Boy or Girl?

This day and age it is "normal" to find out the gender of your baby before you have it. That leaves you with another big decision, should you find out or should you leave it a surprise like it has been for thousands of years before.

I personally always said that I wanted to wait for the surprise, I did not want to go with "the norm" and find out halfway through my pregnancy. However since "my pregnancy" is not technically just mine, I am sharing this experience with my boyfriend/baby-daddy; and he wanted to find out whether we were welcoming a little baby boy or a tiny little girl into our lives. Because we both wanted different things, we compromised. He was okay with him finding out and keeping it a secret from me for the remaining 20 weeks. I was not okay with that.

So the compromise I came up with, was a "gender reveal party". Rather than sitting in a doctor office and having some ultrasound tech saying "It's a boy" or "It's a girl". I forced my sister to plan and execute a party where I found out the gender in front of all my close family and friends. In order to do this she got the privileged of finding out the gender before everybody else.

I really liked the way she decided to reveal the gender to me and the rest of the my family. She could have chosen to have a cake with pink or blue inside so I would be surprised when I cut into it, she could have simply bout a pink or blue article of baby clothing  and wrapped it and given it to me. There are hundreds of different options, but she decided to do scratch offs. Everybody at the party got one and we scratched them at the same time. These revealed whether my little stinker is going to be a boy or a girl.

ITS A GIRL!!!!! 

I love that I will be able save one of these scratch offs and put it in a baby book or shadow box with other baby mementos like the first ultrasound picture. This is definitely one experience I will never forget and in no way regret going against my first desire to not know ahead of time. I now have more time to prepare for having a little baby girl, which may be needed since we have not had any girls in our family in over 13 years. I have broke the testosterone streak!

What doctor should you choose?

When it comes time to choose an OBGYN to go to throughout your pregnancy a ton of factors arise that you may have never thought of before. Trust me when I say, unless you already have one, finding an OB can be a very daunting headache.
The first thing you should think about when choosing any doctor, especially and OBGYN, is the location of the actual office building. After all you will be going there at least 15 times within the next 9 months.
The next thing you should do is find out whether or not that office you think is convenient, accepts the insurance you have.
You think this whole process is over now? You have the doctors office that is only a few blocks away, you called and asked and they do accept your insurance (whoohoo because the only other OBGYN office is completely out of the way!!) Well your wrong, its not over yet, now you have to decide on an actual doctor. So that means yet another phone call or trip to the office to get a list of the doctors they have there.
Now is the time to decide, would you like a male or female doctor? Some women feel more comfortable having another women going to the most intimate private areas of your body. Some would rather have a male doctor because "its more natural". Then there are the women like me who really do not care either way, after all weather male or female, they are just doing their job, and have seen hundreds of other women's vaginas throughout their career.
Have you decided? Will you be going with a man or women? AAAHHHH your done now! Haha I was just kidding, there are still a few more steps before you can say you have your doctor. So now you have found there is an OBGYN conveniently located a few blocks away from your home, you have got a list of the different doctors, and thought long and hard about whether you would rather have a man or woman looking deep into your body.
Now that you have done all of that you must actually decide on one specific doctor, yup that's right, look at a list of names on a plain white piece of paper and decide from that which doctor you would like to have. This is where references from people you know or even reviews on the internet can come in handy.
After talking to your mother, sister, best friend with four kids and the random lady standing outside the office, you learn that everybody has a different doctor they absolutly love. So you then go to the internet where you spend hours looking at reviews of each of those doctors on that list you previously received. YOU FINALLY DECIDE on a specific doctor that seems perfect for you. Now you are almost done! Just two more steps!
Time to call and see if that perfect doctor for you is accepting new patients or not. If your lucky they will be and you can then set up your first appointment. If not, I am sorry. Hopefully you had a runner up on that list you can inquire about.

How do I tell them?

Okay, now that I have talked about why I chose pregnancy to write about, I would now like to talk about how I answered one of the first questions that popped into my head when I found out I was expecting. Since I am here now talking about my whole pregnancy experience I am going to skip the first question I mentioned in my previous post (whether or not to keep the baby). Obviously everybody knows my answer to that decision.

So onto the next question. How will I tell my family and friends, specifically the babies father and my parents?

