Musings of a Multi-Cultural Mind

So now that I've introduced our son and talked about our happy pregnancy discovery, I gotta get a little real about the uglier side.  Ahhhhh those lovely psychotic first trimester preggy hormones!  My first 4 weeks, I just figured my moodiness was still from withdrawal syndrome from the high dose corticosteroids I had been on to get my lungs functioning again.  But its almost as if as soon as I saw that little plus sign on that stick, it all hit me like a ton of bricks. First off - the morning  all day sickness.  I'm in mid 12th week so I'm hoping it goes away soon but damn.  I've lost 17lbs since the wedding, which hey, I needed, but its never all that great to lose weight from being sick and worrying if your baby is getting enough nutrition.  My Dr. even had me stop my prenatal vitamins for now until the nausea subsides in the 2nd trimester.  What sucks is I can't even throw up, I just get the dry heaves for extended periods of time, and my hu...

Up until now, I've nicknamed my baby "edamame".  I mean, come on, it looks like a little bean with tiny arms and legs sprouting out of it.  But since I happen to be old as F*, I was fortunate enough to do a genetic screening they give women older than 35 to check for any chromosomal abnormalities. This was a simple little blood test they did last week that just took blood from my arm as usual, and then the sample was sent off to a separate genetics lab for processing.  99% accurate and no trauma to the baby - just using whatever cells the baby sent out into my blood stream as opposed to having to stick a needle into my tummy to pull amniotic samples.  Pretty awesome! Well, today at our 12 week doctor's appointment, the results were in.  No down syndrome or any problems whatsoever, and signs of a lovely "Y" chromosome - meaning IT'S A BOY!  Stephen and I just high-fived each other as soon as we heard.  We would've been just as happy with a girl, but...

So honeymoon over, reality set in really quickly.  I was finally detoxing off of all the antibiotics and Prednisone I had been on for the past 2 months and feeling super motivated to get my new life as a Mrs. started.  I doubled down on my job search efforts and even had some good interviews. But two weeks post honeymoon I noticed something different going on.  Why on earth did my boobs hurt so much, and wait.... why are all my bras so tight?!  I never had this as a PMS symptom before.  I just brushed it off though as a possible side effect of the withdrawal from the Prednisone.  I mean, I had been on 60mg a day for over 2 months after all (typical dose for autoimmune disorders is 5-10mg for reference; my high dose was to bring inflammation down in my lungs that refused to work).  Such high doses of cortico-steroids can really mess with your hormones after all.  In fact, high doses in my youth stopped my period from coming all together for a cou...

This post is so looooong overdue but there have been certain battles and struggles I've been dealing with that some days make the tiniest task overwhelming. But I'll save that for another day and focus on writing about our wonderful little mini-honeymoon getaway in nearby Desert Hot Springs. We'd had a few ideas for our honeymoon, but considering the hubs is self-employed and I'm unemployed, we decided to keep it short and sweet.  We had thought about Santa Barbara or Mexico, but as the wedding approached, neither of us were getting over our colds and we were pretty exhausted from all the wedding stress.  We had stayed in Desert Hot Springs for Stephen's birthday at the Aqua Soleil hotel and we loved that we had a private hot springs jacuzzi in our own room, but unfortunately this time around their jacuzzi rooms were all booked up.  I did some digging around though, and found another place nearby. El Morocco Inn was just what we needed - less than 2 hours fr...