is definitely true with baby boy #2, he is most active when I'm ready to go to bed.
I suppose this is preparing me for what it will be actually be like when the baby is born! Brad, my parents, David, and Christine have all been able to feel the baby kick (or punch, who knows!). It is no longer just a fluttering, it is strong movement that I can regularly feel. The strongest movement happens when I'm eating, I think the baby already has some favorite foods: pizza, Chinese food, popcorn, and tofu panang curry - that's when the kicking has been the strongest! I still can't get enough pizza and LOVE tofu panang curry, despite the heartburn that it gives me. I definitely don't crave Chinese food and have only had it once during this pregnancy - during the mandatory "Jewish Christmas Chinese food dinner" when we made homemade wonton soup. Popcorn - eh, I like Costco's kettlecorn drizzled with chocolate, what's not to like!?!?
Brad is happy now that the kicking ia stronger, he was concerned that its future career as a professional soccer player was in jeopardy due to the soft kicks (as if the baby has any choice of playing soccer or not given my dad and brother's love of soccer!). In fact, the baby is moving like crazy even as I write this blog entry. Sam is actually quite talented at kicking balls and was able to kick a ball before he could even walk! We have signed him up for a toddler soccer class (not to actually learn to play soccer but just because he loves kicking balls around and it's an activity Brad & Sam can do together). Here are a few photos of Sam in his first soccer class:
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| Future Pele! |
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| Stacking the cones is a very important part of soccer. |
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| He has a crush on his soccer coach. All soccer coaches give hugs, right? |
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| VERY happy boy! |
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| He also discovered his belly button that day. Very exciting. |
We've received a number of holiday cards addressed to "Rebecca, Brad, & Baby Geller-Cheney" - kind of catches me off-guard a bit. It's also a bit odd when people at work or elsewhere greet me by saying "Hey Mama!" I'm like, oh honey, my child is never going to call me Mama, I'm not that southern! One secretary at work even greets me by saying "so, how are y'all doing?" - referring to both me and the baby. It's amazing how quickly I've become a twosome! I had my first dream about what the baby will actually look like when it's born. In my dream (before we knew the gender) - the baby was a girl with lots of dark hair and kind of looked like me as a baby, except she was sitting up on the first day of her life. I know, we're having a genius child :) I have crazy dreams with this pregnancy too. I recently dreamed that we had a girl (even though we know it is DEFINITELY a boy) and the girl was an adult literally 2 hours after birth. Doesn't take a genius to tell me that the dream means that I don't want Sam to grow up too quickly!
My tummy has been growing very quickly lately and I am much more aware of it, especially the other day when a waiter was weaving us through some very tight spaces to get to our table in the restaurant - I was like, that's so not happening with my belly! Brad has been STRONGLY urging me to park my car in our 2 car garage in our new house (aka making me). I think I am projecting my growing tummy onto the large size of my car trying to fit into the small garage. Literally, every night when I pull in the garage, I am convinced that my car is too big to fit in the garage and that I'm going to scrape the sides. Brad reassures me, yes it will fit, just be careful....as I hold my breath and slowly inch forward (sometimes closing my eyes!). Yes, this is a constant area of debate in our house! I'm now much more experienced parking the car in the garage. However, I was recently driving Brad's car and lightly tapped the side mirror on the side of the garage door - which left a little scrape. Brad was worried that he'd have to get it painted because it would get rusty. I said "well, the scrapes on the side mirrors of my car have never gotten rusty, so I wouldn't worry about it too much." Brad said, "you have scrapes on your side mirrors too!?!?!" Oh please, you expect me to park my car in the garage EVERY day and never give a love tap to the side of the garage? Let's get real!
I finally had to give in and purchase a maternity winter coat which was much needed as we're heading to snowy New England tomorrow. Afterwards, we head from Vermont and Maine to our last pre-baby vacation in beautiful Puerto Rico! I've learned that this kind of vacation is referred to as a "babymoon." So anyway, while I was buying a maternity winter coat, I also had to purchase a maternity bathing suit and a few summer tops/capri pants. I am now set for every season, oy vey! Sadly, I haven't had any need for the maternity bathing suit this time. Brad was invited on a few awesome work trips to Florida and Hawaii in February/March (which we usually turn into vacations!) which he declined because of the March due date.
