Snoogle Me Rico

One of my favorite new maternity comfort items is my Snoogle body pillow. It is shaped like a giant letter "C" with a place to support your head on one end and your legs on the other. It has made sleeping on my left side much more bearable, although I still long for the days of snoozing comfortably on my back.

Rico has also developed an appreciation for the Snoogle, and commandeers it any time I get out of bed. This isn’t terribly surprising, considering the dog spends most of his days lying on our guest bed on top of a pile of blankets and pillows that he carefully arranges in a way that ensures no inch of paw or tail touches a hard surface. Where else would he sleep, on the floor? That space is especially reserved for rolling around with toys and expressing his anal glands. He’s a very sophisticated dog.

Alive and Kicking

This past Saturday morning marked the first time that I knew for sure I felt my baby moving. John and I were sitting on the couch together watching a soccer game when I felt the distinct sensation of being kicked from the inside out. I told John that I was finally sure I felt something, and he placed his hand on my abdomen just in time to feel a kick.

Since then, our little girl has been kicking me almost non-stop. She kicked while we visited John's family that evening and she kicked while I visited my parents Sunday afternoon. She kicked so vigorously that my mom felt her protests through a pair of jeans and layered tank tops.

I know now that I've been feeling a much milder version of this movement for several weeks, but dismissed it as normal pregnancy discomforts since it didn't at all match the "flutter in the stomach" described by all my pregnancy books. I have no idea what a flutter feels like, but I can definitely tell when I'm getting a swift kick in the gut.

Cletus is a Girl!

Our 21 week ultrasound revealed several key things about our unborn child:

1. The nickname Cletus isn't really appropriate anymore.

2. Our little girl has long legs for her body, a petite nose, and hands with the exact right number of fingers, which she is already using to cover her ears and ignore us.

3. She spends a lot of time with her mouth open, either yawning to express her boredom with her surroundings or preparing to chat us up and eventually use all our wireless minutes.

4. All of her major organs and body parts are in the exact right place and functioning well. This is the best news yet. Here's the profile view of our beautiful baby girl.

Serenity Now

Sunday was a particularly difficult day for me. Various pregnancy-related aches and pains and physical changes left me depressed and afraid of what the remaining four months of preganancy have in store for me.

I gained a little perspective today while looking at the photos I took over the weekend. My own reflection may be scary right now, but at least the view outside is nice.

Our First Complete Baby Project

John finished the installation of a new closet system for the baby last week. The finished product looks great, and the closet is now officially the only neat and organized part of our house.

The Making of Cletus the Fetus

After almost five years of marriage, John and I decided we were finally ready to try and have a baby. We threw out the birth control pills and waited for my body to adjust to the change. After more than six months I found that not having a monthly cycle was actually quite pleasant, but probably not conducive to the making of a baby. I ventured to my doctor and eventually an endocrinologist, who gave me an official diagnosis of elevated prolactin levels. The solution was simple according to this doctor - I would just begin taking a medication call Parlodel, my cycles would return, and we'd be pregnant in no time.

I began taking the medication the week of Thanksgiving and quickly found the catch in this plan. The medication made me horribly nauseous, and I spent most of the week cursing the small, once-a-day pill that made me completely unable to enjoy a traditional Hanson family Thanksgiving lunch or Mayes family dinner. After a little research and trial and error, I found that taking the medicine with a dairy product at the end of the day minimized the stomach-turning effects of the pills. I considered this a sign that I should drink chocolate milk or eat ice cream every night, and for over a month life was good.

My 29th birthday came and went, as did our fifth Christmas as a married couple. Less than a week after the holiday my nausea returned, along with a general feeling of exhaustion and physical discomfort. I made another appointment with my endocrinologist on January 4, 2006, at which point I planned to tell him that not only were the pills making me sick, but they also had failed to return my monthly cycle. As I sat in the doctor’s office rattling off my list of symptoms, he suggested a blood test to check my hormone levels, kidney function… and to see if I was pregnant. The nurse who drew my blood asked if I thought I might be pregnant, and I replied that if I got pregnant after almost a year with no period, “It would be a miracle.”

The next morning I found myself more nauseous than ever, and spent the majority of the morning collapsed next to the toilet. I sent John off to work without me after diagnosing myself with a terrible bout of acid reflux. I tried unsuccessfully to keep down food during the day, and was nursing a bowl of soup when the phone rang later that day. It was my endocrinologist calling to say that my hormone levels were fine, my kidney functioning was good and the only unusual thing he found was that I was pregnant. “You’re kidding!” was my immediate response, followed by “I guess that explains why I’ve been home puking all day.” Before I had time to become embarrassed by the fact that I just said “puking” to my 60-something, Emory-trained doctor, he informed me that he does not kid and that I was in fact pregnant.

I spent the rest of the afternoon pacing the house, hugging the toilet (some more), recounting all the things I had done in the past month that might have ruined my baby (painting the bedroom, taking that acid reflux medication, drinking a soda, oh no!), and poring over Babycenter.com to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do next. I managed to wait until John got home from work to share the news with him, and happily he did not rush out of the house screaming or make a face that says, “What have we done?”

We shared the news with our parents that weekend and I scheduled my first appointment with my OB/GYN. Let me take a moment here to say that as a woman I have often been frustrated by the fact that any doctor I see, no matter what the problem or occasion for the visit, first asks me for the last date of my most recent period. I was once in the emergency room for what I believed to be a broken ankle and this question was posed even before, “How did you hurt your ankle?” So, for the first or maybe second time in my post-pubescent life this question was actually relevant, and my answer was that it was sometime in February of the previous year. This seemed to blow the nurses minds – they would all look down at my stomach as if they legitimately expected to see their first 11-month baby belly.

That first appointment was quickly followed by two more appointments filled with inane questions about my period and blood test after blood test that proved largely inconclusive and completely scary to a first-time mom. We ultimately found ourselves at a prenatal specialist on January 19th for an ultrasound that nearly rendered John unconscious and proved that I had one seemingly normal 8-week old baby growing inside me. Tremendously relieved, we nicknamed the baby Cletus the Fetus and never looked back.


Today I am almost five months pregnant and writing this blog as a way to remember the moments that have defined my pregnancy thus far. Things like hearing the baby’s heartbeat for the very first time and sitting on the bathroom floor at 1am holding John’s hand and crying because the Mexican dish I had for dinner tasted so bad coming back up and looked so terrible splashed on the leg of my pajama pants. The past three months have been the scariest and the most amazing of my life, and I feel incredibly fortunate to be taking this journey with my husband, who is the best friend I’ve ever had, and the love and support of my family, who are the best parents and in-laws I could ever wish for. Cletus will be very lucky to have these people in his/her life.