"Does this baby make me look fat?"

this post is long over due!

as everybody around us knows, we're expecting a little baby girl this spring.

yayy!!

we found out that i'm knocked up this summer (and this was no surprise), and were relieved to realize that it wasn't that hard -- i guess birth control works, when you use it! ;)
who could imagine that these two blue lines on a plastic stick would make people so happy?! the same day we had a bunch of friends for dinner, and it was really challenging not to drink wine and eat all the yummy sushi that i made... (actually, i did the home pregnancy test that morning mainly to check whether or not i can eat everything that evening...)



we waited for the doctor's confirmation before spreading the news, and of course everybody were very excited. i think my mom couldn't compose a coherent sentence for the entire duration of our phone call :) she had to save all her questions to the next day, after she calmed down a bit.
not telling our close friends was tricky, especially since they can easily notice that i'm suddenly the designated driver every single time we go anywhere ;)

the first few weeks were very tiring. i would crash and fall asleep at 9 or 10 in the evening, and had to be dragged out of bed in the morning. and 30 minutes after lunch, i was hungry again. i don't remember ever being as hungry as i was these first few weeks. it was indeed confusing... at a few weeks "old", the little baby is as big as a bean, but needs (and takes!) so much of my energy! at first i couldn't understand why, she's so tiny, but then we realized that i'm (or my body is) busy building a home. and that's a lot of work :)

luckily, i didn't suffer from morning sickness at all. i was a little nauseous if my stomach was empty, but that went away quickly when i learned to "listen to my body" and figured out when and how much to eat. (you could set a clock to my 4PM tummy need for an afternoon snack :)) i don't remember having any cravings (ben still didn't have to drive out in the storm at 3am to look for pickles, ice cream or Matsa)


our health insurance turned out to be surprisingly good, they cover pretty much everything. every time we go to the doctor (once a month), they take a bunch of my body fluids for tests. i understand that tests during pregnancies aren't as elaborate in the US as they are in Israel, but we ended up doing everything i read about in the book: genetic screening, nucal transparency, 1st and 2nd trimester screening, and an expanded ultrasound. maybe we just happen to be going to a good clinic (thanks O'brienim for the referral!).
we were advised by our doctor not to go through invasive tests, since the screening "score" put us in a very low risk for any genetic defects.

Now, after going through all the "interesting" doctor visits, all we have to do is wait a few more months and keep growing.

i took some pictures of me. some of them are trapped in my camera that was left in Cadillac this xmas, so there's a little gap in the timeline... sorry for that. and of course, some pictures of the little one :)

growing