Traveling baby

Greetings from Lima!

We're having a fantastic weekend sharing our great news with our extended families. It's such a relief to finally let the secret out ... and perhaps more importantly, to let our moms let the secret out. I think the phone trees have been ringing tonight.

For anybody who hasn't asked yet, yes we do plan to find out the sex of the baby. We have our first (and probably only) ultrasound scheduled for late July and if we can get a good look we definitely want to know if it's a boy or girl.

We haven't thought seriously about names yet, except to decide that if it's a boy the first name will be James, just like his father and grandfather and greatgrandfather.

I'm feeling great this week. We're at 15 weeks, which means the baby is 4 inches crown to rump, or about the size of a pear. Apparently the baby can now sense bright light, even though its eyes are shut, so if I put a flashlight on my belly it would wiggle away. That seems like an unnecessary stress for the little critter, so I'm not going to try it. But it's kind of neat to know it's possible.

Check-up

I had a good visit with the midwife this afternoon.

We listened for the heart beat and she found it easily, just like last time. It's nice and strong. We also heard a bunch of thumping sounds, which she said was the sound of the baby kicking. It's funny that the baby's so active, yet I can't feel it. She said I won't be able to feel the kicks for at least another month.

All the blood tests from my last visit came back looking good. I found out I have B-positive blood, which I never knew before.

I go back in two weeks to have some blood drawn for screening tests. At the end of July we go in for the next check-up and our ultrasound. I can't even fathom how exciting that's going to be. Hopefully we'll find out if it's a boy or a girl and then we can get serious about picking names.

The one slightly troublesome aspect of this visit was when I stepped on the scale. I'm up about 7 pounds from my last visit just four weeks ago. The little info sheet they gave me today said I'm only supposed to have gained 2 or 3 pounds by now.

The midwife said she's not worried. She just warned me that she'd rather I didn't gain that much weight again between now and my next appointment.

I'm not really worried, either. I assume my body knows what it needs. It has given me the kick I need to get back to healthier eating, though. Now that vegetables don't nauseate me quite so much, I'm going to try to get back to my regular eating habits.

I was thinking about stopping at Taco Bell on the way home from the appointment to celebrate the first day of the second trimester. After hearing the baby kick, it made the pregnancy seem much more real and feeding the baby spicy chicken burritos didn't seem like such a good idea anymore. Instead I stopped at the grocery store and came out with grapes, low-fat cottage cheese, humus and a spaghetti squash. My little kicker need nutrients!

Exercise

I think I'm coming out of the first trimester fog a little bit. Yay!!

I had enough energy yesterday to go to my regular step aerobics class after work. I haven't gone in at least four weeks, probably more like six. It's hard to even remember why I didn't go. I think I was just way too sleepy and the idea of jostling the baby around seemed icky.

It felt so good to be back, though. I kept everything really low so my heart rate wouldn't get too high and nothing would shake around too much. I want to do as much as I can now because in a few weeks I'm not supposed to lie on my belly or my back. That's going to be a bummer for yoga, not to mention the majority of ab exercises.

Two days until the next midwife appointment. I can't wait. I hope I get to hear the baby's heart beat again.

New pants

We're at 13 weeks now, which means this is the last week of the first trimester. Hooray!!!
The baby is about 3 inches long -- about the size of a lime or a jumbo shrimp. In theory a midwife could feel a bump of the uterus just above my pubic bone. I have all kinds of lumps in my belly region so I don't know that's what I'm feeling or not. I'll ask at my appointment next week.
I do know the baby is pushing all my other internal organs up and outward, which is why a lot of my work pants got so tight so quickly.
The pregnancy books all warn you not to buy new clothes at this stage because you're going to outgrow them quickly, so I've been avoiding it and just squeezing into my old pants. But I got so annoyed with being uncomfortable that Wednesday after yoga I went to the Kohl's right next door to stroll through the maternity clothes and see what's available for the transition. I ended up trying on a bunch of regular pants that are just a size or two bigger than what I usually wear and they were SO comfortable. I bought a bunch of them on clearance and it has totally changed my mood. Instead of feeling constricted and fat and afraid my coworkers will notice my belly, now I'm excited about my belly and I can't wait for it to get even bigger! The bigger pants hide it better, too, so I'm less self-conscious at work and I feel more like myself.
It certainly is hard to keep this secret. After our appointment with the midwife next Thursday we'll be officially done with the first trimester and, if everything still looks good in there, there will be no reason not to tell the whole world. Then we'll just be counting down until our baby gets here. I can't wait!!!!

Secrets

It seems that I almost blurt out something about the pregnancy almost daily. Between the guys at working talking about their kids, Alan and Tessa and their kids, and we just found out that Jeff's sister is having a baby, it seems like child rearing is always being discussed. Fortunately since David and Anna just had Lucy I can frequently deflect stories onto them. But, we're almost to the end of the first trimester. By my calculations we should already be there, but that shows what my calculations are worth. Anyway, it will be good to be able to reveal the truth at long last.

12 weeks

Baby's about the size of a lime. That's getting pretty big!
You'd think that sprouting an object in your body the size of a lime would show up somehow on the outside, but I still see nothing.
Though I've been feeling kind of puffy and thick around the waist for a few weeks now, I think it's mostly in my head -- my weight has stayed almost exactly the same since week 8, about three pounds more than what I weighed before pregnancy. I've been wearing pants with a looser waist because they're more comfortable, but generally I still fit into everything.
This morning, though, I put on a pair of the looser pants and they feel tight. Yikes! I'd like to blame the baby, but I think it has more to do with the huge dinner I had Tuesday night and all the Taco Bell I've been eating.
I can't wait until the baby starts really growing and I get to do some serious eating. That's one of the things I didn't know about pregnancy beforehand -- that the first trimester is so tricky in terms of weight. You're absolutely not supposed to lose weight, but you're also not really supposed to gain more than a few pounds. It's not until the second trimester that you get to eat 300 extra calories a day. If it weren't for the nausea, I'm pretty sure I'd already be eating for two.

Baby knitting

One of the first things I did when I found out we were pregnant was to start knitting.

My first project was this fluffy sweater on big needles. I finished most of it in a weekend, which was good because right around the end of that weekend was when major fatigue set in.

I knit a bright yellow sweater next (I'll post a photo when I finish sewing the seams) and now I'm working on a red sweater.

I also just finished a very cozy baby hat with wool I got at the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival (the festival that the baby, ahem, protested). It's lamb's wool, the first shearing from a sheep named Myrtle on a local farm in New Hampshire who apparently is very friendly and thinks she's a dog. It's very soft for wool, so when I spun it I knew I wanted to make something for the baby.

Here is it, beside some of the unspun fiber I have left over.

There are a lot of things I'd like to knit but I'm waiting until I know if the baby is a boy or a girl. It's not just a pink and blue thing -- I don't care if boys wear pink and girls wear blue. But things like delicate white lace mittens would look silly on a boy. I've been avoiding pastel colors because they all seem feminine, but now that I look at the bold yellow sweater I made, I'm not sure if that color's going to look good on a boy or a girl.

It doesn't matter, though. The fun thing is having all these tiny things around the house and spending the time making them and thinking about the baby. I can't wait until we can try them on!