Friday, October 27, 2017

Secret secret, I've got a secret: I'm Pregnant!

August 25, 2017

On Wednesday August 23, I had noticed from my menstruation app that my period was 2.5 days late. I had all my normal pre-period symptoms, but I'm also not usually that late. I texted Adam that I was late, but just kind of in a "ha ha" kind of way.

That afternoon I took a pregnancy test. The two dark purple lines were loud and clear. There was no way it was a guess, it was positive. Holy. crap. We totally wanted this, but at the same time didn't expect or prepare for it (do you EVER?) It seemed like yesterday we were dancing at our wedding. I mean I hadn't even officially changed my last name yet on my driver's license, or mailed out our wedding thank you notes. But I couldn't help but smile, giggle, and say wow! Over and over. Then Mira walks in; "what's wow, mom?" "Oh nothing, just thinking about a funny picture I saw..." "what picture? Show me." LOL this kid. I had also been dying to tell her.

I wanted to tell Adam in a special way when he got home from work. He typically has a beer after work, so I made an announcement label over one of his beers.

Of course, he gets home and doesn't get a beer. We sat and talked for a while and finally I had to tell him to go get a beer. He looked at me skeptical, but went and got it. He took the beer out, looked at the label, and said are you serious?! Yep! He started smiling, came over and kissed me and more "wows" came about. He was in shock as well. Not a bad kind of shock, just like a "we're really doing it, Harry!" kind of way. We were both just basically at the point of holy shit we're doing this again. Let the craziness ensue!



FIRST TRIMESTER

September 5th, at 6 weeks along: 

I was feeling great up until today. I am 6 weeks on the nose and starting to feel a little nauseous and have a cluster headache.

This is about the same as with Mira; the timing and the feeling. If it's anything like last time, I had nausea and headaches from 6-13 weeks. The headaches were worse than the nausea last time but still. Crossing my fingers it's mild and doesn't last that long. I did learn from last time, though. I just need to make sure my stomach is never empty and I won't feel too nauseous.

How far along: 6 weeks
Total weight gain/loss: None that I know of
Maternity clothes?: No
Stretch marks?: No
Sleep: Fine. I do get tired way earlier now.
Best moment this week: Having fun in the cities this past weekend
Miss anything: Indulging in drinks. I've sat through two work happy hours, sat at restaurants with amazing drinks, and missed out on ciders and meads at the Renaissance Festival.
Food cravings: Similar to last time; anything taco-y.
Anything making you queasy or sick: No but I'm starting to have some aversions to a lot of smells. Like turkey bacon.
Have you started to show yet: Nope
Gender Prediction: None at this point
Symptoms: Not too many. Today started the headaches and some mild nausea.
Happy or moody most of the time: Happy. But also more tired
Looking forward to: TELLING PEOPLE I'M PREGNANT. I'm only 6 weeks along but it feels like I've known FOREVER. I've literally known of my pregnancy for 2 weeks.....



7-10 weeks:

I was even MORE tired. Had headaches about every 2-3 days, as well as a few migraines. Also got extremely nauseous when I was hungry. I ate all. the. time. I would out-eat Adam, which is an amazing feat. Never threw up though.




October 23; 13 Weeks

How far along: 13 weeks
Total weight gain/loss: Like 5 pounds
Maternity clothes?: No
Stretch marks?: No
Sleep: Not as good. I wake up once or twice every night, sometimes just to pee, sometimes for no reason at all.
Best moment this week: Having fun in the cities this past weekend
Miss anything: Wine
Food cravings: Spicy. Thai food, buffalo flavored anything, crushed red pepper on things. Salty/vinegary foods. I love sandwiches right now. Even though I'm not supposed to have lunch meat, I still break the rules. Even more recent cravings have been wood fire grilled pizza with arugula and alfredo pasta with red pepper, spinach, tomato.
Anything making you queasy or sick: Being hungry. Smelling strong unpleasant smells.
Have you started to show yet: Yes. This is the beer gut stage. Starting to show earlier. I also swear I felt kicking.
Gender Prediction: My heart tells me another girl, but the 12 week ultrasound seems like a boy. We'll get it confirmed at the 20 week ultrasound.
Symptoms: From 7-10 weeks I was struggling. Extremely tired, headaches, nausea. Much better now!
Happy or moody most of the time: Happy. Just low energy. Haven't truly worked out in 3 months either. I've basically put on my workout gear to go on a walk...
Looking forward to: Finding out gender, picking a name, buying all the things.

