Hearing the Heartbeat

I had my 15 week appointment with my midwife yesterday. Jim and I left Sam with my mom and headed off by ourselves, which was nice. We even went out for dinner afterwards, but I'll write more about that on my other blog. Anyway . . . Sherry checked all the usual stuff: blood pressure, pulse, etc., and then we got to the fun part, listening for the baby's heartbeat with the Doppler. I'm so glad that she has a Doppler, as I've heard some midwives use something called a fetoscope instead, which is harder for the average person (aka the parents!) to hear the heartbeat on. After moving the thingy around for a few minutes, she finally found the baby . . . way down low, so far. But with a nice, steady heartbeat! What a lovely sound. :)
Hearing that always helps the pregnancy seem much more real to me.

We visited with Sherry for a while longer, and it's nice to realize that every time, I get even more comfortable with her. I was commenting to Jim on the way home, how nice it is to build a relationship with just one midwife rather than meeting a whole bunch of them and not really getting to "connect" with any of them. As time goes by, I'm looking forward more and more to having a homebirth!

In other news . . . we received sad news this weekend, that my sister lost her baby at 11+ weeks. That put a damper on my own joy of hearing our baby's heartbeat, knowing that they won't get that privilege in a few more weeks, as they hoped. I am so sad for both of them; they were so excited and happy about this baby, but I know God will help them through this difficult time. I will sure miss being able to compare pregnancy notes with her! But maybe we will have the opportunity to go through pregnancy at the same time, one day in the future.

THIS WEEK'S POLL:
Another embarrassing one, so if you don't want to answer, that's OK! :) How did you other moms do with weight gain during your pregnancies? With Sam, I gained about 30-35 lbs., which was more than I had hoped. So far with this pregnancy, I've gained between 4-6 lbs., depending whose scale you go by. :) I don't think that's too bad for the first trimester. Hopefully I can just gain slow and steady and keep the total around 25 lbs. or so; we will see!

Did I scare everyone away?

Okay, is the topic of stretch marks too embarrassing, or are there just not any moms reading this blog? :) You can always post anonymously, you know! :D

Here's another question, in case no one wants to answer the first poll:
At what point in your pregnancy(ies) did you start needing maternity clothes rather than your regular clothes? And to go along with that, what was/is your favorite source for maternity clothes?

Poll of the Week: Stretch Marks

A friend of mine wrote me last week, congratulating me on my pregnancy. Along the way she happened to mention that she never got any stretch marks with either of her 2 pregnancies. Lucky duck! I certainly have plenty. :) I thought it would be fun to do a pregancy-related poll every week (if I can come up with enough topics), so here's the question for this week, for all of you mothers out there: Did you get stretch marks? Do you have any tried and true "remedies" to help to NOT get them, or to reduce their appearance? I've tried the cocoa butter cream, but it never seemed to make much of a difference. Oh well. As another friend told me, they are "battle scars!" :) And I definitely would prefer the stretch marks over C-section scars. Hopefully I'll never have to find out what THAT'S like!

There isn't a lot of pregnancy news to report yet. I'm about 13 weeks along now. So that means the baby is around 3" long or so. I'm still fitting into regular clothes, so far. Still feeling great, aside from the occasional sciatic twinges, and tiredness. I'll be heading into the 2nd trimester soon--yippee!!