17 weeks

Wow, 17 weeks! Here I am for my weekly update!

I am finally really starting to show! I'm super stoked about this fact! WOOHOO!!

The shirt is from Forever 21, a few people have asked. I like to buy most of my "maternity" clothes there because it's cheap, cute, and they actually have LONG shirts (maybe they're meant to be dresses, but they work great as maternity shirts haha!)

Most days, I'm loving the hair aspect of pregnancy. It has actually grown quite a bit, it looks and feels healthy, and it's thick for the first time since I started coloring it! I don't think it's the prenatal vitamins as much as Viv. I took the vitamins for several months before I got pregnant and they didn't have much of an effect on my hair. 

Today was the first day that I didn't button my jeans. I used the old hair-tie through the button hole trick, then just wore a long undershirt so people couldn't even tell. I'm pretty happy that I've been able to go this long wearing normal pants. I'm super stoked for leggings and maternity pants though, they are way comfy!

Chris and I have a pretty good idea of what we want to do for the nursery, but we've decided to keep it a secret until it's finished. I haven't been so good at announcing things in a fun way (people always say, "Did you tell your parents that you were pregnant in a fun way?" ummm no, was I supposed to?!), so maybe this can be something we present in a fun and surprising way. 

I have been feeling Vivien move around just a little bit, it's not too constant yet, but I always get so happy when I feel a little push or bump from inside. My belly is always biggest in the morning, I'm always so shocked when I wake up and fell it, it always feels HUGE. I think it's because my stomach is empty and my bladder is full. AH I just love her. 

It was so cute, last night, my parents were talking about how excited they are for her to come. My mom said that it's a completely different feeling from when she had her own kids, and that she just loves her so much already. My dad said he can't remember the last time he was this excited for anything (and this is coming from the guy who does some pretty exciting things.) They'll be great little first time grandparents.

16 weeks

Belly is getting bigger! Yay!

16 weeks

Sorry, I always take the pic right before or after I go to the gym, hence the nice hair and no make up, whatever, we're focusing on the belly here :)

It's been another good week! When I lay down you can definitely see my belly poking out like crazy. Chris is cute, when he wakes up, he reaches over and puts his hand on my stomach to feel her everyday, what a cute little daddy! People at work have finally been commenting on being able to finally see it poking out! 

I can not BELIEVE how much hair I have. It's kind of ridiculous. I'm really grateful because it's looking really healthy for the first time in years, but DANG it's hard to do anything with! When I put it in a ponytail, it only wraps around 2 TIMES, WHAT?! It used to go around 4 times! And these boobs...wow, I'm so ready for them to slooow down (sorry, TMI again). 

One thing I am NOT loving about being pregnant is what it's doing to my skin. It really REALLY sucks. I look like a teenage boy going through puberty. I guess it's from all the hormones and crazy things going on in my body :( but ONCE AGAIN, anything for our little Viv. 

My mom and I went on a baby shopping spree the other day! We got her some cute jammies, some outfits, and my ma made 2 SUPER SOFT blankets; 1 receiving blanket, and 1 carseat blanket. I'll post pics soon, they are adorable!

I need some advise.

Now is the time when they say you need to start sleeping on your side (preferably the left side.) So, every night, I fall asleep on my left side with a pillow between my legs, BUT every morning I wake up on my back. It's starting to hurt my lower back. I have tried a couple things: last night I put a pillow behind me to keep me propped up, no good. A couple times I have put a bun or ponytail in before bed, so it'd be really uncomfortable to roll over to my back, but I wake up and my pony is out...tricky sleeper I am. 

So, if anyone has any advise on sleeping, please let me know!

15.5 weeks

Thank you EVERYONE for all your love, support, kind words, calls, texts, and messages! HOLY COW! It seems like everyone else is ALMOST as excited as us about baby Vivien, but not quite haha :)

Well, I'm about 15.5 weeks along by now. I'm not nearly as tired as I was a few weeks ago, I don't get sick when I'm hungry anymore, but I'm definitely feeling chubby. I hope this belly will just suddenly poke out one of these days. But for now, I think it just looks like I need to lay off the sauce and cookies. I thought my belly was looking round the other day, I ran upstairs to show my mom..."LOOK, I'm getting a belly!" She looks and says, "Umm I'm still not seeing anything..." DANG IT haha! Everyone says that it will literally happen overnight and to enjoy being able to move around without a basketball in front of me. I'm so impatient.

15 weeks

I mayyy or may not be pushing it out a bit to make it seem bigger (once again, so impatient)

Most people have gotten it right so far, but I already feel like that mean mom who spells her kids name's all weird and no one will ever spell their names right for the rest of their lives... The most common way is VIVIAN. Ugh, don't like it!

The 2nd most common is VIVIENNE. Pretty but excessive.

We just love VIVIEN, I think it's prefect!

