14 weeks

Hey, so remember last week when I said I forgot to weigh myself, but hoped I was still at the 3 lbs mark?  Well, I weighed myself this morning... and I've gained 6.  So, yea.  That's double.

MOVING ON...

This week has seriously just flown by.  I can't even remember anything noteworthy.  Except for the fact that I told myself I would start being active several times a week, and so far have only followed through once.  I went for a bike ride at Quiet Waters Park after work on Wednesday.  I meant to go for a walk today, but didn't.  And tomorrow's goal is to swim laps.

I bought more baby clothes this week.  Boys baby clothes.  I don't know why I'm doing this.  The people at Baby Gap are going to laugh right in my face if I have to come back in and return it all.  I also had a major moment of weakness and bought two pairs of non-returnable baby Toms.  But seriously, how do you resist something this cute?  I figure my baby girl could still possibly wear these colors... or I could give them away if I had to.

13 weeks

Happy Valentines Day my tiny lovebug!  Today felt like the right day to publicly announce your existence.  We were showered with tons of well wishes and even found out that an old friend is also expecting a baby right around the same time!  So we will have a buddy to go to Mommy and Me with.  :)

We’re also happily in the second trimester!  I’m fairly certain I already feel my energy returning.  Thank goodness!  We have a big weekend ahead of us: attending a wedding in Orlando and also visiting Disney World!  I can hardly wait!

This week I also remembered that I have several pairs of pants and jeans tucked away in my closet that are a size up from my normal pre-pregnancy size.  I can actually button up the waist and sit comfortably!  Amazing!  I look a little sloppy in the leg and butt area because the pants are still too big for me in those spots.  But it saves me from wearing that darn belly band thing at work, so I deal with it.

I’ve been sleeping great, thanks largely in part to the Snoogle pillow that Amanda lent me.  It keeps my dog from crowding me off the bed and kicking me in the back all night.  So that’s a big win.  I forgot to weigh myself this week, but I’m hoping I’m still right at the 3 lb. mark.  13 weeks… 3 lbs.  That’s ok, right?  It probably shouldn’t be as big of a concern to me, but I can’t help it.  I really don’t want the weight gain to get out of control.  I still feel great and baby is doing great!  So that’s what matters most.

So now I’m just counting down the days until Bobby and I find out if this precious blessing is a boy or a girl.  18 days!!!!!!!

12 weeks

We’ve made it to the point where it’s considered safe to share the exciting news that we are expecting a baby.  Thanks to hubby’s loose lips, everyone we encounter on a day-to-day basis has already known for quite some time.  So… I guess that just leaves us with a Facebook announcement – which I’m sure I’ll do at some point.  I just haven't decided when.

I had two appointments back to back on Tuesday.  The first was with an ultrasound technician who did my nuchal translucency scan.  It took her several attempts to freeze the screen right where she needed it to be because sweet baby Duffin was having another dance party inside my belly.  :) But it gave me all the more time to gaze at the screen and cry my joyful tears.  She eventually got what she needed and said everything looked just as it should. [Hallelujah!]

From there, I had to give up some more of my blood (just one vile this time)… and then I headed into my second appointment.  This one was with my regular doctor and it was to hear the baby’s heartbeat.  ~ It was a beautiful, fast-paced whoosing sound. ~

My doctor’s eyes opened wide and she commented on how active the baby is.  This makes me think I’ll probably start to feel the movement sooner rather than later.  

11 weeks

How far along? 11 weeks and 4 days.

Baby's size? Sweet pea is the size of a fig. About 1.5 inch long.  However, at our 10 week appointment, baby measured 10 weeks 5 days… so we may be slightly ahead of the curve.

Weight Gain? This morning the scale showed 2 lbs.  Oy!

Maternity clothes? None yet.  :)

Stretch marks? Nope!

Sleep? I had one really rough night this week, but other than that I’ve just been getting up once a night to pee.

Best moment this week? Anytime I have a moment to myself where I can just put my hands on my stomach and pour my gratitude out to God for giving me this opportunity.

Movement? I can’t feel anything yet.  But I think about what we saw at our 10 week ultrasound every. single. day. and I imagine those perfect little arms and legs just dancing away.

Food cravings? I still haven’t had any genuine cravings.  But I have begun to feel hungry ALL THE TIME!  It’s driving me crazy.  I need to stock up on some healthy snacks so I can just graze all day long.

Symptoms? Insane hunger and occasional headaches (usually when I haven’t gotten enough sleep).

Gender? Still dying to know.  Hubby better hide my credit cards once we find out.  I’m pretty sure I will go on a baby clothes spending spree.

