My Gemini Twins

Finding one person who shares your birthday is rare enough, but finding two? And those two people being a mother and her daughter? Impossible, you say? No, really, it's true!

Happy birthday, Laurie and Miss Sloan! I couldn't pick a more fabulous couple of gals with whom to share my birthday!

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Happy Birthday, Amers!

You are my most favorite little sister in all of the land. I hope you are having a lovely birthday, and I wish I could be there to share it with you. I love you bunches, Amie Elzabeth!

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Week 10

So this is apparently my tenth week of pregnancy. And apparently, this whole baby thing still doesn't seem quite real to me, yet.

Dawn, who is due in September, recommended that I sign up for weekly e-mails from the American Pregnancy Association. Every Monday, they will send me a nice little e-mail informing me of the changes both I and my baby will be going through over the course of that week. Yesterday I received my first e-mail. I learned that, apparently, the majority of our baby's vital organs are functioning, though obviously they are far from mature at this point. The baby's head currently takes up about one-half of the length of the body, which is about two inches long, and there is a bulge in the forehead allowing for brain development. Here's some exciting news: this week, the fingernails, toenails, and hair will begin to become visible. The fingers are now no longer webbed and he/she is actively swallowing amniotic fluid and kicking his/her legs. That's right: LEGS! With which TO KICK! Of course the baby has legs, I know, but OH MY GOD I'm growing something inside of me that has LEGS! And can KICK!

So far, my favorite aspect of pregnancy is the horrendous NAUSEA that haunts me day in and day out. Though I'm not throwing up, there have definitely been a couple of close calls, usually when Ms. Toothbrush visits Chomperstown. If the pasty dirty mouth taste wouldn't aggravate my nausea further, I think I'd like to just give up brushing my teeth altogether for the time being. Because of the nausea, I have absolutely ZERO appetite whatsoever, but am constantly having to force myself to eat (and I mean constantly) because when my stomach gets empty the nausea becomes ten times as bad. And heartburn....I must be lucky, because most women I've spoken to have seemed amazed that I am experiencing heartburn this early on. I guess I just like to live life to the fullest. Aside from that, I'm really enjoying the life-sucking exhaustion that makes me feel too tired to even breathe sometimes. I had to leave work early yesterday afternoon because I was feeling so bad, and came home and slept for four hours solid. I was concerned I wouldn't be able to sleep that night since I'd taken such a long nap, but silly me, 11:00 rolled around and I was out like a light and slept until 8:20 this morning. Of course, if I didn't have to get out of bed three times during the night to tinkle, I might feel a bit more rested.

Luckily, though, my discomfort level varies each day; I have bad days and "better" days, so it's not constant misery. I also realize that in a couple of weeks I'll be moving into my second trimester, so hopefully the first trimester woes will soon be a thing of the past. I haven't had mood swings any crazier than usual, and I haven't experienced any constipation which apparently plagues many pregnant women. For my still regular poops, I am quite thankful! And, most importantly, I have an awesome husband who I'll never be able to thank enough for putting up with my whininess and taking such good care of me. Hopefully, he will accept his firstborn child, which I'm currently incubating, as a sufficient token of my gratitude.

I know in this picture it almost looks like I'm starting to show, but my doctor told me last week that my abdomen is a little bloated from all the hormones coursing through me. So, I blame the hormones, not the two-inch long baby, for my start-of-a-gut.

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Apparently, It's Finally Happening

They (two little at-home pregnancy tests and the doctor) tell us we're going to have a baby. I'm still in shock, though, and don't quite believe the news yet. After all this time, it seems too good to be true. And quite frankly, I'd started to convince myself it just wasn't going to happen.

We gave up trying to not get pregnant in September. That previous month, in August, a miraculous thing happened - I was a few days late, and the thought entered our minds that I could be pregnant...and that thought, for once, did not freak us out. In fact, we were even a little disappointed when I did start. This made us question ourselves and the mantra we'd had for years that maybe in a "couple" of years we'd maybe start thinking about maybe starting a family. And here, all of a sudden, the idea of starting a family did not feel like a complete nightmare.

Contrary to every single health and sex education lesson we've had since middle school, it turns out it is, in fact, quite possible to not get pregnant after one session under the sheets without protection. In fact, after several months of nonchalantly playing it unsafe, we still found ourselves unsuccessful in the department of knocked-upness. When I was a sophomore in high school, my health teacher had frightened us all with a story of a young teenage girl who allegedly became impregnated from merely dry humping with her boyfriend. "It," after all, can apparently "very easily" swim through his underwear, his pants, her jeans, her panties, and eventually up her you-know-where and result in teenage motherhood. And now, almost fifteen years later, I'm finding out I actually have to try? I thought this was supposed to be easy, like catching a cold, or herpes. Sure, it was a great motivator for me to put off having sex in high school, but I have to say it's led to some serious feelings of failure as an adult. Despite those inadequacies we felt, our stubbornness was much stronger. Around December we upgraded our methods and became a little more serious about the whole science of babymaking.

Apparently, our added efforts paid off. I nervously took a pregnancy test on the evening of Mother's Day, immediately after we returned home from Rowan's baptism. Two little pink lines immediately popped up. I took another test the next morning, and it, too, came out positive. This past Monday, on the 4th, I had my first prenatal exam. Although to my dismay they are trusting my interpretation of the results of my at-home pregnancy tests and didn't conduct another pregnancy test on me, I was told during my lady exam that my "cervix looks pregnant" (I guess it changes to a bluish-purplish color when you're pregnant) and my uterus is just the size it ought to be.

Oh my God. I'm about nine weeks pregnant. In mid January, we will become parents. I am so freakin' excited. (And a little freakin' terrified, to be honest.) Stay tuned for lots of stories on pregnancy woes and baby preparations...

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