Found gluten-free pregnancy blogs. . .

I just found a gluten-free pregnancy blog, that so far I find quite interesting. She even presents the idea of adding pureed fruit or vegetables to Trader Joes' Gluten-Free Brownie Mix (which I've tried once and loved. . . I could definitely add sweet potato, etc, to that brownie mix. I already add it to the pancake mix!)

http://glutenfreepregnancy.blogspot.com/

At least I don't have to run into the "saltine advice" on this blog. . . oof, when I actually did eat saltines during my pregnancy with Sam, I threw them up. Since then, I had trouble even looking at them again (and for most of my life, I refused to eat soup without saltines. . . not a problem, anymore.) Now that it has been shown that I am allergic to wheat (and oats), and trying to maintain a gluten-free diet, this website looks quite helpful . . . except for the entry on eating banana! I am also allergic to bananas, so that suggestion is rather unhelpful. Ah, well, the rest is decent!

One potential issue about this blog is that it does not appear to have been updated in at least a year.

I also found out that Shauna James Ahern who wrote Gluten-Free Girl was pregnant last year, and here is a link to a very long post:
http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/2008/07/gluten-free-pregnancy.html

Nicknames

When I was first pregnant with who turned out to be Sam, I started calling the tiny being growing inside of me "Niniboof". 'Nini' (pronounced NEE-NEE, not "ninny" or NII-nee)is a Persian term for 'baby'. Boof is a childish, perhaps silly, term for rice in persian. My husband kept saying at the time very early in pregnancy that the baby wasn't much bigger than a grain of rice, and then Niniboof just popped into mind. Later into pregnancy, when we'd figured out Sam's name, we started calling him Samnini.

So, we've already decided on a nickname for this little one. "Ninibaa" is our choice this time around. Baa - for a little lamb. In Persian, a term for lamb is "baa-by-ee".

So as I am writing this, I am waiting for my backup data to load back onto my laptop (I had to completely wipe the whole drive -- it had problems.) I am also resisting the urger to run to the bathroom to throw up. All-day sickness continues!

Scrapbooking. . . . Part 1

Today as I walked on the treadmill in the fitness room (before my "afternoon" sickness set in), I allowed myself to think about starting a scrapbook already for this baby. I know that I am only maybe about 6 weeks along, but it made me excited. For Sam, my dear husband and I picked out a scrapbook together one night at the scrapbook store. Since by then we didn't know how long we'd have with Sam, I started putting everything in it. . . even a page where I creative wrote down most of the titles of music Sam heard in utero - in the car, on the radio, when my dear husband played the piano, at a concert we went to, etc. Today as I listened to music while exercising I dreamed of doing this again. Some of the songs that I have already exposed the baby to, although the baby cannot hear yet, may not be appropriate to mention to the baby when the baby becomes a preschooler, such as the All-American Rejects song "(I hope my face)Gives You H*LL". He or she might think that is funny (or maybe rather lame) later, but not really appropriate fare for a four-year old.

If this baby could hear yet, he or she would have already heard quite a variety of bell music (and will hear it close up again in the near future), piano music of various kinds (but mostly classical, as that is what my dear husband mostly plays), persian music (there is a cd for kids I like, and then music by Axiom of Choice), and then The Beatles, Regina Spektor, Enya, Weird Al, Pink Floyd, and various rock and pop songs from over the years. If I get my flute fixed, the baby will hear whatever I feel like playing, for the most part.

When do I start writing the names of songs down for the baby? Is now too soon? Do I wait? I know my husband wants me to wait until we're sure this baby is viable, even though we already love the idea of him or her. My husband has even started talking to the baby, even though said baby is barely the size of a baby pea! This is making me hopeful that everything will go reasonably well in the long run. My uterus is also apparently the size of a plum currently.

Woozy. . .

All-day sickness today. I wanted to go do a light workout, but I am feeling so sick right now. . . to the point I am gagging. That's where I lost out on a lot of workouts with my pregnancy with Sam. . . feeling just too sick.

12 days of Afternoon/Evening Sickness and more items of discussion

Today was the 12th day of 'afternoon' sickness. I was gagging tonight, quite suddenly, over the kitchen sink after feeling generally queasy since about 1 pm. That is how it has been for 12 days now. My DH went and bought me a bottle of ginger ale, finally! I kept saying, since my pregnancy with Sam when I had all-day sickness, when I survived the entire first trimester on ginger ale, that with future pregnancies I would refuse to give in to pop/sugar/high fructose corn syrup/caramel coloring. It was such a relief to be able to drink ginger ale tonight!

Still, I am thrilled that I am having afternoon/all day sickness - it means to me that I know that I am still pregnant. In December, my sickness stopped completely, entirely, a few hours before I started spotting with my miscarriage. So I am trying to embrace my afternoon sickness and even enjoy it to some extent.

Okay, off to bed soon. I took a nap this afternoon, but I am still tired. The problem is that lately I will go to sleep cold (on purpose. . . lovely air conditioning. . .) and then wake up later, even minutes later, explodingly hot and sweaty.

One more thing, I joined a pregnancy message board connected to a TTC board I've been on occaisonally, and I sounded off on someone who was on Effexor (not quite an SSRI, but similar - works a little differently) for depression/anxiety at the time of her conception. She went off cold turkey after she found out she was pregnant. I basically told her that it could be too late for her baby's heart, and other early organs (if in fact, Sam's defects were caused in part by my being on fluoxetine - his HLHS occurred the moment his heart was formed). I hope I didn't scare her too much. It sounded like she needed the med. I do hope her baby is okay.

I think that this new baby's heart has probably formed already. I've starting talking to the baby, telling it that we love it already, and really hope that she/he can come home with us.

Trying not to panic. . .

Yes, two VERY positive home pregnancy tests -- the test line was darker than the control line in the matter of 5 seconds. This makes me feel somewhat hopeful, but I am also scared and trying not to panic.

So scared. . . I am scared that every time I hear something that happens to another baby, another child, will happen to us. Again. The reason why I remember this is that early in my pregnancy with Sam, I saw an Extreme Home Makeover episode focused around a girl who'd had lots of surgery and problems due to her congenital heart defects. So now, just in the last two days, I've heard of two little kids locally who drowned in their grandparents' backyard pool. So now I am freaking out that someday I will have a child who will drown (although, I plan to teach my children as young as possible swimming and water survival skills). It's just very scary.

I am excited, but trying so hard not to be excited. . . because SO MANY things can happen between now and when this baby is due.

:)

:) :) :)

The online Magic Eight Ball was right. . . :)