bumpy road.

i was deciding on whether or not to blog the thoughts going on in my head tonight. and as i thought about it, i realized it just make me feel a little better.

stressed, frustrated, overwhelmed, worried, upset, angry, jealous are just a few of the emotions i am feeling on my bumpy road called pregnancy. but then, i think of this little baby growing healthy inside of me and all those emotions get pushed aside with excitement and happiness.

i have hit another rough patch with this pregnancy thing. i had my spleen checked in on friday morning during a full abdominal ultrasound... results came in yesterday morning with concerns from my doctor. my spleen had gotten .4 centimeters bigger and now they noticed my liver, which was fine on the first ultrasound, is now slightly enlarged. i was immediately sent for more blood work yesterday and results came quickly back today. Blood work, again, came back okay with just a liver level a tiny bit high.

doctor is still concerned so now i am off to a GI Consultant and a General Surgeon Consultant. i am extremely stressed and frustrated... i keep thinking "why can't my body be normal? why can't i enjoy being pregnant like many women i know?"

i feel great and have no pain or crazy symptoms (well except for this ridiculous heartburn) :) so i am trying my darndest to keep positive. the doctor told me today that my spleen and liver levels are not affecting the baby and baby is just fine hanging out in there. so that is where i keep my focus. my baby.

as much as i have had a rough pregnancy from the beginning... i am thankful to be pregnant. i am thankful to have this little life growing inside of me. i am thankful that i will be a mom to a beautiful baby in just a few more months.

feel the burn.

with it being valentine's day... i have only one thing on my mind... my heart.

the last time i had heart burn,  i was in mexico, and i ate and drank my face off for 6 days. it was well worth the pain and in my head it meant that i was doing "all inclusive" the right way.

heartburn is something i've had maybe three times in my whole life...UP UNTIL NOW.

now... i get it at least ten times a day.

this was one of my first "signs" of being pregnant. i remember having heartburn after eating a chicken salad and thinking "hmmm... how can this be?" this lead me to google if heartburn was a symptom of being pregnant... the next day we took a pregnancy test.

little did i know that as the months went on that this heartburn would control my life. i started off getting it pretty bad at night before bed. i would try to fall asleep between the breaks of pain and it would be gone in the morning.  then, it started rearing its ugly face during the school day... and now it is any time that i go more than an hour without eating...

i've been drinking gallons of water... and as a very last resort, i take a tums... which i will take if it becomes unbearable at night.

three more months and i am expecting to see an extremely hairy baby with all this heartburn. i know this discomfort will be well worth it come May... :)

pregnancy brain.

i always thought using the old "pregnancy brain" was an excuse for pregnant woman. they can pull the "pregnancy brain" card when they say something silly or forget something... i seriously thought it had been used way too much towards pregnant women.

since the beginning of my pregnancy, if i did something ridiculous, i got accused of it... in the beginning i chuckled at it simply because i was excited and giddy about being pregnant. as time went on, i got annoyed when i was accused of it simply because i seriously thought "this is my brain all the time." it was until recently that i finally understood the meaning behind the words "pregnancy brain."

it all started when i went to a party and left my car running... who gets out of their car and forgets to take the keys out of the ignition? this girl. this pregnant girl. "pregnancy brain."

yesterday i went to fill up my gas tank and noticed my bank card was missing. i am super crazy about putting my bank card back in my wallet every time i use it. i have never lost or misplaced it in the ten years of having one. talk about instant panic! after retracing my steps, i realized that i must of left it in the nail salon on saturday after i got my manicure. tim suggested i call but i thought it would be best if i just go since i may not be able to understand the accent of the ladies on the telephone.

low and behold, my card was waiting for me when i arrived along with an hour pedicure. i mean, i might as well treat myself after a long day of work and the stress over the missing card.

so i have learned to embrace this thing call "pregnancy brain."

it has its goods and bads. bad: forgetting my bank card at the nail salon. good: forgetting my bank card at the nail salon.

(pay no attention to the little funky toe on my right foot... although i may pass that on to my little baby!)

pop a pill.

when i was a kid... it was flinstones. as i became a teenager... it was flinstones. as a young adult... it was ONE a day gummies. and now being pregnant... it is ridiculous.

how come when you become pregnant, you are expected to take vitamins the size of horse pills? i mean, in no way was i ready for this big change in my life. in the beginning of my pregnancy, it was a chore to get those things down. chocolate milk was the way to go.

after about four months, i was sick of chocolate milk every day. i switched it up to grapefruit juice. a sweet friend told me that it is not a good idea to take vitamins with grapefruit juice... so i switched it up again and decided to take it with gatorade. my mom said she heard that taking vitamins with gatorade was also not a good idea. who would of thought there would be so much stress with taking a vitamin? just give me a flinstone where the only stress was deciding between pink, purple or orange.

i know, i know, you are probably thinking, just take them with good old H2O.  talk about a gag factor.  just can't get them down that way... so for the time being, i am taking them with a plain glass of milk until i get sick of it... which will definitely be sooner than later.

now taking these horse pills aren't all that bad... my nails are growing like WEEDS! tim told me today to go and get my nails done because he thought they looked pretty gross. i see nothing wrong with daggers as nails but i complied... who can say no to a manicure?

