my first blog!

Alright, so I'm officially a blogger!

I decided to start this blog for three main reasons: firstly, because I've gotten a lot of emails asking for updates about how my pregnancy is going, and secondly because since I am not planning on getting pregnant again any time soon, I thought I should document this very unique point in my life. And lastly, so many things about my life are changing and it is one crazy emotional rollercoaster (hormones may or may not be to blame..) and I need a place to sort out my feelings. I think I've always had an easier time expressing myself through writing, so it's kind of an outlet for me. Of course, it will include other aspects of my life beside being pregnant, too. :)

For those of you who don't know, I didn't find out I was pregnant until I was 2 and a half months along, and it hit me really, REALLY hard. The hardest part was realizing that my entire life was being flipped upside down and that all the plans I had made for myself were about to be a thing of the past. I graduate college (finally!) this month and planned on moving to New York this summer for a year or so just to experience something new. God must've had different plans for me, though, and slowly but surely I am learning to trust in that and let go of what I think is best for me. Although I really do love kids, I never thought of myself as the "maternal" type or dreamed of having a bunch of babies one day. In fact, babies really intimidate me! :/ I guess it's time to change that...

One of the hardest parts was breaking the news to people (parents, obviously) and being bombarded with the opinions and judgements of everybody else about what I "should" do. I ultimately had to decide to do what I felt was best for me and for the little life inside of me, and while I still have doubts at times, I have no regrets. I have been so surprised and thankful for the outpouring of love and support I've received from so many of my friends and family, and I want to sincerely THANK YOU if you've been one of them :)

So as of today I am 19 WEEKS along! For those of you who don't know (I didn't!), a full term pregnancy is about 40 weeks. Which meaaannnsss in a week from now I'll be halfway done! Luckily, I haven't had much morning sickness, but the weirdest thing is just the heightened sense of smell. I can literally smell a cookie sitting on a table across the room. It really gets my gag reflexes sometimes. :X Mostly I'm just always tired, which isn't much fun. All in all though, I've had a pretty breezy experience so far, especially since half the time I didn't even know I was pregnant!

This week my baby is about the size of my hand! The picture at the top of the page shows what it looks like now... a mini baby! I am just starting to finally show a little bit, but I'm afraid that sometimes I look more like I need to lay off the beer and burritos rather than that I'm pregnant. I will start posting pictures next week though, since many of you have been dying to see a belly on me! The coolest thing so far is that a few days ago I started to feel the baby move a little bit!! Everyone describes it as feeling like butterflies, but to me it feels a little rougher, like a lizard is in my tummy or something. It also kind of feels like a muscle spasm or something. That's the best way I can describe it, it's just weird!

Anyway, this ended up being a way longer post than I intended and hopefully it wasn't too boring! Oh oh, and next week we get to find out the gender!! I'm super excited. I really have no inkling of what it is, I'm just tired of calling it an "it". So...what do YOU think it is? Let me know if you think it's a boy or a girl!

P.S. can anyone tell me how to get pictures to be placed in a specific spot (like the middle of the page) instead of always at the top?