chiropractor.

I am starting my 19th week today (18 weeks, 0 days as of 12/30) -- baby is the size of a sweet potato. I'm really starting to not be able to wear my pants anymore; luckily, my birthday is Sunday, and I am getting some expandable-waist maternity pants as my gift from the 'rents so I can stop walking around with my jeans unbuttoned (classy, I know).

Today started with a visit to the chiropractor. I have been having terrible lower back pain since prior to Thanksgiving, and it's been significantly worse since my car ride from DeKalb to Bloomington, so I went in to see a practitioner my aunt has used for years (I actually went there for acupuncture back in high school when I was having shoulder pain). At first, I thought her table was really crooked and off balance -- and then I realized it was me! My pelvis is totally out of alignment (was, I guess I should say). She worked on me for an hour and also taught me some stretches and exercises I can do. I'm hoping to find someone I can see regularly back at home, because I really can't keep feeling like this until May! And I think baby will be much happier when s/he is in the right place, too.

I know I've been posting a lot of text-y entries with no pictures. I promise to remedy that soon -- once we get home and can load pictures from the camera to the computer. And exciting news: Ross and Meredith got us a Flip camera for Christmas, so there will be videos to share once baby arrives!

christmas eve.

Christmas is a lot of hustle and bustle no matter who or where you are. But Christmas in my family is a little extra crazy -- my dad has a stressful church service to organize and run, 3 people have birthdays on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, and now that we have both sets of grandparents living in MN, we have 2-3 days of nonstop relatives, shuttling people around, and catering to people's whims, fancies, and dietary restrictions, and of course the overwhelming need to preserve tradition. Don't get me wrong: I love all that the McNamara/Boebel family Christmas entails! But now that we have a baby on the way, it makes me wonder what it will be like next year with a little one in the mix. I worry that it'll be even more crazy -- but I hope no one will mind because s/he will be too cute to be mad at. :)

Got to see good friends Reid and Stephanie and their 5 1/2-month old, Juliette, yesterday. We last saw them when Stephanie was at about 39 weeks pregnant, so it was fun to see the finished product in person at last. Juliette was very good the whole time and even put up with me holding her for a while.

I'm still not feeling definitive movements. A few things here and there that make me wonder, "Hmmm, is that...?" but I'm just not convinced yet. Hoping it will happen soon. I'll be 17 weeks, 2 days (otherwise known as "in my 18th week") on Christmas morning.

Merry Christmas to all! Stay safe and warm (the snow here in MN is getting deeper by the minute...)

avocado baby.

Soon-to-be Baby Hanna is the length of an avocado this week. That reminds me of a book my family used to love when I was little: Avocado Baby.

This unassuming little baby becomes like Popeye whenever he eats avocados. I wish our little one felt the same effects so that I could be sure the funny things I'm feeling are really baby movements! Plus, it's hard to think of anything more delicious than fresh guacamole. Hmmm...I wonder how Jason feels about getting Mexican for dinner tonight...

16 week appointment.

Today, we had our 16-week appointment (as I've mentioned before, pregnancy dating is so weird -- I'm actually 15 weeks, 5 days today, but in my 16th week). It went great! I've gained 2 pounds since my last appointment at 12 weeks, which the doctor seemed to approve of. And we heard the heartbeat; last time, my backwards-tipping uterus wasn't cooperating, but this time we heard little future Baby Hanna loud and clear with a heartbeat of 150-155 beats per minute, which is right on target.

Equally exciting: we've scheduled our anatomy ultrasound! On January 3rd at 9:15am, we'll get the chance to see our little one and find out if we're having a boy or a girl. What a great 30th birthday present (one day late, but I wouldn't really expect the hospital to fit me in on a Sunday...). We can't wait! Jason hasn't been present for an ultrasound since week 6, so he's really looking forward to this -- and I am too, of course. Will we be breaking out the pink or blue balloons? Only time will tell...

Edit: only moments after posting this, I realized we had a phone message from the doctor's office -- wanting us to reschedule the appointment! Even though the doctor said "any time after 18 weeks," the scheduler said we had to wait until after week 20. I'll call back tomorrow to plead my case...but it's looking like we won't get to find out until much later than planned. (Update: we won't get to find out until Monday, January 17th -- and I was warned that the ultrasound tech won't tell me much of anything, so I'll have to wait to talk to my doctor on the 19th. Man, I'm already feeling impatient!)

not so quick.

Starting my 16th week today -- Baby Hanna is navel orange size now. Supposedly, s/he is whirling and twirling around in there, but as of yet I haven't felt any "quickening." The first movement is usually detected in weeks 16-20, so I'm anxiously awaiting those little pops and wiggles. I have spent a lot of time this week sitting quietly on the couch or in bed, trying to notice anything different, but I can't confirm anything as of yet.

