Preggo my Eggo Update: 31 weeks down, 9 to go. (Goats are sh*tty hairdressers.)

Friday I had my 30-week checkup and all is well. My Sponsor is weighing in at a hearty 3 pounds, 8 ounces and everything looks great. The only problem: I think my ultrasound technician is obsessed with My Sponsor's balls. I get an ultrasound every four to six weeks to monitor two fibroid tumors that I have. The tumors are no big deal, the Drs just like to keep an eye on them. Well, all of the ultrasounds result in a lot of baby pictures. No good ones, mind you, just a lot of pictures of my son's balls. I find this very weird. Every time we go, she prints me out a picture of his junk with the words, "It's a boy!" next to them. I get it. He has a penis, but do I really need physical proof to show to all of my friends and family? Aren't they called "privates" for a reason? Show the little guy some common courtesy and let him have a little privacy for his in-utero peen. Plus, what am I going to do with 16 pictures of his baby balls?

Me at 31 weeks. You don't get to see my baby's balls, sicko.

Anyway. After our appt, ADD Daddy and I spent the day preparing for My Sponsor. We washed clothes, washed bottles, put everything away and redid The Quiet Contemplator's room to be The Quiet Contemplator's/My Sponsor's room (we live in a two-bedroom loft so they will be bunking up. pictures to come soon.).

After all the heavy lifting on Friday, we decided to have a little fun on Saturday. We headed out to a local wild animal park/petting zoo to enjoy the beautiful day and be attacked by horrible, demon-seed goats feed cute little miniature goats bottles of milk. After we bought our milk, The Quiet Contemplator and I headed into the goat yard. Well, we were there early so apparently the goats were REALLY hungry. Once we got inside the yard, about 50 goats hellbent on being the one to suck the sweet milk of life from the teet of our bottle, swarmed us. I had my arm out protecting TQC from hooves to the face while two goats attacked me and literally ate my hair. The goats had me by the scalp and were jerking me backward while I screamed, "They're eating my hair! They're eating my hair!" to the horror of all the assholes who stood around and laughed on-looking families. By the time my husband got the goats off of me, I had lost some hair. A lot of hair. I pulled out four huge clumps from what I could detangle from all the goat spit and even more in the bath later. Moral of the story: goats make excellent henchmen sh*tty hairdressers.

Preggo my Eggo Update: 30 weeks down, 10 to go.

I am still running! Yay! Well, not exactly running, but waddling faster than a walk during segments of House Hunters/A Baby Story, then walking during the commercials. Unless I have a contraction that makes me want to pee myself. Then I have to walk either way. Don't worry, you don't have to hate me and unsubscribe. I am still downing cheese sticks and cupcakes and packing on the weight. I'm no Gwyneth. I just like to run short distances very slowly, pregnant or not. I feel that it is all about to come to an end, but I am super stoked to have made it this far. Things have been a lot easier this time and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I have been more active.

WTF Comment of the Week:
WTF Commentator: How have you been feeling?
Me: I have felt really good this time around. It has been a lot easier than last time.
WTF Commentator: Well you know what they say, "Easy pregnancy. Hard baby."
Me: Oh. OK.

What I wanted to say was, "I should punch you in the neck for saying something like that to me." What does that even mean? I should hope for a horrible pregnancy so I don't have an a$$hole baby? Sounds like I am in for 9 months of hell either way. I guess I will take the option that allows me to drink while I cry.

Anyway.

Hi, my name is Julie and I am a closet pickle eater. I find that I am embarrassed to eat pickles while pregnant. I feel like if anyone catches me they will make a big deal out of it and I will have to crush their heads. It is just pickle to go on the side of my sandwich people. It isn't like a made a chocolate shake out of them!

Closet Pickle Eater

Top 10 Differences Between your First and Subsequent Pregnancies

Though all pregnancies are special, your first tends to get a bit more of the red carpet treatment than any pregnancies that follow. Here are my top 10 differences between first pregnancies and any that occur after.

10. The Learning Curve

The First: you read every book known to man about pregnancy, childbirth, childcare, environmental toxins, diet and exercise, etc.
Subsequent Pregnancies: you read People magazine in the spare three minutes you get to yourself each day. Hey, you have to find out what Brad and Angelina are up to somehow.

9. Diet

The First: you make sure that you eat a perfect, balanced diet while pregnant so the baby will have every advantage from day one.
Subsequent Pregnancies: you eat spare chicken nuggets off your toddler's plate while cleaning up after dinner and getting ready for bedtime.

