My little melon

It's been a while since I've written and honestly the weeks seem to be bleeding into one another.  I can't believe its November next week.  I feel like yesterday I was thinking, "Shit I can't believe its October next week".

So I'm 34 weeks now and baby weighs about as much as a cantaloupe (4.75lbs).   I kind of can't believe that the baby is this big and I'm only 3 weeks away from being considered full term.  We went to Nantucket this weekend for a little "babymoon" and it was beyond gorgeous.  It is the place you imagine when you think of a seaside New England town.  We had gorgeous fall weather all weekend, ate a TON of really ridiculously good food, walked around cobblestone streets, visited the Whaling Museum and went in stores that we couldn't possibly buy a thing.  We also watched a lot of Breaking Bad on the laptop - we are completely addicted to the series and will watch 3-4 episodes a night if possible. Netflix streaming is the best.

View from our balcony in Nantucket 

And below is what I see when I look down these days.  My belly feels enormous to me these days and lately the baby has been going bananas and moving like crazy to the point where it actually hurts sometimes.  I also think I've been getting more frequent Braxton Hicks contractions where my stomach feels so tight it feels like it could just burst.

And a side view.  Yes I took these while I was at work.  I needed a break and figured why not be awkward and try to take belly self portraits in my cubicle.  Also my shirt is not a maternity shirt and is struggling to cover my lower stomach. I'm awesome and have totally given up.

 

My best friend had a baby last week (!!!) and it sort of put me in a panic to get ready for our little one.  I'm working on a post of the things I'm doing to prepare before baby arrives so hopefully it'll be up this week. :)

My little melon

Trying to balance it all...

I'm officially in my third trimester! I looked at the countdown on one of my baby iphone apps and it said I have 71 days until this baby is due! 71 days is not a lot of time. Sometimes I feel like this pregnancy has flown by.  Then other times I can't remember not being pregnant.  I am starting to really get a little anxious about how labor is going to be, motherhood and the realization that I will forever be responsible for another life. 

I thought I'd write a post about some pregnancy symptoms/side effects and some of the things that have been on my mind lately.

• Carpel Tunnel:  It sucks.  Apparently is very common for pregnant women to experience this because of the swelling and fluid retention. I started noticing it in the mornings when I woke up and my fingers were tingly.  These days I sleep with wrist guards on and have to ask my husband to massage my arms nightly.  I have to say its a really annoying feeling to have tingling, burning and aching hands, wrists and even arms. 
• Swelling: So far my ankles and face have started to swell a little.  Some days are worse than others and I find myself wearing more pants to hide my cankles.
• Leg cramps: I haven't had too many of these but they are awful and wake me up in the middle of the night confused and in a lot of pain.  No great explanation as to why they happen to pregnant women but when they happen,  it helps me to flex my feet or get out of bed and stand up right away.
• Belly button: I'm losing the battle to stay an "innie" slowly.  I'm hoping to make it all the way to 40 without it popping out but it seems to be getting smaller and smaller and ready to pop any day.
• Linea negra: Yup its there.  All the way up my belly almost to my chest.  Lately a dark circle has formed around my belly button and its not cute.  I guess women with darker skin are more prone to this.
• Hair: Looking pretty good and full.  I guess you tend to lose less hair during pregnancy but post pregnancy apparently a lot falls out.  My sister in law lost a ridiculous amount of hair in the two months after she had my nieces and nephew.  
• Back Pain: I swear as soon as I hit my third trimester back pain set in bad again.  I had a bout of sciatica early on in pregnancy but it went away during second trimester.  I think its back now because the baby is getting bigger and squishing my insides. Yup squishing.  I'm super technical and clinical.  If I don't get up every hour or so while I'm at work I get a bad backache and my ass hurts.  Back pain also contributes to me not being able to sleep.
• Hip pain: Since you can't sleep on your back while prego and my usual spread eagle tummy sleeping doesn't work either, I have to sleep on my sides.  This is causing my hips to just ache.  So now I wake up multiple times a night to pee, or because my fingers have gone numb from carpel tunnel, or to adjust because my hips/back are killing me.

