8 Weeks Pregnant - Ultrasound!!!

So much has happened this week, but I can't bear to save the best for last...I'm gonna jump right in. I had an ultrasound today! And here's the photo! I couldn't wait to show everyone!

She said the baby is measuring right on at 8 weeks. We could see the heartbeat, which was going strong at 172 BPM. They said that was good. I think that's on the fast side if what I've read is accurate, but I know too fast is better than too slow.

And now I will attempt to explain what everything is without being able to point: the head is at the bottom. It's pretty big at this point compared to the body, and it's supposed to be. The little dark spot on the head is actually an open space where the brain is growing. The little thing sticking out on the left side is an arm. :-) It has arms! It has legs, too, but you can't really see them on this photo. You can see the outline of part of the amnion (the little sac the baby is in). It's the curvy line that starts on the right side of the feet and goes down toward the head. The large black area is the outer gestational sac. The amnion will eventually fill the whole gestational sac. We could see the yolk sac to the left of the baby's feet. It's pretty small compared to the baby now, because the placenta is getting ready to take over nourishment duty. And in the words of Forrest Gump, "That's about all I have to say about that."

I can't even express how relieved I am to see that there is actually a living baby in there! It's the right size, everything looks perfect so far, the heartbeat is great -- it's been hard to believe that I really am pregnant, and of course there is always worry that something will go wrong. Now that we've seen the heartbeat, the chance of miscarriage drops to just 2% from about 20%.

A funny thing that happened at the ultrasound: the tech said she could see my bladder filling up before her very eyes. :-) They made me drink lots of water beforehand.

An annoying thing that happened at the ultrasound: she asked if I have a high tolerance for pain, since I am planning to have a natural birth. I just think it's something women are built to handle. Don't imply that I may not be able to bear the pain. I don't need to hear that.

My amazing, wonderful husband just went to the store to get ice cream and root beer, and then made me a float and brought it to me because I've been wanting one all day! :-)

I want to hurry up and get this thing posted, so I won't go on and on about all of the other stuff that happened this week. Suffice it to say that the DMV has sent me a notice stating that my license will be suspended on the 20th of this month if I don't pay my speeding ticket from two months ago by then. I sent the payment in on time, but the person I talked to at the municipal court said they never received it. I have sent a new payment and I need to call tomorrow to see if they got it. They better have! I am having my original money order tracked, and hopefully I will get a refund for it.

Also, we took my car to get fixed today (the check engine light has been on forever), and I gave them the wrong car key. I'm blaming it on pregnancy brain. So we had to go back after the ultrasound and give them the right one, and then they couldn't fix it anyway. They had to refer us to some muffler place. Ugh.

Ok, more about ultrasounds really quick: I was able to make an appointment to have a FREE ultrasound at Greenville Tech on January 19th to find out the gender. I was hoping to schedule it before Christmas so that we could sort of give ourselves a present, but they were booked already. They can usually tell the gender at 18 weeks or so, and I'll be 23 weeks when we find out. At least if the baby is a little bigger and more developed, there might be less room for error.

I think that's everything for now! I just can't wait for everyone to see the little raspberry (that's about how big it is now)! And no belly shot again this week...still no belly to show. :-) Have a great week!

7 Weeks Pregnant

Well, I'm at 7 weeks and still feeling good, pregnancy wise! I'm not posting a belly shot this time because there's no point. See last week's photo! :-) The baby is supposed to be the size of a blueberry now. I'm looking at two different books and a bunch of websites to get my information, and it gets confusing since there seem to be slight discrepancies between them, and also when it says, "Week 7," it's hard to tell whether it's referring to the beginning of week 7 (so, 6 weeks pregnant), or the end of the week (7 weeks pregnant). Anyway, last week when I said the baby was 2 to 4 millimeters, I think that information was really for the week before. Last week it should have been about 5 millimeters, and now it's more than twice that! Baby had a growth spurt this week. One of the books I have shows an enlarged image and an actual size image, which is neat. The picture for week 7 is about as long as my index finger is wide. So still pretty small, but growing fast! I can't find a good picture to put on here this time, but the one in my book looks a lot chubbier, with a rounder head and a shorter tail. The arm buds are longer than the leg buds. The primary bronchi (air passages into the lungs) are present, as well as the pancreas and appendix. The intestines are growing in the umbilical cord, which I thought was interesting. They move into the abdomen later. This week the facial features, like the nose and ears, will start to define themselves, and fingers and toes will also begin to form.

