3 Months Along Today! (And Daddies are Expectant, Too)

Today marks 12 weeks, or 3 months along for us, and most importantly, the end of the first trimester!!! Yay!!! I think the majority of the nausea is gone now, to be replaced by heartburn. No more spicy food for a while. If Bryan wants tacos, he can have them, but I'm eating something else. I ate macaroni salad last night before we went to our childbirth education class, and I had heartburn during the whole thing, and for most of the night. The salad had red peppers in it. Not exactly a spicy food, but it still gave me mild heartburn. I think I need to get some chocolate milk mix. I can drink that to combat some of the heartburn, just not a lot, because it will set off my lactose intolerance. I'm looking forward to really starting to show, and hopefully to feel the baby move soon. Unfortunately, I think the military will allow us only one more ultrasound, unless there's a reason to do more than that, so we may not get to see the baby again for a couple months. I'm not really sure. If I end up being high-risk for any reason, they could do more, but I'd rather not be high-risk. That increases the likelihood that I won't be able to have a vaginal birth.

We attended our first childbirth education class last night at the hospital. Apparently, it was meant for women who are much closer to their due dates than we are. All but one of the other women there was due in January or February. It was still good information to hear about, though. They gave us yet another book to read through, I've gotten so much literature over the past two months. I'm sure I'm due to receive more still. Unfortunately, Bryan hasn't really looked at any of the literature I've received. I worry that he'll be horribly uninformed for this pregnancy and the months still to come.

We finally managed to talk about a lot of different things last night. He became quiet and withdrawn on the drive home from the class. That always signals he has something on his mind. He didn't want to talk about it, so I left him alone. Oh, but my mind was whirling, afraid that I'd done or said something wrong. I finally told him, it wasn't what he wasn't telling me that mattered, it was that he wasn't telling me. He finally expressed that he was feeling a little left out of things. I explained to him that I felt like he wanted to be. He didn't appear to be engaged with this pregnancy, other than making sure I was physically cared for. He didn't ask questions, he didn't bring up any concerns to me. But yet, he asked questions at the childbirth class last night. He totally took me by surprise, because he hadn't even mentioned that it was on his mind. He'd talked about it at work, apparently, but he'd not said anything to me. He was concerned about postpartum depression, because I am prone to depressive episodes. He asked the nurses at the class if there was any way to prevent it. Totally shocked me, because I had no idea of that concern. Of course, some of the blame for leaving him out was my fault. I don't want to worry him unnecessarily, so I go to other sources to express my worries, and research on my own to find out if I should be worrying. I'm also afraid that, when it comes to parenting styles or shopping for the baby, that he'll just defer to me anyway. He does that with anything involving shopping for anyone else. I tried to get him to look online with me for things to add to our baby registry, but he doesn't like the idea of registries at all. He feels it's like asking people to get us something. He's a very self-reliant person, sometimes to a fault.

I really fear being the one to do the majority of the care-taking of the baby, because I've done it before. He's never been around newborns, other than his siblings, who are 15 and 18 now. Because he doesn't ask questions or bring anything up to me, I worry that he's going to wait until the baby's born to ask how to do things. I would just really like for him to know those things already, so that I can rest those first couple of weeks. He feels that his questions will be answered in time by the doctors and various classes we'll take, with which I agree, I just didn't like the fact that I didn't know he had questions to begin with. He did tell me that we've talked about a lot of different parenting styles before, such as the use of pacifiers, but those conversations usually revolved around the little girl I babysit for. I needed a refresher on how he felt about this child in particular. So we talked about a couple different things, some he knew how to handle, some he didn't. It was a good conversation overall. It made us realize we are both going to have to handle things a little differently from now on as far as communication goes.

I really hope I haven't made him come off as a jerk. He never likes me to talk about this kind of stuff, because I guess I have a tendency to do that. He's really doing a wonderful job taking care of me, and trying to make sure he can come to all these classes and doctor's appointments with me. He pays really good attention to the nurses teaching the class, asking them questions about things they mention, like how long it takes for the soft spot on a baby's head to go away. He actually already got someone from work who is giving us some neutral clothes and a couple pieces of furniture for the baby. It's funny, he wants me to have the tests done for genetic defects like Down's Syndrome, so he can be prepared, but yet, he doesn't want us to find out the gender of the baby. I just think it's funny. I kept referring to the baby as a "he," and he told me I probably shouldn't do that, just in case it's a girl. We don't want to give the poor child a complex before she's even born. I guess I'm just hoping so fervently for a boy.

Anyway, I've been writing this for about an hour to an hour and a half now, so I should end it here. 19 Days Until Christmas!!! Yay!!! Time to go put on some Christmas music and maybe read a little bit. Later I'm going to make a list of things we need for the baby, and things we may want for the baby, so we can decide what needs to go into the registry and what doesn't.

TTFN!!!