First, and I meant to post this a couple of days ago, but I finally had my first full day without an ounce of nausea!  This is big news in my world.  No such dice today, but it's definitely tapering off, glad for that.

But the BIG news of today is that we had our first ultrasound!  Dave went with me, and I got the Ultrascreen ultrasound and blood test, to check for Down's Syndrome and a couple other chromosomal abnormalities, and also the Cystic Fibrosis blood test to see if I'm a carrier.  I'll know if there are any red flags in a couple of weeks, but the ultrasound lady said all the measurements look good, totally within normal limits.  So much for my neuroses.  I'm also apparently measuring at 13 weeks 4 days, instead of 12;4 which I am today, but I guess that's also normal.  I told Dave that means the baby is tall so we're definitely having a girl.   He was not impressed.  It was very surreal to see little Baby H. jumping around, all 3 inches of it, heart going strong at 167 bpm.  The coolest part for me was seeing its brain.  It's nice to think that I have a little person in there, rather than a large lime!

Okay, so I'm pregnant.  Happily so.  Very very happily so actually.  I'm entirely blessed, this is a miracle, I know all this.  That said, I'm starting to discover that there are many little idiosyncrasies of pregnancy that I wasn't really expecting...

So, in no particular order, here are my Top 5 Weird Traits of Pregnancy:

1.   Waistline, What Waistline?  Oh, I know this is not so much a weird thing as an expected one, but it still is odd to see my waistline slowly disappearing...  I'm sure this will be fun once I'm actually showing and people can 'ooh' and 'aah' over pregnant belly, but for now, I just feel fat.  I simply look like a non-pregnant woman who's wearing her fat pants.  It's fabulous, really.

2.  Overeaters, Anonymous.   So I really really thought that one of the perks of being pregnant would be 'eating for two'.  Yeah, not so much.  The reality of eating every two hours to keep the nausea at bay makes me feel like I eat enough to feed an army, and *gasp*, I'd never thought I'd say this, but I'm SO SICK of eating!  And all of this eating is likely contributing to Trait #1, but we won't go there for now...

3.  Mind-Numbing Fatigue.  Okay, so it's really not that dramatic, but it's definitely weird to wake up after 9-10 hours of sleep, get a little breakfast, drive to work, get to the office, and feel like you could completely take a couple of hours nap again, happily.

4.  Sneezy, the Pregnant Dwarf.   Riiight, I know I would never qualify as a dwarf.  But I've got the Sneezy part in the bag.  I've lost count of how many times a day I sneeze.  Right before I eat, right after I eat, when I'm feeling nauseous, when I even think about feeling nauseous...

5.  My Super-Spidey Sense of Smell.  Seriously, I could be a superhero, my sense of smell is that good.  I smell everything from miles away it seems.  Good smells, bad smells, smelly smells...they all seem extremely strong, and often distasteful, to me.  Dave loves  to hear all about my newfound olfactory prowess when he comes home from soccer practice...it's a highlight of his day I believe.

So that's what I've got so far.  I'm sure there are all sorts of strange things to come, but for now this is what has me occupied.  In other news, Baby H. is a large lime at 11 weeks today, happily moving up the citrus food chain.

10+ weeks, and going strong.  We have been thinking about little else lately than when and how we're going to tell the people in our life about Baby-Horne-to-be.  We did get to tell a few friends from out of town who were visiting this weekend, which was exciting, and really makes this baby thing seem so much more real.  My friend Kristen (who lives in town but was found out this weekend as well) has decided that she will forgive us for not telling her we were trying for kids if she gets to be the first to babysit.  Of course we agreed!  I don't think we will tell my mom until after Thanksgiving now, as I don't want her to have to keep a secret from the rest of my family for a month or more, and we're determined not to tell my brother and family until we see them in December, and maybe not my Oma until we see her at Christmas.  We still have such a long time to wait!

