FAQ

So far we've been asked a lot of questions about my pregnancy so i thought it'd be fun and appropriate to have a FAQ entry here to help answer those questions for those of you who might be wondering!

So here we go:

Are you going to find out the sex of the baby?:

Yes! We can't wait to find out the sex of the baby! We would find out now if we could! The major reason that we want to find out is honestly so we can start to set up a nursery space and start buying gender-specific items (and okay so that when my mind daydreams about the future it knows whether to put a boy or a girl baby into the swing that Ryan is pushing or if I will be carrying a girl or a boy baby down to see what Santa brought on Christmas morning). 

And don't worry, I'm not afraid to stereotype my child with all kinds of pink or blue little outfits. In fact, as most of you have probably suspected - i'm really kinda looking forward to it!. What? Being absurdly girlie or super boyish is totally cute and I am all about the totally cute!

Basically what I'm saying here is that I am not at all above outfits like this:

(found at bootiquebaby)

or outfits like this for that matter:

(found at boscovs lol)

How can anyone look at those and not think that they are amazing?! I challenge anyone to find a problem with either outfit! (not really, please don't blow up my email with harassment) 

So in short (too late), yes, I am definitely looking forward to finding out the sex of the baby and beginning to get ready accordingly.  

Do you want a boy or a girl more?:

At first the answer to this was that I wanted a girl more.  Not only was it just my natural instinct to say that and to prefer a girl (hello, do you see that little tutu outfit up there?) but also it just seemed to FIT with me and what I thought I wanted first.  All of my siblings had girls first and I guess I always imagined having a girl baby as my first baby.  The more i think about it though, the happier I would be with either sex.  I'm not just saying that either, I've actually put a lot of thought into this and I think that there are great things about having a girl and there are great things about having a boy (and there are scary parts of both).  Over the past few days I have felt a huge fondness growing within me at the thought of having a little boy.  My heart just warms at the idea and I know I will just adore him if i have him.  Of course I feel the same way for a girl as well, but since I've always thought I wanted a girl first, that fondness isn't new for me.  I would love to find out it's a sweet little boy too though, I know that now for sure.

And so it's sufficient to say that I will honestly be thrilled to have a baby of either sex.

Note: I will not refer to the baby's anatomy as it's gender. Gender is a very different thing than the physical sex of an individual and I feel very strongly about not mixing these two concepts up or using them interchangeably. Gender is much more of an emotional identification, it has more to do with culture and personality than it does with anatomy. Sex is purely a physical designation based on body attributions.  That's all I have to say about that but I do feel that it's something important to be aware of. Gender and sex are not congruent and really should not be used interchangeably.  The baby's gender will be determined once we know it's personality and find out who the child is. The baby's sex will be apparent (hopefully) at birth.  I am not being nit-picky here, either, this is a very real, very important thing to understand.  Gender is not equal to sex.

Do you have names picked out yet? What are they?:

We started throwing around some name ideas really early on. Before I even knew I was pregnant (about a week or so before I found out) the name for a baby girl just came to me one day out of the blue and i loved it. I have felt strongly since then that we would use that name when we had kids (at the time I thought "when we have kids one day." little did i know!) but since then I am not so certain...I guess because the name that I thought of has turned out to be massively popular and I'm not so sure how i feel about that. In any event, we will just have to wait and see. We are planning to wait until we find out the baby's sex before we really get into the name discussion. 

No matter what we decide, we might end up keeping the baby's name a secret until birth. Hey, it's fun to have SOME mystery and intrigue, right?  Plus, I'm sure if you pressure me enough I'll tell you the name and then make you pinky promise me not to tell anyone else. I'm a total push-over like that.

Also, I've heard that everyone likes to share their two cents about baby names and can therefore end up ruining perfectly awesome names that way if you jump the gun and start telling everyone that you want to name the kid Winston Archibald the Third too soon.  We don't want anyone ruining our baby names for us so that's another argument for keeping it a secret lol (on the down side though, no one will be able to tell us if we've picked an awful name! lol)

Were you trying to get pregnant?

This is an interesting (and very personal) question that we get asked a LOT. I think we mostly get this question from people who are trying NOT to get pregnant and are afraid that the answer is no lol.

Here's all I'll say about this: we weren't trying but we had decided to stop actively preventing it from happening. 

I will also add that becoming pregnant is WAY easier than I expected it to be. Seriously. lol. 

Didn't you just move? Don't you live in a one bedroom apartment? What are you going to do?

