updates Updates UPDATES!

Ok, so now I have no excuses left. I’m finally pregnant! Here come the blog posts. This first pregnancy post may be really long and boring for most, but I want to document my pregnancy for posterity’s sake so I’ve got to get caught up on the last three months.



So I thought I was 13 weeks along and due July 20th, but I had an ultrasound today and the baby was measuring over 14 weeks so the doctor moved up my due date to July 11th - woot woot! I really hope this doesn't just mean I'm growing a monster baby...I don't want to birth a 12 pounder.
I was actually pregnant when I wrote my last post, but I didn’t know it yet. We found out the next week. Most of you know this, but we had tried to get pregnant for a couple of years and were starting to get quite frustrated and worried. We had started the process of seeing doctors to see if anything might be wrong with one or both of us. The first weekend in November we went to SLC for Taylor to have some tests done at the University Hospital. We found out about three days later that I was pregnant. Needless to say, when we got the results from his tests a month later and everything looked fine we were relieved, but not super surprised. I thought about taking a pregnancy test the day before his tests, but I figured it was probably a week too early and wouldn’t show up as positive yet even if I was pregnant. I had started having pretty constant heartburn (I always call it heartburn, but it’s actually acid reflux I think) and a little nagging voice at the back of my head kept saying it might be because of a bambino in my belly; but I kept brushing it off because I’d been disappointed a lot in the last two years. When the heartburn didn’t go away and my stomach started getting a little upset too I decided to take a test. It was positive! So I took another one...and it was positive too! I literally couldn’t believe it; I showed the tests to Taylor and obviously he was so super excited. It seemed so unreal at first that it wasn’t very hard to not tell people; also I was so so scared of miscarriage. I was kind of a paranoid mess for the first few weeks. (Disclaimer: Not that it really matters, but the following time-frames are based on how far along I thought I was before the doctor moved me up). The real nausea started to set in around week 5 and it pretty much set up camp for a nice stay. During weeks 5-12 I would wake up feeling pretty good with only minimal nausea, but throughout the day it got worse and worse. By the time I got home from work most nights I was pretty much useless. I just laid around a lot and went to bed way early. People keep asking me if I’ve been overly tired, as that’s a super common pregnancy symptom in the first trimester. As I’ve said in this blog before, I’m an unnaturally tired person always. I didn’t notice any extra fatigue until I got a cold around week 8. Colds always knock me out and this one was no different. This cold didn’t want to go away and it pretty much stuck around for about a month. So my extra tiredness during that month was probably a combination of cold and pregnancy. All I know is that I would pretty much go to bed by 8:00 most nights and I didn’t feel one bit bad about it.
Luckily before I got pregnant I was in the habit of running/working out in the mornings so I have just kept that up. As far as working out is concerned it has worked out well for me that the mornings are when I feel best. My nausea seemed to get stronger and stronger as the weeks passed, so I was getting a little worried that it might never go away. I kept hoping that 12 weeks would be the magical time of relief. The days leading up to the 12 week mark were the worst I’d felt the whole time - I was pretty miserable. Well last week I hit 12 weeks (actually 13 it turns out) and luckily my nausea has gone WAY down. It’s still the most subtle in the mornings and increases throughout the day, but it is soooo much more bearable than before. I never have much of an appetite, but if I don’t snack pretty constantly I get really sick. So I’ve been eating LOTS of crackers, dried fruit and jolly ranchers. I have had zero cravings. For the most part the same foods still taste good to me, even though they never sound good when I think about them before eating. The one exception to my unchanged food tastes is chocolate! Pretty much as soon as I found out I was pregnant I started having the weird weird symptom of a very strong aversion to chocolate. I haven’t had chocolate in over two months and I just keep hoping I’ll be able to eat it again someday. It makes me sick to think about it, to look at it and don’t even get me started on the smell! Ugh. Sweets in general pretty much never sound good to me anymore, but nothing makes me sick like chocolate. Those of you that know me well know that I am huge sweets/junk food person normally. I LOVE to make sweets and I LOVE to eat them even more...well I used to - I hope it comes back. I also have a really hard time with smells, as I think is common for most pregnant women. It doesn’t matter what kind of smell it is, if I can smell it, it’s probably gonna make me sick. Perfume is one of the worst offenders. Candles, air fresheners, food, smoke, grease, dogs...all bad news.
Taylor has been so great through the first trimester. He’s been sensitive and patient when I needed it most. He’s dealt with my mood swings like a champ! He gives me good back massages and he doesn’t use cologne on the days when I’m gonna be around him during the day :). At the beginning we both felt like the baby was going to be a boy. My feelings changed quickly to a girl. I could not care less what we have, except that I can’t think of any boy names that I would actually consider using. Maybe that’s why I feel like it’s a girl... If anyone has good suggestions for names let me know. I’m real picky apparently.
The best news of the last couple of weeks is that I have given my notice at my job and starting on January 26th I am going to just do medical coding from home! Scary and exciting! I feel really good about it and I am so happy and grateful for the chance to stay home with the baby. We’ll still have insurance through Taylor’s job, so it worked out pretty perfectly. This year has already started out pretty much as great as possible, but if we could sell our stupid house in Sandy everything would literally be perfect. I know - now I’m just getting greedy.
Wow, when I said this post would be long I didn’t know it would end up this long. Sorry if anyone is actually still reading at this point. Thanks for everyone’s prayers and positive thoughts. We are so happy and excited for this step in our lives and we’ll keep you posted (not so many details from now on...at least not all at once). Here’s hoping for a happy and healthy baby!