So far, I have loved being pregnant, I really don't understand why some people hate it. Well, I guess it could have to do with the weight gain and barfing, but whatever, it's so worth it for a BABY! A couple weeks ago, I said I felt flutters, Dr. England said it could have been, he never argues with moms. But after that week, they kind of just stopped (I wasn't worried though). They are starting up again, which is a much more common time, most moms start feeling their baby anywhere from 16-20 weeks, and I'm almost to 16! AH it's such an awesome feeling. I can't wait to hold Viv and see her cute little feet and hands and arms...okay I'm just excited to see everything about her!

Allyssa went in for her anatomy ultrasound the other day (she is just a couple weeks ahead of me), it's so crazy because although the profile picture of Finn and the profile pic of Viv look a lot alike (like an ultrasound picture haha), you can already tell little differences in their faces. Babies are AMAZING little miracles, our bodies sure do incredible things!

Anyway, I could talk about babies forever, especially since SO many of my friends are pregnant. I just love the bond that it creates with other expecting mothers, because who doesn't want to talk about their growing baby?! Once again, thank you everyone for all your kind words and support. We love you all. I'll be checking in again soon.

Best day!

Yesterday, we had the AMAZING opportunity to go into Fetal Foto to see our baby and find out the gender. Ah I can't tell you how perfect it was, I HIGHLY recommend every single expecting mom and dad to go there!

So, through my whole pregnancy I just kept thinking that our baby was a girl. I would have dreams, always a girl. For some reason I could never picture it being a boy (not that a boy would be bad, not at all!) It was just this feeling from the very beginning. 

My mom, Chris, and I got to Fetal Foto, went into the little ultrasound room, the technician girl rubbed the warm goo on my belly, and there was our baby! SO much bigger than just 5 short weeks before! At this point, my mind totally switched and I was sure the baby was a BOY. She showed us the head, the arms, spine, legs, and bum. SO PRECIOUS! 

Already the CUTEST little profile I have ever seen! Look at that nose!

Our baby was being SO stubborn, for 45 full minutes those little legs were crossed! We poked, rubbed, moved, changed positions, but those little things would NOT uncross (it sure was cute though). The girl (I wish I could remember her name ah!) said that she had a pretty good idea what the gender was but she wanted to be sure. So, she went and got me a bottle of ice water, she said that usually does the trick. WALLA, she was right! For about 1 minute those legs stretched out, she snapped a few pictures and said... "It is definitely....a girl!"She said that there are 3 lines that indicate girl parts, and there was nothing dangling down. It was so funny, right after she took the pictures, those little legs went riiight back to being crossed. Must be HER favorite position. 

Here are her little crossed legs. SO CUTE HUH!?

IT'S A GIRL! My motherly intuition was right! I didn't think that she was going to let us have a peek, and that we'd just have to wait another month for our next ultrasound at the doctor to find out. But, I'm so grateful that the technician girl was so patient with us. We got to see a full hour of our baby! I think appointments are usually only 30 minutes there, so I feel extra lucky! We got a DVD of the whole ultrasound and cute pictures with descriptions. I think the whole thing was SUCH a good deal, once again, I HIGHLY recommend it!

We wanted to announce it in a fun way. So before the appointment, my mom and I wrapped this big box and planned on filling it with either pink or blue balloons. Then, to announce we would open the box and take pics of the balloons! I think it turned out pretty cute!

 

We are SO excited! We already have room colors picked out, I'm sure my grandma has already gone on a shopping spree. Yesterday just made everything so much more real! We don't have to call her "it" anymore, we can finally just call her Vivien! We love her so much already, I can't even explain. 

It was Chris' job to pick the middle name, we had 2 that we liked, but since I was so adamant about the name Vivien, I told Chris that he was in charge of picking from the 2 we had come up with. We walked out of Fetal Foto and he said, "Vivien Abigail!" So, it's pretty much official. VIVIEN ABIGAIL HIGLEY. She's so perfect!

2nd appointment

Yesterday, we were able to go in for our 2nd appointment, already! See, I told you time has been flying! It was much quicker and a billion times less stressful than the 1st time around. My blood pressure was pretty normal (even though I was still a bit nervous right when our nurse called my name). Dr. England came in, he told me that all of my blood work came back just fine, I have O+ blood (never knew!), all my iron, hemoglobin, etc levels are perfectly normal, no nasty diseases! Woohoo! He shook my hand and congratulated me for making it through the 1st trimester, "Isn't it great to not be sick anymore?!"...welllll "I haven't actually even been sick haha!" he told me I was one of the very few lucky ones! Then, he pulled out the Doppler. He rubbed the goo on my belly and said, "Usually it takes a minute to find the heart beat, so don't panic." he put it on my belly and immediately we heard the little heart, phew what a relief! Heavenly Father knows that I can't handle scares like that haha! The heart was beating at either 158 or 155, I keep forgetting which! But it was so awesome to go in and hear the heart, the closer I get to my appointments, the more worried I get that something is wrong, so it is very nice to be reassured that everything is going well!

4 days until we find out what we are having!!! Well, as long as our bean cooperates with us :) we can't wait! Every single person had guessed that it is a girl, not one boy guess, wow! We are going to be so happy either way, how could anyone be sad or disappointed about their baby?!