22 Weeks

22 Weeks Pregnant Today - I was to embarrassed to take a side shot, my belly is getting big!  Baby is kicking a lot, although, I would describe it as 'squirming' more than kicking.  He kind of feels like a little tapeworm sometimes.

22 Weeks Pregnant

22 Weeks Pregnant

18 Week Ultrasound Boy or Girl?

My doctor ordered another ultrasound at 18 weeks to make sure the baby was developing normally.  We would also be able to find out the sex of the baby if we wanted to know.  Of course we wanted to know.  I was tired of calling the baby "it".  I wanted to pick a name and buy some baby stuf.

So again, we saw the baby on the ultrasound screen.  The ultrasound tech measured the baby's head and feet and hands, and took pictures of the heart and kidney and all kinds of other things.  The baby was facing my back and she couldn't get the baby to turn, so apparently the pictures didn't turn out very well.

Then, finally the moment we had been waiting for!  It it a boy or gir?  The ultrasound technician tried looking between the baby's legs but the baby had its legs tight together and woundn't open its legs.  She kept trying to get the baby to open its legs.  She was pushing on my uterus and trying to jiggle the baby.  Finally the baby opened its legs and she took some shots.  Ben imediately knew....."Its a boy".  The ultrasound technician was like "Yes, its a boy".  And I am kind of.....slow.  I was trying to figure it all out.  I just couldn't understand how they knew it was a boy.  So I was studying the screen, and I saw legs, butt cheeks.....and I just coudn't understand.  So the ultrasound technician pointed the arrow between the legs for me and said "scrotum". 

I had another moment of nonsensical, I sometimes talk nonsensical when I get overwhelmed.  I was like "Oh, could it be a girl?".  And the ultrasound technician is like "no".

Baby's cute little feet at 18 weeks

Random Thoughts about Pregnancy

Most of the time I don't have anyone to talk to about being pregnant.  I don't have any girl friends, just 2 male dogs and my husband.
Sometimes, I ask Ben pregnancy questions.  It generally does not help to ask a man pregnancy questions.  You will just get frustrated because they just don't get it.  Today I asked Ben:
"Do I look pregnant" he actually said "well, to me you look pregnant, but to other people you just look chubby".
Ever since I started getting bigger, Ben started getting bigger too.  Apparently he has a phenomena called sympathy pregnancy.  Even my DOG is getting fat. If I ever complain about my weight gain, Ben normally lets his gut hang out to show me that he's fat too.  Then he shows me Ray's fat tummy and Ray starts wagging his tail and they both start showing off their fat guts.  Like, that's supposed to make me feel better.

18 Weeks

18 Weeks Pregnant

I'm 18 weeks pregnant and barely showing.  The baby is in there somewhere....

Food Cravings

One of the good things about pregnancy is the food cravings.  Its like a wild ride, I don't know where my food cravings will take me next.  Ben hasn't resisted any of my food craving, I think he likes the food adventure.  We never know what we are going to eat next.  So, Ben has been gaining some weight and getting thick around the midsection.  Even my dog Ray has been getting leftovers and getting fat.  Here are some of the foods I have had cravings for:

Lemon Pie
Buffalo chicken wings with ranch dressing
A&W Root Beer
Pink Lemonade
Mr. Noodle
Jello
Watermelon

First Ultrasound 12 Weeks

I remember laying on the exam table and the ultrasound technician was poking the probe around and I was watching the ultrasound screen.  It was such a tense moment, I was so nervous about what I would see.  Would there be a baby inside?  Or was it all a mistake?  Even though all the tests were positive, my body looked the same, and I felt the same, was there really a baby in there?

I will always remember that flash of a second when I saw the baby on the screen, then the baby disappeared as the technician adjusted the settings and tried finding the baby again.   It was unbelievable.  I saw a baby.

Ben was so happy and I was trying to talk but ended up saying nonsensical things.   I was still in a state of shock, like this is really happening? That baby is inside me?  The baby was having a nap.  The baby briefly woke up and it did a few little stretches, like it was relaxing on the beach, reading a magazine or something.  The baby had no care in the world.  And here I am, having anxiety and worrying about everything.  It was funny, how the baby was in its own world, completely unaware we were watching it lounge.

Some people don't believe in God, but seeing the baby makes it clear to me there is a God.  How could this baby be concieved and forming in perfect order unless there is a God who ordered this?  How could this all happen by nothing, by blobs of cells over billions of years?  No, there is a God who has made all these things happen, in perfect order.

At 12 weeks we saw the baby's little heart beating at 168 beats per minute.  The baby's little body was forming.

Jeremiah 1:5

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

Fit Pregnancy

When I found out I was pregnant, I decided that I wanted to be ‘fit’ during pregnancy and I envisioned myself doing workouts and eating healthy. I kept reading Fit Pregnancy articles and I imagined myself as a Fit Pregnancy model, with toned biceps wearing stretchy pants to show off my lean figure and perfectly shaped baby bump.  It was my way of making it through the nine months with a goal or something to focus on.

Fit Pregnancy turned out to be a joke.  There is no such thing as Fit Pregnancy.  All I wanted to do was lie on the couch in sweat pants all day.  I was breaking out in weird rashes, nauseous and tired.  I gained 10lbs in 3 months.  Every morning I was shoving as much toast and crackers down as I could, so I wouldn't throw up at work.

I forced myself to swim, but my 2000 meter swim workouts were reduced to 800 meters if I was lucky.  I was out of breath after 10 minutes and then I wanted to sleep.  Then I started getting embarrassed at my big belly and I didn’t want to go to Lane Swim anymore because I looked like a whale, so I started going to Family Swim so I could swim with the mom's n' tots instead of the lean professional athletes.  So instead of my usually 2000 meter lane workout, I was floating around with kids and seniors citizens.

The Positive Stick

Something wasn't right.  I remember it was a Monday night.  "Uh, Ben....".  For some reason, he just didn't get it.  He was distracted with other things and he just said not to worry that everything would be back to normal soon.  A week went by.  All week, I kept trying to tell him something was wrong.  So finally after a week of trying to communicate this to him we finally bought a home pregnancy test.
I peed on the stick and we looked at the stick and it made the positive sign.  Now, this was really confusing. I was trying to figure out, does positive mean, pregnant or not pregnant?  We tried interpreting the stick in different ways, we tried turning it.  We looked at it more than five times each. Finally, Ben said "your pregnant, we are going to have a baby".
It was final.  The stick said "positive" and positive meant pregnant.  I just felt overwhelmed but at the same time I couldn't understand.  I had a brief moment when I felt like time stopped and God smiled at me.  I felt like God had surprised me with a blessing I had never expected, or imagined or ever planned for.