8. Diagnosing Mystery Ailments

The First: if any little thing just doesn't feel right, you call your OBGYN.
Subsequent Pregnancies: if anything short of a limb falling off happens, you say it will be fine and keep on moving.

7. Your Social Life

The First: you still go out with friends and stay out a little later than you want just so they don't think that having a baby is going to change you.
Subsequent Pregnancies: short of them offering you free tickets to lick Gerard Butler's abs, you tell your friends to go fuck themselves, you're pregnant.

6. Nursery Preparedness

The First: everything in your nursery is washed, organized, perfectly matched and ready for baby by the time you hit 25 weeks.
Subsequent Pregnancies: Baby? Oh, crap. I am having another one of those? In a panic, you start doing last-minute preparations for the baby around 39 weeks.

5. Extracurricular Activities

The First: you practice prenatal yoga and water aerobics and take every childbirth and child-rearing class that is offered.
Subsequent Pregnancies: you don't have time to think, let alone take a class with a bunch of first-time moms who want to talk about what labor is going to be like. It is going to suck. Then it will be over. The end.

4. Talking/Thinking About Baby

The First: you think and talk about your pregnancy 24-hours a day. It is the only thing you can think about right now.
Subsequent Pregnancies: you think about your pregnancy twice the entire time: once when the stick shows two lines instead of one, and again when your water breaks and it is time to head to the hospital.

3. Weight Gain

The First: you worry about proper weight gain and what you are going to look like after the baby comes.
Subsequent Pregnancies: you supersize everything and get dessert after. F*ck it. I am going to get stretch marks either way. Why not live a little?

2. Fetal Movements

The First: feeling your baby kick will make you stop what you are doing no matter how important it seemed. This is the miracle of life, people!
Subsequent Pregnancies: when your baby kicks, it is still great and all, but if you were on your way to get a donut, you aren't stopping to embrace it. It will happen again after the donut. Babies like donuts.

1. What Your Baby Will be Like

The First: you think that your baby will be the second coming of Christ.
Subsequent Pregnancies: you know there is a good chance that your baby will be an asshole that will cry for hours on end for no reason and vomit in your hair right after you finally got a spare minute to wash it.


If you share this post, I will buy you a pony. I suck at Twitter. I am OK at Facebook. Pinterest is my bitch. I am also on Bloglovin' and Instagram. 

Preggo my Eggo Update: 29 weeks down, 11 to go.

So by the time December rolls around, I am officially going to be so big that I make people feel uncomfortable when they are around me. I have about 2.5 months left and people are already asking me when that baby is going to get here already. Um…New Years. It's not even Halloween yet. There are a lot of other pregnant girls at my work who are due around the same time as me and when I stand next to them, I look like I ate their babies and went for ice cream after. One of them is having twins. That can't be good. I am loving how big I am, but a little worried about fitting through doorways, in cars and whatnot by the end of the year.

Keep in mind, I am only SIX MONTHS!

The Daycare Plague

For those of you that work full time and aren't lucky enough to have a relative crazy enough to watch your kid(s) for free, you are faced with the hell that is daycare. Don't get me wrong, daycare is a wonderful place and my daughter loves it, but like anything else, it has its drawbacks.

My main pain with daycare is the illnesses it brings. MY GOD there are so many and they come so often. If you send your kid to group care, they will get sick. A lot. Like a whole lot. Then you will get sick. A lot. Like a whole lot. Like you will think your family's immune system has been replaced with that of a 95-year-old cancer patient’s. It SUCKS.

When your kids get sick, they will still play and laugh and eat. When you get sick, you will feel like death is a wonderful option to get out of what you currently feel like. After about a year, your kids will stop getting sick as much. A little after that, you will stop. Before that time, you will get the flu a few times, the poops innumerable times, colds, pink eye, upper respiratory infections, roseola, fevers, hand, foot and mouth disease, etc. Yay!

Basically, your days of calling in sick to work so you can drink beer at the game all day are over. Now, you will be out of sick days before the 4th of July even hits. Frivolous sick days are gone, replaced with the need to swap your vacation and holidays for days filled with explosive diarrhea and projectile vomiting. Aren't kids great?

Preggo my Eggo Update: 28 weeks down, 12 to go.

So it's official: I am now pregnant enough to pee when I sneeze. Que me picking up The Quiet Contemplator on Tuesday night with a wad of McDonald's napkins stuffed in my underwear. Classy. Anyway...

