Bumpdate- 14 Weeks

Baby's Growth: At 14 weeks baby is the size of a lemon or a nectarine and is about 3 and 1/2 inches long! Apparently their reflexes are imporving and will wiggle away when my tummy is poked, but I just won't be able to feel it for a couple more weeks.

Boy or Girl: Chris and I have pretty much decided on a boy and girl name. We are waiting to tell everyone when we find out the gender because we want it to be a special surprise! Since we both grew with very popular names, we want our children not to have to deal with having so many others with the same name. The names we've picked out are VERY normal, yet in today's society of babies named Apple, Kyd, or Blaze, the name will hopefully not have as many copies as ours did. 

How I'm Feeling: I've been dealing with the nausua a little bit better this week. I've learned when I have to eat to avoid the empty stomach plague. Whenever my stomach has nothing in it is when the nausea is at it's worst. 


Favorite Moment This Week: It was nice having Monday off for MLK holiday. Last Monday I just did little things around the apartment and stayed in my PJ's all day:)


Sleeping: I have woken up every morning this week at 4:30 to use the bathroom. It's been so anoying because my alarm is set for just an hour later. Getting up to make a quick trip to the bathroom isn't an easy affair because the second I stand, I get nauseous. So I have to nibble on a cracker (which doesn't really seem to work) and make a quick dash.


Clothes: My mama sent me a package this week of some maternity shirts and I really thought that was super sweet. My belly band I ordered came in and I've been wearing it. I like it because it's longer than some of my shirts and gives that "layer" look. I've only gained 3 pounds so my pants all fit, they are just starting to get snug.


Most Looking Forward: Thursday is my 15 week doctor appointment so I am looking forward to listening to Little Bit's heartbeat again!


Thankful For: My many blessings from my Lord and Savior.

Sometimes I try to count them, but they're too many I confess. 

So with arms upraised, I just say still blessed!

Bumpdate- 13 Weeks

Baby's Growth: At 13 weeks baby is the size of  a jalapeno and is about three inches long! Apparently it's a 'hip' thing to compare the size of the baby to a piece of produce. It also now has fingerprints and the vocal cords are developing. (I love baby apps for my cell phone)

Boy or Girl: So far about half the people we've talked to say boy and half say girl. Not leaning toward one way or the other. Even I don't have that 'gut' feeling of the gender some moms say they have. We shall just wait and see at our 18 week appointment! 


Cravings: Ice. Anything cold. Love cold water and ice from the ice machine at work. I also really want a coke icee, like the kind you would get at the movie theater, but we haven't been to the movies and I'm sure they aren't the best choice for a preggo. 


How I'm Feeling: Really not wanting to be whiny, I do not want to be a complainer. I'm sure Chris and my mother have gotten tired of hearing the details of every time I get sick. I try to save it all for them:) Mornings are rough, and evenings are also hard. For some reason every time the clock strikes 8:30 at night my stomach decides to do a flip flop. Lunch is the only real meal I can gulp down at one sitting, but what do you expect when you're pregnant? I really don't have it as bad as I've heard stories about. Usually I knock half a zofran back once a day and I'm good to go.


Favorite Moment This Week: Since this is my first bumpdate, my favorite moment so far has been getting to tell everyone and knowing our secret is out. I don't like to keep secrets from my family and it's nice to know that part is over with. It's been super fun talking all things baby with everyone and hearing all the congratulations.

My students don't know yet, although some of them have seen rumors on facebook. Apparently when someone shares my pregnancy posts and their profile is not set with privacy controls, it makes it go public, and when they searched my name on facebook over Christmas break they saw it. I just shrugged it off, but my blog is accessible to anyone on the internet. So if you are one of my sweet, most precious, and caring 4th graders, and if you are reading this, please respect my privacy as I respect yours:)


Sleeping: haha... no problems here. I usually am in bed by 9:00 and dragging out of bed at 5:30.


Clothes: I've been lucky in the clothing department because I was losing weight before I got pregnant. So my clothes were all pretty loose, leaving some room for growth. I have bought a couple of shirts and just got them more baggy. 


