Ah, symptoms...

Pregnancy symptoms are a blessing and a curse in early pregnancy.  You crave them, worry when they're gone, and analyze each one.  Each pregnancy symptom is a sign that your baby is likely healthy and growing.  On the other hand, each symptom is also a trip to the bathroom, a cancellation of a meeting, an afternoon lying on the couch, or an extra layer of cover up on your face.
In the end, I've decided thus far that every symptom is worth the price of inconvenience and discomfort for my baby's sake.  I've basically come to grips with the fact that my body is not my own for the next 7 months...I'm still allowed to use it and be a part of it, but its primary purpose is baby growing.  The hormones that cause my annoying symptoms also cause my baby's growth, so that's fair to me.

Tricks I've learned for some of them:

• Acne: Load up on your concealer and cover up-I've discovered all new techniques and layers for concealer by necessity. They say salicylic acid is probably ok to use while pregnant-I decided to take the chance on that one. For rash-like breakouts, I got the great tip from my friend Quincy to use cortisone cream for a couple days.  Eventually, I had to visit my dermatologist and beg for help, and he gave me some erythamyacin which helped (safer during pregnancy than topicals like benzyol peroxide)
• Bloating/constipation: Hello, Miralax.  Or, you could get the flu like I did, take a bunch of Tylenol, and then have the opposite problem....
• Diarrhea: Drinking TONS of water.  Like, almost more water than I can stand.
• Fatigue/tiredness:  Sleep 10+ hours a night and lay on the couch as much as possible.  So, that's not really a solution, but it's all that you wanna do in those times.
• Nausea: I have yet to figure out how to deal with this one well.  For a few weeks, I had a ton of nausea that just hangs out all day (no puking) which can be debilitating.  Then it moved into classic morning sickness, which clock-like pukes every day.  Sometimes it feels good to get it out, but others not.  Anyway, no fun. My friend Julia suggested mint tea, which has helped a couple times, and the other staples work at times,  (saltines, sprite, ginger ale, minty gum, potato chips, gatorade, eating before getting out of bed, etc) but many times, there's just no getting around it.

Other fun symptoms:

• Complete inability to concentrate on more than one thing.  I am a proud super-multi-tasker, and this baby has rendered me nearly useless at moments.
• Sounding like an idiot occasionally by saying ditzy/mindless comments (although these moments are pretty entertaining for my husband).  For you critics out there, I most definitely am blaming this on the pregnancy, whether or not you believe me. :)

BEST part of pregnancy symptoms=having supportive friends and family who give you care and sympathy when you're feeling your worst.  Most of all, having the world's most amazing husband who takes such good care of me when I feel rotten!

Breaking the news!

Once we got back from Italy, we had to find the perfect way to share our baby joy with the people we love most.  Getting to tell them our most exciting news was very fun.  We worked hard to tell as many people in person as possible and loved to have them share in our excitement!  A few highlights...

We staged a family dinner at my parents with the excuse for the get together being that we wanted to see our baby niece Sienna and little nephew Brayden (which is quite true, since I'm in love with those two and we hadn't seen baby Sienna since right after she was born).  Right before dinner, we mentioned that we had gifts for Brayden & Sienna.  As we handed out the gifts one by one, my sister Jill started exclaiming "What does that mean??!  What does that mean!!!!???", with no one responding as Jacob first gave Brayden a shirt reading "Cousin #1" and Sienna a onesie that said "Cousin #2".  When Jill could barely stand it anymore, I stood up and revealed my own t-shirt that read "Cousin #3" on my stomach.  Mom & Dad, Jill & Brett, and Papa & Grandma erupted into cheers at this point.  It was a very fun 'reveal' moment!

Showing off our matching shirts: Cousin #1, Cousin #2, and Cousin #3 in my belly!

So excited to give my niece and nephew a 1st cousin!

Sienna got tired from TOO MANY pictures :)

A couple days later, we had our Washburn family over for dinner, telling them we wanted to share our pictures from Italy (also true).  We did, indeed, show all the highlights from the many photos of our trip, but also then had another surprise right before dinner.  My mother-in-law, Jan, has asked us to pick up a Starbucks souvenir mug in Italy to add to her collection (the ones with the city names on them).  However, we couldn't find a Starbucks anywhere in the entire country, so we had gotten her a souvenir mug from the Cinque Terre.  She was thrilled when we handed this to her, not realizing a bigger thrill was waiting inside the mug.  We had put a baby figurine and our first ultrasound pictures in the mug.  Everyone saw it as she opened it and was so excited.  Jonnie, my brother-in-law, filmed the whole thing secretly because we had let him in on the secret a couple days prior.

