Gone fishin' at 17 weeks

Have you ever gone fishin' on a bright and sunny day?

With all the little fishes swimmin' up and down the bay?

With their hands in their pockets and their pockets in their pants

All the little fishes doin' a hoochie' coochie' dance.

Here's the first update on Fish & Chips.  As of today, I'm 17 weeks and definitely pregnant as the photo above shows.  Last week my stomach finally popped out.  Before that, I just looked pretty thick around the middle.  And when I say "finally", I don't mean I was overjoyed when it popped out.  But I was definitely relieved that I now look more pregnant than fat.

As a little recap, being this is my first post regarding my pregnancy, the first trimester was not kind of me.  With Lady I was beyond nauseous (having to roll onto my stomach and scoot off the bed, slowly landing on my knees before standing), but my doctor prescribed anti-nauseous medication which saved me.  This time around, I started with nausea and asked my doctor for the medication again.  I started taking it, but still felt awful.  I thought this meant that my morning sickness was so severe that it was coming through the medication.  Well, I forgot the medication on the trip to Ireland and realized then that the medication wasn't working at all.  The feeling that "was coming through" was the same feeling that I had when I didn't take the medication.  So I was stuck with this feeling of yuckiness.  The best way to describe the nausea is that it's the same feeling you get when you don't eat for several hours and are so hungry that you are nauseous.  Only this time, eating didn't make it go away (though I really did try to eat my way through it).

Also we know that Fish is a boy.  We know this because I'm old.  My age at the time of delivery puts me in the "advanced maternal age" category.  So we were able to get a special genetics test done to test for chromosomal abnormalities and being that they were looking directly at the baby's DNA, they could also tell us the sex.  We have our anatomy scan (which is when most people find out the sex of their baby if they are going to do it before hand) scheduled for early September, so you better bet that we are asking for verification (I really wanted Lady to have a sister).

If I'm being completely honest with you, the hormonal aspect of this pregnancy has made me whack-a-doo.  I've been pretty depressed for most of the first trimester.  We had had a lot of stressors (such as a flooded basement and me not being able to help due to being pregnant and also having to watch Lady) and it's difficult to be the sole care-giver for an 18 month-old with no family locally (E has been working a lot and she also refuses to let anyone do anything for her but me).  There are days where I would truly pillage a village to live closer to my family.  I think the eternal optimist in me that someday I'll be closer is what is making it difficult for me to accept my new normal.  But the hormones are also raging.  When I was pregnant with Lady, the movie trailer for "War Horse" would make me bawl -- it was so bad that I had to turn the channel whenever it came on.  My first severe hormonal bout?  I watched the Disney movie "Brave" over the weekend.  I think that I spent the last 45 minutes of that movie crying.  From the point where the mother turned into a bear (I'm totally crying right now by the way), I was a mess.  In fact, E asked me what was going on with the bear at this specific point (don't click on the link if you have never seen the movie and don't want it spoiled) and I put it to him simply "I'm too pregnant to watch this movie" because I was bawling too much to answer coherently.

As of this week, the nausea has been easing and I'll be thankful to never have that feeling again.  I haven't felt any kicking yet, but I can definitely feel when he is moving around in there.  I can't feel him moving a ton yet (maybe once or twice a day at around the same time each day), but I'm just waiting for that first kick.  I felt Lady kick at 19 weeks, so it should be any day now.  I'm also starting to talk about the baby to Lady, telling her there is a baby inside my tummy.  She points to my belly and tries to look inside my belly button whenever I say that.  Obviously, she thinks I'm lying as she can't see any babies in there.  Ha!