Week 17!!!!!

Now that we know our baby is going to be a boy, it's so much easier to talk about him. Mainly because we can call the baby a him and not just "it". He's now about the size of the palm of a hand. He's getting some fat, which is only fair as I start to get chubbier as well. His heart beat is strong and steady at 159 and is now regulated by his brain!

The ultrasound we saw last week was pretty amazing. It legitimately looks like a baby. It also looks a little like an alien as well, but apparently I've been told that's normal. We saw the ribs, spine and brain; this was what Patrick was looking at for the most part. I enjoyed seeing his little hands and feet move the most. I was told to have some OJ so that the baby would give us a good view and man oh man, he apparently loves OJ! He was moving and shaking. 

Now I'm just waiting on being able to feel him kick!

Baby Weaver is a boy!!!!!

I had heard of this idea of using a cake to reveal the gender to your family and thought it was too cute! Patrick and I wanted to be able to share with our families the excitement of finding out if the baby is a boy or girl. It was extremely difficult to wait from Wednesday morning to Friday night as well...especially since we had the ultrasound pictures in our home. But we held out! We even had a delicious dinner made by Patrick's mom before cutting the cake. To say the minutes felt like hours would be an understatement. :) We had a great turn out with about 20-25 people hovering around to see what color the cake would be!

I had the baker put about 1 and 1/2 inches of frosting so there would be no peaking!

First cut. Allison was looking hard!

It was definitely blue!!!!!!! I have to admit, I saw the cake on the the knife before I cut the entire piece, but to be official and let everyone else see.

 Then I had to put it back where I found it as we were a little overwhelmed. However, I do love this picture of Allison and I'm pretty sure this is what scared Lila the most! :)

 Excited future parents of a baby boy! Can't wait to meet him in April

And one more picture for good measure. The future cousins of the newest Weaver.

Like I said before, it was quite difficult to wait and find out, but well worth it in the end to include everyone. Next time, if we plan something like this, we'll be sure to have our ultrasound on a Friday!

Week 16!!

Baby Turnip

Our baby now weighs somewhere between 3-5 ounces, and is 4-5 inches long! No matter how many times I think about it (and I know this thought will continue with me for the rest of my life), I still can't believe this all started on a microscopic level with 2 cells. Which might not mean too much to non-sciencey people, but I am in complete awe of God's amazing creation everyday of my life.

 This month for the baby, ear bones! :) I try not to sing too much in the car so not to scare our little baby! But Lord willing, he/she will not be half as tone deaf as I am. Patrick is pretty talented when it comes to playing instruments (I had trouble with  the recorder in the 5th grade, so no high expectations on this side of the family!); we'll hope he can pass on the music gene. 

For Me

I'm definitely getting rounder in the middle. Most people at the hospital know by now from rumor or looking at me strangely and I usually help them out and tell them. I've actually been surprised by the number of people who have flat out asked me. That's a pretty big risk in my book, but it's still so much fun to share in the excitement that it has never bothered me. My pants are getting tighter and more difficult to zip up, but I'm not quite at maternity clothes yet. I've been getting by with a belly band that holds your pants up even if you can't button them! Whoever invented this simple spandex band is probably a millionaire. 

The other not so fun symptoms. I've had trouble staying asleep. Falling asleep is quite easy. Cooper woke me up at 1:45 this morning and proceeded to vomit on our comforter (I figure it's his way of preparing us for a baby!). At 2:30, I was frustrated that I was still staring at the ceiling. I also find that the more sleep I lose, the worse my headaches tend to be. And when you can't have coffee or take anything more than tylenol, mornings have been a bit rough for me.

Boy or Girl??

All of that aside, we have an ultrasound this Wednesday! I pleaded my case with our Dr and she agreed to it. She has been such a joy to see on a regular basis and I'm so glad she is caring for me. We had planned on not finding out Wednesday and doing the cake reveal Saturday. However, in our busy lives it's nearly impossible to get everyone together at the same time, so the cute idea in my head may be falling by the way side. I just hated that only one person is allowed in the room (and that my mom and mother in law would not be able to see how excited we were when we found out the gender). It will also be difficult for Patrick and I to wait an additional 4 days until we know. But I've not given up all hope yet! We'll see how the week unfolds...

