Season of G R O W T H
Hi friends! It has been awhile but life has been a little busy! I started documenting our TTC (trying to conceive) journey over on youtube in November, and after only two months of trying- we found out we were expecting! Best news ever and we couldn’t be more excited.
I sometimes feel guilty posting about it because I know there are so many people who try for so long and are unable to have babies right away, and if that’s you- my heart seriously goes out to you. I can’t imagine how you’re feeling and I never want to come off as boasting about it. I’m sending you all the baby dust! Although I feel this sense of guilt, I’m also reminded that I am allowed to be excited and embrace every second of this new journey just like I would want other people to do if the roles were reversed.
Anyways, it has been a crazy couple of months! I found out I was pregnant at only 9 DPO (check out my youtube video that’s linked here and at the bottom of this post that includes a live pregnancy test and the wild day I found out), we had a 7.0 earthquake here in Alaska, school was closed for a week and I was extremely overwhelmed. I was so afraid something was going to happen to the baby within those first few weeks (still am to be honest) but decided I wasn’t going to let that take away my joy. Anything could happen at any time but I am still pregnant now and want to soak up every second. My husband was also supposed to be gone for 4 ish months so we announced very early (7 weeks). I didn’t want to announce it when he wasn’t here, but then he ended up coming back super quick (yay for us!). So now we are together and he is able to go to every appointment and it really just is so much fun!
We told our families on Christmas (also in the video) and they are so excited too! Here are some pictures from this amazing time in our lives :)
This picture was SO hard to get. I wanted Atlas to be in the snow and have the sign around his neck but WOW it was way harder than I anticipated haha.
At just 9 weeks and 3 days I took the Sneak Peek early gender blood test and we were ELATED to find out that we’re having a baby…
GIRL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I TOTALLY thought blue smoke was going to come out. I was wrong. PINK smoke and it was amazing!! I wanted a baby girl so badly.
So with the Sneak Peek gender test, you order it off line and it has 99.8% accuracy. You prick your finger and fill up a little container of blood and send it in to their lab. They are looking for the Y chromosome which indicates a boy. If the blood (which has maternal and fetal DNA) comes back as only having X chromosomes, they know the baby has to be a girl (because I’m a girl too…obviously). If the test comes back that they detected Y chromosome then they know the baby is a boy (again, because I only have X chromosome lol). Pretty neat! We got our results back SUPER fast and even though I’m an idiot and forgot to sign the front of the consent card… It’s super stressful and you’re trying to follow all the steps in 3 minutes or less so you don’t contaminate it. The other thing is, you have to be super careful that your spouse or other children (if they are male) do not have ANY DNA around where you are doing the test. I sanitized super good and took the test in my office where my husband rarely goes. If you get a girl result its 100% accurate so YAY!.
This season has been a season of growth for me. So many life changing things are happening and although I have been LOVING every second of it- the first trimester tiredness KILLED me. I’m SO lucky that I didn’t ever get sick and only got nauseas a few times, but If I could sleep all day I would. Having to work full time and try to be a functioning human for my 23 super active kindergartners has been DIFFICULT to say the least. I also have no TA at the moment so that doesn’t help anything. However, we’re managing and my babies are making SO much growth. I am still working out 4-5 days a week and plan to keep that up throughout my entire pregnancy. I am 11 weeks and 3 days now :) almost out of the first trimester!
I’ve thought about staying home next year and as of now- that’s my goal. I want to supplement my teaching income with Teachers Gone Strong so that I don’t have to put an 8 week old in day care (we have no family here), drive 45 minutes to work and won’t miss any of her firsts. This decision is not set in stone, but we’ve talked about it a lot and it’s definitely a big goal I have. Stay tuned :)
In other news our New Years challenge has been AMAZING and we have 50 + girls doing the challenge. The most we’ve ever had. They are showing up for themselves daily and it is so cool to see their lives completely transform. Ahhh I love this stuff! I can’t wait to see how much they’ve changed (mentally and physically) at the end of the 8 weeks!
That’s all I have for now :)
xoxo,
Brooklyn