Baby Arnold

As many of you already know...Brant and I are expecting our first little one September 15th, 2010!!! We are now 12 weeks and 2 days! We found out at 12:45 am on January 7th and have been SO excited ever since. We have chosen to go to a Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM) instead of an OB/GYN and will be delivering at The Birth and Women's Health Center here in Tucson. After going through our L&D rotation in nursing school, I knew exactly what I wanted my pregnancy and childbirth experience to be. I do not feel that I am sick and need a Dr., so a midwife was really the best choice for us. Brant was a little leery at first and really wanted me to be in a hospital. You can deliver at the hospital (TMC) with a midwife but I felt I would be at a much greater risk of having unnecessary interventions done. Now that we have met two out of the five midwives in the practice...Brant feels much more comfortable and is very excited! We chose to wait and announce it to the world mostly because I know too much for my own good and was worried, LOL! But now that we have seen the baby and heard the heartbeat I feel a lot better!
At our first appt. we were able to get a quick peek of the baby on an ultrasound. They normally don't do this but because it was too early (7w 5d) for a heartbeat to be heard through the doppler, she did a quick scan for us. I cried, LOL! The baby was so tiny but you could see the umbilical cord and our little one just floating around. At this appt. (12w 2d) we were able to hear the heartbeat just for a quick second. She said it was definitely there and sounded good! The baby is still low and was apparently hiding out behind my artery so it was a little tough, LOL! It is truly amazing to know something so tiny is actually growing inside of me :-)! Brant is handling everything so well and has been pretty amazing I must say! He has been doing so much around the house (especially now that I'm working) and gets so excited even over the little things. Since 4 weeks he has been rubbing lotion on my belly...not sure if he's being sweet or just trying to make sure I don't get stretch marks, LOL!
As far as how I have felt...not too bad! I had all day nausea starting just before 6 weeks and lasted until 9 weeks. I will take nausea over throwing up any day. I haven't been too tired...during the time when I would have been most exhausted I was sitting around at home, LOL, so I didn't really notice. My body has actually been surprising me. I thought for sure by now I would be completely showing and need my maternity clothes, LOL! But some how I actually lost about 7 lbs from the nausea. I now have gained almost 2 lbs back which the midwives are very happy about. They don't really like to see wt loss especially when you didn't start out over wt to begin with. While my belly is just starting to show I don't really need my maternity clothes just yet but they are just so darn comfortable that I wear them when I can HAHA!
Being pg at work is actually going quite well. My manager took the news very well and I can have 3 months off if I want! There are 5 of us pg right now so she deals with this a lot, LOL! My preceptor just came back from maternity leave so she knows exactly what I am going through.

Well enough of my blabbing...here are some pics!

The night we found out!

Second test...I took about 6 or 7, LOL!

4 weeks

5 weeks

6 weeks

7 weeks

8 weeks

9 weeks

10 weeks

11 weeks

12 weeks