Whoa... There's A BABY In There!

I found out back in January that I was pregnant.  We were excited and happy about this, but really it was just two lines on a paper stick at that point.

A few weeks later we went in for a 'pregnancy confirmation' appointment, and the ultrasound tech showed us a tiny flickery blob on a screen and told us it was a baby.  Um, let's just say we took her word for it.

Since then I've had some physical changes, but honestly it's felt more like having a mild illness that made me nauseous and then started to make my back hurt rather than being pregnant.

Intellectually we knew I was pregnant - I was going to prenatal appointments and taking vitamins and all that good stuff - but emotionally it hadn't quite sunk in.  It just seemed more like the IDEA of a baby than the REALITY of one.

Over the last week or two I've felt a few small flutters, but they would come and go so quickly that it was hard to pinpoint that any particular one was the baby.  It was more like taken all together, the odds were that some of the little flutters had to be the baby moving.

But.... now that I'm at week 18 suddenly things have been changing.

I'm starting to show (although it looks more like a small beer belly than a baby so far), and I've felt the baby move for real.  Over the weekend I was laying in bed one morning, just enjoying the fact that it was the weekend and I didn't have anything pressing to do, when suddenly I felt several movements that was clearly the baby doing something in there.

Not only that but we have an appointment this Wednesday to find out the gender of the baby.  We have gender-specific names all picked out so once we know if it's a boy or a girl, we can start calling the baby by name!

Feeling the baby move and knowing we're about to find out the gender has really brought the reality of the baby home to me.  Emotionally I've finally reached that point where it seems 'real'... Jeez, there really IS something in there!

It's a little daunting, but mostly it's really really exciting.  I can't wait to meet him or her for the first time!