Pregnancy Q&A

Thank you so much for all of your kind words after our announcement on Monday! Sharing the news makes everything feel even more real, so it's been exciting for us. Here are a bunch of questions and answers to hopefully tell you everything you'd like to know about this little baby!

How far along are you?

The baby is due January 8, so I'll be 15 weeks tomorrow.

How are you feeling?

Honestly, it's been rough. Nausea kicked in around week 6. From around week 6 to week 10, it just felt like I was carsick all the time. I'd start feeling bad around 10:00 or 11:00am and continue until I went to bed (usually super early because I was SO TIRED). It was really a blessing though, because I spent the first few weeks of the pregnancy being SO worried about whether the baby was okay, and the sickness was like a little reminder every day that yes, baby was doing just fine and my body was doing exactly what it was supposed to.

Around week 11 the carsick feeling turned into multiple-times-a-day vomiting, and that's still going on, despite the fact that "morning" sickness seems to end after the first trimester with most pregnant ladies (It's slowly getting better though... I usually go 2-3 days between throwing up now!). Heartburn started around week 11 too (which was super odd because I've never had heartburn before in my life and thus had no idea what it was!). Jeff has done such an amazing job taking care of me while I've been sick and exhausted, and I've never been more thankful for my sweet, selfless husband. He's a wonderful daddy already. :)

I'm getting some of my energy back after being totally exhausted for the first few months, so that's good! And honestly, as not-fun as it can be to feel sick all the time, I feel so blessed to be carrying a healthy baby and I wouldn't trade it for the world. Getting pregnant didn't happen super quickly for us, and during those months of negative pregnancy test after negative pregnancy test, I would've gladly traded it all in for a pregnancy with much worse symptoms than I'm currently having! 

How did you find out?

I was feeling really, really thirsty one Thursday at work (I re-filled my big 20-oz water cup seven or eight times), and it was odd enough that I started thinking maybe this is a pregnancy symptom? Thanks to the wonders of NFP, I knew that I was only 7 days past ovulation (so it was really, really early to be taking a pregnancy test), but I took one anyway on Friday morning. The faintest of faint lines showed up, and it was so unclear that I didn't even show it to Jeff. I was pretty sure it was a positive (I'd seen enough negative tests to know that this one was different), but I didn't want to surprise Jeff with a test that didn't really look positive. I was super thirsty again all day on Friday, and I woke up really early on Saturday morning ready to take another test! Sure enough, that one showed a nice, clear positive! I was definitely pregnant!

Are you doing weekly belly photos?

Yes and no. I knew there was no way I could keep up with photos every week, so we started doing biweekly photos around 7 weeks. We took pictures for weeks 7, 9, and 11 (although I'm pretty sure my belly was barely growing at all during any of those weeks)... but then we were on vacation and then Jeff was out of town for work, so we totally skipped week 13. We'll do week 15 this weekend though. I'm not really worrying about it... if we get a photo at least once a month or so, I think that'll be plenty to see the baby bump growing!

We're doing one set in front of our crape myrtle tree, with me wearing whatever I have on that day (I figured it would be fun to see the tree change with the seasons, and I wasn't sure I could keep up with consistent outfits):

And we're doing another set in front of the fence with jeans and a black shirt (Jeff wanted a set of photos that were consistent and matching):

Will you find out if it's a boy or a girl? 

Yes, and we can't wait! We never even considered not finding out... we think it's a wonderful surprise whether you find out in the delivery room or in the ultrasound room, and we're such planners that we both really want to know! I can't wait to start saying "he" or "she" instead of "the baby" or "it." Our 20-week anatomy ultrasound is in August, so we're planning to find out then.

Do you have names picked out?

We're about 99% settled on a boy name, so if baby's a boy, we'll likely share the name before he's born. We're having a harder time picking out a girl name, but we have three that we really like. If baby's a girl, we might end up taking a couple names with us to the hospital and just deciding when she's born which one we'll choose. Or maybe we'll decide on one sooner. We'll see!

Which room will be the nursery?

One of our upstairs guest bedrooms will be the nursery. Of the three bedrooms upstairs, one is my craft room/office, one is the loosely-Texas-themed guest room with an attached bathroom, and the third is the aqua, red, and black guest room. My office gets used way more than any other room upstairs, and it's considerably bigger than the other two (and kind of huge for a nursery), so we decided to keep the craft room intact and give up one of the guest bedrooms instead. Since the Texas guest room has the larger, more comfortable bed and is attached to the bathroom, we figured we should save that room as a guest room, so the red/aqua/black room will become the baby's room.

Future Baby's Room!

I think that covers everything! I'll do posts about how we told our families soon!