Starting to Show

so i think it's officially official: I'm starting to show.

Yesterday was a big milestone for me, I wore a total maternity outfit!  And i think i definitely looked pregnant although i might be in that stage even still where strangers don't know whether i'm fat or not. That's not my favorite stage to be in but that's okay.

I snapped some photos of my "starting to show" belly so i'll share them with you guys here:

(please note, these were taken late last night with a webcam so the quality is not the best!) (PS i would like to also point out the stacks of boxes in the background! we have made much progress with our packing!! hooray!)

and then a close up just for kicks:

i think my husband is afraid to admit that i'm starting to show. Yesterday when i put this outfit on i said, "wow i really look pregnant don't i?" and he was like "i dunno, it still looks pretty hidden to me!"

i think he thinks this is the same as the "do i look fat in this?" trap but it's not! I WANT to look pregnant, I AM pregnant. I know i look different than i used to and if i finally look pregnant that would be GREAT to me because people would know i wasn't actually just letting myself get huge lol

oh men. maybe someday they'll learn.

maybe not, though.

:)

Packing Day (dun dun dunnnnn)

so yea, today is packing day. can you feel my excitement oozing through your screen?

Packing day. The day that everyone who ever plans to move again dreads.

Sometimes before I knew we were moving again, I would look around my apartment and laugh to myself thinking "ha-ha! we won't be dealing with all of this STUFF again for quite a while!" And somehow that would bring me some kind of temporary high or weird feeling of elation. Crazy, I know but the thing here is that Ryan and I have moved....3 times in three years and this will be our FOURTH time in three and a half years. That officially sucks.

So it's no wonder that today I kept the covers pulled up to my chin for as long as possible once I realized that it was, indeed a new day and that unfortunately Saturday this week didn't mean "yay! what do we want to do today??" but instead had a much more ominous outlook: Packing.

Ryan's mom is coming over to help which is really nice of her. She whipped us into shape when we first got here and were unpacking so it just seems pretty fitting to have her here on this end of it. The Departure end.  The Packing End. The annoying, stupid, boring, tedious, takes-forever-i-just-want-it-to-be-over end.

So okay, as much as I would like to prolong this experience even more (okay and really I want to sneak away with the xbox and continue kicking cowboy ass in red dead redemption) i have to go and help my husband who has diligently begun the packing process already (he's so great).

At least he's fun to pack with. He just discovered a large drawing i had done that was being *stored* in our closet:

"look! you're outside!!!" hehehe he's so cute

okay, UGH, wish us luck. And please, if you're the praying kind, offer up a prayer to the Packing Gods on our behalf. We could seriously use it.

Breaking News!

okay well i guess it's not so breaking to us, but since I forgot to update about it, it can be breaking news here!:

We've decided to move!

And to answer your questions:
Yes, we did just move into our current apartment in January.
Yes, we realize that it is only 5 months later.

Buuuut add to that equation a pregnancy that took us both at least somewhat by surprise only a month after we moved in and you'll see our dilemma.

Here's another equation for you (I am doing surprisingly well so far for being such a non-mathy person!): 1 bedroom + lots of STUFF + no closet space + a whole new person currently marinading inside my tummy + all the STUFF that said new person comes with = a need for somewhere else to live.

Soooo where are we moving, do I hear you asking? Well, I'll tell you! (duh):

We are moving in with my parents!

I'll let that one sink in for a second.

You feeling okay? Good.

So yes, we're moving in with my parents. Two adults, one little unborn person, a cat and two birds. Moving next weekend.

Why? Well there are several reasons. Most of them involving the obvious....

No, we're not masochists. The obvious is MONEY! DUH!

Ahhh money. That sweet, and evil little word that means so much in life (and yet ultimately means so little). Money, money, money.

See the thing is, Ryan and I realized that someday in the not-so-distant future we would like to own a home. And, after looking into it a bit, we realized that even if Obama does ship us $8,000, well, houses are still hella expensive. Hella Expensive, my friends. Especially considering one of us is a full-time student (when she's not on modified bed rest, that is).

And so while we could buy now (and we really did look into it), we've decided to play it a little differently and to go room it up with Mom and Dad and pay off our debt while simultaneously saving some ca$h towards our future.

Plus, there are other bonuses too:

1. My parents are awesome. Seriously, they are. They're not like typical parents...they are funny and light-hearted and legitimately enjoy having interesting conversations with you and they like to do fun stuff and they're just great to be around. All of my friends have always said to me, "I seriously love your parents so much! They're awesome!" and it's happened enough that I know it's true and not just one of those things people say.

2. My mom has had 4 kids. FOUR. that's a lot.  And, well considering that so far I haven't had any yet, I'm figuring out that I could really benefit from her wealth of knowledge. Plus, i will have people around to talk to all day when it's just me and little Baby L at home together.

3. We will be having our own space. Two spaces actually. Well, three if you include the bathroom.  See my parents have a pretty awesome house (now that it's been renovated from the fire that happened a year ago) and they have more space than there are people who live there now (just for now though, wait until we get there, all that space will quickly be filled up).  We will be having a livingroom space (that is the size of two former bedrooms which have been combined into one super-room), a bedroom and our own bathroom. So really, we will basically have the same amount of space that we do now. Only it's plopped down in the center of my parents house which is fabulous!

4. I'm a hustle-and-bustle kind of person.
This might seem like a weird bonus but I was raised in a very active household. There were forever people coming and going, weird things occurring, interesting events taking place and honestly, living on my own with just my cat and husband is not quite the same as being in the center of a busy family universe. Don't get me wrong, me and Ryan have a great time together but at my parents' house there are people forever stopping by, random things always breaking and needing fixing, funny stories always just waiting to happen. They have dogs and grandkids and all of my siblings and it's just a good time. I guess it just feels like home to me (duh, because that's what it is) and i'm really looking forward to going back home, you know?

So there we have it. Our big news!  Within a year we shall be wealthy home owners and in the meantime we get to spend that year having family dinner and hanging out with my rad parents and swimming in the pool.  I'm pretty pumped about it to say the least :)

Wish us luck though because I have a feeling that once I get there it might be easier to remember all of those scenarios that sent me stomping up the stairs and slamming my door when I was a teenager.

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