Second Trimester

Well, today I am officially 16 weeks pregnant!

Here's what we've been up to:

May was a rough rough month as far as pregnancy side effects go. I was sick as a dog. I also got to experience this really awesome pain... pregnancy sciatica. Thankfully, after a week, baby must've moved because the pain has since stopped. June looks to be a much more promising month! Today, I decided to see where I'm at sans nausea/vomiting medication. So far so good (but I still have to eat dinner!). I have done pretty good today and feel a little more energized too without the meds adding to my exhaustion. Enough with the whining!

We bought nursery furniture! Baby H now has a crib and a dresser. I spent a day cleaning out some things in the office (ahem, nursery) and then we spent the rest of the weekend building. It's pretty surreal to walk into the room and see baby things. Sometimes I just stand in front of the crib and wonder about life post delivery. There will be a baby in this crib, in this apartment, in our lives. I wonder about who it'll look like. Who it will act like. [Side note: baby will continue to be an "it" because we aren't finding out the gender.] Grandma and Grandpa Donaldson bought baby a car seat/stroller combo so that's put together and ready to be used also.

Baby seems to be the only thing we've been up to lately. There is lots to think about and discuss, some of which I will probably procrastinate way too long on (finding a pediatrician and daycare!).

We had a doctor appointment last week and baby has a strong heartbeat, 144! Now we have to wait an agonizing 3 1/2 weeks for our next sonogram. I love to see baby on the monitor and the last time Jesse went the baby just looked like a gummy bear.

So, baby baby baby. That's what we've been up to! I'm getting more and more eager to meet whoever this is growing inside of me (I say girl, Jesse says boy) so I hope some of this pregnancy starts to fly by!

UPDATE: The weekend of no meds ended up being a DISASTER! 

Baby H Update

Say hello to Baby H!

It's so cool to see baby on the monitor! Today he/she was quite the teeny little wiggle worm!! This go round baby actually looks like a baby too. 

I've been suffering from some pretty nasty morning (noon and night) sickness and I've been exhausted, otherwise I might not believe baby was in there. 

I'd like to take a minute to do what I love to do: brag on Jesse! He has been A-MAZING! He takes such good care of me and has picked up so much slack on top of his job. I could not ask for a better partner in life and I know he'll be the best daddy a baby could ask for!! 

Everything looks good thus far with Baby H so for now we're just going to keep praying for a healthy baby and hopefully start purchasing baby things soon!

It's public!

Well those last posts didn't add in the correct order so I hope y'all can figure it out!

Today we made our baby Facebook official! The secret is out! 

It was becoming increasingly hard to keep up with who knew what and we were getting wind that some people were talking despite our gag order. We are very excited that it no longer has to be a secret and we can happily talk about it with anybody and everybody. 

Lots of prayers please that baby bean stays healthy! We go back for another ultrasound 5/8!!

But then....

SURPRISE!! 

Yep, 4 tests say I'm PREGNANT! Say what!? So here I am, making another top secret post until we decide to announce (which is becoming increasingly more difficult because I want to scream it from the mountaintops). 

I could hardly believe it. My period still hadn't shown by Saturday so I decided to take the last test we had in the apartment. I knew I'd be testing so I hardly slept a wink. I was up extra early and snuck out of bed to test. Longest three minutes ever. I turned on a timer and promised myself I wouldn't look until three minutes had passed. I prayed. I prayed for a happy, healthy baby. I prayed for God's timing. I prayed for peace. Of course I was also teary eyed. Then, after three, extra long, minutes I got the courage to look at the test. As you can see, it was positive! I cried. I was so shocked because I was so convinced that a stressful week had led to a missing period. 

When we first decided to start TTC, I had lots of ideas of how to tell Jesse. I decided on a t-shirt. I ordered a shirt that says, "This guy is going to be a daddy." I had it all ready for whenever I'd need it. So Saturday morning I grabbed the box and threw my positive test in with the shirt. I hurried into the bedroom and woke him (we had to be up early because it was his mom's wedding day!). I told him I had gotten him a little gift in honor of his mom's wedding day (I had to come up with something haha). 

He opened it while I recorded. He giggled the most perfect, adorable giggle and said, "Great baby." I had to tell him there was more in the box besides the test. After he saw the shirt, of course I hopped in bed for a hug :) I think at 5:30am it was a lot to take in haha

Well, to complicate things, we only had a little time to be so incredibly excited because we still had to get dressed and ready to go out of town, where we'd have to keep our mouths shut pretty much all day about our new little secret. Boy was it tough! My mom rode with us (and her wee little new grand baby bean) so we didn't even have the car ride to process out loud what we had just found out. My sister in law is pregnant and due in just a couple of weeks so there was lots of talk about pregnancy, babies, and pregnant ladies. Of course I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, "I'M PREGNANT TOO!" But of course, we didn't want to steal my mother in law's thunder and we also want to wait until we go to the doctor and are probably 8 weeks along.

So all day we were quiet. We stopped by the store on the way home to get more tests because I'm crazy and needed lots of proof. Then when we got home, we rejoiced. I prayed some more. We spent the evening talking about Baby H. Sunday, we were home almost all day. I sat around preparing a chalkboard and an announcement. That's right, we're ready already to announce our pregnancy :) It's going to be so cute! 

I called today and made an appointment for Wednesday to see the OBGYN. I can't wait to have it confirmed by her.

