Wow. It's already been another week. I guess I've been slacking. I wish I had a good excuse, but I really don't, other than being preoccupied with thoughts of moving and freaking out because I still have another THREE WEEKS until my next appointment (although at this point it's only 18 days away).
I do have a new symptom this week!! Last Monday after eating my morning oatmeal and drinking the first of many glasses of water for the day, I had another bout of pregnancy heartburn and it has returned pretty much daily since then. The first time it happened it caught me off guard, so I didn't have any antacids and had to suffer until it passed. I finally got my act together on Tuesday and bought the biggest package of Tums that I could find. (It took me until Tuesday because I wanted to consult with a couple of recently pregnant friends to make sure that Tums are on the approved substance list for pregnant women, which both of them confirmed. They both also reminded me that Tums are a great source of calcium.) Since then I've been downing two Tums pretty much every night, because the heartburn tends to return between 8 and 8:30 every night, and I'm feeling much better.
Other than that, there's nothing much new to report on the pregnancy front. I'm still tired all the time. I've had a couple more bouts of nausea, but nothing serious. I'm also starting to see an increase in my appetite, although I'm trying to keep it in check and make sure that my snacks are healthy ones. I've had one or two spells of lightheadedness, but mostly only when I've been hungry and get up too fast. I can still fit into all of my clothes, although my pants are feeling just a teensy bit more snug than they have in the past few weeks.
I had a bit of a chuckle to myself tonight. J and I went out to dinner, and he asked how big the baby is going to be when I go for my next appointment. I pulled out my iPhone and opened up one of the apps, then scrolled to the information for when I'm 11 weeks along since I'll be 11 weeks, 2 days at my next appointment. I handed my phone to him, and he proceeded to flip through the rest of the weeks to read more about what'll happen with the baby each week through the rest of the pregnancy. Whenever he read something he found particularly interesting or amusing, he would read it aloud to me. This particular app also shows sketches and 3D ultrasound pics of babies every week, so you can see what the baby will look like as it grows, and he looked at all of those, as well. And then he started looking through the info about what happens to me each week during the pregnancy, but he only got as far as the first mention of hemorrhoids and then he stopped looking at that. It was the first time he's seemed really interested in what's going on with the baby, and I think it's got him hooked. I thought it was really cute.
On the new house/moving front, we still don't have a new closing date, but we started packing this weekend anyway. (Ok, so J did most of the packing, and I did a lot of sitting around feeling like crap yesterday and today.) So far we've gotten most of our miscellaneous extra dishes and glassware from the kitchen packed up, as well as our DVDs and J's video games and my unicorns. We've also got a box of books that J packed, but it's too heavy for him to lift so it'll have to be re-packed. We've run out of boxes, though, so I'm going to see if I can beg some copy paper boxes from work (since they'd be free and they're a good size for packing books, because you can pack them full but they're still light enough that you can pick them up) and J's going to make another run to either Lowe's or the UHaul store to get more. We're also trying to map out our game plan for getting everything moved over there, depending on when we close. We're thinking that if we are able to close sometime late this week we'll start moving boxes and some of the more manageable furniture over next weekend, and possibly start unpacking some boxes so that we can reuse them. Otherwise, if we close sometime early next week, J will most likely take over a load of boxes per day, and then we'll move all of the furniture the next weekend when we can (hopefully) get people to come into town or come over and help us move.
That's all the news from here! I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving, and is ready to welcome the final month of the year and begin the countdown to Christmas this week!
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
11/13/09 and 11/20/09 ultrasounds and house
I know. I KNOW. It's been two weeks, and this is completely unacceptable. The only real reason that I can offer is that I'm constantly EXHAUSTED, and the fact that I've made it to work every day for the past couple of weeks (although a bit later than I used to make it to work) is a miracle to me, especially since all I want to do these days is sleep. Unless, of course, I'm already asleep and something wakes me up (one of the cats crying, J coming to bed, things like that), in which case I can't seem to fall asleep again and thus, I am writing this entry at about 5:45 on a Sunday morning when I would much rather be asleep. Oh, well. It's a Sunday. I can nap while I'm doing laundry, right?
