5 weeks, 3 days

Not showing at 5 weeks, although I'm really bloated. In the past several days I've gotten some great gifts from a friend and from my Mummy. My mom sent me a month by month pregnancy planner. I read only through Month 1 last night, and while getting ready for work this morning realized that, hello, 5 weeks means I'm into month two. Der. It has a long list of questions to ask the doctor on your first visit so I will be utilising that. Melissa bought me a couple things; a book about what and how to eat while expecting, and a "journal" that goes day by day and tells what new developments Baby is making. It has little spots to write in how you feel, or what you think about being pregnant, or your belly measurements, or whatnot. She also got me this great herbal pregnancy tea. It's meant for early pregnancy to help the uterus and the baby's brain and all sorts of good stuff. Tastes good too. After week 34 I'll start Raspberry leaf tea instead, to prepare the uterus for delivery.

I'm still not having any sickness, although I have been a little nauseous this afternoon. My main thing is just fatigue. I feel like I'm swimming through quicksand all day. I just want a nap.....:( I'm sure every pregnant woman in the world feels that way. I found a really neat picture of what Baby looks like this week.

And here's what's going on in there, according to Babycenter.com: Deep in your uterus your embryo is growing at a furious pace. At this point, he's about the size of a sesame seed, and he looks more like a tiny tadpole than a human. He's now made up of three layers — the ectoderm, the mesoderm, and the endoderm — which will later form all of his organs and tissues.The neural tube — from which your baby's brain, spinal cord, nerves, and backbone will sprout — is starting to develop in the top layer, called the ectoderm. This layer will also give rise to his skin, hair, nails, mammary and sweat glands, and tooth enamel.His heart and circulatory system begin to form in the middle layer, or mesoderm. (This week, in fact, his tiny heart begins to divide into chambers and beat and pump blood.) The mesoderm will also form your baby's muscles, cartilage, bone, and subcutaneous (under skin) tissue.The third layer, or endoderm, will house his lungs, intestines, and rudimentary urinary system, as well as his thyroid, liver, and pancreas. In the meantime, the primitive placenta and umbilical cord, which deliver nourishment and oxygen to your baby, are already on the job.

Lucky Baby, getting to sleep all day!!

The Car

Our car has been on its last legs for several months now, and I've been putting aside money for a new engine. As the stupid thing puffed and panted it's way home on Friday night after work I grew very angry, and decided that I was going to roll it off the side of a cliff. Thankfully, I couldn't find a cliff and when I got home Nathan told me that he was getting a motor the next day and putting it in. This was the past weekend. So he worked on it on Saturday night, Sunday, Monday night, and probably will again tonight. I think he is nearly done. Thomas, who is my friend Melissa's husband and a friend of Nathans, has been helping him nearly the entire time. While our husbands worked on the junker--er, I mean, the car--Melissa picked me up and I went to their house for the weekend. We enjoyed having some girl time!

Taking the old motor out...

Old motor out...

Yes, there is a reason that my dear sweet husband is standing halfway in a manhole. You see, he has always admired the Ninja turtles and decided to take the opportunity to be like them. No, really what happened was that his keys were on his lap, and when he got out of the car (next to the storm drain) they fell out of his lap and down the drain. So he had to go down in the storm drain and find them. I guess it took him about a half hour. I wish I had been there with my camera, but Thomas took this picture for me. I think that the care should be done today, so lets pray that it runs well and is reliable for another 200,000 miles!

4 Weeks, 4 Days

Well last night we announced the baby news to Nathan’s family. We took his mom and dad out to supper at El Paseo’s, which is one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. (They would be so much better though if they would sell Sopapillas!) We wore our shirts, but they didn’t say anything the whole time we were eating. Finally after we got the check and we were sitting there talking Nathan just told them. They were super excited. Brian, my father in law, starting claiming it as a boy and my mother in law asked me if Alie (our 4 month old niece) cried when I held her. I wondered why she asked, but told her that she always smiles and giggles at me. Come to find out that there’s an old wives tale that if you are pregnant and you hold a baby girl, if she cries it will be a girl and if she laughs it will be a boy. I thought that was cute. Our baby will be their second grandchild and my parents first. All of our parents are really excited. Nathan called Andrea and asked her if she had any prenatal vitamins left. When she wanted to know why, he told her that I was going to need them. Then he called a lot of his relatives from his mom’s phone and told them. The way it works down here is that if one person knows something, everyone knows it and probably not a true version of the real story. So if Nathan hadn’t called them, and for whoever hears it through the grapevine, I’ll probably ending having puppies, or guppies, or something randomly strange.

When we got home, Andrea was excited and hugged us, and she and mom and I sat down and talked for a few minutes.

I called my dear friend Melissa around 8:30. I had planned to wait to tell her until the weekend but I was so excited that I just couldn’t wait any longer, so I asked her to meet me at the Starbucks down the road. Thankfully, she didn’t have class until 10 this morning so she was able to meet me. I got there first and got a decaf white chocolate mocha (yum!) and wrote in the card I got for her. It said something about how we’re there for each other when we’re going crazy, but we’d be outta luck if something happened to both of us at once. So I wrote “So you’d better not get pregnant too!” Well, she was really happy, and Nathan and I have asked her to be Baby’s godmother. We stood around and talked until around 11, then we headed home. When she got home she sent me the sweetest text. It said,
I’m home. And…Put your hand on your tummy…
Lord, I thank you for the life that you’ve given to Nathan and Alesha. I ask that you protect this baby, this mom and this dad. I ask that you bless this family, that this pregnancy be successful and easy, Lord. You know the desires of their heart with this child and I ask that if it is your will that their desires be granted. I thank you Lord for all of these things, and it is in your holy and precious name we pray, Amen.

