The How to Know if You're Pregnant so You Can Stop Freaking Out guide

here's something i've been wanting to discuss for a while. 

People who are friends with me in real life or who have access to my private blog have already heard me discuss this but I think that it warrants a Public Service Announcement of sorts anyway...This is a post for all the girls out there who have never been pregnant before and who might have gone through (or who might in the future go through) some "pregnancy scares".

Of course me being the innocent and angelic individual that I am, i have no first hand experience with something like that myself, but I am aware that it exists so I thought I'd write this little guide to help you ladies out. 

So here's the How to Know if You're Pregnant so You Can Stop Freaking Out guide (and don't worry "if you miss a period" isn't going to be on here because, duh, that one is obvious and it's during those two weeks leading up to that point that causes everyone concern). 

Let's begin:

1. You Just Know 

First things first, I want to discuss the phenomena that occurs when you first become pregnant and the fact that something within you knows right away.  

Everyone always hears about that, right? That mysterious sentence that mothers always seem to say (like they have some magical gift that the rest of us are lacking), "Oh when you're pregnant you'll just know." 

I used to hear this sentence and think to myself, "yea that's all well and good except for the fact that I might NOT 'just know'. What then?" 

Until it happened to me. And I did! I just KNEW. 

It's weird how true that statement turned out to be, especially because i did not trust in it at all before this actually happened. But it IS true, you really DO just know. (this is provided that you have some awareness of your body and you are in tune with it...how do you know if you have "some awareness of your body and are in tune with it"? Easy: if you're obsessing about whether you're pregnant or not. That right there is enough to show you that you are analyzing little changes and paying attention to things. Trust me, those women on "I didn't know I was pregnant" must not have ever even WONDERED if they were or not because once you start to wonder it becomes super obvious right away). 

So okay, there's the whole You'll Just Know rule which really is true and it really does work.  In fact, I can summarize when my "just knowing" made it's way into my conscious mind:

I was having a debate with my husband about something.  I remember that I was sitting on the floor of the kitchen while my cat ate her dinner (don't ask, my cat is spoiled and likes it when we sit with her while she eats...yes, i am aware how insane it is that i even know that she has this preference and that i furthermore indulge her in it). So i was sitting with the cat while she ate and Ryan was in the bedroom doing something on his computer. We were debating (which is just a nice word for arguing) about something which I don't even remember now and the distinct thought went through my head "stop arguing with me, I'm pregnant!" (as if those two things go together at all). I paused for a moment and started to tune Ryan out while i considered that thought. It wasn't "stop arguing with me, i might be pregnant" it was "i am pregnant" a definitive statement that didn't even feel wrong or weird. It was something i had never thought before and it was something that felt like the absolute 100% truth.

Not only that but  i was just more aware of my uterus (that might sound strange but it's true). It felt (and okay, this is really cheesy) all sparkly and warm inside. 

I know that's maybe kinda gross or strange or just completely WTF but it's true. I suddenly just knew that my uterus existed and like i said, it felt like there were sparkles in there.  Strange. 

So that's how I Just Knew. And you will too. I swear. 

2. Symptoms Show Up Right Away.

This also seems weird but it's really true and it does happen. You can be what I referred to as "barely pregnant" (this is what i called myself when i was at the three and four week mark) and you more than likely WILL have symptoms. 

My first symptom (aside from my Just Knowing) was my sense of smell becoming incredibly enhanced. 

All of a sudden I could smell EVERYTHING. and Strong. It was like I was little again, everything had a distinctive and unique smell and it was all in 'technicolor'.

Having a strong sense of smell was cool for the first day but pretty gross afterwards. Ryan would have to change the cat litter all the time. I knew it was going to rain like three days in advance, dinner NEVER seemed appetizing and I definitely became even more of a sanitation freak than I already was. 

My sense of taste went next. Suddenly things that I usually liked were disgusting. I hardly wanted to eat anything, food seemed different to me. It was weird and it was gross. 

3. It Will Seem Like You are Getting your Period

 

Here we come to the particularly odd foray into pregnancy symptoms that are super early signs.  

I had cramps. All the time. 

