One Quarter Done

today marks 10 weeks, 6 days pregnant so we are over one quarter of the way to getting our sweet pea!


my belly goes up and down depending on how bloated i am, but it is getting harder to stretch my stomach. i feel like my insides are all in my ribs when i stretch. oh and my skin feels really tight after i eat a normal size meal (i've been sticking to smaller meals since i'm hungry all the time, and full size meals usually make me feel to full and sick).


i still am getting just little waves of nausea here and there, water usually helps. brushing my teeth in the morning is getting harder. no matter whether i do it before i eat or afterwards, my stomach does NOT like it.


we had our first OB appointment last week and everything went great! our doctor is so good about explaining things in detail that we had NO questions at the end of our visit. everyone in the practice is so nice and the exam room was clean. their ultrasound machine isn't nearly as advance as the ones at our RE, but we still got to see the hulk again. here is the blurry picture:



our OB sends all of their patients for the 1st trimester screening, which includes a finger prick blood test and an ultrasound known as Nuchal Translucency Scan or Nuchal Fold Lucency. during this test they are checking for characteristics that are common in fetus' with Down's Syndrome, Trisomy 18 & Trisomy 21 (all chromosomal defects that cannot be cured).

i am really happy to be having this test, because it will be another sigh of relief to know our baby is ok (knock on wood). plus we get to see our baby in a new light, since he/she will look so much more like a baby by then and there will be more detail of the scan. then i will feel much more comfortable about telling the rest of our friends and family.

i know the test has a high false positive rate, but i am also prepared for this since i know in advance. i can't say for sure it won't upset me if we get a positive result, but at least i know that i can tell myself that we just need to do further testing to rule out the possibilities and try to remain calm.

truthfully, even if our baby had one of these defects we would NOT terminate our pregnancy. we would just like to know in advance if there were some characteristic of our child that would require us to change our plans in order to provide the care he/she would need.