Baby #2 Update

So, first the printer broke. And then the microwave. And then the camera. I guess I won't be getting that glider for this pregnancy/baby after all. I also am going to have worse quality belly photos than before until we get the camera replaced. 

On Monday (November 10) I hit 28 weeks and officially entered my third trimester. Yay! I was in my 'belly-picture-shirt' and ready for my close-up, and then we discovered the camera was broken. So, tonight I decided to attempt a picture with my phone. HA! It will have to do. 

28 weeks

Can you tell that I do not take selfies? Perhaps I need to practice. I'm still looking small-ish, but it went that way with Sprout, too. During my last trimester I apparently explode.

I finally figured out how to get my ultrasound off of the website. They condense a rather lengthy (and boring to everyone but the parents) ultrasound into a few minutes of highlights. I love to sit and watch my baby girl.

I was able to snag this still shot (below) out of the ultrasound. Pretend the freaky picture on the left isn't there: she looks like an alien, and I want you to look at the one on the right anyways. I swear that's my set of lips and nose that we see there. I just hope this little lady comes out as cute as her big brother. We'll love her even she's hideous, but Sprout set newborn expectations very high in this family.

She's a very active little thing, and not nearly as predictable as her brother was. The only thing I can expect from her is a big bout of movement around my bedtime. She doesn't seem to be much of a kicker, but instead seems to just roll and roll and maybe do some stretching. Every once in awhile it'll feel like she's having a seizure or something. The best way I can describe the way it feels is to compare it to when a rabbit is rapidly and repeatedly beating their foot against the ground. It's very odd, and sometimes she wakes me up with it in the middle of the night. I would love to have an ultrasound going so I can see what it is exactly that she's doing.

I have had a couple of dreams where she is born as an ENORMOUS baby, and is actually a boy. Maybe I need to stop stocking up on little girl clothes? And maybe I need to request a c-section....

I am so very excited for this baby. Mr. Mitchell says he thinks it's because it's a girl, and that could be. I must confess that besides the stress of gathering a new wardrobe I have been surprisingly glad to know we're having a little lady. I'd like to think that I'd be just as stoked if it were a boy, and I'm pretty sure I would be if you consider the time and tears it took to conceive this baby. (Again, I'm not pretending to know what it is to be infertile, but we all have our own trials.)

Thank you again to everyone that has expressed your congratulations and love and excitement. It has not gone unnoticed.

Pregnancy Round Two

I am completely ashamed of how poorly documented this pregnancy is turning out to be. Quick recap...

1. Found out late-May that we're expecting - tried not to get too excited.
2. Had horrible morning sickness and fatigue.
3. Mr. Mitchell and my mom were sure it was a girl because everything was so different already.
4. Heard heartbeat at 14 weeks.
5. Finally moved past the morning sickness phase at about 14 weeks.
6. Started freaking out because I hadn't felt baby move and I was supposed to be almost 20 weeks.
7. Saw our amazing little lady, was told she's perfect, and learned I was more like 17 weeks.
8. Felt her move shortly after the ultrasound.
9. Started wearing maternity pants at about 20 weeks.
10. No more tummy sleeping at about 22 weeks.

I know that doesn't really do it justice, and I'll kick myself in the pants when I look back on this blog in a couple of years. I haven't done great in my personal journal either. Double kick in the pants. I will try to do better, and any encouragement might be annoying, but appreciated.

Belly pictures - so far from works of art it's embarrassing, but they're for the purpose of documenting. 

17 Weeks

After that first picture I decided I would use the shirt you see in the next ones as my official 'belly photos' shirt so that there's consistency.

19 weeks

20 weeks

24 weeks

I was told at church a couple of times today that I have finally popped. I guess before this I just looked like I was getting chubby. Per my sister-in-law's request I am including this 'unofficial' belly photo I literally just snapped 30 seconds ago so you can see the poppage. 

(I will try to remember to take an 'official' one tomorrow (I'll be 25 weeks).) 