This was really worrysome because by the time this one set in, I knew that I was pregnant (but then again, I found out at like 3 weeks so this one still counts) and so I thought that maybe I was going to be having a chemical pregnancy or something.  It was scary because it legitimately seemed like I was going to get my period because, well, cramps = period right? Wrong. Turns out one of the funny tricks of pregnancy is that you have menstrual-like cramps when you first get pregnant. This is a sign that your uterus is expanding already and, well, that kinda hurts i guess. 

And remember, all of this all happened before I even missed my period. These are the only pre-missed-period symptoms that i even had. These are the kinds of things to look for if you're really super wondering if you're pregnant or not. 

And obv I'm no doctor or anything, but this was my firsthand account, so that's what i'm basing this advice on.

So when/if you ever get paranoid that you might be pregnant, don't start looking for things like "am i nauseous" because honestly that didn't show up until the 6 week mark for me and that's usually when it shows up for most other people too.  Instead try and ask yourself if you FEEL pregnant, do you KNOW you're pregnant or do you just suspect it? Are you smelling things all of a sudden, does food taste weird? Do you have cramps without a period? If these things are happening THEN it's worth the money to go get a pregnancy test. Not before. 

Again, this is all just my humble opinion. But i do think that I'm right. 

Being nauseous doesn't mean someone is pregnant. Hell, having a late period doesn't even mean you're pregnant. Stress affects that a LOT. Being moody doesn't mean you're pregnant either. Neither does being bloated or tired or whatever else you might have heard.  Sure, these things all DO happen with pregnancy, but they don't show up until after you've figured out that you're pregnant (right around 6 weeks of pregnancy).  And unless your period is 14 days late, those aren't the symptoms to keep an eye out for early on.

During that Two Week Wait when you're biting your nails and analyzing every little thing just ask yourself if you are or aren't. You will honestly have a good idea from that question alone. Inside your intuition knows. Your fear has a loud voice but your intuition always speaks the truth. You might be afraid you ARE pregnant, you might be afraid you AREN'T pregnant, but underneath that, your intuition always knows.

oh and here's a super practical tip: only trust and use the tests that are pink-line tests. The blue ones give false positives. 

As for me, I took my pregnancy test 4 days before my period was due and it was accurate. It wasn't the darkest line i've ever seen in my life but a line is a line and a line means you're pregnant. So if you get a negative that early, you can probably trust it (but you might want to wait a few more days and test again just in case). But if you get a positive, you can certainly trust that too. 

Oh, and some doctors don't want to see you until you're 8 weeks along. That's insane to me. When you call for your appointment after you get a positive test make sure you say to them "I want to confirm my pregnancy and figure out how far along i am". They're more obligated to see you then. Once you get there you can tell them how far along you are and all the rest of it, the trick is to just get them to let you in the door. 

Anyway, now i'm off on a tangent. 

I hope that this guide helps all of you girls out there who have worried or wondered before. I don't know if it will ease your minds or not but i hope that it does some good. I know everyone will feel slightly nauseous and still think to themselves "oh my god am i pregnant" but trust me, the odds of nausea showing up for you THAT early are pretty slim (unless you are nauseous because you can smell ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING which then I understand lol) 

Good luck and I hope that this helps.

FAQ

So far we've been asked a lot of questions about my pregnancy so i thought it'd be fun and appropriate to have a FAQ entry here to help answer those questions for those of you who might be wondering!

So here we go:

Are you going to find out the sex of the baby?:

Yes! We can't wait to find out the sex of the baby! We would find out now if we could! The major reason that we want to find out is honestly so we can start to set up a nursery space and start buying gender-specific items (and okay so that when my mind daydreams about the future it knows whether to put a boy or a girl baby into the swing that Ryan is pushing or if I will be carrying a girl or a boy baby down to see what Santa brought on Christmas morning). 

And don't worry, I'm not afraid to stereotype my child with all kinds of pink or blue little outfits. In fact, as most of you have probably suspected - i'm really kinda looking forward to it!. What? Being absurdly girlie or super boyish is totally cute and I am all about the totally cute!

