Pregnancy By PerCent!

Hey pregnant friends, have you ever wondered how far along you are in the grand scheme of things? I mean, you know you're _ weeks and _ days and if it's a particularly exciting or stressful pregnancy you might even have the hours, minutes, seconds figured out too. But how far along IS that really? I'm currently 7 weeks and 3 days, which means I'm currently 18.6% through my pregnancy. And when I get to 8 weeks, I will be 1/5 of the way through! Very cool! :) In case you are curious and don't want to spend half the day playing with numbers, I already did that for you. (Don't ask me why either, I hate math.) Please enjoy my chart below and feel free to link to it but PLEASE do not steal it and post it elsewhere on the internet! Thank you!

1/3 of 40 weeks = 13 weeks & 2 1/3 days long
Pregnancy is 6,720 hours long or 280 days
1% is 67.2 hours = 2.8 days = 2 days, 19.2 hours

4 wks is 10% or 1/10
5 wks is 12.5%
6 wks is 15% or 3/20
7 wks is 17.5%
8 wks is 20% or 1/5
9 wks is 22.5%
10 wks is 25% or 1/4
11 wks is 27.5%
12 wks is 30% or 3/10
13 wks is 32.5%
14 wks is 35% or 7/20
15 wks is 37.5%
16 wks is 40% or 4/10
17 wks is 42.5%
18 wks is 45% or 9/20
19 wks is 47.5%
20 wks is 50% or 1/2
21 wks is 52.5%
22 wks is 55% or 11/20
23 wks is 57.5%
24 wks is 60% or 6/10
25 wks is 62.5%
26 wks is 65% or 13/20
27 wks is 67.5%
28 wks is 70% or 7/10
29 wks is 72.5%
30 wks is 75% or 3/4
31 wks is 77.5%
32 wks is 80% or 8/10
33 wks is 82.5%
34 wks is 85% or 17/20
35 wks is 87.5%
36 wks is 90% or 9/10
37 wks is 92.5%
38 wks is 95% or 19/20
39 wks is 97.5%
40 wks is 100% or 3/3 or 10/10 or 100/100

Toddler Tales Tuesday

I love my Buggie's laugh! He's got such a contagious giggle! I tickle him all the time to hear it!

1/11 During morning snacktime, Buggie was laying on the floor looking under the appliances and furniture trying to find anything gross he could get his hands on - to eat it. He had Goldfish on a plate but UFFO's (Unidentified Fossilized Food Objects hehe) were apparently more appetizing. And you know no matter how well you clean your floors, nobody is as good at finding something gross you missed as a baby!
Later that night, almost midnight to be more precise, I was up late as usual. I heard the bedroom door open and then a drunkenly staggering Chicklet groggily stumbles over to me, tells me, "I need a kiss!" Gets her kiss and a hug, and then staggers drunkenly back to bed, saying "Night night" over her shoulder. Mmmkaaaayyy...

1/14 Bug comes running up to me saying "Nanana! Nanana!" in a singsong voice. I gave him a banana, he replied, "Nankyou!"
Meanwhile Chicklet is dancing around me excitedly, accidentally steps backward onto my foot. I didn't even notice. She did though and said, "Oh Mommy I'm sorry!" and promptly kissed me before returning to dancing around. Just after that she began singing ♫ I love you Mommyyyyyy! I loooove yoooou Moooommy!♪ making the tune up as she went along. *melt*

1/27 We're watching the State of the Union... Chicklet was at first concerned over the fact that the TV was on and it wasn't Dora (we rarely let the kids watch TV and only prescreened DVDs when they do). After getting over the initial shock, she proceeded to stand very close to the tv, looking up at it with this baffled and offended look on her face. She listened to the speech for a while before suddenly turning around, throwing her arms up in the air, rolling her eyes in exaggerated anguish, and moaning; "Ohhh MAKE it STOOOP!" I tried not to giggle so as not to encourage her disrespect, as I was secretly thinking, 'I'll bet that's what ALOT of people are thinking as they watch this speech.' ;)


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If you have a sweet, cute, or funny Toddler (or kid) story, I'd love it if you'd share it! :)
If you would like to post a Toddler Tales Tuesday on your blog, please leave a link to your post in my Linky below, AND post the code for this blog hop in your Toddler Tales Tuesday post! ;) The linky will remain open for 2 weeks following the date of this post.
If you don't have a blog or would prefer it, you may share your toddler tales here in the comments.

If anyone's awake I could use some prayers right now!

