Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?
As a matter of face, I do know. It's a boy! I might have you scratching your head as to how I know the gender so early as people typically only know after the week 20 ultrasound. Well, we did the genetics testing and with it came the gender results. It blows my mind that they can figure out the baby's gender just from a blood sample. Science and technology, who knew?!
When are you due?
Right now they are saying January 15, 2016. Originally it was January 17th, so I imagine it'll happen sometime in mid-January (or, I hope so!).
Are you showing (obviously, not an in-person question)?
This is a tough one to answer. For me, I feel like it's incredibly obvious I'm pregnant and have a bump. My friends can all tell that I am showing, but I don't think a stranger is going to really notice. Plus, I've been attempting to wear looser clothing so it makes it harder to tell. To me I started to show around week 12 or 13 with a lil' bump. Now, at week 15, I definitely have a bump, but nothing too big - like I said, it's there, but not glaringly obviously. I feel like it's a bit of an awkward stage right now, but I'm sure when I'm bigger I'll wish I was the size I am now.
How are you feeling?
Right now, I feel pretty good. In fact, I can hardly tell I'm pregnant. Ask me in an hour. Seriously, though, I was super lucky in my first trimester.
In fact, I feel a bit guilty telling other expectant mothers or moms that I didn't get sick (as in throwing up) once in my first trimester (or yet, for that matter). I have heard some horror stories, so I'm incredibly relieved. I have a irrational fear of throwing up. But it wasn't all daisies either. I was pretty tired most of the time. I started to go to bed earlier than my usual, which for me is saying something. Although, again, I heard stories of folks that had to go to sleep at like 7pm. I was more like 10pm instead of my typical 11 or 11:30pm. Also, I just had this constant low grade nausea thing going - I could deal with it, but it made eating less fun. I would get hungry and then nothing sounded good and eating just sound bleh. It was a struggle.
But now I'm in the second trimester and things are feeling better. I still get a tired earlier, but I have more energy - yippee! I don't have the constant nausea thing, and I get hungry and want to eat things. I'm not going to get into details on some other new things - dealing with indigestion, we'll leave it at that - but overall, life is pretty good.
Now, if the heat in Seattle could just settle down!
Do you have any food cravings?
Seriously, this is everyone's favorite questions. I think the movies just make us thing all pregnant women want pickles and crazy foods at midnight. I really don't have any real cravings, necessarily. There are things that definitely sound good. For instance, I can't get enough bread and comfort foods - pizza, pasta, POTATOES, chicken pot pie - these all sound terrific to me. Now, I'm not craving them in a way where I demand Josh go drive forever to find them at midnight, but they do sound quite tasty. But now that you mention it, Yumi Yogurt sounds good. Should I make Josh fly to the Bay Area to get me some and blame the pregnancy? Mwahaha, evil laugh.
Anyway, luckily, a lot of the pregnancy "super foods" I already enjoy naturally - oats, yogurt, sweet potatoes. And guess what, I don't like pickles and I never will.
The less commonly know thing to people are food aversions. Sometimes I will picture a particular food in my mind and just cringe. Like a while ago salad just didn't sound good. I would grunt to myself, but if served it, I'd eat it because it's the healthy thing to do, right? Sigh, healthy. But, especially in the first trimester, I just didn't want some foods.
Are you feeling any movement?
Not yet! I was at an appointment today and the doctor said I could start feeling him soon. When she listened to the heart, she said he was moving around. We also saw him moving around in my week 12 ultrasound. The earliest I should start to feel him is at week 16, but the doctor said that less likely for first time moms and more likely closer to week 20. Can't wait!!
How did you share the news?
We started the news at different times for different people. Of course our parents and my sister were the first to know. They had to suffer like us in keeping it secret. The timing could not have been better since the Brown parents were visiting shortly after we found out the news ourselves. They were visiting here the weekend after Mother's Day (yup, back in May), so we decided to share with them via Nada's mother's day gift. We got her a "Mama Bear" necklace and on the tag wrote in "grand" - it took a moment before realization dawned and then it was all happy tears and hugs of joy.
Unfortunately, my parents didn't have a trip and we needed to tell them long distance. We bought a baby book, and inside we wrote a message saying they could read this to their grandchild. Then we included a baby card sharing the news. I told them I had a package in the mail for them, and call me before opening it. They opened the gift with Josh and I on the phone. Again, it took a moment and then bam! realization hit. It was the best phone call ever.
That evening, my sister actually drove down to stay the weekend with my parents. My mom told her to call me when she arrived because I had an important question. When she called, I asked, "Would you rather be called Aunt Lindsay or just Lindsay?" She got that right away!
The next round of sharing was later at around week 13 (after good results on our ultrasound and at the start of the second trimester). First, I told my boss. I think I almost gave him a heart attack since he thought when I had "some news" it might be my two weeks notice. But then he was super happy. Just after that, I pulled my immediate team into a room for a "quick sync" and shared the news. Again, I think I momentarily had them worried, but then thrilled once I got all the words out of my mouth.
Then came sharing the news with the broader team at work. On Monday, I brought in some sugar cookies with blue frosting and blue sprinkles. I took them to our scrum (a meeting we have at the beginning of each day to discuss what'd due that day). After I made my updates, I took the cookies out and said, "I brought in some cookies, and they have blue frosting because....(long pause)...to celebrate the baby boy I'm expecting in January!" Then it just blew up from there with congratulations and questions.
Finally, I got to share on my blog and FaceBook. You can just go to the post to see it for yourself.
