13w0d

Sorry for the absence.  Brian and I took a trip to CO to visit his aunt last week and I didn’t have a chance to update.  Then, upon coming home you know how work goes when you go on vacation.  It’s almost like you should never go on vacation in the first place because the work piles up so much while you’re gone you end up working late to catch up when you get back!  But who am I kidding, I love vacations.

And, we had a wonderful time in CO with Nancy and Winn!  We love you guys and miss you already!  Seriously, it was such a joy to get to know them better and spend some good times chatting it up, hiking it up and eating some great food :).

I think I’m finally getting over the extreme exhaustion stage.  Like, I can actually wake up around 6:30 or 7am and not feel like my world is in a fog.  Does that mean I’m rip roarin’ ready to go at 6:30 or 7am? Let’s be honest. No. Haha.  But it doesn’t take every ounce of will power to make my brain and muscles function so I can stumble to the bathroom for a quick pee before I tumble back in bed for another hour.  In fact, when Brian gets out of bed around 6am I find that it’s actually difficult for me to go back to sleep again.  All I can say is that I am thankful.  Thankful because I thought maybe I was just lazy; but I’m realizing that fatigue is just one of those things you go through whilst cooking a baby.

Speaking of Baby.  Today s/he is the size of a peach.  How fun!  Brian actually bought peaches for our lunches this week so I’ll get to imagine what baby’s size is when I whip mine out for lunch today.  Yum.  Is that weird?  Now, while baby seems to be growing…my belly sure doesn’t.  I guess it’s a good thing since I haven’t shared the news with hardly anyone yet.  But still, it does make it kind of funny/awkward when you tell people and they immediately look at your belly.  All I can think is, man, they probably think I’m just barely along.  Second trimester in one week!  Woot!

Here are my 11 & 13 week pictures…for comparison

11w4d

Ugh…think I’ve caught a cold :(.  I woke up with a sore throat, stuffy head and just an overall blah feeling.  I’ve had this weird urge to want to dry-heave all day too, which is so so strange.  I was downing glasses of orange juice yesterday ’cause i could feel the sore throat coming on.  I’m pretty bummed to begin feeling bad as Brian and I are set to head to CO tomorrow.

Looking forward to the trip.  Looking forward to being away from the office and also most likely sharing the fun baby news with Brian’s Aunt Nancy.  I think she’ll be excited.

It’s fun having more and more people in on the secret.  But I’m also getting excited to share the news with everyone.  We’ll probably share the news with our small group after we tell Brian’s family.  Next,  I need to figure out how to announce the news at work.  I assume that will come before the general announcement on facebook or something.

That’s all for now.  I go in October 11th for a regular check-up.  Perhaps we’ll wait until after THAT appointment to make the news public.  Decisions, decisions!

11w1d

I finally got around to taking a picture of myself.  So now begins the [maybe] weekly progression shots.  I guess this is a good starting point because I don’t think I’ve changed much externally in the last 11 weeks.  The plan is to wear the same or similar clothing for each picture (black tank, black capris).  I guess I’ll have to upgrade the pants at some point to maternity pants.  I think the shirt is stretchy enough to go over an expanding belly!

Baby is now the size of a lime.  Apparently s/he will be going through a big growth spurt this week.  AND, I’m in my second to last week of my first trimester.  It’s kind of hard to believe how fast time is flying.  Soon enough we’ll be going in to find out the gender of our baby (November, most likely).

Brian and I have been brainstorming names.  We thought we had the name for a boy and a girl all settled already but I’ve been second guessing the boy name we picked out.  The boy’s middle name is set, we just need to finalize the first.  And the girl’s name is settled, for now…I guess I could always get cold feet on that one too, but I don’t foresee that happening.  We’re excited to tell people once we know if it will be a boy or girl!  I like the idea of getting to pray for the little one by name and would love for friends and family to join us in that and be able to refer to the baby by his/her name!  That gets me excited to welcome them into the world.  I also think it would be tooooo difficult not to let it slip, if I was trying to keep the name a secret.  Heck, it’s been hard enough not to tell people I’m pregnant, at this point!  So I can imagine getting used to talking about baby by name with Brian and then blurting it out in conversation with others without even thinking about it!  So yeah, excited to settle on names and then find out which one it will be!

