14 weeks down...

I’m going to try to be better about documenting this pregnancy. I did miss the 12 week pictures I was planning on taking of my baby bump, so the ones below are actually my 14 week baby bump. Still pretty good since I think the only picture I took of my baby bump with Cecilia was moments before I left to deliver her!

So far things have been good. The first trimester was definitely harder than what I experienced with Cecilia. I felt pretty awful most of the time and if I wasn’t throwing up, I was gagging over every little thing. Sometimes nothing would even trigger it, just be talking and all of a sudden there I would go. Cecilia found it pretty hilarious, and while I would be bent over the toilet I would hear her in the other room echoing my sounds. Nice. Throw up noises are now a part of her regular vocabulary. Because of the constant nausea, nothing really sounded good to me – so I had to force myself to eat anything at all. This was completely opposite of what Cecilia did to me – I couldn’t get enough to eat with her for the entire nine months. Happily, I have moved on to a new stage of my pregnancy and am feeling so much better. In fact, now I hardly feel like I’m pregnant at all!

“Pregnancy Brain” is without a doubt my strongest symptom right now. I could just skip this paragraph altogether but it really is too funny to not mention! While I have been known to do “air-headed” things even when I’m not pregnant, my “blondness” most definitely increases when I’m “with child”. Ryan’s favorite is when I have gone to fill up my car and pulled the car up to the wrong side of the gas pump. Now, this wouldn’t be so bad, except it took me three more tries before I finally got it right...and this has happened two separate times now! Another good one was when someone came up to me and started talking about a wedding we had both been to exactly two days before and I just stared at her blankly thinking “this is so embarrassing for her, she obviously thinks I’m someone else – I didn’t go to a wedding Saturday.” Yea, well after her continuing on for several more minutes and me staring blankly – it finally hit me, “oh yea!! I was at wedding Saturday and sat right behind her, too!” Talk about embarrassing! Another time, I was excitedly telling Ryan that we could find out what the sex of our baby was RIGHT NOW (this was at 12 weeks) because a girl I know just went and got a 4-D ultrasound done and found out and she isn’t due till the end of January!! Ryan said, “yea well, January is a month before February, Vanessa.” “I know, Ryan!! That’s what I mean she is due a whole month before us and she already knows!” Sadly, it took a few more seconds of this kind of conversation before it finally clicked that if she was due a month BEFORE me that would mean she was a month farther along than me! DUH!!!! These things should be so embarrassing – but the truth is, I think there are plenty of other women out there that have experienced the mind-shrinking that occurs during pregnancy. And then again…maybe it’s just me. Either way, even I can find humor at my own expense!  

I had my first actual prenatal appointment this past Friday. The Dr. we had with Cecilia left shortly after she was born – and we have found it very hard to replace him. But I really liked the Dr. we met on Friday and am hoping we end up being as pleased with him as we were with our old Dr. Everything was good at the appointment, measuring fine and heard a steady heartbeat of 145.

We are all very excited to find out whether Cecilia will have a little sister or a little brother. Cecilia seems convinced that it is a boy for some reason. She always calls it “the baby boy” and if I try to tell her it could be a girl – she emphatically states, “No, BOY!” Hopefully she isn’t disappointed if she’s wrong! Ryan and I don’t care at all what we have – we have loved having a little girl and would be very excited to have another one, but it would be fun to have one of each, too! Mostly, we are grateful to be blessed with another baby and are just praying for another healthy, sweet baby – no matter what "kind" we are given!