PutYourFlareOn

I have to admit...

that I am not enjoying this pregnancy very much. Besides being riddled with hellacious nausea the first three months, I haven't been able to sleep very well lately and my body just feels completely taken over. I keep reading and hearing from friends that this is what a pregnancy with a girl baby does but I guess I just didn't really expect things to go the way they have. I mean I can't help but compare everything to my first pregnancy. I think its normal that we do this and pretty hard for us to avoid considering everyone asks me on a daily basis how this pregnancy is going compared to first. 

I saw a friend today who I haven't in about 4 months or so. She had no idea I was pregnant and she asked me if I were sick because I didn't look very good. Nope, just pregnant. She shook her head and remarked that's why I looked like I've gained weight. Thanks, friend, for so nicely telling me that I looked fat. Funny though, I haven't gained a kilo since I started this pregnancy. But putting on a skirt that I wore pretty frequently while pregnant with Maximilien I noticed that my butt looked bigger as I pulled my black maternity tank down over the top of my bum. 

And the heat... oh man, the heat. It's currently 29°C (84°F) in the apt right now. We own one fan and it's blowing into our room where Max has decided he'd rather sleep these days. The heat isn't helping things. I do find myself lingering in the yogurt and cheese aisles at the grocery store but besides that none of my daily haunts have la clim so I will have to go out of my way to find places to cool off. I thought about the pool today but walking home after doing morning prep at the tea house and seeing the line go around the building and down the street pretty much turned me off from that idea. And then I remembered going to the pool with Max and the craziness that the French public pools could be. 

In a positive light, Max is completely obsessed with my belly and babies. He tells me everyday there's a baby in there. The assistants at the creche know that I am pregnant now and talk with him about it. They were excited to get out their collection of books about becoming a sibling and new babies in Maman's belly. Today, I went to pick him up from the crèche and I saw Max pushing around a baby in a pousette. One of the assistants told me that he had been telling all the other kids that this was his baby. He would hold the baby and then put it back in the stroller and sing songs to it. Talk about total explosion of my heart.

   

Compared to at 16 weeks with Max. No 18 weeks photo available. 

   

But standing in the mirror tonight in my favorite striped skirt and black tank I looked and felt like I was starting to look pregnant. I am definitely carrying this baby differently. With Max, I carried him out in the front  and with BB it's more of a fat tire thing going on with my whole mid-section. I can feel her kick and sometimes kicking in my back? Anyone else feel that? Maybe my placenta is placed in the front this time. I'll have to ask my doctor about that. But those little love taps make me happy and I quickly forget about how uncomfortable I am this time around. But still... I find myself counting the weeks until the finish line. I'm 18 weeks this week, indigestion and all. 

Où suis-je?

Had a very special shopping trip to do today to prepare for my MIL's retirement party. I don't go over to this part of Paris very often unless I go to this one shop that makes me think of Audrey Hepburn and the scene in the movie where she's gazing through the window like a child looking through the window of a candy shop. Though this shop in Paris isn't as beautiful as the original in New York City, they do make you feel very special when you go shopping there and always have the AC cranked to my liking perfect for today's sweltering temperatures! I've probably given away too much but this is an easy photo for you to guess at. So, where in Paris am I?

This pregnancy has been completely different...

When I became pregnant with Max it was at a time in my life that I consider a huge turning point emotionally for me. I had just lost my mother to a heart attack a little over a year when Julien and I conceived Max and right before we conceived Max I suffered a miscarriage. The emotion roller coaster of loss for me was intense but I came out of it and soared into pregnancy and loved it. I was sick with Max but nothing I couldn't handle. In all honesty, a mother's brain does the mama good by forgetting things like being sick in the first months but thank goodness for blogs I can go back and re-read and compare. I was sick with Max but not nearly as sick as I am now with BB. 

I didn't work while I was pregnant with Max. I was in a transition period between jobs and had taken a small part time job tutoring a couple students in English to busy myself in the afternoons. As Julien puts it, I had time to pamper myself thus not noticing how sick I was. I don't remember it like that but I do agree that I had ample time to relax. So this time around I am now the owner of my own business working 65+ hours a week and I become pregnant. I did this for the first month of my pregnancy and then quickly learned that I had to stop. I hired someone to cut my hours in half and made myself slow down. Still working 35 hours a week is hard but I can do it and if I can't... well, I rest when I need to. 

One plus of working so much and running around on my feet all day is that now 4 months pregnant I haven't gained a pound! I can't hardly believe it! I had gained one kilo last month only to have lost this month. Thus I am hovering right at my pre-pregnancy weight. I can't tell you how stoked I am or how pleased my doctor was today when he announced my weight. I warned him it may not be the same when I get back from the US (with my plans to eat copious amounts of BBQ and Mexican) but he smiled and said that I could faites vous plaisir. But still... I am going to try to keep to this minimal weight gain this pregnancy and see what it gets me afterwards. I will soon have to return to my 65+ work weeks so I will need all the help I can get. 

So, difference so far...

- I've been way sicker!

- I've had zero weight gain (and I'm not complaining about this at all!)

- I've noticed that my stomach doesn't feel as substantial as it did when pregnant with Max.  Though it's popped out it feels different.  Example, I roll on my stomach and instead of feeling a mass in my lower belly, I feel a slight pressure but nothing that different. 

- I don't feel pretty. I know this may be vain of my but when I was pregnant with Max I felt like a million bucks. I felt like I actually glowed. I look back at photos of myself and I looked pretty great, I think. My hair was healthy. My skin was clear. This pregnancy I am constantly breaking out, my hair is oily and super dark and I look like hell warmed over. 

I did not want to get my hopes up that I could be having a girl because of all these signs. I mean every other person I know (2 friends and you know who you are, gals) had different pregnancies and I suspected pretty hard that they were having girls and it turned out they did. But this is me, the opposite always happens for me. I thought with my first pregnancy I was having a girl and I had a boy. I felt disappointed when I heard the news and I didn't want to feel like this again with this pregnancy. 

So, when my doctor asked me today if I wanted to find out the sex I couldn't resist and I said yes. He has his own personal sonogram machine in his office so we had a look. He checked the position of the baby and listened to the heart beat. And then the moment of truth... he threw up a shot of the baby right between the legs and even before he could say anything, I muttered "Le Choix du Roi"*. And he responded, "Exactement!". 

I cried until Julien arrived and he then took all the credit like the proud papa he is. 

Bring on the pink. 

*Le Choix du Roi is an expression the French use to express that you have two children, one boy and one girl. . 

lolli?

His first and he loved it.