Archive for the ‘Koskie Life’ Category

Pregnancy Week 24

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Seriously, those weekly numbers might look like they’re getting bigger, but really they’re get smaller. SO MUCH SMALLER!!! Currently I’m in my 25th week and that means we’re 15 short weeks of meeting this little cutie. Someone hold me. And rub my gums with vodka… or cranberry juice… or both.

All kidding aside we’re both balls of nerves right now as we realize how close we are. We’re two weeks shy of the third trimester and I don’t feel any more prepared than I did two trimesters ago. Hold that thought, we have five pairs of newborn baby socks and a package of infant forks and spoons. I think we’re good! We’re so anxious to meet her and hold her and get this journey started with her, yet, I don’t think either of us has any idea what lies ahead of us. And I’m a super anal planner/organizer/etc. So my neurosis is kicking in as I try to wrap my brain around taking on the biggest event of both of our lives with little more than the knowledge that for girls you have to wipe front to back.

Week 24 was a very, very busy one. The beginning of the year is always an insane amount of work over there at my day job DietsInReview.com. Tuesday’s Biggest Loser premiere meant I worked a 16 hour day (straight… I stopped for 30 minutes to eat dinner). No, that’s not my norm, and for good reason, I was an achy, crabby, sore, tired mush ball the next day. But sometimes it’s got to get done. The end of the week meant a house full of family and friends for our belated Christmas celebration. Four whole days of house guests, hosted meals and other shenanigans that was incredibly memorable, very fun and left me wiped out.

By Friday morning I woke up to find that I was spotting… again! I don’t even stress about this anymore. My nurse explained that it’s just the way my pregnancy is going. I’ve learned that it only happens when I’ve pushed too hard and my body is stressed and strained. It’s a literal red flag that I need to stop and/or slow down. And so I do. As much as I can. Because I’m a busy body and I’m incapable of letting the world pass by without me actively being a part of it. On Sunday we had a load of housework to do and the third of four hosted meals to prep for, and as I slowly shuffled around do this and doing that, Shelton basically told me to stop. He was amazing and stepped up to take care of the very long list I had in my head that day. I was a complete stress ball as I sat idly by watching and instructing, trying my hardest to just be still and relax. I did manage to have them “let me” snap green beans from the living room chair.

Other recent symptoms include the endless back pain. I got a huge yoga ball for Christmas and have converted this to a chair when necessary, and let me tell you, it’s a God send! It relieves so much pressure in my back, hips and even legs. Plus, I can get in a little exercise while I hang out on here, too! I still have bloody noses. Not sure if I mentioned this previously. I’ve been waking up with these for about a month now. Doc said it’s normal w/ pregnancy, not to mention the dry, cold winter air. We’ve cranked the humidifier in the house and I’m otherwise dealing. This is odd but I’ve also noticed that my fingers get pruney very quickly in the shower. As in, by the time I finish washing my hair (usually my first bathing task) my fingers are wrinkled. Not sure what that’s about.

Every few weeks I’ll look down or walk past a mirror and go “whoa! that belly is big!”, and this week was one of those. I swear it just happens over night. I look down the other day and this belly is bigger, rounder and firmer. I think the firmness is coming from the baby mostly, just the way she positions herself and moves I got these “walls” under my skin that can be somewhat uncomfortable. She found my bladder and has no qualms kicking it. It’s almost like that funny bone sensation in that it’s kind of indescribable and hurts but not really. It’s strange, and it makes me pee more!

Other than that everything is hunky dory and normal.

Pregnancy Week 23 and OB Visit Week 23

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

Oh what a week! Not as bad as the past few have been, yet still not the starfish kisses that everyone promised second trimester would be. I liked week 23.

I had my monthly visit with my OB. And as much as I like going every four weeks and having him reassure me that there is in fact still a baby inside of my uterus, I’m going to be perfectly honest… these appointments are pointless. I’m learning that short of having a foot hanging out of my vagina, no one is going to react to anything. NO ONE WILL REACT! Which is disappointing for a person like me who, well, likes it when people react to things I say and do. He measured my belly and that was the only “test” he did. Apparently it was fine. I at least took a long list of questions with me to make it worth my while for going down there.

Whether I’m more sensitive to it or it’s just trending, I’ve been hearing a lot about pre-term deliveries lately. This completely freaks me out. And Dr. W was reassuring in telling me that they have no idea what actually causes pre-term and he can’t tell what to do or not to do to avoid it. Awesome.

