Today was our second visit to see our OB. (We decided to go with an OB this first pregnancy instead of a midwife because we felt more comfortable being with a doctor during the first pregnancy to get the hang of things. Maybe next time...) I was really hoping to do another ultrasound but the entire appointment consisted of my blood pressure check, pee-in-a-cup, and questions on my part. Then she whipped out the doppler, put some jelly on my belly, and searched... Then there it was! Our heartbeat! We *heard* the heartbeat! Just for a couple of seconds, then it disappeared. She said the baby was being shy, so she searched around for another 10 or 15 seconds and she found it again, nice and strong and a healthy 150- 160 bpm. DH was with me, I'm so glad we're able to share all these first moments together!
Turns out I lost a pound. Which I totally don't understand because I'm bigger (just a little bit) in my stomach? What has shifted around? Nothing's shrinking, that's for sure!
Yesterday I was 13 weeks pregnant- out of the dreaded first trimester. Next appointment is July 13, 3 days before our first wedding anniversary.
Thursday, June 15
First Trimester Summary
Since I'm beginning this blog basically at the beginning of my second trimester, I'll just summarize quickly what's happened so far...
Since we chart, we knew there was a huge chance we'd conceived. I took a home pregnancy test on the day before Good Friday in April, 8 days past ovulation, and it was negative. I was pretty sure it would be, that's usually too early to tell! Easter Monday I took another test, and this one was positive! DH (dear husband) and I couldn't believe it! We knew it had probably happened, but there's something very real about seeing the positive sign on a test instead of the negative we'd gotten before. That vertical line changed our lives!
The next big step was to make an appointment with our doctor. We went on May 11, several weeks later, and she did an internal sonogram and WOW. That was 50 times more real than a positive home test! As the doctor pointed out the blinking dot on the screen that was maybe the size of the tip of a pencil, we realized that was the heart pumping, already. At about 4 and 1/2 weeks past conception. The heart was beating. (Gosh and who in their right mind calls this baby a blob of tissue??? Another story...) She changed my due date (since she *incorrectly* estimated Dec. 15 according to the LMP rule) to December 26, a little closer to the date I calculated as December 29. So we tell people we're due right after Christmas! A Christmas baby!
Other odds and ends:
1. I've thrown up once, and only once. My sincere apologies go out to the poor witnesses, my DH, dad, and brother. Those poor guys.
2. I've had major food aversions- basically all food in general has been so incredibly disgusting. DH did the majority of cooking for several weeks, and for that I love him!
3. Fatigue is something real, I always thought it was just laziness. But when you fall asleep after putting your head on your desk for 3 seconds, you know you're pregnant.
4. Acne during pregnancy is *different* from acne during puberty. For me, it's been those painful, under-the-skin mountains that won't pop but hurt like heck.
5. It's scary to tell some people who you think might not be so happy for you that you're pregnant. But in the end, your excitement is contagious and people really *do* care! And people don't wait to start offering you their opinions about maternity clothes and breastfeeding and carseats and excercise and alcohol, they don't wait one minute!
6. Pregnancy has strengthened this relationship between husband and wife. We're going somewhere together that we've never been before, and it's incredibly exciting!
7. Breath Right nose strips are worth the money.
8. A community of support is very important- you need someone whom to ask random questions and to hear similar experiences about pregnancy and its trappings.
9. Grandparents rock!
10. Prenatal vitamins suck and praying is difficult when you're exhausted, but both are extremely important to the development of your baby. :-)
Since we chart, we knew there was a huge chance we'd conceived. I took a home pregnancy test on the day before Good Friday in April, 8 days past ovulation, and it was negative. I was pretty sure it would be, that's usually too early to tell! Easter Monday I took another test, and this one was positive! DH (dear husband) and I couldn't believe it! We knew it had probably happened, but there's something very real about seeing the positive sign on a test instead of the negative we'd gotten before. That vertical line changed our lives!