Another annoying thing about pregnancy is that I feel like I need to rely on my husband a lot more.  I know it shouldn't annoy me and I feel so grateful that he takes care of me and really has pampered me this entire pregnancy.  That being said I'd really like to be able to lift heavy things (or even things of moderate weight), not be so emotional and not need him to rub my arms and/or back every night.  He always does and he is the best but sometimes it feels like I have to rely on him too much and I'm just not used to that feeling.

I'm such a whiner and I didn't mean for this post to go on and on but sometimes I think its helpful to hear about the crappy parts of an otherwise great time in life.  Yes I still think its just as incredible that I am growing a life inside me and I know this baby is worth all the pain listed above and much more. It doesn't change the fact that pregnancy is difficult.  On top of your body changing, your entire life changes and shifts.  Whether you like it or not, you become a different person in some ways.  For example, I have had to deal with the frustration of being phased out of work.  They no longer put me on important projects and I feel completely out of the loop.  I know they are just preparing for me going out but it still bothers me to have to compromise in this area.  I have always dedicated a lot of myself to work/school and I hate feeling useless and underutilized.

This makes me think about how hard it is going to be to prioritize everything in my life.  I've heard from different working mothers that it can be really frustrating to know that you can't do everything well.  You might not/probably won't be the best employee at work or the best mother when you have to juggle it all.  I mostly worry about missing out on my child's life while I'm at work.  If I'll somehow not bond with my little one as much or be there for them when they really need me.  Both my parents worked but my mom ran my dad's office growing up (and still does) so the job was definitely flexible.  I never felt neglected when both  my parents were at work but my SIL is a stay at home mom (for now) and is able to give so much to her children.  I know we will work it out to find some balance that works for our family but these are the things that have been weighing on my mind these days.

Readers, any advice for moms to be on finding a life balance, going back to work or any general advice?

Trying to balance it all...

Maternity Dresses are Ugly

I had a really hard time finding a cute maternity dress for my baby shower my Mom and Sister in Law threw me in California.  In my opinion maternity dresses in general just aren't that cute or fashionable.  Luckily non maternity clothes can usually work because dresses and tops these days are loose and flowy.  But of course when you are looking for a dress, you can never find one.  I shopped for dresses for weeks and was pretty frustrated overall throughout the process.  In the end it came down to three contenders.

Dress That Launched 1000 Ships from Modcloth (in Storm):

This dress is really beautiful and the print is much better in person.  Its a non maternity dress, nice quality fabric and could definitely be worn again.  But it  just didn't look that great on me.  I have big hips and this dress floated over them and made me feel even bigger than I actually am.  I think part of it too is that my boobs have decided to grow along with the baby bump and they are just monsters these days.  Plus the dress was expensive ($150).  So back it went to Modcloth.

The Back View Dress from Anthropologie:

This dress is really vibrant and colorful.  I loved the back of this dress so much (its all braided).  Plus it has these butterfly sleeves which hid my arms that I am so self conscious of.  This was a serious contender for me for a while but my mom just didn't like it.  I'm not sure that it was all that flattering because I had this baby bump and then on top of it the butterfly sleeves made everything up top look sort of voluminous.  I think someone with really skinny legs could rock this dress with a baby bump though.  It is expensive at $168.

I also really debated wearing an Isabella Oliver dress but ultimately decided it might be too sexy for a baby shower with family and family friends everywhere. Tight, red, sexy and worn by Angelina Jolie I realized doesn't exactly scream baby shower and motherhood (not that you can't be a sexy Mom).

So, when I finally got this dress from asos I was thrilled.

