Baby!!

So I have clearly failed at blogging. It's been a seriously long time, but I'm going to attempt it again. This is partly thanks to several family and friends who DO keep their blogs updated and I am very jealous. So, they have inspired me to work on it more. Also, I have a kind of big event to keep track of, and for my own personal records, I figured I had better start writing things down before I forget stuff or mix up dates. My plan is to start with the most recent stuff and try to stay on track, and every once in a while I can go back in time and catch up on things from before today. Like, I don't know, maybe the wedding and honeymoon? Or our trip to New York? Or San Diego? Or Niagara Falls? Yes, we've done a lot, and I have no proof.

Anyone who is reading this knows that I am pregnant. And if you didn't know, now you do! I am currently between my 19th and 20th week. There is obviously a lot to catch up on, and I won't be able to recall every moment from every day so I'll have to do the best, somewhat detailed, rundown I can give.

I took my first positive test on November 18th. I had decided the day before to take one in the morning because I already had some symptoms, though I won't share them all with you here :) The main ones were exhaustion, a little emotional (I bawled at the sight of a car wreck earlier that week) and frequent trips to the bathroom to pee. Yes, that started before I even took the test. I haven't had a full night's sleep in ages. Anyway, I wanted to take it first thing in the morning to get the best accuracy. Thanks to my frequent bathroom runs, first thing in the morning was 5 AM. I took it and it went to positive very quickly. Tom was still asleep, and wouldn't have to get up for work for close to another hour. I was too anxious to go back to sleep so I just laid there until he woke up. Then I told him, got a happy hug and kiss, and fell back asleep. And that was that! I took another test a week later to be sure, and called the doctor to make my first appointment sometime after that.

We decided not to announce anything until week 12, just to be safe. That wasn't easy to do, but I somehow didn't leak it. Also, miraculously, nobody asked! If anyone had come out and asked if I was pregnant, I would have said yes. In a way, it wasn't entirely too hard to not tell anyone because I had quite a hard time believing it myself to be honest. It happened much faster than I expected. So even though I had all the symptoms and positive tests to prove it, I couldn't really wrap my head around it.

The first couple months weren't fun, but not as bad as other experiences I've heard of. I worked just as much as I normally would over the holidays, which was tiring but not too bad. I just had to take a lot of bathroom breaks. And snack breaks. Needless to say, my managers figured it out very quickly. But that was fine because then they were able to make it so I didn't lift heavy things and they made sure I would be covered if I needed snacks. The rest of the staff didn't know until we told the world :)

I definitely had nausea, but no vomiting. So far, so good! My nausea mostly came from an empty stomach, so I had to learn that when I felt sick, I needed to eat. But not a lot, because that would make me sick too. It was weird. I had smell aversions, mostly to cooking meats and various spices. I had some food aversions too, things just didn't sound great Between weeks 8 and 12 I don't think I ate meat at all. I ate a lot of crackers, PBandJ, applesauce, fruit snacks, cereal, toast, etc. Just simple, easy, non-offensive foods. And there were points where I was having to eat every 1 to 2 hours. So, all the weird food and smell stuff was really as bad as I had it. Poor Tom didn't have a real meal for quite some time. Unless he made it or we got it from a restaurant, because then I wouldn't have to smell it cooking.

Rosemary was a weird thing that nearly made me vomit just thinking about it. I had an incident at the grocery store where I was sampling a piece of bread from the bakery and as it turns out, there was rosemary in it. I couldn't even chew it, let alone swallow it. There wasn't a trash nearby to spit it out into, and of course by the time I wanted it out of my mouth, the bakery employee was asking me if I needed anything. I had to shove it to the side of my mouth, tell him I needed a minute, and then I made a beeline for a trash can where I literally had to pull it out of mouth and throw it away. Embarrassing. Especially since I didn't look even close to pregnant, which might have given me a good excuse. Sigh.

Fortunately, the food and nausea stuff is entirely gone. I still won't eat rosemary, and for some reason Chinese food doesn't sound appealing (which is weird because normally I LOVE it!) but mostly, things are normal.

The most exciting thing is that I'm finally starting to show some. It happened in just the last couple weeks. At my 16 week appointment last month I hadn't gained any weight yet, but I there were some days that I looked a little bigger. And then the next day I would look normal again. But, in the last few weeks I noticed that after eating my pants would feel tight. Then, just the other day, I tried on a pair of jeans and they wouldn't button. I still have a couple pairs of jeans that do fit, but these don't at all. I tied them up with a hairband and wore a long shirt. So, I'm guessing that by my 20 week appointment next week, the scale will show a bigger number. I don't have a scale at home, so I don't know until I go. But I can see growth.

I had originally wanted to take weekly pictures, but I quickly noticed that I wasn't really growing. I did a 12 week photo because that's when we first heard the heartbeat, but it's exactly what I looked like before I got pregnant. This is 12 weeks:

This next photo is at 16 weeks, again, I took it mostly because I had been to the doctor and it had been a while since I took a picture. I was the same weight as I was at 12 weeks, (and before we even started trying for that matter) but now that I look at it I might be a tad bigger. Not showing, just bigger. But maybe it's just the angle. Who knows. I know all my clothes fit then :)

This next photo is from last week, at 18 weeks, when I felt like maybe I was showing some. It's not a very defined baby belly, but I'm definitely growing.

This last one is from yesterday, 19 weeks. And yes, I might be looking pregnant here :) It's still very easy to hide though. Unfortunately my legs and rear look bigger as well! Oh well, that's how it goes I guess. Also, I'm noticing how gross my mirror is! I don't even use that sink! I'll have to get rid of that by the 20 week shot.

So that is where I'm at in a nutshell. A small nutshell but I think I've typed enough for now. I think if I do a couple more posts over the weekend I will feel pretty caught up on the pregnancy stuff. Then maybe I can catch up on stuff from before. My goal is to be fairly caught up on the pregnancy before we do our ultrasound next week! I can't wait to find out what we are having!