I've been in a weird mood today (blame the hormones) so I just had to use this opportunity to say something:

God, I hate my name.

And if one more person asks me, "Why don't you just change it?", then I'll scream.

See, it's not that simple. First off, to get it legally changed to "Marnie", which the way everyone pronounces it (even my mother, who cursed me with this moniker) would be a huge hassle. So to just go by "Marnie" would be confusing as hell, because all legal documentation would have the correct spelling, and I wouldn't be able to keep track of which name I was under for which situation. Plus, people will STILL misspell and mispronounce it, because trust me, I've tried this route already.

My middle name is currently my maiden name, so I couldn't go by that. My original middle name, though, was even worse: Juliene. Pronounced "joo-LEEN". NOT "joe-LEEN." Even my mom (who, once again, is the one to blame for this) forgot if it had one "n" or two when I was about 10 years old. So going by my middle name was never an option. (Why the HELL my folks couldn't have blessed me with ONE SIMPLE NAME is beyond me, although Jason has pointed out that it honed in my spelling skills at quite the early age.)

My mom has suggested over the years that my name is perfect because it could be broken up into two nicknames: "Mara" or "Anie". Well first off, I'm sure as hell no Annie. :-P Secondly, I TRIED to be called "Mara" back in high school. I really did. But when your friends are used to calling you one thing, they will never fully call you by something else, especially if it's not your real name. (I knew a guy from college who successfully got people to switch from one NICKNAME to another, but last I heard, everyone still defaults back to his given name of Matt.)

And this all leads to "why don't you just change it to Karen or Jennifer or something?" Let's throw out that whole "legal hassle" thing, and the fact that while your friends may get used to the new name, your grandma never will. (Hell, family rumor states it took my grandma a full year to get "Maranie" down, lord forbid I mess her up now!) Truth of the matter is, as I learned from my "Mara" days (or a similar time when my closest friends called me "Cat"), you will ALWAYS have a problem in answering to a new name. My buds would holler "MARA!" 'til they were blue in the face and I still would not hear them or pay a lick of attention until one of them gave up and yelled "Maranie!"

I've never had a good nickname stick with me, either. "Cat" was one of the best, but only a handful of people called me that, and I don't know a one of them anymore. "Squirrel" (or the full title "Squirrel Girl"), was my nickname my freshman year of college, but it died out after that (once again, only certain people calling me that) and besides, who wants to be called "Squirrel" her whole life?! Other stupid ones never made it past high school, where EVERYONE had an identity crisis as part of the whole kit n' kaboodle of being a teenager. And the cute names Jason calls me are not only sentimental, so that I only want him to call me that, but also kind of nauseating to anyone else. ;-)

This really doesn't have too much to do with babies, except as a possible warning to all other parents to think long and hard before naming their kid some crazy shit like "Maranie Juliene." I'm stuck with it, but no one from hereon has to be, dammit. Or any other name like it. My sister is Pamela Kay and I've envied her that for years. If you're looking for a name, look to her and keep on walking by me, I'm not giving it out. :-P

It's official: I've become an ultrasound addict.

We had an optional ultrasound perfomed on Friday to check for certain birth defects. The last one was a month ago, when Kiddo resembled nothing more than a peanut. This time took my breath away.

Two little arms. Two little legs. And, as before, a quickly beating little heart.

I commented to the nurse that she probably wasn't able to get the measurements she wanted by the way he was positioned. Imagine my surprise, then, when moments later, he turned.

Yup, my baby flipped around, upside down from the way he'd been before. And I got to see it. It was amazing.

Then, from that angle, we got another wonderful view as the nurse pointed out a perfect profile shot. I have a baby who moves around, who has two arms and two legs, and now apparently has a nose as well. :-)

I'm just hoping all is well with Kiddo, that he's doing all right. So far, he's growing and developing at a normal rate. But now I want to see him ALL THE TIME. I want to go in next month, and the month after, and keep getting these blurry views of my baby. I want to bring home more fuzzy Polaroids that sit atop the piano, waiting for me to walk by, look at them, and get misty-eyed.

In other words, I'm an ultrasound addict. I can't get enough. If I had enough money, I'd just see if I could get gratuitous ones all the time.

