Movement

For about the last 2 weeks, I have felt our baby moving. At first I wasn’t sure that it was her because it was just light little flutters. Over the past week or so, she has really started moving and there’s no doubt that it’s her causing the movement.

Tyler got to feel her last week. We had had Mexican for dinner and I had some spicy salsa. I’m not sure if she enjoyed it or hated it, but it REALLY got her moving. Enough that both of us could sit on the couch and Tyler had his hand on my stomach and could feel her movements. Ever since then, I have felt her moving about every day.

It's the strangest thing to be sitting in a meeting and feeling her doing flips or dancing or whatever it is that she's doing in there. It feels like I'm riding on a rollercoaster and no one can tell that anything is happening. It is pretty neat though. I get to feel her all the time and we're already bonding. I just love her so much already.

PINK

From the day we found out that we are having a girl, our house has begun to fill up with all things pink. Buying the little outfits has been fun for all of our family and friends. In fact, I think this girl has more clothes than I do… and I’m not kidding. Many things have been bought ahead for next summer on great clearance and there’s lots that has come from garage sales, so our little girl is already a bargainista!

We decided on nursery bedding and the plan is to find paint and border this weekend so that we can decorate next weekend. We’ve had boxes in our garage for weeks for the crib and changing table. It will be great to see them built and in place so that we can start getting all things baby settled in that room.

It seems like the wait until this point has been so long, but now that we know her gender and I’m getting further along in my pregnancy, things are picking up! We need to decorate the nursery, we have signed up for all of our baby classes and have scheduled our appointments through the end of the pregnancy. When we look at the calendar, it’s filling up fast. And we can’t forget that we have Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years’ during the 3^rd Trimester… we are going to be busy! That is wonderful though because time will just tick away and before we know it, we’ll get to meet our sweet baby and we can’t wait!!

The Past 11 Weeks

So maybe I’m not near as good at this blogging thing as I had imagined. Maybe, too, it’s the fact that many of the last weeks haven’t been very “news-worthy.” Don’t get me wrong, many things are changing during this pregnancy, but everything has been going right along schedule and we haven’t had any issues, so it’s been smooth sailing.

We found out on September 23^rd that we are having a GIRL! That appointment was our second attempt to find out if our little one was going to be a boy or a girl. She is breech and reverse, so seeing the important parts for the scan was a bit difficult. At our second appointment, the nurse wasn’t even sure if we would find out, but luckily she cooperated and showed us just what we wanted to see. In fact, the technician said it was one of the most clear pictures she has ever seen, so that was great to hear!

As we were watching the screen, I saw the picture pop up and instantly knew what it meant. The tech started typing, “It’s a…” and I looked at Tyler to ask him if he knew. I told him it was a girl and the tech looked at me and said I was right. Tears just started streaming down my face because I was so happy to finally know what our baby will be. I think in that instant millions of thoughts ran through my mind of what our future family would look like and the things that we would get to do. I could “see” the bows and the tutus and all of the girly things. I could picture having a little girl whose parents loved her more than the world and I instantly fell in love. Tyler looked over at me and smiled and just held my hand while I cried for the rest of the appointment. It was real. We are having a daughter. This little person growing inside of me just revealed more about herself and it made us so excited that we just couldn’t stop talking about her.

I, honest to God, think the situation would have been just the same had they said it was a boy. Just knowing what our little baby will be gave us so much happiness and we were able to bond with our child and envision the future. We are both completely excited and happy that our first child will be a little girl.

Week 12 Begins

How your baby's growing:

The most dramatic development this week: reflexes. Your baby's fingers will soon begin to open and close, his toes will curl, his eye muscles will clench, and his mouth will make sucking movements. In fact, if you prod your abdomen, your baby will squirm in response, although you won't be able to feel it. His intestines, which have grown so fast that they protrude into the umbilical cord, will start to move into his abdominal cavity about now, and his kidneys will begin excreting urine into his bladder.
Meanwhile, nerve cells are multiplying rapidly, and in your baby's brain, synapses are forming furiously. His face looks unquestionably human: His eyes have moved from the sides to the front of his head, and his ears are right where they should be. From crown to rump, your baby-to-be is just over 2 inches long (about theh size of a lime) and weighs half an ounce.

