Baby dances!

Today Bob and I had our first prenatal visit and we were so excited to see our baby (fetus) dancing around on a computer screen. We met with a Certified Nurse Midwife named Sue who was super informative and great/comfortable to interact with. Bob and I both like her a lot. She said my uterus is the size of a cantaloupe now, when before pregnancy it was more like a lemon. I was expecting at this visit to have the heartbeat listened to, but I wasn't sure if it would be by doppler (just audio) or ultrasound with a picture. Well, to our delight it was an ultrasound and we saw her heart beating (at about 150 bpm), and her arms and legs moving. I felt like we were spying on her! It was pretty neat. The midwife said that the baby looks just like Bob. See for yourself in the picture below. I labeled it so you can tell what is what. It was easier to tell when we watched the live moving video. We saw arms and legs moving constantly. That's why the still frame is a little blurry, I think. The dark area is amniotic fluid, and the circle you see around the baby is the amniotic sac. We could see the yolk sac in some moments, which looked like a small circle on top of the big circle. The midwife said that you can only see that sometimes in the beginning of a pregnancy, and then it goes away. The plus sign marks on the picture are where the midwife marked the head-to-rump and then the computer measured the length as 28 mm, which is a little bit longer than 1 inch.

Estimated due date is April 20, 2008. Stay tuned!

Belly

My belly is definitely filling out. Last week I bought my first pairs of maternity pants. Wow, are they comfy! These pants come with wide elastic/cotton waist band, no buttons or zippers, and they feel great. Any pants that have buttons or a tight elastic waist band are uncomfortable these days. So here is a picture of me, to start documenting the growth of my body. I am 9 weeks and 6 days along. Tomorrow will be 10 weeks.

As for my morning sickness, the past few weeks have been pretty severe for me. I've been nauseous, very tired and cranky. I sleep a lot at night, and still enjoy a nap at lunchtime. I didn't realize being pregnant would feel so dramatic at this point. It is as if I've had a stomach flu for a month already. Last week I had an episode in which I got sick on the street/sidewalk on my walk from the bus stop to work. How awful! I don't know if anyone saw me, but now you all know it happened.

On Sunday Bob and I went to a music festival on Treasure Island. We brought a beach towel and blanket and I spent half of the day lying on the grass while the indie rock bands played. We saw Built to Spill, M. Ward, Two Gallants and several more bands, some of which I slept through. Bob got us the tickets to celebrate our 2 year wedding anniversary, which was Sept. 17th.

On Tuesday morning I felt so sick that I wanted to stay home, but I knew that it was a busy day at work and not a good day for me to be absent, so I just went in a little late. Then yesterday (Wednesday) I did use a sick day and stayed home from work. I was able to rest all day and it was great. Now today is Thursday and I feel much more energy. I didn't feel as nauseous as usual this morning and so I practiced some mellow yoga before getting ready for work. I'm hoping that this is the beginning of the end of the morning sickness.

Next Tuesday we have our first prenatal appointment, and we are looking forward to it. Hopefully we will hear the heartbeat and get an estimated due date from the doctor.

Pellegrino and Pretzels

I have morning sickness. For me, I started feeling slightly nauseous the first weekend in August. From then on every day the nausea came on stronger and more often. I read about ways to minimize it: basically, eat or snack often and drink a lot of water, and eat and drink something before even getting out of bed in the morning, or first thing after getting up.

One morning last week I forgot to make eating something a priority as soon as I got up. It was as if I forgot I was pregnant. "I'm okay," I thought. So I showered, got dressed, then suddenly felt nauseous and hungry and so I ate breakfast, and then felt worse, and I ended up losing my breakfast. Ugh! That convinced me if I had any doubt of my pregnancy. Since then, I've been eating first thing in the mornings, and I haven't lost a meal since. But I still feel nauseous most of the day. "I don't like feeling nauseous!" I announced today to my co-worker.

What helps me when a wave of nausea comes on, is salted hard pretzels and sparkling water. I ate so many pretzels yesterday, that they haunted me in my dreams. And I have a history of talking in my sleep, and apparently last night Bob heard me say "Pretzels!" in the middle of sleep. I woke up to him asking me "do you want me to go get you some pretzels?" It was very confusing. What? Why are you waking me up and asking me that? Then I remembered the dream, and I said "no, there's pretzels in my dream."

6 weeks

I've learned that 6 weeks pregnant actually means about 4 weeks after conception. From what I've read so far in the "What to Expect..." book and on websites, you can figure out an approximate due date based on the date of the last menstruation. For us, that means our due date is April 20th, 2008 (4/20/08). I can't imagine a greater high than giving birth to our tiny baby.

We have an appointment with my OB doctor in about a month. When I called the office to schedule, they recommended waiting until I'm 10 weeks along before coming in. I look forward to hearing what the doctor thinks our due date is, and what the approximate date of conception was. I wasn't tracking my ovulation yet because we were only just beginning to try to conceive. I was planning to start checking my daily morning temperatures this month, but then we found out we're already pregnant. I recommend this article to any woman who's thinking of conceiving and wants tips about the fertility awareness method. One thing we did that might have helped was elevate my hips after each love session. Usually I did legs-up-the-wall pose, or just kept my legs lifted in mid-air with a pillow or bolster under my hips for 5 to 15 minutes.

This week I told Bob that our baby is about the size of a BB pellet, and he said "our BB". Next week it will be the size of a small raspberry. So for a few days we referred to the embryo as "BB", and lately Bob has been calling it "little blueberry".

Exciting news...

Here's a picture of us in Briones Regional Park in the East Bay. We came across a rattlesnake on this hike with our friends Jenn and Roy. It was coiled and rattling and six inches from Bob's leg, so we were scared but no one was hurt. This picture was taken a week before we found out our exciting news. Now I know why I felt car-sick during the drive over there. We are happy to announce that we are PREGNANT, and we'll use this blog to share any updates.
Love,
Jen and Bob