I asked about the bloody noses that I wake up with every morning. He told me I’m pregnant. Awesome.

I asked about the heartburn I have that would make a dragon cry and “radiates in my knee caps,” according to Juno. Ah ha! A solution. Prevacid or Pepcid.

We spent the weekend of Christmas in Oklahoma City with Shelton’s family. We got to catch-up with friends over a very long lunch and it was as if the past two years hadn’t lapsed at all. It was one of those four-hour lunches where we left with cheeks hurting from laughing so hard. They cooed over my belly and I soaked it up! There was confusion over our baby name and they thought it was Petunia. It is definitely NOT Petunia! We also got to spend two whole days with our nieces and nephew. I absolutely am in love with those babies. My nephew, Stone, is one of these boys who charges you when he wants to hug. It’s adorable, and I’ve indulged this behavior for nearly four years, scooping him in to my arms with each charge. We both had to learn that pregnant people can’t pick-up charging 3.5-year-olds… and 3.5-year-old boys can’t charge pregnant aunts.

One of the highlights of the week was, of course, continuing to feel the baby moving. I will seriously sit here and laugh out loud (that’s normal English for “LOL”) when she gets on a roll. Each week her kicks and punches get stronger and the sessions last longer. This past week, they got so strong that I didn’t even have to touch my belly to feel her, my stomach just moved. It’s insane! Feeling her moving, rolling, punching and kicking is absolutely the highlight of my pregnancy and I think it is this that I will miss most when she’s resting in my arms.

We did two road trips this past week – one to OKC and one to Topeka to celebrate the new year. I swore off planes a few weeks ago and I’m not too far off from swearing off car trips longer than 20 minutes. We have to stop all the time for me to pee, eat something or get up and walk. There is absolutely not one comfortable position in those seats. Driving helps some, but I hate driving and Shelton hates when I drive.

Our New Year’s Eve celebration was fantastic. It not only marks the start of a new year (clearly!) but also the anniversary of when Shelton and I started dating. At midnight of 01/01/01 we kissed and we’ve been doing so every new year since. Maybe one or two other times during the year. 01/01/10 marked nine years… which means we’ve actually known each other for more than ten, and that’s astonishing to me. We spend each Eve with some of our best friends in Topeka for a stay-at-home party that is always themed. This year I was fat and when someone suggested PJ Party I said yes! So we all sported jammies and had a comfy, cozy celebration. I actually made it all the way to 12:45am… even though around 8:30pm my eyes were doing that rapid-blink thing struggling to stay open. I also had a martini glass filled with “pregnancy sangria” all night long, and while I jealously watched everyone sip bubbly at midnight, at least it wasn’t water.

As if my cousin’s long-john style PJs with the butt flap weren’t entertainment enough, my pregnant boobs took center-stage and were the topic of conversation throughout the night. Apparently I’m supposed to change the name of the site to Baby AND Bust. I’ve known they’ve gotten bigger. I mean come on, I’d have to be blind and paralyzed from the neck down not to realize the expansion project taking place in the middle of my chest. But it’s one of those things that you don’t quite realize just how big they’ve gotten until someone points it out. And people pointed, literally. It was all in good humor and I’m glad that I was able to provide such robust entertainment for the evening.

Finally, we finished the week by registering. Yay!!! I’ve been waiting to get through the holidays to do so. The next few weeks are pretty insane for us and my first shower is the end of February, so I thought we should just get it done. Shelton was really stressed about it. He thought we needed a plan or a strategy. And I was like, we’re going to scan baby wipes, what kind of strategy do we need? We went to Babies R Us and quickly realized that ALL OF THE PREGNANT PEOPLE IN WICHITA go there to register on Saturday afternoons. The BRU staff has clearly done this before and they got us set-up with a gun and on our way in a matter of minutes. It helped that I had registered online so we didn’t have to go through all of that in the store. I started crying when they handed me the gun. Just another one of those moments that I thought would never be ours. So many times I’ve walked in to BRU to buy gifts for friends and walked out of their crying each and every time. And here I was crying inside the store because I finally got to be there for us, and it felt so good! I think we did pretty well, considering we have no idea what we’re doing. When faced with 400 different varieties of baby bottles, strollers, diapers and other ESSENTIAL baby items, we typically opted for the brands we commonly see friends or family using. That was our on-the-spot research method. We were actually pretty reasonable about the whole thing, so we think, only scanning items we really needed and straying from the over-hyped plethora of YOUR BABY WILL NEVER LEARN TO WALK WITHOUT THIS SUPER TRENDY VERY EXPENSIVE HOUSEHOLD CLEANER WITH A PICTURE OF A BABY ON THE FRONT type items. Then we went to Target where my back and feet finally gave out and we spent one more hour scanning a few items. We’re just that much closer to getting her here!!!

