Baby McP First Update

Yep- we're having a baby! It feels great to finally be able to share the news with everyone. It makes things a bit more real. Since we figured we'd be announcing near the start of July, we played off the holiday season (Canada Day on July 1, and Independence Day on July 4), and the fact that I'm Canadian and always root for Team Canada, and Kyle always goes for Team USA (it is particularly heated during the Olympics when Canada always wins at hockey). We each found and selected our respective onesies. Mine- tasteful with a touch of humor (see photo below), Kyle's- a bit obnoxious yet still somehow adorable.

I wasn't sure what to post or how to organize this, so I think I'll just do bullet points for now in one huge post so ENJOY.

- Baby is 11-12 weeks now, with a due date of January 23. Initially, when I first found out I was pregnant, I was given a due date of December 25, which would put me at almost 16 weeks now. Pretty big difference, but I hadn't had an ultrasound prior to last week, so I wasn't that surprised that their estimate was off by nearly a month. My mom's birthday is also 12/25, and my brother is 12/27, and there's also Christmas, so we don't mind pushing it back until later into the new year. (I know babies will come when they come, so you don't need to tell me that due dates don't mean much).

- I found out towards the end of May that I was pregnant. What prompted me to take the test was actually just that I was super tired one day. I could hardly get out of bed and felt so exhausted, and I'm not usually one to do that or nap, so I was like- what is going on!? Kyle had actually flown to PA earlier that day, so I spent the first week of knowing I was pregnant alone (though I told Kyle and a close friend).

- Since Kyle and I were both going to be in PA for a couple days, and probably wouldn't see any family in person until...maybe the baby was born, we decided to share the news in person with immediate family (Kyle's family was in town for his brother's wedding, and my sister and mom are up there). I didn't like the idea of just saying "hey, I'm pregnant!" or some other exclamation, so I came up with the idea to get birthday cards that said "Aunt" and "Grandma" and give them to my sister and mom. I handed them the cards and just said they were thank you cards from graduation stuff, and so they were definitely surprised when they opened them and realized what it meant. I loved it! We ended up doing the same thing for Kyle's parents (though Kyle thought we should announce it at his brother's wedding....full of people I don't know and didn't need knowing I was pregnant....also it's someone else's wedding...poor guy is not gifted in knowing how to share news with people). People were excited and it was fun to share the news.

- Morning/anytime sickness hit just a few days after I found out I was pregnant. The worst was having to take three flights and travel for 15 hours up to PA for the wedding. I broke the "fasten seat belts and remain seated during landing" rule and ran to the bathroom once. The guy at the end of my aisle didn't move at all to let me through, and flight attendant gave me a snarky look and shook her head, so I just had to tell her when I came out that I'm pregnant (so don't give me snark, lady!), at which point she became sympathetic and offered me a drink (ok, baby, we got this). I thought the sickness was done with when I had about a particularly calm week, but it seems to be back, and worst in the evenings. I spent most of June sick in the morning, tired all afternoon, and sick in the evening, so I was super fun. I'm feeling generally better now, but I still have a lot of food aversions (the weirdest is olive oil...even the thought of heating olive oil in a pan to cook something is repulsive), and some days I have to hold my breath if I even step in the kitchen. Ginger ale and crackers help, but please don't ever give me or let me see another ginger chew again. I sucked those continually for the first five days of sickness and can't stand even the thought of them, because they are gross, and I just associate them with feeling crappy now, and who would eat those for pleasure?!

- I am really glad to be having a winter baby! Mostly I'm glad to get summer over with during the first half of this pregnancy (well, more like 2/3 being down in Texas where it won't get consistently cool until October/November), as I already do not like summer and I can't imagine I would be functioning well as a very pregnant person in this heat.

- We have a name for a boy pretty set (we've had that name picked for about five years now). For a girl, I think we have a first name pretty well established (though I have another name I love and would want to use, but Kyle isn't sold), we're just playing with middle names. We will share the sex of the baby once we find out, probably around mid-August. I don't know yet if we will share the name, but probably, and a bunch of people already know the boy name at least. I'm keeping a list, an informal poll on who thinks girl and who thinks boy, so feel free to let me know where to add you name, just for fun! It's pretty even right now.

- I'm pretty sure all the animals will handle a baby well. The cats and Luna will be mostly curious and sniff it out. It'll be good they will have time to adjust to it before it can chase after and grab them. :) I'm excited to see the baby grow up with an awesome pup like Loony.

- Doctors appointments. So far, not like the movies, or even like you think it should be considering you're growing a life and that should be important and not a time for your health care providers to be super chill about things. It has been a lot of waiting, and poor communication, and frustration. I had to wait five weeks from knowing I was pregnant to get my initial appointment (which seemed like a long time, particularly since they were telling me I'd be almost 15 weeks by the time the appointment came around...that is super pregnant). Hopefully, though, the troubles are in the past (laughing at myself for writing this already). The ultrasound? You know in the movies it's a bright room, and you can see the screen and the squirt the goop on you and it's like "there's mah baby!"--that is not how it was. It's a dark room, which was nice and calming. But the tech doesn't say much of anything to you, you can't see the screen, you're left wondering- is there a baby in there? Surely they would have said- oh yes, there's the baby, if they saw it? Thirty minutes of silence and mystery, then the tech leaves the room, and you're sitting the dark room in your gown, fully expecting the tech to return with a doctor to break the bad news to you (what bad news? Oh, you have about 10 minutes to think off all the possible bad news scenarios). But then, the tech returns and says "looks like you're just not quite as far along as they had thought you were." Upon which you then have to ask how far am I then, because you have to ask everything very directly, and the tech tells you and hands you a picture, and says you'll probably come back at 18 weeks. Ok, so there is a baby in there. Good, just wanted to know THAT MUCH AT LEAST. Everyone has been nice to me, which has been the silver lining here.

- It is weird and kind of lonely being pregnant. It is better now that friends and people know, but I don't have any close friends who have had babies or been pregnant, so I'm kind of venturing into unknown waters without much reference. We are also very far from family and close friends, so that's kind of a bummer. Since learning we are having a baby, our plans have kind of narrowed a bit, and we're not looking to move somewhere completely new. I definitely don't want to be moving end of this year, to a new place, with a new baby on the way, and zero support systems. We already live in Temple, where we don't know anyone, so I don't want to do that again if at all possible. So, I'm hoping to get a job in/near Waco, so that I can commute there for now, and we can move towards the end of the year (and then Kyle would hopefully go to Baylor as he will be leaving the Army and planning to finish school). Hopefully all of this works out!

What else? I think that's it for now! No, we haven't bought anything aside from the onesies in the photo above, and a couple books. I think I am more comfortable easing into all of this instead of going crazy for nine months, so I don't feel eager or rushed to go buy all the baby things. Yet.

Thank you for all the excited messages and well wishes! I don't know how much I will be updating on here/various medias, but if there's something worth sharing I will. I have zero plans to take maternity photos (rather, I have all the plans to not take maternity photos), so unless this baby inside of me makes me for some unfathomable reason want to spend money on a professional photographer to take pictures of my pregnant self in a field (I do not understand that impulse at all, though most photos I have seen of other people have been lovely), that won't be happening. Ok, bye for now!