In other news, Baby Horne-to-be got to go along for the ride to his/her first wedding this weekend...our friends Jaime and Brad got married on Sunday, much congrats to them.  Oh, and Baby H. graduated to being a fetus and is the size of a plum this week.  Much better than an olive last week or a pinto bean the week before, don't you think?

I got the idea for this journal from my friend Jill, who now happily has her two-month old Laurel!  I absolutely loved being able to check in and see how her pregnancy was progressing, so I thought I would do the same when I got pregnant myself.  And now here I am!

Disclaimer: This first entry will be very long as I try to catch everyone up to where we are at this point.  Naturally wordy though I am (I'm a speech pathologist for a reason ), I will try to keep the other ones relatively short.

So. It's a bit weird writing this when so few people actually know that I'm pregnant, but if all continues to go well, more will know soon.  Right now only Dave and I, selected co-workers (I had to declare as soon as I knew since I sometimes work in radiology), and two friends know.  I'm super excited to tell my mom, but we're going to try to make it to 10 weeks.  I've never wanted to tell people really early because I'm so afraid of miscarriage. 

We're trying to hold back our excitement until the fear of miscarriage is much alleviated, though as each week passes, we're getting more and more ready to shout it out to the world.  The plan for now is to tell my mom next week, and - if we can wait this long - tell Dave's family when we see them for Christmas.  And we want to tell my Dad and brother and  SIL when we see them in CA in early December.  But for now we're just praying that all continues to go well so we can put our plan into action.

So how did we get here?  Well, we've been wanting to get pregnant for a while.  It's funny though the difference between wanting to be pregnant and then actually being pregant.  When I first thought I might be (but wasn't), Dave's initial reaction was "Oh Sh!t".  Believe me, I gave him some sh!t for that reaction. However, when I took a HPT and saw the positive result, my first reaction was that of an even more choice expletive!  So Dave is now happy to report he is off the hook forevermore. 

That was on October 4th.  (So Shannon, when you read this, you'll be happy to know that I was actually pregnant while you visited in September, but we didn't know it yet).  That same day I went to the doctor for a confirmation, got it, and I came and told Dave.  I was pretty impressed with myself that I was able to keep it a secret all day. I really wanted to surprise him. I told him by giving him a Bill Cosby book called "Fatherhood".  He looked at it, looked at me, and said "Is this an 'Oh sh!t' moment?"  I said yes, and we just sat there speechless and smiling, staring at each other for a while.  Obviously I am no longer speechless. 

Here's the timeline so far:

Oct. 4: Yippee, we're pregnant!  I know, Dave knows, life is good.  Oct. 5: Told my boss, got my fetal monitoring badge for radiology.  Oct. 20: A few minutes of mild spotting and one major freakout later, everything appears to be normal and we are back in business.  Oct. 22: First prenatal appointment, with the NP only.  She spoke a mile a minute so I think I lost a lot but I did leave knowing I shouldn't eat sushi and deli meat. Bummer. Oct. 26-28: Went to Rocky Point, Mexico on our annual trip, where my friend Sarah noticed I wasn't drinking and asked if there was a reason why.  So we told her, and boy did it feel good to share the news with someone!  I think a few other friends suspect, but haven't said anything yet.

Upcoming doctors appointments: Nov. 29th: for our first Ultrasound! - actually the UltraScreen to check for Down's Syndrome, etc., and the Cystic Fibrosis blood test.  These are both optional but our insurance covers them, so we figured hey, why not.  And it's a good way to get an ultrasound way earlier than normal. Dec. 10: Our first prenatal appointment with our actual doctor, Dr. James Johnson.  I'm going to West Valley Women's Care, which is in the same complex as Banner Estrella, the hospital where I work, so it's very convenient.  I'm going to deliver at Estrella as well.  They have a very good WIS department there.

So that's it!  We're off and running.  I hope you will enjoy my journal and tales of pregnancy as time goes by.  It's certainly going to be quite the adventure for me!