We have a doctor's appointment on Tuesday, so I'm sure we'll get some reassurance then, but now that my nausea is gone it'd be nice to have some other signs of the life within. Besides running to the bathroom 10 times a day and having my pants get a little tighter, I'm feeling pretty normal. I'm still struggling with anxiety about the pregnancy but trying to channel it into being excited as much as I can.

I'm also getting excited about finding out the sex of our baby, which usually happens at a 20-week ultrasound (somewhere in the beginning of January). I know that it's trendy now to wait until you give birth, but Jason and I feel that we'll be surprised whenever we find out so we might as well know sooner rather than later! I have no reason to think so, but I feel convinced we're having a boy. Jason refers to the baby as "he" but feels equally convinced we're having a girl (you can try to figure out that one, because I can't!). It'll be fun to share that news with you when we get it.

Hoping for an early Christmas present, since it's too late for Hanukkah now, with feeling movement...I'll let you know when it happens!

"belly bump" pics -- sort of.

Here is some photo documentation of my "do I look pregnant?" development thus far. I don't really know precisely what my weight was pre-baby, but as far as I can tell, I think I dropped about 5 pounds by week 10 due to nausea and lack of gym time (I was on pelvic rest for that subchorionic bleed, so my 3x a week on the elliptical routine came to a crashing halt -- goodbye, toned muscles from summer!). Since then, I think I've gained that weight back, plus possibly 1 additional pound.

For comparison, here is a picture of me taken this August on our trip to Boulder, CO (admittedly, this is taken from the front so you get less of a three-dimensional view, but it's all I have!):

Two weeks ago, Jason took this picture of me just after the Packers pummeled the Vikings 31-3:

And today, after the Packers beat the 49ers 34-16, this is me in my other Packers t-shirt:

So, it seems that all of the weight that I lost and regained since September has settled in my mid-section...but I'm not sure that I would say I'm "showing" at this point. More like I look as if I just ate a really big meal. My pregnancy guidebook says that I should start gaining an average of 1 pound a week starting now -- we'll see what the scale says when I go to my next doctor's appointment on 12/14!

nerves and not showing.

Some blog news: I added tickers at the bottom so you could follow baby's progress through the produce department and count down the days with us. I think counting weeks of pregnancy is really confusing -- I guess it's like how you might say a baby is in her first year of life before she turns one. Still, every time, I have to double check to make sure my math is right!

Week 14 is wrapping up and week 15 is just around the corner -- baby is graduating from peach to lemon (these sizes seem very arbitrary -- what if you have a large peach or a small lemon?). Regardless of his/her increasing size, I'm not increasing by much at all. I guess it's pretty normal in a first pregnancy to go several months without showing, but it seems like you should, considering how much growth is happening in there! My doctor said she doesn't think I'll show until at least 20 weeks -- so far, she's right, because I'm fitting into all of my clothes just like I always do.

In some ways, that's been advantageous: no one at school has guessed anything. Up until this week, only a few people were on a need-to-know basis, but I decided I should probably talk to human resources about family medical leave, and I also wanted the principal to know before he heard anything "through the grapevine." So now the word is out with administration, and I'm trying to find the right time to break the news to the other people I work with.

And...I'm terrified. I know that there are no signs anything is wrong, and that everything looked great at my last appointment. And I know that the odds are greatly in my favor that everything will be fine from this point forward. But I'm just so, so anxious to tell people beyond, well, you! I'm sure that, besides being nervous about complications, I'm also just nervous to verbalize it and make it real -- at this point, it is still so, well, surreal. Today was a baby shower for two of my work colleagues, and I didn't want to say anything to steal their thunder -- but I'll have to bite the bullet and say something soon, I guess...

Edited 12/3 to add: I sent out an email to my department today. It was a little scary but people were very supportive and nice. I'm still terrified that I'll go to my next appointment, get horrible news, and then have to deal with it...but it's nice to have supportive people around you, too.

thankfulness.

Happy Thanksgiving! Happy second trimester! I officially start my 14th week of pregnancy today. By some calculations, I have been in the second trimester since last Thursday at the start of my thirteenth week...by some, not until Sunday, and by others, not until next Thursday. I like the calculations that choose TODAY and figure it's a good happy medium.

We flew into Salt Lake City VERY late last night, thanks to terrible weather in Chicago that delayed almost every flight going in and out of O'Hare after 7pm. But now that we've gotten a little sleep, we're very glad to be here with Jason's family to celebrate Jason's favorite holiday. What could be better than food, family, football, and Fozzie? Well, I can't take antihistamines, so Fozzie and I are not getting along as well as we'd both like, but I'm dealing with the sniffly nose and itchy chin as best as I can. (Fozzie can be seen in action here and here!)

