Had my blood test this morning. This test is for several reasons…….to check my blood type and a routing test for STD’s, and also testing that goes with my ultrasound next week. It was frustrating this morning though, cuz I’m not good with needles and I need to lay down in case I pass out. However when she tried to take my blood, the vein collapsed. ugh……so that meant she had to do it AGAIN in the other arm. So I’ve ended up with a bit of a sore arm where the vein collapsed, a bit bruised and sore and I’m also feeling extra wussy at the moment!

I’ve opted to go for genetic testing for disorders such as down syndrome and neural tube defects. These tests are non-invasive and give an indication of the risk of a genetic disorder. If the risk is considered high, then further tests can be done from there.

For now, I’m excited at the chance to just have another scan next week. I’m also hoping that this time means I can get it on DVD so I can send it to Alex!

Alex and I have also decided that we are going to find out the sex of the baby at the 19 week scan. I don’t like surprises and I’m too impatient aswell. haha. Luckily Alex feels the same way about me when it comes to finding out the sex of the baby. 😉

I’m proud to announce that Alex and I have both decided on a girl and boy name for our child.

I’m surprised at how easy it was for us to come up with 2 names. I thought there’d be a lot of disagreeing over deciding on names. There seems to be plenty of books on how to choose them, but Alex and I didn’t need one.

I opened a word document to create a “list” of those names we liked. I mentioned a boys name I liked and Alex said “oh I like that name, put it on the list” then he said a girls name and I replied “oh wow, I LOVE that name”

So we had 1 boys name and 1 girls name.

We continued talking about names to add to the list and after 1 hour we still only had 2 names on the list. Hence therefore we now have our childs name.

I think it’s so special in how we decided on the names. Seems so right.

K/C  xxx

I’ve finally scanned the ultrasound images, so here is the first snapshot of our baby 😉

It feels absolutely incredible to be able to see that…..this little thing that is growing inside me. Ahhhhh, hormones do wonderful clucky things to you!!!

Incredible, absolutely incredible. I can’t begin to explain the feeling of seeing the baby on the scan for the first time. I wish Alex could have been there to share it! It just made it all really real, and so reassuring seeing it kicking and punching away (already practising combat I could tell!!!) and the heart beat pumping away. I didn’t realise, but you can literally see it pumping.

Thankfully there’s only 1 baby. I had been a little bit scared about having twins and now I feel a huge relief that there isn’t. But the most amazing thing was when my Obstetrician finished the scan, the baby was waving 1 hand. My Obstetrician (who incidentally has the same name and birthday as me 😯 ) said “Say Goodbye!” It literally looked like the baby was waving! Seriously……I felt so warm and fuzzy. I could have layed there watching that all day.

I’ve heard that the ultrasounds can be recorded onto DVD, so I asked about it today. But she told me that she didn’t have the equipment to do that today, but my next scan in 2 weeks they will. I’m so looking forward to being able to have a DVD that I can send to Alex. I hope the baby will be combatting as hard as it was today, lol.

I now understand the whole proud parent thing……it’s something only a mother or father could understand 😉

I’m positive I felt my first flutter of movement this morning!!

I know it’s pretty early, but after talking to some others who’ve had babies I’m sure it’s the baby. It felt a bit like wind, but only it was in a different spot, distinctly right where my uterus is. I’ve never felt it in that position before and I’m so in tune with my body I think, that I’m just sure it’s the baby!

It’s such an amazing feeling! I’m nearly 10 weeks pregnant and tomorrow I have my first appointment with the obstetrician where I’ll get my first scan. I’m so excited to finally see it. As time goes by the realisation that we’re having a baby and that I’m going to be a mother is actually sinking in……and I couldn’t be happier about it!

I feel all feminine and proud and motherly.

I’m now 8 weeks pregnant and feeling a bit fat, although my friends assure me they can’t notice the difference. They HAVE noticed my boobs getting bigger though. lol, like I needed more of those. They’re a bit painful so I guess I got lots to look forward to there.