Basically what I'm saying here is that I am not at all above outfits like this:

(found at bootiquebaby)

or outfits like this for that matter:

(found at boscovs lol)

How can anyone look at those and not think that they are amazing?! I challenge anyone to find a problem with either outfit! (not really, please don't blow up my email with harassment) 

So in short (too late), yes, I am definitely looking forward to finding out the sex of the baby and beginning to get ready accordingly.  

Do you want a boy or a girl more?:

At first the answer to this was that I wanted a girl more.  Not only was it just my natural instinct to say that and to prefer a girl (hello, do you see that little tutu outfit up there?) but also it just seemed to FIT with me and what I thought I wanted first.  All of my siblings had girls first and I guess I always imagined having a girl baby as my first baby.  The more i think about it though, the happier I would be with either sex.  I'm not just saying that either, I've actually put a lot of thought into this and I think that there are great things about having a girl and there are great things about having a boy (and there are scary parts of both).  Over the past few days I have felt a huge fondness growing within me at the thought of having a little boy.  My heart just warms at the idea and I know I will just adore him if i have him.  Of course I feel the same way for a girl as well, but since I've always thought I wanted a girl first, that fondness isn't new for me.  I would love to find out it's a sweet little boy too though, I know that now for sure.

And so it's sufficient to say that I will honestly be thrilled to have a baby of either sex.

Note: I will not refer to the baby's anatomy as it's gender. Gender is a very different thing than the physical sex of an individual and I feel very strongly about not mixing these two concepts up or using them interchangeably. Gender is much more of an emotional identification, it has more to do with culture and personality than it does with anatomy. Sex is purely a physical designation based on body attributions.  That's all I have to say about that but I do feel that it's something important to be aware of. Gender and sex are not congruent and really should not be used interchangeably.  The baby's gender will be determined once we know it's personality and find out who the child is. The baby's sex will be apparent (hopefully) at birth.  I am not being nit-picky here, either, this is a very real, very important thing to understand.  Gender is not equal to sex.

Do you have names picked out yet? What are they?:

We started throwing around some name ideas really early on. Before I even knew I was pregnant (about a week or so before I found out) the name for a baby girl just came to me one day out of the blue and i loved it. I have felt strongly since then that we would use that name when we had kids (at the time I thought "when we have kids one day." little did i know!) but since then I am not so certain...I guess because the name that I thought of has turned out to be massively popular and I'm not so sure how i feel about that. In any event, we will just have to wait and see. We are planning to wait until we find out the baby's sex before we really get into the name discussion. 

No matter what we decide, we might end up keeping the baby's name a secret until birth. Hey, it's fun to have SOME mystery and intrigue, right?  Plus, I'm sure if you pressure me enough I'll tell you the name and then make you pinky promise me not to tell anyone else. I'm a total push-over like that.

Also, I've heard that everyone likes to share their two cents about baby names and can therefore end up ruining perfectly awesome names that way if you jump the gun and start telling everyone that you want to name the kid Winston Archibald the Third too soon.  We don't want anyone ruining our baby names for us so that's another argument for keeping it a secret lol (on the down side though, no one will be able to tell us if we've picked an awful name! lol)

Were you trying to get pregnant?

This is an interesting (and very personal) question that we get asked a LOT. I think we mostly get this question from people who are trying NOT to get pregnant and are afraid that the answer is no lol.

Here's all I'll say about this: we weren't trying but we had decided to stop actively preventing it from happening. 

I will also add that becoming pregnant is WAY easier than I expected it to be. Seriously. lol. 

Didn't you just move? Don't you live in a one bedroom apartment? What are you going to do?

This question is one that comes up a lot from our closer friends and family who know that yes, we did in fact just move only a month and a half before getting pregnant and that yes, we do live in a one bedroom apartment. 

And despite the many, many stories that we have heard of successful super-hero-type parents who raised healthy and happy babies while living in one bedroom apartments we're not so sure that we're buying it or that we're the super hero types ourselves. Okay, strike that last part, we totally are (super-model super-heros for that matter) buuuuut still...

