Baby and the Bump: Pregnancy updates, recaps, and all my baby bump pictures thus far

I had so many grand ideas of documenting pregnancy before I got pregnant.  Then I got pregnant and all of those plans seemed to fizzle.  The idea of taking a picture of my belly every week in a cute outfit.  Possibly with a good quality camera to try and get cute photos.  Yeah...none of those things happened.  I can blame being sick and nauseaus the first 16 weeks but really...I've just been lazy.  I'd say that I wanted to wait until I had a day when I did my hair and my make-up and wore a cute outfit.  Well let me tell you one thing this pregnancy has made me realize.  Contacts, make-up, doing your hair...they're all overratted.  Haha :-)  Although I am trying a lot harder now to put in an effort of documenting this pregnancy I came to the hard realization that I've just got to take pictures.  I have to capture the moments whether my hair is done or not.  So here we go; a big post of baby pictures throughout my pregnancy so far.  Quality of pictures...eh. But the memories associated with them (aka my wonderful growing child) priceless :-)

First ultrasound: Almost 10 weeks
Highlight of this ultrasound: Our baby was moving her hand as if waving to us :-D

This is me at about 18 weeks I think-maybe 20weeks.  I felt like I was showing a ton at 12 weeks but it was actually just a lot of bloating/water retention/food babies.  This was when I really felt like my belly was growing and that it was legit.

20 week baby ultra sound-We had to reschedule so I was actually 21 weeks. June 27th.
This ultrasound was really neat.  We had no idea what the ultra-sound tech was looking at the majority of the time, but when we did-it was great.  When we first got in there the tech said that our baby was breech (I don't know if that makes a difference for ultra-sounds or not) and that her legs were crossed.  By that point in my pregnancy I was just so anxious to make sure she were healthy and growing well that I didn't care if it was a boy or girl. In fact, the couple days leading up to the ultra sound I was really starting to think I had a little boy in there.  When the technician said how her legs were crossed I thought "that's ok baby-I just want to know you're healthy".  Then the next thing I know, the tech randomly said "It's a girl!"  I didn't know what he had seen to tell it was a girl-he said he could see the 3 lines so he was about 95% positive it was a girl.  I told him we'd blame him if that 5% happened after buying all girl stuff.  Luckily though, we have names picked out for a little boy or girl-so if we are surprised come November-it'll be ok.  (I'll just have to return a lot of clothes).

So here are some of the ultrasound pictures from this ultrasound.  It was an outside the belly one where as my first ultra-sound was trans-vaginal.  I think the first one was more clear-but since my baby was a lot bigger this ultrasound we were still able to see a lot. 

In the first shot she is all curled up with her knees going to her face. And her spine does not make her look like a scorpion-seriously...I haven't really gotten any mean/inconsiderate comments yet (I know they'll happen so I'm trying to prepare), but the first mean thing I've gotten was I was told my baby looked like a scorpion. Who says your baby looks like a scorpion?! That's so much creepier than a monkey, alien (all not nice things to say) etc...Word of advice-don't ever tell someone their child looks like a scorpion even if they're family (and even if you think it's true)...it's just not very nice. Ever. To say that about someone's baby or to say that about anyone. Exception: someone is dressed up as a Scorpion for Halloween. (Also-person who said this-I forgive you and love you.)

Highlight of this ultrasound-seeing our sweet baby yawn like 3 times in a row-it was really cute :-)

 Again: when I found out I was pregnant I had all of these grand plans of doing a cute picture belly blog sequence.  You know the ones-they wear the same cute shirt or dress the whole 9 months and document their belly/baby's growth. I even went out and bought a cute striped top to do the pictures in (below).  I wanted to take the pictures in front of a blank background.

This was the closest I got. 22 weeks here. 

 

I can't remember when I took these pictures-somewhere between 20-24 weeks.

It was at about 22 weeks that my belly just totally "popped" out and was really noticeable.

Again-please don't judge me for the horrible quality of my pictures-I fantasize of one day knowing how to take a good photo, but alas...it is a fantasy.  

These were at 24 weeks

This is kind of funny/sad.  But although my wedding band and engagement ring still fit, when I wake up in the mornings my fingers are always really swollen.  I thought I'd switch rings before I had to get my other ones cut off.  So here is my temporary ring that I'm wearing until after baby girl comes.  My older sister Emma gave me this ring when she was getting married to Steve.  A friend from college had given it to her because he didn't want to pawn it after his girlfriend or fiancee broke up with him, so he just gave it to Emma as a sign of friendship.  I think she gave it to me because she said she didn't want anything from other men or something before she married Steve-is that right? I don't know if that's right but it sounds good to me.  Either way, I'm ok having it.  It's just a cute band with a small row of diamonds and it is working great until my fingers aren't in jeopardy of swelling a ton anymore.

25 weeks. Tim took these pictures for me after we went to Tucanos for his birthday dinner.  I am a little over 25 weeks here.  That was a big belly day-I blame it on the yummy Tucanos food baby that is cushioning my real baby :-)

26 weeks. I'm a little over 26 weeks here.  There's an office at my work that has a wall that's a mirror (kind of bizarre). I decided to go take advantage of that though and took a couple quick pictures.

Those are all the pictures I have so far.  Sorry I've kept a lot of you waiting to see my progress. I'm going to be in my 3rd trimester on Thursday and I am hoping to document things better these last couple months. In the meantime, I am doing great. Baby is doing great. Life is great. And we're very happy :-D

Highlight: Last night I saw my belly move where my baby was kicking-it was SO cool!