I loved the color and I thought the fit could be flattering but I wasn't really all that sure about the fabric.  It wasn't that expensive ($69 at the time) and with free shipping I figured why not.  This dress ended up being the one that my mom and SIL liked the best.  I felt really comfortable in it and the fabric is this soft jersey that feels so soft.  Here are a few pictures of me and my fellow prego BFF from my baby shower.  I'm 26 weeks in the picture and she is 34 weeks. 

I guess the only dress that worked turned out to be a maternity dress so the title of my post is a little aggressive.  I've been pretty disappointed with maternity clothes shopping aside from the fact that you get to wear elastic waistband pants everywhere.  That seriously is a dream come true.  I wonder why they don't make more regular stylish clothes with elastic waistbands.  Where are your favorite places to shop for prego friendly clothing?

Maternity Dresses are Ugly

Pregosaurus Attacks

I know its been weeks since I've posted.  I really want to get better at consistent blogging but I honestly sometimes just feel boring.  I feel sometimes like nothing I am writing or thinking of writing is new or original.  It probably has already been written before and more eloquently than I can say it.  I guess this is my blog though and I can only write about what I know so here we go....

I'm 24 weeks pregnant today!  This is a huge milestone for me - one I honestly wasn't sure that I would make back when I was only in my first trimester.  At this point in my pregnancy, my baby is medically viable and if anything bad were to happen, they would try and save this little boy or girl.  The lines are a little blurred here and some hospitals have saved babies as early as 21/22 weeks but I'm just happy that I've made it to the well known 24 week mark.  Don't get me wrong baby - you stay in there and grow (my early first trimester mantra was "grow baby grow")- but this does bring some kind of relief.  After having two miscarriages, I can finally recognize that this pregnancy is different.  This is one strong little guy or girl and I believe in the baby and my body.  So far, the best feeling in the world has been feeling the little one kick.  There is nothing quite so reassuring and wonderful as feeling those little kicks, pokes and turns.  I'm sure I'll be singing a different song towards the end of pregnancy when the baby is rearranging my insides and its uncomfortable.  But for now, I'm blissfully happy when I feel those movements.  It makes me feel like we have a little secret together and are already sharing moments together.

So clearly I am pretty damn happy and grateful for this pregnancy.  But oh my god my hormones are insane.  I am a mercurial monster and honestly frequently feel like I could laugh, cry and scream with rage all at the same time.  Tonight for example, I lost  my shit on my husband who brought home a not ripe avocado.  Seriously just lost it and basically threw a tantrum.  It was sort of integral to our dinner but really did not deserve my reaction. Pregnant bitches be crazy.  The funny thing is that at the time I totally recognize that I am being insane but I just cannot get a grip. I call  myself pregosaurus because of my hormones and because I eat food with gusto these days.

Plus I feel like a fat monster.  I know I'm pregnant and I'm supposed to gain weight blah blah.  It is just hard to feel attractive these days.  Feeling ugly and laziness have stopped me from taking prego pictures.  I really wanted to be one of those cute women that takes weekly pictures and has everything documented.  I just can't get it together in the morning since I am perpetually late.  And at night the last thing I want to do is take a picture of myself.  I did it though at 22 weeks on my iphone so one of my fellow prego friends could see what the bump looked like. Excuse the crappy quality - my husband was on call and I'm not good at taking my own picture.

Sorry for the long boring post.  I will try my hardest to keep writing and hopefully it won't all be prego related.

Pregosaurus Attacks

Been a little busy...

Growing this little one!

Baby at 12 weeks, 2 days

I am 15 weeks today and feeling pretty great except for being tired and having allergies. I was blessed with no morning sickness and only some slight nausea. I waited for a long time to announce anything first because we were nervous given our previous miscarriages and then because we had to wait to tell all our family and friends.

Aside from baby growing, we recently moved and I've been working like a mad woman so the blog has definitely fallen to the wayside. I haven't even taken any pictures of my already showing little belly bump. Its starting to look a little less like I've eaten too many donuts so I'm happy about that.

I can't wait to start getting back into blogging more and documenting the my pregnancy. :) Hopefully some of you are still reading and will be here for the journey!