We have a solution for this situation figured out but you will have to wait for a while longer to find out what that solution is.  I will tell you this much: staying in our small one bedroom apartment is not an option for us. We barely have room for all of our own stuff let alone all of the accessories that a baby comes with (for being born completely naked, those little ones sure do bring a lot of stuff with them when they come into the world!).  We will be letting you guys know shortly exactly what we will be doing.  Keep yourselves on the edges of your seats for that blog post! (how can you resist?)

How are you feeling? 

This is a really thoughtful question and it's one that has been complicated for me to answer. I'm never sure if I should just go with the standard, "fine!" that people expect when they first see you and say "how are you?" or if I'm supposed to answer with details. And then I wonder, "how many details should i share here? there ARE quite a lot" so I end up glossing over some things and being as truthful but short-winded as possible.  My answer recently has been, "Much better than a few weeks ago, thank you!" 

The real answer is that it changes every day. Literally, every day I have felt completely and totally different than the last. Back in weeks 6 through 9 i would wake up every day and wonder to myself what my new symptom would be during that 24 hour time period.  I had intense nausea (but no throwing up (thank god)) for two and a half weeks, I had bleeding and spotting for 21 days straight, I had migraines, food aversions, pain and discomfort while sleeping, exhaustion and a very itchy scalp.  I've had a lot of weird things affecting how I was feeling so at any given moment the answer to that question was kinda a crap-shoot. 

Now though at almost 12 and a half weeks, I am feeling much more normal (knock on wood). Sure, I'm still exhausted and I could easily sleep 14 hours a day but the nausea has subsided for the most part, my scalp has stopped itching and many of the other weird symptoms have diminished or disappeared completely. I'm sure they will be replaced with new and different things as we continue on this journey but we shall see and only time will tell. 

Overall though, I feel fine. I'm making it and it's all for a good cause. And seriously, thank you for asking. 

How is Ryan handling all of this?

Ryan is doing great.  In fact, Ryan was way more prepared for this than I was. He's a planner and once he decides that he's ready for something, he's ready for it. Apparently he had decided he was ready for this and so aside from being completely shocked by how quickly it happened (seriously, that was a big one for both of us) and for feeling like he was going to faint when I told him I was pregnant and showed him the positive test (lol that's another story for another entry), he's been GREAT.  He has calmed my nerves several times throughout this whole thing and has remarked how awesome it's all going to be.  He refers to me in the plural ("how are you guys doing?" when he comes home from work (and is talking only to me lol)) and has generally been an absolutely doting husband, literally waiting on me (it is so, so, so sweet of him). In short, he's thrilled and really excited.  Ryan is incredibly family oriented so this is something that will be great for him and honestly just seems to come naturally to him. He's just so fabulous and fantastic, I couldn't ask for a better husband because there simply wouldn't be one. 

I find it funny though how many people expect the father to be a ball of nerves and hyper energy. No one seems to ask the mother-to-be how she's feeling or if she's ready for this. And it's probably a good thing that no one asks because honestly, there's no good answer if she's terrified (at least not one that anyone wants to hear lol) and there's really only the expected answer if she's not.  

I occasionally am terrified but mostly I'm over-the-moon excited.  I am of the firm belief that life is all about perspective and therefore things for us and our family are always going to be great - even when they aren't so great. Know what i mean?

When do you find out the sex of the baby?

We can find out between 16 and 20 weeks! Can't wait! 

Are you going to get a 3-D/4-D ultrasound done?

We don't know yet.  I kind of want to leave some things up for surprise and those ultrasounds are soooo accurate that I feel like we will be ruining the surprise of what our baby looks like if we get it done!  They are SO cool though!  We'll just have to wait and see what we're going to do!   

So those are all the questions I can think of for now!  Please feel free to leave any more here in the comments and I will gladly answer them in a future post (seriously, i would love more comments!)

Hope this has helped!  We are all looking forward to sharing this journey with you.  Oh, and we will be continuing the blog after the baby is born as well so stick around for the long haul ;)

12 Week Update!

Okay so my 12 week post is late this week because it's been a CRAZY busy weekends. My weeks change on Fridays so that's when these posts are supposed to be made for future reference.

Anyway, here's 12 weeks!

We've hit a huuuuge milestone this week though because at the end of this week I will officially be in my Second Trimester!!! Yaaaaay!

