Sorry for the delay in blogging; been too busy enjoying my last few months of freedom before I’m never alone again forever. I will now give you a smattering of information and thoughts that I will separate by paragraphs for easy reading, but each paragraph will not include the same subject and would be graded poorly if reviewed by an educator.  Fair? 

Seriously, being pregnant is awesome.  I love it. I’m telling you, if things continue to go as swell as this, I’m going to get knocked up right away after and go for a second or be a surrogate.  I haven’t gained a pound which is FREAKING FANTASTIC NEWS.  Also, if one more person tells me I’m glowing they’re going to get a big fat smackeroo on the lips.  Seriously.  Love.

I feel really guilty acknowledging this out loud.  There are moms out there that may want to slice my throat open for things going this smoothly.  Including my own mom who has just recently stopped calling me in the morning asking me if “my symptoms have kicked in yet”.  (She had it rough with all 3 of us kids) I will say I did have 3 days a couple weeks ago where I felt fairly nauseous. BUT, I was in Charleston where it was 118 degrees with 1000% humidity so it also could have been that.  I just kept sucking on sour candy and stealing my nieces and nephews snacks they had packed for our field trips and I survived. 

Oh wait, I did throw up once.  Oh, and dry heaved over the toilet once.  So, 2 timesish. But to be honest that’s because I gagged myself with my toothbrush.  If you’ve ever seen me brush my teeth, I get pretty aggressive.  The Little does NOT like my current style of teeth brushing so I’ve had to ease up on that. 

As far as my “say yes to everything” attitude, I haven’t slowed down even a little.  I’ve traveled, golfed, happy houred, networked and gone to everything I’m invited to.  The past week (I’m at 14 weeks) I’ve had a TON of energy.  Over the past few months I’ve done some controversial things like drank the fresh squeezed lemonade at the Wisconsin State Fair and ate half of a really shitty looking lunch meat style sandwich in a box on a golf tournament.  My Little will have my incredible immune system.  I can drink the water in Mexico and sit on ANY public toilet.  (Except black toilets.  I hate black toilets) Oh, and last week I rode on a Bird Scooter because I was late to a meeting. Actually, a date.  More on that later.  I do in hindsight admit that was slightly reckless and won’t do it again. 

I had my first doctor appointment with an ultrasound where I got to see that there was one singular Little Travel Buddy in there with 2 arms, 2 legs and a heartbeat of 161 beats per minute so that was really relieving.  I brought with my lucky nieces who were there during the insemination, Georgia and Ivy, as well as their mom Natalie, and my mom.  My best friend Cynthia was there too, but only for breakfast before at one of my favorite breakfast spots in the city (Mimosa.  You must go if you haven’t been.) because she happened to have her 6-week postpartum appointment at the same place and same time!  It was amazing to have the gang all there.  Also, my mom made “ghost” cookies for the staff as a thank you for knocking me up.  (Mind wandering… wondering if she would have baked those same cookies for a guy if that’s how I ended getting pregnant instead?)

During the appointment, I could tell in classic Lisa style I did a couple of controversial things.  There’s always got to be that one person that goes against the grain, doesn’t there? (I believe our biggest enemy is the status quo so I’m used to the distaste I often get from others when I challenge the norm) First thing was when the doctor asked me if I wanted genetic testing done, I said “Yes please!”.  Listen, I’m not saying that I wouldn’t be a-ok with a special needs baby, because I would.  I’m saying, it would be nice to be prepared if that was the case by researching and having my budget appropriately planned for the type of childcare and support that would require.  Test results were negative which is great but not 100% conclusive. 