Ok, enough rambling; the picture:

 

10w6d

We got to see our little one again today!! It was SO neat!  S/he was really active and as soon as the u/s wand was pushed up there s/he started waving its little arms and kicking its feet!  It was either saying, “Hi, Mom and Dad!” or else it was saying, “Get that thing out of my face.”  Either way it was hilarious and precious all in the same moment!  Needless to say I got a quick tear in my eye.

It was very weird to see him/her moving around so much and yet not feel anything.  I think my SIL mentioned this when she was at her anatomy scan at 18 weeks.  She could see the little guy moving around but hadn’t yet felt him move.  I guess I can kind of relate…on a much smaller scale.

It was nice to get to chat with the Dr. today.  He is great and very funny.  I got to ask him about my running and heart rate.  Seems that I need to maybe slow it down just a tad.  I told him my target heart rate was below 160 and he said as long as I can run and hold a conversation without being severely out of breath I am OK.  Well, I’ve never been able to run and hold a good conversation, so I’m just going to take that as, slow it down slightly so you heart rate isn’t spiking and try to maintain it around 150ish.  Overall, I feel pretty good when I run.  There are of course days when I’m more out of breath and sluggish and then there are days when I feel amazing and feel like I can go forever.  We’ll see how it progresses as my belly starts to actually extend (it really hasn’t yet).

So for all you curious folks, here is little one’s 2nd photo shoot!  S/he is starting to look more and more human and like a little baby!  We are smitten.  Well, at least I am :)!

10w5d

So, the first time I was pregnant I remember having super vivid dreams. This was before I even found out I was pregnant. So when I got pregnant this go around I assumed the dreams would kick in full force again. Well, that hasn’t been the case…until last night.

I had an incredibly vivid dream. It was in color and I remember strange details about the dream. I normally dream in black and white and don’t see faces. This time, however, I dreamed about my baby. At least, what I think my baby might be like. Mind you, I don’t really put much stock in dreams but I figured it would be neat to at least write it down and compare notes later once baby does arrive.

So, in my dream, I went in for a check-up. I don’t remember now if it was the gender reveal visit or not, but it ended up being that. But the odd thing was, instead of doing an ultrasound they actually took the baby out of me so they could look at it. Strange, I know. So anyway, this little baby was on the table and was clearly a boy. He had long curly blonde hair and his face kind of looked like Brian’s younger brother, Michael. After we oohed and ahhed over him for a bit they put him back inside me and I woke up.

I guess I won’t be finding out if little one is a boy or girl until around November sometime, but it was still fun to dream about him/her. It will be interesting to see how my dream stacks up to reality.

I go in for another appointment on Thursday. Yay, we get to see the little one again and hopefully it will look more like a human than a blob! I’ll try to post another picture once we get them.

10w3d

Whoa, we’re in week 10!  Baby is now the size of a prune.  It’s kind of funny to think about…a wrinkly prune.

Anyway, this last weekend was such a whirlwind.  My parents came up from GA and Becky and Jack were in from NM.  My in-town sister Tracy and her husband Rob all came over to celebrate birthdays!  Dad’s b-day was Aug 12th, Mom’s Sept 2nd and Tracy’s Sept 3rd.  Brian and I, as I wrote previously, had planned to reveal the news of baby to the whole family during the party at some point.  Our initial plan was to serve ice cream sundaes for dessert and have one of the toppings be pickles for the stereotypical pregnancy craving of ice cream and pickles!

Well, things didn’t quite go as planned, for good reasons!

