Anatomy Scan date

Today I made our big ultrasound date- Wednesday January 14. 45 minutes or so of bliss watching our bean bounce around and hopefully a lovely surprise of a boy or a girl! We're crossing our fingers baby isn't camera shy...

17 week update

Today we had our first Centering baby group with the midwives. It's a really neat concept, essentially you are assigned to a birth cohort, a group of couples all due the same month as you. You all go once a month to group classes with one of the midwives from the practice, with the opportunity to talk to other couples, hear their questions and experiences. During the class each couple also has an exam with the midwife individually.
Today's experience was good, and I'm hoping it's going to be great for us as first time parents. And we got to hear the heartbeat again, which was great. I was actually feeling the baby kick me a bit on my left side during the class, too!
So now we just need to make an appointment for our anatomy scan. Only a week or two left of mystery about baby yostee's gender...

Nudges!

Last night, the most amazing thing happened- I got two little nudges from baby!!
I have been wondering whether the little flutters I feel are the baby moving around, but so far it had been a little difficult to distinguish from intestinal rumblings. Last night, I was lying in bed late at night (debating about whether to drag myself to the bathroom yet again)... I rolled over onto my belly, and tap! tap! baby kicked me right where I rolled as if to say- HEY! You squished me! Of course I woke Eric up to tell him, not sure if he was concious enough to process, though.
How's that for my very own personal little Christmas miracle!

Snow

The last couple of days have been CRAZY snowy- more snow than I have ever seen in Seattle by far! Last night we got about 8 inches at our house, topped by a thin layer of freezing rain for the ultimate slippery roads. Today it started snowing about 3 and has been coming down ever since.

Jenny and Ward came over to do some sledding at gasworks park, which was fun. My snow pants would not even come close to buttoning, but they stayed up just fine unzipped :-). Above are a few pictures of our weekend.

Now it just remains to be seen whether Eric and I will make it down for a day or two before I have to work Christmas or not... trains are all booked, flights are canceled, and the roads are definitely not passable right now. We will see!

15 weeks

Now baby is as long as a navel orange, 4-5 inches crown to rump, and weighs several ounces. Now he or she is going to get down to the serious business of gaining size and weight, and soon I should be able to feel him or her move, which I can't wait for.
Our next appointment is Dec. 29, and at that point we should be able to make our anatomy scan appointment. I think it's fun to try to predict gender, but Eric doesn't want to guess. Does anyone else want to speculate??
I bought my first pair of maternity jeans this week, too- what a relief, I love elastic!
Not much else to report right now. I am looking forward to my birthday and Christmas celebrations in the next couple of weeks, I think we will be busy busy busy. Happy Holidays everyone!

10 fingers, 10 toes!

Today we had an ultrasound and got to see our baby- who really LOOKS like a baby now! It was really fun to see how wiggly he/she is and we got a couple beautiful pictures which you can see below. 10 fingers, 10 toes and all the guts on the inside (the nurse in me is celebrating!!!).
The unfortunate news is that I have a partial placenta previa (low lying placenta), which has been causing a few minor problems. Most likely I will just have to decrease my work hours for a while and wait for it to move to a better place.
That's not so bad in the grand scheme of things, just a little annoying.

14 week belly shot

Here it is... the emerging belly.

Thanksgiving recap

Well, it was a great Thanksgiving. I haven't been home to have mom's food for 3 years because I've worked it every year I've been at Children's, so I enjoyed it extra this year. It was also great to have all the siblings together and the crowd of grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins/friends at the table was really fun.
Baby-wise things continue to go well as we cruise past the 13 week mark. I feel fabulous! My tummy continues to pooch out more, which I will show you in a picture one of these days....