It was a good final birthday gift, as I turned 27 on Thursday, October 24. I got lots of nice cards, in fact, some of the best-versed ones I've ever received. I got sweet-smelling flowers at work - roses and carnations and things I'm not quite sure what the hell they are, but they certainly are lovely. I received checks, well-wishes, and some pretty cool birthday gifts, my favorite so far being the tanzanite-and-diamond earrings Jason got for me. He wants his wife to have real jewelry now - "Earrings I didn't get her from Lerners" he reportedly told the clerk at the jewelry store - and y'know, I'm not going to argue with him. They're gorgeous and I really don't know how I'm going to wear any other earrings now. :-)

This weekend was the first in what's sure to be many installments of Adventures in Maternity Shopping. No store carries a size 14 or 16 petite pant. I'm not even looking for the most fashionable pant, I'm just looking for something to cover my legs and my ass that doesn't droop about five inches below my ankles. The most heartbreaking experience was at JCPenney, where Jason found 14 AND 16 petite jeans, only for me to discover that they hadn't actually made them any shorter and that they were STILL about five inches too long for me. In fact, even though the inside AND the outside tages read "PETITE," they were the exact same length as the 14 and 16 average-length jeans. I about cried right in the middle of the store. Probably would have, too, had Jason not gotten righteously indignant on my behalf, ushering me out the door while telling me that Penney's sucks and how we didn't want to give them any of our money, anyway.

My mom, my mother-in-law, and I now have something in common. We talk baby stuff, pregnancy stuff, you name it. This doesn't mean that my mom can't still annoy the living shit out of me. In fact, given my mood swings, it's even worse now when she insists that we're going to need a new roof in two years after replacing it this winter, or that I screwed up in taking on my own health insurance through work because my pregnancy would be covered 100% if I were Jason's dependant. (Both, by the way, total bullshit - but enough to get my poor little head in a tizzy.) But at least we have something in common, for once. It's nice. Kinda.

That's it for the latest update, which I know no one reads because no one voted in our baby name poll. (In fact, no one, except Coby, voted who I directly sent an e-mail to, either. Nice to know that no one gives a shit. :-P But actually, it IS nice to know that we can choose any one of those names and had better not hear any bitching, because everyone had their chance to weigh in and failed to do so!)

Back to work. Bleh.

I was going to apologize for all the bitching. I was going to try to make this whole thing sound sunnier.

Fuck that. (While I can still say "fuck" without worrying if a little someone is going to repeat it.)

The nutty-ass dreams, I can do without. Please. Why the hell, in last night's dream, was I in a bathroom with Zhaan from "Farscape" mixing up hair dye, some of which exploded and made me stupid? (Jason thinks the question here is to ask why hair dye is going to make me stupid. I think the question is, why the hell am I talking hair dye with a bald Delvian priest in the first place, hmmmm?) This is just par for the course, though. This is one of the normal ones. I can't even begin to get into some of the other ones. Hell, I'd be locked up.

The uncontrollable gas, I can do without too. Yeah, I just love letting one rip when our buddy Darren is over - and it completely wasn't on purpose. Even worse was the fact that it cleared the room.

The overly sensitive sense of smell can go bye-bye as well. Like the fruit cup I tried to consume for lunch today. It smells like urine to me, so I can't eat it. Last night I caught a whiff of something burning through an open window as I lay in bed, trying to get to sleep. Common sense told me it was from the apartments with fireplaces, two blocks up, but panic told me it was our house in flames. (You can imagine how far I jumped out of the sheets when I heard the buzzer on the dryer go off about five minutes later.) And women really don't need to wear that much perfume/scented lotions/smelly hairsprays. Please, ladies, you're killing me.

The moodiness can please disappear before I burst into tears at my desk. Everyone feels that way sometimes, but before, it was only a matter of control. Now, it's only a matter of days. :-P It's bad enough that I'm the world's most unreliable geyser at home, erupting into sobs at any given moment, under any circumstances and reacting to any stimuli. Case in point? The bawling session accompanying last night's viewing of "Kindergarten Cop." Yeah, exactly.

Even the one thing that's a bonus - understandable weight gain - is sucking at the moment. I told Jason yesterday that I can't wait until I'm obviously pregnant, when people can look at me and think, in a glance, "Oh, she's pregnant." Because now all I am is bloated. I don't understand why Kiddo is padding my belly for the trip north, out of the pelvis, when there was PLENTY of padding there to begin with. Put it this way: Several months ago, I lost 17 lbs. on Weight Watchers. I've put back on around five pounds. Yet all my pants are starting to fit like I didn't lose a damn thing. BAH.

And if I hear one more well-intentioned person say "It's almost over, it always ends at the end of your first trimester," god help me, I'm smacking them. Why? Because my first trimester ends soon. In fact, according to some conventional wisdom, it ends TOMORROW at my twelfth week of pregnancy. Am I feeling better? Yeah. But is "better" still "pretty damn crappy"? Hell, yeah.

