{Hidden Baby Chronicles} 11 Weeks - A Lime

May 29, 2014

A good week! Only three weeks left in the first trimester, AND we had another ultrasound and got to see our little lime bouncing around like a jumping bean! 
 

Photo Thoughts: I'm finally willing to show my bloat a little bit.  I'm still pretty sure that's about 90% bloat/10% the roundness of my tummy I've always had.  But whatever, there it is.  Also, this lime was a little bigger than the given 1.6 inches for this week, but who has ever seen a lime that small anyway?

How I'm Feeling:  Still really good and mostly normal.  I definitely felt a huge amount of relief when we saw the baby alive and kicking (even bouncing) at the ultrasounds this week.  More on that later. 

Baby/Bump: This week our jumping bean is the size of a lime!  I just looked back at my first post, and was shocked to see that what is now a lime started out the size of a poppy seed!  A lime was still seeming pretty small to me before, but now I realize just how much growth has already happened.  The baby is 1.6 inches and weighs 0.25 oz.  Our lime is doing lots of moving in there now- which we got to see at the ultrasound- so wild!  Also, tooth buds, hair follicles, and nail beds are forming already. 

Symptoms:  Still very few symptoms, but I am finally feeling much less paranoid about that since the ultrasound.  I know how lucky I am to be feeling this good.  The few minor symptoms that I'm still having are: belly bloat, and waking up once per night to pee still.  It seems like my general food indifference in the evenings has returned somewhat.  I sit down to dinner and am just not all that interested in eating.  I've also been feeling a few minor cramps throughout the week/round ligament pain- whatever they call it.  Oh, and even though I'm drinking a TON of water throughout the day, when I wake up first thing in the morning, I am always extremely thirsty!

Weight: +3.5 which is down 0.5 from last week.  Yay?...

What I'm Anticipating: David and I finally decided that we would tell his family our big news on Father's day weekend, so I'm already getting excited/anxious/nervous about that.  This also means that around that same time, I will tell the rest of my immediate family.  After that is all done, then we will move onto telling extended family and close friends.  We will deal with social media at some point after that. 

What I'm Stressing About/Worries:  Just like I was nervous about telling my parents our news (for no reason really), I am also now nervous about the next round of "reveals."  Don't get me wrong, I'm excited, too!  But for some reason, it really gives me some anxiety. I know it will be fine though, and really fun and exciting even!

I'm also a little bit nervous about going back for my follow-up appointment with my OB (my ultrasound was just with a tech).  At this appointment, I will get the results of the nuchal translucency screening and my blood work.  I'm trying not to think about it too much just yet though. 

Diet/Cravings/Aversions:  I brought salads for lunch at work each day this past week, and I literally was choking them down.  It wasn't making me nauseous or anything, but each day they just seemed totally unappealing to me.  I made it happen though! 

Sleep: Best thing ever.  Still really weird dreams, still waking up once a night, and still really hard to get out of bed. 

Exercise:  Really proud that I'm still sticking to 6 days a week.  Although I'm definitely having to take more frequent breaks than in the past. 

Movement:  WAYYYYY too early for me to feel this, BUT it was so so cool to SEE so much movement at the ultrasound! 

Boy or Girl: Too early to know, of course.  BUT, this is kind of interesting.  For as long as I can remember (even when I was growing up), whenever I thought about having kids in the future, I automatically thought girls.  Not that I don't want a boy- I'd love to have BOTH!  But that's just what my mind automatically envisioned- girls.  I think some of that may have to do with having tons of girl cousins and all the babysitting I did in middle school and high school for a family with three girls, and I loved those sweet girls.  BUT during our ultrasound, within just a minute or two of seeing the baby on the big screen, I had this inexplicable instinct of, "that's a boy."  It was so strange, but it was definitely an overwhelming "boy" feeling.  Mother's instinct?  Maybe, maybe not.  We will see eventually!

Highlights of the Week: FIRST TRIMESTER ULTRASOUND!  Best day ever!  Our appointment was on Thursday morning.  They called us back right away, we met the ultrasound technician who was very nice, and she got us situated in the coldest room ever.  We were both freezing the entire time!  Luckily, we were distracted from the cold for the most part.  They had a pretty sweet setup, with a big screen TV mounted on the wall so we could see what was on the tech's screen on the the TV screen. 

I didn't actually get nervous until she put the little wand on my stomach and turned the machine on.  Then the butterflies immediately kicked in.  I had been so nervous about my lack of symptoms that I had pretty much convinced myself that we would see nothing or that she would immediately have bad news to deliver.  And actually, it did take her (what seemed like) a long time to find anything, and when she did find the baby, it was just absolutely still at first.  My heart sank.  And David later told me that he thought the same thing at first.  But it wasn't long before the baby was seriously bouncing all over the place!  HUGE relief at that point!  I really was not expecting to see so much movement.  It was so fun to see though!  He/she was bouncing around all over the place, kicking his/her feet, rolling around, and even waving his/her little hands at us.  The tech has some trouble getting the baby to stay in the right position to get the measurements that she needed, so she had me roll onto my side a couple of times.  I could have watched all day!  We got to hear the heartbeat for the first time too- which was incredible!  His/her heart was beating away at 182 bmp- that was so surreal to hear!  It sounded like a helicopter or horses running.  I wish we would have thought to get a video of that so we could replay the sound. 

After the tech got what she needed, she gave us a printed photo, and we even got a disk with multiple photos from the ultrasound and even a few video clips.  Then a nurse came and took my blood, and that was it. 

I still can't believe that I have a bouncing, squirming, kicking, lime-sized human being in my belly!  Pregnancy is seriously wild... and surreal.  But so amazing!