Moving on, we've had our last two ultrasounds at the fertility clinic. Both of them were great. On 11/13 we were able to see the heartbeat...it was a little flickering on the screen. It was completely amazing. I would have loved to have heard it, but at that point, the heart was too small and wasn't beating hard enough to be heard via Doppler. But we did get to see the baby, and could see that it had grown. We could actually see the baby itself, and not just a line where the baby would be some day. And we could tell that the amniotic sac had grown, and it looked like the yolk sac had gotten smaller (although that could have been my imagination). But we could see the baby!! We were so excited.
On 11/20 we got to see the heartbeat again. Again, we weren't able to hear it, but the ultrasound tech did a measurement, and it came out to be ~144 beats per minute. That little heart sure is beating fast!! The baby had grown, just as expected, and we could see it much more clearly this time (although the pictures that we brought home with us weren't the greatest this time around). We were both glad to be graduating from the fertility doctor's office but also a little bit sad, because after this appointment, I won't have another doctor's appointment (assuming everything continues along as well as it has) until December 17. And even then, we won't be getting to see pics of the baby at every visit like we have so far. I'm telling you, seeing a fertility specialist sure has us spoiled!!
So far, my two biggest symptoms have continued to be exhaustion and sore boobs. I had a couple of bouts with morning sickness earlier this week, but I haven't had any the rest of the week. My pants still seem to be fitting for the most part, which is good - I'm dreading having to go shopping for maternity pants. I seem to be hungry all the time, which is new. I've resorted to carrying an apple in my purse when I go to work so I have something healthy to snack on mid-morning when I'm suddenly ravenous. I haven't yet figured out a solution for what to eat mid-afternoon yet, but I'm working on it. Despite all of this, I'm feeling pretty good. And I was a good pregnant lady and got both the seasonal flu shot (actually, I got that before I got knocked up) and the H1N1 vaccine, so hopefully I can avoid any major illness during this flu season.
And in house news, I think I mentioned last time that there was a question about whether the wiring for the house all had to be in conduit or not. J and I were both under the impression that "low voltage" means anything under 240 V, or somewhere in that range. That's based on our work, him as a EE, and me, in the utility industry. As it turns out, "low voltage" when it comes to houses means "really low voltage" - things like doorbells. We had asked the seller to fix several items that were on the home inspector's list of things that needed to be addressed, including the wiring issue, and he agreed to fix almost all of them except the conduit thing. His response to that was that he hadn't done anything to the wiring in the house, and that it was all up to code. J wound up calling the electrical inspector for the city that we're moving to, and got clarification on the code. Apparently the code was changed in either the late 60's or the early 70's, so depending on when the house was built, not having all of the wiring in conduit is considered "up to code" because it complied with the code at the time that the house was built. We finally were able to track down when the house was built, and it looks like it was built in 1962, which means that it the wiring should be just fine, so that issue was finally resolved and we were ready to move on.
But then came Thursday.
*sigh*
I got a call at work on Wednesday from somebody in the mortgage office asking who she could contact to verify proof of employment for me. I gave her the phone number, told her to listen to the options and that it was buried in there somewhere, and that was that. Then on Thursday she called back while I was gone to lunch. Her message said that everything was still on track so that they were going to be able to complete the loan and close on Tuesday, which is when we were trying to have our closing. But she said that she hadn't heard back from my company yet with my employment verification, and she was still waiting on something from the attorneys regarding the title. I called her back to try to get clarification on what she needed, but she didn't answer so I left her a message. An hour later she hadn't called me back, so I called her, only to have her tell me that she'd gotten everything that she needed, and that we were ready to go. I breathed a sigh of relief.