Friday, I had to drive halfway to Wilmington to pick up Jack and Becky.  Well, Tracy volunteered to be my driving buddy and over the course of the drive we got on the topic of pregnant friends and pregnancy in general.  At one point Tracy couldn’t hold it in anymore and blurted out, “I wasn’t going to tell you until tomorrow, but, I’M PREGNANT!”  I think I immediately started screaming and squealing and overall overreacting to the exciting news!  I hope I didn’t scare Tracy too badly!

So anyway, of course my mind immediately starts racing thinking, oh man, she’s pregnant, I’m pregnant…she wants to tell Mom tomorrow in a card, but we were going to tell everyone…how do we work this out so she gets her turn in the spotlight?  So later that evening I brainstormed with Brian and we decided on the idea we had seen on youtube and all over pregnancy forums.  We were going to do a self-timed family shot and have Brian yell out, “Everyone say, DEBBIE’S PREGNANT!”

Well, Tracy couldn’t hold in the news any longer so the following morning when everyone was gathered at our home to head out to brunch Tracy gave Mom her birthday card.  It was cute and inside had a Target gift card with the word Baby on front.  Mom of course reacted pricelessly.  She was SO excited and it was so fun to watch her joy and excitement bubble out for Tracy!  So we got to talk baby talk and just be excited for her all day.  It was a lot of fun :).

Later in the day, after dinner and presents and before brownies and ice cream, we gathered the family in the living room for a group shot.  No one suspected anything so we were excited about what was to come.  So, I got the camera ready and pressed the timer button and ran over to join the rest of the family.  Brian did his duty and yelled out the above statement and…..!  NO ONE REACTED (except Jack and Becky who already knew the news).  It was HILARIOUS!  The picture timer went off with mom, dad, Tracy & Rob all smiling calmly at the camera.  After the picture I stepped out and looked at them and was like, it’s true!  And then of course came the shock and surprise and excitement we had been hoping for.  It was great and we all got a good laugh out of it!  No one believed Brian was telling the truth, they just assumed he was saying that to get genuine smiles out of everyone for the picture.  After we all laughed and got congratulations all around we decided to take a posed “shocked face” picture for fun.  So without further ado, the first picture below is the original after Brian announced the news-I think Jack and Becky’s faces are great.  The second is the posed shot.  I love them both!

 

 

9w4d

Wow, what an exhausting Labor Day Weekend!  It was a good kind of exhausting, though–time with family and friends and serving others.  And we’re gearing up for round 2 of crazy-busy weekends coming up!  I got to run twice over the weekend (Saturday & Sunday).  Pace was alright; not great, but decent.  I can definitely tell that I don’t breathe as easily these days.  I’m not sure if that’s due to being pregnant or just out of shape.

One exciting piece of news…Jack and Becky came into town on Saturday and I we got to share the baby news with them!  They were SO excited, well at least Becky was.  Jack I don’t think was overly excited but I didn’t expect too much of a reaction out of him :).  When we picked them up from the airport we parked in hourly parking.  Before we headed in we stuck a “Baby On Board” sign in the back window for them to discover as we were loading up the car.  As we walked up, Jack saw it first and made kind of a ohhhhh man comment.  Then Becky saw it and immediately goes, Wait, are you Pregnant?!  And then grabbed me in a bear hug.  The funny part was that just the day prior she had asked me over the phone if I was pregnant (the third of several such inquiries from her over the phone).  And like usual I had to give a bald face lie because I wasn’t about to just say, oh yeah, I am, over the phone!

It was fun to get to talk about baby things with her and also talk about bodily changes…or lack of thereof at this point (which I am not lamenting in the least).  Thanks, Becky for having a great reaction to the news and for your love and support of this little one already!  I can’t wait to get to share the news with the rest of my side of the family this weekend!

Next appointment is scheduled for September 13th.  We get another u/s and a chat with the doctor to go over my medical history.  I guess that will be a good time to ask about what my target heart rate should be when exercising.  For now I’ve been trying to keep it under 160.  Hope that’s good!

Oh, and as of right now we’ve not taken any photos.  I’m not showing really at all so it seems a little pointless.  Maybe we’ll take one this coming Friday…we’ll see.