A Bun in the Oven...

Milton and I decided in October 2008 that we were ready to start a family. I was pregnancy within two weeks of making the decision! We made the announcement to my family at Thanksgiving dinner even though we knew I wasn't very far along. We just couldn't keep the excitement to ourselves.

My original due date was June 28th, but then after an ultrasound in December we found out that it was actually July 25th.

The pregnancy went well overall. However, I did suffer from morning (all day) sickness from about 7 weeks until 4 1/2 months.

We found out from an early ultrasound at 14 weeks that little nacho (the babies nickname) was indeed a girl. We didn't think that they would actually tell us that early, but when I asked if they could tell and they said yes we of course wanted to find out. I remember hoping she was going to say "it's a girl" and trying to convince myself that I wouldn't be disappointed if it wasn't. I just had a feeling from day one that it was a girl and we already had the name picked out. I can't understand why I wanted a girl so bad when before I got pregnant all I wanted were boys.

We had several more ultrasounds, including the standard one at 19 weeks which reassured us that our little girl was healthy and growing right on schedule.

I had decided that I wanted to go natural with the birth and started my hypnobirthing classes in April. We got lucky and were the only couple that had signed up for the class and got one-on-one attention from our instructor, Alicia Watson.

I have to give a lot of credit to Milton during the entire pregnancy and birth. He was the perfect partner and really went along with whatever I was most comfortable with.

Even better was that Kathryn was due in August, so we got to be pregnant together (not that you can tell in this picture, but she is about 24 weeks and I am 28).

Once the morning sickness cleared up everything was great until I made my last trip to Monterey to work the Sea Otter Classic event. I was almost 7 months along and the weather was unseasonably warm (or should I say hot). Needless to say my legs and feet swelled up and remained in that state until well after the delivery. It was truly painful and so uncomfortable!

Every night after work all I could do was prop my feet up and hope that the swelling would go down a little by the time I woke up.

Despite the swelling I was very lucky and didn't experience any high blood pressure or toxemia.