November Randoms

bbluemoo

Finally told most of our immediate family this weekend! It’s been fun and exciting but now I’m absolutely exhausted.

maryanne2019

@pourmeanothermocktail. Aww can’t he do the walk sometimes?  At least so he knows what you’re going through!   

I don’t think husbands have any idea how much we do...  

maryanne2019

@bbluemoo how’d you announce it?

pourmeanothermocktail

maryanne2019 said:

@pourmeanothermocktail. Aww can’t he do the walk sometimes?  At least so he knows what you’re going through!   

I don’t think husbands have any idea how much we do...  

Lol, they have no idea. But pickup and drop off (it's preschool, so it's half day, but even a normal elementary school has a short schedule) he's at work for. To the point that he's not even listed an official pickup person at school, only an emergency contact after me, my mom, and my sister. He's gone 7am-5pm, and his work is 45 min away. He likes the cold anyway. But ugh, getting kids dressed for it is exhausting!

saladflambe

First scan today!  

ambosb

9 weeks today.  This past weekend was horrible! Severe headaches, and I threw up all day Saturday.  I have not been sick at all until this Saturday.  Also with all that, severe emotions flowing=CRYBABY!!!! Anyone else felt crappy this weekend, and all of a sudden?

JessiBride

ambosb said:

9 weeks today.  This past weekend was horrible! Severe headaches, and I threw up all day Saturday.  I have not been sick at all until this Saturday.  Also with all that, severe emotions flowing=CRYBABY!!!! Anyone else felt crappy this weekend, and all of a sudden?

Me! Morning sickness has hit but peaks in the evening.  I also have it all night so haven't been sleeping well.  I feel like death warmed over the past few days.  And headaches have returned.

pourmeanothermocktail

Update-the constant peppermint oil smell has seriously helped me a ton today. I'm not feeling 100%, but I do feel like a human. Instead of a total sick zombie/ghost.

chaos-and-coffee

I love my OB but hate her office staff. I called this morning because I had some red spotting and cramping over the weekend. I called before 10 am and I am still waiting on a return call. I had to call a few times with my last pregnancy and multiple times I had to call a second time before the end of the day because they never called me back. The staff is terrible at giving messages to the nurse. They have a freaking nurse line, wtf is it even there for?! 

saladflambe

The lady who took my blood (phlebotomist?) at my midwife practice is a character. Suuuuuuper Christian lol. She kept saying "praise God" to literally everything I said...like when I confirmed my personal information lol. But amazing...I literally did not feel the needle AT ALL. And she did some weird 1-minute massage thing afterwards which she said would mean no bruising (I ALWAYS bruise)...lo and behold..no bruise. 

virginiaham

I was looking at medical photos of a severe-colitis surgery on a woman who was 14-weeks pregnant (I don’t recommend doing this...but she had good outcomes), and they noted that the 14-week pregnant uterus was smaller than the size of a fist.  

And that felt like the opposite of validating lol.  Where is all this 10-week blump coming from?

bbluemoo

@maryanne2019 we couldn’t get our families to all be available at the same time, so we had to go visit everybody separately to tell them. My husband was in Vegas last week so we played it off as him having gifts to give everybody. And then I made different gifts including the ultrasound pic to give everybody to announce it

runwmusic

@virginiaham I don't understand how I've only gained 2 lbs yet look the same as I did about 16w pregnant last time already. Pregnancy defies logic

pourmeanothermocktail

@virginiaham That doesn't sound accurate to me. Normal uterus during fertile years but not pregnant should be only a little smaller than a fist. But that doesn't leave room for a 3.5" long baby, waters, and placenta. I think I read somewhere it doubles normal size at maybe only 4 weeks.

virginiaham

@pourmeanothermocktail yeah they didn’t give details like maybe she was measuring small, and the photo almost looked like it could be just a tip-of-the-iceberg thing...I can’t imagine they were manipulating things to see the whole uterus.  But, mistaken or not, that was their medical observation in this one case.

alli392

Emotionally wrecked by a soldiers coming home and surprising their kids video that came out of nowhere on my newsfeed. I watched the whole thing and bawled like a baby. Made DH leave the room because I couldn’t handle the emotions. 

maryanne2019

@bbluemoo aw how sweet

diagonalley

@alli392 those get me every.time

lizanet

any one else find themselves looking up baby everything in their free time? lol 
I cant help myself. Of course I am not ordering anything yet or putting anything in a cart. But looking at cute baby clothes and such makes me feel better about all these yuckie symptoms. 

akoros

@lizanet I was...but now we're debating buying a house which is a bit of a fixer upper so now I'm frantically looking up everything I can find on kitchen renovations. Are we crazy?

chaos-and-coffee

@akoros we listed our house yesterday and have a pending offer on a house 🤷🏼‍♀️

akoros

@chaos-and-coffee Ok, so we're not alone! If this doesn't work out we'll probably continue looking through early spring before calling it off and just sticking with where we are for now.

pourmeanothermocktail

akoros said:

@lizanet I was...but now we're debating buying a house which is a bit of a fixer upper so now I'm frantically looking up everything I can find on kitchen renovations. Are we crazy?

