& it’s a BOY!!!!!! we’re expecting our first little baby later this year! oct. 1 to be precise but with my birthday on sept. 28 and with my luck i will turn 33 and go into labor all in one day, ha!
we’ve been trying to get pregnant since our trip to bali last may. i’ll never forget the afternoon we decided it was time to start our family. we had been talking about when would be the “right time” and all of a sudden it hit us…we were sitting in a cafe in seminyak called ‘the fat turtle‘ and we were casually having brunch and an austrailian couple about our age next to us had the cutest kids, one about 2 or 3 and one in a stroller sleeping and i had an out-of-body experience where i envisioned our future life like that was us with our two kids still traveling the world & we started talking about how having kids should not stop us from adventuring or traveling, just enrich our lives and bring us joy, so it was that day i stopped taking my birth control pills. i’d been taking them daily since high school so wasn’t sure how long it would take for them to wash out of my system and my ovulation cycle to normalize back out, but here we are not even a year later and i’m growing a life inside of me! it still is so crazy saying that & thinking there’s a heartbeat in my belly that’s beyond mine.
this journey so far has been a rollercoaster. i was in shock and disbelief at first. i’ll never forget taking a pregnancy test because my period was late and seeing two pink lines, the test clearly says that if you see two lines (even if the second line is faint it means positive) but i took another two tests, ya know…. just to be sure. after feeling confident in my tests i ran into the kitchen and told dek who squeezed me and then i snapped this pic to my sister:
i wasn’t feeling any symptoms when i found out i was pregnant, i think because i found out so early, i was literally a few days late for my first missed period so i was probably only about 5 weeks preggers at this point. we went to dinner with my mom that weekend and i told her by giving her a card that said “baby” on the front and i wrote “in the oven” on the inside and even though i told her not to tell anyone, she was so excited she told the waitress at dinner! debbie was (& still is!) so full of excitement and joy, it’s hard to get mad at her. i love my mom so much! at around 7 weeks was when i started to feel nauseous all the time, especially when i would first wake up in the morning and it would last until mid-afternoon. when i saw my doctor a week later she recommended eating more small meals throughout the day and keeping things like crackers by the bed so i could nibble before even getting up. i found things like gatorade, goldfish & fruit helped me, but really all i was “craving” were carbs and sweets. i wanted nothing to do with healthy food and some things (& smells!) like eggs were such a turnoff. i wasn’t sure how to go about telling my friends and especially work, but i knew i wanted to wait at least until i saw a doctor to quadruple confirm and also hear that all was good with the little baby & i’m glad i did because seeing a sonogram with a little baby bump growing inside me made it so, so real.
after my first doctor visit at around 8 weeks, i invited my closet girlfriends & sister over for a mimosa brunch because i wanted to tell them in person and hug their necks, which is exactly how it went down. my bestie molly knew before coming over because she guessed! she’s a mind-reader and when i said i wanted to host a brunch she texted me “are you pregnant?” and i was like “how the hell does she even know?!?!” but it worked out because she was able to secretly film everyone’s reaction, which i still tear up at watching & am thankful it’s on video.
i’m now at the 15-week mark and have passed the nausea phase and am feeling more energized and good! we found out and revealed the gender to our work and family & friends, so it’s all becoming even more real than before if that’s even possible. thinking of what’s in me as a boy is crazy. i have to admit that i was disappointed to find out it’s a boy as i really wanted a girl. i somehow envisioned myself with a girl and felt like that was what i was growing, but i was wrong! that feeling of disappointment has since passed, i really just want a healthy baby, but it was like a small dream was crushed when we got the bloodwork results from week 12 doctor visit and opened it together at our kitchen island & scrolled down to find “male.” i know i will love this baby unconditionally, but i’m just being honest. i’ve now formed a small belly pooch which to me is this awkward in-between of baby bump and food baby, but dekel kisses it every morning and my friends at work touch my belly and get excited for me and this compounds the joy inside. i’m happy to have shared my secret and now that it’s out in the open i’m excited to connect and learn from other moms and future-moms. this is just a whole new chapter in the book of life we have turned and it’s really exciting, scary, thrilling, crazy, emotional and fun at the same time.
thanks for reading!
