Punch me

Punch me in the face. That would be better than what I have had to go through today. I went in for my routine 12 week OB visit. My midwife used a little doppler ultrasound to listen to the heartbeat. When she couldn't find it, she assured me this is normal at this point of the pregnancy. Still, we went to the ultrasound room for the "peace of mind". As soon as the ultrasound tech found my uterus, and baby, she turned her head, and gave the midwife this look. I immediately knew something was very wrong. I said: "that's not a good look!".

It really wasn't. They told me that the fetus was dead, and that it had probably been dead for 4-5 weeks! That is a LONG time! After all of the problems in the beginning, then the new hope, and joy of seeing a heartbeat; this is just heartbreaking.

Right now, I am going through waves. I'll be okay for a little while, and then I just break down and cry. It's especially hard when I have to tell someone on the phone, or even when I read an email from someone saying how sorry they are. This is the part where I am sooo happy I only told a select few people about the pregancy. I can't imagine having to tell the whole world what happened. (of course, the whole world can read this after I post it, but that will be several months later)

My midwife gave me 2 options. I can either wait, and see if my body with expel the baby naturally, or get a D and C. If it has taken this long, and can't imagine waiting around to see when/if it will come out. So my midwife is trying to get me scheduled for a D and C on Monday. It will be hard, but I think it will make it easier to feel closure that way.

Luckily, my midwife told me, that I don't have to wait a certain amount of time before trying for pregnancy again. She said that as soon as I have my normal period, things should be good to go. Also, this miscarriage shouldn't mean that my chances for another one go up. I guess the chance of a miscarriage (after medical confirmation of pregnancy), is about 11-25%! It's not until you have 3 miscarriages in a row that they conside you to have a realy "problem". Or as Joe likes to say "a hostile" (think Lost).

Where to go from here? I just need to cry, and cry some more. Then, we need to try to get pregnant again. If/when that happens, I need to TRY not to be an emotional wreck the whole time, fearing the worst. I am just so thankful right now, that I have 3 healthy children. I can't imagine going through this for a first pregnancy.

Support Ginger

So I entered Ginger in the Parents Magazine cover contest. You could do me a huge favor. Please go to Ginger's photo's, and rate each one of them a 5. If you don't like any of the pictures, meet me at the bike racks after school. Just kidding.

Cutest kid in America

Do you have the cutest kid in America? I think I do! Parents Magazine is doing a contest right now, to find the cutest kid. This kid will be on the cover on the magazine! And, if you submit a photo, you'll be entered for a $10,000 prize. Go here to see all the details.

Here are some pictures I am considering submitting. You can submit up to 6 per child, so I need to look, or take some more pictures

12 weeks

It's getting more tempting every week to tell everyone about the pregnancy. But then I think about how much cooler it will be if I can wait another month. It's so much fun to watch people's faces when you tell them you are 3 or 4 months pregnant. I can't remember if I wrote this already, but with Ginger, I didn't tell anyone (except family) until I was 20 weeks! You should have seen the amazement on people's faces when they found out. Plus, it gives me extra incentive not to gain any more weight then necessary.

I was just doing some research on weight gain during pregnancy this morning, and it was interesting to see the trend over the past 100 years. Back in the early 1900's, women were put on restrictive diets to prevent difficult labor, as well as "preservation of figure". They were told to gain no more than 15 lbs. In the 70s, the recommended range was 20-25 lbs. Currently, we are told to gain 25-35 lbs. I believe 35 lbs is way too much! What a difference it makes to gain 25 vs 40 lbs. I know, I did both. With Winter I gained 40, while I only gained 26 with Sterling. Winter's labor brought a bunch of complications with it, that could have been avoided if I hadn't eaten for 2.