This question is one that comes up a lot from our closer friends and family who know that yes, we did in fact just move only a month and a half before getting pregnant and that yes, we do live in a one bedroom apartment. 

And despite the many, many stories that we have heard of successful super-hero-type parents who raised healthy and happy babies while living in one bedroom apartments we're not so sure that we're buying it or that we're the super hero types ourselves. Okay, strike that last part, we totally are (super-model super-heros for that matter) buuuuut still...

We have a solution for this situation figured out but you will have to wait for a while longer to find out what that solution is.  I will tell you this much: staying in our small one bedroom apartment is not an option for us. We barely have room for all of our own stuff let alone all of the accessories that a baby comes with (for being born completely naked, those little ones sure do bring a lot of stuff with them when they come into the world!).  We will be letting you guys know shortly exactly what we will be doing.  Keep yourselves on the edges of your seats for that blog post! (how can you resist?)

How are you feeling? 

This is a really thoughtful question and it's one that has been complicated for me to answer. I'm never sure if I should just go with the standard, "fine!" that people expect when they first see you and say "how are you?" or if I'm supposed to answer with details. And then I wonder, "how many details should i share here? there ARE quite a lot" so I end up glossing over some things and being as truthful but short-winded as possible.  My answer recently has been, "Much better than a few weeks ago, thank you!" 

The real answer is that it changes every day. Literally, every day I have felt completely and totally different than the last. Back in weeks 6 through 9 i would wake up every day and wonder to myself what my new symptom would be during that 24 hour time period.  I had intense nausea (but no throwing up (thank god)) for two and a half weeks, I had bleeding and spotting for 21 days straight, I had migraines, food aversions, pain and discomfort while sleeping, exhaustion and a very itchy scalp.  I've had a lot of weird things affecting how I was feeling so at any given moment the answer to that question was kinda a crap-shoot. 

Now though at almost 12 and a half weeks, I am feeling much more normal (knock on wood). Sure, I'm still exhausted and I could easily sleep 14 hours a day but the nausea has subsided for the most part, my scalp has stopped itching and many of the other weird symptoms have diminished or disappeared completely. I'm sure they will be replaced with new and different things as we continue on this journey but we shall see and only time will tell. 

Overall though, I feel fine. I'm making it and it's all for a good cause. And seriously, thank you for asking. 

How is Ryan handling all of this?

Ryan is doing great.  In fact, Ryan was way more prepared for this than I was. He's a planner and once he decides that he's ready for something, he's ready for it. Apparently he had decided he was ready for this and so aside from being completely shocked by how quickly it happened (seriously, that was a big one for both of us) and for feeling like he was going to faint when I told him I was pregnant and showed him the positive test (lol that's another story for another entry), he's been GREAT.  He has calmed my nerves several times throughout this whole thing and has remarked how awesome it's all going to be.  He refers to me in the plural ("how are you guys doing?" when he comes home from work (and is talking only to me lol)) and has generally been an absolutely doting husband, literally waiting on me (it is so, so, so sweet of him). In short, he's thrilled and really excited.  Ryan is incredibly family oriented so this is something that will be great for him and honestly just seems to come naturally to him. He's just so fabulous and fantastic, I couldn't ask for a better husband because there simply wouldn't be one. 

I find it funny though how many people expect the father to be a ball of nerves and hyper energy. No one seems to ask the mother-to-be how she's feeling or if she's ready for this. And it's probably a good thing that no one asks because honestly, there's no good answer if she's terrified (at least not one that anyone wants to hear lol) and there's really only the expected answer if she's not.  

I occasionally am terrified but mostly I'm over-the-moon excited.  I am of the firm belief that life is all about perspective and therefore things for us and our family are always going to be great - even when they aren't so great. Know what i mean?

When do you find out the sex of the baby?

We can find out between 16 and 20 weeks! Can't wait! 

Are you going to get a 3-D/4-D ultrasound done?

We don't know yet.  I kind of want to leave some things up for surprise and those ultrasounds are soooo accurate that I feel like we will be ruining the surprise of what our baby looks like if we get it done!  They are SO cool though!  We'll just have to wait and see what we're going to do!   

So those are all the questions I can think of for now!  Please feel free to leave any more here in the comments and I will gladly answer them in a future post (seriously, i would love more comments!)

Hope this has helped!  We are all looking forward to sharing this journey with you.  Oh, and we will be continuing the blog after the baby is born as well so stick around for the long haul ;)