Pregnancy

I felt her move every day.

From the second I woke up with that annoying urge to pee (usually well before my alarm went off to get up), she started jumping around like a candy-fueled kid on a trampoline.  I nicknamed her little miss kickypants, and once my husband Matt made me laugh so hard I had to change my pants, which just made us laugh harder, etc. Every time Matt put his ear to my belly to listen to her heartbeat, she kicked him in the side of the head.

Matt and I had been talking about having a kid of our own for a few months, but only actively tried for about two months when the faint double pink line showed up.  I couldn't even announce it on facebook that day, since it was April 1st and I knew everyone would think I was joking.  We announced early, another in a long list of things I was "confident" in doing.  My pregnancy with Parker 10 years earlier was so textbook, so uncomplicated, that I was sure we could do it again with no problems.  I was sort of right.

Coraline's pregnancy was uneventful.  At our first ultrasound, the doctors only saw the egg sac, and had me come back the following week to see if she had attached.  I knew I was pregnant, even at five weeks.  And the next week, there she was, a little bump in the circle.  We shared our news with everyone, letting them know we were due around Christmas.

Although this pregnancy was planned, and Parker's wasn't, I became more and more miserable as the months wore on.  I stopped taking my welbutrin, even though my doctor said it would be okay, because I didn't want to risk any possible side-effects.  This led to several mood-swings and blowouts, one of which actually resulted in me leaving the house and wandering through Riverside until Matt tracked me down hours later.  I was ignored at work, and if I wasn't being ignored, I had some of the most ignorant things said to my face (such as that my child would have Tourettes because I was brutally honest).

I knew my moods were part of the hormone surge.  I tried to take care of myself and Coraline as much as possible.  I added chicken and red meat back into my diet when I started craving them, after a year of being pescatarian.  I don't smoke, I wouldn't even touch my allowed glass of wine.  The strongest drug I took was Tylenol.