I have ordered all of my maternity clothes online from Old Navy or Target, I love the pre-holiday free shipping deals. When my recent shipment arrived from Old Navy, I started trying everything on and could not even get my arm through the sleeve of the first shirt! I started freaking out and was like "Geez! How much pregnancy weight have I gained already!?!? And I'm gaining weight in my arms??? How strange and disturbing!" In my momentary panic, I held up the shirt and was frozen by how tiny it looked. Either I was getting really big really quickly or this shirt was tiny! I finally looked at the tag and saw that it was an extra small (sent to me by mistake!). Whew!!! The other clothes fit me fine and I still have plenty of room for my tummy to keep growing in them. Brad laughed at the ridiculously small shirt, he's convinced that they made it for a pregnancy pre-teenager! My very thin (non-pregnant) friend Christine came over and she couldn't even fit her arm all the way through the sleeve! It gave us quite a chuckle. I've had the opposite problem during this pregnancy. I lost a LOT of weight in between pregnancies and am just now approaching the weight I was when I FIRST got pregnant with Sam. As a result, none of my maternity pants fit me anymore! The legs were like clown pants and I absolutely hate spending $ on maternity clothes. Thankfully I borrowed a bunch of stuff from people, especially some fabulous capri pants from my best friend Melissa - who is like 5'10" and her capri pants fit me like regular pants! Hilarious.
I'm hungry all the time and try to eat about every 2-3 hours. On lazy weekend mornings, I have been waking up very early (usually 6 or 7am), eat my first breakfast, then get back in bed and sleep some more. We joke that I've been fed and then need to take my morning nap! OH HOW I MISS THOSE LAZY DAYS! This is probably one of the biggest differences between the pregnancies. When I was tired then, I could sleep in forever and basically hibernate. Now, sleeping in past 730am feels like a huge luxury! The other day we all slept until 745am and it was WONDERFUL. However, I still feel like I need to eat a snack every 2-3 hours!
I've been really disgusted by meat over the last few months. Brad made a roasted chicken for dinner recently, I walked into the house and almost fell over, the smell was HORRIBLE (to me)! I went straight upstairs and wouldn't come back down until the smell and food was gone! I particularly dislike beef and have eaten it only once in the last few months (a fabulous steak panini at Whole Foods in Boston). I still eat turkey sandwiches and chicken occasionally, but I'm much happier eating vegetarian - I especially like eating beans (lucky Brad!). This is DEFINITELY still true. I've occasionally been able to eat meat but the smell really disgusts me. When we were in Vegas in November, Brad wanted to go to a steakhouse, but there was no way I could stomach that. The smells...uch. Unfortunately my severe anemia is partially caused by the lack of red meat in my diet. But, I still like eating beans and occasionally indulge in a Taco Bell burrito with meat. Yo quiero Taco Bell! I know Taco Bell is really bad Mexican food, but I seriously love it. I have no idea. Don't ask.
My food cravings are as strange as ever. My recent discovery was an amazing treat concocted at a Hanukkah party! She made tater tots instead of latkes and had chocolate fondue to dip various things into. After dipping a pretzel into the chocolate and awakening my salty/sweet taste buds, I tried dipping a tater tot into the chocolate fondue - it was AMAZING!!! I was delighted by my creation and made others try it, Brianne even liked it (despite others spitting it out)! It was very yummy, seriously - don't knock it until you try it! My other favorite pregnancy food arose from my friend Sandy's baby shower. One of her favorite foods is a toasted bagel with cream cheese and melted cheese on top of the cream cheese. GENIUS! Brad thinks it is gross, but I think it's pretty incredible.I still love the salty and sweet combination. The toasted bagel with cream cheese and melted cheese is still delicious - I eat that even when I'm not pregnant - although it's not exactly the healthiest...
