Baby Number 2

We finally went ahead and announced baby number two to the world this morning with the oh so common FaceBook announcement! I made a little sign for J to hold and prayed that he would let me take just one go picture. I bribed him with M&M's. I knew it was time to post because i'm 12 weeks as of tomorrow and i just could not keep it in any longer! 

Meal Planning

As things get tighter while expecting a new LO I have deployed some new attempts at frugal living. While our food budget has never been overly lavish I do tend to cook whatever I want that night instead of planning it out which leads to a lot of last minuet trips to the store and money spent that should be saved because I came home with more than just the one thing I went for. So I have started a weekly meal plan which I will post here every Monday. ( which will also lead to more faithful blogging fingers crossed ) Hopefully during the week I will take pictures of what we are eating for dinner and post the recipes for what we are having. Al tho most of the food I make is pretty simple I mean I am running around after an almost two year old here! So without further ado here is the dinner meal plan for this week. Keep in mind pasta and the like is all wheat free and we avoid all of j's allergies so sometimes things can get a little plain. 

3/4/13

baked chicken, au gratin potatoes, and green beans

3/5/13

meat balls, mashed potatoes, side salad

3/6/13 

penne pasta bake, garlic bread, side salad

3/7/13

spiral sliced ham, au gratin potatoes, broccoli 

3/8/13

Asian style chicken stir fry, steamed rice 

3/9/13

steak stuffed baked potatoes w/ brow gravy 

3/10/13 

egg omlets, sausage, hasbrowns

WIC

Today i went to my first WIC appointment to sign up for the pregnancy package. I waited until now because i was still nervous about something going wrong but seeing the heart beat flicker on the screen on Monday has given me some confidence that this baby is here to stay. Even if i loose the baby at this points i will still get six months worth of WIC. Its not a lot its meant to supplement your diet. We normally get rice beans milk cereal cheese juice and $10 worth of fruits and veggies. The only problem with using WIC checks is the fact that you have to get the whole check at one time you cant just pick and choose so sometimes i will end up with 3 gallons of milk in my fridge. While some parts of the WIC system are flawed their are some great resources that come with the program, such as when im breast feeding if i have problems with latching like i had with J i can borrow a nice pump to get this baby fed without having to use formula and without having to shell out $800 for a hospital grade pump. The WIC income limits are pretty high and very from state to state so check with your local WIC office.

Baby Bean

Is looking great, everything was looking pretty good. We didn't hear a heart beat with a doppler, but we did see a very nice flickering heart beat. Baby bean looks on track at a nice healthy 9ish weeks where is right where i'm supposed to be. Next week we go in for a level 2 ultrasound which is a more in depth ultra sound allowing us to see everything. Also it should hopefully explain the bleeding i have been having for the last couple of weeks. That all for tonight time to celebrate for the time being, fingers and toes still crossed.

it's D day

I have an OB appointment today and after all of the scares of the previous weeks i'm nervous we are going to go in for the ultra sound and see the same thing we have been seeing for the last six weeks, just a tiny smudge really. What we should see is a tiny almost 10 week baby ( 9 weeks and 5 days ) I'm almost 100% positive on my dates so their really is no way i could be not as far along as we think i am. If we don't see enough on the ultra sound I'm going to ask to have a higher level ultra sound done. If everything looks good i'm also going to be asking about the maternity21 test they now offer which is something new they didn't have with my last pregnancy which has about a 99% accuracy rate at detecting Down Syndrome and two other trisiotomys. As a bonus the test can also tell you the sex of your baby at only 10 weeks. So I will update after everything is done today. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Weekend Jitters

 I have yet another OB appointment this coming Monday. Of course its Saturday and i'm starting to freak out about every tiny twinge or moment of discomfort. On top of it all i have a horrendous cold that Justin seems to have brought home to share, while he suffers only a slight cough J and i are full blown snotty messes. Al tho it could be worse i'm still not enjoying this particular present from the Hubby. We went out to dinner with my parents a few nights ago and jason had a wonderful time drinking out of a big boy glass because oddly enough this restaurant did not have and kids cups or even to go cups. I thought it was very odd since they had a kids menu, who knows but he did a great job with the cup.

One of my favorite blogs that i read religiously is Enjoying the Small Things written by Kelle Hampton. She recently welcomed her third child and first son. Its brings a lot of emotions up to read about her birth story  and imagine what mine is going to be like. If you haven't read or heard about her blog i would suggest that you do and i will give you a link http://www.kellehampton.com/

WOW!

 I posted the link to my blog on my Siggy on Babycenter.Com and i just got more traffic in the last hour than i have for four months woot woot!

As i type my son is working his way thru a gel fruit cup with whip cream and i dont feel one bit of guilty. He has so many food allergies i feel bad denying him whipped cream!

Our female Boston Terrier is in heat so of course our male is putting on a show and in general being a pain in the ass! Hopefully by this time next week we will be outta of this mess and have some puppies on the way! That would be odd my dog and I pregnant at the same time, now being pregnant for a few short weeks is very enviable!

Our male laying on my very pregnant belly last time around :)

The up and downs of motherhood

Lets start with the downs since i would rather leave you with a sweet taste in your mouth rather than the bitter. Over the last year and a few months of trying justin and i have ended up pregnant three sperate times loosing all three babies at early stages except my most recent loss which was at 12 weeks. It effects my parenting ability when im sad about these sorts of things and i do think that jelly does notice when im "less" of a mom. Going thru three losses over the course of about six months really took it out of our relationship as a couple and almost made me resent the people around me getting pregnant and being able to stay pregnant. It is hard to not want to ask why god cannot provide in this situation. People would always tell us that god does not give you more than you can handle but reoccurent MC seemed more than i could really handle. For several weeks afterwords i cried for days, wanting nothing more than to wish myself pregnant. According to justin i was not the friendliest of people to be around! But i came to terms with things and i decided to get a job. A simple [art time kinda deal just to get my mind of of things for a few months a change of pace. I enjoyed my job im glad that i was apart of the team for as long as i was. Now here comes a bit of sad and happy news. I recently found out that i was pregnant again just about four weeks after starting my job. We where overjoyed and i made and OB appointment to get started on the medications to hopefully keep this little bean stick. Our first ultrasound revealed two yolk sacks TWINS happy and healthy five weeks along right where we should be. Sadly two weeks later at another OB appointment i was informed that one baby was still only five weeks and the other twin was vanishing. My OB sadly informed me that i was probably going to MC the second remaining baby shortly. I was devastated to learn that we where having yet another MC. I went in for Blood work and labs and did several blood BETA tests, which are tests that measure your HCG levels 48 hours apart. Fast forward to today i was given a call from my OB telling me that my BETA tests showed that i have a very healthy pregnancy going on, and instead of another MC we should know next Monday where we shall get yet another ultra sound and hopefully see an almost 10 week baby. Fingers are crossed!