Everyone always asks do you care if it's a boy or a girl? And the politically correct answer is: as long as he or she is healthy. However, that is really how Patrick and I both feel. I have loved loving on both Lila and Drew (and now Daniel). Lila is a girlie girl who loves Disney princesses and God forbid she get a speck of dirt on her. Drew on the other hand is all over the place. He is up and down, into everything. By the end of last weekend's soccer game, he had spilt coffee down his shirt, orange pieces on his hands and probably grass in his shoes. (Daniel is still growing into his personality!). I adore both of them equally, so honestly, as long as he/she is healthy, I'll be the happiest girl in the world!

Keep your fingers crossed that the baby's legs will not be crossed and we'll know by the end of the week if we need pink or blue!

Week 9!

It's amazing how much the baby has grown in just 3 weeks!  We were finally able to make out our little baby/peanut, with a little head, belly and legs.  I actually think the baby was waving at us at one point (or at least that's what our doctor told us!).

Week 6!

Our little baby is the tiny white dot in the picture

Even as tiny as it was (the size of a poppy seed in fact!), I could still see a heart beat! The most amazing and reassuring thing I've ever seen in my life.

Weeks 0-15

So I'm a little behind on the blog. For those who have ever been pregnant, I know y'all can totally understand why. But I can give a very brief synopsis of how things have gone

Up until week 6 and 1/2: felt great. No sickness. Just tired. And when I say tired, I mean 'just ran a marathon after taking 3 SATs in a row after pulling an all nighter after staying up partying the night before' kind of tired. I could and still can sleep at any time in any place (even at 10:30 in the morning after waking up 3 hrs before, with gameday on TV, family hanging around and a dog lying on top of me)...

Week 6 1/2-14: most people decide not to tell other people that they are pregnant until after the 1st trimester because that's usually when if something bad is going to happen, it will. I'm now convinced that it's because you feel so ill that you don't feel like celebrating the beautiful thing growing inside of you that is causing you to want to be put into a coma and woken up at the start of the 2nd trimester when you actually start to feel better. I have just had morning sickness from dawn til dusk. I got a cold in the middle of all of it (and when you can't take anything and just have to let it run its course, it tends to last longer).  I tried to tell myself if I could make it to my birthday, which would be around week 13, I should be fine. I broke down the Tuesday before. However, once my birthday rolled around I did start to feel better. And have been on the mend since.

I was convinced for ~7 weeks that this was going to be an only child. All that is already starting to fall by the wayside as I continue to improve. I'm still quite tired, but the sickness has scaled way back and it's much easier to get through the day! This I am quite thankful for every day.

The Big Reveal

So like I said before, we did not plan the whole pregnancy test well. Mainly because we had to wait to share the news with our families.  It's funny too because our families are pretty different in their reactions. Telling our parents about being pregnant for the first time is something that I wish I could relive again and again.

Friday night, we had planned on coming home and telling Patrick's side of the family. We had rush ordered a shirt for Cooper to wear that said "I'm going to be the big brother". But on our way back to Orange Park from Gainesville (and as things usually work out), plans were being changed. Allison, Andrew, Lila and Drew were originally to come over to Patrick's parents. But then for bed-time sake, the plans changed for us to go to their house and bring pizza. So we were going to be rushed out the door as soon as we got to Patrick's parents (which meant no time for Cooper to get dressed!). We did our best to explain that after a long week, we didn't want to be rushed. After being persistent about not hurrying once we got there, we finally arrived and told Patrick's parents and Robert that we bought Cooper a Halloween costume and we wanted them to see it.

So they were all waiting when he made his way from the bedroom. It took a while for everyone to read it. There were 3 other dogs around trying to play with Coop and his shirt got all bunched and he was moving a lot. It felt like 30 minutes before anyone could decipher it. I think Patrick's dad read it first and got the biggest little kid grin you could ever hope to see on a grown man! And was soon followed by the screaming and hugging of his mom.  Robert is a great uncle to Lila and Drew and was just as excited for a new baby as this baby will be to have him as an uncle.