(before)

(after)

Looking forward to the day when i get back on those gummie vitamins. but until then, i will enjoy my long nails and unlimited manicures! 

do i look fat in this?

YES!!!!

i hate shopping for clothes. i hate looking at the racks, picking clothes that i think will look good, trying them on, sucking it in and trying to look skinny. and when i don't look good, it puts me in such a funk that i want to leave the store and be done with shopping... oh. and a big "no, no" is having tim tag along... he is just as miserable as me during these shopping sprees.

recently i went shopping at Motherhood Maternity. i have never been in one of these stores in my life until now... and believe it or not,  they actually give you a pillow to wear while you are trying on clothes to make you look fatter!!

i don't mean to toot my own horn, but every single article of clothing i put on looked GOOD! because i thought "theresa, you can look fat in this!!" and let me tell you... i looked fat in everything!!!

tighter fitting tops? why not? you are allowed to be fat! looser fitting tops? sure!!! the bigger you look the better!!! horizontal stripes? absolutely! they make me look twice as big and it is okay!!! because i am suppose to be looking a little chunky these days.

(just about 22 weeks!)

so. to wrap this up, i wish i had the excuse of being pregnant all the time. i had the BEST experience shopping for clothes ever. the $245.00 bill at the end just proved it.

ice cream for breakfast.

usually i am not much a dreamer... but lately my dreams have been crazy. i have dreamed every night this week and remember most with vivid detail. i have already dreamed three times about the baby. i dreamed it was a boy twice and a girl once. i dreamed that the baby was going to be born on may 18th and weighted 6 pounds 7 ounces. it seemed so real.

last night i had a dream that i was helping the boy scouts clean up the side of the roads. they all had trash cans and trash bags full of trash. but not me. i had a small trash can FULL of ice cream sprinkled with m & m's. i was eating it with a huge spoon and i had a very hard time sharing it with others. i literally could taste the ice cream.

the dream woke me up out of a deep sleep and i woke tim up this morning and said "i need ice cream." i haven't even wanted to touch ice cream in the past five months... and now i wanted it that second.

so low and behold, i ate a bowl of ice cream this morning for breakfast.  and i enjoyed it to the very last bite.

sorry cheerios. 

never use google.

a friend of mine asked where i was going to go with this blog now that i am pregnant... i told her i didn't want to bombarde everyone with pregnancy things because really how much can you take of that? but reality is... that's my life right now. i wake up. i think, i'm pregnant! i go all day. and think, i am pregnant! i go to bed and roll over. and think, i'm pregnant! so i will try to keep this pregnancy thing to a minimum... but i just can't help it! :)

the reason i have been quiet this past week is because...  I received a phone call tuesday night from my doctor and was told that i have an enlarged spleen (they found it on my ultrasound)...  my first thought was "what the heck is a spleen?" and one thing i have learned in this process is to NEVER use google.

after i googled "enlarged spleen" i frightened myself to death and stressed myself out for four days straight. after another doctors appointment, oodles of more blood testing and poking... everything came back wonderful and fine... the doctor has come to the conclusion that this could just happen because of pregnancy or maybe i have always had a slightly enlarged spleen (normal spleens about 12 cm and mine is about 14 cm) and we will be keeping an eye on it through the next few months with ultrasounds and check ups.

lots of ups and downs with the pregnancy...

praying that both me and the baby can finish the next nineteen weeks happy, healthy and stress free. i really want to enjoy this pregnancy.

have you ever scared yourself to death googling something?

sneak peek.

yesterday, tim and i had the chance to take a sneak peek at our baby. we had our 20 week ultrasound and it truly was amazing. hard to believe that little person is growing inside of me... i have really only felt the baby once so it seemed so unreal to me until i saw it moving up a storm on the monitor. we are "team green" with this little guy so we opted out of finding out the gender which makes it even more exciting.

we were given the ultrasound pictures afterwards... although, like i think for most ultrasound pictures, it looks like blobs of white and black. if you look hard enough, you can see the baby ready to give a "fist bump." Pound it!

after the ultrasound, i had a doctor's appointment and all went well. in fact, since i have been eating healthier over the weekend, i lost 3 pounds. which puts me at an 12 pound weight gain in twenty weeks. 

finally, i thought i would share a picture of last nights dinner... chipotle chicken salad. tim made his homemade salsa and guacamole to add to the salad... it was so good and i inhaled it in like two minutes...too fast to grab a photo... luckily, tim took a picture of his salad to capture the moment. 

Do you sometimes think that these ultrasound pictures look like black and white blobs?