Blog post #100: The much anticipated PREGNANT post!

The baby

      For the last 8 weeks, I have been dying to blog about the most exciting thing in our lives right now: we are going to have a baby! The due date is May 1st. We wanted to hold off on making the big announcement until we had our first appointment and were nearly done with the first trimester, and the moment has finally come! It must have been fate, because it just happened to also be our 100th post, so that's just extra fun.
      We wanted to just only tell family and really close friends until after the first appointment, but I didnt do as good of a job as sam... all of the sudden, everyone I talked to became my best friend. It was just so hard to keep in such great news! Plus, many of my friends just had babies or are pregnant and I had a hard time not sharing in all the baby hubbub. The funnest part is that all 3 girls in my family are pregnant right now: Jen's 3 weeks behind me and due on May 20th, and Becky's one trimester ahead of me, her baby boy's due in January.

The planning

      Since we got married, we set goals to not have any consumer or credit card debt, save up for a downpayment on a house for when we're done with school, take time to enjoy being a married couple, and have a baby as soon as we could. We decided the earliest we could have a baby would be a year before sam finished with his masters, so I made an excel spreadsheet and factored in all of the variables that would most likely go into our lives until the holy day of graduation. That excel spreadsheet revealed that we could start trying to get pregnant in August of 2007. So we did, and poof! Pregnant city our first month of trying. Now I always knew that Excel was a powerful program, but I didn't know that it could dictate the future. I shall not doubt again though...

The first appointment

      So I'm currently 11 weeks pregnant. We had our first baby appointment today. Aside from being deeply violated by the midwife (she was thorough...), it was the best experience ever. She went to find the heartbeat, and started off rather low, then just kept moving on up my belly- till about 2 1/2 inches below my belly button and then there it was clear and strong- thawump thawump thawump. It was awesome, just so fun to hear. More than anything, it was a nice confirmation that i wasn't imagining the whole thing in my head. The heartbeat is 160 which is optimal, and all of my tests are looking great. She said that according to the baby placement and my overall uterus size that the baby could easily be at 12 weeks, but I should keep my May 1st due date until further confirmation.

The first trimester

      So good things: Aside from my prenatal pills, I have been pill free for the last 12 weeks and am actually more comfortable than I've ever been. Before I was pregnant, I was told a fairytale that arthritis symptoms subside during pregnancy. I'm happy to confirm that that's the truth! I'm sleeping like a baby at night, my back hardly hurts, and my muscles have all relaxed, so yay! My biggest worry is if my still recovering spine can take the weight of a big ol' baby belly. But so far, I'm quite happy and feeling good.
      The bad things: For the first 9 weeks, I was DEAD tired all the time. I didnt even have the capacity to play video games or read. I was just a lifeless lump on the couch. Sam thinks it's hilarious... He's never seen me tired before, and never ever in our time together have I ever asked him to come to bed before he asked me, I'm always keeping him up usually. As for morning sickness... not too bad. I feel uncomfortable and I need to eat more often and I frequently just feel gross in general- but I'll get over it. I know it could be 100 times worse, so I'm grateful.

The pics

      Well here are the pics! I'm actually showing a lot for the first trimester, but that's not too surprising considering my torso is a whole 6 1/2 inches long. Our baby's just going to have to get creative because I really don't have much for it to work with.

The Test

This is before I had eaten anything. You should see it after I eat, I'm enormous! This pic is only a week old and I can already see the difference between now and then.