3 month adventures

Jocelyn is 3 months old as of november 15th! I am late yet again in posting the monthly blog. There is no monthly stats this time since our next well baby visit is on her 4 month mark.

 

 

My mom and I went to Utah this past week and we were able to spend some time visiting with the family while we were there. We went to my grandma and grandpa Ralph's house the first day we were there and were able to show off Jocelyn to them. It was fun to see their faces as they talked with her. She was the spot light of the party thats for sure.

 

 

Great Grandpa Ralph could get Jocelyn to smile and laugh at thim while he talked to her. It was so great and fun to see.

 

 

Both great grandparents and Jocelyn. Such a great picture for posterity.

 

 

Above is my grandma Ryan. It is a four generation picture. My grandma, my mom, me and Jocelyn. I was so happy to get this picture. Jon said that I could go to Utah only if I promised I would get this picture. What an easy task that was to accomplish.

 

 

Jocelyn just loved sitting in Great Grandma Ryan's arms. Grandma Ryan loved it too because not many babies sit still enough for her to hold them since she had suffered her stroke a while back. (9 years or so ago i can not remember)

 

 

Last night we had BLT'S for dinner and Jon said the word bacon to Jocelyn and she just cracked up. It was so cute I had to get a video. She must love bacon! I hope the video works out for you guys.

one plus one= 2 MONTHS

HEY EVERYONE! My baby is already 2 months old. Where has time gone. I know I am late on posting this update but better late than never. :)

 

2 month status:

Height 23.8 in (96 percentile)

11.1 lbs (65 percentile)

41.1 cm (96 percentile)

So this month has definitely been an interesting one. On her 2 month dr appt. the doctor had decided that he was really concerned about how big her head was. (96 percentile is way big). I think that dr visit was the longest visit I have ever been to. It was a total of an hour and a half! He was being so thurough examining her and making sure her head was ok. He kept telling me that he was guessing that it was hereditary since jons head is huge (he did some research on head sizes while we were there and he found out that jons head is 3 standard deviations away from the mean for mens heads. I have the exact average for womans head sizes.) but yeah jon has a huge head! But the Dr. wanted some proof that nothing was really wrong with her brain so he sent me into TMC the next day to get an ultrasound done on her head. (by the way I think it is so cool how you can do an ultrasound through the fontanel on babies heads).

 

The ultrasound tec. told me that the dr. would have results to me by monday ( I went in on friday) but they would let me know that night if there was something wrong with her head. So I went home, hoping I would not be getting a phone call that night. Well I did... pure panic went through my system and I was so scared to hear what the dr had to say. Just the thought of something being wrong with my babies brain was so devistating and I felt horrible for her. BUT that panic was only short lived. The dr got the results sooner than the ultrasound tec. told me and he was just calling to tell me that my baby just had a big head like her daddy. the tears in my eyes immediately dried up and I was so relieved to hear that news.

 

At that dr. appt we also found out that jocelyn might be lactose intolerant. my poor baby. She has been in a lot of pain when she has to pass gas and rarely has a bowel movement so I was getting so worried. So the dr told me to go on a dairy free diet. Let me tell you this diet has not been the easiest. I miss my cheese, milk, yogurt, chocolate etc. I know they have dairy free chocolate, and milk and all that but it definitely is not the same thing as the real stuff. I will do anything though to keep my baby from being in pain. I just can not wait till I can stop nursing her so that I can eat all the dairy again that I want.

 

Other than that this past month has been great. She is growing so fast and her personality is showing through so much. It is so great to see her smile all the time and see that I ammuse her as I sit and talk with her through the day. Enjoy the pictures. :)

pretty in pink

love the smiles



 She is able to sit in her bumbo now. She has a stong neck.

Picture above is jocelyn enjoying conference!

Just chillin

oh and you better watch out because she sleeps with one eye open. No playing tricks on her at night. ;)

One month old pictures

One Month Status:

Height: 21.6 inches ( 82 percentile)

weight: 8.1 lbs (30 percentile)

Head circumference: 37.3 cm (69 percentile)

 

All in all I think we have a pretty happy and healthy baby thus far. Here are some pictures. She has been the easiest baby. She sleeps so well and sometimes I have had to wake her up to eat instead of the other way around at night. People say I should have just let her sleep through the night but I did not want her to be loosing any weight since she is only in the 30 percentile for weight.