Farewell 2009

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

I don’t do Christmas letters, but I do like to wrap up my year all nice and tidy on my blog. Web site. Whatever we’re calling it. Before I had a blog I would always go back to the front of my calendar and relive the events of the past 12 months. But now I can do it so much flashier!

2009 will go down as one of the best years I’ve yet lived. It wasn’t too fast, it wasn’t too slow, it feels like it was exactly the pace a year is supposed to be. We’ve enjoyed four actual seasons, distinguishable from one another with generous tap lapses between one climate/weather and the next. You know, because I’m such a crier, I get a little misty thinking about bidding this year farewell and I wonder if 2010 can live up to the bar that has been set so high.

Here’s a look at some of the highlights from our year. First in pictures, surrounded by the people, places and even things that fill our lives with such immeasurable joy.

And now, the list. The things I’ll most remember 2009 for.

1. Ringing in the new year with some of our dearest family/friends, at a nerd-themed party.

1b. (because I’m not renumbering this list!) Watching Obama being sworn in as president.

2. Eating oysters for the first time in Dallas with the Woolards. And not dying.

3. Spending an entire week with the Koskies in OKC, while dodging Flu Armageddon ‘09

4. Attending my sister’s sonogram to learn she was having a little girl!

5. Buying a Snuggie. And wearing it in public.

6. Attending SXSW in Austin (my first trip) with some of best guys I know. Not to mention eating lobster tacos and sipping mojitos on a roof-top under the sun.

7. Going vegetarian for an entire week. Not one piece of meat. And trying tofu.

8. We moved (and will likely do so again this spring). Sigh.

9. The Brooks wedding.

10. The Morehead/Bauer wedding.

11. Witnessed the founding of Snikl.com.

12. Invited to have dinner with Jillian Michaels. Had to try sushi for the first time. Didn’t die.

13. Start taking birth control pills, officially begin the IVF process.

14. Shelton got a fantastic new job, ending seven months of unemployment!!

15. Spent a weekend in Baltimore and Annapolis visiting Koskies, being woke up each morning by my nephew.

16. Attended my 10 year high school reunion and loved it!

17. Skipped Shelton’s 10 year high school reunion because he said we wouldn’t love it.

18. Welcomed miss Charlie Jane Morehead! My 18th cousin or something.

19. Spent 4th of July in Omaha/Cedar Creek with the Moreheads and made the best of the dreariest July EVER!

20. Shelton’s MESA surgery.

21. Started Lupron and thus began 68 consecutive days of fertility drug shots.

22. Said goodbye to Anna Cesario, who never hesitated to tell cancer where it could go!

23. Welcomed my niece Eleanor “Ellie” Sue Marie Felker!

24. Did our egg retrieval, and got 17 eggs.

25. Waited “patiently” for four days and then transferred are only two viable embryos.

26. Waited “even more patiently” for 11 days and then took a pregnancy test and found out that we were finally, FINALLY pregnant!!!

27. Waited “really super patiently” for two more weeks, then did a sonogram to learn that one little baby was occupying my womb!!!

28. Released from our amazing fertility clinic to join the ranks of normal OB/pregnancy treatment. But, we know we’re not normal!

29. The best camping trip in a very long time! Morning sickness and all. Thank God someone brought BBQ potato chips.

30. Rocked the best Halloween costumes EVER as the Twitter bird and Fail Whale .. with the Moreheads.

31. Felt the baby moved… and she has yet to let up!

32. Took our Babymoon to Boca Raton. Swam in the Atlantic for the first time. Sailed on a catamaran. Spent an entire day on the beach doing nothing.

33. Found out she’s a she baby!

34. Celebrated our little’s 13th birthday with Hibachi!

35. At midnight we’ll celebrate nine years together.

Pregnancy Weeks 17 and 18

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

As usual, I should have made some notes for myself because trying to recall the information to do an update on weeks 17 and 18 is proving to be a little difficult.

I spent most of week 17 trying to just hydrate. That is still my mission. Just keep drinking. I’ve been sleeping much better since I got over the dehydration and leg cramps.

