16 weeks

baby update: today i am 16 weeks 4 days pregnant.

16 weeks

i am starting to show finally! not the cute little baby bump show, more like the i look like the i'm gaining weight in the mid section show. but at least it's something right? it's funny because you can feel where the uterus is because it's hard, and then i am also getting squishier, so the belly that i have is a combination of the two, with a little more of the squishiness i think.

but the funniest thing started happening this week...well, last week i said i could feel a little bump when i was laying down on my back in bed, and that little baby bump is starting to grow. So one morning (i think it was last saturday), i woke up, and i noticed that the bump was a lot bigger than the night before. but not only that, it was high up on my belly. at first i was like, there is no way the baby could have grown that fast! then i had a theory: when i first wake up i always have to use the restroom, at least since i've been pregnant, and so i thought, what if my bladder is just really full and it is just pushing my uterus up higher because there is no room for it. so i went to the restroom, then went back into the bedroom and laid back down. sure enough, the baby bump (aka uterus) was back where it had been the night before, and it was smaller. i guess the uterus is small enough that the bladder can push it around...luke and i both thought it was so funny, so we took some before and after pictures:

 this first one i put my legs up so you can kinda see some point of reference, but this is first thing when i woke up.

 lying flat, you can see it a little better

then this is after going to the restroom. bump is still there, just not quite in the same place, and noticeably smaller.

we showed my sister the pics and she was like, "eeewwwwww! that's gross!" so sorry if you think it's gross, but we think it's awesome!

also, i definitely have more energy than the first trimester, but i definitely don't have it all back. i notice that if i am on my feet a lot i still get tired, but nothing too bad. also, i haven't felt the baby move yet. sometimes i try and concentrate to see if i can feel anything, but mostly my heartbeat gets in the way and it's hard to notice anything else. i do feel things sometimes, but it's hard to know if it's the baby or just my body. but i am sooo ready to start feeling this baby!! it's one of the things i am most excited about. 

also, i don't know if this has to do with pregnancy or not, but before when it came to sweets i always wanted chocolate; creamy milk chocolate! but since i have been pregnant i like gummy, chewy stuff, and even suckers or hard candies. luke noticed it too. and i also like soda more! if you know me very well you know that i have never really liked soda that much, i just prefer water... but soda has started sounding really good to me. i still haven't really started drinking soda, it just sounds really good to me, whereas before water was all i wanted.

boy.

it's official. we are having a baby boy!!!!! both luke and i were hoping to start the kids out with a big brother, so we are super stoked! we found out about a week ago, when i was 13 weeks 6 days. we went to this place in costa mesa and they did an awesome job and gave us lots of pictures! it's crazy to see how much this little babe is growing. i still can't feel any moving, even though we were watching the baby move on the screen. he kept moving his hands and arms, he would grab his little foot, and then put his hands up by his head or roll over. seriously such an amazing thing to see! still no baby bump, although last night i noticed that while i was laying on my back in my bed i could feel a slight bump if i rubbed my belly. it's starting to get a little harder, but i'm excited to start showing!

1st trimester.

I feel like i was pretty lucky with my first trimester. it's hard to keep it a secret because you just feel so excited. but these are some things that happened to me during the first trimester.

-I never once threw up. whew!
-i did however get nauseous everyday, but it was only really bad a couple times. the worst time was right after our first doctors appointment (almost 6 weeks along), when we got home that day i felt really tired and ended up falling asleep on the floor. i later woke up and got into bed. When i really did wake up i felt like the whole room was spinning around me and i felt all dizzy. I had to move very slowly so that my head wouldn't spin. i basically sat in bed that day with my head between my knees. that seemed to help a little.
-my sense of smell was never heightened, except once. we went to dinner at my parent's house my mom made some pasta, and i could not stand the smell of the sauce that went on the pasta. i had to sit outside until the house had aired out. that was the one and only time, otherwise my nose stayed the same.
-i was exhausted everyday after work. i would come home and immediately put on my pjs and get into bed and it was only about 6pm. most pregnant women sleep, but i couldn't sleep, my body just wanted to rest. i felt very unproductive and usually didn't have a lot of desire to do anything. i don't know how some women exercise during the first trimester.
-i pretty much always felt bloated. i did not know that was something that happened during pregnancy, but apparently bloating and gas is very common during the beginning. so even though there is no baby bump, there is an air bump.
- food lost it's flavor for a few weeks. if i was hungry it was so hard to decide what to eat because nothing sounded good. it didn't make me really queasy, but it didn't always sit well with my stomach either.