Another favorite 'reveal' was when we told our good friends the Stockmans and the Lofstroms.  Lindsay Lofstrom and I made a pact a while back that as soon as I get pregnant, she would too.  Because of this, she had been asking me nearly every time we're together if I was pregnant.  When we saw everyone at Scott Stockman's (championship-winning!) baseball game after getting back from Italy, I was certain Lindsay would ask right away...and for once, she didn't.  Finally I said "Lindsay, aren't you going to ask?" and she replied "oh, yeah, are you pregnant?" and I casually responded "yes".  My casual response combined with Lindsay's fear that she was then 'up to bat' for baby making caused her and Alicia Stockman to be convinced that I was lying for a good 20 minutes (despite Jacob backing me up, me telling her details about my doctor visit, due date, etc.).  Finally, she believed me, then spent the next 10 minutes or so feeling guilty for calling my poor pregnant self a liar.  It was great entertainment nonetheless to have them be certain we were tricking them-who knew we had such a reputation for being tricksters??
Here's the group (with the champion baseball player) on the night we told them all:

Prego in the land of 'Prego'

On the Island of Capri at 4 and a half weeks along!

I spent almost 3 weeks of my first trimester in Italy...

Pros:

• Made it easy to keep the pregnancy a secret for the first few weeks
• Got to eat out every meal
• Got to tell anyone I met that I was pregnant at no risk of ruining the surprise back home. However, no one seemed to ask if I was (weird), so no one really knew...There was one time on the airplane when the flight attendant asked if I was pregnant.  I got so nervous wondering how she knew since this was such a secret and thought about lying until she gave a glance at the book I was reading: "What to Expect When You're Expecting" and then I relaxed and said yes.  She was suddenly the first person besides me and Jacob to know I was pregnant, a huge deal!  Alas, she had no idea the magnitude of the moment as she continued down the aisle asking people to buckle their seat belts.
• Jacob and I were able to take time to digest and believe that I was actually pregnant and talk about it all day every day as we spent tons of time together
• I was in Italy, that's just sweet whether or not you're pregnant!

Cons:

• Italian wine & cheese=off-limits to pregnant ladies :(  I actually looked up how to say 'pasteurized' in Italian so I could ask if the cheese was pasteurized.  In the end, it didn't get me that far.  Most of the time when I asked and they said "yeah, sure" I didn't quite believe that they understood what I was asking, so I steered clear anyway.
• Pasta, pizza (only when the cheese was cooked enough to be bubbling), and bread are a perfect recipe for bloating early in pregnancy.  Thankfully, this was somewhat welcome, as I was desperate to experience pregnancy symptoms and felt engorged yet excited after every meal to be convinced that I, indeed, must be pregnant to be so bloated.
• Biggest con=having unexpected spotting while across the globe from your doctor and without any family or friends knowing you are pregnant.  It was a very scary night in Venice when this happened, only solved by crying until I couldn't do anything but sleep and then get the doctor's office reassuring email the next day.  Thank the Lord that this was at the end of our trip!

Before You Know It...

Jacob and I decided that after our epic trip to Italy we would be open and up for a baby to come.  This loosely translated into us "not trying not to" as of September.  However, with the hyper-fertile genes that women in my family seem to carry, this meant that we were pregnant even before we left on the trip!
Taking the pregnancy test was a fun experience.  I had bought a pack of 100 pregnancy test online at Amazon recently (Why not?? It was only $10 for 100, and I love a good deal) so I had been taking a test every day or two, just for fun.
One of those days, after taking another test, I seemed to notice a very faint second line-or at least I thought I did.  I pulled Jacob in the bathroom to look at it, and we both squinted and turned our heads in many funny angles trying to decipher whether or not there was truly a second pink line.  We both felt somewhat confident that our brains were playing tricks on us, but we were also just slightly more confident that we were indeed seeing double when it came to those pink lines.
We waited dramatically until the night of Jacob's birthday to spring for a decent pregnancy test at the drug store.  We went for the one that took out the guesswork-it either said "Pregnant" or "Not Pregnant"-no squinting needed.
I took the test and prepared to wait the tense 3 minutes for the results.  About 10 seconds later, as Jacob carried the test stick to the other room for us to sit anxiously together, he said "Does it usually have 'Pregnant' show up first and then the 'Not' show up later?"  I decided that would be far too cruel and unusual punishment, and ran over to inspect.  There it was: "Pregnant".  With that moment, we looked at each other with the realization that our lives had just changed forever, in a good way (as our friend Robert would say).

That's so cliche

So I have to confess-here I am, another Mama-To-Be, starting a blog.  I feel like it's so cliche to do such a thing, but I've decided I'm ok with it.  You see, I have a minor attitude about wanting to be original and creative, rather than copy other's ideas.  Starting a blog now that I'm pregnant goes directly against that.  However, I have enough friends that I've seen start a blog when they start motherhood, and I love these blogs!  I find them to be beautiful diaries of baby's beginnings and the family's growth.  So, while I provide the disclaimer of not wanting to be cliche, I fully recognize the value of a baby blog and therefore dive in head first.  Here I go!