the story of charleigh - part 3......

The 10 day mark for my bloodtest fell on a Sunday, which also happened to be Labor Day weekend. So of course the lab was closed on Monday also. Grrr... Tuesday finally rolled around and we did the obligatory blood draw, followed by a phone call from Dr. A's office late in the afternoon saying "Yes, you are pregnant!" Woohoo! (Kinda saw that coming seeing as how this is Charleigh's story, huh?)

From there, it was another blood draw Friday to make sure levels were rising, then an ultrasound to check progress at 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10 weeks. My appointments were always on Friday and every week I would get so nervous all over again that something might be going wrong. But every week upon arriving at the office I got to see the beautiful progress of our little baby. I had been alone when I went to the doctor and learned of my miscarriage, so I never went alone to these appointments. One week I even took my aunt along because no one else was available. That was the first week that we could see the heartbeat. I remember sitting in the room and both of us being in tears. It was so overwhelmingly amazing to see this little thing that was only a couple centimeters big and there it was. A heart. Beating away. It was breathtaking.

At the end of my first trimester I was transferred over to my regular OB for the remainder of the pregnancy. From then on, everything was pretty much smooth sailing. The morning sickness had been pretty rough (read: Getting sick at work 4-5 times a day, which usually required a change of clothes each time due to a um, control issue while getting sick.) but it tapered off completely around 14 weeks. Honestly, I didn't even care when I was sick. I was just so happy to finally be experiencing a healthy pregnancy that nothing mattered.

We scheduled an ultrasound with Baby Sightings the day before Thanksgiving to find out the gender. Almost immediately upon starting the tech said, "There it is. The (insert girly part word that I don't really want to type on my blog)." Josh was like, "Huh? What's that?" So I had to educate him. "That means it's a girl!!" Later that evening while driving to the mountains Josh turned to me and said, "You know what this means right? We have to pay for a wedding." Such a guy.

Now if we could only agree on a name.......