About two hours later I got a call from J, and the first thing he said was that we're not going to be closing next Tuesday. I asked him why not. He said that, since we're getting an FHA loan, there's a requirement that the contract for the house cannot be dated less than 90 days past when the seller closed on the house. It's an anti-flipping law, or something. And, which we already suspected, the seller of our house is a flipper, and our contract was just barely within that 90-day mark. To get around that, the solution was for us to write a new contract, with all of the same terms, and just have it dated later. That all got taken care of on Friday, so we should be good to go on that part. The thing that is holding us up now is the fact that there's also a requirement that if the contract date is 91-180 days past when the seller closed on the house, there has to be a second appraisal. Since it takes a few days for the appraisal to get scheduled and then processed, and given that Thanksgiving is next week and a lot of people are taking vacations, it may be difficult to get the second appraisal in next week, so it may not happen until early December. Since the bank won't be able to finalize the loan paperwork until the second appraisal is done, that means that we could be looking at mid-December for closing. And that's all well and good, we just want to know when we should plan on doing it so we can line people up to help us move and figure out when to go appliance shopping, since we'll want to do that (and have them installed) before we move in.
Ok. So that's the summary of everything that's gone on for the past two weeks. Well, other than the fact that I went to see New Moon yesterday with a friend, and it was wonderful. I'm looking forward to the next two movies coming out...I can't wait to see them, and I can't believe that we're going to have a baby and a house by the time the next one comes out!! Since I most likely won't post another update before next Thursday, I want wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving! May your day be filled with good food and friendship or family, and may you find many blessings for which to be thankful. I know I have more than my share!
Moving on, we've had our last two ultrasounds at the fertility clinic. Both of them were great. On 11/13 we were able to see the heartbeat...it was a little flickering on the screen. It was completely amazing. I would have loved to have heard it, but at that point, the heart was too small and wasn't beating hard enough to be heard via Doppler. But we did get to see the baby, and could see that it had grown. We could actually see the baby itself, and not just a line where the baby would be some day. And we could tell that the amniotic sac had grown, and it looked like the yolk sac had gotten smaller (although that could have been my imagination). But we could see the baby!! We were so excited.
On 11/20 we got to see the heartbeat again. Again, we weren't able to hear it, but the ultrasound tech did a measurement, and it came out to be ~144 beats per minute. That little heart sure is beating fast!! The baby had grown, just as expected, and we could see it much more clearly this time (although the pictures that we brought home with us weren't the greatest this time around). We were both glad to be graduating from the fertility doctor's office but also a little bit sad, because after this appointment, I won't have another doctor's appointment (assuming everything continues along as well as it has) until December 17. And even then, we won't be getting to see pics of the baby at every visit like we have so far. I'm telling you, seeing a fertility specialist sure has us spoiled!!
So far, my two biggest symptoms have continued to be exhaustion and sore boobs. I had a couple of bouts with morning sickness earlier this week, but I haven't had any the rest of the week. My pants still seem to be fitting for the most part, which is good - I'm dreading having to go shopping for maternity pants. I seem to be hungry all the time, which is new. I've resorted to carrying an apple in my purse when I go to work so I have something healthy to snack on mid-morning when I'm suddenly ravenous. I haven't yet figured out a solution for what to eat mid-afternoon yet, but I'm working on it. Despite all of this, I'm feeling pretty good. And I was a good pregnant lady and got both the seasonal flu shot (actually, I got that before I got knocked up) and the H1N1 vaccine, so hopefully I can avoid any major illness during this flu season.
And in house news, I think I mentioned last time that there was a question about whether the wiring for the house all had to be in conduit or not. J and I were both under the impression that "low voltage" means anything under 240 V, or somewhere in that range. That's based on our work, him as a EE, and me, in the utility industry. As it turns out, "low voltage" when it comes to houses means "really low voltage" - things like doorbells. We had asked the seller to fix several items that were on the home inspector's list of things that needed to be addressed, including the wiring issue, and he agreed to fix almost all of them except the conduit thing. His response to that was that he hadn't done anything to the wiring in the house, and that it was all up to code. J wound up calling the electrical inspector for the city that we're moving to, and got clarification on the code. Apparently the code was changed in either the late 60's or the early 70's, so depending on when the house was built, not having all of the wiring in conduit is considered "up to code" because it complied with the code at the time that the house was built. We finally were able to track down when the house was built, and it looks like it was built in 1962, which means that it the wiring should be just fine, so that issue was finally resolved and we were ready to move on.
But then came Thursday.