Been a little busy...

Where did February go?

First things first, I suck at keeping up with my blog. Lots has happened in the past month though....

House
We found a house, made an offer and it was accepted!!! Yay. After a few hurdles, we have officially signed a purchase and sale and are on our way to being the owners of an actual home! It will be kind of a shock to have no one living above or below us, more than one bathroom, a garage and for the first time in 10 years not be living in the middle of a big city. Granted, we are only 7 miles from Boston but with the traffic and roads here, that's about a 20 minute drive. Our official move to suburbia won't really change that much because to be honest I drive everywhere and rarely take the train downtown. My husband however can't walk to work anymore which means we have to buy a new car too. This is the most money I've ever spent in my entire life and the first time I will be owning a car (I never needed on in Boston or NYC and the one I drive now is officially my husbands) and property (current condo was my husbands before we got married).

Baby
So now that we've got a 4 bedroom house, its time to fill it with a baby or two. The trying to conceive game continues and I was loving Carly's post on the dreaded two week wait. The husband is in DC for the month so who knows how long this annoying little dance will be. I'm not going to lie, its been tough watching everyone around me get preggers in no time at all. The jealous, frustrated and angry part of me came out for a while and was just bitter about everything. I am getting over it though and realize that things happen for people at different times. You can't rush something as good as a baby and when we do have a baby it'll be extra special for us. Plus I still get to do things like indulge in wine, drink coffee, eat sushi and have some turkey sandwiches while I am at it. I know I'd give up all those things in a heartbeat for a baby but I am trying to stay positive after some very comforting advice from Shortie. Although Our Little Haus is no longer, Shortie recently started a new blog about trying to conceive, how to get pregnant and pregnancy after loss that is already one of my favorite blogs to read.

House, baby and work have been taking over life. Oh and the travel for work is getting OLD. I spent a week in San Diego last month which I know is annoying to complain about. But don't worry, it was rapidly followed up by a week long trip to rural Minnesota. Yup Minnesota in February is just no bueno. Can't switch jobs until we move to the new house though so to try and keep myself more calm and take charge of my health (the scale at the doctors office was a slap in the face!), I took a hot yoga class with my friends last night. It was hot and sweaty but very relaxing. Hey, if my friend's husband can do it and be all flexible then so can I.

Anyway, that's whats been going on with me lately. I've gotta think of a new name for a blog soon and I think make the transition over to wordpress. Any suggestions of names would be great since I don't think I want to start a blog called Life on (new street name).

Where did February go?

Weird Dreams and Random Thoughts

I'm all in a funk today because I had some weirdo dreams last night. I think most women who are TTC (trying to conceive) feel that the two weeks of wait for your period are agonizing. I start to freak out and think every little thing I feel could be a pregnancy symptom. Clearly pregnancyis on the brain (among other things) because last night I had a dream that I was pregnant and also that Anthony Bourdain and some woman were pregnant too. Oh and we were all hanging out at one of my nieces birthday parties. I think its because I was watching an episode of No Reservations where he goes to Syria that was particularly weird. Either way I need to get a life and get distracted fast because I'm driving myself bananas.

Image

On another note - did you see Clemence Poesy in Marie Claire? Its featured on Who What Wear's Blog and I love the styling and her hair is incredible.

Above three images via Who What Wear

Also, I wish I could make a fishtail braid like Minka Kelly and actually rock it without feeling like I was back in 5th grade. What? Didn't your mom do a fishtail braid that went all the way across your head too? Awesome.

Image via people.com

Weird Dreams and Random Thoughts

Women, Leadership and Success

I just found this video (see below) of Facebook's Chief Operating Office, Sheryl Sandburg, giving a talk on why we have too few women leaders. The statistics she provides on women in leadership positions is disappointing. As a woman in a challenging business environment who is also thinking about having kids soon, this video really hit home and made me feel inspired.