We've talked and it almost still doesn't feel real (if I wasn't peeing every 10 min I'd definitely not believe it!) I think it'll really hit us when we see our little bean on an ultrasound, hear it's little bitty heartbeat. We are already so in love with this little life growing inside me. I'm scared to say the least of all of the what ifs but we couldn't be happier to start this new chapter. Jesse is already the most adorable daddy!

We can't wait for Baby H to make his or her arrival, we think in November :)

Pregnancy Thoughts Thus Far

At 5 weeks 2 days I don't know much about pregnancy but here's what I do know:

1. Baby bloat is no joke!

2. I pee very very often.

3. Putting on stretchy pants is the absolute best feeling (see #1).

4. Keeping quiet about such a big secret is 100% torture!

5. I want to sleep so much!

6. Being pregnant is scary. Everything freaks me out.

For real, this is all still so surreal. I don't really have any pregnancy side effects yet (knock on wood!) so besides for the extra peeing and the fact that my pants are already tight and uncomfortable, I feel normal. 

Our first dr appointment is tomorow and I'm so excited (and nervous!). I would love nothing more than for the OBGYN to confirm that I am indeed pregnant. I'd also love to see baby bean on an ultrasound but don't think I'm far enough along for that just yet.

UPDATE 3/19/14: We have decided that we will be telling our parents about Baby H April 6, the day of our church's annual Kite Day. We've invited Nancy and Denis and my parents. We've got a cute little plan and can't wait to share the big news. As for Jesse's dad and Debbie who live out of town, we have a plan to send them a special little package that same weekend :) We want to talk to the doc before deciding when to tell everyone else. So now I am even more anxious and impatient to get the word out!!

UPDATE UPDATE 3/19:14: Saw the dr earlier today. We are indeed PREGNANT! Scheduled our first ultrasound for April 4!! If the next two weeks could just fly by, that'd be great :)

Scream and shout!

"I'M PREGNANT! I'M PREGNANT! I'M PREGNANT!"

Man, I just want to scream this and tell the whole world!

I want to tell people. I want to tell people why I can't stop inhaling food. I want to tell people why I'm so exhausted. "Why are you so tired lately?" I'M GROWING A HUMAN! 

I'm running out of excuses. And I'm a little tired of lying to everyone. I feel like for a month or two everything we say has been a lie. "When are you going to start TTC?" We don't know (we did already). "Why do you need off work?" Insert some random appointment (I have to meet with the OB, we're having an ultrasound). "Why aren't you drinking?" Gave it up for lent (pregnant people can't drink). "Are you not still doing the diet?" Yea sure (pregnant people shouldn't do diets that dramatically decrease calorie intake). "Do you have kids?" No (not technically, but in 8 months).

Oy, I'm ready for everyone to know so we can stop lying and just start being excited around everyone. The only person who knows is my boss, Tim. I felt like I had to tell him to make sure my job was safe for baby. I work around a lot of chemicals and needed to know what to avoid. Now he looks at me silly and wants to mention it but I swore him to secrecy. 

This is by far the hardest secret we've ever had to keep and I'm finding it harder and harder by the minute. Here's to April 6!! It can't come soon enough! 

TTC

I didn't publish this blog post right away because we wanted our TTC journey to be ours. I did want to keep my thoughts though so now I'm posting about our trying to conceive experience. It may be a little TMI so read at your own risk!

2/9/14: So in January, we had some very serious discussions about where we wanted to be this year. I was leaning towards house but Jesse wanted to wait a bit. When faced with the decision, he wanted babies over a house. So we signed another lease. We'll be residents here until at least 2015. 

In other news, we started TTC! I stopped taking my BC pills January 9th. We haven't told anyone. We really want this journey to be ours and ours alone. We don't want the added pressure of people's opinions and hundreds of questions. I especially dread the thought of having to answer the inevitable "so are you pregnant yet? How long have you been trying?" questions. So here we are, walking down this road with only each other. It's a little scary, but very exciting! 

2/11/14: I've gotta tell ya, so far TTC is for the birds. I was so hopeful that month one would be some miracle month and that I'd be pregnant already. Apparently that's not really how it works and our first month of trying was unsuccessful. I was pretty bummed. I had visited my GYN and she warned me that my cycle may be a little off the first couple of months after stopping BC. Well, she was right and my hopes were high only to be dashed by a negative pregnancy test and a two day late period. So, we'll keep trying. We are just getting started so while I was really wishing for an awesome first try, I know it'll happen for us soon enough. I suppose the silver lining is we will definitely make the one year mark that we sorta set for ourselves to be married before starting a family. Yay us.

2/13/14: Today, I got a flu shot. Why? Because my GYN recommended I get one. Pregnant women (which I hope to be soon enough) are immunosupressed so, flu shot. I never get a flu shot. Never. But, you do whatcha gotta do when you're trying to create a human! Good news is my $39 shot was completely covered by insurance :) 

2/25/14: Turns out when you're TTC, every little thing feels like a pregnancy symptom. This weekend I was extremely dizzy. I spent most of Sunday in bed trying to fight it. I tried eating and drinking plenty of water, no real change. I didn't start feeling better until almost bedtime. This brings me to my point... Is this dizziness an indicator of pregnancy?! I've never had this happen before. Of course I immediately jumped on google. Apparently dizziness may very well mean pregnancy. Or it could be 101 other things. I suppose we'll be waiting (a LONG) two weeks to see.

3/10/14: So my period again was a no show. Took a test. Got this. 

Needless to say, we weren't excited. I was really hoping the dizziness was a sure sign of pregnancy. So we thought, on to month three....