Confessions of a happy wife (& expectant Mom!) by Flamingo Girl

Joyfully Blessed

I'm feeling pretty thrilled with life this afternoon, despite still dealing with a migraine. Earlier my husband and I had another appointment with the baby Doctor, only this time it was with a genetic specialist. Because I'll be 37 when the baby is delivered I'm considered a late in life pregnancy (like 37 is late in life, ugh!) and could be at risk for more birth defects than an expectant Mom in her 20's. We were offered a genetic screening test to try and predict if the baby will have Down's Syndrome or two other chromosome abnormality birth defects. Since the test was non-invasive we decided to have it done. All it involved was giving a blood sample and doing a more detailed ultrasound where they measure  different areas of the baby to look for abnormalities, then going over our family histories with the genetic counselor.

The ultrasound itself was pretty uncomfortable, even painful at times, as the technician really put a lot of pressure on the center of my pelvis, an area that has been feeling a bit tender anyway as the baby developes. The baby wasn't in the right position and didn't want to move so the technician actually had to bounce (kinda hard) the wand around to get the baby to move into a profile position. Even though it was uncomfortable it was really cool to see the baby in a bit more detail. We could make out the arms, legs and hands much more clearly and the baby was waving it's little arms  all over and even put it's hands over it's nose and mouth at one point. The technician laughingly said the baby was very stuborn a few times as she tried to get it into position and I had to smile at that. Both my husband and I are pretty stuborn too. The heart beat was a nice, strong 151 and the baby is exactly the right size for it's age.

After the ultrasound the genetic counselor spent awhile talking to us and charting our family medical histories. Then she gave us the results of our screening. Apparently I have the bloodcells and reproductive organs of a 20 year old :). The tests showed I have about the same chance of having a baby with Down's Syndrome as someone20 years old (approx. 1 in 2800) and an even lesser chance of the baby having any other defects. So basically she said that we have a 99.9% chance of having a perfectly healthy baby. The screening will never say there is no chance at all for problems, but I think we're pretty safe. Even though our results were really good because of my age they still have to offer us the option of doing more invasive testing such as a CVS or amniocentisis to completely rule out any chance at down's syndrome or other defects. We've chosen not to have those done now. Both of the tests come with a moderately high risk of miscarrying and we aren't willing to risk that. We could still choose to do an amniocentisis later in the pregnancy if complications arise.

So YAY!! The baby and I are both fine and healthy. It's really a relief to get those screening  results back. It gives us piece of mind and reduces the anxiety. All  'late in life'  first time expectant couples hear are horror stories about miscarriage, birth defects, etc. It can really make you worry unnecessarily. So far we've been incredibly lucky. We had no problems concieving and the pregnancy so far has been text book. We really are joyfully blessed.

Migraines, Morning Sickness and more

Ugh, I'm miserable miserable miserable. I was so hoping that getting pregnant might reduce my migraines, possibly even get rid of them for nine months or so. Since my migraines tended to come on either at ovulation or during menstruation I'd assumed it was all hormone related and maybe with luck I'd get relief from them until the baby was born. Unfortunately I haven't been that lucky. I had a very mild migraine a few weeks after getting pregnant and I thought, this ain't so bad, much better than my usual mind blowing migraine pain. The next month I didn't have a migraine at all and I was thrilled. Unfortunately, beginning last night and continuing through today I've gotten nailed by a pretty severe migraine attack, complete with flashing lights in my vision and vomiting. Combined with my normal morning sickness this has left me feeling like death. What's truly horrible about it all is that relief is sitting on top of my fridge and I can't take it. I have two different prescription migraine medications that normally cure my migraines within an hour or so but I can't take them because they may cause miscarriage or other problems in pregnant women. This is so not fair. Sometimes these migraines will last two to four days. :( . Heaven give me strength!!

I do have to admit that I've been fairly lucky with my morning sickness so far during this pregnancy. I didn't really get any symptoms until around the 8th week and mainly I've just had to deal with nausea, not the severe vomiting lots of women get. Being constantly nauseous isn't a lot of fun but it's bearable. For me the harder things to deal with have been the feelings of exhaustion, the fluctuations in body temperture, and the constant need to pee. Nobody really warned me about those delightful little side effects of getting pregnant. Overall though I can't really complain. So far both baby and I have been healthy and it will all be worth it when we get to hold our first baby (just in time for Christmas!).