The key thoughts of her speech are:

1. Sit at the Table - She makes the point that women often underestimate themselves, attribute their success to outside factors and aren't as confident and self assured as men. She provides examples such as 57% of men negotiate their first salary out of college, while only 7% of women do the same. I know that I didn't negotiate my salary much with my first job and didn't at all with my second job. After discussions with my male coworkers (I happen to work with mostly men), they all said they really negotiated and weren't afraid to be rejected. A potentially costly lesson learned for myself. She also talks about how women who are driven can often be viewed in a negative light when compared to male counterparts. She references an Harvard Business School case study on a successful venture capitalist who happened be a woman (Heide Roizen) and how when the name was changed from Heide to Howard, the students at HBS perceived the success very differently. While I don't think that women are always perceived in a negative light when they push to be successful and are competitive, I do think it happens fairly often. It may be subconscious on some level, but I've been in many situations over the years where I've seen this type of behavior. Where men and women behave in similar manners and the woman's actions and speech are considered "bitchy" and "pushy" while men are considered "authoritative" and "no nonsense". I put those in quotes because my coworker once actually said those things after a meeting and he's generally a very open and intelligent person. I don't think this is just the male perception either, I think women feel that way towards other women a lot of times.

2. Make Your Partner a Partner - Sandberg speaks of the common theme of women taking on "twice the amount of housework", and "three times the amount of childcare" compared to the man. She doesn't simplify the cause and doesn't deep dive into it but does talk about how as a society we put more pressure on boys to succeed than our girls. Also when men do decide to work from home, Mom's often don't know how to interact with them and tend to shun them. She encourages us to "make it as important a job to work inside the home for both genders if we are going to even things out and have women stay in workforce". I couldn't agree more with that sentiment. We don't even have kids now and I tend to feel pressure (self imposed) to do more of the household duties, to "take care" of my husband and the people around me and to keep a beautiful home. To clarify my husband helps out a lot around the house and I actually came home from work yesterday to find him cooking me a homemade Indian dinner AND he even did the dishes (we usually rotate - if you cook, the other cleans up)! Its honestly all in my head and I have to say that I do take pride and put pressure on myself to be a great cook and to maintain a clean and stylish home. Plus if stress relief weren't enough, Sandberg mentions that people with equal responsibilities and equal earning tend to have half the divorce rate and a better sex life.

3. Don't Leave Before You Leave - This final point emphasizes that women often tend to "lean back" and stop looking for a promotion and ways to get ahead when they think about/have a child. They start to wonder how they can fit taking care of a child into everything else they are doing and so they stop trying to get ahead in their career. I can honestly say that I have thought about that a lot lately. How could I possibly continue with my career when I travel so frequently and work such long hours? How can I scale back instead of how can I get ahead. Sandberg points out that the problem with this is that when you do have children, your job should be rewarding, challenging and make a difference. Otherwise you are less likely to come back or want to leave your kid(s) at home. Essentially the message is to just keep swimming or keep your foot on the gas pedal.

Watch the video below - I promise the 15 minutes is well worth your time...

Women, Leadership and Success

Life on...

Lots of things have been happening and I just totally dropped the ball on reverb. No surprise there I guess. As soon as I told my friend, N, that I was gonna do it she couldn't stop laughing. She pointed out that I was traveling to Minnesota for work, coming back and leaving for Hawaii with 19 other family members for a week, then had friends visiting for new years and more friends staying for another week. Not to mention I was already behind a week. New goal - set realistic goals! Haha.

Also a huge thank you to all my readers who left such sweet comments about my last post. It felt strange putting so many personal things out there and all those comments made me feel so loved.

So the long absence was partly due to all the madness I mentioned up there. Hawaii was incredible and the first time my entire family (parents and all 3 brothers) have taken a trip together in about 15 years! New years was perfect and low key. We had our close friends from college over and just hung out, drank and played Spot It. Spot it is the BEST card game ever. It seems really simple and kinda silly but its so much fun to play (especially when drinking). I highly recommend picking it up. Also I made this ridiculous cake and it turned out perfectly! I skipped the raspberry filling and used extra chocolate ganache and topped with fresh raspberries instead.