*sigh*
I got a call at work on Wednesday from somebody in the mortgage office asking who she could contact to verify proof of employment for me. I gave her the phone number, told her to listen to the options and that it was buried in there somewhere, and that was that. Then on Thursday she called back while I was gone to lunch. Her message said that everything was still on track so that they were going to be able to complete the loan and close on Tuesday, which is when we were trying to have our closing. But she said that she hadn't heard back from my company yet with my employment verification, and she was still waiting on something from the attorneys regarding the title. I called her back to try to get clarification on what she needed, but she didn't answer so I left her a message. An hour later she hadn't called me back, so I called her, only to have her tell me that she'd gotten everything that she needed, and that we were ready to go. I breathed a sigh of relief.
About two hours later I got a call from J, and the first thing he said was that we're not going to be closing next Tuesday. I asked him why not. He said that, since we're getting an FHA loan, there's a requirement that the contract for the house cannot be dated less than 90 days past when the seller closed on the house. It's an anti-flipping law, or something. And, which we already suspected, the seller of our house is a flipper, and our contract was just barely within that 90-day mark. To get around that, the solution was for us to write a new contract, with all of the same terms, and just have it dated later. That all got taken care of on Friday, so we should be good to go on that part. The thing that is holding us up now is the fact that there's also a requirement that if the contract date is 91-180 days past when the seller closed on the house, there has to be a second appraisal. Since it takes a few days for the appraisal to get scheduled and then processed, and given that Thanksgiving is next week and a lot of people are taking vacations, it may be difficult to get the second appraisal in next week, so it may not happen until early December. Since the bank won't be able to finalize the loan paperwork until the second appraisal is done, that means that we could be looking at mid-December for closing. And that's all well and good, we just want to know when we should plan on doing it so we can line people up to help us move and figure out when to go appliance shopping, since we'll want to do that (and have them installed) before we move in.
Ok. So that's the summary of everything that's gone on for the past two weeks. Well, other than the fact that I went to see New Moon yesterday with a friend, and it was wonderful. I'm looking forward to the next two movies coming out...I can't wait to see them, and I can't believe that we're going to have a baby and a house by the time the next one comes out!! Since I most likely won't post another update before next Thursday, I want wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving! May your day be filled with good food and friendship or family, and may you find many blessings for which to be thankful. I know I have more than my share!
Sunday, November 8, 2009
11/6/09 ultrasound results and new house!!
For those of you who are also following me on my Totsite, this is going to be a repeat of the same journal entry I just posted over there. :)
Our first ultrasound was GREAT!!! We were looking to ensure that there was at least one viable embryo in place. We were able to see the amniotic sac and the yolk sac, which will go on to form the placenta later. There was a second blob? spot? something in there that the ultrasound tech didn't focus on, because this one was easily visible and, like I said, we were just looking to make sure there was at least one viable embryo in there. The other thing could be nothing, or it could be another embryo. We're going to look at it in closer detail next week.
Speaking of next week, we're going back next Friday for another ultrasound. This time we're going to be looking for a heartbeat. I can't wait!!
In other news, we had our home inspection on Thursday. For the most part, everything was fine. There were a few of minor things. The furnace is dirty, most likely because of all the construction that was going on during the renovation, and he recommends us getting it cleaned out. There is also some weird setup where a previous owner had a PVC pipe running underground from the back yard into the shed and had a heavy-duty extension cord going through it. We're not sure what that was all about, but it's obviously not up to code. It's easily remedied, though - just pull out the extension cord and cap off the pipe. The counter in the master bathroom wasn't screwed down, but that's another easy fix. The emergency relief valve on the hot water heater didn't have a pipe to direct the runoff toward a drain, but instead was just a valve, which is another easy fix. The inspector also pointed out that there aren't any exhaust fans in the two upstairs bathrooms (not a huge deal, they both have windows) and that the garage door opener that was installed was pretty ancient, but there was a newer one lying in the floor of the garage.
The only major thing that the inspector identified was that not all of the electrical wiring was in conduits. J and I looked up the code for the city we're moving to, which said that low voltage doesn't need to be in conduit, and since pretty much all of the wiring inside the house is low voltage, that would seem to indicate that the wiring doesn't need to be in conduit. I guess we're going to have to wait until we get our final report (we're still waiting on it, but we hope to get it tomorrow) to find out for sure what is going on there, and to try to figure out what we're going to do. We're also waiting until tomorrow to find out the results of the radon test - the radon guy couldn't set it up on Thursday, but he was supposed to go back yesterday to set up for the test and he's supposed to pick it up tomorrow. Hopefully we'll be in the clear there. We're also waiting to hear back about the results of the appraisal, which took place on Wednesday.