I get the feeling I'm going to be enormous. I'm this big at only 25 weeks, and I have many, many more to go. Heaven help me when the Christmas goodies start rolling in.

Baby #2

Hello everyone!

Well, we recently went public with our announcement of baby #2. It's been an interesting journey to get here. If we'd had our way we'd already have a 5 month old baby on our hands, but things definitely did not go our way, and I learned a lot. I am not going to claim to know what it is to be infertile (since I'm obviously not), but I do have more empathy for those that cannot conceive. I am sharing more on here than I would normally share, but I have this feeling that I should.

Here it goes: After trying for a little while I finally got pregnant late September/early October of 2013, and then I miscarried the day before Thanksgiving. I was truly devastated. I know that miscarriages don't really affect some women, but it definitely affected me. I spent a lot of time crying or sleeping. I had never miscarried, and I don't have any women close to me that have miscarried, and so I didn't realize that I should have gone to see the doctor (the nurse on the phone also never told me that - very confusing). That contributed to the next mess.

I spent the next four months getting positive pregnancy tests, and then starting my period 2 or 3 days later. Talk about heartbreak. I finally called the doctor and he prescribed birth control. That was definitely NOT in my plans, but it made sense. I also learned while at that appointment that it will always be harder for us to conceive because of some female issues. Not impossible, obviously, but I'll never be a Fertile Myrtle.

There was one week when I was on my period, and crying all of the time, that I received 8 pregnancy announcements and 2 gender reveals. Talk about salt in the wound. I was genuinely happy for these people, but I could feel myself turning bitter at the timing. I finally wrapped up my birth control and started ovulation testing with great trepidation. Luckily,  I was ovulating and didn't need to start any medications.

Finally, just after our fourth anniversary, I got the positive pregnancy test, and it seemed to stick. There is only one OB clinic here for all of Pocatello, and so they run a tighter ship than my last doctor. Unless you've had multiple miscarriages they do not see you until 10 weeks. This had me very anxious because I was so worried about miscarrying again. I was very sick and fatigued which made things worse.

I finally went in at 10 weeks, but this time I wasn't going to see the doctor. He doesn't actually see you until 14 weeks. At this point we only told parents and my sister as I didn't want to spread the news and then miscarry again, but I felt some people needed to know.

I finally went back in at 14 weeks and heard the heartbeat. It was relieving, but I still wasn't satisfied. I still had this anxious, worried feeling that something was wrong with my baby. So, I still kept it a secret that we are expecting. They don't do ultrasounds here until the anatomy ultrasound, and my doctor scheduled me at 19 weeks to go in. I figured at that point I would be ready to share.

The day finally arrived where I got to see my baby! I was feeling almost sick at this point because I was supposed to be 19 weeks, and I still hadn't really felt my baby. Maybe a slight nudge or two here or there, but that was it. I was a basket case, and then we found out that Mr. Mitchell wasn't going to be able to make it. Fortunately, my sister was able to come to record the ultrasound for him. I had decided it must be a boy because the world is expecting so many baby girls right now (at least that's what my Facebook feed regularly says), but, surprise! We're having a girl!!

We also discovered that we're about 1 1/2 weeks behind what the doctor had said. This did not surprise me as he based the due date off of my last period, but the ovulation kit showed I ovulated very, very late in my cycle. The due date has been changed from January 25, 2015 to February 2, 2015. Tomorrow I will be 19 weeks. Despite only being about 17 weeks at the time of the ultrasound the technician is confident that it is a girl. She got a good view a few times and each time she'd say, "There's absolutely NOTHING there. You're having a girl." Along with finding out the gender and due date I learned that my baby is perfectly healthy. The relief was amazing. At that point I was BURSTING to share.

I went home and had my sister take a picture that I then emailed to all the siblings as an announcement:

I actually had to shove my tummy out quite a bit to
get a picture where it didn't just look like I've gained weight.

As soon as I had a response from all of my family members and close friends it was time to share with the world. I had an overwhelming response of love and support for which I am grateful. I have been a wreck my entire pregnancy, and I can now just bask in it and anxiously await the arrival of my sweet, little lady.

