I'm Pregnant, Yea?

Yup, as my friend Matt would say, I'm "all knocked up and shit." Tomorrow will be 12 weeks, first trimester already over! Seems so fast, but also so slow what with all the nausea and exhaustion. I feel like I missed out on what summer we did have because I was too sick and/or tired to enjoy it! Hopefully this nausea will be done with soon, and I can begin to enjoy eating again. While it's been nice to lose 10lbs before putting on another 20 or so, feeling hung over for two months isn't my ideal weight loss plan.

Brooke has been fantastic, so supportive, loving and patient, he's a lot more excited about this than I am right now, but then he's not the sick/exhausted/sore one! Once this part is over I think I'll be a lot more excited about it too. Right now it just feels like I have the flu or attended some raging party that I have no memory of, just the residual hangover.

So far we've had two ultrasounds and some blood work done, and everything looks good so far... blood pressure is good/low, Rh+, not pre-Diabetic, no elevated levels to cause concerns genetically, A+ (never knew that before!), yadda, yadda. I'll still be worried about things like Autism and the like for a long time to come, but feeling a bit better about our odds for a healthy baby. No reason to be more concerned than anyone else, but the horror stories of people dealing with special needs children has kept me childless so far. Fingers crossed!

Basically, this is an act of faith for me right now. I can easily visualize all the reasons not to have a kid... the exhaustion, the mess, the fighting, the cost, the loss of personal freedom/privacy/finances... a visit to this website has endless examples of why perhaps my fur child Jester is a better, safer, cheaper option: http://www.shitmykidsruined.com/. These are real, tangible, mostly inevitable parts of being a parent. Most of the reasons to have a child are theoretical: the sense of wonder of a child, watching something we created discover and learn about the world, the joy of successes, the love shared... those are all things other parents talk about, but until you actually HAVE a child, hard to fully comprehend, no matter how many Facebook posts you read.

So... I have faith that our child will be healthy, that my husband will be a loving and supportive father, that our families will be there for us when we need them (and give us room to figure things out on our own when we don't!), that we'll be the parents who maintain a social life and their friendships (eventually!), that I'll be able to handle the next 28 weeks and the birth to come, that I'll be the kind of parent I want to be, not the one I was afraid I'd be. So... right now while I can't eat and physical activity makes me ill... I'm going on faith, and for an avowed Agnostic, that's saying something.