This week the baby is the size of a:



PLUM!!!

That's right, a plum! That's infinitely better than two weeks ago when it was a prune amirite?

my baby is approximately 2.5 inches long and weighs anywhere between 8 and 14 grams! That's the weight difference between a large egg and two (8 oz) glasses of water! (14 grams is equivalent to 16 ounces in weight!) and the baby is about as long as your pinky finger! WOW!

In the past three weeks the baby's size has DOUBLED! (let's hope that doesn't happen to me in the next three weeks...)



all of the baby's main structures are developed at this point. All of the organs are in place and they're continuing to grow and develop more as time goes on. The skeletal system now has centers of bone formation in most of the bones (whatever that means), the pituitary gland has begun to make hormones and the intestinal system can now push food through the bowels (yay?). The intestines are kinda weird though, they're not all located INSIDE the baby at this point, some are in the umbilical cord.

The baby can squint, open it's mouth and move it's fingers and toes! It's skin is highly sensitive and the baby can feel pain now (awwww! :( that makes me sad!)

the baby could even be sucking it's thumb in there!!



the eyes have finally settled into place in the front of baby's head and the ears are positioned too. The baby can swallow and it practices swallowing by taking gulps of the amniotic fluid (yummy!). The reason the baby can breathe in there is because the baby is getting all of it's oxygen through the bloodstream, it's not even using it's lungs at all!

The baby's chin and nose are becoming defined this week and it's fingernails are growing!



This is cool: the baby is working on reflexes this week...it's learning how to open and close it's hands, clench it's eye muscles (something i don't think i ever learned how to do..?) and curl it's toes. If i were to poke my stomach where the baby is right now, it would squirm and wiggle in response!!

As for me, my uterus is now too large to stay below my pelvic bone and has started moving up...Before I got pregnant, my uterus was almost solid and held less than 0.3 ounces. Now the uterus is more like a muscular container that carries the fetus, the amniotic fluid and the placenta...by the end of pregnancy it will hold almost 40 ounces! scary!

This week I will probably start to show slightly (check) and I will get to leave behind most of the crappy symptoms of the past few weeks (hallelujah)

so yay that's it! At the end of this week I will be in my Second Trimester! Hooray! 196 days until our due date (i'm not crazy, one of my tickers told me that this morning lol)

ultrasounds are exciting!

So tomorrow we have an ultrasound. I'm really excited because I'll be 12 weeks and I think that the baby should be pretty visible from the external ultrasound at that point.  Well, at least I hope it will be!

I should probably mention that I've had some complications so far with this pregnancy and I have spent the last four weeks or so on modified rest. It's not total bed-rest but it is very much, "stay off your feet, take it way easy and don't lift anything at all" rest.  I haven't been allowed to walk for more than 15 minutes or so at a time, not allowed to grocery shop or make dinner or carry anything and have been encouraged to stay off my feet as much as possible.

This is all because of some bleeding I had in week 7 of my pregnancy.  The bleeding was caused by a subchorionic hematoma which is just fancy medical talk for a small tear between the baby's placenta and my uterus.  The reason for the rest is to ensure that the tear heals and doesn't get worse.

Tomorrow's ultrasound should ensure that the hematoma has finally healed. At least hopefully that's what it will show us...and if not it will tell us how things look and what to continue doing in terms of my resting.

It's been a big adjustment, I've had to withdraw from school and take life completely easy.  I've been pretty bored honestly and have become best friends with Barnes and Noble and my DVR lol but ultimately it's all been worth it because as long as the baby is okay I am willing to do any and everything no matter how inconvenient it is.

One of the up sides of this has been that we've gotten to have three ultrasounds so far :) The first one we had for dating and viability purposes when I was 7 and a half weeks and the baby looked great. It had a strong heartbeat and we got a really clear image of the baby from that ultrasound:

Can you believe that's only at 7.5 weeks? The baby is facing downward for those of you who have trouble seeing anything in these (though i honestly think this is realllllly obvious) and that circle at the bottom there is the baby's yolk sack.  This is before the baby had an amniotic sac and a placenta and all that good stuff.