P.S. Here is a more accurate picture of my tummy taken a couple of days before we had the ultrasound:

My butt is still bigger than my belly.
(17 weeks - apparently)

Thank you to those of you who have been just as excited as we are about this pregnancy. You have no idea what is has meant to me.

I Just Want To Share

I like to blog about things in chronological order, but we're in the middle of moving again and it's a pain in the rear to try and get pictures onto the computer at the moment. (Don't ask.) So, hopefully in the near future I'll be able to share about our 2nd anniversary and my week escape to Boise.

At the moment, I want to share something. I don't know if it's because I want pity, or someone to share their experiences with me, or for someone to laugh and share in my joy, or what. Mr. Mitchell and I both decided that we didn't want to announce the pregnancy on Facebook because from our friends' experiences we have learned that people start sharing every wives' tale known to man and every terrifying story they've heard from a friend's husband's grandma's cousin's mom. We're first timers and we'd rather be more selective about who we get advice from. Consequently, I can't share on Facebook.

I just want to say that our little boy is a total wiggle worm. Yesterday he decided that it would be really fun to relentlessly kick my bladder. I was happy and not happy at the same time. (Apparently, it's common to be confused about what you're feeling while pregnant.) I love that it's finally real that our child is in there, but it never stops being surprising when I get a solid *thwump* from my insides. The bladder thing was soooo uncomfortable though. And it's making me wonder, if he's only going to get bigger and stronger, and I'm not even 2/3 of the way through, what is it going to feel like when I'm full-term? Yikes!

While it's uncomfortable to have somebody bullying your bladder and constantly surprising you with nudges and kicks, it's totally joyous. (Like I hinted at earlier, my emotions are conflicting.) It's almost unbelievable that I have a little human being inside of me and that makes it that much cooler. I'm starting to get really anxious to meet this little man that can hardly sit still. How can I possibly wait four more months?

I have to wait until the 20th - and even then he could decide he wants to bake a couple more weeks after that! And I have an ultrasound scheduled in a few days to double check the due date because they think a more accurate due date might be the original - that'll add another week! Can you tell that I'm dying? Poor Mr. Mitchell. Thank goodness he's so happy that I'm pregnant and is very patient with me because I'm a freaking psycho. 

A Little Bit About Sprout

Sprout is what we are fondly calling our baby until the gender is made known to us...hopefully this Thursday! I found out I was pregnant the night we got back from Mexico. (I don't say "we're pregnant" because, let's face it, we're not. I'm pregnant; we're expecting. There you have it.) I didn't take a picture of the test because I personally don't care for seeing sticks that people have urinated on and I don't think anybody should have to see my urination stick. The product that will come from the test's positive result in 9 months time, not to mention the growing abdomen up to that point, should be proof enough. Wow...I totally got on a soap box there. Sorry. Let me continue with telling you about our Sprout.

We had been trying for awhile to get pregnant and nothing had happened yet and so I didn't believe the test, especially since it was almost 2 in the morning and my brain is not trustworthy at that time. I told Mr. Mitchell about it and said I'd take another one in the morning. The morning came and I suddenly got very nervous about trying the test again. My hopes had gone up a bit; what if they had to come crashing right back down because  my brain couldn't figure out what the pee stick was telling me at 2 in the morning? Mr. Mitchell finally got tired of waiting and practically forced me into the bathroom with the test. (He waited outside - peeing in front of other people is not a favorite past time of mine.) Once again, it came out positive! We were, and still are, so excited!

Because we were going to be moving up to Oregon before the first trimester was over, we didn't meet with any doctors in the area and I relied on babycenter.com to fill me in on what was happening to me. I rather enjoyed the weekly update on what size the baby was. Sometimes they were kind of obscure or they'd use an object that could be just about any size, but one week they said the baby was the size of a blueberry. That seemed pretty reliable and we bumped across some blueberries as we did our grocery shopping that day. This brings you my first tummy picture.

