medium shrimp

week 13, like week 10, 11, and 12, is kicking my butt. next week is the beginning of trimester two and i am hoping things turn around in a drastic way.

this week our baby has finger prints! and if it's a girl it already has 2 million eggs in her ovaries. talk about babies being able to make babies!... that was disturbing. forget i said that. all this baby-baking business continues to blow me away, even though this is my third time around.

i had a regular doctor's visit this week on monday. everything was fine until they couldn't find the heart beat with the doppler. twice. panic overtook about 45% of my brain. i was at my appointment alone, cause chris was home with the kids and i told him this was not an important visit for him to come with me. wrong! so they were able to squeeze me in for an impromptu ultrasound, and there my little medium size shrimp baby was! good strong heartbeat and all. this baby is getting a serious time-out when it's born for giving me a heart attack. i have a new white hair and i also blame the child for that one. add a minute to that time-out.

so, even though the appointment didn't start out the way i wanted, we did get to see our little baby, and that was a huge blessing:

chris thinks the baby looks like a girl. i think it looks like topher:

it's the giant head ;) (this is topher posing like the baby)

the ultrasound tech asked if i wanted her to check out the gender of our child. i had to pause for a second before i said "NO!" cause chris and i have decided we want to be surprised with this one. but i did think for a second how funny it would be if i knew the gender and NO ONE else did. but then i realised it was more messed-up than funny, and that chris might see the messed-up part of it more than the funny part.

so being surprised with the gender isn't the only different thing we are doing with baby #3. i am under the care of two AWESOME midwives and am going to try to do this birth as naturally as possible. though still at the hospital. topher was born sans epidural, but that was more by accident than anything else. but that birthing (and recovery!) went infinitely better than lily's birth (AND RECOVERY!) did. so that's why i am doing this. the midwives and i are on the same page with lots of different things so i am really excited to be on this journey with them. if you are interested in having a baby via midwife and you live in Arizona, check out Valley Women for Women. they have plenty of doctors and the two midwives i am currently seeing.

having our new ultrasound pics has really helped lily and topher see that there is a real, live human child in my womb. lily looked at the picture and said: "oh, the baby is swimming!" she tells everyone that she is having a baby sister, which has caused some people to get very excited. but then i squash those peoples' hopes and remind them that lily is 4 and does not know what she is talking about. if you chat with her for longer, she will explain that i am having her baby sister, and dad is having her baby brother. oh how i would love for that to happen! anyway, yesterday, lily said: "mom, i am so excited to meet the new baby!" and it made me more excited as well. just 6 more months to go!