Travis was sick with a cold for a few days last week, and on Wednesday I started feeling like I was getting it too. Thursday I felt even worse, so I cancelled lessons and laid on the couch all day. Friday morning I felt WAY better, except I still had a bit of nausea. I'm thinking that was probably morning sickness, even though I haven't had much of it since. It's very mild.

One symptom that I've had from the beginning is lots of peeing! It's starting to annoy me more and more, especially at night. If I don't fall asleep within 15 minutes, I have to get up and go again, and again, and again. I hear this symptom usually disappears in the second trimester, only to return again at the end of the pregnancy. Other than that, I've just been a little more hungry. I don't really think I eat more, but I eat more often, because if I let myself stay hungry, that's when I start to feel sick. Certain foods are starting to sound very unappetizing to me as well, but it's not always the same foods, and not all the time.

We have made some progress on the birth center choices, etc. I don't want to give birth in a hospital, for too many reasons to list here. I will probably tell you more about it later on. I have done tons of research and have come to the conclusion that it's actually riskier to give birth in a hospital than at home. Higher risk of infection, higher probability of unnecessary interventions, such as C-sections, less opportunity for bonding with the baby, etc., etc. We considered doing a home birth, but now we're pretty sure we're going with a birth center. I have no worries about doing a home birth, but I think it would be stressful to have to set everything up here, and they'd have to bring in a birthing pool and all kinds of equipment. I don't want to have to worry about all of that. I just want to stay comfortable and relaxed throughout labor so that it will be as easy as possible (though I know it won't be easy).

I want to be clear that I'm not judgmental of people who want to give birth in a hospital. I think everyone should make the choice that they are the most comfortable with. But I am definitely pro-considering-your-options. I think a lot of women don't realize there is even a choice to be made.

Anyway, the birth center we visited is called Labors of Love. It's in Spartanburg, only about 15 minutes from us. We really liked it there, and liked the midwives. The concern is insurance. Our insurance is the ONLY one they know of that doesn't cover them! So, just to check, I called another birth center in Simpsonville (nearly an hour away). They said, no, our insurance doesn't cover them, either. "But wait, we're running a special right now!" A special? Isn't that strange? As if people are gonna go, "Oh! A special! We better get pregnant before we miss it!" Their 25% off "special" still puts them just over the regular price of Labors of Love. Also, if we do the Bradley childbirth class at Labors of Love, we will get a discount (I don't know how much). So, we're sticking with Labors of Love (I keep wanting to shorten it to LOL!).

We might switch insurance companies, or we might be able to talk ours into covering the birth there because of the Affordable Care Act, which, as of a few days ago, supposedly requires all insurance companies to cover prenatal care. I'm afraid they'll say, "Yes, we'll cover it...IF you go to the hospital!"

But, even if we have to pay for it out of pocket, it's not much more than we'd have to pay at a hospital AFTER insurance covered most of it. In other words, hospitals charge WAY more than birth centers do, but insurance covers all but about $3,000 at a hospital. Labors of Love charges $3500 for everything including postnatal care until 6 weeks after the birth. The only difference is that we have to pay it all before the birth.

House stuff -- this is the last thing, I promise! I emailed our real estate agent several days ago and told her that if we're going to sell the house, it needs to be soon. I asked her if we could lower the price a bit, and if she could feature the house on their website. She has not gotten back to me! Anyone know of a good realtor?! We are so done with her.

Come back for week 8!

6 Weeks Pregnant!

Yes...I'm pregnant! I have so much to talk about that I don't even know where to start! We are so excited.

In my last post, I was certain that I was not pregnant. I expected to feel different somehow. I guess I just thought that I would know. A couple of weeks ago on a Saturday night, I noticed I was feeling a little nauseous. Even

though that's not an unusual feeling for me (I just get random mild nausea once in a while), I decided that was reason enough for me to take a pregnancy test the next morning.

Travis had told me weeks in advance that he wanted to be present for the test, so we got up

together on Sunday to watch the line (or lines) appear. I remember setting the test down on the counter and nonchalantly explaining to him that one line is negative and two lines is positive, but that "this is totally going to be negative." As soon as I had said that, I looked back at the test and was in disbelief at what I saw. A very faint line was appearing. Was I seeing things? Travis wasn't sure what to think. He almost didn't believe it since it was so much lighter than the other line. I

had to convince him that a line is a line, and

immediately I did another test to make sure the first one wasn't just defective. Same results. I remember saying things like, "No way! Holy crap! Honey?!" Travis was just smiling. And then we had to be off to church since Travis was teaching a Sunday school lesson on the history of church architecture and symbols. :-) I kept taking tests daily all week to watch the line get darker. And here they are:

I can't make that any bigger...I hope you can see it. The first red line on each test is the test line, the second is the control line, and "DPO" means "Days Post Ovulation."

