Oh, Sweden!

We had every intention of setting ourselves up with a midwife today, as we had checked the website and knew what the call hours were. Sweden really likes the concept of call hours. There are specific times that you can call many places like doctors offices, government offices and similar fields to schedule an appointment or get information. The American Embassy allows calls between 12 and 1 each day. That’s it. Well, we slept in today and it felt awesome. I am guessing in about 8 months, sleeping until 10:30 will only be a fond memory. It was okay because the clinic has morning and afternoon hours. We decided to run a few errands in the meantime. Sally needed a manicure and, having checked the website, I knew the groomer opened at noon. We got there only to discover they only work Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the summer. Back home we headed. Then we tried to call the midwife, only to discover that in the summer, they only take calls in the morning. Oh well. At least they aren’t closed for the entire month like some places. Swedes take their summers very seriously.

On a fun note, we switched mobile service providers so that we’ll have better coverage and the package includes 5000 worldwide SMS messages, including pictures, each month. Hopefully that means baby picture sharing. We ordered new iPhones that came with a year of Spotify Premium, so we ordered cute cases, tiny radio transmitters for each car and new matching ear buds. (I hate the Apple earphones!). We also ordered a pregnancy seatbelt for Cami.

We’re both looking forward to our first ultrasound on August 8th and if all goes well, we’ll celebrate with a little baby shopping and perhaps an IKEA romp. We truly do live the charmed life. Now, it’s time to turn in. I have been typing this while walking Sally at 10:30 PM. It’s still as bright as 5 PM back home. Despite the phone hours, Sweden does have its perks. We had better set an alarm so we don’t sleep past the acceptable time to snag us a midwife. Oh, blissful sleep. How I will miss you.

And so it begins…

What do you do when you 6 weeks pregnant wife announces that she wants macaroni & cheese at 12:40 AM?

You get up and make her some macaroni & cheese, of course.  Sigh.

I Love My Brother

My brother and I have not always had the best of relationships.  We can get angrier with each other than with anyone else in the world.  We don’t have a lot of patience with each other, probably because each we knew what the other was capable of when we were younger.  Maturity was rather slow coming in both of us, I must admit.  The relationship tends to be better when we are far apart, but I also know there is no one who would have my back faster than my brother.   He knows the same about me.

When Cami and I got together, he was the first person in the family to ask me point blank.  He was very supportive and just wanted to know what was going on.  He’s always tried to smooth things over when they were not so easy for everyone else to grasp.   After we told mom about the pregnancy, I got a text from my brother that said, “I heard you’re having a baby!”  lol  Very typical.  Then a couple of days ago he asked me to call him.   We talked about us having a baby and how happy we were and he told us he was very excited to be an uncle.

Then, this morning, I got another text from him asking me to call him.  At 8:30 AM my time and 1:30 AM, I did.  He said, “Hey, I forgot to ask you… which one of you is pregnant?”  You cannot imagine what that meant to me.  He just accepted point blank that we were having a baby and that he would be an uncle and it didn’t even occur to him to ask which one was actually carrying the baby.  We had a great long talk while I walked Sally.  (She was pretty happy to get a much longer morning romp than she usually does.)  He said some pretty amazing things.  The boy has grown into a pretty wonderful man.  We are lucky to have him and our children will be lucky to have him.

First Post-Positive Major Baby Purchase

I am a Southern girl and I just don’t believe it’s possible to bring a baby into this world without a proper rocking chair!   We had looked around here and couldn’t find much.  The dream was a nice glider, but they just don’t have them here. (I have spent more than my fair share of time gliding in Babies R’ Us and wishing.)  IKEA has a nice rocker, but it’s just that and not proper for nursing or getting up and down with a baby.  The discovery of free shipping to Sweden on Amazon UK’s site opened up a new realm of possibilities, but I didn’t consider buying a chair.  Then I just happened to check.  Not only do they have a few, but they ship here for free!  

As soon as it’s back in stock, Amazon will be delivering this to us:

We won’t have a nursery, really, but this will go in the guest room for middle of the night bonding time.  :D

We’re pregnant!! (4+6)

Yay, it finally happened – little Snobbit is in place, and growing as we speak. This day, according to one of the pregnancy calenders, little Snobbet’s liver starts to function. Isn’t that crazy?! It has been 2½ weeks since conception, and already he has a liver?! :D It’s wild, and we are so happy.

So far, I feel pretty good. A little nausea, but not crazy bad. More tired than usual, and much more sensitive. But you know what? Even if the next 8 months were to be sickness like I’ve never known it before, it would be okay! Just bring it on, as long as little Snobbet is safe. <3 

-Camilla

Beaches, Birthdays and Busyness!

I always have every intention of updating this blog more often than I do, but time just seems to get away from me. It has been a month since my last post, and as you could imagine, a lot has happened. We went in for the ultrasound and Cami had "lots" of follicles that looked like they could be heading for maturity. After that, we headed for IKEA and bought lots of things to get the house and guest room ready for the arrival of the Beaches! We had to schedule a second ultrasound for a few days later, on Tuesday, to which Cami went alone, and we had one follicle that was stepping out ahead of the rest. They gave us instructions to trigger on Wednesday night and come back in for the insemination on Friday. Yep. The same Friday that the crew was arriving from the US. So, we made a plan. I would head to the airport and pick everyone up while Cami took Sally with her to the hospital. Since the hospital is only 20 minutes from the airport and their flight was due to come in 2.5 hours before the appointment, we'd have plenty of time to get there. Well, my favorite phrase of late has been, "If you want to hear God laugh tell him your plans." It has fit in with a lot of things. The Beaches missed their connecting flight in Copenhagen and had no way to contact us, as we didn't make sure they had our numbers and such before they left the US. I was left at the airport for right at 6 hours, having no clue what was going on, while Cami had to do the insemination on her own. It was rough, but they made it, Cami made the appointment and it all began a very busy week.

