2nd Tri, Here We Come!

It's been a while since I updated, so I figured it was time...

I have been really swamped at work and have had little time to do much else. It is report card season for the first quarter already and parent conferences are fast approaching. I have also been working on a few (unpaid...) projects outside of school and I have been spending every minute that I am not working vegging out with C watching movies and TV.

As of last week, we are more or less graduated from the RE. I am still taking PIO every other day, so I will need to go back periodically for blood work, but I am no longer going there officially for monitoring of the SCH.

I was supposed to start slowing down on the PIO a few weeks ago, but my progesterone levels were never high enough. Finally about two weeks ago, I got the OK to cut back to every other day. When I went in for blood work and ultrasound, however, my levels were not quite high enough to cut back further, so I stayed on the every-other-day plan for another week.

This past Friday, I went back for another ultrasound and more blood work, and we are starting a new cut back plan. I continued to take it every other day on Friday, Sunday and Tuesday, but they want me to skip Wednesday and Thursday. Then, I will go in for more blood work on Friday to see if I am generating enough progesterone on my own and see if we can stick with the every-three-days plan. I am also still on progesterone suppositories and, according to my nurse, these will be the last of the meds to go.

I have another appointment with the OB on November 20 and they want me in every four weeks. This means my next appointment after this one will be the big one - the 20 week anatomy scan in late December to determine the gender of the baby, among other things. Knowing that we are entering the second trimester and that we are getting this close to the halfway point is exhilarating.

As far as preparing for baby, we really haven't done anything yet. I still have told remarkably few people and I have really held back on any planning or buying. We cleaned out the spare bedroom that will be the nursery this past weekend, which really just needed to be done anyway. The room has a bare, beat-up hardwood floor and we are hoping to refinish the floor before Christmas. At that point, we will know the gender of the baby and can start planning a bit more with registering, painting and prepping.

I figured that at this point, it was OK to allow ourselves to get a little excited, though. I know that everyone and their proverbial mother will have advice about dos and don'ts, so I thought it would be fun and helpful for C and I to go out baby shopping just to get an idea of what we want and do not want before everyone starts barraging us with advice. We went to Babies R Us this weekend and test drove some strollers, looked at furniture and talked about feeding while wandering through the aisles. It was nice to see C get excited about certain things and to see that we were mostly in agreement about our expectations.

They say that the second trimester is the "honeymoon phase" of pregnancy and I am certainly hoping that they are right!