7 weeks...my pants' button is more impressive in size than Sprout at this point.

After that ridiculous photo shoot I decided that I didn't want any more tummy shots until my stomach started showing all of the time.

We made our move to Oregon and settled on a doctor. When he found out that we were about 11 weeks along he was pretty surprised that it was our first doctor's appointment. Apparently we're more patient than most. Because I was far enough along they were able to do an ultrasound through my abdomen where we discovered that I was actually a week further along than we thought. This brought Sprout's official EDD to September 20, 2012. The countdown truly began. (Which also means that the 7 week blueberry picture was actually 8 weeks and I should have been holding a kidney bean.)

Sprout's first picture at 12 weeks

The doctor was very happy with how active Sprout was being. At first it looked as though s/he must be sleeping, and then suddenly BAM! S/he was kicking and punching and flailing and having a grand ol' time. Personally, I was glad that I couldn't feel any of it yet. The doctor was also very surprised with how long Sprout's little legs already are - we're guessing s/he takes after me in that respect.

Right when we got in the car after the ultrasound appointment Mr. Mitchell insisted that we start calling parents right then. I found his enthusiasm quite contagious and decided to call all of my family, not just my parents. I also collected their initial responses:

Dad: Ooohh!
Mom: Wow! Congratulations!
Annie: I kind of knew...
     (Mr. Mitchell decided we should tell his grandma (Wanda: Do you have insurance?) so she wasn't wondering why we were disappearing into town all of the time and she accidentally blabbed a little too much information.)
Garrison: What?
Chris: Oh! Congratulations!
Ryan: Oh! How far along?
Tena: Congratulations!
Britton: Hey!
Jen: Brina! Yay!
Angela: Are you serious?
Carter: What are you doing?
Heather: Yay!
Eric: Congratulations!

Carter's response was my favorite.

The next intentional pregnant picture we took was at graduation. Mr. Mitchell wanted to find a tiny graduation cap to put on my stomach for a picture, but the bookstore didn't have any. We settled for a BYU onesie instead. We don't know the gender, but we figured school colors have to go either way.

Sprout's first clothing

While visiting my friend Jen, who is very much pregnant, we decided we should get a pregnancy shot just in case we're never again pregnant at the same time. It also worked with my rule that my stomach had to have an actual baby bump all of the time in order for it to warrant a tummy picture. It just so happened that the week of the numb-bum was the week my bump started showing all of the time and that I had to stop buttoning my pants. (Thank you BeBand for existing and making life easier.)

We've decided they're practically cousins.

There I am at 18 weeks and my stomach isn't really that big. I didn't mean to push it out, but I have a habit of either slouching or arching my back. Perhaps I will try and use pregnancy as a time to fix my posture...haha, yeah right. I think from this point on I will try and do a weekly picture. I've heard that women regret not taking tummy pictures because then they can't compare them to future pregnancies. Since we're hoping to have more than one child I'm going to try and avoid that very easily prevented regret.

My breasts have been very tender, I'm simultaneously drying out and getting crazy acne all over, I'm pretty consistently tired, and I'm more picky about my foods. I have had zero morning sickness, zero BM issues, zero swelling. Overall, I think my body is taking pregnancy very well. I'll take the unsightly pimples over constant throwing up. Thank you Sprout for being kind to me. Within the past couple of weeks I have felt some little hits or kicks from Sprout, but they're only a few at a time and there will be days in between them. S/he's still got plenty of floating room in there and I suppose I should enjoy that while it lasts - before I know it I'll be getting kicked in the ribs all of the time.

Since we're sooo close to finding out the sex we've started a list of people's guesses. So far we have:

BOY                 GIRL                ZOMBIE
Dad                      Jayme                   Carter
Annie                    Liz                        Britton
Morynn                Luke
Kaleigh                 Finn
Chris                    Harry
Ryan                     Patti
Dawson                Mom
Rachel                  Ryanna
Mike                    Angela
Stephanie             Heather
Liahona

Boy is in the lead and zombie was originated by Carter. We're always open to more guesses!