 DT got to go to Dreamhack in Jonköping while his parents stayed at a wonderful hotel and did lots of sight seeing and shopping. (It was there that I got Cami a pretty darn cute one-piece for her birthday!) We went to Gothenburg for two days and shopped and visited museums. We spent the night out on Hönö. On Friday, which was Midsommar and Cami's birthday, we had a big meal with Cami's mom, brother, sister-in-law, the nephews and the Beach family. It was a fun day. Saturday we laid low and on Sunday I took them back to the airport. It was a very fun, exhausting trip for everyone.

During the visit, we talked about baby possibilities some, but this time neither of us were really feeling it. One morning when Cami woke, LE said she looked like she was glowing, but other than that, Cami felt no symptoms. She returned to work on Monday and did an overnight. I brought up how we would proceed in upcoming months on Tuesday night, which was a mistake as it just made us both sad. We had originally planned on testing on Wednesday, but since there were no symptoms, we wanted to save ourselves that two days of, "well, it could have been a false negative!" which it can at that point, so we decided to wait until Friday. Then on Wednesday, the sadness really crept in and we decided we would test Thursday morning. Cami went out to buy a test. When she came home, she had bought two tests and some good coffee. She said, "You make us some coffee and some ice cream while I test, just to get it over with." I was had just finished making the coffee and was putting a tag on Esme's new collar when I heard Cami gasp from the bathroom. I ran in and we both looked in amazement at this:

Neither of us could believe it. It was still flashing for a moment or two, but I kept thinking over and over that it wouldn't say "gravid" (pregnant in Swedish) if she wasn't. There are false negatives, but a false positive 14 days after trigger would be crazy rare. After we finished crying and jumping and freaking out, we tried to call Amy & Christy. We finally got Christy, who was at work (sorry!) on the phone and then Amy called back. Needless to say, they were thrilled. That's when I started trying to call my mom. Then I called Christina and got to hear Lucy babbling in the background. Then I tried mom again. And again. And again. We called the Beaches to thank them for being such good luck and then tried mom again. And again. It took two and a half hours and a call to my dad to get mom on the phone, but we finally got her. She is so super excited! Then we called Nana, who is also thrilled. Then, while doing a little dance and singing, "I'm gonna be a mommy! We're gonna have a baby!" I accidentally butt dialed my mom, so she heard the whole thing, much to my embarrassment. Sigh. This baby is already making a fool out of me.

 It's still very early and we are both realistic in that we know anything can happen, but we are pregnant! Snobbit may be on his or her way. Cami tested again when we woke up at 3 AM.

Confirmation sure feels good! I guess the whole nature of this blog will change now. I couldn't be more thrilled!

Not the slam dunk we had hoped for...

Well, our second attempt came and went without the positive we were hoping for.  The second round was as opposite from the first as it could be.  No symptoms.  No certainty.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I took that as a good sign.  Cami seemed to know that the test would be negative.  It was more immediately emotional this time.  Rather than just sadness, I think we both experienced a lot of anger.  There are people having babies all over the place.  16 year olds get their own episodes of MTV reality shows for accidentally getting knocked up.  Jillian Michaels, who has been chronicling her road to adopting a little girl from Haiti had a bit of a surprise for her fans.  The same week that the adoption came through, her partner gave birth to a healthy baby boy.  She became the mother to two in one week!  I was so jealous I couldn't see straight.   She honestly seems over the moon and I'm happy for her, but it still got to me.  Then there are the spoiled idiots who can barely care for themselves.  They are having babies and whining about whatever thing they feel they are entitled to, be it attention, baby-sitters, familial support, and it's all playing out on my Facebook feed.  Ugh.

We weren't sure if timing would be in our favor to try again in June.   We still don't know if it will work out, but we are going to try.  Cami is filling herself up with those fun hormones and we'll be having an ultrasound on Friday.  We hope we can inseminate before the Beach crew rolls in from the US the following week.  Maybe being busy with them will make the two weeks of waiting go a little faster. I think we're even less hopeful this time than we were last month.  It's absolutely taking its toll on us emotionally.  When I called the clinic to tell them we had a negative result, the midwife asked if we wanted to take a little break.  Had you asked me before we started this, I wouldn't have imagined taking a break.  I would have thought rolling from month to month, without the possibility of missing a cycle, would be the way to go.  Now I can't imagine that.  We are trying in June, but mainly because the clinic will be closed in July.  If this attempt doesn't result in a pregnancy, we will take a much needed break.  We've only been at this for a little over two months and it feels like a year.  I don't know that one could ever be prepared for how difficult this journey is.

I have worried since we decided to try to have a baby that we have been setting ourselves up for pain.  We are both planners and bargain hunters.  When something was on sale that we thought we might need for a future baby, we bought it.  Now, those items that were so much fun before (the pram, the, car seat, the crib, the bouncy seat, the BabyBjörn, the tons of clothes, the blankets I have been making) are a bit of a reminder that it's really out of our hands.  I don't like to gamble.  I don't like to take chances.  I am the girl that will go with her friends to a casino, get $20 worth of dimes and sit and play video slots all night.  If I double my money or run out, even if it's in the first 15 minutes, I am done.  I am happy to sit and watch others gamble the big bucks.  (Though once I did win $147 in the first hour.  I put it all away and ended up buying everyone dinner that night.)  Now I have to put my money down and wait for that little ball to settle somewhere on a roulette wheel.  It's not a fun position to be in.