Last year, we went to Temple Square in downtown SLC to see the "lighting of the Square" to kick off the holiday season. I don't know that we'll venture out this year, as the high temperature is not supposed to be above 20 all weekend, but here's a picture from a local tourism website to give you an idea of how beautiful it is:

We're very thankful this Thanksgiving for so many things. Love to all of you, far and wide, on this wonderful holiday!

morning sickness: not just for mornings.

Growing up, I remember hearing horror stories from my parents about how sick my mom was during both her pregnancies. (Case in point: my dad had to cook up at church because my mom couldn't stand the smell of food in the house -- thank goodness he had an extra kitchen to use!) I had read that pregnancy-related nausea tends to be inherited, so I braced myself for the worst. Now that I'm nearing the end of the 12th week, with all signs pointing towards queasiness being on its way out, I have to say I've been (relatively) lucky. (Knocking on our wood coffee table right now!)

Weeks 6, 7, and 8 were the hardest. First of all, "morning" sickness is such a terrible name -- in my case, it was usually "early and late" sickness, meaning that I felt the worst when I first woke up and then starting at about 6pm until I went to bed I got steadily worse again. I ate a lot of baked potatoes with cottage cheese, fruit, and saltines. I also found that starting the morning with two packets of apple-cinnamon instant oatmeal, milk, and a handful of frozen blueberries thrown in got me through the next several hours in decent shape (this is still what I eat for breakfast every morning -- I'm scared to go off it!). I never actually threw up, but the foods that got me closest (and that I haven't eaten since) were butternut squash ravioli, acorn squash and quiche -- three foods I ordinarily love and now can't stand the thought of. Oh, and sweet foods (chocolate, especially) and coffee were off limits, too, which is pretty much unheard of for me!

In week 9, I suddenly felt great again -- which really, really scared me. This was about the time I found out that I had the subchorionic hematoma, so I was in a tailspin of worry. But never fear -- queasiness came roaring back the morning of parent-teacher conferences, naturally, so I struggled through two days of putting on a smiling face while subsisting on a diet of saltines and peppermint tea. The "morning" sickness continued through weeks 10 and 11, and just as I was about to start week 12...it faded.

I'm still not feeling completely normal -- if I don't eat on a regular schedule, I start to feel ill, certain foods are still off-limits, and at the same time I'm able to eat foods I never was before (I actually used ketchup, which I've always hated, on some Belgian fries at the French market in Chicago last weekend instead of my usual mayo) -- but I'm crossing my fingers that, as is true for 90%+ of women, the end of the first trimester will also be the end of the perpetual queasies! And after 7 months of meat-free living, I'm actually looking forward to turkey on Thursday...

mugging for the camera.

Here are a few ultrasound pictures of how things are progressing so far. (I've never posted pictures in a blog, so apologies about any weird formatting! Also, we don't have a scanner, so further apologies about having to post a picture of a picture...)

This first image is from our 6 week ultrasound -- the blob the arrow is pointing to would have been the size of a pinky fingernail at that point.

And this is our most recent image (12 weeks) -- freaky alien baby doing the dance from "Thriller"! It's about 2.5 inches at this point, half of which is the head (by birth, the head will only be 1/4 of the baby's total size [Jason asked me to edit this to add, "unless it takes after Alan"]). We think it's weird and amazing that we can already see a nose, chin (will it have the famous Hanna/Herszenson chin, we wonder?), and individual fingers.

surprise -- we're expecting!

Hello, friends and family!

As a (very) few of you know already, we're expecting a baby sometime around June 2nd, 2011! Though we're not ready to shout it from the rooftops quite yet -- no Facebook announcements, please -- we wanted to share this exciting news with you.

When we got married in 2005, we both wanted to be married for 5 years before thinking about having a family (Jason would be done with grad school and we both would have the opportunity to enjoy "just being married" for a while). After much discussion and soul-searching once we hit the 5-year benchmark, we decided to give parenthood a whirl -- and were very surprised to get a positive home pregnancy test result on September 20th (Courtney's note: I knew Jason would need some evidence and convincing, so I waited until I had 6 positive tests to break the news!).

It's been a little rocky so far -- with my ovarian cancer history the doctor has been extra careful, and a subchorionic hematoma (bleeding, basically) threw us for a loop a few weeks ago -- but the 12-week appointment today was wonderful, with little future Baby Hanna doing flip-turns and waving like it was the Miss America (or Mr. Universe?) pageant. As of today, baby is about the size of a plum!

We'll be posting here periodically with updates for friends and family near and far. Thanks for checking in on us throughout these next several months!

p.s. We hope you recognize the name of our blog from our "first dance" song at our wedding -- we thought it would be especially appropriate as we get ready for two to become three!