I took one more on day 23, and the test line was quite a bit darker than the control line.

We have told our families except Travis's grandmother, who lives in North Carolina. We plan to go visit her on Tuesday and tell her. I managed to capture most of our families' reactions on video. I need to get them uploaded and edited and hopefully post them on here... I hope no one will object! Those moments were life changing for us, and I'm excited to share them.

The baby is now considered an embryo...I guess I'm not sure what it was before! :-) It should be between 2 and 4 millimeters long. The "neural groove" should be closing and brain chambers and eyes are forming. The heart has started beating, and little arms and legs are probably starting to sprout. Personally, I think it looks like a baby shark or something. :-) By the end of this week, it should be much bigger and look slightly more human.

I've had almost no symptoms, and I'm crossing my fingers that it stays that way! I went ahead and posted a belly shot, even though I'm no bigger so far -- ok, I might have a bit of a belly, but that's a food baby! Pregnant women digest food more slowly in order to get more nutrients out for the baby.

This week we're hoping to finalize where we will be going for prenatal care. We have some insurance stuff to figure out. We have met with a midwife, but I have not had any real prenatal appointments yet.

I forgot to tell you my due date. The midwife we met with told me that I am due on May 16th, but I know that my weeks change over on a Sunday, and May 16th is a Monday. So, not that it makes much of a difference, but I think I am due on May 15th, since that's when I will be 40 weeks pregnant (full term). Really, though, I could give birth any time in May.

Also, Travis is the sweetest! The day after we found out, he had a day off for Labor Day, and he suggested we go to Babies R Us, which was a lot of fun! He kisses my belly every morning before he goes to work, and he said this in an email recently: "I hope you know I am REALLY excited about all of this! I keep thinking of the two of you and beaming!"

And now, I will conclude this post with some photos of things we gave our family members to announce the pregnancy. Be back next week!

Made this for my mom:

And this for my dad (whose name is Rad(ford)):

Got this book for Travis's mom:

...and Travis wrote inside:

Made these for my step-mom and little brother:

TTC: Month 1

So...I'm kind of doubtful about this month. I just don't think our timing was very good, etc. I'm ok with that, though. If I got pregnant this month, I would be due in the middle of May, and I'm supposed to be teaching lessons up until May 13th. So, really, I'll be more relaxed if I don't have to worry about trying to keep the baby in while I finish up the year. :-) I will be looking for pregnancy symptoms over the next couple of weeks, though, just in case. If not, then we'll just look forward to next month!

My doctor's appointment went surprisingly well. The nurse who took the blood samples was great. She found a vein and managed to poke it right the first time, which I honestly don't think has ever happened to me! I think my veins are small and hard to find, so normally I end up with about three needle pokes and a big bruise.

The blood test results were good: my thyroid is fine, but I do have high cholesterol (both the good kind and the bad kind), which I think just runs in my family. I'm not worried about it.

I had Travis take some pre-pregnancy pics of me last week, because I want to do a belly shot each week and then do some kind of virtual flip book at the end of the pregnancy. And I just think it will be fun to watch my belly grow! So here they are:

I'll be back next month, unless I end up getting a positive in a couple of weeks!

Just a General Update

It's 1:00 am and I have more energy now than I've had all day! Go figure! Also, our air conditioning quit on us today, so it's at least 85 degrees in here right now. There's no way I'm getting any sleep tonight.

I was planning to wait another couple of weeks to do another post, but...well, I just felt like doing one now. :-)

As TTC time gets closer and closer, I've had lots of distractions, which is great. I stayed at my Dad's while Travis went to Delaware with his family a couple of weeks ago. I decided to stay in town for various reasons...partly so I could teach the few lessons I had scheduled, partly because I thought it'd be fun to hang out with Dad for a few days (my step-mom and little brother were out of town for the week), and also just because I wasn't ready for another 12 hour road trip so soon after the drive back from PA. I was glad I was there to make sure Dad didn't just eat peanut butter toast for a week straight! :-)

Last weekend we went camping with a bunch of friends (about 20 of them!). It was a lot of fun, besides being stung by a wasp!! We were right on a lake, so we got to swim endlessly, and make campfires and have s'mores while we listened to and sang songs for hours. Ah, the simple life.

I've also been getting ready to start lessons back up as the students start school this week and next. Travis started setting up his classroom yesterday, and he already seems exhausted! I guess it just takes time to get back into the swing of things...getting up at 6:45 and all...ugh.

