-Day In, Day Out-: Baby Journey -Part 7 & Thanksgiving

Baby Journey -Part 7: Finally Cheery! & Thanksgiving : )

15-16 Weeks

I finally feel like I can say I feel better! Hallelujah! Most of the time I am feeling more like myself and overall okay. My stomach is way better -almost all the time, not always. I have more energy and don't feel like I have to come home from work and just nap, although I am still going to bed extremely early on a nightly basis. At this point I'm assuming the early bedtime will be a constant throughout the pregnancy. I just cannot seem to stop yawning once it reaches 8:00. Cody and I went to a Spurs game (thank you Sue and Steve!) this past week and while I LOVE the Spurs and really enjoyed the game, it just about killed me lol. Mainly it was just so difficult because it was a weeknight. I think a weekend game would be much easier to handle since I could sleep in the next day.

This past week I bought my first pair of maternity jeans. I have bought a couple other random maternity items so far but this was the first thing I felt like I REALLY needed and started to wear them immediately. My jeans had been killing me. I had been using the Belly Band things for several weeks now and while I could still wear my jeans with the band, they were SO uncomfortable. After eating I would literally try to hold out my jeans so they weren't smashing my stomach. I looked at a couple places for the maternity jeans and as my usual problem, most of them were all way, way too long. I finally went to an actual maternity store (should of just gone there in the first place) and found some jeans that I love that were a petite size and therefore don't drag on the floor! I thought it was kinda funny because before I bought any maternity clothes I had NO clue what it meant for pants to be "maternity" except I figured bigger. I have a friend who is also currently pregnant and ahead of me who showed me some maternity pants she had. I thought the stretchy band was so hilarious! I then started to learn the different styles of maternity wear that some things have the stretchy band bellow your belly and some styles are a stretchy fabric that goes all the way up covering your whole stomach. I definitely in my head thought -about the stomach covering one, "That is ridiculous. Who would want to wear something that looks like that? And how would that even be comfortable?" And well guess what, the two main maternity items I have that I now wear (the jeans I just got this week and also a pair of black tights/leggings I got about a week ago) are the style that go up all the way covering my belly! Serves me right for judging them before I ever tried them. I do still think they look ridiculous though. I definitely made Cody laugh when I showed him the leggings for the first time and then when I saw my family for dinner the first day I wore my maternity jeans, I flashed my mom the top stomach part. What can I say? Somehow they really were comfy and I liked them.

So excited to have comfortable pants again!

This past week I've also been enjoying starting our baby registries. At first it was completely overwhelming (and still is when I think about all the stuff babies apparently need). I mean, not only do you have to know what items you need, but then each item itself has numerous brands and styles and other choices. You can't just register for a bottle. What type of bottle? What brand/size? What about a crib? Which crib is the best, or considered safe, but also not crazy expensive? I still am not totally sure what all a crib even needs! I've gotten the (by "gotten" I mean registered for) crib itself, the mattress, a mattress cover/pad, and a sheet. Is that it? I don't know. Guess we'll figure it out soon enough. I am having fun with the registries : ) Hopefully I'm choosing smart stuff!

18 Weeks

Today is our 18 week ultrasound where we get to find out the gender! It's actually in about an hour. I'm taking a quick break from getting dressed and ready to write. I'm officially going on record saying I am really nervous for this appointment. Yesterday I had a couple really strong sharp pain feelings -very different than any pain feelings I've had yet. It was only a couple times and they quickly went away but they were so strong and just different than everything else I've felt. Additionally I think I've gotten slightly nervous before each of our appointments worrying that they'd say something is wrong. That combined with the pain from yesterday, I'm extra nervous. I honestly don't think I have a real reason to be though. I think everything is okay and I'm just slightly freaking out for no real reason. Aside from that, we are of course extremely excited to get to find out if we're having a baby girl or baby boy today!! Somewhere along the way I convinced myself it's a boy. Cody remains neutral. I think I started thinking it might be a boy at first because it seemed like we knew tons of people with girls -so I figured someone has to have some boys to balance it out. Then Cody and I agreed on a boy name that I love! And we still have zero girl names we agree on. So those two things combined somehow slowly convinced me it's a boy. Cody's worried that I'll get upset and disappointed if we find out it's a girl today.