Second thing I did that made Natalie and my mom feign with disapproval was that I asked about a planned C-Section.  Geez Louise people, I like to know all my options.  First of all, I get 2 extra weeks paid time off for a C-Section with Short Term Disability so there’s that.  (Did you know that the US is in the bottom 5 in the entire world for supporting working mothers having children? We only get 6 weeks paid, but only if we have Short Term Disability, and only a portion of our income. FMLA allows us to take 12 weeks off if we can afford it without losing our jobs. The World Health Organization recommends a minimum of 16 weeks off for your body to recover) Secondly, I already have a wild gnarly scar on my stomach from an emergency appendectomy so it would be cool to have a collection of them.  Thirdly, I’m still very single so it would be really nice for the future love of my life to meet my lady bits in all their glory before they are destroyed by a human emerging from them.  Just sayin’.  Not saying I’ll do it; I just would like to know my options.  Geez.  (Sidenote:  I love my mom and Natalie with all my heart and all of you as well so I am not at all discouraged by people challenging my decisions and disagreeing with me so I’m not even a little mad at them and you as well if you decide to weigh in.  I went into this full transparency, so I expect the healthy disagreements in opinions. Just so you know I ain’t mad about it and feel free to bring it without hurting my feelings)

My favorite part of the appointment was how excited Georgia was.  I gave her one of the pictures from the ultrasound and Natalie says she takes it with her everywhere.  I was telling Georgia about my doctor and how she has 3 little girls.  I rattled off the names of the girls, one of which was Amaya, and Georgia immediately fixated on that name and now calls the baby Amaya.  Natalie said to Georgia, “but what if it’s a boy?”  to which Georgia replied, “but what if it’s a girl?”  Touché Georgia.  Touché. 

Another quite magical part of this pregnancy is how attractive I am to men at the moment.  I’ve NEVER gotten this much attention in my life from men.  It’s pretty awesome.  My first experience into this phenomenon was in a Taco Bell drive through. (I promise that was my only Taco Bell drive through moment so far. It’s not a thing, it was just the only convenient thing on the way home from a late night work event. But now I really want Taco Bell.) The young man with the headset in the drive through taking orders was in his early 20’s and wearing a taco as a hat. He proceeded to tell me I was “rocking that bomber jacket”. (It was a pretty cool bomber jacket from Rent The Runway.) He wrote his name and number down and passed it to me saying “just in case” with a wink.  Because I was so surprised and flattered, my response was putting my hands over my heart and bursting into a huge smile and saying “THANK YOU!!!!” with enthusiasm because I was over the moon excited to be found attractive to anyone whilst pregnant. In hindsight, I feel bad for that reaction.  He probably was convinced that meant I was going to call him and waited by the phone for weeks.  I did not. It wasn’t the hat. The hat was the sexiest part.

My second experience was a Meet Cute IRL in the Apple Store with one of the Geniuses.  (Meet Cute is what they call it when you meet someone now days in the wild and not online.  IRL means “In Real Life”.  You’re welcome.) He was getting me hooked up with a new phone because I don’t put mine in a case, so it was all jacked up.  We had some fun banter the whole time.  I knew he might be into me when he offered to look at cases with me and left the Genius Bar to go slumming in the retail section. (I know from getting many a broken phone replaced that this is not at all something that happens IRL)  After more banter before I left, he asked if I might want to continue our conversation to which I excitedly replied “YES!” and he then asked for my number.  It was wild.  I genuinely can not remember the last time a man asked for my number IRL.  Maybe in Phoenix, years ago.  A guy followed me to my car outside of the grocery store and offered to put my groceries in the car. Psycho.  I blogged about that and was going to hyperlink the blog post for your to read but I’m so bad at technology that I can’t even access the website anymore. Not to give away the climax of this story but it’s too bad things didn’t work out with the Genius from the Apple Store, he could have helped me restore my old blog. He was hot. Anyways, me and the Genius went on a date to the Milwaukee Art Museum, and then he ghosted me after that.  I did not tell him I was pregnant.  He could have googled my name.  Whatevs.  Still got it!

Sorry for being a blogging slacker.  I do understand I scared many of you with my lack of communication, but I promise me and my Little Travel Buddy are doing great.  We even bought a rug for his or her nursery, so things are getting serious.  I’ll be better this next time I promise. 

Thanks for following me on my adventure into motherhood!

Lisa