Had 2 ultrasounds so far; one at 8 weeks, one at 12 weeks. I started seeing the midwife and she does 8 week ultrasounds instead of listening to the heartbeat, because it's apparently safer. So that's new. Everything checked out to be just great at both of them. Got lots of good pictures. And at the 12 week one she kept laughing at how active baby was - wouldn't stop moving. Has a good heartbeat, all its limbs and fingers and toes. Just likes to move a lot. Such deja vu from Mira's 12 week ultrasound. She was the same way. And the ultrasound tech said the same thing as last time too; "you have a very happy baby!" Maybe they just say that to everyone :)



Tummy was still flat at 12 weeks. Can't say the same about 13 weeks.... 
Thursday, October 12, 2017

Switzerland vs. Austria

So we had the time of our life on our honeymoon. It was beautiful and was nice to have two weeks of bonding time with just us. Of course we missed Mira, and skyped with her as often as we could.

I wanted to write a fun travel post on the differences I noticed between Switzerland and Austria. The only disclaimer is that we traveled all around rural Switzerland and only went to urban Austria. So some things might be just a difference of big city vs countryside.


1. Switzerland is more English friendly. And also had more American tourists. When we sat at restaurants, it wasn't weird to sit next to a family or couple who also spoke English with an American accent. Everywhere we went we would come in contact with Americans in some way. There were also a ton of people from the UK and Australia. It was common for waiters to automatically speak English to you before you even spoke a word.

Austria; we didn't come in contact with any Americans until our very last day. It was a man in an elevator and he seemed excited to talk us too. I don't think I ever heard anyone from the UK or Australia there either. A lot more waiters and store workers seemed to struggle with English once we tried to speak with them. Luckily, my brother was with us there and helped SO much by speaking on our behalf. I did notice the locals who could speak English thought it was "cool" that we spoke English. Austrians love a chance at speaking English with someone...they would eavesdrop on our conversations and make an excuse to talk to us :)



2. Switzerland's German is different than Austria. It sounds more French, which makes sense because in part of Switzerland, their first language is French. You're greeted with "Gruezi" instead of "Hallo" and thank you was always "Merci" instead of "Danke".

3. Things are more expensive in Switzerland. It wasn't as bad as a lot of people make it out to be. In fact, we came out way under budget because I accounted for it to cost a lot more. If you're smart you can get by with eating pretty cheap. Hotels are mainly the expensive part. We also didn't explore around Zurich or Geneva, the two biggest and most expensive cities; we just traveled around the alps.

Austria was surprisingly affordable. It was comparable to what things would cost in the U.S. Except the food there is better! They have a lot of variation in their cuisine, I was surprised; we had Vietnamese, Italian, traditional Austrian, French, and who knows what else. It was always delicious, unlike Switzerland, in which there were a few meals that were very plain. But the cheese was always good!

4. You can't go in a Swiss town without seeing watch shops. So. Many. Watch. Stores. And Swiss knives stores too. And cuckoo clocks.

Austria's version of this is their famous artist, Gustav Klimt. His work is everywhere! There are stores dedicated to him and there are miscellaneous gift shops with his work featured in the front.

5. In Switzerland, is common for people to pay for small purchases using a hundred dollar note. I bought something for 3 francs and handed a cashier a hundred and they barely even looked at it, and gracefully handed me the change. Cards are also widely accepted everywhere, even when you're in a tiny village in the mountains.

Vienna, surprisingly, had a lot of cash only restaurants. It's such a big city I thought it was weird. Luckily ATMs are on every corner. They use Euros (unlike CH which is Swiss Francs) so we had to exchange all our notes from CH by the time we got to AT.


