Goodbye First Trimester...

...don't let the door hit you on the way out!!

That is how I feel as I gladly welcomed my second trimester about a week and 1/2 ago. Although, I can't say that I have reaped any of the benefits of the "honeymoon phase of pregnancy" quite yet and am still throwing up and nauseous all day long. I've regained a little bit of energy though which is nice. But everybody keeps telling me the relief is "right around the corner" so I'm praying that it is. This post may get long and it's all pregnancy related so feel free to skip if you find it completely boring but I just wanted to do a general overview of my pregnancy so far for myself.

We found out we were pregnant first thing in the morning on June 7th. We were both thrilled and shocked to see those two lines show up. Even though we were trying to get pregnant it still did not seem possible and despite being so excited I think we were both a little freaked out that we just changed our lives forever. We went out to Kneaders for breakfast to celebrate. We told both of our families over Father's Day weekend. I think we took everybody by surprise because nobody really knew we were even trying. This is the first grandkid on my side so you have no idea how excited my mom is. I think she started buying things for the baby the next day. Our immediate families and a few close friends were the only ones we told we were pregnant at first. We just wanted to be careful and have our first doctor's appointment to make sure everything was ok before we made the big public announcement. But my little brother who has been on his mission in Africa has no idea that I am pregnant. He comes home next week and we are surprising him then.

I started feeling sick around week 6 and it has definitely been a challenging summer. I have felt nauseous all day long with tiny, rare breaks in between. I throw up sporadically but luckily it's not an everyday occurance and I have had ZERO energy. I feel like the nausea got worse around week 9 and I started throwing up more frequently. I have been working full-time all summer and that has been quite the challenge. I have to muster any ounce of energy I can get for those 8 hours. It was mentally draining as well because the whole time I would just tell myself, "You don't feel sick, you don't feel sick..." On my days off I am lucky if I make it out of the apartment at all. I sleep in, get up to find something to get on my stomach and would lay on the couch and watch HGTV all day. Whenever I felt enough energy to actually do something fun like the things I have blogged about I always seemed to pay for it the next day and was always more sick than normal. Ok, ok, I'll stop being the annoying pregnant girl that just complains all the time because I know there are women out there that have it worse than me (my heart seriously goes out to them) and I couldn't feel anymore blessed and grateful to be growing this little child inside of me. Getting to see the baby on ultrasound and hearing the heartbeat makes all of the yuckiness SOOO worth it.

Around week 10 we had a little scare when I had some very light spotting. Looking back I'm sure I completely over-reacted but I have never been so scared in my life. I learned in our OB semester in school that the two things you don't want to have during your first trimester are cramping and bleeding. Even though it was a tiny amount and I wasn't having any cramping, I immediately assumed the worst and kind of had an out of body experience and there was nobody who could have kept me from getting an ultrasound ASAP to check to see if baby was ok. I called my Dr. immediately and he did a good job of calming me down by telling some statistics. He said there was nothing I could do at this point though, either I was going to miscarry or I wasn't and nothing I did was going to change that. My first appointment was only 4 days away so he said it was totally my decision to get an ultrasound right away or wait a few days. Of course all of this happened on a Friday when his office was closed so I could either go to the BYU Health Center or the ER. Waiting was not an option for us so we got in the car and I called the Health Center on the way. They called their ultrasound tech in and we got our ultrasound. I have never been so nervous and I just started crying when I heard the heartbeat because I was so relieved. Everything looked great with baby and there was nothing on the ultrasound that showed any reason for spotting. The spotting went away soon and I haven't had any since so whatever was causing it must have resolved itself. We had our first appointment the next week and it was so fun to see the baby again. It's little heart was beating strong at 174 beats per minute. We had another appointment today and got to hear the heartbeat again which was going strong at 162 bpm. We can't even explain how much love we have for this little baby already and are excited for these next stages in pregnancy and watch he or she continue to grow. We are paying extra to get a gender check ultrasound at 16 weeks which is in exactly a week from today!!! We are so anxious to find out the gender. I started a poll on the sidebar so please take a guess at what you think we are going to have. I won't tell you what we think to keep it unbiased. Wow, sorry this is so long, you are seriously a trooper if you made it all the way through! Here are a few of my first belly shots, I'm ready to pop out and not just look chubby...