"High weight gain is associated with increased risk of both prolonged labor and cesarean birth". So I know to be careful, and not hork out. But part of the problem is that my body really does need more food. I used to be able to eat breakfast, go to church, and eat lunch at 2pm with just minor stomach grumbles. However, yesterday, my stomach was grumbling by the time it was 11am, and if I hadn't brought a snack, I wouldn't have made it home. There's just a fine line between eating enough, and eating too much. I try to just eat enough, and eating mostly healthy foods. Before I eat a piece of cake, I carefully evaluate whether that's worth all the extra calories. (ice cream and chocolate usually make the cut)

Growing slowly

Several of my most faithful readers have asked for an update on our garden. I'm sorry it has taken me so long to finally meet your requests. Honestly, after I replanted my garden, I was a little sick of it. I had spent a lot of time out there, and it all looked pathetic. Over the last several weeks I have gone out there every once in a while to water it, and maybe spend 5 minutes spraying some weeds. It wasn't until this morning, that I finally really got out there to do some more work on it.

I am happy to report that most of my plants are still alive, and slowly growing. I did loose both my cucumber plants, and 2 of my zucchini plants. I found the seeds leftover from last year, and planted some of those today. My beans are also finally big enough, so I could mulch them. They had by far the most weeds in my whole garden. After the frost I thought for sure that I had also lost my cauliflower and brussel sprouts. Luckily I didn't yank them out of the ground, because apparently only the leafs died, but the core survived. I only lost 1 of each plant.

Speaking of weeds, I have a silly confession to make. When I put the goat-poo hay and the leafy mulch down, I believed that would result in no weeds. Oh was I wrong! Grass is especially hardy, and came right through the hay. Also, in some spots where the hay is decayed a bit more, grass is growing straight out of the hay. The upside: only relatively few weeds, and most of them that do come through, are pretty easy to pull. (except the grass that was already there and now coming through). There is also one kind of weed, and I have no idea what the name is, that came through just like the grass, and seemed to be thriving on the poo in the hay. Those got the roundup treatment! And then there are some spot where I evidently didn't put enough hay/mulch down, and as a result many more weeds were coming up. I pulled those weeds, and added more mulch.

Also, I am so happy to say that I saw the first flowers. There's a beautiful yellow one, on a squash plant. Several tomato plants also have some little flowers. While looking at my tomato plants, I had to do a double take. It appears that my roma tomato plant actually has a tomato on it!! It's still really little, and green, but that's major!

I have discovered that onion plants prefer to have leafy mulch over hay mulch (I used leafy mulch on almost everything, but I ran out, so switched to clean hay). Half of them have hay, and half leafy mulch. The half with the leafy mulch are clearly bigger and greener than the other half.

The garden still doesn't look very impressive to me, but at least it's not dead. I thought it would be fun to mark where everything is located. Maybe, when the plants get bigger, it will look more green, but for now you can seen some of the plants (click on the image for a larger view)

Sleeping outside

Tonight I have our king size bed to myself. Joe is sleeping outside. No, we didn't have a huge fight, and sent him out! The kids really wanted to sleep on the trampoline. We figured they are probably not old enough to be out there alone the whole night, especially Ginger, who is just 3. Before Joe went out, he tried to convince ME to sleep out there. Crazy guy. The bugs and pollens would kill me before sun up.

I remember when I was a kid, we loved sleeping on the trampoline as well. Of course we didn't go to sleep until late, and woke up super early, but it was fun to sleep in the open. Out here there are lots of stars too.

Vla

My new recipe book from Tastebook came in today, and I am loving it. There are some issues with the photos I took, they are all too dark. That's totally my fault, because other photos are just fine. As I was making my menu for the next week, I was trying to find some recipes that call for a lot of eggs (again), and saw that flan was one of them. That got me to remember the yummy Dutch dessert called "vla". It's a yellow custard dessert, that can not be found in the US. Since it's a dairy product, they don't import it to the Dutch grocery stores.

I finally found one that didn't call for "custard powder". The ingredients are pretty straight forward: milk, sugar, vanilla, eggs, and cornstarch. After you mix all of them, you just have to stir over low heat until it thickens. I didn't want to risk cooking it too fast, so I ended up stirring the vla for an hour! Now it's cooling in the fridge, and I can't wait to see how it tastes (it was pretty yummy warm, but that's totally different)