11 WEEKS!

It's Sunday and I'm making the time to update this blog properly for a change. Symptoms for this week have been much the same as last week. The nausea is virtually non existent now (yay!) and more foods are starting to sound appetizing. I'm able to eat a little more at each meal so I should be putting some weight on soon. The extreme fatigue is still pretty bad but I'm coping with it pretty well. I'm making sure to get to bed early and rest when I feel like I'm about to give out. A new symptom for this week is round ligament pain. Wow, I had no idea how uncomfortable that would be. Some days it's much stronger than others. It mostly feels like a dull aching that gets stronger from time to time right under my belly. I can't really compare it to period cramps since it's not even remotely the same. There have been a few times where I had to stop and breathe for a few seconds. And it hurts really badly when I sneeze. I'm getting more emotional but I think that's mainly due to stress. All of the uncertainty of the near future is wearing on us but God will see us through. It's hard not being able to make plans more than a few weeks at a time. It could all change at any day. But if we move and I have to drop out of the study then I'll be free to choose the home birth that I wanted!

Last Tuesday was my first official OB appointment and Steven went with me. I didn't need a pap since I had one recently with the last pregnancy so she just did the tests required by law like the STD cultures. She tried to find the baby's heartbeat on the Doppler but he/she was being evasive. Which was fine by me since she did a quick ultrasound instead to double check! It was just a very quick ultrasound, enough to see the flicker of the heart and grab a profile shot. She didn't do any measurements or measure how many beats per minute. We did get one picture though! Steven and I were amazed and I really wish we could have watched the screen for longer. She gave me an information packet and explained the optional tests we could have done. But I think we are going to opt out of those tests since any information we found out wouldn't alter our decision on whether to keep the baby or not (and our insurance wouldn't cover anything). I had my blood drawn and that was about it. We will have an anatomy scan up at the hospital around 19 or 20 weeks and find out the gender at that time as well. We'll see her monthly until closer to the end so our next appointment is March 23rd.

Without further delay, here is our little babe at 10 weeks 2 days....



And this is me.