The crying phase seems to have set in. Everything makes me cry. For anyone who knows me you might be thinking, what’s new? But this is seriously all the time. It takes nothing to send me straight to bawling. In fact this morning I woke up with an overwhelming urge to cry, and while it never happened, I felt that way for four hours. Just a lump in my throat and the wrong moment was going to send me off the deep.

We spent half of each week on our “babymoon” vacation to Boca Raton. It was a much needed and overdue break for both of us, and I’m going to fill you in on all the details in a separate post. As far as the pregnancy is concerned, I managed just fine. I’m glad it was an easy vacation, meaning a lot of laying around the beach, because I don’t think I would have had the energy to keep up with a fast-paced trip. I did well on both flights, despite the nightmare of traveling the day before and the day of Thanksgiving. My back is in dire need of catching up, and it’s make me nervous about my even longer flights to/from LA in two weeks. I just couldn’t ever find a comfortable position and I was up several times to go to the restroom.

I got to feel the baby move a few more times during weeks 17 and 18. Still just fleeting little flutters that catch me off guard. It tends to be either late at night or very early morning. There was one moment following dinner on our trip though that was completely out of no where. We were walking around some shops when my knees buckled because I swear the monster was trying to escape out the left side of my abdomen. I think it was a combination of slight pain and a lot of surprise.

The day after Thanksgiving I woke to find that I was spotting a tad. I’d had a lot of cramping this day, too, so I was of course fairly concerned. But the spotting didn’t seem to last and neither did the cramping.

I have my monthly appointment with the OB on Monday to kick-off week 19. While we were told it would have to be week 20, I’m HOPING he’ll let us have the sonogram this next week. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!! Before I was adamant about not finding out the gender of the monster. However, I’m a little OCD when it comes to planning things and being organized and I just can’t wrap my brain around not planning for a specific gender. So, we anxiously await to find out if this is a he-monster or a she-monster.

Niece Ellie

Friday, August 28th, 2009

I finally got to meet my new niece Eleanor. I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who calls her Eleanor. Everyone else calls her Ellie. She’ll be six weeks tomorrow and I’ve been dying to get that little munchkin in my arms – and that’s precisely where she sat for the past five days.

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People, she is perfect in every way. She is positively gorgeous. Yes, I’m bias, a little bit. She has a gorgeous tan complexion that I will never have. Nor will my children who are bound to be transparent based on what Shelton and I have to offer for pigment. She has perfect, beautiful, stunning eyes and they are crowned by the most amazing set of eyelashes I have ever seen. I drooled over them all week. They kind of swoop up on the outside corners making her look a little like a vixen cartoon character.

She coos, grunts, whines, moves, wiggles and jerks constantly. CONSTANT! Thus her nickname fidget.

Tonight she was taken away from me. I miss her already, even though I’ll see her in two short weeks. She’ll be six years old by then.

I am so grateful that my sister Jenna took the time to travel alone with a newborn so that I could see the baby. It was fun watching my baby sister as a new mom and see how naturally she’s fallen in to the role.

It was equally bizarre to be receiving pregnancy advice from someone I used to tell was adopted and would pretend to be running away from home in front of just to make her cry. Yes, I was that older sister.

This “Aunt Brandi” gig just keeps getting sweeter!

Also, a nugget of a conversation Jenna and I had the other night re: the possibility of me having twins:

Brandi: I see your baby and raise you one.

Jenna: I fold.

He Gets It!

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Let me start by saying that when the call came from Shelton’s brother last night to tell us about Tilton’s arrival, I was watching the season finale of The Mole. With no way to pause the TV when I saw his name on my caller ID, I hesitated to answer. I’m glad I chose to answer though.

After we’d hung up with Keith, I sat in Shelton’s lap just hugging him. He asked if I was doing OK. The day our nephew was born I was a wreck. But in all fairness, the day he was born we had just had our first appointment with our fertility doctor and everything was still so fresh. I had an ear-to-ear grin and told him I was fine. He asked again. I told him I was fine.

Anyone married knows that “fine” from the wife doesn’t always mean fine. So very sympathetically, Shelton asked one more time if I was handling the news OK. I told him that I couldn’t be any happier. I was thrilled to have my niece and so excited that they delivered a healthy baby girl.

Not that Shelton doesn’t get this, but the way he manages the emotions is far different than me. It meant so much that he asked, and kept asking until he knew I was alright. It also shows how much we’ve grown in this journey in the past two years.