Complicating Factors- Or, My New Widget

Tummies are Awesome!

As I mentioned recently, I've been having some... rather complicated health problems.

The gall bladder thing, skin cancer, catching every little bug that goes around...

If you follow me on Twitter, you've probably noticed routine complaints that I am either hungry or tired.  Or nauseated.

There's a reason for all of that.

I'll tell you the same way I told all my friends on Facebook...

That's right!  I'm pregnant!

I found a super cool widget for the blog- it has a rendering of my new grubling floating around in what is supposed to be my extremely spacious uterus.

I can't telly you how excited we all are about it.  The girls are absolutely thrilled about the idea of the baby in mommy's tummy.  SI is insistent that she wants a brother, while DD refuses to acknowledge that there could be any acceptable outcome but a baby sister.

M is pulling for a boy, which isn't a surprise.  I'm totally on the fence.  I feel like I'm kind of awesome at raising girls, and I don't really know if boys would be different.  At the same time, I would love to have a little boy as well.  So either way, I'm going to be thrilled.

The day I found out I was pregnant was a pretty amazing day.  I had noticed a mole that had gone all... funny.  You see, when I'm pregnant I get skin cancer.  It's kind of terrifying, but there's really nothing I can do about it.  So when I saw that mole changing, I thought to myself, "I should take a pregnancy test."  I wasn't due to start my period for another two days, easily, but I went ahead and tested.

I went into shock.  I took the test as soon as I got home, so our new sitter was still there.  I called her the bathroom with me (she obviously thought she had started working in a crazy house- the look on my face must have been terrifying) and asked her if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.  She flipped out.  She kept saying the line was a little faint, so maybe I wasn't pregnant and I should stay calm.  I thought I was a lot calmer than her, so I told her to go home and started trying to put my thoughts in order.

This is an impossible task in a house filled with active toddlers.  So, I took them into the back yard.  The back yard had a few surprises in it for me.

First, there was the GIGANTIC katydid.  The girls LOVED it.  And I couldn't help myself but smile.  Katydids are a symbol of fertility and luck.  There's a an old Chinese blessing, "May you have as many children as the katydid."  I helped the gigantic insect escape from my children by promising them we could look for another "big bug."

We found one.

It was a GIGANTIC grasshopper.  Another luck symbol.  And another Chinese omen- it's supposed to be a harbinger of a baby boy.

It seemed kind of impossible.  Those first few weeks, I seemed to be followed everywhere by katydids and grasshoppers, reminding me that even if the only difference I could physically feel was mutating skin cells, I was going to have another baby.

And seriously, I was practically being stalked by katydids.  On my walk from my car to class.  Sitting on the wall outside the pharmacy.  Hanging out on trees near my friends' houses.

Katydids everywhere.

We've passed through all the scary things well enough so far.  It turns out that I'm a carrier for a really terrifying looking genetic disorder.  But after a few weeks of fretting and worrying, it turns out that M isn't, so that's a huge load off my mind.

I'm due at the beginning of June, after graduation but before my last summer class.  That is going to be a HUGE challenge.

But M will be done with school.  We'll both be graduating.  We'll be free of that huge weight, that huge responsibility, and free to get better jobs- that give us more resources and more time.  And that's a gigantic relief.

We'll have our whole summer with the new baby.  All of us together.  And then... then the girls will go to preschool, and for the first time I'll find myself alone with just one baby.

Ideally, for the first time I'll find myself with only one child in diapers, too.

Of course I kind of suck at pregnancy.  Through the whole first trimester- this time as well as the last- I was just so darn ill that I actually lost quite a bit of weight.  And once again, I'm having SPD problems.  (For those of you unfamiliar- it means my hips have prematurely loosened to make way for a baby that just isn't really there yet.)

Just try figuring out a way to get enough calories when you are a)constantly puking, b)have no appetite, c)restricted from eating fat or meat or dairy or eggs, and d)chasing two toddlers with hips that keep threatening to dislocate.

It makes me nervous, but it doesn't bother my doctors.

One of the best parts of this new pregnancy is that we didn't use fertility assistance.  We got the all clear that M is fully recovered from his chemotherapy (he was on chemo from August of 2007 until February of 2009), and so... we just went off of birth control.

And a few months later...

Well...

It looks like we're going to have to find a way to fit another person into our little condo.