Lets start from the very beginning. On the night of February 10th I decided I should get a pregnancy test, due to the fact that I could not drink an iced tea from McDonald's like I normally do. I was too nervous to take it that night (plus your first morning urine is more accurate) so I waited until the next morning to take the test. That day I had plans to run errands with my sister so while we were out and about I casually brought up the question "So what are the chance of having a false positive on a home pregnancy test"? I already knew the answer to this question, so we made some detours and went to get my pregnancy "officially documented" for my insurance and stuff. Telling her was the easy part.

After all the questions from the doctors and such, I had to think about how and when to tell my boyfriend. I decided that since it was so close to valentines day I would wait until then to tell him, I spent the next three days trying to decide HOW I was going to tell him and trying to avoid him so I did not "let it slip" before then. This was extremely hard, and he knew that I was "up to something". On the night of the 13th while I was at work I FINALLY decided how I was going to tell him.

I stumbled across a pocket sized baby name book that we sell at my place of employment (surprisingly enough I had NEVER seen this book before this day). As soon as I seen it I knew right away that was it! With Valentines day being the next day I stopped at dollar general and bought a small gift bag as soon as I got out of work. Him and I already had plans for dinner and I already had a couple other gifts I previously purchased for him.

The next evening after I got out of work on our way to dinner I gave him his "real gifts" and told him he had one other but it had to wait until after dinner. We had to wait over an hour for a table at Red Lobster (we originally planned on going to Lucky's but there was a three hour wait there) this wait was antagonizing for me, after all I was keeping one of the biggest secrets in my life. By the time we got a table, I was so nervous (and my "morning sickness" always came later in the evening) I could barley eat anything.

After we packed up most of my food, we went back to his house. As soon as we got in the house I sat the little gift bag on his chair and told him I was getting in the shower, before I could actually get into the shower I heard him yell "OH MY GOD, what is this!!!?" "Is this forreal?" "Your not lieng are you?".. That night he was very excited as he has been talking about trying to have another child for a few years...... Now that hard part was over.......

Why I am Blogging about Pregnancy

Pregnancy is an experience that a lot of women get to experience. For each and every women this experience is different. It can be good, bad, excruciating, depressing, exciting or just plain boring.

Not only is pregnancy different for each woman who experiences it, each pregnancy the woman has can also be unique. You may have a terrible pregnancy with horrible morning sickness all throughout the entire process and have labor complications with your first pregnancy. Then when or if you decide you would like to suffer another 40 weeks of agony and pain you may find out that this pregnancy will go down a completely different path compared to the last one. It just might turn out to be one of the best experiences of your life.

While the pregnancy experience itself is always unique, so is everything else that comes with baring a child. From whether or not the insemination of one of your precious eggs was actually planned, or your birth control failed and the condom broke and wha-la your now going to be spending the next eighteen or more years supporting another human being. All the way too whether you decide to give birth naturally or opt for a c-section. EVERYTHING can be different.

There are sooooo many choices and questions before, during and after every pregnancy. First off should I keep it? (this can be an easy no-brainer question, or one of the hardest decisions you have ever made in your life). How should I tell my boyfriend/husband/guy I met at the bar last month (Crap what was his name? Does anybody know his last name?)? How should I tell my family and friends? Should I and if so what kind of prenatal vitamins should I take? What doctor should I use? Should I choose a male or female doctor? Will I feel comfortable with a male doctor looking into and feeling the depths of my vagina? All of these are questions that can and most likely will arise within the first week of finding out you are expecting.

I am here now experiencing all of these changes, choices and decisions. Since the morning I peed on that stick my brain has not stopped. There have been constant questions, debates and decisions that only I can make. There have been tons of emotions and what if's. The best way to make these decisions and put the worries aside is to talk to other people, connect with other mothers or mothers to be, share what you are going through and realize that just because your pregnancy is different then your sisters was last year, YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Every women who gets pregnant whether on purpose or accident has to make these same choices and have legitimate reasons as to why they made the choice they did. I am here to share my experience with you!       

Where I am at in my pregnancy

I am currently 18 weeks and 5 days along, which would put me in my second trimester approximately 5 months.

 

What to expect during the second trimester http://www.webmd.com/baby/guide/second-trimester-of-pregnancy