19 week update -- more details

First, let me say I'm fine and everything with Baby Tray is perfect.

One night in Boston, I woke up in the middle of the night with this intense abdominal pain centered around my belly button.  After it didn't lessen over the course of a few hours, I called the 24 hour nurse help line through Matt's awesome insurance.  They recommended I head to the emergency room.  I wasn't keen on getting up in the middle of the cold, snowy Boston night to ask Matt's parents to drive us to the hospital (although, I know they would have done so happily), so I decided to seek a second opinion.

Our OBs office has a 24 hour message service.  You can call, leave a message and, if it's an urgent matter, one of the OBs from the practice will call back right away.  So, at around 3am east coast time, I had a nice long conversation with an OB (not mine) about my pain.  She said it didn't sound like appendicitis or a gall stone because the pain was NOT centered on one side of my abdomen.  She asked a lot of other questions and eventually said that it was probably just an irritated gall bladder and indigestion.  She recommended I take Tums or Maalox.  I took some Tums and was eventually able to fall back asleep.  I felt okay the next morning.  However, throughout the rest of our time on the east coast, I continued to have the same indigestion issues after meals.

Since returning to Seattle, I'm happy to report that almost all of my morning sickness symptoms are gone!  I have a much healthier appetite and I'm not experiencing any nausea.  I still gag a little in the morning when I first wake up and I absolutely must get something substantial in my belly within about 60 minutes, but I'm honestly like a new person.  I'm not experiencing the same indigestion after meals as previously.  I also have a lot more energy overall.  Hallelujah!  After 3 months straight of feeling like sh*t, I'm glad it appears to be behind me. I sort of feel like I'm coming out of a depression.  For 3 months all I did was come home (maybe go to the gym first), eat, feel sick to my stomach, go to sleep, wake up, feel like crap, repeat.   All of those poor women who are sick all 9 months!  I truly cannot even imagine. 

I've started feeling little tickles from the inside of my belly recently.  It's still sporadic and hard to notice.  At yesterday's ultrasound appointment we were able to see just how much Baby Tray moves around.  I'm glad I don't feel everything just yet.  Both the ultrasound tech and our OB are amazed at how active s/he is!

We think we may have figured out Tray's sex from the appointment.  I'm sure we're wrong.  We've seen all of 2 ultrasounds ever, that hardly makes us experts!! We told the tech we didn't want to find out and she said nothing, but there was one point that we thought we could make out some identifying features!  I'm not saying any more than that because we really don't know and I really want it to be a surprise.

Finally, random story overheard at the ultrasound office yesterday.  As we're waiting in the reception room at the ultrasound office, I hear this woman talking to her partner on her cell phone.  This was the conversation:  "I'm at the ultrasound office.  You're not going to believe this.  {She takes a deep breath}.  They think we're having twins.  They must have missed it the first time. I need you to get here as soon as you can."  The totally wild part is that she looked bigger than me, so it's possible she's like 18+ weeks and just finding out that she's having twins.  What a shock!