Depends on your renovation budget and abilities. Things always take longer than anticipated and make a huge mess. You'll likely be very uncomfortable by 32 ish weeks and I like to be settled by then if possible, as an early baby can happen and is much harder if your home isn't even ready to easily feed you. This however, is a bigger deal if you (like us) absolutely don't have budget room for a bunch of unexpected take out, etc. If you can pay more than the lowest bid, and if unexpected project hiccups can be financially handled easily, then things are easier. 

We had some flooding at 33 or 34 weeks with my second. Our entire lower level had to be partially ripped apart. I suddenly lost half of our available play room, and had to put important things into our other playing room, to save them. I had bad SPD and all of our couches were suddenly in storage so I had no comfortable seating in my house. My husband also works 50+ hours per week and we couldn't afford contractors, and with me having a toddler at home and being largely unable to work on my feet...and me having a plan for a home birth, in the flooded space, plus my first being born just before 36 weeks....it was a total disaster. Super stressful, unpleasant, painful, etc. Had it been taken care of in second trimester, and again, if we could have paid someone to take care of it instead of having to beg every friend we had to come over and help put it all back together. Ugh. Never again.

chaos-and-coffee

@akoros I will say the house we have an offer on is brand new and we don’t have to do a thing. I don’t think I would do a fixer upper (in general, but especially not pregnant!) that sounds really stressful. 

akoros

@pourmeanothermocktail Ugh, that sounds awful! We do have what seems like a good budget, plus buffer/wiggle room. We're not particularly handy and don't have illusions as to our personal abilities, particularly if we want this to actually look good. The hope is that we could get a lot of the messy stuff done before moving in (mainly the kitchen and refinishing the hardwood floors), though are debating doing at least some of the painting ourselves (I painted our old place by myself and generally like it) and are admittedly on a deadline as we'd want to move no later than May.

akoros

@chaos-and-coffee For the most part we hadn't really been considering fixer uppers given that prices are so ridiculously high around here ($800k+ for a fixer upper? No thank you...), but given the price of this one is lwo enough to free up some funds, coupled with the location and layout it's extremely tempting. Worst case, I suppose, everything in the house *works*, it's just dated/ugly. 

pourmeanothermocktail

@akoros I hear you. We bought a 1950s ranch with an almost untouched kitchen two years ago, original hardwood. We are trying to save up to redo kitchen in a couple years, but I did paint everything before moving in. It's all working stuff, but kitchen is super old and starting to fall apart. No budget yet though!

I will say, we considered refinishing our hardwood floors, but elected against. It was our plan to get a puppy and have a couple kids, and I decided I'd rather wait on floors until youngest is maybe 5 (or we decide to sell) just to avoid having to do it twice. They're not falling apart, but it's nice to know that scratch from my toddler taking a knife to it (oops!) and the small Sharpie mark, and probably only a couple dog pees....weren't devastating! I am looking forward to having new cabinets and counters and tile floor one day. Plus a pantry and additional storage! And a full size oven and dishwasher. Lol, we've already made tentative plans and it's fun to dream. To one day have kitchen appliances younger than me (they're all from early 80s at least, so not 60 years old like the cabinets). 

kyrwyn

We bought a fixer upper 11 years ago and our fixing upping list is still 75% undone. I'd strongly recommend considering whether you can live with the state the house will be in when you move in. It's way harder to do work when you're already in. 

That being said, buying a fixer was the only way we could get into a house here in CA. Somehow you make do if it's liveable.  

lizanet

@akoros it seems like a lot to take on while pregnant. You are limited to doing certain things and once you get uncomfortable you will just want to rest. It seems like its live in ready but just not aesthetically pleasing to you. if you think the big things you want to change can be done in a short time frame I would say go for it. 

chaos-and-coffee

@akoros yikes at that price! I live in a relatively low cost of living area so cannot relate. My husband and I decided long ago it benefits our marriage greatly to hire things out. Do not regret any thing we’ve paid for once. 

kerco925

We bought a fixer upper this summer.  We put a lot of work into it over the summer, new kitchen, flooring downstairs, siding, painting, etc.  I am grateful that we did so much before I got pregnant, because I am useless now. 

lilaros

@akoros Those prices for a fixer upper sound similar to prices around us. Are you in the Bay Area also? A month or two ago we put in an offer on a fixer upper in a nicer area. They were asking $780k, we offered a bit above that since we knew it would be competitive. They had 30 offers and it sold for $990k 😭 I wish I didn’t live in an area where prices are so freaking high!

akoros

@chaos-and-coffee It's insane! I know people who have paid far more for a far worse house, too. The one consolation is that if we ever leave the area we're pretty much set wherever we'd want to go (with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions).

