ntg

I am half way through this pregnancy and I can officially no longer sleep. The first few weeks of my pregnancy, I was plagued by the same problem, I thought I was drinking too much wine with dinner. Apparently I was, but for reasons that wouldn’t become clear for a couple more weeks. Around eight weeks, a switch was flipped and I became a sleeping fiend. I was sleeping and napping for upwards of sixteen hours a day. That phase was not incredibly productive, but enjoyable and lasted until I entered my second trimester. Then the switch flipped back!
I expected to shoulder this burden come July, not in March!! A typical night looks like this: T and I lay down between 9 and 10. He is out cold fifteen minutes later… Snoring. okay maybe not snoring but breathing loudly in my ear. I will typically watch TV to kill the time. Not ideal. I know. I have read a lot about sleep and the TV is asking for trouble. But in this situation, T would rather sleep through TV than sleep through having a light on so I could read. Lola (the dog) eats at night – something I never knew about her. Between elven and twelve she chomps away on her dry dog food. (I thought about taking it up, but she is not a big eater and I don’t want to make that problem worse.) Then sometime between one and two, I fall asleep. Now, in theory, I am not working and don’t have kids, this shouldn’t be the worst thing ever. I could still get eight or more hours BUT T then wakes up between four and five to go workout before work. (T and I are living in a hotel through April on the Newport Naval Base while he finishes his training.) In this hotel room it is impossible to slip out without waking the other person up. He cannot even slip out without waking up the dog (believe me he tries, in order to avoid having to take her out in the freezing cold). So again, I am awake from when his alarm goes off until around seven… After staring at the ceiling for half an hour, I will turn back on the TV. I have watched the end of Rachel Maddow (on from 4 to 5), MSNBC’s First Look and Way Too Early with Willy Guiste every day for the last two weeks at least. Sometime between six and seven I will fall back asleep, until between nine and ten depending on when the construction work on the hotel rooms above us kicks off for the day. Have I mentioned the hotel is under construction?? Blah!! I am ready for the switch to flip back already. I have even more severally cut back caffeine – one diet coke before two pm and nothing with caffeine after two. Started drinking Natural Calm again. Piecing together six hours a night is abysmal in these circumstances. Sleep should be something I have nailed down right now. I need to man up and turn off the TV for good but I cannot bring myself to do that just yet.

T and I are going to find out the sex of Baby G on Monday, assuming Baby G cooperates. I am worried about it for no logical reason, as if there is some mysterious option other than a boy or a girl. Predictably, he wants a boy and I want a girl. But neither of us is as attached to our original preference as we used to be.
Determining Baby G’s sex is the final obstacle between us and settling on a name. The issue has become tense, so it has been tabled until we know the sex, that way we only have to deal with the one name instead of two. What we do agree on is that we prefer a strong, professional adult name to a cute kid name. We would like something unique enough that there will not be multiples in Baby G’s grade school classes, but not so unique that he will have to spell it out several times a day.
Before the pregnancy, T and I would talk about baby names every once and a while. It was fun then. We determined that if we were to have sons, we would name them Davis and Carter. Davis is my maiden name and a tribute to my father. The Davis line will, in all likelihood, end with him. I grew up thinking that I would one day name my son Davis. I think that made it easier for me to drop my maiden name so readily when T and I were married four years ago. But since we began to talk about names for Baby G, T decided that he does not like Davis. I hope that he will change his mind, but in case that he does not, we still like Carter. Maybe we can use the name Davis if we have a second son. Carter does not have any particular family meaning, it is just a name we both like… Carter Pace to be more specific. So if Baby G is a boy, we know he will be named either Davis or Carter.
Now if Baby G is a girl all bets are off.

T and I agreed that once we told any family about the pregnancy we would tell them all. Which meant, when I told A, my sister, I better be prepared to tell his parents and my parents as well. It is one thing not to say anything over the phone – that I could kind of handle. But spending time with someone, especially, A! I think I made it three days. We were headed to Costco to pick up lunch to bring back to the condo and I told her in the parking lot after swearing her to secrecy. Like secrecy means anything to the women in my family. The first thing she said is, ‘now I have to have a baby!’. Yes, A, now you do. A started really pressuring me to tell my mom. I think we waited another five days before telling our parents. And slowly and surely I have been telling friends. Most learned way before I thought I was ready to tell them, I just had no willpower. I started avoiding phone calls. I am now thirteen weeks and well in the clear to make the news public. Most of our friends know by now. And I am really looking forward to announcing it on facebook in a few weeks. I am waiting to make that bog announcement until after Todd is able to come with me to an ultrasound and after I tell my mentor… I am nervous about the later. I am really looking forward to the facebook announcement. I want to take a picture of T and I holding an ultrasound picture and caption it ‘Our First Family Photo.’ I just need to wait until we have an ultrasound picture, in which Baby G looks like a baby. At my nine week ultra sound, Baby G looked like a strawberry. At my second ultrasound, the baby looked like a baby! It was so wiggly that the PA had a hard time taking its measurements. I loved watching the squirming and am anxiously awaiting the day that I can feel him or her. I am looking forward to when T gets to see the baby so we can announce it officially. I just have to hold out for a few more weeks.