Baby Howard Week 1-10

When starting the blog, I figured it would be a great way to share our family adventures. And to be able to share the pregnancy with the family and not have to repeat the same story many times :) 

A woman doesn't actually get pregnant until around week 2. Weird, I know. Starting week 4 is when the baby starts to grow and make it's little home for 9 months. This trimester has actually been pretty easy for me. I've been exhausted at times and had difficultly finding food that both sounds good and is good for me. For awhile there I was eating lots of chili mac and ice cream. However, my body has adjusted and I feel very...normal. 

Starting last week, I started to notice my belly getting a little pudgy. Its not the nice round pregnant belly I was hoping for. It just looked like I ate too much ice cream and had developed a muffin top. I'm not one who deals well with being out of shape. I hated that my middle was expanding and I couldn't do much about it. I was working out still and my belly was still pudgy. I thought it was too early to be showing, I most really just be gaining weight. The scale disagreed. hmmm..

By Week 10, the pudgy belly started to take shape. I can feel it pushing out and growing sometimes. It is a very odd feeling but it's comforting too. I know our baby is in there growing and getting bigger. 

Today was my first ultrasound. Josh was out of town and was sad to have to miss it. But with cell phones these days, it was like he was there :) We got to see the little one moving around. They were SO excited! Both arms and legs were kicking. It was really cute. I tried not to cry and my doctor laughed. I guess they aren't normally that active this young lol I got to see the heartbeat. This machine doesn't have audio so we couldn't hear it. Plus, it's harder to this early on. Seeing the heartbeat drops your chances of miscarriage down to 3%, great fact from my doctor today :) By the measurements of the baby head to rump, I am actually a few days ahead of where they had guessed. Putting me at 10 weeks and 2 days instead of 9 weeks and 6days. It projected my due date for January 8th, however, since it's so close, my doctor isn't going to change the Jan. 11th due date. 

2 weeks left in the first trimester! Next ultrasound is in 4 weeks! Hopefully we will be able to see more of the baby by then!

Projects and Babies

Well, I'm not sure where to start. There has been a lot going on here. I'll start with Josh's man projects. It's so great to married to man that is good with his hands :)

This is his Ohio State cornhole boards. I managed to find the OSU bean bags online for him. It's a really fun outdoors game that's big in his home state. I had never heard of it before, but find it's a great way to spend sunny Sunday afternoons.

The next project was one that I had some influence on. Our master bathroom vanity was in bad shape. To top it off, the sink kept clogging and it was starting to smell. Really bad. So we decided to replace it. The homeowner picked up all the costs so it made it a lot more fun to do. We replaced the mirror and the ugly little shelf above the sink. Here is what the final product looks like:

It turned out to add more space in our bathroom without getting rid of any drawer space. 

I didn't blog for fear of spilling our secret before we told our parents. We had found out that we were pregnant. It's kind of a funny story on how it happened. We had been trying for a baby but I think anytime you see the 2nd little blue line appear, it surprises anyone. It was a normal work day for us. Josh left just as I was getting up and getting ready. I took a test that morning since it was around the time that we could find out, but I wasn't really hopeful that it would be positive. I had seen enough negatives ones to not get my hopes up. I looked down at the little stick and noticed a 2nd line forming..

I freaked out.

I started running down the hallway calling Josh's name. I could hear his truck and was hoping he was still inside. He wasn't. I called him and found him driving down the street already. Now that week, one of dogs had been really sick and was at the doggy hospital. When I called, I was out of breath and asking if he could come back home. He started to get nervous thinking one of the other dogs had gotten sick as well. Knowing that he would want to know why I was acting odd, and that I can't keep a secret to save my life, I told him,

"We're pregnant"

He was just as excited as I was. We both wanted to tell everyone right away. However, Josh's parents were coming to town in a few weeks for a visit and we were going to see my parents then as well. We decided to wait until then to tell them. We wanted to do it when we could tell them in person and when they were all together. It worked out perfectly. We told some of our friends to tide us over until the big announcement.

Here is the reaction to telling our parents :)

Baby Howard is Announced!  

It's pretty cute and worked perfectly. We went shopping that day and got the crib and some other things for the baby and the nursery. Now that everyone knew, it made it so much more real!