my belly is officially growing!

i'd like to apologize in advance for my half-naked belly photos.  i swear they will stop soon.  every time i go to post a blog update, jon isn't home to take a "decent" picture so i just upload the ones from my phone that i send to jon and my mom haha.

i'm almost 14 weeks now and can say that my belly is starting to pop.  i'm not quite past the "is she just pudgy?" stage but luckily its a round bump and not so much just a blob. 

i'm happy to announce that my morning sickness has almost officially come to an end!  thank god.  that was the worst.  headaches have taken place of the nausea but i'll take those over puking any day.  the headaches are pretty brutal though.  non-stop pounding usually from about 7pm until bed.  again i take it as baby saying, "i'm ok in here mama!"

ok no joke, i swear i just felt my first flutter.  i'm aware that i could be crazy and it could all be in my head but it almost felt like nervous butterflies on my left side (where i know the baby is).  so cool!  i just drank a cup of mango tea with honey so maybe it got the baby moving.  i guess only time will tell! 

not much else to report, pregnancy wise.  which is great news all in itself.  and with that my friends, i will leave you. 

13.5 weeks.  at night. after a meal. when its the biggest :)

short & sweet.

we had our 12 week doctor's appointment today and i'm happy to say it was nice and boring!  no u/s but the doctor did check the heartbeat (on my belly, so exciting!).  heart rate is in the 160's so it's calmed down a bit since last week which i've heard is normal, but i'm still banking on it being a girl!

we find out the gender on september 30, a few days before our 1 year anniversary :)  what we plan on doing is going to the appointment on friday in the morning, and then leave from there to go to savannah, ga for the weekend to celebrate our anniversary.  my parents hooked us up with two nights at the sheraton for $100 (thanks again mama and papa g!).  at our doctors appointment, we aren't going to find out the sex. we will tell the doctor to write it down and seal it in an envelope.  when we arrive in savannah, we will stop at a local cupcake shop and tell them our situation.  they then will look in the envelope, frost a cupcake according to the gender (obviously blue=boy and pink=girl).  i'll make sure they package it up really tight and secure so we can't see anything!  then we will go out to dinner and after we are done eating, open up the cupcake together to enjoy our sweet surprise :)  it's gonna be awesome!

Another Long One...

well just as i promised, this is going to be another long entry to get caught up on the last 2 weeks...

the shirt says it all.

my trip home to san diego ended up great but started off really crappy.  2 days after i got there, i woke up at 5am to extreme nausea.  i hadn't actually been woken up from my sleep with morning sickness, but i still figured that's what this was.  i puked, and then naturally downed a ton of water and crackers.  i had learned that when my stomach was empty, that's when i would get sick.  well, not this time.  20 minutes later i puked all that right up.  the nasty thing is that i felt relief for about 5 minutes before i would feel extremely sick again.  this lasted for the next 4 hours, throwing up about every 30-45 minutes.  mind you, after the second time, there was absolutely nothing in my stomach and i'm sure we all know how fun it is to throw up bile and what felt like stomach lining.  after not being able to keep down a sip of water or gatorade, i finally caved and asked my mom to take me to urgent care.  i was very dizzy because i was completely dehydrated.  i've seriously never felt so sick in my life.  i immediately got hooked up to an iv and went through 2 bags of fluid in less than an hour.  they gave me a dose of zofran, which is a nausea medication they give to cancer patients going through chemo.  it helped for about 20 minutes.  luckily I didn't throw up again but by no means did i feel "good".  i was so worried the whole time for the baby, but the doctors didn't seem concerned at all.  that actually bugged me a lot.  no u/s or anything.  anyway, the doctor came in a few hours later to release me, but i said i needed more drugs. hahahaha i'm gonna be HORRIBLE during labor.  he gave me another dose of zofran (didn't help) and insisted i also get morphine for the pain.  this freaked me out.  morphine does not sound safe for my baby but he promised me (twice) that it was harmless.  well, this also didn't really help.  instead it felt like freezing cold lead being pumped through my veins.  no thank you.  i finally felt like i could stand long enough to get to the car and made it home to the couch.  the rest of the night was miserable.  i was so thirsty but could only sip at gatorade and otter pops.  i developed a slight fever and fell asleep with an ice pack on my head.  my amazing mom made this horrible experience so much better. i couldn't have done it without her. she even slept with me :)  thanks mom, you're the best. 

miserable.

it took about 4 days after this for my body to get back to normal.  i'm pretty sure i lost about 4 pounds.  i was so pissed about this sickness because i've SOO been looking forward to eating my life away when i got home at all the food places i miss.  well i made up for it from saturday-thursday. 

i still couldn't shake the feeling that our baby was okay.  i have a friend who works at a fertility clinic in sd and she literally snuck me in to the clinic and had her doctor do an ultrasound on me.  oh my gosh.  i haven't seen our baby since 7 weeks and now i was exactly 11 weeks.  i was amazed to see our little ninja bouncing all around, doing flips and kicking its little arms and legs all over the place.  strong heartbeat of 181 bpm (its gotta be a girl) and perfectly perfect. 2 arms and 2 legs.  :)  exactly what i needed to see and hear to feel okay the rest of the trip.

ninja baby! legs straight up in the air.

i threw up 2 more times over the course of the trip but i blame that on morning sickness.  we go in on monday for our 12 week appointment.  i'll be 12 weeks 4 days.  oh and our appointment to find out the sex is scheduled! september 30 is the big day. 

11 weeks.

12 weeks. i've popped a little!

on a brighter note, i got to spend lots of time with my brand new nephew isaiah christopher and my best friend/sister kim.  isaiah is perfect and beautiful and changing everyday.  i'm so blessed to see them and spend time. we also got to tell everyone our awesome baby news in person.  that was so fun.  from the barrel rooms girls to jon's extended family to our friends at a bbq.  everyone is really happy for us and i even put up the "official" facebook status.  it said: "kristen smith has 2 heartbeats".  i couldn't believe how many people thought we were having twins.  i had to clear that up real quick.

snuggly baby isaiah, a week and a half old.

i'm happy to say that i'm getting into cooking again.  for a while it was the last thing i wanted to do, but now i've spent the day arranging meals and recipes.  only a few more days until the first trimester is over and hopefully i get my energy and stomach back!!