Lately I've been in a I-want-to-have-hobbies sort of mood. I've been practicing the guitar a lot this week -- I was inspired by the campfire music last weekend. I took a guitar class in college and have pretty much stayed at the same fairly low skill level ever since. I would like to be more adept at it. I also have been feeling like doing crafts. I have a sewing machine that a very generous someone gave me a while back. I've made curtains, neck pillows, little change purses, and a pair of undies, of all things. (They're the comfiest ones I own!) But nothing lately. I can't wait to make baby things! :-)

I decided that I should have a check-up before I get preggers. I want to know if I have a problem with my thyroid...I mentioned before that I wasn't going to worry about it, but I decided I might as well get it checked out. Now, if there are two things I can't stand, it's blood work and pap smears -- I didn't realize until after I made the appointment that I'm going to have to endure both in one day. God help me. The appointment is next Tuesday, and Travis can't come with because he'll be teaching. So think of me! Happy thoughts, please.

I am having such a hard time keeping this a secret from our families! I wonder if any of them are suspicious...I think a few of them are. Anyway, I will try to resist the urge to update again until I'm in the "two week wait" (which should be in less than two weeks!).

Goodnight!

Some Fun Stuff I Bought

Hi again! First of all, I just wanted to say that I'm not sure if I'll end up doing a blog post every week or not. I guess it will depend on how things go and whether there is anything to update you on. I will definitely try to do one every week once the TTC-ing has paid off. :-) I don't have too much to talk about for the past week, except some fun purchases!

I have realized lately that it seems whenever I have a life changing event approaching (or hopefully approaching), I like to have things that I will get to use when it happens. Example: when Travis and I had been dating for less than two months, I was so excited and so sure we would get married that I went online and didn't just browse, but bought a wedding dress. Practical? No. Fun? Heck yes. Turned out to be a great deal and a great dress. Anyway, it just makes the event -- whatever it is -- seem closer and more real.

Fast forward to last week. I was ordering some more vitamins on Amazon, and of course I wanted to get the free shipping you get when you order $25 or more. I was about $7 short, so I decided it would be a good idea to order some of those pregnancy test strips that are way cheaper than the kind you buy in a store. I got 25 of them for like $5.50.

Since I still had to spend more money to get the free shipping, Travis and I picked out our future baby's first onesie. So cute!

The test strips came in the mail today. They're really tiny! I tested one out, which seems stupid, but I really wanted to see what a negative result looks like so I would know later on if it was positive. It was very obviously negative. The control line was very clear, and the test line was completely nonexistent. So, if I take a test next month and there's any kind of visible test line, no matter how faint, I will know that it's a positive result. And these test strips are supposed to be much more sensitive than others, so you can use them earlier. I know I won't be able to wait long!

Ok, so then I was innocently perusing Old Navy's maternity clothes online -- you know, just for fun. :-) I saw this top that I just had to have...it was on sale, and I was afraid they wouldn't have it in stock much longer. Does it look too much like fruit stripe gum or something?

Anyway, I hated to pay shipping for just one item, so I had to buy something else, right? They had some really adorable onesies for $1.97, so I bought one of those too.

Can you tell I'm hoping for a girl?

I really hope I get pregnant, otherwise what will I do with all this stuff?!

I'm not buying any more! It's time to hold off on the spending for a while. I still think it's fun to look at it and daydream, though. :-)

Stay tuned for more updates!

About Me And Why I'm Writing This Blog

This is me and my husband Travis. We met in the Fall of 2007 when I was student teaching at the school where he was an art teacher. We didn't get to know each other, though, until the following Spring. And once we did, it was an immediate relationship that felt so comfortable and so familiar. It sounds trite, but we both felt like we had always known each other. We got married on June 28th, 2009.

We have talked about our future children since the beginning of our relationship. We've always been on the same page about kids. Before we got married, Travis asked me how long I would want to wait before starting our family. At the time, I didn't feel anywhere near ready. "Oh, five years!" I said. He was in agreement, but I think he knew we would most likely decide to try sooner. Once we were married, we discussed it again and decided, "Well, maybe more like two or three years..."

Travis currently works as an art teacher at an elementary school, and I teach private piano and violin lessons. We are happy in our jobs, but as you might imagine, we don't make a fortune. In the year that we have been married, we felt financially insecure almost constantly. Things always came up that we could barely handle. There were many contributors to this, including my decision to teach private lessons rather than teach in a school. I have stuck by that decision anyway (and Travis has, too, thankfully) because I really love working with students one-on-one. When I worked as a substitute orchestra teacher for three months before we were married, I felt emotionally beaten down every day. I wish I could handle it, but I just can't. Another factor was (and is) our mortgage payment. Travis bought this house a couple of years before I knew him, and it seemed affordable to him at the time, but now it just eats up all our money, and we have nothing to show for it. The value of the house has decreased, and we owe more than it's worth. We've been trying to sell since March.