 

I look at her every day and can not believe how blessed I am to have such a beautiful daughter. It is still weird for me to think of myself as a mom and when I tell people this is my daughter it still sounds weird. Maybe one day I will get used to the sound of being a mom. I have loved every minute of being a mom. She definitely looks a lot more like me when I was a baby than Jon but unfortunately I do not think she will have my red hair. :(

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope these pictures made you smile!

She has Arrived!

Well Friends, She has finally arrived! My beautiful Daughter (Jocelyn Johanna Brimhall) was born August 15th, 6 lbs 5 oz, 19.5 in long at 7:02 P.M.

Warning, here comes the story of Jocelyn's delivery so read on if you want. A few weeks before I was due, I had asked my Dr. (Dr. Howell) if I could be incuced if the due date came around and I still had not had her. The reason I asked for this was because the ultra sounds were showing that she was a big baby (birth weight being around 8 to 9 lbs) and that her head was really big. I was scared to have to give birth to such a large baby especially my first one and did not want to go past my due date so Dr.Howell agreed to induce me on the 15th.

August 15th finally rolled around and Jon and I arrive at the hospital, both of us as nervous as could be! I did not know what to expect and what induction methods were going to be used which caused more anxiety on my part. Not to mention the fear of how bad labor was going to hurt and the possibility of any complications. Well despite the anxiety and fear, we signed in at the front and then a few minutes later we walked back to my room for the next 12 hours. There I met my nurse (polly) She was the greatest nurse ever! She was so kind and sweet the whole day long and really made me feel cared about. She hooked me up to the monitors and then tried putting the IV into my arm. Tried is the key word here. My vein in my forearm where she wanted to put the IV was not participating and after trying to get the IV to slide into the vein for a good 5 mins, she had to choose a different place and had to put it into my hand. Not the most comfy place to put an IV at all. Every move you make you feel the needle pinching you and it is so hard not to bend your wrist all day. Polly tried so hard to get it to go in and my forearm that my arm ended up having a huge black and blue bruise on it for a few weeks after birth. It was pretty impressive.

Once the IV was in she hooked up the oxytocin and then my journey started. :) Going into the hospital I was already dilated to 2 cm. My mom got to the hospital once everything was in place and ready to go and we sat and played games and watched some TV and everything was going great. A little contraction would come every so often and I thought "wow these are no big deal. I can go through labor without an epidural"... All I have to say now is HA!!! Later on the contractions were horrible!

Anyways after a few hours my dr came in and checked me and I was only about 2 and a half cm dilated so she decided that we should break my water. After that was done it took about 3 hours to get me dilated to 4 cm. Oh and it took an hour to get me into actual labor (contractions every 4 mins apart). So about 3 O'clock I made it to 4 cm and the contractions were getting pretty intense. Jon felt so bad that he could not do much other than watch me go through pain and hold my hand. So by this time he was telling me how horrible it was to watch me go through so much pain and I was so done feeling the pain that I asked to recieve an epidural. I wish I was tough like a lot of people I know who have gone through labor without one, but I just could not handle it anymore. Once the epidural was in I felt immediate reliefe but only in my right side. Unfortunately it did not take in my left side.

So for the next hour I was told to wait and see if it would kick in and I continued to feel every contraction. Every painful contraction. OUCH! The anesthesiologist came back in and had to inject more meds because it never took on the left side and after he injected it, I started to feel a little relieve and my toes were going numb finally. But an hour later I was still feeling some pretty intense contractions. They were so bad it was making me so sick and I almost lost my stomach contenets (I probably had nothing to loose from the stomach so thats why nothing came up thank goodness). I was so sick that my mom called the nurse and asked them to bring anti nautious meds in for me. Well an hour later no one came in to give me that medication so I was still sick as a dog and sweating bullets and still in so much pain. We called the nurse again and she brought the meds in immediately telling us that she had to be in another room for a delivery and another nurse was supposed to bring me the meds. But she gave me the meds and I finally felt some relieve from feeling like I was going to vomit but the contractions were miserable now. So the anesthesiologist came in and gave me one more injection and that finally did the trick and my left side went numb. Just in time too. (by the way I went from 4 cm to 9 cm in the matter of a couple hours once the epidural was in. I dilated so fast that Dr Howell could not believe it)

