12 Weeks

I am 12 weeks today and I am going tomorrow at 3:20 PM for my 12 week appointment. My doctor knows how comforting it is for me to see the baby, so she setup an ultrasound for this appointment too! Thanks to my beloved doppler, I'm finally excited about an appointment! I'm still nervous of course, but at least I can finally go into an appointment knowing the baby is alive (or was before I left for work) instead of assumng the worst and that I'm going to see a dead baby on the monitor again. I will say that the one down side to having my doppler right now is that the baby is going through changes in heart rate. Supposedly babies heart rates peak at about 180 at week 9 and then slowly fall into the 120-160 BPM category around week 12. So with that in mind, I kind of freak myself out when the rate is too high or is getting low. Silly I'm sure, but there's always going to be something that freaks me out I guess. I bet it doesn't help that I check it before I leave for work in the morning (before I've eaten or had anything to drink) and then check it again as soon as I get home from work (after I've eaten). In the morning it's been around 162-165 BPM and then in the evenings it's at about 172-175. Maybe it has to do with eating or my heart rate or something. I'll be sure and ask my doctor tomorrow. In fact, now that I'm getting a little more confident that this baby might stick around a while...I've got a long list of questions to ask her.

The following week, on June 10th I'm scheduled for an appointment with the high risk doctor to get a 12 week NT scan. I googled what that is and it made me nervous. As I'm sure you can agree, sometimes knowing too much is a bad thing. I learned what the measurements and all that are *supposed* to look like and now I'll be a nervous wreck trying to see for myself if I think there's something wrong. The scan is supposed to screen for Downs Syndrome, Trisomy 13 & 18, etc. I really hope baby is healthy!!! A good thing about the scan is that there is a chance I could find out the gender! Wouldn't that be so freaking exciting?!!??! I can't wait!

If I do find out the gender...then I will tell my parents. If not, we're still playing it by ear. Something crazy happened this weekend: My parents hosted our family reunion at their house and I had bought some shorts and a shirt to wear from Old Navy. That morning I put the shirt on and *BAM* I'm showing. It was the weirdest thing. I had to change shirts because even my hubby agreed that it was kind of obvious. I'm not even sure how well the shirt I wore instead hid it but no one asked me anything so that's fine by me. I really hadn't been showing prior to Saturday. I think just recently I finally gained like 1.5-2 lbs if that because over the past month or so my stomach would get very upset after I ate so I wasn't gaining weight and for a couple of weeks I was actually losing weight. I'm excited to start showing because I like being pregnant and having the belly but I just don't want everyone at work to notice yet. I don't need all those vultures hounding me.

I'll try to post tomorrow after my appointment. If you don't mind, keep praying for me...we all know how things can look promising and then come crashing down.