While dealing with migraines and morning sickness I've been trying to get the url address I bought, www.flamingogirl.com, mapped to this journal site so that when you type it in you come here but though I've gone through all the steps twice it's still not working. I guess I'll have to break down and ask my hubby to go through it for me. Grrr, it's so annoying. I've followed the directions but obviously I'm missing something.

Okay, enough complaining from me. I'm going back to sitting in a black room with ice on my head praying for devine intervention and the appearance of a winged migraine angel who will come and instantly take my pain away.

Meandering down Mommyhood Lane

So, why do I feel a need to start yet another new blog? Yep, you guessed it! I'm pregnant :). Sound the trumpets now please!!  A new baby=new beginnings which seemed like the absolute perfect time to start a new blog as well, especially considering I'd all but abandoned my old blog several months ago. I need a place to chronicle this exciting new direction my life has taken, a place to record my journey as I meander down mommyhood lane. Maybe someday I'll take all the posts about our journey to parenthood and print them up for our future kids, or more likely I'll just keep them for myself as a reminder of a very special time in our lives. Don't worry though, not every single post will be about the pregnancy. I'll try to keep it down to just 99%,lol. It's our very first baby and we aren't exactly spring chickens anymore so you guys can't blame me for gushing on about it every now and again :).

Giddy with excitement we decided to start trying for a baby around the end of January. We're generally not the impulsive types and we wanted everything in our lives to be perfect before we started having kids but I think we suddenly realized that if we waited for the perfect time we'd probably never have children. Life is never perfect. So we decided to take a giant leap of faith. We were both ready to start a new chapter in life, parenthood. It was time to make some babies, Yippee !!! After reading some articles about how hard it is for a woman to conceive after the age of 35 we figured it would probably take us 6 months or so to get pregnant, maybe longer. Low and behold within 2 months I was throwing up prenatal vitamins and feeling tired all the time (not to mention the constant need to pee, ugh!). Aren't we the fertile myrtles? hehe. We had our first prenatal visit in mid May, and everything looked good. They did an ultrasound and it was sooo fun to see the baby floating about and doing the hula.

Right now I'm about 12 weeks along, fast approaching the end of the first trimester. The baby's due date is December 23rd. We'll be getting a baby for Christmas!!! Could life be any better?

Setting up a new and permanent home, flamingogirl.com

Yet another fresh start with yet another blog. In the approximately 8 years I've been on line I've probably had at least 10 different blogs or websites. Each time I get excited about the new space but then for some reason I just can't seem to settle in for long and within a few months or a year at most, I'm on to a new love affair with a new blog. I think I must have commitment issues :), lol. Well, I'm trying to stop that pattern now. I've bought a url (flamingogirl.com) and from now on that's going to be my internet home. I may try different blogging platforms or designs but from today forward I won't be galavanting all over the web with different blog addresses. If I change blogging hosts I'll just redirect or map my domain to the new blog so that anyone typing in flamingogirl.com can find me, regardless of where I'm currently getting my hosting services. I know it's been annoying for the few people who have faithful followed me through all my blogging incarnations so I'm making you, and myself a promise. From now on you'll always be able to find my personal blog at flamingogirl.com. Yay!!

My current blogging platform is typepad, which I'm liking a lot right now; particularly the fact that it offers photoalbumns and multiple pages as well as multiple blogs. It seems to be really popular with alot of bloggers I've followed and is often used by the bloggers featured in Artful Blogging Magazine, which I adore. It's not as easy to customize, organize, and add pages to as the blog hosting site I was last at (squarespace.com, which I highly recommend) but squarespace is more expensive than typepad and doesn't offer unlimited blogs like typepad does, also mapping my domain address should be much easier with typepad. I'm sure over time I'll be able to customize this typepad blog and stamp it with my personality. Anyway, this is home now. Welcome to my blog!!

P.S. Because I have a billion blogs floating around all over the internet, someday when I get myself organized I may move some of my old blog posts into this blog, in which case any blogs posted before this date (June 9th, 2009) will be from those other blogs. Hopefully this won't cause too much confusion.