At Alex’s request I’ve started a week by week section where I’ll take a photo each week of my growing tummy. At the moment any tummy that’s there I think is fluid and evidence of the crap food I’ve been eating sometimes. I can’t help it, it seems the hormones and tiredness are making me eat badly. Considering I’m normally very healthy I can see why some women put on so much weight during pregnancy. The hormones really take their toll on your body!

So I’ve decided this week I need to sharpen up and just not by any bad food any more. I’ll let myself have some when I’m out and stuff, but at home I need to stick to healthy stuff, it’s just not doing me good.

Because there’s so many limitations on what I should and shouldn’t have during pregnancy, I light-heartedly suggested to Alex the other night that he support me and follow the same restrictions, ie. no alcohol and caffiene (since I don’t drink much coffee anyway I’ve decided to just cuz it out of my diet). When I said this to him he just laughed at me, hah!

I finally saw the doctor today. Kinda reassuring but also overwhelming at the same time. I found it intriguing that he didn’t actually retest me. I know it’s certain that I’m pregnant anyway, but it was interesting that he just took my word for it. The tests are that reliable though that he didn’t feel the need to do another one.

I did have people warning me to book into a hospital and with an obstetrician asap, but I still discovered just how hard it is to get in. I’ve had a few recommendations on who to see, and I was lucky to be able to get in with one of my first choices…..or inclination for a first choice. All the others that I’d been recommended were already booked out.

I’m seeing Dr Melissa Sandercock (pronounced Sanderco) on 15th October. That’s only a bit over 3 weeks away so I guess it’ll be reassuring then when I finally see her. It’s all a bit overwhelming. My doctor today said there’s no issues with continuing the exercise I’m doing and I asked him about the risks of overheating and he said I’m only likely to overheat the baby if I do more than 3 hours of exercise in a sauna 😆

lol, ok he was exaggerating, but he’s made me feel better because it’s easy to get over paranoid and protective of baby 😉

What’s the deal? Tonight I’m bursting with energy, filled in pump and balance aswell tonight which resulted in me teaching 3 classes (combat being the last) and I hardly felt like I’d done much (mind you, I didn’t push the weights in pump). Well didn’t feel like 3 classes anyway.

But what’s up with the brain fade? Gah…..I seem to have lost coordination with the ginga’s and I just can’t sort out my left and right anymore! I’m filling in combat again tomorrow night, so I think I’m going to have to try and practise the move again. I dunno what it is, I’m still teaching most of 33, with just a few tracks mixed in. With track 1 and 6 I just can’t seem to figure out which arm to do first and which leg to step back first, and yet a few weeks ago I was teaching this release perfectly. It’s just all gone……..waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Not to worry, I INSIST on getting it right tomorrow night…….I’ll show this baby I can still think properly {{slams fist down on mouse pad]]

I’m now 6 weeks pregnant and some things in my body feel like they’re starting to settle down, but other things feel like they’re going haywire. I think I’ve put on 2kg of fluid just in the last 2 days which feels depressing, although other people assure me it’s not noticable, but I notice it!

I’ve starting telling people the news here. I was going to wait till I had at least seen the doctor tomorrow, but it was too hard to keep it a secret. I’ve been too tired and nauseous and people are noticing.

I’ve also written on my personal blog that I’ve registered for BODYVIVE training this weekend. Here I can explain part of the reason why. At some point during my pregnancy I’m going to have to cut down on the cardio classes like attack and combat, so I figure taking on Vive means I’ve got another program I can teach. This isn’t the only reason I’m doing it, as I’ve always been interested in it, but we haven’t had a Vive training in SA yet (that I know of) and also I couldn’t justify adding a 5th program at that point. Now because I know I’ll have to drop some it means I’ll have another program I can take on.

Not to mention it’ll also make me more able to pick up classes if (when) I do take off for overseas.

So……..another program for me…….yikes.

It’s around about now that the baby’s heart first starts beating, around 24 days after conception. Amazing to think something like this can happen so soon. I think the rapid progress that is occuring in the baby’s development at this stage definitely reflects how tired I feel!