((**UPDATED at bottom**))
Okay tonight I feel just awful. It's 11pm. I am so close to throwing up but I am scared if I start I won't be able to stop. It's turning into hyperemisis again... just like with my first. Not yet, but I'm scared it's coming. Only with her it came on suddenly. This time it's just gotten worse and worse every day until last night I felt so close to vomiting but didn't. Then this morning again so close to losing it. The other day I did lose it and vomited for an hour and had burst blood vessels all around my eyes the next morning from heaving so hard. Once I start I have trouble stopping. Now tonight I am not going to be able to fight it. My 3 year old is in the bathroom so I am trying to hold off until she goes back to bed. We only have one bathroom. I don't want to scare her either.
"Oh Dear God! Please help me not to puke until my daughter goes back to bed! And please help me to stop puking shortly and not just keep on vomiting all night long like with my daughter!" (I'm so afraid of that happening again. I have kids to take care of this time. I can't be in the bathroom puking 24-7.)
Hurry Chicklet hurry! Hurry! Hurry!
I have that weird tingling feeling the back of your mouth gets just before you hurl...


((**UPDATE 2:30pm 1/27:**))
Well it's official. I couldn't stop throwing up for several hours last night and most of the day so far today. My husband has left work early to pick up my prescription. I hate meds. I really do. I would rather go a natural route if at all possible. But this morning I started throwing up water too. And it's kinda getting dangerous for me and baby once I can't keep down liquids either. Thankfully I am not heaving at the moment. Usually it's bad in the late mornings around 10am, and then very worst in the evenings around 6 or 7pm. The fact that it was worse this morning than last night, and in fact worse every day this week than the preceeding day, is a very bad sign. So I broke down and called the midwives this morning between heaving into a bucket and they, knowing how my first pregnancy was, just called me in a prescription. Which my dear husband is on his way to get for me now.
Right now I'm trying to get the kids to nap so I can nap too. Wish me luck. I'm going to post some fun pregnancy related stuff later tonight if the meds help enough. ;)

GIVEAWAY: $10 Dollar Tree Gift Card! [ENDED]

Would you like to win $10 to spend in Dollar Tree? Well of course you would! Who doesn't love Dollar Tree?! I for one just love browsing through Dollar Tree! So if you too heart the deals and steals at my favorite $1 store, if you want to get your thrifty hands on one of these,

then this is one giveaway you're going to want to enter! Here's how...

TO ENTER:
You must do entry #1 before you qualify for any other entries. All entries after that are optional; you may do some, none, or all. You MUST leave your email address in your primary entry AND in each of your daily Tweet link comments so I don't have to hunt too hard for it if you win. To avoid spam, alter it so a program can't tell it's an email addres but a person could. For example my email is mamamirage at yahoo dot com. Giveaway is open to residents of the US and ends on Valentine's Day, Sunday, the 14th of February 2010, at NOON Mountain Standard Time. Winner will be emailed, has 24 hours to respond before a new winner is picked, and will be announced in a post on here as soon as they are confirmed. By entering this or any of my giveaways, you acknowlege that you have read and agree with my Giveaway Rules and Liability Policy / Disclosure (as updated 1/9/10) . Please read each entry qualification carefully;

#1. Primary entry, READ CAREFULLY: Visit the blog of the person who commented directly above you, then come back here and tell me something you like about the person or their blog. If your blog is not appropriate for children to view, please state that in your comments so the following commenter knows. If the person above you doesn't have a blog, or if their blog is not family friendly and you do not wish to view it, you may visit my featured bloggy friend of the week HERE instead. This goes for the first commenter also- the person above you is nobody so you may visit my featured blogger instead. Don't forget to leave your email address in your comment. {worth 1 entry}

#2. Bonus entry: Leave a thoughtful comment on any of the most recent 7 posts on THIS blog Every Precious Joy and then come back here and tell me which post you commented. {worth 2 entries-comment here twice}
#3. Bonus entry: Tweet (up to once a day if you wish) and then comment here with the tweet link and your email again. Don't forget to comment here afterward so it counts! You may make up your own tweet or use my suggestion below, but make sure it contains @MamaMirage so I can see it, and the link to this giveaway. {worth one entry per daily tweet per person}
       #Giveaway $10 Gift Card to Dollar Tree! @MamaMirage http://bit.ly/5JnqIT Ends 2/14
#4. Bonus entry: Leave a thoughtful comment on any of my reviews on my review blog HERE, then comment on this post saying which review you commented. {worth 2 entries}
#5. Bonus entry: Snag one of my buttons (you'll see them in the sidebar) and put it on your blog, then leave me a link letting me know where to see it! {worth 3 entries}
#6. Bonus entry: Blog about this giveaway with a link to this giveaway in your post, and then come back here and leave me the link to where you blogged it so I can see! {worth 3 entries}
#7. Bonus entry: Leave a thoughtful comment on my latest book review titled "This is Your Brain in Love" and because it's my newest review it is {worth 3 entries}.