All in all, everything is progressing pretty well, for the most part. We're just waiting to hear the final result of the appraisal and get the report from the home inspection and the radon test, and then we'll be able to move forward with buying the house. We're also holding our breaths and crossing our fingers that our little tadpole keeps growing and that we'll be able to see a heartbeat next Friday!!
Our first ultrasound was GREAT!!! We were looking to ensure that there was at least one viable embryo in place. We were able to see the amniotic sac and the yolk sac, which will go on to form the placenta later. There was a second blob? spot? something in there that the ultrasound tech didn't focus on, because this one was easily visible and, like I said, we were just looking to make sure there was at least one viable embryo in there. The other thing could be nothing, or it could be another embryo. We're going to look at it in closer detail next week.
Speaking of next week, we're going back next Friday for another ultrasound. This time we're going to be looking for a heartbeat. I can't wait!!
In other news, we had our home inspection on Thursday. For the most part, everything was fine. There were a few of minor things. The furnace is dirty, most likely because of all the construction that was going on during the renovation, and he recommends us getting it cleaned out. There is also some weird setup where a previous owner had a PVC pipe running underground from the back yard into the shed and had a heavy-duty extension cord going through it. We're not sure what that was all about, but it's obviously not up to code. It's easily remedied, though - just pull out the extension cord and cap off the pipe. The counter in the master bathroom wasn't screwed down, but that's another easy fix. The emergency relief valve on the hot water heater didn't have a pipe to direct the runoff toward a drain, but instead was just a valve, which is another easy fix. The inspector also pointed out that there aren't any exhaust fans in the two upstairs bathrooms (not a huge deal, they both have windows) and that the garage door opener that was installed was pretty ancient, but there was a newer one lying in the floor of the garage.
The only major thing that the inspector identified was that not all of the electrical wiring was in conduits. J and I looked up the code for the city we're moving to, which said that low voltage doesn't need to be in conduit, and since pretty much all of the wiring inside the house is low voltage, that would seem to indicate that the wiring doesn't need to be in conduit. I guess we're going to have to wait until we get our final report (we're still waiting on it, but we hope to get it tomorrow) to find out for sure what is going on there, and to try to figure out what we're going to do. We're also waiting until tomorrow to find out the results of the radon test - the radon guy couldn't set it up on Thursday, but he was supposed to go back yesterday to set up for the test and he's supposed to pick it up tomorrow. Hopefully we'll be in the clear there. We're also waiting to hear back about the results of the appraisal, which took place on Wednesday.
All in all, everything is progressing pretty well, for the most part. We're just waiting to hear the final result of the appraisal and get the report from the home inspection and the radon test, and then we'll be able to move forward with buying the house. We're also holding our breaths and crossing our fingers that our little tadpole keeps growing and that we'll be able to see a heartbeat next Friday!!
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Excuse me while I hyperventilate
Given that we now have a baby on the way, and that our apartment is WAY too small to accommodate us, our two cats, and our bundle of joy, J and I decided on Wednesday that now might be a good time to start looking into buying a house again. So on Thursday we called a realtor that a friend of mine recommended, and she sent us an email with a bunch of listings in our price range. We went through that list and picked several in a bunch of different areas that we liked. On Friday we talked to a loan officer and got the pre-approval process started. Yesterday we went and looked at a ton of houses, and found one we really liked. Today we looked at several more, and decided to make an offer on the one we liked from yesterday before someone else came along and stole it from us. After a couple of rounds of counteroffers, we settled on a price. Now it's a matter of making sure that we have insurance, making sure that all of the loan paperwork gets taken care of, getting the inspection, and having the attorney look over the contract. Oh, and we're hoping to close before Thanksgiving so we can take advantage of the $8000 tax credit that is currently being offered to first-time home buyers. EEK!!!!!
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