Still here!!

WHEW!

It has been a ridiculously busy past few weeks.  I've been working an average of 60-70 hours a week lately and I have barely had time to breathe, let alone BLOG!!  I have so many posts brewing around inside my head, including a long one about the trip to Ohio a few weeks ago, I just need to find the time to get them down on paper...er...blog.

So... let's see... where are we?  18 weeks today!  My goodness time is FLYING!  In two weeks, we will be halfway through this pregnancy... and we have SO MUCH to do in the house to get ready!  I've been feeling a bit more energy overall lately, but working so much has drained me incredibly - it would whether I was pregnant or not!  Jonathan has been traveling a lot lately, and it has been tough not having him home.  I started to feel our baby moving around last week.  It's been very sporadic, but it's a truly remarkable feeling... I can't wait until baby is moving enough for Jonathan to be able to feel.

Our 16 week appointment was two weeks ago and went pretty well, though I was sort of put off by the doctor that we saw basically dismissing me when I mentioned wanting to research natural childbirth plans.  She told me that since this is my first pregnancy, I will likely have a long labor and will not be able to do it without drugs.  Now, Jonathan and I are not entirely against a medicated birth, but I want to know all of my options and be educated in natural childbirth before I just mindlessly agree to letting them shoot me up with meds!

In two weeks we have our 20 week appointment as well as our Level II ultrasound at the hospital.  It will be at this appointment that we get to find out the gender of our little one!  We're really excited to know.  We had toyed with the idea of not knowing, but I am such a planner, I really wanted to know.  I thought Jonathan was going to talk me out of it, and in fact, I had almost talked myself out of it, and Jonathan talked me back into it!  We are still deciding whether or not we are going to share the gender with everyone.  Or... we may decide to wait and keep it to ourselves for a little while before sharing... we're just not sure.

Okay, there is lots more to tell, but my time is running short.  I will leave you with some pictures of the belly.  At some point I'm going to have to put together a progression (we started taking pics at 6 weeks and I just took them off my camera today!), but for now this will have to do!  Enjoy! :)

18 weeks!

18 weeks! (Bare belly! Eek!)