Finally public with our baby!!

Here are the pictures we did for our pregnancy announcement. We think they turned out so cute! Thanks so much Laura for sharing your time and talents with us. You're the best!

Week 13

      Every Friday is the start of a new pregnancy week for me. It makes it easy to keep track! And since that is the slowest day for me at work, and Ryan is free after his morning classes, it also makes for a perfect day to have our OB appointments. Currently, we have our OB appointments every 4 weeks. Since our last appointment was at 9 weeks when I was freaking out, our next appointment fell at 13 weeks. Since that was technically when we finished the first trimester, we figured once we heard from the OB that all was good and well, we’d finally announce to everyone outside of the few that knew about our little peanut. We got to the appointment only to find that the OB had been called out to a c-section, and learned that there was a chance we wouldn’t be able to see her until the next week. I was so bummed!! I’ve discovered that I’m not very good at keeping secrets since I’ve wanted to tell the world pretty much since we found out. Each time we had a scare I was glad that everyone didn’t know, but then once those moments passed I was back to wanting to share the news. They were able to give us a call when the OB returned to the office, so we did get to see her after all.
      We talked about how things have gone, and I asked how they choose the date for a c-section, since I know I need to have one. (Due to the nature of my injuries from that car accident, as well as the titanium screw I have in my pelvis, my pelvis can’t open the way it should to deliver a baby. My orthopedic surgeon from the accident told me it was extremely important for me to inform any OB I worked with of this so as not to endanger the baby or myself during delivery.) She said that she wasn’t aware that I needed one and asked me to explain why. I told her all about it, and that I had gone over all of that with the nurse practitioner at my initial visit to their office. Apparently she didn’t think that was important enough to write down. Odd, right? Anyway, I pulled up a picture of my pelvic x-ray right after the accident to show her as an illustration to why a c-section was necessary. She said that she delivers lots of babies and she thinks it would be worth a shot to try a regular delivery, especially since she can turn to a c-section as a last resort if necessary. Hmmm. Ok wait a second. I understand that there are risks associated with having a c-section. But in my case there are also risks associated with having a vaginal delivery! It could re-break my pelvis!  Um, no thank you. Maybe she’s presenting that as an option because she really thinks it would be better to go that route. Maybe she’s suggesting it because she prefers those deliveries over c-sections. Well, I’ll go somewhere else if you don’t want to do my surgery, lady. I did sign a release of information so they can get everything from the hospital in Texas and she can review everything further. She wants to have an orthopedist here take a look at the scans and give a second opinion to what I was given years ago. I’m ok with her looking into different options and getting a second opinion. But what it comes down to is what feels right and best for me and my baby, and anyone who knows me knows that I will not be shy in sharing that opinion. So we’ll see what happens. She may take one look at everything in person and say there is no way she would try anything but a c-section. Time will tell.
      My symptoms have returned, so I constantly have to go to the bathroom again. When it happens in the middle of the night, I play a time game with myself. If it’s within an hour to an hour and a half of when I’m supposed to wake up for work, I tell my bladder it’s out of luck and it has to wait. Otherwise I drag myself out of bed and go. I guess that is just preparing me for later in my pregnancy when it gets worse as well as once Baby is here and I never sleep again! Haha. I still haven’t had many cravings, but the one that keeps popping up is the need for popcorn. Movie theater popcorn would be ideal, but since we don’t go to the movies often (and popcorn there is waaaay expensive) I just have to do with regular popcorn. It works well enough.
      I started to show a little around 11 weeks, and my little bump is continuing to grow. I can’t wait until I feel Baby move so that maybe I can finally actually feel pregnant!!
      We had a lot of fun taking some pregnancy announcement pictures, and even more fun finally announcing to everyone. Yay for happy times!! Thanks to everyone for being excited with us!! :)

Week 8 thru 12

      Starting at week 8, the few symptoms I had completely disappeared. So of course, being me, I started to freak out that something was horribly wrong. Having those scares at the beginning left me a little on edge that we were just playing a waiting game for everything to come crashing down on us. After worrying and fretting and everything for a full week, I called the OB’s office and explained everything that was happening. Since it had been my primary care doctor that had ordered the tests and ultrasounds in the beginning (I wasn’t “established” yet  at that point with the OB, so they wouldn’t do it) they decided to have me come in for an appointment the following day (9 weeks to the day) instead of waiting 2 weeks for my scheduled appointment. I was a wreck at work, worrying that we were going to discover that I had experience a missed miscarriage. For those of you who don’t know what that is, I’ve decided that it’s even worse than a regular miscarriage. What happens is your baby stops developing, but your body still thinks it’s pregnant. All of your symptoms will continue (usually), and the only way to find out what’s happened is when you go to your next OB appointment and get an ultrasound. So there you are thinking that you’ll get to see your baby, only to discover that your baby stopped growing weeks ago. Isn’t that horrid???
      So we went to the appointment (after basically having to move mountains for Ryan to be there) and we explain to the doctor what was going on. She had me lay down and tried to find the heartbeat with the doppler (a type of ultrasound wand that just picks up sound but has no picture). She tried and tried but couldn’t find it. So of course at this point my anxiety went from high to through the roof. They didn’t have any openings for an ultrasound right then, so we had to return in a hour and a half. Longest wait ever! Finally we went back and checked in for the ultrasound. The ultrasound tech at the OB office went off on this whole monologue on how she wasn’t going to be able to tell us anything and we would have to wait for the doctor to call with the results. So when she started we didn’t have an overly positive feeling, much less any hope for her to find our baby with a healthy heartbeat. When she started moving the wand around and brought our baby into view, we recognized the heartbeat right away (since we had seen it before and knew what to watch for). At that point the tech did verify that it was the heartbeat, and that everything looked great. She said that she had to tell us all that stuff at the beginning in case she DIDN’T find the heartbeat, but since it was there she could tell us everything. Baby was measuring exactly 9 weeks (perfect) and had a healthy heartbeat of 150 bpm. She printed out some pictures of Baby, which is included below. Picture a gummy bear laying on its side facing you, with the head to the right of the picture, and you might be able to figure out what you are looking at. After that appointment, even though my symptoms didn’t return, I could look at that picture and feel peace.

Our little gummy bear!!