Dr Howell kept asking me if I felt any need to push because I went through the transition stage that many women go through right before they are ready to push, but I honestly felt no urge. So she checked me and I was at 9 cm. Not a good situation for my her because she had another patient delivering down the hall and she was a mother of 3 already at 8 cm. Dr Howell did not know if she was going to have time to deliver the other lady and make it back to me before I had to push. Luckily the other lady delivered realy quick and my dr came back in to check me since I still felt no urge to push. When she checked me though she almost laughed because the babies head was right there able to be seen. She looked at me and said "its time to have a baby" and could not believe I had no urge to push yet.

So after pushing through 3 contractions, my baby was born. I was in "actual labor" (what the nurses kept calling it) for 4 hours but was in the hospital for 12 waiting for he induction to kick in.

There are no words to describe holding my baby for the first time or seeing her laying on my stomach right after birth. I was so happy and could not believe that I actually had a child that was mine. Oh and I could not believe how small she was! I was expecting a big baby, but a baby in the 14th percentile for weight and 32nd for head circumfrence is not big at all. Now we have been home for 3 weeks, and we are very happy. She has been such a good baby. Very mellow and content with life. She normally sleeps through the night, and I have to be the one to wake her up to eat through the night. Lately she has been having a hard time sleeping at night keeping me up all night, so we are trying to figure out why. But honestly I am so happy to have her and would not trade her for anything in the world. My dad and I always had this saying as I was growing up. He would ask "what do you know Jo"? in response I would say "I love you more dad" he would just shake his head and say, "just you wait for your first kid. You will then know you are wrong". But he was right. I now know how it feels to love your child. This love is without limits and I am so happy I get to experience such a gift. I was going to add some pics of her on this blog but it wont let me upload them tody. I will try tomorrow uploading some pics.

Beginning of the End

Well my friends I am beginning the ending preparations for my baby. It is hard to imagine that any day now, I will be a mom to a beautiful baby girl. It is so exciting to think of her coming any day but so scary too, because I feel so unprepared. I try to make myself feel prepared by asking family questions about becoming a mom when they ask if I have any questions, but I keep feeling like I have a million questions and no way to ask them because I do not know what to expect in motherhood. I am just praying that natural instincts will kick in when she is born and put me at ease with how to raise such a tiny and fragile blessing that has been given to me.

I can not wait to hold her for the first time, and to kiss her head, and sooth her when she is unhappy, and just admire every aspect of her and thank Heavenly Father for such a wonderful gift he has entrusted me with. It makes me cry just thinking of the day she will be born and how happy I will be to finally hold her and to see my husband hold our child and see his love and admiration for her. I guess it must be pregnancy hormones making me so emotional but I really can not wait. 

People always say that the last month is the longest month of a pregnancy. Time just ticks on by so slowly as compared to previous months. I feel that previous months have flown by because of how busy I was studying and preparing to take my boards test and buying things and decorating Jocelyn's room and so fourth. Now that the test is finally over with, and I have everything ready for Jocelyn to come, it makes me antsy every day. I look at the clock so many times through each day begging time to go faster so that the week can be over and I will be a day closer to the due date. It does not help that I am in the same room as the crib most of the day either as it taunts me about how close I am to having her here. But I am trying to really enjoy every last minute of her kicking inside me and laughing at my belly as it moves side to side every night as she is kicking.

I have recently started feeling some pretty bad pain in my right leg as I walk though that I will be happy to have go away after birth. It feels like my pubis bone joint is ripping apart as I walk and lift my foot off the ground even an inch. Thank goodness for pain killers! I feel bad for my mom now because this is what she had to go through with me. I guess it is payback :)  Oh and leg cramps I can not wait to get rid of. Banannas have become my best friend as of late. I probably eat 2 or 3 a day to get rid of the cramps. (good tip to remember for those who have not had a kid before) Other than that pregnancy has been so super good to me. I could not ask for a much better pregnancy.

Here are some pics I have taken lately. Below is something I put together of me from the beginning of pregnancy to this morning at week 36. It will probably be the last pic I take of me being pregnant so I will just say this is the ending point and biggest I got in the pregnancy.

