Are you surprised? Did your heart skip a beat? Do you have goosebumps? All of the above??? Do you believe me yet? Maybe first I should answer some questions that I know a lot of people will have.
1. When are you due? As I said before, mid-January. I'm not going to do the whole definite due-date thing with people because I think it'll only stress me out. The midwives and I will know the tentative due date, but really it's give-or-take a week, so why bother with the whole, "You're 5 days past your due date and you're STILL here at church?!" thing.
2. How far along does that make you? 11 weeks and 2 days today. 3 more weeks of the first trimester, and almost 3 months along!
3. How have you been feeling? Pretty normal actually. I almost wish I felt really sick so that I could convince myself it's happening. It's a little hard to believe. I've mostly just felt tired, so I've been going to bed earlier than normal.
4. Are you going to find out if it's a girl or a boy? Yah, probably. I see the excitement in both, but I want to start buying things now, and feel like I'm doing something rather than waiting and waiting and WAITING.
5. How long have you known? Call me a bum or not, but Matthew and I have known for 7 weeks now.
6. Was the baby conceived spontaneously, or did you use Assisted Reproductive Therapy (ART)? Okay, so most people wouldn't word it that way, but now that I know the jargon, I prefer using it. Besides, it feels a little weird to say, "yeah, the baby was conceived naturally." I can't say WHY but it looks so bald written out in my blog post like that. And yes, for the record, this is a "spontaneous" and normal pregnancy, if you can call any blessing from Heavenly Father 'spontaneous'. I think to Him it was quite planned.
I think that covers the usual gamut of questions that I encounter whenever I tell someone, so now if you don't see me for a while, at least you're filled in on the details! AND I don't have to answer those questions repeatedly through the comment section on this post. How practical of me, I must say!
It really took a fair bit of convincing before I realized that I'm actually pregnant, and to be honest, I'm only now getting excited about it. It just seemed a little too hard to believe before now. Here is a photo of the four pregnancy tests I took, a few days apart. Note that they are all different brands! That was so that I could make sure there was test-retest and inter-brand reliability!
[caption id="attachment_498" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The second one down was the dollar-store one, and it's a little difficult to see the line on it. I liked it the least because you had to collect your pee (who likes peeing into a cup?!) and then use a syringe and stuff, which was a little too much work for me, even if it WAS an eighth of the cost."]
[/caption]We went for a dating ultrasound a couple weeks ago just to make sure that the due date wasn't totally out of whack, and while there we got to hear the heart beat. I'm not sure what the speed was (I'll find out at my next midwife appointment) but it was so cool to hear the steady thump thump thump thump. I even managed to charm my way into getting a photo to keep, which apparently at that ultrasound, they're not supposed to do. Maybe because there isn't much to see. The baby kinda looks like a little lima bean! I scanned my copy of the image so that I could put it on here. Here it is:
[caption id="attachment_501" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The baby is in the lower part of the little circle on the bottom. I like the end result of ultrasounds, but MAN it sucked having it done. 4 cups of water is just TOO MUCH to drink 1 hour and half before you actually have the ultrasound done. I thought I was DYING. Okay, so I'm being dramatic, but still! All the dark stuff at the top of the photo is my bladder. Yikes!"]
[/caption]Anyway, there's my extraordinarily exciting blog post! I've been waiting for a while to post about it, but we only just started telling people this past week, and I wanted to wait so that I could tell my friends Lisa and Anne in person, and I didn't see them until today, so here I am, as soon as possible, posting about our big (or little!) news!
I'm sure now that I have something a little more exciting to post about than the boring summer-ramblings of an unemployed university student, I'll actually get off my butt and post more often than once every ***almost*** six weeks, so keep checking for more!