@lilaros We're in DC, I think you're in the only area that's actually more expensive than ours! (though not by much...)

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone! We'll see how this works out...

kyrwyn

@pourmeanothermocktail I share your kitchen dreams. One day, I hope to jettison these early 70s yellow oak cabinet monstrosities with their weird beige tile with brown grout counter tops directly into the sun. We had to get a new range when we moved in because the existing one was a severe fire hazard, which is possibly the only saving grace.

pourmeanothermocktail

@kyrwyn I hear you. We tried to just replace our oven, but no one makes one in that size anymore. The Linoleum is awful, but the cabinets I would really love (if we refinished them), if they weren't starting to fall apart in places. Sigh. We'll have to move an interior wall to do it, and do most of work ourselves, but it'll be worth it!

kyrwyn

@pourmeanothermocktail That bites. We have similar problems with other parts of our house because it was built "to code-ish" in our region's equivalent of the Levittown expansions. We took out the in-wall heaters a few years ago and found that they closed up a gap in the insulation with empty beer cans. So great. 

hayhay2501

@akoros we bought a 600 sq foot “mansion” in London at the start of the year for a silly amount of money. We could have got something bigger that’s a fixer upper but we just don’t have the cash to spare for projects that end up costing way more than planned. We just did our bathroom and even that cost all the money.  That being said if you’re up for it and you can at least live in it while renovating then it could turn out amazing! 

Also I totally know what you mean when the positive is if you move you’re 99% likely to move somewhere cheaper 🤣🤣. I can’t wait to trade my two bed flat in for a home that costs less somewhere else!!!

kiki75

chaos-and-coffee said:

@akoros yikes at that price! I live in a relatively low cost of living area so cannot relate. My husband and I decided long ago it benefits our marriage greatly to hire things out. Do not regret any thing we’ve paid for once. 

Yes! We have somewhat complicated taxes and after trying to do them together one time, we started paying someone to do them. Marriage insurance. 

@akoros Similar to what others said, I’d consider scope and who would be doing the work. My husband painted four rooms and we put new hardwood flooring in the same rooms: nursery and our room got one kind, living and dining another. I pulled up all of the carpet, pad & tack strips myself. Should have been in and everything set up & moved in about a month before my EDD. Except that there was a problem with the flooring in the bedrooms. That the contractor blamed on the flooring company. So we had to wait for the flooring company to come out & inspect it. Then baby came at 38+5. We were sleeping in the guest bedroom. I was changing baby on the bed we were sleeping on, while H and the dog were in it. We had no dressers for any of the three of us. We lived in a system of many laundry baskets. Then the contractor came back to rip out all of the bedroom flooring & install new. While a baby tried to nap. It was a hot mess and baby was probably 13 weeks old before we had bedrooms set up again, including the nursery. The stress took a toll on me. Just make sure the necessary projects can all fit into the time before baby arrives, even if it’s early. 


In other news, would anyone be interested in a thread about non-obvious stuff to watch for sales on during the holiday season?
Like:
Squatty potty - it really does help during pregnancy and PP. 

Robes/washable open front sweater/sweatshirts without metal zippers - even though we’re June, it’s still nice to have something warmer to slip on for night feeds and once Christmas is past, winter’s over at all the stores and robes are hard to find. I had a few I rotated due to washing needs. 

Slippers for the same reasons as above.

Home exercise equipment - If you’re into it. Because of our schedules, we have a Peloton bike and it’s really good for being able to squeeze a workout in during nap time or before anyone wakes up (the quiet is part of the benefit of the bike vs tread). The classes are really helpful for motivation, too. I work as hard as I would in a normal spin class and much harder that I do just a bike at the gym. Sales are really hard to come by but it seems like they mostly come in the form of free shipping/accessories and Christmas/New Years are the best times. A couple of us have them & we could give you referral codes. It looks like it gets you $100 off accessories like shoes, mat, weights. 

chaos-and-coffee

@kiki75 I’m totally on board for that thread

chaos-and-coffee

Pregnancy is hell on my skin. Anyone have good recs for pregnancy safe products? Last time I used cetaphil and it didn’t work at all. Currently using cerave which I think is ok? I really just looked for Sacylic (sp) acid since I know that’s a no.