That should keep you busy for a while. ;)
___________________
This giveaway is not sponsored. I paid for it myself and receive nothing in return for it except having you nice folks visit my blogs. Which I consider an honor. So thanks for stopping by! :)

On being pregnant again

I wouldn't have thought I would be so HAPPY to be pregnant. You see, I haven't exactly had GOOD pregnancies to date. I'm not one of those chipper little cutesy preggo's everyone loves. I'm the one with my head in the toilet for 9 months or calling my poor midwife's office every day because I'm bleeding or contracting.
With Chicklet, my first pregnancy, I was irregular so I didn't really think anything of it when I had a 3 month long lapse between cycles. It had happened before and we weren't exactly planning on having kids. We wanted kids! We just saw the state of the world and didn't think we had the heart to bring kids into this mess. So we were using non-hormonal preventative measures. Well I felt just awful queasy for the longest time and my sister told me on the phone one day that I was pregnant. I laughed at her. Took a test to prove her wrong. Wasn't I surprised when there were TWO pink lines on the test instead of one! Well the queasy turned into heaving and then one night I started heaving during supper and could not stop. Sometime in the middle of the night it was so bad I couldn't take a sip of water without it coming back up with blood. Even when I didn't drink anything, the blood and bile was coming up. By morning I was so weak I couldn't lift my head off the toilet seat for more than a second. My husband called off work and carried me to the car to take me in. They tried to get an IV in but I was too dehydrated. They kept stabbing me but no vein could be found. Finally in desperation they gave me a shot of anti-nausea meds in my hip, hoping that I had enough circulation for it to work enough for me to keep some fluids down the natural way. Thankfully it did work and within minutes I was gulping water down my raw throat like I'd come from a week in the desert. I was prescribed the same drug, in pill form, to take for the rest of my pregnancy. I would periodically have bouts of uncontrolable puking, and would take one of the meds, and puke it back up, then take another, maybe puke it back up too, and take another, which I might finally keep down long enough to give me a few hours peace. Towards the end of my pregnancy I was able to wean myself down on the pills by drinking lots of Morning Wellness Tea from EarthMamaAngelBaby.com and in fact I think I went most of month 9 without taking the pills at all, thanks to that tea. Plus being due in September was really difficult. It's just SO HOT here in the summer, not uncommon to be 110 degrees, that when you're already having hot flashes, it's pretty much like being boiled alive. I also had painful braxton hicks contractions the entire second half of the pregnancy. Thankfully, she was born nearly 2 weeks early!
My second pregnancy was a sad one. I just knew somehow that I was pregnant. I couldn't get a positive test though! I remember staring at the test wondering WHY it was wrongly saying negative! Sure enough I missed my cycle. We hadn't planned a baby, it was a surprise, and I told my husband I felt sure I was preggo though the test would not confirm it. I was happy, walking around with my hand on my tummy humming cheerfully, but wondered when the morning sickness would start. The sickness never started. One day I felt ... off. I just didn't feel right. That day I started spotting just the slightest bit. I spotted again the next day. Just a drop. And again the next... For about a week just a tiny spot of blood each day. And I was sinking into an uncontrolable depression. Something was WRONG. I went through the motions. But inside I was all wrong. A month after the spotting I started bleeding. I bled so much I should have gone to the ER. I was soaking an overnight pad every half hour. I should probably have died, as much blood as I lost. I remember putting the baby Chicklet down for a nap and collapsing into bed, only to wake up an hour later with myself and all the bedding soaked in blood. I numbly just cleaned myself up and took a heating pad to my computer chair, putting the baby in the playpen with some cheerios, and curled up in my chair in extreme pain, not even realizing how bad a shape I was in. I was too numb and fuzzy from bloodloss to know how bad I was. My husband didn't know what was wrong with me or how bad it was to know to take me in. Finally, 7 days after it started, the bleeding just suddenly stopped. I spent the next months inventing time-consuming projects and becoming addicted to message boards to take my mind off of my inner pain. I was mourning a baby that the little white test told me never existed. Finally, God let all that bottled up hurt inside me just explode one night, in the middle of the night, and HE put a friend online in the middle of the night who asked the right questions, and confirmed for me that YES it was a baby and the test can't take that away from me and that YES, I may have only been 7 weeks but I have a RIGHT to greive for my baby! When she gave me that validation I was finally able to begin to greive for my lost baby, and so I began to heal. For a while it was all I wanted to talk about. The floodgates I'd held back so long were flung wide and months of greif POURED out. My dear friends bore with my constant need to talk about it. Then it began to hurt less, I began to need to cry about it less, I began to reach out to others who had lost pregnancies, and I thought about it less and less.
Then, just 4 months after my loss, my husband told me he was finally ready to try for another baby. He had been mostly a spectator in the miscarriage. He didn't even really know it happened until the floodgates were flung wide and I began to greive, about a month before his announcement. I had been so depressed I didn't talk to anyone until then, and then after that point I talked to everyone about it. But when he told me he was ready for another baby I had mixed feelings. I was afraid of another miscarriage. I was afraid my greif had not run it's course enough to love another baby yet, and I was afraid that if I didn't agree enthusiastically he might change his mind and we would not ever have another! When we married we'd agreed on 4 kids, but after Chicklet, he had changed his mind and said he only wanted just the one. Just Chicklet. So I agreed happily to begin trying in the spring. I was secretly glad though, that we were waiting until spring to start trying because my heart was not ready. Meanwhile, we stopped using contraceptives and I began to chart. We used the rythm method. And whaddaya know, I was new to charting, messed up, and wound up pregnant that very first month. I was terrified when I found out. I wasn't happy about it because I was too scared. I had heard that if you get pregnant too close to a miscarriage it increases the risk of miscarrying again.
And with Bug, it was a very difficult pregnancy. There was extreme prolonged pain in the general vicinity of my ovaries. The midwife thought I might have an ectopic pregnancy. The pain was very intense and crippling and lasted for many weeks into the pregnancy, even after we confirmed by ultrasound that the pregnancy was not ectopic. Then, toward the end of the first trimester I was spotting. Then for the duration of the second trimester I was contracting, sometimes for too long. I had to try every trick in the book to get it to stop sometimes. It kept getting worse into the third trimester. One night it was beginning to feel like real labor. I was only about 7 months along I think. I was praying like crazy and it suddenly stopped. I told my midwife at the next appointment, and she said to drink half a glass of wine if it ever got that serious again. She said the wine should get it to stop and if it didn't, go to the ER immediately. We were counting down the weeks until I was 36 weeks along and it would be safe for him to be born. And I did have to use the wine trick 2 or 3 times when it got really scary and nothing else was working. Then I was 36 weeks and the contractions, all that scary preterm labor, STOPPED. That's right, it all stopped. My belly was so huge. I was roasting alive in the hot August sun. Packing for a move. My hips kept dislocating and I was in so much pain all night long from him being so HUGE that I barely slept. I could not move at all without pain. I was exhausted from just getting up and down out of a chair. I couldn't reach my legs. I felt sick from being so tired and hurting so much. We moved to our first owned home right before his due date. His due date came and went. The day after, I spent the day cleaning and unpacking and in general feeling like a beeched whale. I was SO much bigger in the belly than I was with my first! I could barely reach the stove to cook without putting my belly in the frying pan. I wore myself into complete exhaustion so of course at 7:30 pm when I plopped down on the couch totally done in, labor started. He was born the following morning. I didn't have the strength to both sit up and push him out simultaneously so hubby had to keep me from falling off the birthing stool while I pushed.

