Bye Gracie!

We waved my baby sister off at the airport today, she's off to Germany for a year to be an au pair and experience the big wide world. I still sometimes think of her as this age (below) so it seems like such a big, scary thing for her to be doing.



But in reality she is (almost) all grown up, and will have a fantastic experience. I am a little sad she won't get to meet her new niece until she's almost 8mths old, but hopefully we will be able to skype. (Photo below to prove she really is grown up - this is us, taken almost a year ago at our brothers wedding)


If you want to follow her adventures she's started a blog at http://www.graciegrowsup.blogspot.com/
Miss you baby sister!

Happy Christmas and all the rest!

We have just returned from a few days up in Blenheim/Nelson, christmassing with the families.
I haven't taken a nice official side-on belly shot for a few weeks but I'll show you a few we Christmas photo's so you can see the huge gut.

We had our scan on Christmas eve, everything fine and healthy, baby is measuring bigger than expected according to my dates, but I suspected it might, as my belly feels so huge. We found out the gender...PINK flavored. A girl! The scan place is supposed to be emailing us copies of some pictures so once they arrive I'll put them up.

She's moving round a lot, Phil felt his first real big kick the other day - he was stoked.

In other news we have found out our great friends the Jones's are also expecting - Yay! Christine is due about 2 months after me.

Phil and I comparing "babies" on Christmas day:

17 Week Belly Shot

For those who wanted one!
I reckon I look about 20 weeks at the moment. And it can't be extra fat cos I haven't really put on any weight. Maybe 1kg if I weigh myself after dinner!
I'm modeling some of the new preggy clothes I inherited from Phillipa, these clothes have been doing the rounds of the ladies at church and now its my turn. I've got a great big bag and now have everything I'll need I reckon. Its so much more comfortable to wear proper maternity clothes, I've been making do with leaving the top button undone on my pants.

17 Weeks

It seemed to take forever to get to 12 weeks, and now the time is flying!

We have been really busy, traveling all over the country for weddings, as is usually the case for this time of year.
I'm still experiencing nausea, especially when I'm tired, which is often these days.

Still, its a nice stage, finally I am starting to feel 'properly pregnant' and not just fat and tired.
We spent the weekend in blenheim, attending a wedding and visiting family. It was great to see wee nephew Joey again (Frank and Emily's baby). Phil practiced his moby wrap skills on a very grumpy Joe - worked a treat though - he went to sleep almost as soon as he was snuggly wrapped.



No bump photo's today - I haven't taken one this week - the camera has run out of batteries.

Big tummy

16 week belly shots:



See how good I am - I even wore the same clothes so you can see the difference! People are noticing I'm pregnant now, and I'm starting to feel like I look pregnant and not just fat. From feeling my fundus it seems I'm quite big for my dates... I definitely think I look big for 16 weeks.

I am feeling a lot better this week, still get really tired which is made worse by the fact I haven't been sleeping well lately.

We are having a scan on Christmas Eve, and hope to find out if its a boy or girl. AND before you say anything - Whenever I tell people this they seem to have strong opinions. "oh don't you want a surprise.." " oh why don't you just wait and see - thats what WE did"... FOR GOODNESS SAKE!!! MY baby MY body, I think I can make the decision about weather to have the surprise at 20 or 40 weeks, without having to feel the need to defend my choice. Why does it matter to YOU weather or not I know?? Some people seem to be trying to make me feel bad for wanting to know. Next person to try this is getting a verbal bashing courtesy of my pregnancy hormones. humph.

15 weeks. I thought it was supposed to get easier from now on!!

Forgive me for supplying too much information, but the last few days have been awash with puke. I had either a vigorous return of the pregnancy sickness, or some kind of stomach virus over the weekend. It was better on yesterday (Tuesday) and I had high hopes of returning to normal today but no such luck. My breakfast made a forceful return and I'm feeling as grotty as ever, so yet another day of staying at home worrying that I should be at work but feeling glad that I'm not cos even walking to the mailbox seems like too much effort. So much for all the books saying that the 2nd trimester is awesome, all glowing and filled with energy...so far the 2nd trimester has been far worse than the first!

Ohhhh..and now I'm feeling all guilty for moaning and not enjoying every moment of this much anticipated pregnancy. Sigh. I'm sorry.

On a higher note I had a midwife appointment yesterday, and got to listen to the heartbeat on the doppler machine. It was awesome, really bought home the fact that there is something ALIVE inside me! It was such a cute wee heartbeat. So loud, and fast. It was nice to know all this sickness hasn't affected bubba and he/she/it is growing really well.

Heres a week 15 belly pic..

And that was taken after 2 full days of not keeping anything (food or drink) down, so you're definitely seeing baby bump - not just my dinner.