As of Jan 15, I’m officially 19 weeks along. Today, Dave and I took our first official “belly picture.” While I started showing around 14 weeks, now I’m at the point where people are really starting to notice. Let me quickly get you up to speed on the past 19 weeks:

For those whom I haven’t shared this with, Dave and I had originally decided to start “trying” in October of this past year. Due to my blood pressure, I had been off birth control for almost a year, and we felt like the Lord had lead us to the time in our life where we were ready for a family. Our expectation was to start trying in October, not expecting to get pregnant until sometime around the new year. Well…that didn’t happen, and low and behold, we found out we were pregnant in September of 2010.
In October we went down the Arkansas to visit our new nephew, James Elliot Norvell, and see the Norvell family. I had a feeling at that point that I might be pregnant, but I wasn’t ready to deal with it just yet. When we got back, I took a test before work one day, and here we are!

The first 12-14 weeks were NOT fun by any means. Sure, they had their happy moments. I loved the day that we told our family. I confided in one friend at work so that I had a confidant for my bad days, which turned out to be much more often then I though, and the excitement from others was very joyful. We had decided to wait until our first doctor’s appointment before we told the family. I know so many women who have had failed pregnancies, and I wanted to do what I could to protect myself from the emotions that might come from that. After we got our clear 8 week sonogram, we spent the rest of the day telling our families. My mom did actually find out about a week or so before, and I must applaud her for keeping the secret. After one particularly bad day when my stomach was churning all day and my emotions were out of control, I broke down and called my mom. Ladies, what is it about your mother that, no matter how old you are, they just know how to make things better?? She was able to comfort me and give me some advice that made things seem much better, and she promised in fear of her life to keep our secret till we were ready to share. After our appointment, the first person we called was my dad. I was very excited to tell him. I have a huge soft spot for my dad, and I knew that his excitement would be so fun to share. After that, we alternated between calling a member of Dave’s family, then a member of my family, till we had told everyone by the end of the day.
Those moments of joy really helped me as I struggled through my first trimester. The biggest challenge was feeling awful all the time. I was not lucky enough to only suffer from “morning sickness”. Nope…I suffered from “all day sickness”. I’d wake up in the morning, eat a few saltines, and struggle my way through work. I don’t really know how to describe it except that, ya know that feeling when you know you have a cold coming on, when you can feel that at any minute your body is going to shut down? I felt that way for 14 weeks. Add on top of that the inability to eat any food whatsoever and extreme fatigue, and you’ve got one moody mom to be. To top it all off, by the end of the day, when I hadn’t been able to eat anything and I was so tired I couldn’t see straight, my emotions would start to get the best of me, and I’d have these breakdowns of tears, fear, and yes, even feelings of regret. I asked Dave a couple of times “do we really have to have this baby?” He deserves the husband of the decade award. He would just sit next to me, rub my back, and promise me that it wasn’t going to be this way forever.
And you know what? He was right. Since about week 14, I’ve felt better than ever. I still have some crazy symptoms (my gag reflex is extremely sensitive and I sneeze all the time), but at times I forget that I’m pregnant. When everyone tells you that month 4-6 are better, they aren’t kidding. My energy is back, finally! And I can actually eat pretty much whatever I want without any upset stomach issues to consider.
I have much more to share with you about the first several months, but we’ll get back to that in later posts. For now, let me share with you our first purchases for the nursery. Our school district has a “For Sale” website that is exclusively for employees. It’s called the Unclassifieds, and several weeks ago, I found a posting for a car seat set. It was the basic Graco infant car seat set that has the gray base, car seat, and cart that the seat attaches onto to make a stroller. This was the set that I had wanted to get. I’ve seen several of my friends with it. Well, the person was selling two bases (one for each car) the car seat and the stroller base for $50.00! What a steal! It retails for over 200 with only one car seat base. So, needless to say, I swiped it up as fast as I could.

It needs a new, clean car seat cover, but that will be cheap compared to getting the whole set.

And I am most excited about this….

My before mentioned friend at work sold us this awesome, beautiful changing table for $50.00. I love the see through drawers and the large changing area on top. Dave is anxious to get his power tools out to sand and restain it. She also threw in this side table for free.

While the two don’t match, I think the side table would be really cool looking if we painted it a color to match the room.
After this, we just need to purchase a crib. We’d like to get some shelves, too, that we can display pictures, toys, baskets with clothes and supplies in as well, but that isn’t as immediate as a crib. We are considering buying a brand new crib. They make cribs now that will convert into a real bed when the child is ready, and we feel like that would be a good investment of our money, but we will see. Fortunately, we’ve got some time:>)

Ok…that’s it for this first addition. For those of you that read up till this point, thank you! Stay tuned for more updates!