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.  :) 

7 weeks

It was starting to feel like our first doctor’s appointment would never come!  I remember calling the office as soon as we found out we were expecting - and then again at 8:30am when they were actually open ;) - and they told me I wouldn't be coming in until December 31st!  It seemed like an eternity at that moment... and really for every moment after that until we were actually sitting in the waiting room.

Maybe it's because I haven't had any morning sickness, but in these first weeks it has been hard to believe that there is actually a new life growing inside me.  I worried a few times that maybe, in fact, there wasn't.  But now I know that instead of worry, my heart should be filled with joy and gratitude because there is undoubtably a tiny little Duffin cooking in my oven.  Measuring exactly as it should with a heart flickering so strong it made me cry like a pregnant woman.  (Which if you're wondering, is MORE than 'crying like a baby'.  Am I right?  I'll write a letter about getting that saying changed.)

Bobby was excited as well.  He nearly crawled over top of me to snap pictures of the ultrasound screen with his phone.  And thank goodness he did, because the ones the doctor actually gave us don't even show the baby!  So here was our first glimpse at our little love:

Just a fuzzy shape on a screen, and the size of a blueberry... but loved to a greater depth than the deepest ocean.

I was given two days to revel in this joy before the first (and hopefully only) traumatic event of this pregnancy occurred.  The bloodwork.  I'm always a little jittery when walking into any situation where a needle will be stuck into my skin or blood will be removed from my body.  So I prepped quickly by 1. warning the lady that I was nervous, 2. taking some pre-poke deep breaths, and 3. closing my eyes - the most important step, in my opinion.  It started off just fine. The needle was in, and my blood was coming out.  It was creeping me out that I could feel a vibration in my vein every time she started a new vial.  I wanted my blood to stay inside of me so badly, but it was just *pumping* out and I could feel all of that effort.  The nurse was doing a decent job of trying to distract me.  She asked a bunch of questions about where I work and was complimenting my outfit, etc. - and I really thought I was going to make it through this experience just fine.  But the vials kept coming!!  I warned the nurse that I was starting to get dizzy and she said we were almost done.  Two seconds later I said "ok, it's getting really bad now", and that was all she wrote.  I completely passed out.  When I came back to earth the nurse was fanning me, there was another lady holding an ice pack to the back of my neck, and a third woman came running in, all out of breath, with some smelling salts in her hand.  Every inch of me was sweating and it took a moment for my eyes to come back into focus.  We all talked for a bit and they said that the color was returning to my face.  As I was drinking the juice they gave me, I looked over at the tray and saw the n.i.n.e. vials of blood that they took from my body.  NINE!  No wonder my body gave out.

So really, two things go without saying - I will never donate blood... and I will most certainly cry before my next bloodwork appointment.  My fear has exponentially multiplied.  :(