No, not the Justin Beiber song. Ick.
Think more along the lines of what happens to be growing inside of me right now (minus 2 babies, of course). Per my
last post, we're expecting Baby G #1 in January, and I figured now would be a great time to recap our adventure of finding out we are entering into the unknown and exciting land of parenthood.
First though, I must share this photo:
Story of my life.
Someone asked me the other day if we knew what we were having. I looked at them and said, "A puppy." I can't wait to be 38 weeks pregnant and have people ask me when I'm due just so I can say "I'm not pregnant".
Goodness I'm so mean, but hey, you only get to do this a few times in your life! I like to have fun with it. Life is too short, afterall.
So, back to Baby G. What an adventure this has been so far. I will be 11 weeks in exactly an hour and a half, which means baby is the size of a lime (I miss margaritas!). It's hard to believe, but baby has already grown so much--when we found out we were expecting, baby wasn't even the size of a poppyseed. How incredible is that?!
K and I were not planning on our family growing yet. I am finishing up my Masters--only have 6 1/2 weeks left--and he just started his. We are anticipating a PCS move in the next year and a half and our small 1 bedroom apartment just can't handle any more growth, especially with two giant fur children involved. I love how God changes our plans!
We were on our honeymoon, which I also addressed in my
last post. Toward the end of our trip, my nose got so incredibly stuffy I couldn't stand it. I seriously thought I was going to die. I felt so crummy because of my nose, that I spent most of that entire day doing this:
I looked like death. My mother put it kinder: "You look like you just went through labor". Hmm, foreshadowing anyone?
What I couldn't understand was that I otherwise felt normal. I was tired, of course, but I attributed that to our late nights and travel. Boy, was I wrong!
As we prepared to leave Punta Cana, I was hit with the worst nausea ever, and I never get nauseous. I remember telling K that there was no way I would make it through a 4 hour flight. Coming from a family of nurses, I figured I was just suffering from side effects of post-nasal drip. Go figure.
The next day was Mother's Day. Mind you, I had absolutely no reason to think I was pregnant and wasn't even thinking about starting our family for at least another year, however, when I woke up that morning I had a fleeting thought of, "This is my last Mother's Day not being a mommy." I thought I was so strange and figured that was just a result of how tired I was because
obviously the only thing that could make me that tired was travelling.
May 16th, I woke up very early for work (yes, I'm one of those lucky people who has a job they actually miss when they go on vacation) and started getting ready to shower. I wasn't due for my monthly ladies adventure for another five days but for some strange reason decided to take a pregnancy test before my shower, knowing full well that it would come up negative. So, I did my thing, put the test on the counter, turned around to get the shower going and turned around to grab the test and throw it away. Except, I saw this
Well, that's never been there before! I stared at it for a few minutes before it even hit me what I was seeing. Then I started to shake that poor test like an
Etch-a-Sketch because, obviously, I had a broken test. The line didn't disappear. In my entire life, I have never experienced the kinds of emotions that I experienced all at once. There was joy, fear, happiness, sadness all rolled into one. There's no guidebook that tells you what to expect when you find out you're expecting!
I had always thought I would tell K about our pregnancies in a really cute way (Thanks,
Pinterest), but all creativity went out the window at that moment. K was still asleep, and I walked into our bedroom and said, "Honey, you might want to wake up."
He didn't move.
"Honey, you seriously might want to wake up right now."
So he groggily opened his eyes and looked at me like I was nuts for waking him up at 6:30am on his day off.
All I did was show him the test. Then I said, "It's positive."
He grinned, said, "Congrats, babe." and put his head back down on the pillow and closed his eyes.
I love my even-keeled husband. He obviously needs his coffee in the mornings.
About 30 seconds later, his head popped off the pillow and he said, quite worried, "Shouldn't you be going to a doctor?!"
Goodness, I love him.
So, by 7:30am we were on our way to the base clinic to get what we already knew confirmed. We were having a baby!
I will never forget that phone call from the nurse. They go through your information whenever they call you and she asked me, "Are you Active Duty or a dependent?"
"Oh, I'm just a spouse."
I could tell by her voice that she was smiling when she said, "Oh honey, you're not just a spouse, you're a mommy."
I burst into tears of joy. Let the pregnancy emotions begin.
This picture was taken the day we found out.
I have a feeling I'm going to miss that flat belly.
Being pregnant hasn't changed too much in my daily life. I'm still way too busy for my own good (K is always telling me to slow down and take it easy), working full time and taking four MA classes. I've been super fortunate not to be sick hardly at all unless BBQ is involved, which is rather unfortunate. I haven't really had much meat either, which is a bummer. Bagels, strawberry cream cheese, milk and peaches are my favorite.
The greatest change I've noticed is how tired I am. I am usually a go go go type of person and am able to wake up whenever. Not anymore. The earliest I can get out of bed is 7:30am, and that's pushing it (maybe shouldn't have scheduled that 7:30am Chiropractic appointment tomorrow, whoops). I've recently started getting the occasional heartburn, but even that is tolerable.
Baby is being nice right now.
We told our families about a week after we found out we were expecting. K's family happened to be all together that Saturday, so we met them for dinner and broke the news. This will be the second grandbaby, so naturally, they're thrilled.
On my side, this is the very first grandbaby on for both sides. We told my family at my little brother's baseball game. My twin sister was in on the secret (I wish we had recorded her reaction, it was very similar to this
SNL skit... she really did freak out like that. It was awesome) and got everyone together for a picture. When we were settled, we turned to my Dad's mom and said, "Hey grandma, did you know that today is National Celebrate Great-Grandparents Day?". She didn't catch it right away, but my mom sure did!
Once we got through the numerous askings of "Are you serious?", everyone was thrilled and I can't count the number of times my dad asked when he could post it on Facebook.
So now, the news is public. Baby is growing and is healthy. Mommy is growing (bye bye, skinny day jeans) and healthy. Life is beautiful and even though this baby was a surprise, we couldn't be more thrilled. God knows what He's doing and we are ready to embrace this new adventure!