Lately, I have found that pregnancy is a great awkward silence filler. Last week I had to go to a work party for two women that were retiring. Where this would usually be torture for me since it is hard for me to censor my diarrhea of the mouth at work functions, it was actually easy and almost fun. People you would normally have nothing to talk about with now have something to act interested in you about. And, all of a sudden, you are the life of the party. Everyone wants to know how you are feeling, when you are due, what's the baby's sex, do you have a name picked out, will you be taking drugs in the hospital or chanting and squatting over a tub in your living room? Obviously, I hate the handsy bastards that think it is OK to touch my stomach when asking me about the baby, but they are few and far between and can feel the searing burn of my gaze when their hand goes anywhere near my gut.

Overall, I just really like not having to come up with mundane crap to talk with strangers, family and co-workers about. Can I just pretend to be pregnant forever so I never have to deal with actually acting interested in people again? That would rock.

Yes, I am pregnant. Let's talk about that.

On another note:
While explaining to my husband that an awesome reader came to my defense and called another reader "Gwyneth" when she called me a bad mom, the following conversation unfolded:

ADD Daddy: But why would she call her Gwyneth?
Me: Gwyneth, as in Gwyneth Paltow. Moms hate her.
ADD Daddy: Why do mom's hate Gwyneth Paltrow? Is it because she named her kid Apple?
Me: Because she feeds her kids all organic, cooks 8-course dinners every night and is married to the hot dude from Coldplay.
ADD Daddy: Oh. OK.

And scene.

Based on 99.9% of our conversations, I think my husband thinks that I have way too much time on my hands/have some sort of mental disability. In the long run, though, what does that really say about him? He is the one that married me.

Registry Hell

Registering for a baby can be an experience that will leave you muttering and rocking in a dark corner somewhere. It is not near as fun as it sounds like it is going to be. Here are a few tips to help you along the way:

Register early. You will change your mind and find out all kinds of new things during the process of registering. Do not wait until a month before your showers to do this. You will regret it.

Babies “R” Us might be what Hell is like. Just know, the first time you go to Babies “R” Us (BRU), you will probably be so overwhelmed you will cry. It is a horrible, yet necessary, place. Get used to it. It gets easier.

Make your first registry trip with your husband to pick out big things like strollers, cribs, etc. Leave him at home for all the rest. He DOES NOT care what kind of bibs you get, diapers you buy, breast pump you choose, etc. Take another trip with a friend who already has kids and can give you tips. Take yet another trip alone so you can spend 20 minutes obsessing over whether the kelly green bib really does match your carseat as well as the sage green ones you already registered for.

You CAN get everything at BRU, but some people are scared of that place, so register somewhere neutral, like Target. I know that I, personally, would never go to BRU for a shower gift. I hate that place.

Though you have a little girl or a bouncing baby boy this time, that doesn't mean you will the next time. So go neutral on the big stuff like carseats, strollers, pack ‘n’ plays, etc. Otherwise you will have to buy all new if you have a boy/girl next time or deal with the repercussions when your kid is 20...

Don’t feel bad about registering for some pricey items. People like to go in on group gifts and going the cheapest route on everything is neither fun nor wise. Do not, however, be the a$$hole that registers for top-of-the-line of everything. No one is going to buy you a $500 diaper bag. Get over it.

Register for a few types of everything (strollers, carseats, etc). Then, come home and start reading the reviews on the web. VERY useful. Some seem great in the stores and then get HORRIBLE reviews. You will then have to take them off your registry. Since you already have a backup, no need to venture into hell, I mean BRU, again.

Ask other mommies what they loved/hated, used/didn’t use. Other moms are your greatest resource when you have questions about baby stuff. Though beware: some will say you HAVE to have a wipe warmer, other will say it is dumb (it is). Same goes with most things, just take it all in, then form your own opinions.

Don’t be tacky. Yes, you can register for your after-birth jumbo maxi pads and tummy-sucking-in-wrap, but don’t. Gross, girlfriend. Some things a mommy needs to keep private. Also, if you decide to breastfeed, get someone you know is going to buy you a big gift (like your mother or grandmother) to get you the breast pump you want without adding it to your registry. I think it is a bit gauche to remind everyone that peruses your registry that you will soon be milking yourself. Plus, it saves you the awkwardness of opening it as a gift from your co-workers at a co-ed work shower. Shivers.