Dear Baby Pacheco,

The last few days were full of events: you were 12 weeks along as of Saturday, Dad had his 27th birthday on Sunday, the entire Pacheco side of the family was here visiting the whole weekend, and we had your NT scan with the ultrasound and blood test today.

12 weeks along = size of a plum! We now have pictoral evidence, but I still can hardly believe it. I look more or less like my normal self… here is my first “belly pic” for the 12 week mark:

Other than a little bloating (and thus having to go back into my “fat pants” for some things), there have been no visible changes to my mid-section so far. But at least this is a good benchmark to go from. Since I am already a big gal to start with, I don’t expect to really start showing for another month or two. The NT scan today was therefore a huge relief, to see that you are indeed healthy and developing properly in there. The nurse measured your heartbeat at 169 beats per minute (“very healthy” she says 🙂 ), and took a TON of pictures/measurements of you from all sorts of angles (all of which she said were “perfect” and “right on target” 🙂 ). Luckily you were extremely compliant and flipping around all over the place so that she could get everything she needed. We got to take most of the pictures home, but I will just show my favorite one here:

This picture doesn’t show it, but we got to see your little arms & legs as well. It’s amazing how much more human-like you look now! Dad says getting to see you was the best birthday present he got. 😀 The second part of the scan is a blood test, and thank GOODNESS the nurse was able to get my blood drawn on the first try. We should have the blood test results back within a week. But so far everything seems to be great! We could not be more thrilled. 😀

So now that we’re pretty much past the highest risk of miscarriage (chances are less than 1% now) and you are looking healthy thus far, we can finally begin to relax a bit and just enjoy this experience. We’ll be going “facebook official” tomorrow (which in this day & age is a big deal, but who knows if you’ll even know what facebook is by the time you read this) and just in general we won’t feel the need to keep the pregnancy a secret anymore. It’s been hard not to talk about it, because honestly that is what I’m thinking about 95% of the time. Haha. The other great thing is that I am reaching the end of my first trimester, so the few symptoms I’ve had are fading. I haven’t felt any nausea for the last few days, and the constant fatigue is starting to lighten up a bit. 😉 Woohoo!

That’s about it for now… the next couple of weeks should be fairly quiet, no big plans and no doctor’s appointments until my next checkup on July 31. Hopefully I’ll be able to come up with something interesting to write about next week. Until then, keep growing little plum!

All my love,
Mom

P.S. — My apologies for the ridiculous amounts of smiley faces in this post… Dad & I are just on Cloud Nine after getting to see you on the ultrasound today. 😀