Sharing Our Story

Well, it's just about time.  Tomorrow we will be 12 weeks which means we get to share our secret with all of you.  Let me tell you, it is about dang time!  When you get exciting news, all you want to do is share it with the world.  We were blessed enough to be able to tell our closest family and friends, and through them, we are telling all of you.  If you haven't already, head over to my Facebook page to see our pregnancy reveal.

So now that you've all enjoyed that, I wanted to share with you how I told Brian:
My sister is a photographer (http://jackiraney.com/ if you're interested), and I instantly knew I wanted to tell him in a way that would also capture his reaction. We told him she was working on a couples project, which she does from time to time.  On letter boards, she had us say what we loved most about each other.  His said "I love her heart and her passion" while mine said "You're going to be the best dad! 2019"  We stood back to back and then faced each other when she told us to.  At that point, we looked at each other's signs (well, I looked at his face while he read my sign).  He had this look of confusion, and then it clicked: He is going to be a dad!  When we were talking about it later, he told me he was confused because he thought I did it wrong.  Haha!

Here are photos from that moment.  We hope you enjoy sharing in our joy:

-jennilea

11 Weeks!

Here we are: 11 weeks!  Yesterday we got to see baby.  We were expecting to hear the heartbeat, but my doctor told us they err on the side of caution during the first trimester because doppler could potentially lead to miscarriage.  So we wait until our next appointment at the end of October to hear it.

Here is a picture of baby A, who is starting to actually LOOK like a baby:

Measuring exactly to where it should be to keep that due date of April 19th.

New things for week 11:

• I'm getting my energy back! 
• I haven't really had any morning sickness.  As long as I eat breakfast, I haven't gotten too nauseous.  
• I can smell all of the smells.
• Aversions:  Minty gum (so sad), fish, fried food, eggs (except in quiche and the spinach egg wraps from Starbucks for some reason), and garlic.
• Having gained a whopping pound and a half, I'm not showing much yet.  Here is a photo from week 1 to now. 

So far we are doing pretty well. :)

-jennilea

We're Telling Family & Weekly Updates!

Ah the joys of telling family!  Now that we're feeling better about everything, we've started to tell our family and very close friends, which has been really exciting!  We've given a good amount of thought on how to tell each of those people, and we've filmed their reactions - which you will all be seeing by the time these blogs are out.  We hope you enjoyed watching it just as much as we enjoyed walking it out.

In week 7, I finally starting to feel hungry again!  I'm trying my best to eat things that are going to be good an nourishing for baby and for myself rather than using the old "eating for two" excuse.  The only hard part is that I'm getting hungry a lot more often than I did before.

Aversions: Fish, garlic, and fried food.  No thank you!

In week 8, I was completely exhausted! All I wanted to do was sleep.  

Same aversions. I'm also having trouble getting water down which is a problem I've literally never had!

In week 9, I started off sleeping my days away if possible.  I experienced a small amount of morning sickness on day.  Toward the end of the week I started getting my energy back!  I love eating cold foods, especially fruit!  Aversions are still the same.

I am doing my best to stay as active as I can even if it's just a walk around my neighborhood.  I still enjoy lifting and aerial yoga as my favorite activities!

I'm almost to week 10 and we are about 1 week out from our next ultrasound.

It's been a wild and exciting few weeks. 

-jennilea

We Saw The Heartbeat

At our ultrasound appointment we got such great news!  Baby has a heartbeat!  We got to see it and she said the rate was perfect (note to self to ask about how many beats next time).  It so crazy how baby went from being a dot at 5 weeks to seeing a head and body a week and a half later!

Somehow this is moving fast yet so slow all that the same time.

Brian is absolutely incredible and so supportive.  The hours I spent in pain in the he spent awake with me either holding me, helping put pressure where it hurt, or by pouring warm water on my tummy to help the heat kick in faster.

When I am scared, he prays with me and comforts me, not showing even an ounce of fear.  His bravery and strength astounds me - especially later on when he tells me that on the inside he was freaking out all of those scary nights.  But then we get to see this - and it's a reward for all the pain.  My body is doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing to create this home for baby for the next several months.

We are still in disbelief that all of this is real - but it's happening, and we couldn't be more excited for our future, and our family.

Our next appointment is on September 27th, which feels really far away.

Can't wait to post this journey. :)

-jennilea

Waiting Is Hard

Here I am, on August 30th, waiting...again.  By the time you reach this, we will have announced that we are pregnant (hopefully), and alllll of these posts will be available to the world, but for now, we are waiting in secret, and my heart is pounding because it's been a rough few weeks.  Here is a recap for you:

I am 6 weeks and 6 days pregnant today, but we found out around 4 weeks. Week 4 was actually pretty easy.  Nothing felt different, a few light cramps here and there, but almost right after week 5 hit, I began experiencing some really awful cramping.  I have a relatively high tolerance for pain, but these were put me in the ER, radiating to my back, and I can hardly walk cramps.  They happened often, and went from lasting about 10 minutes to over 45 minutes of the worst pain I have ever felt in my life.

When I went to the ER for the first time, I was by myself in Southern California for work.  It was 3am, and I was exhausted, and terrified.  By the time I got to the hospital, the pain had stopped.  They ran tests, did an ultrasound, and everything thankfully came back normal.  They said the cramping is normal during pregnancy and can sometimes get pretty bad but (as long as there is no bleeding) everything is fine. "It's just from growing and stretching." I was back at my hotel by 8:30am.

I had a follow up appointment with my OBGYN a few days later, and she mentioned that my symptoms are tough, because so early nearly everything is a sign for your period, miscarriage, or a normal pregnancy.  I was already aware of this though because...Google.  That being said, she wanted to run more tests before having me come in a week and a half later to see if we can get a heartbeat.  My blood tests came back showing hormone levels were still rising correctly, which gave us some peace of mind.

On Tuesday, the fear set in again though as the cramping was the worst I had felt of all the days.  Remember me mentioning cramping that radiates to my back?  The part about not being able to walk?  Bingo.  That was it.  My incredible husband took me to the ER, where we once again had tons of tests ran only to be told that it's still from growing and stretching.  Good news, but at the same time, is this life for the next 9 months?  I don't know how to experience this amount of pain while also living life and working, but I had to do something.

With much hesitation, I decided I needed to take whatever could help the pain so I could start getting rest again, and get back to work.  Tylenol is the only thing that I'm able to take, and 500mg doesn't help at all, so they recommended 1000mg, 3 times a day until it stops.  2 nights ago was the first time I've been able to sleep through the night in almost 2 weeks.  Last night was even better.

The pain is scary, and it makes me sad that I couldn't tough it out - especially because I'm really hoping for a natural birth without an epidural.  This is the first time I've felt like I can't do that;  a failure before I've even gotten to that point.

There are a lot of mixed emotions happening right now, but right now the biggest one is fear.  We are just a few hours from meeting with our doctor where I am praying there will be a heartbeat and that everything will be okay.  Pregnancy is actually pretty scary, way more than I had expected - and waiting is really hard, but that's all we can do for now.  So...we wait.

-jennilea