This is the super cute travel system my mom bought me. I love it so much. It is brown with a cute design on it. I liked the color because it will fit a boy or a girl. So if next child is a boy he wont have to be pushed around in a girly seat. 

And this is the babies wall in the computer room. My mom came and helped me decorate this wall and since we did not really have a full room we could dedicate as her room Jocelyn will just have to due with a wall and closet. Good thing she can not really protest.

I am so excited to be a mom and can not wait for her due date. The dr. said I am starting to dilate a tiny little bit and that her head is pressing down pretty far so we will see how long it takes for her to be ready to enter this world. Next blog will have pics of her :) YAY!!!

11:11 Wish While Pregnant

Time for an update again on Jocelyns progress thus far. Lately I have started to feel super tired all the time. It is so hard to wake up in the morning at a good hour and if it were not for Jocelyn sitting on my bladder, I would be in bed all morning. 

It has started to get hot outside if no one has noticed yet. :) Honestly I never thought I would be a pregnant person that would be so affected by the hot weather. I usually love to be under blankets even in the summer time so I thought the hot weather would not be too bad on me. I WAS WAY WRONG! I feel like I can hardly do anything without breaking out in a sweat. Just walking to the kitchen for a drink of water makes me want to go jump in a pool of ice water. But I guess it does not help when you have had a broken AC/Swamp cooler for the month of may and half of june. 

During those months I was living off of sitting under a fan, hair in a pony tail, with ice packs all over my body while sipping on ice water the whole day just to get through the day. My house never got below 85 degrees and in the hottest part of the day it would reach about 90 to 95 degrees. It was miserable! I opted every night to take cold showers instead of hot ones. I never thought I would opt for that. 

Just when I thought I could not handle it anymore, I looked at a clock that said the time was 11:11 and I always make a wish when I see that time. So I made my wish and shortly after that wish (i wished that my house would be able to start beeing cool) Jon came running in to me and practically shouted "I know what is wrong with the Swamp cooler" then he ran outside and fixed it. 20 minutes later, we had a working swamp cooler and a couple hours later we had a house that was down to 80 degrees! I was so happy and could not believe that my 11:11 wish came true! 

Jocelyn is definitely worth the heat stroke I feel every day though. I get to feel her kick and squirm inside of me all the time and her kicks are getting stronger every day. She gets the hiccups a lot poor thing. I hope she does not get them all the time when she is born. 

At the last dr. appointment I was given news that I am not measuring like I should be which is a little scary. My stomach should be measuring 31 cm. but I am one and a half cm smaller than that. So if I am more than 2 cm too small by next friday,they will have to do an ultrasound on me to make sure the baby is growing properly, and that I have enough amniotic fluid in the womb. I am hoping that she grows like crazy this week so that I reach my normal measurments and so that everything will be ok. 

Other than all this, pregnancy has been fun still. I will start working in a week and a half so we will see how that affects me. Here are some pics.

   

One Week till Trimester 3!

Sometimes I feel like my life is so busy, but when I look back on the past few weeks I realize that life really has not been that busy at all. The only thing that has been going on for the past 4 weeks is studying for my big test that I had to take in order to recieve my license to be a Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant. Althought that was only one thing, I probably put about 4 to 5 hours daily into studying for the test. With all that said, I feel like this past trimester has gone by WAY too fast.

I feel like yesterday I was just entering into my 2nd trimester and now here I am in the last week of it. I kept reading from websites, and books and articles that it is a good time to just enjoy pregnancy in your second trimester because when the 3rd hits, you become tired, you hurt more, you are uncomfortable, you can not sleep well etc. All the pregnancy symptoms start to show up but before they show up you were supposed to enjoy the pregnancy before semester 3 rolls around and kicks your butt. Well I guess I tried to enjoy it but I was more stressed out about the test that was looming over my head.

Today my friends I have taken that dreadful test and have dedicated my next couple weeks to enjoying my pregnancy before it gets too hot outside and before I start to feel too many unpleasant symptoms. I am so happy to have it over with.

On the bright side of pregnancy, this past weekend I went to gilbert and spent time with my family and enjoyed a baby showe that my little sister planned for me. It was such a fun baby shower and I enjoyed the company of all my friends who were able to show up. It would not have been a celebration without them. :) Plus they all gave me the cutest presents. I can not wait to play dress up on my baby with all the cute clothes they bought me and read her the books I got, and let her play with all the fun toys. I have to say I was a bit spoiled to recieve so many gifts. (or should I say Jocelyn is a little spoiled...already) Here are some pics of the shower.

