7 weeks

My little one is starting to look a little less like an alien! This is what I got from BabyCenter today:
How your baby's growing: The big news this week: Hands and feet are emerging from developing arms and legs — although they look more like paddles at this point than the tiny, pudgy extremities you're daydreaming about holding and tickling. Technically, your baby is still considered an embryo and has something of a small tail, which is an extension of her tailbone. The tail will disappear within a few weeks, but that's the only thing getting smaller. Your baby has doubled in size since last week and now measures half an inch long, about the size of a blueberry.

If you could see inside your womb, you'd spot eyelid folds partially covering her peepers, which already have some color, as well as the tip of her nose and tiny veins beneath parchment-thin skin. Both hemispheres of your baby's brain are growing, and her liver is churning out red blood cells until her bone marrow forms and takes over this role. She also has an appendix and a pancreas, which will eventually produce the hormone insulin to aid in digestion. A loop in your baby's growing intestines is bulging into her umbilical cord, which now has distinct blood vessels to carry oxygen and nutrients to and from her tiny body.

idea for parents

I have started a private blog that will be all about my baby. I thought of this awhile ago as an alternative to making a scrapbook for my kids. I gave up on scrapbooking long ago. I am going to do a wedding photo album because I got 4x6 prints as part of the package with the photographer. But printing photos and pasting them is just not for me. I'm a fan of all things digital!

Instead of a baby book, I've made a baby blog, and once a year I will have it printed into a book with the help of blurb. I know I am not the first to think of this, but I'd bet there are still some of you non-scrapbookers out there that might think this is a brilliant idea! Also, I decided I might as well get started now to document my pregnancy. This gives me an outlet where I can write about pregnancy stuff without boring all of you. And I like that it will all be in one nice place for my child to read someday. Sometimes I may copy and paste and put the same post on each blog. We'll see how it goes.

So for all you parents and parents-to-be go start a blog for your little ones! It's so much easier than scrapbooking!

Do you have any other great memory-keeping ideas? I'd love to hear them.

paralyzed and pregnant

I've already become slightly obsessed with all things pregnancy related. However, I am going to make an effort to keep my blog somewhat varied over the next 8 months, so that it doesn't turn into "musings of a pregnancy". But today's post is pregnancy related.

The other night I watched a documentary on Discovery Health Channel called "Paralyzed and Pregnant". It is about a woman named Michelle Carston, who at 23 years old dove into shallow water off the coast of Mexico and injured her spinal cord. She is now a quadriplegic.

This story hit close to home because my brother-in-law is also a quadriplegic caused by a diving accident when he was a teenager. Something I didn't know until I met Mike is that there are varying degrees of paralysis in quadriplegics. It all depends on where your spine is injured. So many quadriplegics have some use of their arms. Such is the case with Mike. And also with Michelle, who has quite a bit of upper body movement.

When Michelle was in her mid-thirties she met and married her husband and 11 months later she got pregnant. She endured an incredibly difficult pregnancy and was then able to deliver her baby boy vaginally. I was so inspired by her. She has immense challenges, but her dream was to be a mother. The pregnancy took a huge toll on her body. And the birth was amazing! She didn't want a cesarean. She had an epidural and actually pushed the baby out. The doctor also used the vacuum to help.

Michelle then had a very long recovery, and her husband is truly a saint! He has had to take on the bulk of the responsibility because obviously Michelle can't do a lot, especially right after the birth. I got emotional watching him do so much. You can see the love he has for his wife and son in his service to them.

Watching this documentary made me so grateful for all that I have. I'm so grateful for my healthy body! I'm grateful for my loving husband. And I'm extremely grateful for the little baby that is growing inside me. I pray that he/she will be healthy too.

The film was made in 2005. Unfortunately I couldn't find much updated information on Michelle and her family. If you are interested in watching it, Discovery Health Channel is showing it again Saturday, Dec 15, at 11:00 am.

fasting good for the heart?

Those who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints know all about fasting. The first Sunday of every month we are asked to skip two meals and donate the money we would have spent on those meals to help the needy. (I personally find fasting to be really difficult and was quite excited to realize that now that I am pregnant I won't have to do it for awhile! Don't judge.) But now there is new evidence that fasting is helping more than those who benefit from the donated money. New research suggests that fasting may be good for our hearts.

The Associates Press is reporting that a study conducted in Salt Lake "found that people who skipped meals once a month were about 40 percent less likely to be diagnosed with clogged arteries than those who did not regularly fast."

Benjamin Horne, a heart disease researcher from Intermountain Medical Center and the University of Utah led the study.

"It might suggest these are people who just control eating habits better," and that this discipline extends to other areas of their lives that improves their health, Horne told the AP.

The research was partly funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Horne says that this study is not proof that fasting is a great idea for everyone, but that it should be studied more.

Interesting, don't you think?

nine months

We've made it 3/4 of a year! Nine months ago today, Jared and I became Mr. and Mrs.
Since I have them so handily available on my computer here, I will subject you to a few more photos from that March day.

Speaking of nine months....

What is that stick we are so happy to be holding? Why, it's this:

That's right folks! I'm knocked up! We've known for 10 whole days, and I have been DYING to spill the beans here in blogland, but somehow managed to wait. Of course, that doesn't mean I waited to tell my family... nope, they heard the day I found out! I am six weeks pregnant and due August 3rd! It has been confirmed by the doctor and everything. Of course, there is still that chance of a miscarriage this early on, but I decided I couldn't wait until week 13 (so far away!) to share the news. I am SO excited! And I need to be able to talk about it. Luckily, I haven't really been sick yet. No throwing up anyway. Just some mild queasiness and cramps. And moderate exhaustion! I think it will be a miracle if I don't get the pukes, but here's hoping right?

a few favorites

I didn't get these up as soon as I was planning on, but here are a few of my wedding pictures. I seriously have hundreds and hundreds, so I tried to be selective and show a variety. My photographer took some fantastic photos!

another reason why my husband is my favorite person in the world

Last night I was going to make dinner. Jared and I share this responsibility. He actually loves cooking, and he's more talented in the kitchen than I am. Well except for baking. He doesn't bake. I do. Back to last night--I was going to make pasta and asparagus. Very quick and easy. Jared was working on his thesis and also had to leave for a meeting at 7:30, so I was going to have it ready by 7. At 6, I told him that I needed to lay down and close my eyes for just a couple minutes. Fast forward an hour, my husband wakes me up and tells me that dinner is all ready. Wasn't it so nice of him to let me sleep and make us dinner? Thank you, honey!

Stay tuned: I now have all my wedding pictures on cd's!!! So I'll be posting some of my favorites either tonight or tomorrow.

a wordless wednesday (in other words, I'm lazy)

I took this in September at the Raleigh Temple.

analytics revealed

A few weeks ago I discovered Google Analytics. It's pretty darn amazingly cool. I now have the means of knowing, not only how many people visit my blog, but where they are, how fast their connection is, how long they stayed, what pages they looked at, how they found my blog, etc. It's fun to see that someone in Sweden has checked out my blog, even if they only stayed for 20 seconds.

But all this cyber people watching also made me realize that other people probably have this too. And those people are probably seeing that I check their blogs like 5+ times a day to see if they are updated! Uh oh! I confess, I'm a blog stalker. I sit on a computer all day long at work. I have to pass the time somehow. So yeah, if you have noticed that someone from NC visits your blog an absurd amount... that's me. And thanks for keeping me from going crazy at work.

vanity

So I happened to go check out my wedding photographer's website the other day, and he had redone the design. And guess who is on the first page? Moi! Made me feel special. Have I told you I'm a dork?