16 Week Update

Just a quick update following my 16 week check up this morning (at 15 weeks, 4 days).

This month I battled a number of infections, for which I was on a number of "pregnancy safe" antibiotics, but otherwise had no complaints.

Everything looked good at the appointment.

I did gain 5 pounds within the last month, which seems kind of steep for this early in the pregnancy. I am looking bigger around the middle these days and wearing a lot of my friend Emily's hand-me-down larger, non-maternity clothing to feel comfortable, but there's not much of a bump there, if any at all. Until this morning, I thought my uterus was much lower than apparently it is, so maybe some of that pudge is actually a bump now after all.

The nurse practitioner found baby's heartbeat immediately, which was a steady and strong 157 bpm.

At next month's appointment, on April 25, we should be able to tell whether he or she is a little boy or girl! I can't wait. I guess I should start researching fun ways to "reveal the gender" to our families and friends. Mostly I am looking forward to looking for cute baby stuff to put on our registry. I haven't let myself do that thus far because there are far too many gender specific things out there and I don't want to find myself daydreaming and leaning one way or another, when really all we care about is a healthy and happy baby.

Pregnancy Update!

Today/tomorrow (depending on which website you pay attention to, I'm 14 weeks along! And as usual, I have not updated this blog in a very, very long time.

Let's rewind a little, with a little help from my written, private journal, which I keep up only a little more efficiently than this blog ;):

Just before Valentine's Day, around 9 weeks, we told our parents, using heart-shaped mini boxes of chocolate and cute little Valentine's Day cards. Now that I think about it I should have taken a photo of them before we sealed them up, but David's parents' card said something along the lines of "Roses are red, violets are blue, September 2014 is when baby is due." Both sets of "grandparents-to-be" were pretty excited!

Although it felt good to tell some people, it still didn't feel real until that first doctor's appointment, which was Feb. 28. We heard the heartbeat and saw our little one on the ultrasound for the first time. It was really exciting! He or she was bouncing around a lot in there, and appeared to be sucking his/her thumb at one point. It will be weird when I can feel all that. 

Here's baby's first photo: 

That night, we celebrated with dinner at Applebee's and then telling our closest friends. On Sunday, we told some extented family, and on Monday, which was another snow day, we went "Facebook official."

It's all much more real now. I'm still not "showing" in a way that anyone can tell, and I haven't gained much weight, but my clothes are definitely tighter. I really just look fatter. I tried on clothes Friday to clean my closet up a bit, and almost none of my pants fit me at all :/ Although it's cold again today and supposed to snow, it has gotten significantly warmer over the last few days, and I'm looking forward to full on spring, skirts, and nice weather. 

Yesterday, some of my friends ran the St. Pat's Parade 5-Miler in St. Louis. This was my first time NOT doing that race in the past three or four years, and it felt kind of weird, even though I'm not the biggest fan of that race and even got sick last year after doing it (I think I had already come down with something - which would explain my less than stellar time). We have been playing some tennis since the time change, so I'm trying to keep active, but my back's been pretty sore, so it's not as easy as I would have thought. Even this early. Anyway, that's the update for now!