How your life's changing:

Your uterus has grown to the point where your healthcare provider can now feel the top of it (the fundus) low in your abdomen, just above your pubic bone. You may already be into maternity clothes, especially if this isn't your first pregnancy. If you're still fairly small and not yet ready for maternity clothes, you've no doubt noticed that your waist is thickening and that you're more comfortable in loose, less restrictive clothing.
You may begin to feel heartburn (also called acid indigestion), a burning sensation that often extends from the bottom of your breastbone to your lower throat. Many women get heartburn for the first time during pregnancy, and those who've previously had bouts of heartburn may find that it gets worse. During pregnancy, the placenta produces a lot of the hormone progesterone, which relaxes the valve that separates the esophagus from the stomach. Particularly when you're lying down, gastric acid can seep back up the pipe, which causes the uncomfortable burning sensation. For many women the problem doesn't begin (or get worse) until later in pregnancy, when your growing uterus starts to push up on your stomach. The discomfort may range from mildly annoying to intense and distracting.

Week 10 Ultrasound

Tyler wasn't able to get off of work for our last appointment, but my mom was MORE than willing to go with me. It was just our normal monthly appointment and an early one hour glucose tolerance test. Luckily I passed the glucose test, but let's just say that I won't be drinking anything orange flavored for a long time. Ick!
The Dr wasn't able to find the baby's heartbeat using a Fetal Doppler during the check up, so she sent us to ultrasound just to make sure things were ok. While it was a little alarming that she didn't find it, I wasn't too worried and my mom was excstatic that she would get to see the baby via ultrasound. We got in to the ultrasound room and it was amazing to see how much the baby has changed in the last 4 weeks. It actually looked like a baby! Our first ultrasound was just a little blob with a hearbeat, so to actually be able to see the form of a baby was very exciting!

Nausea Sucks

Let me start this post off with a thankful heart. I’m not puking 24/7 like many other women have done when they are pregnant. In fact, I’ve only puked once (knock on wood!). I know that I’m very lucky for that, but I have some incredible nausea lately and it’s making me miserable. My biggest enemy of the day is my tooth brush. I’ve quickly learned how to brush my teeth just right and avoid gagging that leads to the dry heaving. Ick. It’s just awful. And once my day starts with all that, my stomach just won’t settle down.

Even on good days where I get through brushing my teeth with no trauma, I haven’t been able to enjoy food. Nothing, I repeat: Nothing sounds good. I used to bring left overs for lunch or keep a hot pocket or frozen meal here for lunch. Not anymore. I never know what will sound good, if anything does, and I’ve ended up with some interesting lunches.

I’m in this weird situation where I need to eat to stay healthy, but nothing on earth even sounds appealing. And God Bless Tyler. He has always helped out around the house, but lately he’s been extra helpful lately. Like last week when he called to tell me that he layed out some ground beef and chicken breasts to thaw so that we’d have something for dinner for the next couple of nights. At that moment, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the thought of cooking either of those made me want to puke, so I told him Thanks and appreciated his thoughtfulness. I have hardly cooked lately. Nothing sounds good and I just am too tired to give cooking dinner a decent shot.  We did eat at home last night, which was nice and didn’t make me sick, so that was a success!

We went to CVS last night and I got these things called Sea Bands. They’re basically wrist bands with a small plastic ball type thing sewn into them that you wear on your wrists. The plastic part sits on a pressure point and it helps reduce nausea due to motion sickness and morning sickness. It’s an acupuncture-ish wonder and so far they’re helping me. It’s not all gone away, but it’s reduced the nausea and in my book that’s a win!

The Waiting Game...

Keeping this pregnancy a secret is about the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Especially after seeing the ultrasound, I just wanted to tell everyone how happy I was. There’s so many things that can happen at the beginning of a pregnancy and we had planned on waiting until our birthday week (mid July) to tell the world that we’re having a baby. Wellllll that plan didn’t quite work out. We just couldn’t hardly wait to tell everyone and we decided that we would share the news on Father’s day weekend.

Our friends Eric & Dana got married on Saturday and many of our friends were together for the entire weekend. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through the weekend without getting questioned for not drinking. Friday night we had everyone over to my mom’s house to hang out after the rehearsal and we ended up telling everyone there that we were expecting. We told a few people at church on Sunday morning and from there went on to visit my grandparents in Wathena and Tyler’s grandma in Savannah to share the news. After that we put it on Facebook and sent out lots of text messages.

It’s so fun to share our news with the world and have everyone we know share in the excitement and anticipation of our little one!