6. Wifi in places in Switzerland and Austria was always locked with passwords, but if you asked an employee they would give you a piece of paper with the password. In Switzerland, their wifi was on lockdown in public places like airports and train stations and I was never able to connect.

7. Tipping. We weren't sure of the tipping rules in Switzerland, but we knew it wasn't 20% like America is commonly. So we left 10-15% pretty much the whole time. Then I skyped with my brother and he said they mostly just round up. So if your meal costs $77, you give them $80. Whoops. My brother laughed and said Europeans love Americans because they always over-tip. I don't feel so bad though, because the waiters were usually super nice, like a scary amount of nice. It was like something out of the movies. But, we did it the right way in Austria; just rounding up, and they seemed to be a lot more gracious there actually.

It's also awkward to tip with a card, because you have to be deliberate about what you're going to tip before you pay. They don't have that little line on their credit card receipts for you to write it down, and by the time you notice that, the transaction is already done. So you're supposed to tell them the amount you want them to enter in the credit card ahead of time.

Oh and you also have to flag them down when you're ready to pay your bill. They will never ask you "are you ready for your bill". They must think that it's rude of them or something.

8. In Switzerland, as long as you have your own reusable water bottle, you will have no problem getting an endless supply of free water. There are gorgeous water fountains everywhere. And the water is delicious. This is coming from a water snob! And they don't have to add a thing to it. The one time we went to a restaurant and didn't bring our water bottles, it costed $6 for one water. We didn't make that mistake again. Hey, I guess they're really proud of their water, as they should be.

In Austria, there weren't as many water fountains around, but also if you went to a restaurant and ordered tap water, it didn't cost extra. In fact, if you ordered a coffee drink or wine, they automatically gave you a water with it. Their water is also top notch.

9. Shops in both Switzerland and Austria close early. Like 6 PM. And they are closed Sundays. It was worse in Switzerland, because we were in such small mountain towns. Some shops were only open from like 8AM-noon 3 days a week. It's insane how people can stay in business.


10. Lodging. Switzerland is expensive. I was a major planner and booked all our lodging ahead of time, and since hotels were so expensive in CH, we stayed in a hostel part of the time there. The hostel was still nice because it was a private room, we got fresh towels daily, had a double bed, our own sink and mirror area, and a-mazing views. I would definitely stay there again. The hotel we stayed at was really nice, just so expensive if we were to do all 5 nights.

Austria's pricing for hotels was so much better. Granted, my brother's girlfriend got us a really good deal, but we did shop around beforehand and things were a lot more affordable.

11. Tourist traps. So the definite tourist trap in the Swiss Alps were the Jungfraujoch (top of Europe) and the Schilthorn (James Bond movie). It was super expensive to take a cable car up and on a clear day, yeah it's cool I guess. But it wasn't clear when we were there, so it would've been cloudy. So then you're paying a crap ton of money to take a cable car up to play around in snow.


In Austria, it was probably the Schonbrunn Palace. The line to get in was just ridiculous, even mid-day on a weekday. We opted for the Belvedere Mansion instead, which checked off pretty much the same items; 16th century palace, beautiful architecture, chandeliers, paintings, gardens, sculptures, history, yada yada.


Both countries also, of course, had many similarities. People don't like small talk. They both had similar train systems. It costs an arm and a leg to take a cab anywhere. People apparently are comfortable in hot, stuffy temperatures and seem to never run A/C. Both like their beer watered down, but both have good crisp wine. You can find delicious espresso and pastries on every single corner in both places. And garbages are everywhere in public; you do not litter. You just don't.

We had a great time and everything went absolutely perfect. ...Except for when we first arrived in Vienna and couldn't figure out the right train to get on, and realized we watched two of them leave the station right in front of our eyes. There was lots of running up and down stairs to go look at the schedule, trying to figure out where our stop was supposed to be in such a big city. It took us a bit but we figured it out.

If you couldn't tell by this post, Switzerland was my favorite. And I can't wait to get back and see the southern part of the country as well! Glad we can have such a keepsake memory together :)

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