Pregnancy announcement: 12 weeks

October 6, 2013

It's been FOREVER since I've last blogged!  I'm a little disappointed in myself, as I really want to record as much about this pregnancy as possible.  But with going back to school, working, my service learning (which is sorta like student teaching), friends, house, and life in general, I'm finding it very difficult to get into the habit of blogging 1x/week, which is the goal.  I'm going to try and at least upload a few pics every Sunday.

Our friends Mike and Tanya brought over our FIRST baby gift, how cute is this?!?!  As of right now we're unsure of the gender, so Tanya was thoughtful enough to put both shorts and a skirt.  This was the kicking off point to our big pregnancy announcement on social media.



That night (9/28/13) we attended the ASU vs USC football game.  It was a great game and the Sun Devils pulled through with a BIG WIN!!!  So at the end of the game we had another fan take a picture of us with the onesie.  With a little editing, we posted this for all of our family and friends to see on Facebook and Instagram.  Love how it turned out!

We also had our second doctor's appointment this week (10/3/13).  We got to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time, which was VERY EXCITING!!!  Each appointment makes it so much more real.  I was texting with my brother about the appointment and his girlfriend wanted to know if I had cried at either one of our appointments.  As you can see my hormones are going nuts and making me cry at random, sometimes inappropriate, times.  Jeremy never knows what my mood is at any given moment, but is taking it all in stride.

Here is a the first picture of our baby!!!  We got this at our first doctor's appointment at 8 weeks (9/2/13).  The baby is on the right and looks like it's kicking a soccer ball.  In reality that "ball" is the yoke sack which no longer exists (that's what feeds the baby in the early days) and the baby is actually standing on it's head!





Last but not least here is the famous chalk board picture.  I'll be doing one of these once a week and updating how I'm feeling.  The first 10 weeks were pretty rough, but from what I've heard, my morning sickness wasn't that bad.  The best way I've come up with to describe it is: it feels just like being extremely hung over.... Every. Single. Day.  At some point, not necessarily in the morning, I felt very nauseous and extremely tired.  I learned to change my eating habits, eating small meals often, and that seemed to keep the nausea at bay.  Once I got to 11 weeks I was finally feeling like the morning sickness was starting to subside, but then I started to get headaches, almost every single day.  A Facebook friend said she had headaches every day when she was pregnant with her daughter, but never had one with her son.  Which I found very interesting, as I've felt like this little one is a boy from very early on.

I've been very conscience of my water intake, which has minimally helped with the headaches.  I think once I started to feel better and the nausea went away, maybe I wasn't eating or drinking as much/as often.  So I'm trying to get back to that.

My little belly "popped" at 11 weeks.  NONE of my pants or shorts are fitting at all!  I'm currently using hair ties and rubber bands, along with a belly band that I purchased at Target to keep my pants up.  I've gone maternity clothes shopping twice.  Once with Jeremy and the place I ended up having the most luck was a baby re-sale store here in Gilbert.  The mall was a joke, and looking online has proved to be difficult as well.  I'm having trouble finding petite maternity clothes as most maternity stores don't carry them and all of the pants are too big and too long.  So for now, I'm sticking to maxi skirts and dresses, who can complain about that?!

We have our next appointment in 4 weeks, then in 6 weeks (at the 18 week mark) we get to have another ultrasound.  We have invited both my parents and Jeremy's parents to this appointment so they can see the baby for the first time.  At that time, only Jeremy will be finding out the gender of the baby.  I have never wanted to find out the gender in advance.  I grew up with both of my parents not knowing what my brother or I was until we were born, so I thought that was the "normal" thing to do.  But Jeremy really wants to find out.  I've heard from others that it allows the dad's to be more connected with the baby if they know the gender.  He's great at keeping secrets, so I'm not nervous about that.  We'll see how long I last.  That's it for now, see you all in a week!