What I miss? Feeling thin and Starbucks white mochas.  (This still holds true from last time)

What I'm looking forward to? My appointment on February 5^th.  Ultrasounds are my new favorite thing in the world.

Weekly Wisdom: This week’s lesson is called “Round Ligament Pain: You’re Not Dying”.  Every so often when I sneeze or go from sitting to standing too quickly, I will get these *shooting pains* in my stomach (sometimes to the point where I have to scream).  It only lasts for 2 or 3 seconds, but as you can imagine it was very concerning.  My quick google search assured me that this is normal.  You can read about it here if you’re curious.

Milestones: We’re completing the first trimester!  Praise the Lord!! 

Emotions: Happy, grateful, excited for what is to come!

10 weeks :: 25% done!

Fun fact: You might not know unless you are extremely familiar with our house, but my weekly photos are taken in the baby’s nursery!  You may have noticed the new molding that began appearing in the 7 week picture… and now the more obvious change of everything below the chair rail being white.  We have little by little been working on the gender neutral aspects of the room.  So our crib is assembled and we are making progress toward completing our gorgeous raised panel wainscoting.  The room will be grey and white - and then once we know the gender, we’ll accessorize accordingly.

But honestly, I don’t even know why I’m wasting time talking about this right now, because something so much more exciting happened this week.  Our 10 week ultrasound was more thrilling than finding a large sum of money on the ground... at Disney World... on Christmas morning.  We saw our baby move for the first time!!  And I guess you could also say we really saw our baby – who now has real baby features – for the first time as well.  At the 7 week ultrasound you really don’t know what you are looking at.  Bobby videoed the whole thing and I’m so thankful… because I’ve watched it about 89 times already.  Baby Duffin stayed pretty still in the beginning – but keep watching and you will see our little wiggle worm in action!   :*)

Keep growing, little one.  I am so proud of you!

9 weeks

Just when I was starting to feel silly about taking weekly pictures because they have all looked more or less the same… holy moly, look at that gut!  I will admit that this dress is unflattering under normal circumstances unless you are feeling your absolute slimmest – but wow, there is no denying that I am looking more convex in the midsection.

This has been a rather uneventful week, and I mean that in the most grateful, Lord-please-don’t-strike-me-with-morning-sickness way.  And since all of the important people in my life have been informed of our news, I don’t have any fun videos right now either.  Enter the pregnancy survey!! …  a fun little way to document the details that I would surely forget if I didn’t write them down.  Here we go.

How far along? 9 weeks and 3 days.

Baby's size? Lovebug is the size of a grape! About 1 inch long!

Weight Gain? As far as my home scale says, still zero.

I certainly notice a change in my stomach though.   Although baby is only grape-sized… my uterus has grown to grapefruit-sized!  It makes for some uncomfortable sitting in buttoned pants.

Maternity clothes? Unnecessary at this point.  But I’m not really looking forward to the day where I have to give in.  Everything I have seen is either hideous or too expensive to justify.  My plan is to live in non-maternity empire-waisted maxi dresses.  Naturally, they are nowhere to be found in stores at the moment.

Stretch marks? No. But I have been slathering on the Mustela Ultimate Hydration lotion for moms-to-be.  I want to get my skin prepped for what’s in store.  And thankfully, it doesn’t smell like cocoa butter (which I’ve always had an aversion to).

Sleep? I don’t want to go jinxing myself or anything – but I have been sleeping so much better this week!  Praise the Lord!  I will say this though, it’s not as deep of a sleep as my pre-pregnancy days.  Which makes me wonder… Has my husband always woken up in the middle of the night to pee?  Or is he trying to encroach on my pregnancy symptoms?  Hahaha.  Maybe this is something he’s always done but I used to sleep right through it.  Not the case anymore!

Best moment this week? Um, I don't know yet.  I'll come back to edit this once the week is over.

Movement? Little Duff’s arms are long enough to bend at the elbow now and he/she may even respond to light and noise at this point!  Wow!  I can’t wait until I can actually feel it happening.

Food cravings? None.  All food is eaten and appreciated right now.  :)

Symptoms? Like I stated before, this has been an easy week!  I’ve only had that nagging grapefruit-sized-uterus bloated feeling [stop reading here if you don’t want to venture into the too much information zone] and wishing I would go #1 less and #2 more.

Gender? It’s too early to find out for sure.  But wives tales and myths are pointing to BOY.

What I miss? Feeling thin and Starbucks white mochas.