 Cute cake pops my mom made. She is so good at making things look so cute!

we had tons of food. Pasta, sandwiches, and lots of fruit and salad. So So yummy!

I loved the color scheme Tori had picked out and all her cute ideas. It was a "things that pop" baby shower. For example because my stomach is poping out, she incorporated pop corn, popcicles, lollipops, bubble gum, rice crispy treats, baloons etc. Such a cute idea I thought. 

It was such a great weekend being home with the family. Amanda was even able to fly from Utah to come to the shower. It was great. Here is my week 23 and week 27 pictures side by side as requested by Amanda. (warning the stomach has been growing significantly) She said that she likes to compare the pics and hated having to scroll to the previous post to compare so here you go Amanda and friends. And here goes my 3rd trimester. Hopefully I do not melt or go completely insane from the heat.

                                                                                                                                        
 

                                         

Coincidence?

I just thought it was funny as I was thinking about the date this week, that I began my 23rd week of pregnancy on April 23rd. That is pretty awesome and a great coincidence right? JK.

At my last OB appointment, my dr said that I should be growing a lot faster now that I am this far along so I am posting my 23 week picture today and we will see really how fast I will be growing.

 

It is so nice being able to see my baby bump a little better, but I have to say having a larger bump is causing a lot more back ache, especially when I wake up in the morning. My back throbs so much that I just have to get out of bed by 7 am instead of sleep in like I really want to do. I sleep on a tempurpedic mattress so you would not think that I would have this problem, but I do and I also sleep with a body pillow to ease the discomfort. I guess this is just the beauty of being pregnant though. Jocelyn makes up for it when I can feel her kicking around inside when I wake up in the morning because I am tossing and turning waking her up.

Last saturday I was at my brother and sister in laws house for my nephew's 3rd bday party and that is when I realized just how much I am showing. My little niece came up to me a couple times and placed her hand on my tummy and after the 3rd time she did that she asks "do you have a baby inside you like mommy did." Her mom had my nephew 8 months ago so she realized I was getting big like her mom did. She was excited after I told her I did and was even more excited when I told her it was a girl. She was super cute but I was thinking to myself, "it is a good thing I actually am pregnant and not just getting fat." That would have been a real downer being asked if I were pregnant by a child if I wasn't. 

After the party Jon and I went out to buy Jocelyn her crib and I am not going to lie I was so excited about this that I could not sleep very well the night before. I don't know why I was so excited but I guess I am just so ready to start buying her things and decorating her room it is just overwhelming excitement. Well we go to the store to buy this little beauty...

and after they searched the storage room, the come and tell us the horrible news. They said they did not have the crib in stock and had to order one to the store, which also meant that we would not get the crib for another 12 weeks. My spirits were crushed because I was so excited to buy the crib that day and start decorating. We special ordered one to the store though and we will get it in 12 weeks. Until then, I just have to decorate the walls. One project I did was made her initials to hang above the crib. They turned out super cute I think.

 I am trying to think of other things I can do to decorate and will probably come up with something by the next post I post. :) Oh and one more thing, since I could not buy the crib, I bought a bed set for the crib which I am in love with. This pic is just the quilt that came in it but it is the cutest part.

So that is about it for this past few weeks. I am getting anxious to see my baby for the first time sitting in my arms, but look forward to what the rest of this pregnancy has to offer me.

Half and half

Half way through my pregnancy and half of it to go! Here is my 20 week baby bump photo.

I have finally been able to start feeling Jocelyn kick and move around. I have been fascinated by all the movement that goes on inside of me on a daily basis. She usually moves around a bunch when I wake up in the morning, quiets down towards the middle of the day and then when Jon gets home she starts kicking some more. I guess she is as excited as I am when he comes home. :)

The sad part is that every time she starts to kick when Jon is around I try to place his hand on my stomach so he can feel it, but she stops kicking the second his hand is there so he has not been able to feel her yet. One of these days he will get to though and I can not wait to see his face when he does.