So yea, that was amazing!  Our next ultrasound was a few days later in the ER when i went in for the bleeding, that was just to check on the baby and make sure it was okay. It was :)

I had another one a few weeks later and that was truly amazing, we could see the baby kicking it's legs!  The heartbeat was very strong - 173 beats per minute and it was the same rate when Ry and I got to hear the heartbeat with the Doppler at my last doctors appointment on the 12th.  The nurse said we have a very active baby and that that's a good thing!

So all in all even though things have been a little crazy during this pregnancy so far and we've ended up taking some unexpected turns, I am hoping that it's all going to get better and better as we progress and move forward.  Tomorrow we'll hopefully find out what's going on with the hematoma and will have some answers.

That's all for now :) just thought i'd share the first photo we have of our sweet little baby!

love and sonograms,

Rhian

"I'm not fat, I'm pregnant!"

So a new thing happened to me this week....

I got asked if I was pregnant.

This is crazy to me because all of a sudden I went from looking like a (slightly bloated) version of myself to a definitely PREGNANT version of myself overnight. Seriously, it was overnight.

I had a good friend staying with me this weekend and on Monday I woke up and got dressed and suddenly none of my clothes fit me and i had a definite baby bump where there was no bump before.  Thinking I might just be paranoid and my hormones could be playing tricks on me (trust me, it happens...a lot) I went out into the living room, turned sideways and said to her, "do i look more pregnant today than I did yesterday?" she nodded and said, "Yea, wow you definitely do"

How weird is that?

Answer: SO WEIRD.

So i did the only thing I could....I wore a maternity shirt that my mother bought me (you know, one of the ones I was convinced I wouldn't be needing for "quite a while" (you're right again, mom)) and I hoped that it did a good job of hiding things. And for the most part, I think it did.

until.....

we went to the nail salon.

It was while my feet were submerged in water and a woman was scrubbing my legs with exfoliate that the subject was causally brought up:

The lady rubbing my friend's feet said to me, "So are you married?" and I said, "Yes, I am!"

she nodded and then said, "So how long have you been married?" and i said, "i think about 14 or 15 months now?" (real answer is actually more like 16 months).

She replied, "That's nice, do you have any kids?" I grinned and said, "Not yet but we've got one on the way!" and I patted my stomach which I realized I had already been resting my hand on.

she said, "Oh congratulations! We were wondering if you were pregnant but we didn't want to ask and be rude!"

I laughed but inside I was like, oh my god, i really DO look pregnant!

Looking pregnant is something I'm used to avoiding. I'll try on shirts or dresses with empire waists and say, "Yea it's cute but does it make me look pregnant?" when it billows out and away from my body.  Now however I am wearing regular clothes and I STILL look pregnant anyway! This is totally weird and something I'm not sure I'm ready for (not that I have a choice!) but I know that the more that time passes, the cuter my baby bump will become and the better I'll feel about it.  Because even though the nice lady at the nail place had the courtsey to ask me, there are tons more people who probably look at me and just assume I never lost the freshmen 15 or something. And that kinda sucks.

Though it's all for a good cause, I know that.

In the meantime, my sister gave me a good tip...I asked her, "what do i do when i look somewhere between fat and pregnant?" and she said, "oh it's easy, just stand with one hand on your back and one hand on your stomach all the time! it totally works!" and she proceeded to model the pose for me. And she was right! She looked pregnant! Well, really she looked like a super thin girl pretending to look pregnant but still, i got the message. So now I kinda try to stand like that just in case.

here I am modeling The Pose on the day in question (and don't ask why I'm standing in front of a Chick-fil-a...it's so not an interesting enough story)

See though? The Pose totally works you guys!

In light of all of this, I kinda want to get that t-shirt that says "i'm not fat I'm pregnant!" but I think that's a little too aggressive for my taste.

 (available on cafepress for $23)

Even if it DOES have those hearts on it...

And anyway, this phase will only last a little bit longer. From what i've been told in no time at all I will be unmistakably pregnant and my plan then is to wear all of those ambiguous little sun dresses and frolic around proud of my cute little baby bump.  Well, hopefully anyway...if I'm up to frolicking that is of course.

