First Trimester

If I had to give just one or two words to describe the first trimester, it would probably have to be happy disbelief. But really, even though I knew I was pregnant, most of the time I had to keep reminding myself that it was real, that we were finally, actually having a baby. 

Because I had been going to the fertility clinic before, even though I technically hadn't been doing a treatment, they were awesome and let me come in for a couple of early appointments/ultrasounds before I switched over to a regular OB. So I was lucky enough to see, hear, and get pictures of our baby at 6 weeks and 10 weeks with them, and then I had an appointment with a regular OB at 11 or 12 weeks, I can't remember exactly. It was such a blessing to get so many early appointments, because it did make it feel more real and helped me be slightly less paranoid about something going wrong. My favorite early ultrasound moment was probably when my fertility doctor compared our 10 week old baby to a perfect little gummy bear; short little arms and legs and big head. 

As far as first trimester "symptoms" go, I did have some nausea. For a couple of weeks I felt slightly nauseous almost constantly, which got annoying, but I only threw up a handful of times. So, it could have been a lot worse. Plus, I was more than happy to deal with the nausea I did have because I was finally pregnant. They did give me some meds to try and help with the nausea, but they made me feel so tired and out of it that I decided I'd rather deal with the nausea, so obviously it wasn't that bad. The biggest thing for me was probably how tired I was, all the time. Naps became a regular thing even though I'm not usually a nap person at all, and I often went to bed early as well. It wasn't unusual for Jacob to walk into the room and find me half asleep with my book open in my lap. I didn't have any food aversions or cravings, and my sense of smell only got a little overactive, so all in all, things weren't too bad for me. 

Perhaps the hardest thing for me about the first trimester was waiting to tell everyone. I found ways to talk Jacob into letting me tell certain people, always looking for an excuse to share the good news, but I understood why he felt we should wait. So I did. And it drove me crazy. I actually feel kind of bad for some of the people who did know (like my coworker Whitney) because I talked about the pregnancy with them all the time since they were the only people I could talk about it with. I think anyone has a hard time waiting to tell, but it was especially hard for me because I knew just how many people had been praying and hope and wishing right along with us that we'd be able to get pregnant. I really wanted all of you to know all your prayers had finally been answered. 

I knew pretty much from the moment I had the first pregnancy test that I wanted to use the scripture in 1 Samuel to announce our pregnancy on FB, so I had that post planned weeks and weeks in advance. I counted down weeks and then days, bugging Jacob all the time about only having to wait so much longer, and as soon as I hit that 12 weeks mark, I posted first thing in the morning. It was so exciting for me to finally let everybody in on our secret and share the joy. 

Telling Our Families

Okay, I know I promised months ago that you'd get more pregnancy updates. Sorry I've been so slow! I promise I'll try and do better. As promised, here is how we told our families:

The first family member we told was my sister, Sarah. Let's be honest, there was no way I was capable of waiting to tell her. So, she found out the day after I took the first pregnancy test. Jacob wanted me to wait until after we had a blood test to confirm, but when I found out she was having a horrible day, I knew I had the perfect way to cheer her up. After she actually understood that I was saying I'd taken a pregnancy test that was positive, I was little surprised when she said "Hold on, don't go anywhere" and disappeared from the other side of the phone. But when she came back on, she explained that she'd had to run downstairs where she could scream without waking her kids up. Then, since my sister knew, I sent my brother a text a few days later and also told him. I figured it wasn't fair for only one of my siblings to know.

After that, we waited until Christmas to tell the rest of our families. My parents spent this Christmas up in Washington with Sarah's family. So, before we video chatted with them on Christmas morning, we had them read an email from us that ended with "we can't wait until next Christmas when all 13 of us will be together." It was a very vague clue because as far as they knew, there were currently 12 people in the family. Since it was fairly vague, we had Matt on standby to say something like "wait, there are only 12 of us." My dad claims he was already starting to count in his head when Matt spoke up, but I guess we'll never know. Apparently my parents were too impatient to wait until we were going to video chat in a couple of minutes, because they both grabbed their phones to call me. Dad won out and (crying, as I totally called that he would) simply asked if it was true. After I talked briefly on the phone, we did eventually video chat and I was able to give them some more info on their coming grandchild.

Telling Jacob's parents was hilarious. Jacob was determined to be clever with our announcement but not just with something that was obviously an announcement and easy to figure out. So, we planned carefully. We spent Christmas with them and were there a couple of nights. The first night after they went to bed, we put a 64 oz bottle of Prego sauce on their counter for them to discover in the morning. They spent the entire next day coming up with crazy theories of where and who it had come from. They still didn't get it when they found their DVD player paused on the Pixar short about storks. However, they finally caught on when they found a hot dog bun in their oven. And we thoroughly enjoyed giving them a hard time about how long it took them to catch on.

I'm going to try to post more often, so next up, look for a post on how my first trimester went.