We wanted a fun way to tell the rest of the family, so we figured we'd let Lila tell Andrew and Allison. We coached her on exactly what to say and told her to make sure that her mom and dad were together when she told them. When we finally arrived to Andrew's (I had to drive because Anna was so incredibly giddy), we all got out of the car. Allison was complaining about the tile in the bathroom being laid the wrong way, which Anna and I had followed her to look at. It of course looked fine to me (and to this day, I'm not sure if it was laid wrong or not). Apparently, she just wanted to get Anna away from everyone to tell her that she thought I was pregnant (how she knew or why she thought at 5 weeks I was pregnant is beyond me). I had walked away and was standing in the kitchen waiting for Andrew and Allison to come together so Lila could share the news. Patrick, Andrew and Lila were still making their way through the front door when I heard Lila tell Andrew: "I'm going to have a cousin". Andrew promptly looked at me and the cat was let out of the bag. (And a big parenting note to self, after Lila was the flower girl at our wedding and wouldn't go down the aisle without Allison and her own way of telling the story after we coached her many times on how we wanted it to go down; the lesson learned is that it's nearly impossible to make an under 5 year old to do exactly what you have in mind. The good news is she's cute as can be so you're never upset by the way it all turns out!) Needless to say, I left with a boat load of pregnancy books and magazines that night and was excited to tell my parent's the next day.

Patrick had to get back to Gainesville to study for a test. So I called and asked to have lunch over there with my mom and dad. First thing, entering the house, my mom had a to-do list for Patrick, which involved fixing a TV among 2-3 other things. She worked him quite hard as we anxiously awaited the right time to sneak out and put Cooper's shirt on one more time. Literally 30 minutes after we had arrived, lunch was ready and I put a stop to everything to show them the shirt. We let Cooper go back into the kitchen dressed. They had an even harder time reading the shirt for some reason.

My dad's first comment was: "so you're getting another dog". When we answered no; I think my mom finally got it and asked: "does this mean what I think it means?" And of course I started crying as we said yes. Which then threw the two of them for a loop and took about 5 minutes for us to finally get around to sitting down for lunch. Throughout lunch, my mom asked a ton of questions, my dad said nothing. And when I say, he said nothing, I literally did not hear a peep from him for about 30 minutes. Which is not unexpected for my dad; he has never been a chatterbox. But it was quite obvious that he was in shock. Finally after we had finished up lunch, he came to and managed to get out: "The end of April is a long way away".  :)

We also went over to my brother's house to see my new nephew and share the news with them. When I told them that Daniel would have a cousin at the end of April, my sister-in-law figured it out right away. My brother had to ask: "who's pregnant?". Which would be a reasonable question if my brother had more than one sibling....

Sharing the news with family has seriously been one of the most joyous times in my life. I cried and laughed at the same time. They were really taken aback too because we really hadn't told anyone we were thinking about kids in the near future. Both of our parent's have been such wonderful grandparents and Patrick and I can't wait to see them with our baby in April!

When and how we found out

                                                       

We talked about starting a family once Patrick finished with dental school. For me, it seemed to consume my every thought. When is the best time? Are we ready? Can we stay in our condo with an infant? Can we afford to take a hit in a paycheck? These are just a very small sample of the questions that ran through my mind from sunup to sundown. I'm pretty sure I dreamed about it as well, even if I don't remember it.

Turns out waiting to find out if you are pregnant when you really want to be is extremely nerve-racking. I was planning on waiting 'til our anniversary on August 22nd to take the test, but Patrick discovered I had already purchased the pregnancy test and told me to take it Sunday, the 21st of August. I felt that there was a good chance I was (not sure why, mother's intuition already?). Took one test, waited the 3 minutes, it was positive!!!!!

The following conversation took place:
Me: It's positive!!
Patrick: No, it's not
Me: Yes, it is. I know I'm reading it right
Patrick: Take the other test

So I took the other test, which was also positive. I can't remember what was said after that, I think we were shocked. That's quite the news to sink in! Then we realized we would have to wait 'til Friday to tell our families, since of course we would want to do it in person. It was the longest 5 days of my life and quite difficult to talk to our parents throughout the week without telling them the exciting news!

If you haven't heard yet, now it's official!!!

Cooper let our families know that we are expecting!! More about our reveal in future posts. I'd like to think Coop is excited about the baby, but I still haven't decided how he is going to feel with a new attention getter in our little space! He's used to all the love, but I think he'll be happy to share.

Baby Weaver is due to make his or her appearance April 26th, 2012 and Patrick and I can't be more excited to meet him or her. It seems like forever away, but we know (and have also been told by numerous people) that it will be here before we know it! So for now we are enjoying life as a threesome while trying to mentally prepare ourselves to be a foursome (if that's even possible to do so).

My sister-in-law was religiously awesome enough to send out weekly emails about how she was feeling, what was going on with the baby, MD appointments, etc. I'm not sure I quite have that commitment, but I'm hoping to keep all our families and friends updated on mine and the baby's progress, so check back for more stories and updates as time goes on