finally!

well... i think it's time to write about my latest news. now that we've told our families, close friends, next church community and facebook... it's time to share about our baby.

brendan and i are having a baby! the due date is july 14. i'm currently in my 14th week and have started feeling somewhat normal again. i was pretty nauseous for the second and third month, and between boxing day and this past friday i was vomiting quite frequently. i'd caught a cold/flu, so my already sensitive gag-reflex was off the charts with all my coughing. but i haven't thrown up in 3 days, so i take this as a good sign. i've been hearing a lot of horror stories of women throwing up for many many months. just yesterday, a friend told me she threw up every day for seven months! ugh! what a nightmare! i'm thankful i didn't have it as bad as kate middleton :p

i've noticed that after i tell people the news, they usually look to my belly to find signs of a bump. but i'm not really showing yet. in my underwear it looks to me that around my belly button i'm jutting out further. and in my clothes i look thick around the middle. but neither seem like a baby bump, but rather that i've put on some weight. the baby is still down low, which just confirms my feeling that my jutting out tummy is just fat, but i've been told it's not.

another thing i've noticed is that the same few questions come up once we get past the due date and how far along we are. so let me take some time to address those...

1) were you trying? to that i always say "well, kind of". we took a "let's just see what happens" approach.

2) were you trying long? no, not really, about a month and a half.

3) how long have you known? well, i was pretty sure i was pregnant before my missed period and we had to wait the 2 weeks to take a test. we talked about it and decided that we wanted to tell our families when they were all together for christmas. and since we couldn't tell next til after we told our family, we decided to just wait til the new year before making it public. that gave us 2 months to process this change and talk together about how we were feeling. it's a pretty big deal and we cherished having it just to ourselves for a little while. although, i did tell rach, jill and mianh (my midwives/birth counsel). and muirgy. muirgy overheard me talking with rach.

4) a variety of questions about afterwards... i'm going to return to work after my year mat leave. while we have no clue what life will be like in 18 months, i feel it's best for me to return to work to keep my options open for down the road. finding my job in the kingston market was very difficult and in the long term i think i'll be grateful to have held on to the job i have. besides that, i'm the primary earner in our home - although, that might change after brendan graduates this spring. ideally, i'd like to work a 4 day week, but i haven't looked into that yet. we'll need some kind of childcare. i'd love a home daycare, but don't really know how to find a good one. if you know of anyone or hear of anyone, please let me know. in the meantime, we're on the waiting list for the daycare up the street from our house, which coincidentally our niece audrey goes to.

5) do you have room for a baby/what will you do for a nursery? well, when we were considering our house, i gave some thought to how it might work when we someday have kids. for the first couple of years, we'll share our room with baby, there's space. i've also developed an idea for a play area that will double as a play-things storage area (with shelves and buckets, etc). we're going to keep baby gear to a minimum, which is good, it will help keep things simple. this is partly out of necessity, and partly a life-style choice. it seems to me that a lot of 'essentials' (like a change table, or a bathtub) are really more of 'nice to haves'. i dunno, women have babies all over the world and they do without all the 'stuff'. i rewatched the movie 'babies' recently, and smiled seeing the other cultures.

6) did you get a midwife/who's your midwife? our midwives are mico and heather. we met with mico just before christmas and we really like her. b felt in awe of her as a midwife and was afraid of saying something stupid in front of her out of nervous admiration. the highlight of the visit was hearing the baby's heartbeat!! it was awesome! and it felt good to know for sure that there really IS a little baby growing inside me.

7) are you going to find out the sex? yes. we gave it some thought, and went back and forth. i ended up deciding that i was ok either way, and we'd do whatever brendan decided. for a little while he didn't want to know, but has since decided that he's like whatever information is available to help prepare us for this little person. i believe we'll have our ultrasound at the end of feb. we probably won't make that super public, but tell people if they ask.

8) are you going to share the name you've picked? nope. we're going to keep that a secret til the big day :)

are there any other questions?

i've got to say, there's a lot about western baby culture that freaks me out and i'm going to try my best to navigate this stage while staying in line with our values. as i mentioned last week, i want to be authentic in 2013 and not become something i'm not. i know that i'll change in unexpected ways, but i'm hoping to change into the mom-version of me, and not someone else entirely. i don't think i'll bother learning all the proper lingo for things. if i call it an "eating chair" instead of a "high chair", i'm ok with that.

this week baby grows to the size of a large shrimp!

i'm ready to go anywhere, i'm ready for to fade
into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
i promise to go under it.