Isn’t that great?! She is, as Anne of Green Gables would say, my Bosom Friend, the one I’ve been asking God to give me ever since we moved here.

I still have no sickness today. I am trying to firmly believe that I won’t get sick, since your mind is so powerful. We’ll find out if it works :) I am starting to feel very tired (although that could be since Nathan stayed up till 12:30 and therefore so did I!) and this heartburn is SUCH A KILLER!!!! I get it if I eat a lot, a little, or not at all, no matter what I eat or when. I’m eating Rolaids like candy and it doesn’t do a thing! Although I guess that’s not so bad compared to barfing, or pregnant moms without a roof over their head or any tums to take at all. Hey, what I am I complaining about?!

Just found out...

Yesterday I found out I was pregnant. The funny thing is, I’ve been feeling like I was pregnant for the last couple weeks. There was no specific reason, and in fact I remember telling myself several times that I was crazy (I guess talking to yourself makes you crazy anyways) for “feeling” pregnant. I told myself that you can’t “feel” pregnant and that I was just around too many preggo ladies and was just feeling the signs of my oncoming period. No way was I pregnant.

Boy was the voice in my head wrong. Yesterday morning I was texting with my mom about getting the family cradle when we go visit them in Ohio for Christmas. I just wanted her to know that I wanted to drive it back down here rather than have to pay to have it shipped. Mom, being Mom, wanted to know if that was an announcement. “No!” I told her. Then I hesitated and thought, wait, I was supposed to get my period on Saturday. I’m two days late. I’m never late. Crudsicles!! I spent the rest of the day at work thinking, I’m pregnant, no I’m not, yes I am, no I’m not…

I left work and drove directly to the Walmart around the corner from where we live. I bought a First Response test, NOT name brand thank you very much, went into the WM bathroom, and peed on the stick. I took up the handicapped stall, and didn’t even care. A mom came in with her kid and they both had to squeeze in the little stall. I didn’t care. I was sitting on the toilet, with the stick on the TP roll cover, with squeezing my eyes shut and counting to sixty seconds 3 times. I peeked after my first 30 seconds of counting and there were two lines on the stick. No way, I thought. You can’t get results that fast. So I squeezed my eyes even tighter and kept counting. After my three minutes were up I looked and there were still two lines. Pregnant.

I wandered around Walmart in a daze, trying to simultaneously decide on a creative way to tell Nathan, figure out what I actually needed to get there, and absorb that I’m going to be a mother. I was totally blown over. We hadn’t planned on trying for a baby for a few years yet, and I was just spaced out. I got a pizza for supper and went home. A huge thunderstorm was rolling in, but I begged Nathan to drive me down to the lake. There’s a place we go occasionally, a little stone picnic pavilion with a perong, and I wanted to go there and be near the water. He agreed, and drove us there. I was so nervous I nearly threw up as I got out of the car, and Nathan held my hand as we walked down to the bluff. He was talking about how it would be cool if we could cliff dive from there, and I blurted out, “I got you something at Walmart.” I handed him the card I bought him, which was about love and how I always fit in his arms. At the bottom I wrote, “And I hope you have room in your arms for one more, cause I think you’re gonna be a Daddy.” He looked up at me with a glimmer of excitement in his eyes and said, “Is this a joke?” Worldlessly I reached in my purse and handed him the pregnancy test. “Two lines is positive,” I said. He was so excited and hugged me, and I cried because I was so nervous to tell him but he was so excited that it made me happy too.

We talked for a few minutes, and I told him my ideas for how to announce it to our families. Finally as the storm was about to break we headed for Hobby Lobby. We decided to make two T-shirts. Both on the front would say “It” Happened, and on the backs they would say Mommy and Daddy respectively. As I was working on the shirts in our room later that evening one of my friends asked me how he felt about having a baby. He said, and I quote, “I feel ecstatic!” Once we made the shirts I sent pictures of us in them to my mom, dad, sister, and brother. That’s how we told them. We are taking Nathan’s parents out to dinner tonight and will wear our t-shirts and see how long it takes them to notice.

I love it that Nathan is so excited. I am nervous and I feel disconnected. I realize that I have a little life growing inside of me, but I don’t feel it yet. So far all its doing is giving me horrible heartburn and making me pee a lot. I don’t feel pregnant. I don’t feel like a mommy. I guess I am excited, but I still am in shock I guess, and find it difficult to believe that there really is something there. I feel like I am walking around in my sleep. My dear sweet husband is so excited that he has told pretty much everyone he know, and bought a lot of them cigars. (Kinda wish he hadn’t done that though…it was expensive!) His excitement and happiness really takes a load off my mind. I love seeing him so happy—I don’t think he would be happier even if we had planned it!