Baby #1

We are excited to welcome Baby #1 into our family in October! We found out we were expecting exactly 4 years from the day PE proposed. In March, I went to my first doctor's appointment and I was able to see our baby for the first time. You can't tell much from the picture, but it was neat to see the little heart beating. Based on this ultrasound, my due date was set as October 16.

Baby at Week 9

In March, I also started experiencing the joys of "morning" sickness. About the time I started feeling sick I had to go to a national biological engineering conference in Indianapolis to present my research. The first time I threw up was actually in Indianapolis (fortunately it happened while I was in my hotel room and not while presenting my research). From about week 8 to week 15, I was pretty sick. PE was a saint and took good care of me. There were many days he would come home from a long day at work and find me lying on the couch, too sick to even think about dinner. So he would find or make something for dinner without any help from me. Towards the end of week 15 I started to feel a lot better. I still have some bad days, but it is more manageable now than it was during the first trimester.

PE and I decided that we would wait until people asked if I was pregnant before we told them (with the exception of a few people). My family finally guessed on Mother's Day that we were expecting. The thing that gave us away was the gigantic bruise I had on my arm from where the nurse took a blood sample for the 16 week screening tests. And Mother's Day was during week 18. It actually took 3 weeks for the bruise to disappear. We also told PE's family on Mother's Day since we didn't think it would be fair for one family to know way before the other family.

Yesterday we had our big ultrasound! It was fun to see how much development has occurred since the last ultrasound. We are going to have the gender be a surprise. I actually almost forgot to tell the ultrasound specialist that we didn't want to find out the gender. Good thing that the first thing that showed up on the ultrasound was the baby's face! The measurements from this ultrasound actually showed that I am 4 days further along, so the due date has been moved up to October 12.

Baby's Profile at Week 21

Baby's Foot at Week 21

So far, I would not consider pregnancy a "fun" experience. But we are very grateful and excited to welcome this little baby into our family in a few months!