still growing

I started taking belly pics last week. I have belly pics from my other two pregnancies too, much earlier than 9wks, but I just couldn't bring myself to start documenting things until I felt more comfortable with the pregnancy. This was taken about an hour after I woke up last Saturday morning. Most of my belly disappears over night, but within the last week or so, I wake up with a little bump. Then as I eat and drink (I drink TONS of water), it grows throughout the day.

Each week our appointments get a little more nerving. We should be feeling more relieved and excited with each passing week, but when you suffer through a missed miscarriage, you learn to fear the future. The days approaching our appointment we talk about how excited we are to see the baby again, but when we find ourselves in the waiting room, we are nerve struck immediately. After finding out solely through ultrasound that the last baby's heart stopped beating, we developed a learned behavior to fear each passing appointment. We have to stop our neurotic thoughts and remind ourselves of everything we've seen the past 5 weeks. The baby is noticeably bigger and definitely more human looking each week, the heart rate steadily climbed and has remained strong ever since and we've now seen it wiggling around 3 weeks in a row! I asked the nurse today when she feels that I'm in the clear. She said there's really two points they look at...8wks and 12wks. We have healthily passed the 8wk mark with flying colors. In about 2 weeks I will be at the 12wk mark. Today was supposed to be my last appointment with the fertility doctor, but after seeing how nervous we still are and how incredibly relieved we are once we see the baby's heart beating, she told us we could come back one more week if that would make us feel better. Of course we jumped all over that! So we will squeeze in before Thanksgiving next Wednesday afternoon. She told me to look at it as a graduation point. They wouldn't release me if they didn't feel that the pregnancy was going well enough. Always constantly reminding ourselves of things like that... Neurotic, I'm telling you!

Our June Bug!

Here's the stats from this week's appointment... The baby is almost 3cm long now...that's about an inch and a quarter. In a few days it will be about the size of a prune! Its measurements are back on track. If you remember last week, it gained 2 days. Just a little growth spurt! Its 9w5d this week, which is right on with our dates. I'll be 10 weeks on Saturday. It didn't want to move as much for us this week as it did last week. I had terrible indigestion and nausea last night and didn't sleep well so I thought maybe the baby was catching up on sleep. This week's heart rate was 163bpm, which is lower than last week, but still high. With the baby not moving as much today, that's still a good resting heart rate. The flicker of its heartbeat isn't as obvious anymore as more internal organs are developing inside our little one every day. The arms and legs have grown significantly since last week...all 4 limbs were very clear on the monitor. We were able to see a good shot of the brain today. If you look in the 2nd pic, the head is up and the dark circle at the top is the brain. So neat to know that it already has a mind of its own! The placenta was still really clear and the baby is taking up more and more space in there. Eventually it will start to stretch and take up that entire gestational sac (the black circle around the baby). If you look really closely in the last picture, you can see facial features! Most of the pic is the head...we were peeking at its brain when we got this shot. You can see eyes, nose and mouth...the baby was looking right at us in the pic. On the monitor we got a good frontal shot of the baby and could see the arms and legs on both sides of the body. Its so awesome to see it actually looking like a baby now!

It did wiggle for just a bit and I say this every time, but I am forever in awe of that image. It is so breath-taking watching it on the monitor. When I plugged in my thumb drive to edit the video, I giggled out loud after watching it. I will watch it over and over until we see it again in person. It doesn't just move its head and body now, it moves its arms and legs all around. Such a proud momma!