Team Pierce: April 2012

Sunday, April 29, 2012

First Movements: 16 Wks 6 Days

Today is 17 weeks! Big news from last week.....I felt the baby yesterday!! It was very cool. I felt it on at least 4 different occasions throughout the day yesterday. The first two times were sitting at my desk leaning forward a little, so probably squishing the baby so it was fighting for space :). The first time was faint and just a couple so I wasn't sure. The second batch was unmistakable and lasted for a long time, several minutes. I was IMing Spencer through the whole thing telling him when there was a little poke or a big punch or just a shimmy/wiggle. I tried really hard not to move because I didn't want to shift to a position where I couldn't feel it. I felt it on my car ride home and again while sitting on the couch later that night, but both were shorter than the long stretch at my desk. I also felt it a little bit this morning while lying in bed and am excited to hopefully feel it again soon!! Spencer is really jealous that he can't feel it yet and insists that he put his hand on my stomach whenever I feel them come even though he can't feel anything :).

I would say I'm officially showing now. Spencer has been trying to get me to take a belly picture, but I'm not a huge fan of taking pictures even when I don't have a huge belly sticking out of me, so I'm not thrilled about that idea. But I will probably give in this week since he wants one so bad. I'll send it with the next update so you can see how big the baby bump is getting :).

In general I am feeling much better, only a little nauseous in the evenings. My back has been bothering me a lot, we plan on talking to the Dr about that tomorrow. We are starting to think about all of the things we need to get and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed at the thought of it all :)! I still have mixed feelings about the speed at which this pregnancy is going by. In general I feel like it is going way too fast! But at the same time, I can't wait to meet our little one and March seems a long way off :).

20 Week 2 Day Ultrasound- It's A Boy!!

Boyhood!

Mom update from 21 weeks talking about ultrasound:

"Today is 21 weeks! I'm officially into the second half of the pregnancy. Big news from last week was that we had our 20 week ultrasound and check up. As you all already know, we found out we're having a baby boy and we are super excited! We are still adjusting to now knowing what he is. We keep catching ourselves calling him "it" still.

The tech was trying to hint to me what he was when she was going to tell us the gender by saying that we should bet breakfast in bed on what the gender was, since Spencer had said he thought it was a girl. I was so anxious to just be told that I didn't catch her subtle hint. I just said oh I don't know, I can't decide what I think it is. Then she said "well Spencer, you're wrong, there's his penis and scrotum" (sorry for the juicy details :) ). We were both pretty shocked. I had my suspicions of it being a boy since I wasn't as sick as I hear some people get and I had been craving things like wings and meat both of which are wives tales of it being a boy. Also he has been super active, not that little girls can't be.

The rest of the ultrasound looked great. The tech was very friendly and talked us through what she was looking at. We were able to see the spine (which the tech called beautiful), 4 chambers of the heart in motion, boyhood parts, stomach, eye sockets, lip, skull, hands, feet, etc. She took measurements of the skull, body cross-section and femur (I think) and extrapolated his weight at 14 oz which is heavy for what baby center says he should be. He has been very active every time we get an ultrasound and the Dr/tech always comments on it. She would toggle between traditional ultrasound and 3D and could never get a great 3D shot because he kept shifting. We got some regular ultrasound pics, but haven't had a chance to scan them in yet. They weren't great because he kept moving, but we will still send them out, maybe in the next email.

I've been feeling better this past week. We had a productive weekend getting more things set up in our apartment. Last night I even had enough energy to make it to the gym and ride the bike for a little bit. We have started to talk about boy names and think about nursery colors. We are all ears for name suggestions, we're pretty stumped.

We are referring to him as "Champ" for now, while he is in womb. My brother suggested the names of Raptor or Steel with a middle name of Champion. While we won't be pursuing any of those names on a permanent basis, we thought Champ, short for Champion, was a cute nickname for now. Funny story tied to that. We were actually telling some friends last week about Jared's name recommendation. Our friends asked how old Jared was, expecting to hear a response like 8 years old or something. They were pretty shocked when I responded with 28. They are missing out not knowing my goofy brother.

All in all, it has been a good week. We are really excited to finally know our baby's gender. We are excited to plan for the arrival of his little self. Spencer has been really cute lately talking to him all the time. He has been able to feel him a lot easier now that he his getting bigger and hitting harder. Spencer can feel him with just his hand resting on my stomach as opposed to me having to place his fingers in just the right spot to feel a little jab."

14 Week 1 Day Ultrasound

Baby Pierce Waiving

Mom email update from week 14:

"I'm officially into the 2nd trimester! I feel like on the one hand March seems forever away, but at the same time things seem to be going way faster than I'd like. I'm continuing to feel better, except last night I felt really sick, and my energy is returning. Spencer and I went swimming at Northwestern last week which was nice, we are going to try to get in the habit of doing that a few times a week. I'm done playing volleyball since I've struggled with back pain the last couple of weeks of playing. I told my manager about being pregnant yesterday. Spencer told his family on Sunday. I am telling my co-workers today and have a couple of emails to send to close friends and extended family tonight. By the end of the week word should officially be out. I was anxious about telling my manager, but he was really great about it all, it ended up being a very nice chat."