Sometimes when Jocelyn does not move too much through the day so I sit and poke at my stomach trying to get her to kick. Jon always holds my hands down and tells me to let her sleep but it is like an addiction to feel her kick. I just like to know she is still doing ok and that she is alive in there.When I do not feel her kick at her normal times it worries me but she always ends up kicking later. I guess I am a little paranoid but I love her so much already and love to be reassured that she is doing alright. Being pregnant is so amazing!

Rattle your rattles... ITS A GIRL

Well the day has finally come and I was able to find out that my baby...

!!!!!IS A GIRL!!!!!

Can you tell that I am just a little excited about having a girl? 

Here are some of the pictures we got of her today. She kept sticking her hand out and waving at us the whole time so they got us a picture of her hand. And yes we saw her thumb too so she has all 5 fingers on that hand thank goodness. You can see her other hand in the second picture but it is in a ball so it is just the fist you can see. It is right next to her face. 

A lot of people have been asking me what her name is and so I will tell you all that her name is going to be Jocelyn. Picking her name was not the easiest thing in the world though. When I got married to Jon I told him all the names that I loved for our kids names and he disagreed on all those names which really was sad. But after I got over the hurt of him hating all the names I loved, we started throwing names back and forth to each other to see if we would like them. Well we did this for a long time and we did not agree on a single name until one day I threw Jocelyn out there because that was a name that I loved for a long time but was so scared to tell him because I thought he would hate it too. But I threw caution to the wind, closed my eyes (expecting him to say he didn't like the name) and asked him how he liked it and he came back with the most surprising response I was not expecting. He loved the name and I opened my eyes and told him to tell me again that he liked the name so that I was not imagining it. So we made a deal that our first girl would be named Jocelyn and we are very excited to have her coming to our lives. 

She almost did not want to behave today and show us if she was a girl or boy. The nurse had to keep wiggling my stomach to get her to move and open her legs. After a bit of convincing, she moved for a split second and the second she moved I knew that it was a girl. I blurted it out before the nurse could say it. She looked at me and asked me how I saw so quickly what it was and honestly I do not know but she said I was right and got a better picture later. (I did not include a pic of her "girl parts" on here) but I do have proof that she is a girl which will one day be put into her scrapbook. She is going to love me when she is older. :)

When I got home from the doctors today one of our goats had her babies and I thought it was funny coming home to babies after seeing my baby earlier. I guess today was meant to be a baby day. Oh I just love babies and cant wait to see and hold my baby. Well I can because I want her to develop fully inside but I am just excited for August 20th!!!

A Naval Orange

As promised, I am posting the first picture of my baby bump at 15 weeks. If you squint hard enough and tilt your head, you might be able to see a small bump protruding from my stomach. My little baby is the size of a naval orange this week, is 4 inches long, and is moving a lot. Unfortunately I have not felt a bit of movement yet. I can not wait for that day to come!

This past few weeks have been just about as uneventful as my first trimester.I have had no signs of morning sickness, my stomach has not grown much, and other than being ready for bed by 8 pm. I am not really tired through the day. Yes I am feeling way blessed for having such great genetics. 

I can not say I am completely symptom free from pregnancy though. I constantly have to go to the bathroom finding myself up about twice a night to relieve myself, half way through the night my body hurts so bad I have a hard time sleeping, and I have recently started to feel my first bit of tendon stretching pain. Every few days I get bad pains, but for the most part it is all manageable and I am still enjoying pregnancy. I was talking to my sister in law the other day when she took me out to dinner and after finishing my BLT sandwich, she said she was amazed that I was able to hold the sandwich down. She is one who could not eat any meat sandwich/ hamburgers through her whole pregnancy without having to loose that lunch in the bathroom minutes later. 

I remember "nannying" her kids while she was pregnant with her last child because she got so sick she could not get out of bed to provide adequate care for them. After watching her go through that pregnancy, I worried about how mine would be, but thank goodness it has been a walk in the park so far.

In 5 weeks or so I will be able to go in for the Anatomy screening, where they look at each organ to be sure my baby is growing correctly, and that is when I will find out if it is a boy or girl! So start putting in your guesses!

1st Trimester Bliss

YAY!!!! It finally worked. After 6 months anticipation of trying to get pregnant, Heavenly Father finally said it was time to start a family. I can now write about the experience I felt when I finally found out I was pregnant and how my first trimester has gone.