Like I tell Jason, "But your sister Anne's in her fourth month and she's still getting sick!" He reminds me, though, that Anne is her mother's daughter, that their mom was sick all nine months for all three kids. This does not comfort me, as my mother swears she didn't have ONE NAUSEOUS MOMENT with me in the womb. In fact, all I've heard are wonderful stories of pampering and steak dinners. Jason pointed out, however, that we did catch her in a kind-of lie about her pregnancy: She told me that I'd know I'm having a boy if my ass spreads out. Then she said that all signs pointed to me being a boy EXCEPT for that one. Which my dad responded with, "No, Cherie, your ass spread out too!" "Oh it did not!" "Yes, it did! I remember!" So she could be lying about the morning sickness, too. All I know is, I've just confirmed that my ass is going to get fat, and not in the good way (sorry, I like my butt now, I'm going to be sorry to see it go!)

So what are the good things? Picking out baby names and looking at baby clothes. That's about it, at this point, which I'm sure will change as soon as I feel that first kick. At least I hope it does, and hope that such a trauma to my midsection won't make me vomit by that point.

I'm back!

I've had a busy-ass week that meant no lunch breaks for me, which is when I normally update this blog. (Well, I had lunch breaks, but ones where I didn't have time to play online.)

Not much more news except that my stomach is finally feeling a little better. The fatigue's still there, so is the nausea, but both are subsiding somewhat. The moodiness is still pretty bad, but it's always been that way so really, it's no big.

We've bought a lot of used baby stuff from a friend - a crib, changing table, play yard, car seat, and all sorts of other odds n' ends from her two kids (the younger of whom is now three.) Because Jason's aunt has already purchased us a baby book and a mobile, there are two other items we won't have to worry about. And my mom is repainting my old bassinet.

Last night I got a horrible panic attack, fearing the pain of childbirth but more importantly, fearing the unknown. I have no clue what this feels like, and no one can really tell me. I have no clue what will happen, either, which also no one can tell me because every delivery is different; I could interview every woman I know with kids and get countless different stories. I'm not a big fan of pain (who is, people a leetle too much into S&M excluded), in fact I've been told I'm quite a baby about it, so what if I don't hold up? And I hate to lose control, especially in front of other people. For example, vomiting due to morning sickness always bothers me twice as much if someone overheard me. I can't imagine I can get through having a baby.

And next week is another litany of tests. I fear their outcome. I fear that this newly painted bassinet, these newly purchased finds, these baby gifts, will all have to find new homes. I fear this blog will be pulled because I won't be a mommy. I just FEAR. And that's all I'm feeling now, as I try very hard to not get sick off my fettucini alfredo, stay awake, get some work done, and not cry.

Hey everybody! It's an interactive pregnancy! And remember, vote soon and vote often! ;-)

I hate this moodiness.

Anyone who knows me already knows I'm a naturally moody person. But trust me, folks. This is worse.

I'm flying off the handle or bursting into tears with only the slightest provocation. One minute I'm laughing like I'll never stop, the next I feel like I'm going to weep for the next six hours. You probably think I'm exaggerating, that I'm prone to hyperbole and it can't be that bad. Please keep in mind, though, that my embellishments are at a minimum, and that if I DO seem to make a big deal of it, it's only because it FEELS that bad.

See, the problem is that this is NOT going to get better. People keep telling me my morning sickness will only last a few more weeks, as well as the crippling fatigue. And let's face it, the lugging around of the pregnant belly, backpains, and even labor that all come later, all have a stop date. This doesn't. Nope, long after my body has healed from the effects of baby, the emotions will still take their toll. It's called postpartum depression, folks, and given my current state during pregnancy, I really don't see how I can avoid it. (Although perhaps breastmilk laced with mommy's Prozac will nip any colic the kid might have in the bud, he he he....)

The part that's driving my poor Jason nuts is the ever-constant worrying. Let's take last night. It was our third wedding anniversary, so we celebrated by going out to the town's best seafood place. I ordered ginger decaf tea and the mahi mahi, and split a vanilla creme brulee with fruit with Jason. Everything was delicious. But after the meal, I sat there and stressed about what I'd just consumed: The tea had green tea in it, so was it dangerous to drink? I can't eat swordfish, tilefish, mackeral, or shark because of the high mercury content; is mahi-mahi a form of one of those, is the name Hawaiian for "mercury swordfish" or something? The creme brulee tastes mildly like custard, so if it is a custard, does it have undercooked egg in it? Do I now have a herbally poisoned idiot baby with salmonella?!?!