The rest of January has been consumed with house hunting and after seeing 30-40ish pretty underwhelming houses we were excited to stumble a house we genuinely love. We are thinking about making an offer tonight, its a bit lower than the asking price but we don't think its unreasonable. Hopefully this blog won't be named Life on Minden at some point in the near future. Finding a place also means we need to get on the ball for selling our condo so we spent some of the weekend cleaning up and fixing up little things in our condo. I can't believe how much junk and how many clothes I've bought in the past 3.5 years. I gave away 2 garbage bags of clothes this weekend and a couple items still had tags on them. It made me feel so bad and wasteful! It was also pretty sad to see my itty bitty grad school jeans - I didn't even try to put them on.

I'm hoping for new home, new job and new baby this year! Hopefully 2011 delivers. I figure putting out all your wishes and thinking about them positively is the way to go...at least for now.

Less boring posts to come soon. Thanks again for all the love last month and sorry for my absence.

Life on...

all grown up

it was my baby niece's first day of school today. sigh they are all grown up :(

all grown up

Birthday blues....

I'm getting old. Yes I'm in my 20's. Yes I'm only turning 27 which is nothing in the grand scheme of things (I hope anyway). But somehow I feel OLD. Its only 3 years until I'm 30 which seems to be the age I had set to accomplish many of my life goals. Three years to start a family, have a highly successful career, make six figures, travel the world, and really just overall become a wise, poised, graceful adult. Some of my random goals (make six figures) are arbitrary and actually not far from my reach. But really, I feel pretty far from becoming the effortless, intelligent person that I thought thirty came with. My career is not quite where I want it to be. I like my job occasionally and sometimes I feel challenged by it. Is it a career and what I want to do with the rest of my life? No way. I had grand dreams of changing the world with my public health degree and instead I'm helping hospitals become more efficient. Still a positive in the healthcare world but not quite working on world hunger.

My husband has also been pushing for starting a family. He wants a baby yesterday. Realistically once I start having kids, where is my career going to fit? I don't think I could be a stay at home mom permanently but I think when my kids are little I'll want to be at home. I could be out of the workplace for a few years. What job opportunities will be there when I'm ready to come back? I don't know if I could have a job like mine part-time either.

Aside from the job worries, am I ready to be responsible for another human being? Its a little terrifying for me to even think about. Part of it has to do with just worrying about if I'll be a good parent. Me and my brothers all turned out SO different and struggled with very different things in life. One of my brothers is battling schizophrenia and anger issues combined with unfounded entitlement. He has no job, no goals in life, continually blames other people for his misfortune and my parents still pay for everything with him. My other brother battled with drug and alcohol addiction for almost a decade before turning his life around. And my other brother became a spinal surgeon. What a crap shoot life is. Is it my parents fault that we all turned out differently or just our personalities/personal preferences that made things so different? Maybe a combination of the two. But when I think about having my own kids or look at my adorable, innocent nieces, I can't imagine them dealing with mental illness, drug addiction and the likes. I don't want them to even think about much less experience anything like it.

I'm slowly realizing that we can't really plan out life and trying to calm myself down before I decide I need to move across the world and never have any children for fear they will end up screwed up. Its a silly thing to think that by the time you are 30, your life will be perfect. But its a great way to take some time to review what your life has become and where its going.

My new potential ideas/goals:

- Volunteer more and get more involved in the grassroots organizations that drove me to get my MPH.

- Career wise, take a serious look at where I'm going and potentially start an event planning business that might be able to work when we decide to have kids.

- As for starting a family, I hear that something just turns on inside of you and you are ready one day. For now, I'll comfort myself with that and say that when I'm ready for babies, I'll just know.

- Calm down, relax and enjoy life.

Birthday blues....