chelan 2009

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8 weeks

This week I'm growing a Raspbaby!

Can you believe we are at 8wks already? I cannot. It's going so fast and this is suppose to be when time passes slowly. This last week I started getting the baby registry together and just today went to barnes and nobel to get some ideas for pregnancy and baby books gathered up. The nausea has started to subside, thanks to my mentally overcoming thinking about it all day. I just keep going and don't let it slow me down and that's seemed to work. Here's how babies growing this week:

Webbed fingers and toes are poking out from your baby's hands and feet, his eyelids practically cover his eyes, breathing tubes extend from his throat to the branches of his developing lungs, and his "tail" is just about gone. In his brain, nerve cells are branching out to connect with one another, forming primitive neural pathways. You may be daydreaming about your baby as one sex or the other, but the external genitals still haven't developed enough to reveal whether you're having a boy or a girl. Either way, your baby is constantly moving and shifting, though you still can't feel it.

I spend the weekend in Atlanta with Lisa and Abigail. Of course two WHNP's wanted to SEE baby so we headed down to Abigail's office and warmed up the ultrasound. Baby looked great and even gave us a wiggle, the first time I have seen actual movement! Here's the picture.


and the belly shots:

I must give credit where it is due, Lisa and Abigail kindly kept up the nightly routine of snapping a belly shot for me, thanks girls!

7 weeks

The big news this week: Hands and feet are emerging from developing arms and legs — although they look more like paddles at this point than the tiny, pudgy extremities you're daydreaming about holding and tickling. Technically, your baby is still considered an embryo and has something of a small tail, which is an extension of her tailbone. The tail will disappear within a few weeks, but that's the only thing getting smaller. Your baby has doubled in size since last week and now measures half an inch long, about the size of a blueberry.If you could see inside your womb, you'd spot eyelid folds partially covering her peepers, which already have some color, as well as the tip of her nose and tiny veins beneath parchment-thin skin. Both hemispheres of your baby's brain are growing, and her liver is churning out red blood cells until her bone marrow forms and takes over this role. She also has an appendix and a pancreas, which will eventually produce the hormone insulin to aid in digestion. A loop in your baby's growing intestines is bulging into her umbilical cord, which now has distinct blood vessels to carry oxygen and nutrients to and from her tiny body.



We got baby's first gifts and I'm just now getting around to getting the pictures up! Thanks Nana and Papa for the chick and The Zank's for the Willow tree statue



And now to the belly shots: here is the first day of the week


Here's the last day, taken by the lovely Lisa Hoopes in ATL at the girls weekend

6 weeks

Baby is the size of a pea. This week's major developments: The nose, mouth, and ears that you'll spend so much time kissing in eight months are beginning to take shape. If you could see into your uterus, you'd find an oversize head and dark spots where your baby's eyes and nostrils are starting to form. His emerging ears are marked by small depressions on the sides of the head, and his arms and legs by protruding buds. His heart is beating about 100 to 160 times a minute — almost twice as fast as yours — and blood is beginning to course through his body. His intestines are developing, and the bud of tissue that will give rise to his lungs has appeared. His pituitary gland is forming, as are the rest of his brain, muscles, and bones. Right now, your baby is a quarter of an inch long. you can see just how baby looks below:

now for a few belly shots
This first one is for reference, this is from the last day of week 5


and the night of the wedding. Cindy, what did you put in that cake? there is seriously a problem with this picture

and a few days later, GONE!

weeks 4 and 5

First belly shot EVER. 12 days post ovulation. (this is the before and what I strive to reobtain)

Another from later in the week

A few belly shots from week 5

BFP

which means BIG FAT POSITIVE! we're having a baby :)


Sorry to have held out on you this long but we really wanted to see a beating heart and make sure all was well first. I got my first positive 10 days post ovulation with an impromptu late night test. The line was so faint, as you can see here:




that I thought maybe I was seeing things, thought I better sleep on it and retest in the morning, since that's the most likely to be positive. I woke up bright and early before Dominic left for work and did it, then left it and went back to bed, I DID NOT read it. When I woke up for the day I check and it was surely positive. I did some bloodwork that day and started taking prometrium just in case, my progesterone levels were running low in previous months. The first beta HCG was 61. Two days later it was 220 and 2 more days later it was nearly 1300! My progesterone with the first test was 18 and on the third test, I had stopped the prometrium, was 40+. I was feeling confident but was a little nervous at the rapidly increasing values, it can indicate twins. Wednesday before Chelan I did a quick ultrasound scan but all you could see was a little shadow of something. The following day you could see a gestational sac. I did some lifting for packing and had some spotting.

We told the Jensen's on Saturday morning by sending Eclair up with her Big Sis tee on.

And then headed straight to the Garguile's and surprised them with picture frames for grandparents and aunts/uncles.

Everyone was thrilled, but I think Mary takes the cake for excitement. She wanted to tell everyone ASAP. We made her wait until we got to Chelan and had the family pose for our traditional group chelan shot. instead of saying cheese, Dominic said 1-2-3-shawna's pregnant! They were thrilled of course. This shot was taken just a second too early and the flip died before it was time, GRRR

Here are the two ultrasound pictures we have already. The first looks like an empty circle because it is, the baby is just a few cells and is actually FLAT still

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You can see at the top of the circle in this one there is a little something, that's the baby and it now has a heartbeat which we could see. We call this one our gummybear since that's what it looks like.

The plan is to take belly shots every night, we've already missed a few but gotten most of them, so you can see the "growth" from afar.

Tree of life

Bonus points if you know what this is

For the record my husband about had a FIT when he found out what this was.