So in the meantime I think I might hide out in my house or wear a bunch of flowy stuff or walk around with my hand constantly rubbing my belly and just make due. Cause honestly, who really cares what other people think anyway? And isn't it EXCITING that I'm starting to show?

I should start some kind of movement, Early Pregnancy and Proud! or something lol

maybe not.

So there we have it, my first encounter with someone who didn't know me knowing I was pregnant. This is the kinda stuff that's noteworthy guys, this is the kinda stuff that there is to blog about.

I'll be back tomorrow I hope, i have something else i've been wanting to talk about :) oh and an early ultrasound picture to share too!

Thanks for reading and yay for starting to show!

Love and Baby Bumps,

Rhian

11 week update!

So this is my 11 Week Update!!! Can you believe it's already 11 weeks? Just one more and i'm at 12 (and then six days after that and I will officially be in my second trimester! hooray!)

so without further ado...let's get on with it!

this week the baby is the size of a:



a lime!!

I remember a friend of mine being at 11 weeks back when I was at 7 weeks and I was jealous because her baby was a lime already lol! But now my baby is a lime too! No more lime-envy haha ;)

the baby is between 1.6 to 2.4 inches and it weighs approximately 8 grams! (a large egg weighs about 8 grams just for a weight-comparison! that's pretty good, right?)

Over the next three weeks, the length of the baby will DOUBLE! That's amazing :)



Right now the head-to-body proportions are about 1:1 which means that the head is pretty huge and is about the same size as the baby's body.  That's to fit in all of the brains bc you guys know we're gonna have a super genius baby ;)

oh wow, i only have 29 weeks of pregnancy left! that's amazing

the baby is probably having the hiccups in there this week because the diaphragm is forming! aww that's so cute!



all of the baby's vital organs are formed at this point and are functioning normally and they will continue to do so throughout the rest of pregnancy (and life!).  The baby can kick his or her little feet and move his or her arms but sadly i won't be able to feel any of that until about another month or so from now. Boo!

His or her genetalia is fully formed now but won't be visible for a while more.  But whatever it is, it's there!

The baby's urinary system is working and the amniotic fluid (about 3 tablespoons worth) is being replaced by my body every three hours.

Soon the baby will be able to open and close a fist!  Nails and teeth buds are forming as well.



some of the baby's bones are beginning to harden. His or her skin is translucent and you can see blood vessels underneath/through the skin still.

here's what the baby looks like in my tummy:



as for me, headaches are really normal right now (and boy have i had that symptom...this week i've had CONSTANT headaches and migraines). My hair and nails might start to grow thicker and faster now too...so that would be awesome. OR they could break and fall out lol so lets hope for thick and strong, right?

As of now it's normal to not have gained any or much weight...once i'm in the second trimester I will probably start to gain about a pound a week. oh man lol.  As of now I've gained probably 2 pounds. The normal range for first trimester weight gain is 2 - 5 pounds so that's good for me :)

okay so that's it for this week! 11 weeks! yay!

10 Weeks!

Every week I do updates about what the baby is doing that week and how much the baby is changing. I started doing them over on my private blog and I will do them here as well from now on.

Since this week is ten weeks, I give you my Ten Week Update!

First Post! Exciting News!

I decided to keep a blog about this exciting place we’re at in our lives; once I make the announcement and everything is all “Internet Official” I think that this will be the perfect resource for all of our friends and family and everyone else to keep up with us and find out how things are going with our growing little family.

So in case it isn’t completely clear at this point: Ryan and I are expecting a baby!  We are due on November 5th 2010.  And we couldn’t be more thrilled!

Life has, in Ryan’s words, changed already. I’ve overheard him tell people that he’s already thinking about things differently, already sees the world in a new way. Every time I hear him say that, it warms my heart a little bit more. He’s already such a good daddy in that way.

Today I am 9 weeks 6 days pregnant. Tomorrow will be 10 weeks. I know I’m starting this blog kind of early considering that I won’t be making it public until 11 or 12 weeks but i guess I just wanted to get started, I guess in a way i’m excited for this future that we’re walking into. Even though it is full of all kinds of new and totally uncertain things for me.

I can’t believe I’m going to be a mama. That’s so amazing.