Almost 13!

I am PREGNANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I still have to let that sink in every single day. I am 12 weeks, 6 days pregnant, (I'll be 13 weeks tomorrow!) With each day that passes, I am all the more proud of my pregnancy, so thankful for another day of being pregnant.
I feel totally normal. Isn't that crazy?! Pretty much everyone I know who has been pregnant (except my mother), has had some form of morning sickness or nausea, but I have none! At 5 weeks pregnant, I had 3 solid days of nausea and threw up twice, but that was it! It went away after 3 days, and at that point, I had a hard time convincing myself that the pregnancy was okay since I was nauseous, but then it went away. To me, that felt like a bad thing. Especially since you always hear people say "morning sickness just means a healthy pregnancy!" So for me, with no sickness, I seriously took that as a bad thing. But then we went in for our first sono at 7 weeks, and saw our one beautiful baby with a lovely heartbeat. That was just miraculous to see and hear!!!

That was my last visit with Dr. Le's office, then they released me to my OB. My OB saw me the following week, at 8 weeks pregnant, and we had another sono then and saw the baby, and saw its heart beating away!

 So seeing the sono then kept me feeling secure in our pregnancy for a while, but within a couple weeks, knowing that I really didn't feel ANY pregnancy symptoms, once again I started to doubt that our baby was okay. It was to the point that I cried and cried with Stuart because I honestly thought that something HAD to be wrong. So at 11 weeks pregnant, even though I had an OB appointment scheduled for the following week, we went and had a 3D ultrasound performed, and I am so so thankful that we did!

That last one, the baby is waving! You can see its fingers and thumb!!!
I am SO happy to have these precious pictures. Our baby will NEVER look like this again, and I knew that my OB wouldn't do another sono until I am 20 weeks along, so I would never have had this stage in the baby's growth captured. I am so glad we did this!
Now that I've passed the hard 12 week mark in my pregnancy, I honestly feel a lot better and safer about our baby. At my 12 week appt. with my OB last week, we got to hear the heartbeat.
I bought a heart beat monitor a couple weeks ago, but I could never find it myself at home. Until.. the other day! I tried just for the heck of it, and as usual, I found my own heart beat, but then I barely moved the monitor and heard the tiny, speedy heartbeat of our baby! I couldn't believe it! My first instinct once I found the baby's heart beat was to actually turn the machine off and just let that moment sink in. I was so thankful to have found it and it was an overwhelming moment. That I, myself, home alone, could hear my baby's heartbeat. It was so wonderful! It made me cry for the first time in my pregnancy. Then I turned the machine back on and continued to listen to it beat away for several minutes! Not only listening to the heart beat, but after about 10 seconds of hearing the heartbeat, I would hear loud noises and then the heart beat was gone. I had to move the machine to find the beat again. Those loud noises I was hearing was our baby's body moving around in my womb, and so that is why the heart beat went away and I had to look for it again, because the baby moved! How awesome is that!
That was the most wonderful part of our 3D sono at 11 weeks was seeing the baby move its arms and legs everywhere. It was seriously moving! How could it be that it can move all over the place and I feel nothing! And also that it has arms and legs to move, but at the time, it was only 2 inches long! So so amazing.

I now spend my past time looking online for all things baby! I'm on the Babycenter forum where you can go in to chat rooms with other women who are due when you are, so you can relate to each other and share the same time line of being pregnant together! These are strangers of course, and since I have no symptoms, and the majority of women were talking about being nauseous, I couldn't relate to them then, but they are slowly getting done with that phase, and it's fun to just read about other people's pregnancy! Some women in the "August 2011" group already know the gender! Some who are 14 weeks along found out on an ultrasound, and some who are 12 weeks along found out with their 12 week testing their doctor did.

We only have 3 THREE more weeks until we find out. That blows my mind! That is seriously SOON! I can't wait for our gender party! I am going to start looking for decoration ideas for the party!