Something i did not know is how they calculate how far along you are. you do not count how long the baby has actually been inside you, but you count from your last period. so even though at this moment i am considered to be 15 weeks along, the baby has only been inside me for 13 weeks.

we went to our second doctors appointment when i was 8 weeks 5 days. this time there was actually a baby inside! he looks like a little bean. you can kinda see the little arms and legs. what was so cool about this appointment was that we could hear the baby's heartbeat. It sounded like galloping horses and was a pretty fast beat, but i guess that's normal for little babies. also we got to watch our little bean wiggle around. that was so cool to see!
it's hard during the first trimester because you have no belly and you just don't feel very well, but when we get to see this little guy on the ultrasound it's just reassuring, there is actually something inside me!

finding out.

Luke and i have been praying about when to start a family for a while now. I've been pretty excited about it but we felt like it needed to be a prayerful decision. So, we actually decided that we wanted the baby to be born in January, because i have always been against having a baby during the holidays. but after a while we both felt like we shouldn't wait any longer, so it was actually really cool to both receive spiritual confirmation that we needed to start a family a little sooner.

waiting to find out if i was actually pregnant or not was killer!! the at-home pregnancy tests say they can tell you as early as 4 days before your next expected period. not true. i was a little overly anxious to take the test, so i ended up taking one a day early, and of course it came out negative. a few days later i tried again, this was only 2 days before my next expected period...still, negative. i was super bummed. but when my period didn't come the day it was supposed to, or the day after, or the day after that, i started to get antsy again. i decided one evening that the next day i was going to take one more pregnancy test. i tried not to get my hopes up, but that night i could barely sleep. finally at 5:30 am i couldn't wait any longer, i woke up luke to tell him that i was going to take the test. this time it didn't take long for the lines to appear to confirm that i was indeed pregnant. i was soooo excited! neither luke or i cried, we were just giddy with excitement and hugged. luke was still pretty much half asleep through the whole thing, so he went back to sleep pretty easily. But not me. i couldn't sleep. i kept thinking about what it would be like to have a baby and was up looking at baby stuff online. finally a few hours later i fell asleep.

We didn't really know what to do after that. We weren't sure when to tell family or to set up our first doctor's appointment. I read online somewhere that you basically call the doctor right away, which i later learned really isn't necessary. Luke was really cute, we were both excited about going to the doctor for the first time, but luke couldn't sleep the night before because he was so excited:) But our first doctor's appointment i think i was 5 weeks 4 days. Basically it was just a confirmation that i was pregnant.

this is what we saw. the black is the amniotic fluid, where the baby lives, and there is a little white ring which is the baby. i think at this time it was a yolk, but i am not even sure.

After our first appointment we just decided to tell our families. so we just went over to my parents house and pulled out the ultrasound. they were super excited a we caught them by surprise. Then we went to tell luke's mom, mindy, since no one else was around. she was at the institute building and she was super excited too, her reaction was funny because she was so excited. we then planned a family BBQ for the next day so that we could tell the rest of luke's family.

so i made some cupcakes that says "someones pregnant" to bring to the BBQ. It was fun to see everyone's reactions...it took a few seconds for some to get it but they all caught on and everyone was really excited for us.

so this is me at 6 weeks. i figured it was best to have a starting point just to see how much i grow!