Ryan was always bouncing around in the ultrasound shots which was so fun to see his little active and healthy self!

10 Week Ultrasound

At this point I had started sending updates to our mom's on the progress of the pregnancy. This was the update I gave with the ultrasound pics from this visit:

"It was the coolest visit by far. The baby was bouncing around inside and wiggling like crazy. We got to hear the heartbeat which was fast and strong. And it actually looked human-like :), we were able to see the head, body, legs and little arms moving around. The still-shots aren't perfect so I tried to label them to help you tell what you are looking at. We are relieved to see another positive ultrasound and are excited that we are progressing toward the end of the first trimester when chances of miscarriage begin to decrease significantly. We will have our next appointment in 2 weeks and we can't wait to see how much it will have grown. Right now it is 3.5 cm! "

7 + Week Ultrasound

By this point I was feeling nauseous and the only thing that I could bring myself to eat was Wendy's and McDonald's burgers. Our first evidence that he was a boy :).

Our First Ultrasound: 6 + Weeks

6 + Week Ultrasound

We were so excited to see our first ultrasound! It was slightly more believable than all of the pregnancy tests we had taken, but when you look at a baby at 6 weeks old, only the ultrasound technician knows that what you are looking at is a baby inside. It was such a surreal visit to the doctor and so wonderful. It took several months of us being pregnant and seeing multiple ultrasounds before we finally accepted the fact that we were in fact pregnant.

Saturday, July 9th 2011- The Day We Found Out We Were Pregnant!

The week before we found out that I was pregnant I had been feeling really tired. I had fallen asleep a couple of times on the couch at night when I came home from work, which I never do. We didn't think much of it initially. But then I woke up Saturday morning before we went to soccer (we play soccer every Saturday at 8:30ish during the warm months) and decided that maybe I'd randomly take a pregnancy test. We had sworn off pregnancy tests a while earlier because we had had difficulty getting pregnant and they always seemed to be such a downer. I found an old test buried in the drawer in our bathroom that had expired the month before and decided to try it out, just for kicks. Much to my dismay, it came back... PREGNANT! I definitely didn't believe it and claimed that it was an expired test and didn't mean anything. It is the middle tester shown above and one line was really dark and the other was lighter so I thought maybe it was a false positive (came to find out later that the control line was the light one and the "you're pregnant" line was the super dark one because my HCG levels were high at that point). I called to Spencer who was still in bed and hesitantly told him what had just gone down...that I had decided to take the test that morning and that it came back positive. We both sat there bewildered and in disbelief... it was the one month in quite some time where we hadn't even "tried" to get pregnant, we didn't plan, we had no idea how far along we even were. We had decided to take a break from trying before we got more aggressive with our approach and then it just happened!

Anyway, we decided it wasn't real and went to soccer ignoring what had just happened. Obviously soccer was an interesting experience. We were both in a daze, minds totally elsewhere, wondering if that test was legit or not... so ironic that it had expired the month before causing it to lose all credibility in our minds, especially given the situation. I was petrified playing soccer, worried that if I was pregnant that it was going to fall out if I ran or that if I got hit with a ball, I'd lose the baby I wasn't ready to believe was inside of me... totally rational I know :).

After our mostly unsuccessful morning of soccer we went home and I sent Spencer immediately to the grocery store to buy more pregnancy tests. I was a wreck so he was a trooper and made the trip. I insisted he get more than one brand and specifically one that was digital so there was no mistaking it. We took them all and they were all positive! It had finally happened... WE WERE PREGNANT!

We were in a daze the whole day. I cried in the bathroom sitting on the floor. Neither of us could really process the news. We sat there trying to figure out how far along I was, turns out I was 4 1/2 weeks pregnant, though we weren't sure at the time.

That afternoon, shortly after we had taken all of the tests we got a call that our dear friend's had had their baby at 27 weeks and we went over that night to watch their kids overnight while the dad stayed in the hospital with mom and baby. It ended up being such an emotionally charged day between getting our own news, hearing our friend's news and our concern for their well-being. It was a tender time being with their children and put everything into perspective.

Baby Ryan's Story

As some of you may know or at least assume, it took us a bit longer to get pregnant with baby Ryan than we would have preferred. BUT he was definitely well worth the wait and we are SO in love!

Because we had had quite the journey getting him here, we kept our pregnancy pretty quiet initially and I stopped blogging. Then once we were sharing our news, I felt so far behind on all that had happened that I was overwhelmed by the thought of going back to tell his story on the blog because there was so much to tell and never enough time. Now that he's here and growing so quickly I want to start blogging in real-time, but still need to go back to the beginning and get caught up. SO...I've decided I'm going to dive in and finally tell his story. Enjoy!