I've also been in love with Potbelly's hot peppers. For those of you whose lives have not been enlightened by the deliciousness of Potbellly's, it's like a Subway or Quizno's type of sandwich place - but much better because of their homemade hot peppers. I often go there for lunch just because I want their hot pepers. I finally bought an entire jar of them to put on sandwiches I make at home! Unfortunately, the peppers often give me horrible heartburn - but pretty much anything gives me heartburn these days, so it's worth it! Reading this TOTALLY cracks me up. I still love Potbelly's hot peppers and even did a blog post on this: My Love Hate Relationship with Potbelly's Hot Peppers But the heartburn has been so much worse this time so I've been trying to lay off the hot peppers.
The emotional roller coaster continues, and I cry over anything. A few weeks ago I woke up at 2am and couldn't fall back asleep, so I watched the ridiculous movie "Jack Frost" that was on tv. The G-rated movie was about a cute little family struck by tragedy when the father (Michael Keaton) dies in a car crash Christmas eve. The following Christmas eve his spirit comes back to visit his son and wife (Kelly Preston) in the form of a walking, talking snow man. By the end of the movie, I was so overcome with emotion that I was sobbing and sobbing and finally woke up Brad to tell him how much I love him, etc. He saw the walking, talking snow man on tv and said, I love you too - but this is what you're crying about?!?!?! Which of course, made me cry even more! We have also watched the new Charlotte's Web movie on tv (again, resulting in many tears). Over the weekend, I watched a Beverly Hills 90210 rerun...which left me weeping as well. Let's just say that Brad has learned to keep tissues on hand at all times. Although I've had a few weepy crying days, Brad even commented recently that I haven't been as ridiculously emotional with this pregnancy. Hmmmm. But, I still regularly cry at tv shows and commercials.
Otherwise, we are doing well and getting ready for our May 09 arrival! My friend Dana helped us unpack a few weeks ago and brought her 3 year old son Connor with her. Watching Connor play with his trucks and run around the house was the first time we began to imagine what it will be like having a child in our house. Connor was so cute, he was helping us unpack and embarked upon a treasure hunt for all of the loose change that fell on the floor during our move. I told him he could keep any coins that he found! My mom told him that he was going to be rich - not knowing the word "rich," he said, "I don't think so, but I will have a lot of money!" We cracked up, he is such a sweet little boy. If only our baby will grow up to be that polite and sweet! :) We recently had a wonderful visit with Dana (Connor's mom) and she commented on what a sweet and smart boy Sam was. Of course, I think that Sam is amazing too. The physical impact he has had on our house was not quite what we imagined. Our house is FULL of toys and he has blazed quite a trail of things he has broken. But, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Thanks for all of your notes on the pregnancy blog, we love reading your messages! We will continue to keep you all updated and will post some pictures from our trip after we return in January. I added a few recent pictures from Hanukkah and holiday parties - enjoy! We hope that everyone has a happy holiday season and a wonderful kickoff to 2009!
We hope that everyone has a wonderful 2011!
Messages:
Posted Dec 24, 2008 7:09pm
by Anonymous
you are hilarious! aside from the emotional rollercoaster (ie crying at kid movies), i never had anything quite so funny during my pregnancies:-) enjoy your babymoon. don't worry, you can still travel when the baby comes (our kids are world travelers), but it's definitely easier to travel with family! happy channukah.
Posted Dec 23, 2008 7:19pm
by lisa plotkin
Hi, Bec and Brad! I'm sad again that I'm so far away and can't be experiencing you guys as you go through this pregnancy! I want more PICTURES, WOMAN! :-). Please. :-). I love that your emotions are so nuts, but that you can still talk about them and get a chuckle out of it (or at least, that Brad can get a chuckle!) I miss you!!!
Posted Dec 23, 2008 5:03pm
by Anonymous: Becca, I always found the maternity bathing suit a real killer - it made it seem all too real (and me all too fat). Have a wonderful holiday.
Posted Dec 23, 2008 4:16pm
by RB ...
At least you are not scarfing down pickled herring, which was Jenn's favorite pregnancy food....
Jenn is pregnant right now too and still loves her pickled herring! :)
We welcome any messages from 2011 too!
Jenn is pregnant right now too and still loves her pickled herring! :)
We welcome any messages from 2011 too!
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