Most Looking Forward: When the first trimester is over, a lot of women feel better with less nausea and more energy. I'm really looking forward to that:)


Thankful For: A loving husband. Chris always is great, but he's been perfect these last couple of weeks while I've been back at school. He has handled the kitchen like a pro, cause every time I go in there I get queasy. He takes care of me by bringing me crackers and water. He even has cleaned out my throw up trash can a couple of times!

our blessing

For the past year and a half Chris and I have been trying to have a baby. For the past year, we have been really trying by tracking everything.

 (Girls... even't if you aren't trying to get pregnant, I totally say you need to download an app on your phone and start tracking now. You have no idea how much I wish I had been tracking everything sooner!)

Like I was in la-la land, I thought getting pregnant was going to be easy. It happens everyday to people, even people who aren't trying to get pregnant, why wouldn't it just happen quickly for us? Yeah, give it 3 months and we gonna have a bun in the oven, well it's not always that easy! For me I would have really long cycles, then really short cycles, and even months were I didn't ovulate. Tracking all this and using ovulation strips, makes it a lot easier to look back and see how regular, or irregular, you are. 

After several months of trying, in June we were so excited to finally get a positive on a home pregnancy test. The timing seemed perfect, we were going to be going home soon to spend a week with our families in Georgia and we could tell them all our exciting news in person. It all just lined up. I got a positive on my last test in a pack of three after using them over a couple of days. I was late and even had a little bit of nausea. I got my positive on a Friday, and had a doctors appointment on the following Tuesday. They had an opening and we were excited. 

Chris came with me to the appointment and I remember we were both sitting there wide eyed and nervous, not knowing what to expect. They called just me back first and had me go to the bathroom and the nurse did all her usual stuff by asking questions and taking blood pressure. I was sitting in the little office chair and she did a pregnancy test on the counter in front of me. She held the stick up and just went, "huh.. well let's try again." She did another test, and I just sat... in silence. She turned and looked at me and said, "Honey, both my tests came back negative, it looks like you might have gotten a false positive."

Who get's a false positive on a preggo stick? I remember thinking how that is just a joke. I understand false negatives but had a little trouble with the whole false positive thing. I went and got Chris and we talked to my doctor. She told us it was something called a "Chemical Pregnancy" and that can mean a lot of different things. In my case, she said it could have been my hormones playing tricks because I just wanted to get pregnant so badly or maybe the egg just didn't attach to the uterine wall. Even though chemical pregnancies fall under the "miscarriage" umbrella, the exact cause of them can be very hard to detect. With mine being so uncertain, there is no definite reason as to why I received that positive. I imagine it was probably just a faulty test. 

Through that whole process I only cried once. That may make me sound like I didn't care about it, but I prayed and and believed that we would get pregnant, it just must have not been in God's timing yet.

Back in January I wrote a blog post about my Bible verse theme for the year. It was:

Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.

Psalm 27:14 

He knew what he was doing when he led me to this verse and I have repeated it nearly 10 times a day through this year. From that moment on, before every pregnancy test I took, I said a prayer asking God to help me with patience as I wait for his will and not my own.  

On November 16th I got a positive on a home pregnancy test, and I kept getting positives, unfortunately I was unable to get a doctors appointment before Thanksgiving, so the whole time we were home with our family celebrating Chris and I kept our secret. I wanted to be sure before we told anybody. Not being able to tell my Mama, my best friend, was so hard, but after our experience I just felt like I couldn't chance it!

Now as everyone knows, we confirmed out little bit at an ultrasound and got to give our families the best Christmas present ever! We are so excited for July, and our blog is now totally going to be overrun with pregnancy posts from now on. We live 3 states away from the nearest family, and I plan on using the blog to keep everyone informed with pictures and humorous stories of our mishaps! 2014 is going to be our best year yet! 

If you are reading this and trying to get pregnant, just remember that every pregnancy experience is different. My prayer for you is that you will have patience and wait for the Lord, for He is sovereign,  loves you more than your mind can even comprehend, and everything happens in His time.