Back in June 2012, Jon and I had this major impression that we needed to start thinking about starting our family. We had gone through our first year of marriage and at this point my goal was to make it through school before I started having kids. I guess Heavenly Father was tired of waiting for us to be ready to talk about kids because one day while in the Temple Jon and I got this feeling that we needed to start a family. We both went home and talked about our feelings and although we were so scared about the prompting we felt, we decided to trust the Lord and I threw those birth control pills in the trash.

Month after month went by and each month my period came and went until eventually it started getting very depressing that I was not getting pregnant. I just could not understand why we would have such a strong prompting to start trying to have a kid and have such a hard time getting pregnant. It got to the point that I was getting so jealous of people reporting they were pregnant on Facebook. I mean I was so excited for them and their exciting news, but it made me feel like I was never going to get pregnant and start wondering what I was doing wrong in my life.

I was so discouraged that I went to my OBGYN and talked to her about my difficulties and after many tests she said that all was fine and that I just needed to relax and have some faith that things would work out. So I did just that and lo and behold one month came and I missed my period! I was so excited at first, but then I thought this could just be a fluke and I should not get too excited until I can take a home pregnancy test. At this time I did not tell my husband about my possibility of being pregnant. 2 LONG weeks ticked by and after waiting in anticipation for so long, I ran to the bathroom one morning ripped open a test and waited for the results, my hands trembling in the meantime because I was so excited/nervous about what the results would be. A couple minutes later this is what I saw...

Sorry the picture is blury, but there are 2 pink lines meaning one thing... I WAS PREGNANT!!! I was so excited that I finaly had proof that I was pregnant other than a missing period that I ran into the room jumped on the bed and woke Jon up and practically shouted that I was pregnant. Poor Jon had no idea what to think because he was so abruply woken up. After things could process a little more, he smiled so big and gave me the biggest hug and he could not wipe his smile off his face. This was all in November.

We decided we would keep this a secret from everyone and bask in the excitement by ourselves for a bit, but then christmas time came and I just had to tell my parents and siblings. So I made them little presents and had them open it Christmas eve at the same time.

When they opened the presents, they all ghasped in excitement, ran to me and threw their arms around me. This is their first grandchild/niece or nephew. Each onesy (probably spelt wrong) said I love G-ma, I love G-Pa and I love my Aunt. I told them they had to wait till I was 3 months though before they could tell anyone. My dad was so excited about the news he said "I do not think I can wait 3 months. I am so happy I just want to shout out to the world about this news." He will make the best grandpa ever!

I made my first appointment with the OBGYN soon after and we got to see the baby because by this time I was 8 weeks along and the baby was big enough to be seen through ultra sound. It made me cry when I saw my baby for the first time and made me cry even harder when I heard my babies heart beat! Jon was sitting there with me and when he heard the heart beat he was at first alarmed and had to ask "Why is the heart beat so fast." The dr. calmed him down and told him that a normal heart rate is about 140-160 for a baby and my babies heart rate was 150. I lauged a little as he calmed down and we listened to the music of our baby's strong heart. Oh I love my husband.

Although this picture is not the best quality, you can see my baby and the foot that is starting to form and the big black spot for his/her brain.

I was on cloud 9 the whole week after seeing my baby and was excited to see what pregnancy had in store for me. Week after week I was just waiting to feel some sort of feeling of pregnancy like sickness, cravings or fatigue that is normally felt by other woman, but I never got the slightest upset stomach, didnt have any cravings and I was never tired like I thought I should be. I am a lucky one is what I keep thinking and what others have told me. So every day I have looked at my refrigerator where my babies picture hangs so that I can remember that I really am pregnant and that it is not a dream.

I am now 12 weeks and 2 days today and I had another OBGYN appointment where I was able to hear my babies heart beat, which is just as great the 2nd time as it is the 1st, especially when it reaffirms that I am pregnant since I have not felt any of the pregnancy symptoms. My OBGYN is so jealous of me for not feeling any sickness and I told her I had good genes. Both my grandmas and my mom did not get sick either. Lucky me! In 7 weeks I will go for my anatomy screening and figure out if this baby is a boy or girl and I am so excited. I do not have a baby bump yet or else I would post pictures but stay tuned and I might just pop suddenly and will have to post pictures :)