17 Weeks and Counting!

Each Saturday morning, I wake up excited to mark a new week in my pregnancy. This Saturday, we officially made it to 17 weeks. At this point, our little one is about the size of an onion (last week was an avocado…gotta love the fruit/veggie comparisons!). He (I’m about 95% sure it’s a boy, lol) can hear sounds now, which is just amazing. I am not yet feeling him move, but I don’t really expect to for a few more weeks still. It’s amazing how much growth and development has already happened in just the past 4 months- our little one already has fingernails, hair throughout his body, and is starting to accumulate fat around his body. He’s kicking his legs and stretching his arms and looks, well, like a baby! Just really, really tiny J .

Part of my journey through this pregnancy is maintaining a lot of faith and hope that our little one is healthy and that at the end of this pregnancy, we will become parents for the first time. At times, I do find myself becoming anxious as the fear and worry begins to creep in. To help me have some peace of mind, I ordered a home Doppler to listen to baby’s heartbeat. It arrived last week, and although it’s not easy to find since he‘s still so little, I have been able to hear his heartbeat at home on a couple of occasions. It’s definitely reassuring for me, though I am trying not to listen too much. It is tempting to listen daily, but I will probably only listen once every week or two, whenever I feel overly stressed. I can’t let it become an obsession, which would be easy to do! The next month or so should be really exciting as everything becomes more "real." Over the next month and a half, we will be creating a baby registry, finding out if we are having a boy or girl (um, basically confirming that it's a boy, lol), start feeling the baby move, and getting to see much of our family with the holiday season. The next 6 weeks should be a pretty incredible time!