Now, if I do this over dinner with my husband, you can imagine what I'm like at any other time.

So after my ever-dwindling lunch break, off I go back to work and try not to take someone's head off. Or try even harder not to start bawling right here at my desk. Especially if I start to look up mahi mahi on some baby website or another. :-P

Time to clear a few things up here:

To answer the ever-popular question: NO. I am NOT OK. I am so far from OK that I don't even know what it looks like anymore.

The next question: YES, I am going to be sick again. Thank you so much for asking as you see me on my way to the restroom. Did you want to follow me in and see the results?

To the women at my office who haven't been pregnant yet: You can stop giving me that look now. NO, it's not contagious and YES, this is what you're in for someday. At least you'll know ahead of time, unlike me.

To the women, both in and out of the office, who have had children: I know morning sickness is a common ailment. Therefore, do NOT give me that look of pity, mild disdain and just a hint of smugness, then say "I don't know what you're going through, I never had morning sickness." (This goes for you too, Mom.) If everyone who said that is telling the truth, then about 90% of all expectant mothers never get nauseous nor vomit without having the flu. I don't think so. (I'm also getting the same response over commenting on constipation. I was going to say that these denials are also a load of crap but then decided that really wasn't the term I wanted to use for such a comment.) ;-)

Things you CAN do:

Hold the doors open for me, guys. I've noticed. Thank you.

Mothers, whether or not you had morning sickness: Keep doling out the advice. I've never even changed a diaper. Jason and I went to Babies R Us last night and just kinda went "duh..." over all the stuff there. We have no clue what the hell we're doing, so lay it on us. We might follow it, we might not, but we'll take any tidbit we can right now. :-)

Don't make a big deal over the retching in the restroom. I'm embarrassed enough as it is.

Ask me questions. I am thrilled to talk about everything from the first piece of maternity wear I've ever purchased (last night, black velvet dress for Christmas, on sale for $25!) to my poor sleeping habits of late to the breathtaking sight of my baby's heart beating on the ultrasound monitor.

Things I will do:

Keep my mouth shut about how often I've vomited in the past couple days.

Not bore you too much with all the facts I find fascinating, especially if you're male and not my husband.

Not spill out the plethora of things I'm stressing about at any given moment.

Not show you the ultrasound photos more than once, and then for a few seconds, because I know you don't know what the hell you're looking at. (And to some extent, neither do I.)

I think we're done with my bitchy little etiquette lesson today. At least, until I start showing and therefore send off warnings that if you touch my belly without an invitation to do so, expect to lose that hand. I don't run around poking you in the abdomen, do I? (Of course, I'll also have to post the name of the first person to commit this offense. I'm getting thicker around the midsection every day, folks, it's only a matter of time....)

A non-pregnancy note:

God Bless Bill Amend.

Actually, I'm guessing it IS preganancy-related, as I really don't want my kid growing up in a world without Farscape. It's never too early to get 'em started on good TV. ;-)

I need to keep my head out of the clouds. I need to concentrate on home, on unpacking and helping out with the housework whenever I feel better. I need to concentrate more on work, add some new responsibilities and start making up hours now for doctor's appointments later. I need to keep in mind that I'm only ten weeks along and therefore nothing's for certain yet.

So why am I jonesing for more baby gifts and a maternity-wear shopping spree? It's all-consuming, I just want to purchase EVERYTHING I'll be needing for the next years. I can't even stay out of the damn diaper aisle at the grocery store. I just want to go nuts and have it all stocked NOW. I've heard of "nesting" but not of "hoarding" as I now truly become The Squirrel Girl, after all these years, trying to stock up this fall for the long months ahead. ;-)

Long story, but I got this picture in the mail the other day, with me in it, that was taken back in April. Jason looked at it and commented on how much weight I'd lost. I mean, you can really only see my face in this shot, but it's still apparent

I lost 17 lbs. on Weight Watchers before I got pregnant, and if the doctor's scales are accurate, I lost another two pounds due to morning sickness. The beauty of all this is that my weight loss might've been a contributing factor to my success in getting pregnant, when I had failed before. And an added perk is that I never bought any new clothes. I just let the old ones kinda hang off of me, and now I'm growing back into them.

