it's aliiiiiiiiiive!!!

The coolest, most exciting thing that's ever happened in this pregnancy... He moves!!!
The baby moves!!!

I think I'm one of those people who pays a little too much attention to my body, especially when something is not "normal" for me. For example, being pregnant. All these things are happening to my body that at first I think some people would not even notice that it's happening to them. Every little tiny thing that I've felt change... I've felt. I think I've even gotten a little obsessive on certain things. I'm not talking body image and self esteem things here (although that has been affected, but that's another topic for another day) I'm talking a weird movement, or a weird pain or something doesn't feel "normal" when I do certain things... I'm obsessive. I'm going to give myself some credit though because I think in general it's a good thing. I'll know right away if something is different or wrong and when it happened and how it felt... it could be beneficial to detecting problems sooner rather then later.

Now the whole point of this...
I think I was about 17 or maybe 18 weeks when I first felt the signs that there really was a baby inside me. Without going to the doctor to see him through and ultrasound or hear his heartbeat. I felt this really weird almost fluttery feeling inside my belly on the right front side. It's weird to describe it this way, but it was almost this burning type sensation, like it almost hurt.... maybe similar to if you hit your elbow wrong and there was a nerve pain... I didnt' really know for sure how to describe it, but it was WEIRD! I sort of left it alone, but then it happened AGAIN! over and over it kept happening every few minutes this one evening. I talked to my mom and my aunt Theresa about it and they both said that it had to be the baby, the first signs of him moving around in there. Well after talking more I just got more and more excited, then I wanted it to happen all the time, I wanted so bad to feel my baby again. It gave me this reassuring feeling. Well, unfortunately I hardly ever felt it again. I could be remembering it a little wrong, but to my recollection I may have felt it happen a couple more times, but that was it! Since then I've been obsessing about actually feeling our baby "kick" for real!

It's happening!! It actually started a couple weeks ago (I'm a few days shy of 23 weeks right now) surprisingly I can't remember exactly when it happened but I suddenly, out of no where, after not even feeling the fluttering very often, felt something more. It HAD to be him "kicking" there's no way it could have been anything else! It was more then a flutter but still not enough to actually feel it if you put your hand on my tummy... but it was him, he was moving and I could actually feel it! I was so excited! I was just waiting and waiting for it to happen again. I would never really notice it happening until I would lay down to go to sleep. I think this was mostly because there were no other distractions around me so it was easier to focus on the movements. The other weird thing is I would ONLY feel the fluttering on my right side and i would ONLY feel the little "kicks" on my left side. Weird!

Part of the reason I was obsessing about him moving was because of Troy. He deploys in about a week, and all I have wanted for him before he leaves is to be able to put his hand on my belly and feel his baby kicking. This was something that we had talked about a long time ago, and since we've never had a baby, we were not sure exactly when we would be able to share this amazing experience. We were both worried that he'd be gone before it'd happen, and it'd be yet another thing he'd have to miss. It made me feel so sad, and  I prayed and prayed for him to be able to have this one thing before he leaves... sure enough, if you ask, you shall receive! It feels like in the matter of a day or two little Eli started giving me real "kicks" that I could actually feel when i put my hand on my belly. The problem was that I would only feel him once or twice, then nothing for hours and hours, or maybe the rest of the day. I would put Troy's hand on my belly when i felt something and unfortunately Eli wouldn't do it again, so Troy wouldn't get to feel anything :-( this made me so sad! But i wasn't going to give up!

One night we had just gotten into bed for the night. Like always I started to feel him moving around in my tummy. So like always i put Troy's hand where I felt it last and then Eli did it again, and again... over and over he kept "kicking" and moving around. More times in a row then I've ever felt him before and Troy got to feel it too!!! This was one of the BEST moments, by far, that I've experienced in this whole thing. It was so wonderful and made us both so happy! It made this whole baby thing real :-) Since that day I've felt him move during the day and tons of times in a row. Just yesterday  he was moving around like crazy most of the afternoon. Even this morning I felt him first thing when I woke up. I'm so happy and so thankful that God's blessed us with this little baby boy and that He's blessed us with this wonderful experience that Troy and I get to share together even though Troy will be gone for the rest of the pregnancy. I'm so thankful that we had this moment that I was so sure we wouldn't get to have... I could just cry I'm so happy :-)

The mystery is solved!

I've been SO busy preparing for Troy's deployment, which included a fairly busy and lengthy trip home to see the family. Lot's has happened with Baby though!