What I'm looking forward to? Our next doctor appointment on January 21^st.  I can’t even remember what she said will happen at this appointment, but any new information on how things are progressing is exciting.

Weekly Wisdom: I don't know.  Am I supposed to be getting wiser each week?  I feel dumber and more absent minded with each passing day.  :/

Milestones: Baby has graduated from embryo to fetus!

Emotions: It’s been a good week for my mental stability and I’m giving my improved sleeping 100% of the credit.  I conveniently left out my meltdown story from my week 8 post.  It occurred around 11pm when I had been trying to fall asleep for 2 hours with no success.  I became a cross between a scary monster and a two year old throwing a tantrum.  It was so bad I even scared myself.  Husband got a thousand apologies the next day.

8 weeks

First things first... "Denise, is that your wedding dress?"  Hehe.  Yes, it is.  We started clearing out the spare bedroom (which will now be the nursery), and my wedding dress was still hanging in that closet.  I have no idea where I will store it going forward, but something made me want to jump back into that lacie frock and spin around.  So that's just what I did.

This was an exciting week for me and my little embryo.  For starters, Baby Duffin is finally starting to take the shape of a baby.  There are all of these apps you can download on your iPad to follow along with the growth of your baby.  You see exactly what they look like at each stage.  Well, up until week 8, my little love looked more like a snail or some other sea dwelling creature… but now, he/she is actually kinda cute!

This was also the week where I made my most exciting announcement of all - telling my best friends the news.  I had every intention of telling them on New Years Eve but I just never found the right moment.  It turns out I get really nervous every time I try to say the words “I’m pregnant!” out loud.  So with all of the other distractions of New Years Eve, it was easy to just clam up and wait for a different opportunity in the future.

You may be wondering “Why would telling your friends be more exciting than telling your parents?”  Well, that’s a great question and here’s a little bit of the back story.  As you may recall, Bobby and I tried for 2.5 years before successfully conceiving our child.  And as a group of newly married girls who get together on a weekly basis to hang out and catch up, you’d better believe that they knew from day one that the “trying” began.  As the months and years passed these girls were the only ones I shared our struggle with.  A few things were mentioned to our parents along the way… but overall, I just didn’t want to worry them with the fact that we might never give them a grandchild.  So these ladies were the listening ears and the hugging arms and the supportive words that surrounded me during this sometimes scary and sometimes sad period of time.  It got a little trickier (I’m sure for all of us) when one by one, they all became pregnant themselves within a span of 6 months.  It’s not easy to walk through baby stores or maternity stores or attend baby showers when your heart is aching for a child of your own.  But let’s be real.  These are my BEST friends and how could I be anything but overjoyed for them and the exciting changes happening in their lives.  And conversely, on their side of the fence, how much would it suck to feel like you had to tip-toe around joyous topics of conversation in order to be sensitive to your one “unpregnant” friend?  My hope of all hopes is that I never made any of them feel that way. 

But the bottom line is - I knew these girls wanted this for me just as badly as I wanted it for myself.  That’s why I knew that telling them the good news would be as big of deal as when I first found out with my husband.  And they did NOT disappoint.  :)

I started off slow by telling our out-of-town bestie, Jen, via a Google Chat conversation.  Typing the words is much easier for me than getting my choked up voice to work.  Well, she knew the magnitude of emotions that would unfold as I told the other girls, and wanted to witness it all.  So we made a plan to Facetime her in to our weekly Girls Night under the guise that she wanted to discuss some wedding stuff.  Jen, our bride-to-be, is getting hitched in February.  We passed around the iPhone and gave everyone a chance to say their hellos to Jen and show off their adorable growing babies to her.  Meanwhile, I am sneakily setting up my video camera in the corner of the room.  I finally feel as though I’m ready to tell all of the girls that I’m pregnant, so I hit what I thought was the record button on my remote control, but in fact just ended up shutting the camera completely off.  I really fudged that whole thing up.  Plus, Brianne spotted the video camera and was like “Denise, are you recording us?  That is weird.  What is going on?”  So at this point I am frazzled and everyone is starting to say their good-byes to Jen.  She is freaking out because she’s on this Facetime call for one reason, and one reason only… and I STILL haven’t spilled the beans.  So the two of us are in a fit of giggles and she is telling me to get on with it already - through gritted teeth.  And that’s where we pick up with this video.  (Jen saved the day by recording what she saw on Facetime)  Sorry for the poor camera work on my part -- my hands were shaking like crazy.

Dara’s baby took an extra long nap this day so she was not present… but we all called her together afterward to let her know.  She cried too.  :)