Crunching the Numbers

     So tomorrow is the big day, we will find out the gender of our baby!!! I sure hope that he/she doesn't decide to be shy tomorrow. Last time we saw our little wiggler it was only about the size of a gummy bear and it didn't look like a baby, now its baby shaped and everything! I am glad that we have plans tonight otherwise I would go crazy waiting around for the appointment.
    In other developments, after Ted and I have been crunching numbers we have decided that rather than paying for day care, that Ted is going to stay home with our little one. We will still need him to work part-time but his job is very flexible so he can do that around my schedule so that we won't have child care costs.
     It definitely won't be an easy adjustment because we will have to scale back on a lot of things, but it was going to take half of Ted's income to pay for childcare any way. We just figured it seemed silly to have him work those extra 20 hours per week just so that we can pay for childcare. Of course there will still be times we still need a sitter, if we want to go out or have things planned for the day but we have wonderful friends here in town who are willing to help us out!
     This will not necessarily be a permanent change, because as our baby gets older the cost of daycare will be less once it's not an infant and Ted might want to go back to working full time, but for now this is what makes sense to us. Sure we will have to cut back on some of the things that we want, we won't be able to go on a date every week, we are cancelling our cable, i will have to be more diligent about couponing to save on groceries and we will actually have to budget rather than just spending money with out thinking. To me these are good sacrifices, and it will show us what is really important. I am just glad that we are in a position that we can do this, and that I have such a wonderful husband that is not only willing to do this but looking forward to all of the time he will have with our child!
Gosh I can't wait until we can actually call the baby he or she, I am getting tired of saying IT!

Baby Insurance!

I am a very lucky girl...I am still covered by my step fathers health insurance until my 26th birthday so all of medical costs during my pregnancy will be covered by that. However, because I am a dependent the health insurance company will only cover the baby through delivery. Meaning that I need to have health insurance set up for our little one before giving birth.
 This seems like it would be a pretty easy task right? Wrong!!! I have looked up a lot of very afforadable health insurance programs, that would be a great fit for what our baby will need. The problem is signing up for these programs so that the baby will be immediately covered once I give birth.  In order to get insurance for a child I actually need a name and birth date, which I don't have yet, because MY BABY IS NOT BORN YET!!!!
The websites I have visited so far say that the baby will be covered by the mothers insurance for a period of time after birth, but in my situation...with my insurance the baby will not be covered at all once delivery is over. I need to have insurance set up in advance in case there are any complications (I am hoping there won't be).
I know I am only half way through my pregnancy but if you know me, you know that I am a planner and I do not like the unknown, so I am wanting to get things set up as soon as I can so I have less to worry about in the days prior to the babies birth. I am just starting my search for all of this so if any of my readers out there know of any places to look or what the next step should be, please let me know!

Wiggles

     Last time I wrote on here I was way over being pregnant and all the restrictions that pregnancy has placed on my life. And while I am still feeling that somewhat, a new development has really brightened my outlook.
     Over the last week or so I kept thinking I felt the baby moving but then I would doubt myself and assume it must have been really weird gas. Well a few days ago I had an undeniable poke, that right a baby poke. It felt kind of like a few kernels of popcorn popping inside of me, it was kind of funny to feel. At first I didn't even think that was the baby, but then I thought about it some more "if it wasn't the baby moving in there then what could it be?" So I had to accept the fact that I finally have a wiggly baby growing inside of me.
      I had been really anxious. excited about feeling the baby for the first time, I was scared that I wouldn't like the way that it felt. It turns out that its actually pretty cool, now I find myself wishing that I could feel it more often. So far I have only felt it a couple times a day for the last few days!
      Feeling our baby move inside of me has made this whole experience more real to me, and honestly more exciting .I love how excited my mom and my oldest sister were when I told them I could feel the baby moving, it made me so happy! I just love how supportive my family and Ted's family is being through this process. Ted and I just can't wait to meet our baby, 5 more months really seems like a long time.

Loving Pregnancy?

Any one who knows me is aware that I never really looked forward to being pregnant, I have always been more excited about the end result of having a child more so than actually being pregnant. Which is probably why it took me several years to come to the decision to give birth to my first child rather than adoption. My pregnancy experience has thus far brought me to the decision that any children Ted and I have after this one will be adopted.  So far for me pregnancy has just been a bunch of restrictions on my regular life and a game of giving up things I love, mixed with quite a bit of nausea.

I am no longer able to carry heavy objects or move furniture, which makes rearranging and organizing for the baby difficult when my husband works 6 to 7 days a week and can't always help me when I want him to. Moving furniture is never something I cared for but the fact that I can't do it now is rather frustrating. I can't eat a lot of the foods I love including sandwiches which are my favorite food of all time, and I am not talking a toasted panini, but a nice sandwich with cold lunch meat and all the delicious crispy veggies, which while pregnant is a big no no due to the risk of listeria in the cold lunch meat. I love soft cheeses like brie and goat cheese but again those are off limits. And I miss being able to have a glass of wine with friends or a bloody mary when out to breakfast, and trust me the non-alcoholic versions are not worth it.


Don't get me wrong here I am looking forward to being a mother more than anything, I can't put into words how much I already love my child and can't wait to meet him/her. But I always hear stories of how people loved being pregnant and they miss it as soon as they pop the baby out, well lets just say I will not be one of those women. Maybe everything will change in a couple of weeks once I feel my little baby wiggle inside of me, but right now I just feel like a more tired, moody and deprived version of myself.