Baby B at 8 Weeks

Here's an updated pictures as of my ultrasound 2 weeks ago. I much prefer this ultrasound to the last one - a lot less reptilian!

Baby is growing nicely, heartbeat was loud and strong.

And then, the fun part. Full physical, health history of my entire family, giving me a list of about a thousand things I need to get blood tests for... Fun! Picking out which screening tests we wanted to do was a bit interesting. Of course we're going to keep the baby no matter what, but how in depth do we want to go in finding out about chromosomal issues such as Downs syndrome, Trisomy 18, etc.? We decided to just do the blood tests for now. If they raise any red flags, then we can do ultrasounds and anything else further that we need to do.

This is the last peek at Baby B that we'll get until Week 20 when we find out the sex (no surprise for us, neither of us has the patience for that!) so I'm sure he/she will be looking lots more like a little person at that point. Can't wait!

Introducing Baby B

Here he/she is! Very tiny right now, about the size of a blueberry, but we could clearly hear and see the heartbeat through the ultrasound machine at the doctor's office yesterday. I can't even tell you how crazy it was to hear a little heart beating in there and see it pumping so fast! Makes it seem a little more real all of a sudden.

I'm a little farther along than I thought - 6 weeks 4 days - making my due date approx. August 11th, 2012. Must have ovulated early! So far it only looks like there's one in there, but she couldn't guarantee it for sure...

Here's a close-up of the picture above. It's hard to see, but the little tadpole-looking thing is the baby. The white spot in the middle is the heart beating. Baby measures .67 cm long.

Next doctor's visit is in 2 weeks, the official first OB appointment. Looking forward to seeing even more then!

Sucking on a Penny...

So yesterday, all of a sudden I started having this annoying metallic taste in my mouth. It totally tastes like I'm sucking on a penny. At first I thought one of my fillings had come out, but that wasn't the case. I was drinking water like crazy trying to get rid of it, but to not avail. This morning, I looked it up online and apparently is a fairly common pregnancy symptom. Guess I'm not crazy after all!

From what I read online, acidic-tasting foods help get rid of it - citrus, fermented foods. So out I went to the Davis Foods Co-op at lunch to stock up. My cart was full of lemons, kiwi, yogurt, and lacto-fermented sauerkraut, pickles and kimchi. Good news: I had some kimchi at lunch, and actually got a few hours of relief!  Bed news: I ate half a jar of kimchi in one sitting... :) I'll keep on it and hopefully it will continue to improve. Maybe my body is just trying to tell me what kind of food it needs...

Whatever the reason, I wasn't expecting to be buying large quantities of pickles this early on!

5 1/2 Weeks Picture

Weird showing a picture of my belly online, especially when I haven't touched my hair after getting out of the shower and have on no makeup, but hey, it will be fun to compare later down the road...

I really did want to get in better shape and lose some extra weight that I've put on recently, in fact I was planning on doing the 30-day detox again in January that I did last May and loved, but it will just have to wait! Time to embrace the pregnancy pounds...

Hopefully Cautious

I wouldn't consider myself a person who worries much. I'm usually the one to tell my husband to stop worrying. I am, however, a bit of a realist. I like non-fiction, not fantasy. I dream of things that could actually conceivably happen, not of being a superhero or being able to fly. So of course, I pay attention to statistics. I know that not every pregnancy results in a happy, healthy baby at the end of 40 weeks. So many of our close friends have gone through miscarriages. And now I have to wait 12 weeks before the risk goes down significantly? That started to really stress me out.

"Don't worry about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 4:6-7

How many times have I quoted that to other people?

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths." - Proverbs 3:5-6

It's so tough to let go of that sometimes.

"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.'" Jeremiah 29:11-13

I have gone back to this verse more times than I can count over the last several years. Why is it that I need to constantly be reminded that God is in control? It's a constant battle, but I am so thankful that God is faithful. He continually and generously fills us with His peace when we ask Him for it.

So that's what I did, and continue to do on a daily basis. And my worry is gone. The peace I feel is so restful. Of course there is the possibility that things may not work out exactly perfectly. That's not magically going to go away. But I am so thankful that the Lord is in control. He has seen every day that this little baby will live. He created it for a specific purpose. And He has blessed me to carry it.

Thanks God!

It actually worked?

Holy crap.

Is this really happening?

Let's just say I wasn't exactly expecting to be ... expecting this month.

Don't get me wrong, I'm THRILLED! And Wes is giddy with excitement. But holy cow, this might actually be happening. What are we in for...

Let me back up a little bit. After not being able to ovulate naturally for several years due to my lovely friend PCOS, I was a bit skeptical that my new gyno's recommended course of action would work. Could a Progesterone shot to the butt and $1.80 pack of 5 Clomid pills really make my body cooperate? Might as well try. So, I got the shot (Ouch!) and picked up my pills. Here's the play-by-play:

Day 1 - The shot gave me a tiny 1/2 day period on November 8th.

Days 3-7 - Clomid. A few hot flashes, some moodiness, but all in all I think I handled it okay. 

Days 8+ - Mucinex to get all the mucus flowing (Clomid has a tendency to dry you up. I know, lovely.). 

Days 11-16 - Ovulation (at some point). I tried not to be too serious with the whole baby-making-on-a-schedule thing - I figured that it would happen if it was in the Lord's plan, and if it wasn't then I wouldn't stress about it. But, still it was hard not to think about it 24/7! I took an ovulation test every day, but never got a positive result. So, I kinda figured that I never ovulated after all.

Day 16 - Holy sports bra, batman! All of a sudden my boobs started killing me. I figured it was just the Clomid, since that's one of the common side effects. But then my stomach started getting a little crampy. Hmmm. Didn't really think too much of it, probably just the ab exercises from my workout class.

Day 27 - I was up at 3:30am to run the CIM Relay with some girlfriends. I realized that it was getting close to 30 days, so I may as well try one of the new pregnancy tests I bought. The result? A very faint line (bottom one in the picture). After reading several reviews of the PG tests on Amazon of women who had seen an evaporation line on the test sticks, I figured it was nothing. But, I told my coworker about it the next morning and she said it was probably a positive. What the heck?

Day 28 - I rushed home from work, headed straight for the bathroom and did two more PG tests (top two in the picture). Can't really refute the results when both showed up with two purple lines! After sitting there in the bathroom staring at those strips for what felt like hours, I slowly walked to the living room and made Wes read them too. Then I texted the picture below to my cousin and made her read them too. Wes was giddy with excitement and I was shaking. So what did we do? We drove to Raley's at 10:30 pm to pick up another PG test to confirm everything in the morning. I felt a little shady running into a grocery store just before closing to buy one pregnancy test and nothing else, and self-consciously made sure the checker saw my wedding ring.  Isn't it weird to worry about something so stupid?

Day 29 - Couldn't hardly sleep so I finally got up to test at 3:30am. Yep, I think I'm pregnant!

THANK YOU LORD FOR YOUR TREMENDOUS BLESSING!

"Every good and perfect gift is from above." - James 1:17

Let the adventure begin!