16 weeks - 4 months!!

Ah, the honeymoon phase. I had heard this term before but didn't truly understand it until hitting the 12th week. Ever since then I've felt pretty good. I've even had days where I've felt that I really love being pregnant! The last four weeks has given me time to focus more on what is happening with my pregnancy as well as finally allowing me to make dinner and clean the kitchen each night. All of those things are equally important in my mind right now! We're trying to get as much done during this time before the hardest trimester hits. Only a few more months until then and so much more to do!

Of course it hasn't all been rosy - in the last few weeks, I have become much more allergic to our dogs. Which is a hard thing to deal with since both sleep in our room (and one on my pillow!). There were even a few nights when I woke up unable to breathe and feeling very asthmatic - pretty scary! Of course the solution it seems would be to find a different place for them to sleep, but since that is almost impossible (Bella & Brody have proven to be Houdinis and have found ways to sneak back into our room, not to mention their constant whining would be enough to drive us crazy!!), so I had to find a different room to sleep in for a night. After a lonely and sleepless night, I decided being with Brian and the dogs was a much better situation than being banned to the guest room. This just means we need to vacuum, clean the sheets and bathe our dogs a little more regularly - a few times a week!! What are we going to do when the baby comes and also shares the bed with us in the beginning?? We've decided that we still have 5 more months to figure that one out...

We had our second appointment last week and got to hear the heartbeat again. We're still going to our original (or really, 2nd) doctor, but after being late to our appointment by 20 minutes, we again realized exactly why we need to change locations. After a lot of thought and a lot of good suggestions, we decided on going to a family practice doctor. We thought this was a good idea for a couple of reasons. First of all, neither us have a primary care doctor and we would both be able to go to her from now on. And now we also do not need to find a pediatrician since the baby will see the same doctor once it's born. The other plus side is that it's MUCH closer to home and only 5 minutes from work! We also got an appointment pretty early and get to meet our new doctor on December 15th! We may even find out what we're having at that appointment! What a wonderful, early Christmas present!!

Last week, we found out another close friend is pregnant!!! We are so excited for them - this is the same couple who introduced us and they're due two months after us! Brian is especially excited to have another guy to go through all this with. This also means there are four of us close friends all due within six months of each other!! We are so excited to share in this experience with such good friends!!

Here are pics at 15 & 16 weeks - although the first one looks like I'm farther along than the second!!

12 weeks - finally!!

I can't believe the 12 week milestone is finally here (well, actually, I'm 13 weeks right now, but was a little busy last week to make this posting :). I thought #12 would be just a number, but it turned out to be a pretty eventful week!

The day I hit 12 weeks, the exhaustion and nausea pretty much became non-existent! It was amazing to wake up last Monday and discover that I had almost all of my energy back!! And good timing, too, because that was Halloween week - one of the most exhausting weeks all school year! I actually worked out three days in a row - I'm sad to admit this, but that was the most times I had exercised in two months!!

The other fun thing I woke up to on Monday morning was the fact that a belly had grown over night. I tried hiding it all week, but could tell by Wednesday that it was nearly impossible! I decided I had to tell my staff on Thursday, or else they would all think I was overindulging WAY too much in my stash of Halloween candy. (Okay, I was, but I wanted to blame something else.) Many had already suspected. Go figure. I also told my students' parents on Friday. Many of them also had their suspicions. Maybe I'm not as good at covering things up as I thought?! And then yesterday, I told my students. Their reactions were priceless. They had such innocent questions and also blunt statements. Such as, "Will you be able to sit in that chair when you get big?" Thanks. Or, "What do you think the baby is doing right now?" And then today a boy came into the classroom and said, "'I've been wanting to see you all morning to see if your belly has grown!" I showed him and before I could explain that it isn't going to get huge over night he said, "Yep, it got pretty big already." Thanks again. Oh, how I am going to love sharing this time with four/five year olds!!!


And last but not least, I am also experiencing the very fun "pregnancy brain". At least I spend most of my time with kids half my size, so hopefully they won't notice too much. But I had one experience on a nature hike field trip last week that really made me want to crawl in a hole. A question came up as to what our state bird is and no one knew it. I kept saying, "I should know this, I should know this." And then suddenly I shouted out, "A beaver!" And then quickly realized a beaver is an animal, not a bird. A parent also quietly explained to me that that would be a good answer for the state animal. Wow, made me feel even more like an idiot. Since the parents who were there didn't know I was pregnant yet, I couldn't blame it on preggo brain. I wasn't even quick enough to say, "Oh, I guess I've been hanging out with PreKers too long." Nothing came to mind, so I just felt pretty dumb for about 5 minutes and pretended I was really interested in some of the PreKers questions. Yikes - I had hoped that I could escape the preggo brain!!

Can't wait to see what else this experience brings! This has definitely been an interesting adventure so far!!