12 weeks.

Wow. I never thought I’d make it to 12 weeks! We had our doctor’s appointment this morning, and everything went great. We heard the heartbeat for the first time, which was the most beautiful sound at 150 beats per minute. We opted out of getting the nuchal translucency scan/first trimester screening, for reasons I’ll go into in another post, and our doctor was very supportive of our decision. Overall I feel really good about things, so now we get to let the cat out of the bag – yikes!

At 12 weeks…

Baby now has reflexes — if I poke my belly, my baby will wiggle in response, even though I can’t feel it yet. (resisting the urge to pester my son/daughter…) He/she can also make fists, curl toes, squint and grimace. Also, the intestines, which have been too large for its belly and living partially in the umbilical cord, will start migrating to the abdomen this week. Kidneys will also start producing urine. Baby is about the size of a small plum this week.

Mama should be starting to feel better, according to most books and websites. Um, yeah right. Morning sickness has gotten worse, actually. I still get frequent headaches, and my allergies are out of control too. I think some of the bloat from early pregnancy may be subsiding, though I still have a small hard raised portion in my lower abdomen, and a bit of a squishy belly/spare tire thing going on above that, which I’m assuming is my guts getting pushed out of the way by my growing ute, which is about the size of a small melon already. Definitely just look like I had too many cheeseburgers, even though I haven’t seen any change on the scale yet.

I feel like I can finally breathe a little. I am still scared of something going wrong, but I know the odds are in our favor at this point, and now that we’re starting to tell people, it feels real, like this might actually happen! We told D’s dad today, we’ll tell his mom tomorrow night at dinner, and I’ll tell work tomorrow morning – yikes! I’m super nervous about that part!

Image via alphamom.com