We had our 20week ultrasound appointment, which I had been waiting for for what felt like forever (what a weird sentence). I had to pull some strings and play the "my hubby is deploying" card in order to get the appointments (Dr appt and ultrasound appt) scheduled in the 10 day window that we had while in the Couve thankfully people are sympathetic and worked with me. So the only available appointment was 8 in the morning! If you remember I was totally worried about the whole drink a liter of water before the appt and don't use the bathroom 'til it's over thing, well it turned out that it was so early in the morning I think due to the fact that I hadn't had any water all night my body needed it and soaked it all up. Basically I never really had to pee as bad as i thought i was going to have to. I didn't find this out 'til I was laying on the table in the ultrasound room, but apparently the reason they needed the full bladder was not for the baby stuff, but so that they could see, measure, and check things on my body. My ovaries, the placenta... something else which i can't even remember now. After that she let me get up and go to the bathroom, then when i returned we looked at baby stuff. So it was not nearly as bad as I had anticipated!

Finally we got to see the baby!! The Dr. had to measure EVERYTHING on the baby from multiple angles. This is why the appointment takes around an hour. She measured the head, the body, the bones, the feet, the hands, the heart... Literally everything. So for most of the appointment we were looking at fairly weird and confusing pictures on the screen. Often times it was hard to tell what in the world we were looking at! ..."is that seriously a baby i see!??" It was pretty crazy to me that the Doc knew what she was looking at. She did really well at explaining to us what she was doing and measure and how the baby was positioned, so that cleared up much of the confusion. It was much like an anatomy class. She would explain to us where the bones were that she was looking at and what they were called. It was just so special and exciting to see our baby, all the different parts of our baby!

This is a picture of the baby's foot! The doc printed out a bunch of pics for us of random parts of the baby that we looked at (here's just a few of them). One thing that was really surprising for Troy and I both was that the baby looked like a skeleton! I thought we'd be looking at a baby with fat but it seriously looked like the baby just had nothing but bones. It was totally freaky! The doc said that it's normal and that at this point in time lots of babies look like skeletons because they haven't developed much fat yet.

Then came the fun part... the real reason that Troy and I, me in particular, had been waiting so long for this appointment... "do you want to know the gender if I'm able to see it?" asked the Doc. "YES!"

Well there it is! She said, it looks like the baby has BOY parts!

"yeah it definitely looks like boy parts. Congratulations!"

She has to say "looks like" in order to cover her butt in case the baby comes out a girl. She told us after checking three different times that it's definitely a boy, however with the ultrasound machine sometimes things can look different then they really are and every once in a while what they thought was a boy comes out into the world as a girl. I'm not too worried about it. It's definitely a boy!

Troy was so good about not teasing me or saying "i told you so" since i was hoping for a girl and he kept telling me it was for sure a boy. hind sight is 20/20 but I think we both knew it was a boy from day one. I had a dream one night, before I was ever even pregnant, that we had a baby boy and his name was so clearly Elijah David. Since then I told Troy that if we have a baby boy that will HAVE to be his name. Troy also said, after we found out i was pregnant, that we're definitely having a boy. We talked about girl names too just in case, but that one was harder to decide on and eventually no name really ever felt right to me, even after we had actually picked one. Troy said it's because we're not having a girl, that's why it doesn't feel right. He was so right! God must have told both of us in his own different ways :-)

All that being said... I'm so overjoyed!! I was hoping for a girl, but ultimately it does not matter at all which one we have. I'm so so so soooo excited he's a HE!! Our little Eli :-) I can't wait to meet him! It feels so very real now that we know who's in there. Eeek!! it's so exciting! I really cannot even find words sufficient enough to describe how this feels!

:-)



Hips don't lie

I'm officially half way through! It's so crazy it already feels like I've been pregnant forever, and at the same time it feels like it all is just starting. I've known since i was about 5weeks along, but only in the past couple weeks have a really been able to see and feel any major changes in my body. With no real sickness or anything difficult to deal with it feels like this whole pregnancy is just beginning.

I think I've found my "thing". Some women have  horrible morning sickness, or severe migraines, or other things that I can't even imagine that could be worse. Well my "thing" is horrible hip pain. My hips have hurt almost since the beginning, mostly at night when I slept. It wasn't too painful just really uncomfortable. Well now it feels like a sudden change occurred and I'm just in pain! Yesterday was horrible. All day long my hips were sore and hurting, especially the left one. It was worse when i was up walking around. As soon as I sat down i felt 100% better. But trying to sleep last night was a disaster. I think the only reason I finally crashed was because I was simply exhausted. I was in a lot of pain and tried everything i could think of, and every arrangement of pillows... nothing helped! Poor Troy, I'm sure i woke him up a million times last night!

After yesterday I decided just maybe it's something to worry about, so like I do with everything else, I Googled it. Basically what i found out is it's pretty normal, especially toward the second and third trimester to feel more hip pain. Turns out it's basically hormones cause the ligaments and muscles and joints to relax in preparation for birth. Unfortunately this can cause pain. A few websites offer some advice to help relieve this pain, however, it doesn't seem to be working for me :-(
The pillows do provide SOME minor relief... so i guess that's good.

Other then that, I'm just counting down the days 'til we find out if we're being blessed with a boy or a girl :-)

20 weeks 1day... the baby bump is coming slowly but surely!