So you see, after those 3 pregnancies, this one kind of took me off guard when instead of being absolutely terrified of the pregnancy, looking at that second pink line, I was overwhelmed with JOY! Such joy! I'm so excited to be having another precious little blessing! It doesn't really make sense, but hey I'll take this strange all-consuming joy! Who wants to be scared and miserable when they can be so happy? Of course I'd be happy and excited about a new baby regardless, but it's weird to be so happy it overshadows the yuckiness of pregnancy. So despite the early and intense morning sickness I've been experiencing with this pregnancy (as I posted about yesterday), I'm really joyful and hopeful overall!
And something else strange... when I saw the positive test I somehow just knew this one is healthy. I wasn't scared of miscarrying. I don't know why, but I just felt ... like this baby is safe. Weird I know. But here I have made it to 7 weeks, a good sign. :)
So, I may be moaning and complaining about the heat this summer, and spending more time with my head in the toilet this winter, but I am HAPPY so very very happy to be having another baby! THANK YOU GOD FOR THIS SWEET BLESSING!!!

January 24th Featured Bloggy Friend!

Featured blogger kinda went by the wayside over ther hollidays, didn't it? Well it's back! This week I'm featuring Heather from Kingdom Arrows. Click the button to visit her blog!

Pop on over to Heather's blog and see what treasures you find!
Heather, What was your main reason for beginning to blog? What is your greatest inspiration for what you write? What is one thing you know alot about? Do you have any hobbies other than blogging? If you get a chance to answer in the comments we'd love to learn more about you! :)

Would you like to be my featured friend someday? Remember that I prefer to feature blogger friends who
-follow me
-have commented recently on my blog
-update their blog frequently
-blog things that are inspirational/relevant to me personally
-do not endorse things on their blog that I'm strongly against.