Right now, though, we're doing better, and it looks like it's going to stay that way. We've both picked up some extra work this Summer, which we couldn't do last year because of the wedding and honeymoon. Also, I'm getting more and more new students. I think last year I started out with eight or so. By the end of the year I had about 15, and I know I'll start this year with at LEAST 20. In addition, this is Travis's fifth year teaching in South Carolina, so at the end of the year his student loans will be forgiven, and what he has already paid on them will be reimbursed. If we could just sell our house, we'd be in great shape.

I should add that Travis's and my parents have been so generous to us, and we are eternally grateful for their help. I really hope we can pay them back someday.

Now, back to the baby discussion (hmm, do you think our parents would accept grandchildren as payment?). There have been times in the past six months or so that I just thought I would go nuts if we couldn't have a baby soon. This started in February, when I missed a couple of my pills. A month later I became convinced that I had been pregnant and had an early miscarriage, which I am still sure of, though I never had a positive pregnancy test. I was beside myself, because I knew that if the pregnancy had stuck, we would've been fine and happy and everything would have worked out, BUT I also knew that we couldn't possibly do that to ourselves on purpose anytime soon. Financially, we were in no place to have a child.

A couple of months after that, my birth control pills were taken off the shelves for some reason. They were a generic brand, and the brand name would have cost $40 a month, even with insurance. I had read a book about FAM (Fertility Awareness Method), and we decided this would be a good time to try that. (I highly recommend the book, by the way. It's called Taking Charge of Your Fertility, and I think the information in it is indispensable to any woman, trying to conceive, trying to prevent, or just curious.) The first month off the pill, I was again convinced that I was pregnant, just because I ovulated so early that we couldn't have timed things better if we had been trying.

False alarm.

I don't remember much about our conversations, but at some point when I was feeling anxious to have a baby, I asked Travis if we could consider trying this Fall so that I would be due in the Summer. At that point, we both felt like it was sort of an unrealistic goal, but we agreed to keep it in the back of our minds. We've always talked about Summer being the best time for us to have a baby, because neither of us will have to be working. Also, because of the nature of my job, I wouldn't get a paid maternity leave, and I'd be likely to lose students if I had to take two or three months off in the middle of the school year.

In the mean time, I investigated the possible causes of my miscarriage. I knew that often there is no identifiable cause, and that there may not even be a problem, but I wanted to rule it out. I noticed some abnormalities in my cycle that could be problematic, and ventured to fix them. I was and am sure beyond a doubt that these problems were caused by my having been on the pill. I got another book, Fertility, Cycles and Nutrition, that has been incredibly helpful to me. I ordered a vitamin/mineral supplement (Optivite) that was recommended in that book and in TCOYF (Taking Charge of Your Fertility). I've been taking it religiously in addition to getting regular exercise. I've seen amazing improvements, and I've only been on the vitamins for a month. My only concern at this point is that my waking temperatures are often very low, around 96.8, which can indicate low Thyroid function. But I'm not too worried about it at this point.

I went to Pennsylvania for a month this Summer, and for two weeks I was there without Travis. At one point when I was talking to him on the phone, he said, out of nowhere, "I really wanna have a kid." I was kind of taken aback. I said, "You mean...soon?" He joked around and didn't answer, so I asked him if we could try this September, and he said, "Signs point to yes." I was so excited I couldn't stand it. He said he still wanted to think about it a little more, but I barely heard that part.

Just in the past few days, I think we've come to a definite yes. The only thing holding us back had been thoughts of moving to the mountains of North Carolina at some point. We took a trip to Asheville recently and fell in love. I think we've decided not to worry about that yet. I didn't want to be having a baby and finding jobs and a baby-sitter and a place to live all at once. It will be easier if we wait to move, and we also can't imagine telling our families, "Hey, we're gonna have a baby! But we're gonna take him/her three hours away and you'll hardly ever get to see us!" That would go over well. And I'd much rather wait to move than wait to have a baby, and I think Travis is totally with me on that.

So, thus begins our journey! Only one more cycle and we can start TTC (Trying To Conceive). And we'll tell our friends and family about this blog soon enough, but I don't want anyone to get excited yet...I want to surprise them! :-) What a huge secret that is to keep, though! Because of that -- because I can't contain my baby excitement -- I am writing this blog. I hope you enjoy!