The next big step was to make an appointment with our doctor. We went on May 11, several weeks later, and she did an internal sonogram and WOW. That was 50 times more real than a positive home test! As the doctor pointed out the blinking dot on the screen that was maybe the size of the tip of a pencil, we realized that was the heart pumping, already. At about 4 and 1/2 weeks past conception. The heart was beating. (Gosh and who in their right mind calls this baby a blob of tissue??? Another story...) She changed my due date (since she *incorrectly* estimated Dec. 15 according to the LMP rule) to December 26, a little closer to the date I calculated as December 29. So we tell people we're due right after Christmas! A Christmas baby!
Other odds and ends:
1. I've thrown up once, and only once. My sincere apologies go out to the poor witnesses, my DH, dad, and brother. Those poor guys.
2. I've had major food aversions- basically all food in general has been so incredibly disgusting. DH did the majority of cooking for several weeks, and for that I love him!
3. Fatigue is something real, I always thought it was just laziness. But when you fall asleep after putting your head on your desk for 3 seconds, you know you're pregnant.
4. Acne during pregnancy is *different* from acne during puberty. For me, it's been those painful, under-the-skin mountains that won't pop but hurt like heck.
5. It's scary to tell some people who you think might not be so happy for you that you're pregnant. But in the end, your excitement is contagious and people really *do* care! And people don't wait to start offering you their opinions about maternity clothes and breastfeeding and carseats and excercise and alcohol, they don't wait one minute!
6. Pregnancy has strengthened this relationship between husband and wife. We're going somewhere together that we've never been before, and it's incredibly exciting!
7. Breath Right nose strips are worth the money.
8. A community of support is very important- you need someone whom to ask random questions and to hear similar experiences about pregnancy and its trappings.
9. Grandparents rock!
10. Prenatal vitamins suck and praying is difficult when you're exhausted, but both are extremely important to the development of your baby. :-)
Wednesday, June 14
NFP
Ok to start from the very beginning... I think it's pretty much safe to say that DH (dear husband) and I practice natural family planning, specifically the Couple to Couple League's version of the sympto-thermal method. No, this is NOT the rhythm method!!! It is completely in line with the Catholic Church's teaching on the Theology of the Body, and has truly been a blessing in our marriage (all 11 months of it!). Not only do we practice NFP to avoid conceiving children during serious times, but we used it to conceive our first baby on our first try. :-)
The running joke is that my family does *not* have fertility issues (I have 5 siblings!) so it was no surprise really that we conceived on our first try! I think though, after doing research and realizing that many people have fertility issues initially, that it really was a miraculous that things have worked out so well so far.
I really, firmly believe that a woman should understand what she does to her body when she uses artificial birth control, and that each woman should understand the cycles of her own body. It is NORMAL for a woman *not* to have 28 day cycles- something I didn't know until after I learned NFP. I thought I was broken, or that something was wrong with me, and that wasn't the case at all! Instead, each woman has a unique way in which they were made, which makes each and every woman's cycle different from the next womans. Yes, some could set their clock by their period, but it doens't mean there's nothing wrong if others can't.
I'm not trying to evangelize here. This is my blog, you're choosing to read it. That said, I hope you enjoy following along with DH and I during our first pregnancy!
The running joke is that my family does *not* have fertility issues (I have 5 siblings!) so it was no surprise really that we conceived on our first try! I think though, after doing research and realizing that many people have fertility issues initially, that it really was a miraculous that things have worked out so well so far.
I really, firmly believe that a woman should understand what she does to her body when she uses artificial birth control, and that each woman should understand the cycles of her own body. It is NORMAL for a woman *not* to have 28 day cycles- something I didn't know until after I learned NFP. I thought I was broken, or that something was wrong with me, and that wasn't the case at all! Instead, each woman has a unique way in which they were made, which makes each and every woman's cycle different from the next womans. Yes, some could set their clock by their period, but it doens't mean there's nothing wrong if others can't.
I'm not trying to evangelize here. This is my blog, you're choosing to read it. That said, I hope you enjoy following along with DH and I during our first pregnancy!
Yesterday
Yesterday I spent a good 30 or 45 minutes writing my first real entry... And the internet went out and I lost it. All. So instead of re-writing everything at once, I'm going to take my time and break it up into smaller blogs so that I'm not so depressed if that happens again!
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