The doctor said I'll gain between 20-35 lbs. If I gain 20, I'm right back to that photo in April, and while I wasn't exactly happy looking like that, I didn't think I was horrendously unattractive. In fact, given the right ensemble, I felt like quite the hottie at times. (Jason helped with that quite a bit - thank god my husband is a man who loves me and thinks I'm beautiful no matter what I weigh. Some women are not so lucky.) So if I get back up to that weight, or even a bit above it, no big whoop. I know for some women, it's a shock to be thin for so long and then put on all that weight. Me, no sweat. At least this time, I'll know it's not from bad eating habits and my exercise ethic akin to that of a sloth. It's from this wonderful life starting inside of me. And if that's not a wonderful reason to put back on the pounds, then I don't think one exists.

Hmmmmm.....

I had a thought - first time for everything, huh? :-P - that perhaps my total lack of interest in pre-pregnancy pleasures might not just be some maternal instinct kicking in. My total exhaustion could be partly to blame. For example, I usually love my Monday Night Margaritas with my girlfriends. It's not so much about the 99 cent margaritas (although that helps!) as it is about the conversation. Well, I missed the last margarita night. Of course I would've ordered virgin 'ritas or something else non-alcoholic, and insisted on the non-smoking section, but I still missed out on lots o' conversation and face-to-face friend time. And I really don't regret it, because all I can think of is: It's a 30 minute drive to and from. If I get sick, I'll have to run for the bathroom all the time in a public place, and then how am I supposed to get home? The drive and the sitting and quite possibly the conversation will exhaust me.

And that's the way it is with EVERYTHING. Almost everything I do has become tedious, a chore to finish. Whatever it is, if it doesn't make me sick or tired, then it's a rare occasion.

(This is, of course, compounded by situations Jason and I have run into in our new house, such as the phone jack not working in the computer room, which means that we need to stretch a phone cord two rooms over to get online. Or the burners on our stove, which smell to high heaven no matter what is cooked on them, so cooking is a hassle. And let's not even start with the dishwasher that makes the dishes dirtier.)

In fact, I'm so pooped that I'm taking off now to try and find more relaxing pursuits for my lunch break. Too bad I can't just curl up in my cubicle and take a nap, which would be impossible to do anyway since the smell of someone else's lunch is making me nauseous.

They keep telling me it'll get better. I think they're lying.

Huh. Well, I didn't get to update at home, so I'll do so now:

I'm at nine weeks plus, as of today. My husband Jason and I tried for about a year and four rounds of Clomid. So far I've had an ultrasound (I'll get the pics of that posted as soon as I can), and everything's looking fine, but I'm still worried sick.

I'm literally sick, too. Anything can hit the Nausea Trigger, I'm too tired to do about damn near anything, my sleep is fitful at best, and I'm bawling with little provocation to do so. I've read the pregnancy books and the websites and all, and they all say you will have SOME of the symptoms. My problem is, I've got ALL of them to varying degrees. One goes away, the other starts up. It's ridiculous. Like I told my friend Beth, "It's like my body's going through the Pregnancy Sampler - a little bit of EVERYTHING."

I'm freakin' obsessed with being pregnant, to the point where I had a dream last night of talking with a friend of mine who frets over sillier stuff than me. In the dream, she was getting stupid over worrying about what soup to eat that evening, I tried to talk it over with her, then thought "This is dumb, she has no clue what it is to really worry about anything!" and she just disappeared. I guess that's the beauty of dreams. ;-) Bizarro, sure, but that's just it: Everything else seems trivial, as I'm constantly thinking of myself and the baby (leading to the comment I made to Jason of "I've never been more selfish or more selfless before in my life.") It's a bit maddening, actually. Combine this with the Instananeous Mood Swings (Just Add Water!), a sex drive less than that of an amoeba, and a total lack of incentive to do anything but sleep, and it's a wonder Jason hasn't hiked off to parts unknown. Yikes.

I had a blog regarding the "trivial" stuff before, too, but I completely messed up the code. Hence the Blogger template here. But I needed a new forum, just for the impending motherhood. I'm not saying that I don't still like the things I did before, I mean, I'm going to be watching Friends and ER tonight and buying Buffy comics every now and again. I'm still going to play around online and such. It's just not quite the same.

I'll add a comments section to my entries as soon as I can find a friend with mucho HTML knowledge, and possibly start up an e-mail account just for this page, but until then, that's all I can say right now. Time to go surf BabyCenter.com for the umpteenth time and try to relax on my lunch break.

Welcome one and all!

Not much to say right now, only that I'm at nine weeks today and counting. I'm at work, but I'll let y'all in on all the details once I get home. :-)