Baby #1: Part Two

After we got our good HCG level, we were cautiously optimistic. I even bought a few maternity items, a baby name book, and some lotion for stretch marks. You can never start fighting those too early. (-: We were tightening up the budget and planning for October 28th, 2013.

Time ticked by super slowly until the day of our first ultrasound. I figured that the baby should be around 7 weeks, 2 days, and I looked online the night before to get a good idea of what our ultrasound should look like. I wanted to be as educated as I could and know what to expect. I had heard some stories where the ultrasound technicians didn't tell people much at all, and so I wanted to be able to pick the heartbeat out myself.

The morning of the ultrasound, we got to the imaging center very early. They make you drink a bunch of water so they can see clearly, so I drank water and we waited. We finally got into the room and all I wanted to do was see a heartbeat. I laid on the table and he put the probe on my tummy. I stared at the screen, waiting expectantly. First they had to take measurements of my uterus - couldn't that have waited till later? (-; And finally, he started looking for our baby. And sure enough, there was our little bean nugget. I immediately started looking for a heartbeat. I stared at the little blob and then I saw it: a little flicker. I said, "That's a heartbeat, isn't it?" and the technician said, "It sure is." Tears trickled down my face and my eyes just stared at the monitor and that sweet little heart, which I later found out was beating at 149 bpm. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let me stay all day and stare at the computer screen, but they did print off some photos for us to keep.

We left the ultrasound center with our photos and a lot of relief. We told my parents that evening and told Mark's family that weekend. We had originally planned on waiting, but some things happened that made us decide to tell them sooner. 

At this point, I believe I was already feeling bloated and looking pregnant - at least to me! (-: I wasn't really experiencing any morning sickness, but I tried not to focus on that. I had read that a small percentage of women don't experience morning sickness, but that your chances of miscarriage are much higher if you don't. I struggle with fear, but I didn't want to focus on a symptom I wasn't having, so I was hopeful that I was in that small percentage of women who didn't have morning sickness but still had a healthy pregnancy. 

The Chris Tomlin song, "God of Angel Armies" was a big radio song at the time, and I claimed that song over me and the baby. In hindsight, I realize God is always by my side, even though it might not always be in the same way I hope.

A friend of mine knew about the pregnancy and told me I was "glowing" and took this hilarious picture of me during church one Sunday and drew a "glow" around me. It was pretty awesome so I wanted to include it:

Ha. Oh, and I bought a pregnancy pillow. Dude, pregnant or not, this thing is AWESOME. It's called a Snoogle:

I started taking weekly pictures at week 7. 

These next pictures are pretty ridiculous. Like I don't think I even really need to go into an explanation of why normally I wouldn't put photos like this on the internet. LOL. However, I feel like this gives a pretty good photo of how big my belly was getting. I believe this was right before ten weeks. 

Oh, and one other thing. (I know this is already a novel). I sang in a concert around this time and wore a black dress and it was pretty darn uncomfortable and I was hoping my belly wouldn't be noticed in it. Here's a photo of my with my mom and dad after the concert. I was going to tell my dad that night, but ended up deciding to wait:

So, that pretty much brings us to right before our first full OB appointment, which was scheduled for about ten weeks, two days. I will write about that in the next post.

~Kathryn