Baby Berrett - Coming May 2014

If you aren't my friend on facebook, instagram, or a follower of my food blog then maybe you don't already know. But guess what?! Nate and I are expecting a baby!

I am a little over 14 weeks pregnant right now and this little one should be fully cooked around May 16. We are so thrilled to become parents, and its very surreal that there is a little one growing inside of me now. (So much that I often doubt that the baby is still there). However, I have been feeling a little sick, less so in the last couple weeks thankfully. And baby should now be the size of a lemon.

Because it was requested by a certain friend, I will tell you how we found out we were pregnant. Nate and I wanted to have a baby born in May of next year or later. But because Nate graduates school at the very beginning of May we were nervous to "start trying" too soon, not knowing how quickly or how long it would take us to get pregnant, but wanting to err on the side of later was better for us.

I'll get to the nitty gritty and say I got off of birth control at the beginning of August. But we fully expected it would take a few months to get it out of my system and to get back into a regular cycle that we would actually be able to start trying.

I have a very personal journal that I keep for myself on Evernote. No one else has access to that account and its nice to be able to write out my very personal thoughts and feelings there. Things that I want to remember but don't need to share with the whole world.

I don't know the exact date that I got pregnant since it did happen so quickly for us and I didn't ever have a regular period off of birth control to know how long my cycles are. But based on our baby being due May 16th, I got pregnant around Aug 23rd.

Well, on August 22nd I wrote in my personal online journal that I felt a little sick. I wrote: "This morning after my run and on my way to work, I felt a little sick. A little sick like I needed to eat something, but I'm sure I'm over analyzing this. I ate a granola bar when I got to work and I feel good now... it can't be morning sickness. Right?"

For the next few days after I wrote in my journal that I was over analyzing things, cause even if I was pregnant then I could maximum be about a week along (and I actually was only maybe a day or two) so I shouldn't have felt any symptoms, and maybe they were unrelated. But I was still a little suspicious.

We bought a pregnancy test finally on Sept 7, a two pack set. I planned to wait to take the test in the morning when my urine would be stronger. We were too nervous to wait, so I went ahead and took the test. It says to wait 3 minutes to look at the test and see the results, so I left the test on the bathroom counter and left the room and set a timer to wait. Nate went back into the bathroom before the time was up. But he looked at it anyway, and it said pregnant!

We were both still a little skeptical I think, so I took the second test Sunday (the next day) morning and it said positive again. Although I had felt like I could be pregnant early on, once I saw the "pregnant" test results I doubted it. I thought something was wrong, that someone the hormones from my birth control were still in my body and throwing the results off or that I had done the test wrong, or that I had a brain tumor. I wanted to take a test every day to make sure I was really pregnant and still pregnant every day.

I was nervous that I would miscarry also, and am still nervous that something could happen. I took a third and fourth pregnancy test of different brands to make sure it still said positive the next week and of course they did.

We went to the doctor around 8 weeks, still not knowing how far along we were. I wanted Nate to go cause I thought there might be a small chance we would be able to hear the heartbeat. Nate was able to come with me, which I was glad for the comfort, but still assumed it would be a basic appointment with blood tests and things to check my health in general. At the end the doctor said "okay, we'll do the ultrasound now" and we were both shocked. We saw our little frog in there measuring about 1.37 centimeters at the time and heard the heart beat and it made it a lot more real that there was/is actually a little human being growing inside of me.

I am so thrilled to be growing this little one inside of me. I can't wait to find out the gender, though I really think its a girl (maybe I'll say more on that in another post), although we usually refer to it as a he. We should find out the gender of the baby the week after Christmas.

I also can't wait to have my belly pop out (more) if you look at these pictures, it looks like its growing a little already. And to feel this little one move around inside of me.

I can't wait to even more so be the mother of this baby when it actually comes to join our family in May. And I pray all continues to go well for me and this sweet baby.