Other notes quick: I finally finished (at least all the big/essential items I know of for now) our baby registries at Babies R Us and Target. It might be a tad early to get those out of the way but I had so much fun looking items up, reading reviews, and picking out exactly what items we'd like. The registries and cloth diapers were the first things I got genuinely excited about during the pregnancy. (How sad is that though?) I felt so awful for so long I really had trouble being very excited. The first thing that did get me excited and reading a lot about it was cloth diapers. Now oh my goodness. If you had asked me about considering cloth diapers even 1 day before I was pregnant, I would have said you are crazy absolutely not for me. Haha. I started reading about it and it was amazingly the first thing I started planning and learning about and getting excited about. Diapers! How silly. But so that's the plan -cloth diapers, and hopefully we're not making a huge mistake lol. And as I already said working on the baby registries was the second thing to really get me looking forward to everything. Cody hated it but I loved it. The first day we went to set up the registry at Babies R Us after doing the paperwork once we finally started walking around with the scanner, we were only about 5 minutes in when Cody very bluntly said "We need to leave now. This is overwhelming. Let's go." So we did (-I did) the rest online slowly over a couple weeks.

About to leave for our 18 week appointment.

Waiting at the OBGYN office - so excited!

We are home from our appointment and dinner. The news is official - we're having a boy!! Cody's already decided on a Spurs and Aggie theme : ) Although really we want to keep things neutral and are thinking grey with some color for a nursery eventually and the "boy" decorations will be small things that can move to a different room later on. I'm kind of leaning toward the grey/yellow colors but who knows. We won't be setting up a nursery for a while anyway since we're going to wait until we move over the summer, which will be about two months after the baby is born. I bet that'll be a fun time... anyone volunteering to help us pack and move while we have a newborn??

It's a boy!!!

Cody and I have a boy name picked out : ) I fell in love with this name early on and it slowly grew on Cody and now he loves it too. I guess you never know; there might be a slightly chance at some point or during labor we change our minds -that can't be predicted. Right now we are pretty set on our name. I'd love to share but I'm not sure we're ready for it to be public knowledge, and even though we do love it we don't want to say we're set on it since we can't predict what we'll think in a few months. Except for the fact that we already told our families (sort of on accident) we really wanted to keep it a secret until the birth. So for now it'll stay offline. We'll see how long that lasts.

Last night I felt the baby kick for the first real time! I have been wondering if I've been feeling something every now and then for the past week or two, but it was faint and I was never really sure. Well last night I don't know what else it would have been except the baby! I was all ready to go to sleep laying in bed. Lately I've been falling asleep with my hand on my belly just in case I might feel something, and yesterday I did! Oh man, that first feeling was super strong too! Not only did I feel it completely for sure but I wondered if our little guy was going to try and burst out. I couldn't believe how big and strong of a feeling it was. He must have tried to stick his whole leg out the side of my stomach! I kept my hand there and then felt another movement and then I yelled for Cody. He was in the kitchen doing dishes (as the usual these days I was in bed pretty early). It took a couple yells for him to hear me and come in the room. I felt the baby move four times before he got there and I was worried it'd be over, but it wasn't. I showed Cody where to put his hand and told him what all I'd just felt and sure enough Cody felt the baby too about three or four times. He kept saying "You're not doing that?" And I responded with something like "No, it's definitely not me. It's the baby for sure this time." We were so excited and it was so fun for us to both feel it and be so confident for the first time in what we were feeling. It's been an exciting Thanksgiving week! Finding out the gender, sharing the gender with our families, and now feeling the baby for the first real time : ) Well today is officially Thanksgiving and I was taking a mini-break from cooking and baking to write this. Back to the kitchen for a bit more before getting ready to go to the Hendersons for the day. Tomorrow we go to my parents and all my brothers are in town which is awesome. Also my brother, Ryan, recently got engaged to a girl named Cassi which is super exciting! We have only met her a couple times briefly so I'm really looking forward to seeing them tomorrow and hopefully getting to know her a bit better. It's crazy to think that by the time our baby is born, he will not only have one Aunt Kari but also a brand new Aunt Cassi. And I'm beyond excited to see my brothers as uncles! I think they are super cute when they interact with other babies/young kids. I think they will be great uncles. Now I do have to get back to the kitchen. Happy Thanksgiving!