I’ve been doing lots of reading and yes I’m taking my folic acid (actually, I’m on a pregnancy & breastfeeding multivitamin, which also has folic acid in it). This is to help prevent neural tube defects.

I haven’t been sleeping well the last few nights, so I’m really looking forward to getting a good sleep eventually. Let’s hope I can do so that I can hopefully have less nausea…….ugh.

The last couple of days I felt a bit upset and hormonal and I must say I feel much better now. But now I just feel flat and completely unmotivated. I guess cuz I feel like my life is at a standstill and I’ve gotten behind in just normal day to day organisation and it’s completely overwhelmed me. Just things like shopping, cleaning, phone calls I need to make, chorrey, updating website, horses, preparing house for sale, accounts, running my business………it seems like an effort just to take a multi-vitamin at the moment.

I guess the nausea isn’t helping and I’m not sleeping well. My quality of sleep has really gone downhill and I’m waking up in the night either thirsty, needing to go to the toilet, or with abdominal pains. I’m not alarmed by the stomach pains because from what I’ve read they appear to be normal and are just the uterus stretching. But they’re annoying and …….. well ……..painful and they keep me awake.

I hope my motivation will come back soon. I’m not normally like this and I’m not really sure how to snap myself out of it.

I’m so lucky to have such an amazing person to be in love with! Somehow Alex suspected something was up when I sent a fairly innocuous text message to him last night…….so he skipped his balance class and came home to chat with me.

Without knowing yet how to tell him I was pregnant, I rang him on his mobile.

It turned out to be an expensive evening……..and I got very little sleep (only got to bed at 4.30am). But it was worth it, and anyway, Alex deserved to know by phone rather than msn.

Alex ended up ringing me on his mobile aswell, so we both spent significant amounts on phone bills. Sigh……..if only we had a cheaper way, since voice over msn doesn’t seem to be working well.

My period is 2 days late and somehow deep inside I’ve had suspicions I might be pregnant. When I got the pregnancy test from the chemist though I suppose I really didn’t expect it to be positive. I did and I didn’t somehow at the same time.

Deep inside me I desperately wanted the test to be positive…….all week I’ve been thinking about babies and I seem to have gotten this desperate urge to have kids. I walked past a book store and I was looking at baby books and I nearly even bought a baby name book. Why? That was stupid I thought, I was a LONG way off having kids.

So I thought.

A faint line on the test appeared nearly immediately and I stood there shaking as it slowly got darker. All I could say was “oh my god”. At that stage I was quite excited although also knowing that now is a bad time to have kids. Still, all the hormones in my body seem to have been preparing me for this and while the timing is really bad, I know everything else is right. It’s with the right person. I feel proud to be carrying Alex’s baby.

The timing just sucks.

I also know there is no way I could abort this child without good reason (such as a medical reason). Not when everything else is right. The instinct, desire and hormones are just to strong to consider not having this child.

I never quite imagined this happening to me.

I’ve just noticed that I’m at the 29 day, meaning my period should have been due by now. I think I have a pretty strong hunch I might be pregnant, since something just doesn’t feel right and I’m NEVER late.

Somehow, I really want to be pregnant right now. I dunno, the urge is incredibly strong. I love Alex so much that I feel almost desperate to have his child. Ok ok, it would be really bad timing right now if I am pregnant, but still I feel so clucky right now.

If my period doesn’t come by tomorrow then I think I might just put my curiosity to rest and do a test straight away.

This blog was originally created as a surprise private blog for Alex when I installed this on this day, 30 August. My idea was to have access for the two of us only and to share our love for each other. But when the news came that I was pregnant with Alex’s baby I then decided to change the focus and turn this into a baby blog, to be shared initially with only close friends.

Later as I decide to share the news I can share this blog with more people. I’ll still share this blog with Alex, and we can both write about our feelings, apprehensions, excitement and all the other feelings that go with having a baby.