Hello Baby!

So yeah, SURPRISE! It feels so good to be able to hit publish on Tuesday's post and on so many of the upcoming posts. Some of you may have seen it coming with my absence and various social media activities (or lack thereof), and some of you that know me in person have even noticed my growing midsection. Also, I am terrible at secrets! We are both incredibly excited, so after our parents and siblings found out immediately, we told a majority of our close friends between 8 and 11 weeks. The rest of our family received the news the last few weeks via a postcard (hopefully all the intended recipients received their mail) with the same photo I posted on Tuesday.

We are officially at 16 weeks and the baby is approximately avocado sized or dill pickle sized or something like that (all the apps and calendars say something different).   Overall, I am feeling good. I've gotten a lot of remarks from mama friends that have either absolutely loved being pregnant or absolutely hated it. I am in the middle. Some days are great, others not so great. Mainly, I am just sore and tired and boy was all that wedding traveling rough!

I find it totally ironic that as soon as I publicly bitch about not getting pregnant, we get pregnant. Also, around the same time we found out, I lost all creative drive and hit a huge writer's block. Nothing new or exciting was being cooked in our kitchen or made in the craft room for a few months. I don't want to ever force anything here so I just kept away for the most part. On top of everything, I still haven't gotten that 2nd trimester burst of energy everyone talks about, but instead I developed "morning sickness" at week 11 that is still lingering and a horribly stuffy nose.

Despite the lack of energy and the "morning sickness" at 11 weeks, now that I am in the second trimester, I have been feeling the need to finish a lot of my creative projects. I have been cranking through the last few months of Project Life that I have missed out on. I also made my first item for the baby. I made a quick patchwork snuggle blanket that I used in our announcement photo. Everyday, my to do list grows longer and longer as I think of all the projects (ya know, besides incubating the baby) and things that need to be done in the next 5 to 6 months. Some of the upcoming projects include sprucing up a chifforobe, refinishing a rocking chair, and converting the guest room/craft room into a baby room.

Also at 12 weeks, I had a really discouraging appointment. Nothing was wrong with the baby, but I had an overall rough time with failed blood draws and what not. I was also advised to try out an anti-inflammatory diet to help keep gestational diabetes and high blood pressure at bay. It has been touch and go, especially with the nausea/morning sickness. We are finding our footing with the changes and I am hoping to document some of that here as we get our bearings. More real time updates can be found on Instagram.

Our appointment this week more than made up for the craziness of that first appointment. We FINALLY got to hear the wee one's heartbeat! Baby was being a little shy the first time we went in and kept moving away from the doppler. This time, while still being a wiggly little thing, we were able to get the heartbeat loud and clear. The whole rest of the day I was so emotional. I just felt like I was going to burst into to tears at any moment. The heartbeat really just made everything so real! I can't imagine how we will feel in four weeks when we go for our anatomy scan.

Speaking of anatomy, let me take a moment to answer the inevitable question: We are currently planning on not finding out the gender of the baby. Gasp! I know. "That's so old-fashioned!" "You're such a hippie" and "You are going to regret not finding out" are all common responses we have gotten from friends and family. We have considered all sides of the argument but Berkeley and I decided that we want to wait until our son or daughter arrives. Man it is so weird to type "our son or daughter".

That being said, I think it is a boy! I've been having very vivid and bizarre dreams that include boy babies. However, Berkeley thinks girl. Either way, we are so very excited and looking forward to that additional element surprise come May.

This is getting really long and kinda rambling, but I guess you can say this is all the details I have been wanting to share since finding out almost 13 weeks ago. I am hoping to find a good balance between what this place was prior to baby and incorporating baby so bear with me while I figure it all out.