About our baby

Last week I announced on this blog in a very sneaky way that I am pregnant, due Jan 7, 2011. I put it into the comments of the blog called "Good Things are Coming!" But, I guess I should just come right out and say it just in case you didn't read the comments.

I had 2 months to come up with a clever way to tell you on my blog, and that's the best I came up with. Sorry. Can I blame it on pregnancy brain? I haven't played that card too much yet.

So, though there's not much to tell you about our child, I will tell you the part of his/her story that we know so far.

How I knew
I have been using the Fertility Awareness Method for almost 3 years now, and am a huge proponent of it. If you're interested, check out Toni Weschler's book Taking Charge of Your Fertility. FAM teaches you how to learn the signs your body gives you at different points of your cycle, which is important information for any woman to have, not just for those trying to or not to get pregnant. Part of that is charting your basal body (waking) temperature, so I've been doing that for a long time now. However, you have to get 4 solid hours of sleep before taking an accurate temp, which I wasn't able to do when we had Baby Z. After he went to his next foster mom's home and I was able to chart again, I had three consecutive days of high temps when they should've been low, so I knew something was up, took a test and got the two lines! At that point, (May 6) I was only 3 weeks past conception or 5 weeks pregnant.

How I told John
The aforementioned test took place at 2:30 in the morning. What can I say? I was excited. So, I had a few hours before he woke up to think of how I was going to tell him. Over the past few years, I have thought of many ways, and they have all been pretty creative and memorable. But any of those ideas would've either taken a few days of planning or just weren't practical. I ended up putting a cleaned off test (of course I took more than one!) in a long, skinny jewelry box. I passed it to him over breakfast asking if we should incorporate it into the gifts we were planning for our moms for Mother's Day. Much hugging and rejoicing ensued.

Best reaction to the news
Obviously, everyone has been pretty excited for us. One reaction in particular wins the gold, though. I called my brother Tim on the way home from work and started out by asking him what they (he and his 3 boys) had done for Mother's Day. He shared all the cute details and then asked me what we did. I told him John had gotten me a card and flowers, and when that didn't click (he assumed it was because of the fostering), I added that I had called Mom and told her she was going to be a Grandma again. Silence. High squeal. Squeaky voice telling me he had almost driven off the road. Then an emotional outpouring of excitement. Apparently, my brother loves babies. He stated that he gets more excited to find out people are having babies than most of the people themselves. I have to agree, since at that point, even I hadn't cried or felt that much excitement.

How it's going so far
So far, so good. I haven't had any morning sickness or nausea. I haven't thrown up or had any crazy cravings or food aversions, necessarily. I haven't had an appetite at all, though, and I've been very tired, two very normal things, I've heard. I think because of not being hungry, I lost 5 lbs in the first trimester and so far have gained one of them back. I'm blaming that on my brother-in-law's cooking this past week, though. I always planned to be one of those people who worked out and ran all through pregnancy, but nope. I haven't had the energy. I hope some of it comes back now that I'm in the 2nd trimester and I'll get off my butt a bit more. My pants are getting a bit tighter around the waist, but I'm not showing any more than I ever did. No belly shots until I'm sure it's actually baby and not just pudge!

What's next
We have the 14-week appointment on Monday, which I am very excited for. My first one was at 10 weeks and we got to hear the beautiful heartbeat, but to my disappointment, I learned that my doctor doesn't do ultrasounds until week 20 (unless we opted to do the genetic testing at week 12, which we declined). Until then, I'll have to be content with the heartbeat and reading what size fruit the baby is the size of. We are not going to find out the gender of our baby until the birth, which is my desire. At first, John did want to find out, but I reminded him that he got a dog for Christmas, so I should "win" this one. I'm happy to find out with all our other kids, if we are so gifted, but just wanted this first one to be an old-fashioned surprise. John is convinced that God will tell me, but I guess we'll just see.

Names
I love it when my friends and family find out what they're having and tell me what the name is. But, I'm not gonna do it for this one. We won't be revealing our name choices until the baby is born. Lots and lots of surprises on that day! However, we have decided on a nickname: Blueberry. This is the first fruit we read our then-embryo was the size of and our friends' parents were with them at our house for dinner and started referring to it as Blueberry and we liked it. Now we're at the size of a naval orange, but s/he'll be our little Blueberry until we meet (and maybe afterwards too!).

So, that's our story so far. I have so many blog topics about this pregnancy (my feelings/ thoughts about it) saved up, so be forewarned that's what's coming. If it's hard for you to read about others being pregnant, I totally understand and won't be offended at all if you drop your "followership" or subscription. I am still praying for those of you in the waiting season, and if you pray, I ask for your continued prayers for me in this new one.