Yep. Those center lines are clearly blue and definitely plus signs! We found out on the Monday morning after coming back from visiting Lockney, TX for the weekend for Sterling's grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary party. Shock of the century for us - very unexpected news!
It's taken us a little while to get over the shock of the news and try and adjust to the idea of becoming parents. Exciting, but also very overwhelming and gives us a lot more things to plan for and figure out. The most significant changes we had been planning on (up until now of course) were getting some blinds and curtains for the windows of our house and maybe taking an anniversary vacation this summer... This was not in the plans for at least 5 or more years...but God has a plan and His plans tend to work out better than ours anyways so it's shaping up to be another eventful year!
So far, the small amount of friends and family that we have told have all been really encouraging and supportive and have been asking how I'm doing/how we're doing etc. so here is the update for everyone:
According to my doctor and doctor mom and everything I've read, everything is coming along perfectly and the baby is growing well. I'm about 8 weeks along right now and experiencing all of the not so wonderful symptoms of pregnancy...mild nausea all day long, some vomiting, some bad headaches with sinus pressure, my skin is breaking out, really tired even when I haven't really done anything, and I've had a lot of food aversions (no cravings though...just mainly repulsed by everything that I am able to smell before eating...which happens to actually be everything because I've developed this crazy dog-like sense of smell). For my swimmer girls who may be wondering, the fatigue is somewhat comparable to the end of a 2 week Christmas training trip but minus all of the muscular stiffness/soreness (except a little in the lower back area) and plus feeling sea sick or car sick.
Even though it hasn't exactly been fun so far (and has left me wondering why and how people go through this to have multiple children, lol) all of these symptoms are actually a good thing because it means that my hormone levels are increasing at the right rates to support baby Cummings and that chances are good that we will have a healthy pregnancy.
So far all we have been doing in terms of baby prep have been reading some pregnancy books: What to Expect When You're Expecting, Eating Well When You're Expecting, and for Sterling (though he's been reading the others with me too) - The Caveman's Pregnancy Companion, lol. We have also been organizing our finances and we are in the process of getting life insurance and figuring out our maternity health insurance benefits/deductibles. Oh! And we also went for our first prenatal visit yesterday with our OBGYN, Dr. Lori Swaim. Here are some sonograms (pictures taken via ultrasound) from our visit:
The head is on the right where the top x is, the bottom is on the left where the lower x is :)
It was pretty cool to get to see the baby's heart beating. And since we've now seen the heart beating, the risk of miscarriage is now much lower - supposedly less than 2% chance now. Even though I've been sick and feeling pretty crummy, I went into the appointment thinking oh well maybe the tests were wrong...I was half expecting for the doctor to look and nothing be in there - but he/she was, haha. I think it kind of sank in a little harder for both of us. It measured in at a whopping 1.67 cm (less than one inch). We could see the heart beating very rapidly and we saw the umbilical cord and the placenta developing...and also the baby's back, spine, and head. The doctor said there are also arms and legs....she tried to point them out to us but I just didn't really know what I was looking at, couldn't really tell. Anyways, it was pretty cool. I'm hoping that the next 4-5 weeks will go by quickly so that I can get rid of this first trimester nausea.
Anyways, that's the news! Say a prayer for us and baby Cummings :)
-J&S