Happy Birthday to me!!

Hello all,
Hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season and is enjoying the New Year. Been a little while since I've had a blog update, but there's been reason for that!!  I received the best Christmas and Birthday present I could wish for, I FINALLY am pregnant!!  Wooo-Hooooo!!! 

 
My birthday today officially marks the first day of my second trimester, so I thought it was a fitting day to announce the wonderful news!

 

So let's catch up now, shall we?  Well, when we left off, we weren't going to pursue any fertility treatments in December, just wanted a break from the stress and the costs and the disappointment. I was going to pursue acupuncture but ended up not fitting it in during the holiday season.  So December, I talked to Randy and said, let's just not even THINK about it this month....And we truly didn't!  We partied with friends (yes, for the first time in over a year, alcohol was involved :-), I dropped 20lbs at the gym, working out HARD (aerobics, belly dancing, hot tubs etc...) and doing massive deprivation dieting and had a wonderful Christmas holiday with family and friends!  So wonderful and stress free in fact, that it looks like a little Christmas miracle was conceived on Christmas Eve :-)

Well, enter the New Year...I'm still dieting, working out, drinking and overall not too concerned with reproductive safety and health ( yeah, I had REALLY put it out of my mind, figured it hadn't happened, wasn't going to, wasn't even thinking about it!)  I thought I'd pulled a boob muscle at the gym one day because it was really hurting (yeah, still not even on the radar)....thought my period was coming because I was crampy...well, just popped a couple of Ibuprofen and moved on, was still crampy for a couple of days but didn't think much about it.  Had a fun game night with a bottle of wine with friends and then the next morning, early in the morning I was laying in bed and I started doing some math in my head...counting...and realizing that I was over a week late.  Well, I figured that didn't mean much since I've been late before and usually the kiss of death to bring on the "monthly curse" was to take a pregnancy test.  I wasn't really even thinking much, just was kinda like "meh, I've got an extra pregnancy test here, let's just take it for giggles."  Usually I gear myself up for the test by flipping it over and making myself "busy" for the next 3-5 mins and then slowly flipping it over with anticipation which then has quickly been followed by month after month disappointment. Well, holy crimoly, the test turned positive before I even flipped it over.  WTF??  I seriously sat there in shock and disbelief....and then proceeded to go wake Randy up at 5:30 in the morning with the good news.  His response? "Mrhuh?" , waking up a little more, "huh?", then, "You're WHAT? "  We were both absolutely overjoyed!!   And then I took 3 more tests :-)

It's been a wonderful first 3 months, I've had absolutely no morning sickness at all.  I was a little crampy in the beginning with sore breasts but all in all it's been just great.  I now know how those people can say "oh my gosh, I didn't even know I was pregnant until the baby dropped out at 9 months in the bathtub!" Not really, but it's been a lot better than what I've anticipated!  I was a nervous wreck in the beginning, worrying about miscarriage and things I couldn't control but as the days turned into weeks, I greatly settled down. The day I found out I took that as an excuse to stop my crazy dieting and I've had a wicked sweet tooth (half a sleeve of Thin Mints for breakfast?  I think that I will, thank you very much!)  but that's kind of tamed itself a little bit too!

I've had 2 ultrasound appts, this first one is from 71/2 weeks where you can just see the little tiny peanut on the top (has the 2 little + marking size by the obgyn).  She said everything was going great and I couldn't ask for anything better!

This second one is from 10.5 weeks and already I can't believe how much she's (:-) grown!  Arms and legs and movement!  It's amazing!

I'm due for my ultrascreen ultrasound this Monday which is a specific ultrasound combined with bloodwork that looks for risks such as Down's syndrome and other genetic mutations.  So we'll all keep fingers crossed that all will be ok, since after all, I *am* advanced maternal age :-)

So glad to be able to share the good news with everyone, I'll keep the updates coming, now that it's "official" :-)