Finally sharing...

So as everyone who is either my friend on Facebook (which any of you are welcome to be, btw) or on my xmas card list now knows, the Feminarian is pregnant. Time for ya'll to get to share in the news too.

This may help explain my a) lack of writing the last few months (while I went through spells of inability to move or form sentences or have interest in anything beyond making a human being in my body); b) not stellar GRE scores (I deserve a medal for taking it with morning sickness); c) general pissiness at the world on most days (and the panic attack of a few months ago); d) tears over most everything happening around me, particularly the film Leroy & Stitch, which was last night's feature.

Well it has been extremely difficult so far, in all honesty - I am waiting for the "glow" and the excitement and happiness to begin. Mostly I've been nervous and tired and worried. I've had to submit to a battery of tests, all of which made me more nervous and worried (I have now put the kibosh on further testing). I've been relatively OK in the sickness dept, no actual puking, but generally feeling "on the verge" for several weeks (which is almost worse) (I will say it is worse but that's b/c it happened to me). It actually went away for a while and I thought I'd escaped but then showed up again two weeks ago, and although I'm in week 14 now I feel like I've reverted to week 7 in both nausea and exhaustion. Right when I'm getting all these chipper emails from babycenter.com telling me "your nausea is probably a thing of the past!" Up yours, baby jerks!

So far, nah, I haven't been able to be that happy - I've been guarding it b/c of course things can always go wrong (and have for it seems everyone I know - I had to stop and count one day to remember that I actually know more people who succeeded at this on the first try). But I was reading about how we all imagine the worst possible thing in some misguided attempt to "prepare" ourselves, when in fact there's no way you will feel any less awful just because you thought about it earlier. That was good for me to read, and I think it applies also to happiness - why not let yourself be really happy? If something doesn't work out, then be really sad at that time!

So I'm going to try a new approach, a happy approach, although I'm so practiced at worry by now that it will take some adjustment. Letting the news out is part of the strategy, though - to be able to share it on here and hear your reactions will help tremendously (and I've been dying to bitch about it too!!). Can you imagine a blogger of my TMI status not being able to talk about the most important deepest thing in my life?? It's been killing me. I'm thrilled to share. (did you know they make onesies that say, "My Mommy is blogging this"? Great gift idea!)

So there you are, my news is out. To answer the proverbial questions, my due date is the same as my graduation date (multitasking to the end), although I think it's off but I'm not sure which direction, but it is June 14. And it's too early to know the gender, but we do plan to find out, because we don't really see the difference b/t a surprise now and a surprise in 6 months. Either way, it's going to be exciting to find out. That will be Jan 11.

And those of you who pray for me, because I know many of you do (or send positive energy which is way appreciated as well), we just found out that we're losing our health insurance (not to mention paychecks) 2 weeks before I'm due. Ouch. So we have to appeal to APU to be good Christian people and give us an extra month. Or we have to figure out how to pay the cobra fees, which will be not so easy with no income. That's the present concern, but I'm not overly stressed about it. We're still heading to Vegas next week for some relaxation and great food, and I mostly don't think too much about it (can't do anything 'til next time J sees his dept chair anyway). The ideal would be if he gets a summer class that goes into June and they agree to keep the benefits going during that time (the miracle would be for them to give benefits all summer, but I don't see that happening when he's not actually working there anymore). But we can work with whatever happens. We can always do cobra for a month, get this baby out, and then go on state aid for the postpartum stuff. Although it's an annoying problem to have (and underlines everything I just saw in Sicko - great flick), it's not insurmountable and it's just another opportunity to trust God.

OK, I think that's all I have to say. I could write for years about how I've felt (again, "sicko" is apt), how I'm not sleeping (except at 8 pm when I'm zonked), how we'll fit the child into a 300 sq ft apt with us and 2 cats (actually I don't have that one figured out yet - all I know is that we are moving one way or another - either to a phd program across the country or across town). But I have so much work to do - this break has been anything but, so far, what with assignments from profs I work for and phd apps and those xmas cards. So excuse me for being rather brief, but at least I got the important stuff out. Cheers!