It's been a while

I know, it's been a while since I've posted. I just haven't been in the mood to talk about anything. I don't think I'm depressed.... but I'm definitely going through a slump, trying to get over finding out I'm pregnant and trying to move into the getting excited faze. I had a setback, too. I went to my doctor Monday for the first time, thinking that I was about 13-16 weeks pregnant... but I'm not :( I'm only 7 weeks pregnant. I don't know why this bothers me so much, but it does. It now feels like the pregnancy is going to last FOREVER. They say I'm due November 4, but I had my other two kids almost a month early, so I'm expecting sometime in October. So here's the little ultrasound:

I know that this should probably get me excited.. but it doesn't. Probably because I'm not very far along in my pregnancy and it's just a tiny dot. The one thing that does make me happy is that it's only one dot... and not two... or THREE! I know that I'll get more excited. I think being so sick and tired isn't helping the situation either. 

One of the big let downs of this whole thing, is accepting the fact that right now, I can't lose weight, and I can run, but nothing like I was doing. I was so proud of myself for losing over 50 pounds and for running over 3 miles regularly. Those were things I never thought I'd be able to do, but I was doing it. It seems like this pregnancy just put a big HALT STOP CAN'T DO IT sign in my head. The doctor said I could still run, just not too strenuously, but I just haven't been able to get myself to do it. I feel like it's going to hurt, and I'm going to be slow, and it's going to be like starting all over, since I've taken 3 weeks off. And I'm SO TIRED all the time. JD doesn't sleep through the night yet, and even if he did, I still think I'd be tired. I think part of that is from all the throwing up and nausea I've been dealing with, and then nursing, and trying to feed myself, JD, and this new growing baby. I have one more month of nursing JD so hopefully it will get better after that. 

I am just counting down the days until this baby is here so I can start losing weight and exercising again! My doctor said she really doesn't want me to gain more than 20lbs this pregnancy. Which I'm TOTALLY fine with. That's excluding the water retention if I get Pre Eclampsia. With both of my other children, I got pre-eclampsia (it's seriously high blood pressure caused by the placenta that basically causes me to be induced... and it's very dangerous). Typically, the more times you have it, the more likely you are to get it. I don't have BP problems outside of pregnancy, but it gets bad during pregnancy. With JD, I was put on bedrest at 28 weeks... which was TERRIBLE! I'm praying that that doesn't happen this time. Anyways... when the Pre-E. kicks in, I start retaining water really really bad. I will gain a good 15-20 pounds in about a day from water retention/swelling. NO JOKE. But as soon as the baby delivers, it pretty much goes away. So the 20 pounds the doctor wants me to stay under, is excluding the water retention, because there's nothing I can do about that. The Pre-E is not preventable either, although I'm doing anything and everything I can from reading online to try and prevent it. Whatever happens, happens, I guess. 

So besides all of that, I've been slightly concerned about Isabella's weight. The doctor has never said anything negative about it, but I'm still concerned. She is tall, really tall for her age. I didn't realize it, until she gets around kids older than her. But she's also big... really big ... for her age.. and she carries a lot of her weight in her stomach. Anyways, I never want to say negative things to her, or talk about dieting. I don't even want to talk about exercising to lose weight. So I just decided, as the weather gets nicer, we are going to spend most of the day outside. Saturday, we spent all but 2 hours of the day outside, and Sunday we spent the whole day, excluding church/nap time outside. We played on the playground, did softball, rode the 4 wheeler. I think also, being out of the house, helps us both not want to snack (she's a snacker too). We already had emptied our house of most sweets, but I also went and bought a HUGE bowl of grapes and some pretty decent granola bars. When she wants something, instead of fish crackers, or a cookie, or something like that, I tell her to get some grapes. The first day, she got mad, but now she's fine with it. I'm hoping that this summer, we can change her habits, and shape her body a little better. I'm not obsessing about it, I just want to be a good Mom and have a healthy child. I don't want her to struggle with her weight and her body image her whole life, so I want to do what I can now to help that. Again, I think it's important that I never tell her, "let's go outside and play so we can exercise because we need to lose weight." I just say, "let's go outside and play." I also don't say, "eat some grapes because the other stuff is making you gain weight or is bad for you." I just say, "If you want something, there's grapes in the fridge. That's your only option right now." Here's some pictures from the weekend with the kids: