Category: family

One June 16,  I started feeling some pretty reliable kicks during a meeting. It was funny because I sat through the meeting pretty much ignoring the little bubbles that I felt in my lower abdomen. You know, sometimes it’s just gas…but about halfway through my meeting, the thought occurred to me that this is about the time when baby kicks start happening.

Since then, the kicking has been on and off, but it’s definitely little jabs and kicks.  When I yelled at the dog yesterday for eating Emma’s food, I felt a quick twitch. I think the volume must’ve scared someone in there.

On another note, I feel pretty tired each night by about 9:30. Un-pregnant Lauren likes to go to bed at 11pm and stay up forever. Pregnant Lauren can barely keep her eyes open after putting Emma to bed. However, if I wake up in the middle of the night to let the dogs out or calm a sad child from a dream, I can’t go back to sleep for at least 2 hours. So that’s fun.

Just to keep notes, this week the baby’s heartbeat was 147 beats per minute. We scheduled our next appointment for the end of June, and we’ll have another ultrasound that week.

Nothing much to report.

 

And now here is a quick shot of week 15:

 

It’s been different this time around because my belly just kind of plopped out. Not popped. Popped would be cute. Plop is exactly what it sounds like–frumpy and dumpy. I recall my pants not buttoning well during week 6 and being shocked.

With Emma, I didn’t look this “big” until around week 20-something. It’s been harder to adjust to my actual reflection in the mirror because it is just so darn fast this second time around.

Sometime around May, Emma started coming home from daycare and telling us about kids at school who were going to be big brothers or big sisters. And being a three year old, Emma started trying out these claims for herself to see what they felt like…which really confused our family. Peter and I had decided to wait for a while to tell Emma about becoming a big sister. I think the goal was to wait until my stomach felt a lot better first, but this kid was just so darn excited.

One day, Peter’s mom came home and asked us if we had told Emma already. Apparently Emma greeted Gramma at the door of daycare saying, “I’m gonna be a big sister!” True, but we had never actually told her that yet.

So we decided to sit her down and tell her before someone else did by accident. She was very excited, and we even did a walk through the house to see where a new baby would be able to sleep. Luckily, Dad had the good idea to put the baby in the extra bedroom where Emma’s old crib was.

We took a couple pictures of her in her new Big Sister shirt, and she proudly went to school the next day and told everyone that Mommy was having triplets…WHAT?!

Yes, so I had to respond to many shocked daycare workers when I walked through the door and asked me, “IS IT TRUE??!!?” I almost spit out an imaginary drink when they followed their question with “Are you pregnant with triplets?!”  Haha. NO! It is NOT true.

Only one Franza baby in there, folks. Emma is positive that it’s a brother named Harry. We have had to tell her that it may not be a boy and that we don’t know right now. She responds with “Oh, ok. But he will be my brother.”

Since I had pret-ty bad morning sickness with Emma, I expected for this old friend to rear it’s ugly head again this time…only, I was expecting it around week 6.5 again,  not week 5.5 like it actually did.

Peter and I went out for Japanese food, and in the middle of our vegetable sushi dishes, I could not look at the sushi anymore. Just the thought of looking at it was enough to make me feel sick.

My doctor had given me some nausea medicine proactively, but she had explained that the “Cadillac” of morning sickness medicines was no longer available until week 12 of pregnancy–Zofran. I tell you what; I missed my friend, Zofran a lot. The new medicine she gave me was called Diclegis, which is a mix of vitamin B6 and a sleeping aid (Unisom). All it did was make me super tired and talk in my sleep like a maniac.

During my 6 week doctor appointment, Peter mentioned to the doctor that I was not responding well to the medicine. I pretty much was sick all the same, making me super sad. She changed my medicine to Phenergan, which was a billion times better but still lots of sleepiness. I also talked in a my sleep a lot but not as much. The Phenergan made my stomach mostly tolerable, but I wasn’t allowed to operate heavy machinery aka drive while taking it. Peter was a wonderful husband and drove me to work each day and picked me up. I still had to have cinnamon gum, lollipops, bags in my purse/car for random vomiting, and snacks everywhere just in case.

At week 12, my doctor switched me over to Zofran, and it was amazing. YAY, ZOFRAN! Except for one side effect, but I won’t get into that here. For some reason, the nausea is still peeking through pretty strong at certain points during the day, but I haven’t thrown up since week 12 or so. I’ll consider that a win.

We also got a better picture at that visit so I’ll add it here to spice up this blog entry a bit.

 

For anyone who is curious, yes, smells make me sick–particularly the smell of men (my husband included), coffee, dirty dishes in the sink, pull-ups, dog food, air freshener, and so much more!

 

If you are a believer in all of the gender prediction myths, here is some information:

• Heart rate: 159 bpm in week 12
• Craving: salty and veggies
• Acne: yep, I’ve got it
• Morning sickness: tons of it
• Clumsy/Graceful: clumsy…not something new for me

I don’t really believe in any of the gender prediction myths, but I’d love to hear what myths anyone out there has heard before.