Half Baked!

Our little bun in the oven is half way done baking!! I cant believe that we are already at the half way mark! I am going to upload the pics from this week and the lost ones from when I did my posts from my phone. We have decided for sure that we are going to use blues and browns for the nursery and add some guitar and music stuff in there here and there.

**The Father and Son Bond Begins**

**Lost Post**
((Orignianlly should have came out right after I wrote the Pink Blue or maybe Two post))

Ryan and I decieded to go to a 3D Ultrasound place to find out the gender bc we were in the middle of finding a doctor and were a little unsure when we would be able to find one and then schedule the actaul u/s..plus niether one of us could wait knowing we have could just simply go right down the street and find out.


We were told, or should I say I was told to drink orange juice 30 mins before coming to help wake up the baby and get him moving around in there. Ryan took this very literally and we got into a tiff about when I could drink my mcdonalds orange juice haha. We arrived at the place and the set up was very nice they had to large(maybe 42') flat screens on the walls to see the ultrasound on. One was on my left and the other directly in front on me. It is always a blessing and a little bit of a suprise when we get to see our little baby on the screen. Ryan I could tell at this point started to get very anxious! He was walking back and forth between the two screens looking at everything and trying so hard to tell what the baby was going to be. And since we are talking about a Nichols here the little one of course took his sweet time to show what was between the legs...and as everyone knows all the sudden we saw it and learned that we were going to be proud parents of a baby BOY! What happend next though is what made my eyes tear up. Ryans face was priceles and I wish I had all this on video. He looked amazed and happy and just in what I guess was disbelief. He actaully walked out of the room and I continued to talk to the u/s tech and looked at our little baby boy. When he did come back in, I asked him where he went and he told me that he went to pray and thank God for the blessing of a son and to call his dad and tell him that it was indeed a BOY!

I cant wait for our son to be here and to watch my two boys interact. I know Ryan is going to be an amazing father!


**EDIT** Ryan got to feel Nathan's first kick!! I have felt some flutters and such but no strong kicks yet. The other morning we were laying in bed before getting up for work and Ryan had his hand on my tummy hoping to feel our son. Somewhere between Ryan talking and the morning news I feel back to sleep. Well I soon heard Ryan repeating over and over again did you feel that?! I was half a sleep and was a little confused then I realized Ryan had felt a kick and I slept through it...well looks like the bond between the boys in the house is growing stronger :)

First Impressions

Since we are looking for a midwife right now and unsure about when our next ultrasound would be we decided to go to a place called First Impressions to check on the baby and as I just posted find out that we are for sure having a baby boy!! We got to preview the 3d ultrasounds which are just crazy to me and go to see him moving around and here the heartbeat! I still cant believe that this spring Ryan and I will be parents. Anyways here are some of the first pic of baby Nathan!

These pictures were done at 14 weeks 3 days

Pink or Blue or Maybe Two??

When you are pregnant the first question is when are you due and then comes the gender question...Boy or Girl? Ryan and I had always said we wanted boys first, we loved the idea of older brother being there for the little sister. Of course we just want a healthy and happy baby, the gender question still gets tossed around a bunch. Ryan wants a boy and has it in his that it will be a boy. I keep going back and forth of what I think it will be...a girl would be great since the cousins closest in age are girls but all the kids around us are boys...I have a strong feeling though that it will be a boy. During all this though my hcg levels had been charted and were higher than expected and for a bit we thought it might be because we were going to have twins...but at our ultrasound at 8 weeks we got to see the flicker of one little heart. So as it goes we decided to do some fun gender predicition test.

The first one we did was the Chinese Gender Prediction....BOY!

The second one we did was the baking soda test...BOY!

We didn't take a pic of this test but the idea of it was you mix pee and baking soda. If it foams its a boy if it doesn't its a girl...mine looked like the first beer out of a keg haha

The Third one we did was the Inteligender Test from walgreens...BOY!

 

So the question is now are we having a boy or girl??????

IT'S A BOY!!!!!!!

 

14 Weeks

 

 

I am now 14 weeks and feeling much better! My stomach isnt has sensitve and I am starting to get my energy back. I do have a few headaches a week but overall everything is going great. I am now looking pregnant no matter what I wear.

 

Ryan and I took our first bradely method class saturday and actually enjoyed it much more then I thought we would. It was very informative and with only 3 other couples in the class we get a lot of personal adivce. One thing the class led us to decide is to get a doula. I think it will help a lot with both of us being more comfortable come day of delivery. I am still looking for a midwife but I have decided that I want to deliver at North Fulton. I have one appt thursday and two more to call to schedule appts with so hopefully out of those I will find one. We have also decided that we are going to look further into a waterbirth.

The Business of Being Born

The Business of Being Born is an awesome movie! It made me and Ryan both very excited about our choice to use a midwife and to go with a drug free birth plan. I was so suprised about some of the statisics that are in the film and how eye opening it was. I truly believe that my body was made for this and that I am beyond blessed to have the chance of experiencing it. Hopefully will go well and my birth will be very similar to my birth plan but only time will tell.  It got me researching some of the different aspects of it.

The c-section rate is beyond high in our country and I found out that the state of ga is actually a little higher than the national average. This is the chart for 2011.

 This made me really want to look in to my hospital choices...I have three hospitals around me that are easy enough to get to. My main reason for looking up all theses percentages is bc I don't want to worry about a hospital that is use to pushing a woman to speed up her delivery or to have a c section if not absolutely necessary. The main hospital around me is Northside Forsyth(nicknamed the baby factory) I knew I didn't want to go there as I have heard many times how unfriendly they are with natural and drug free birth plans. And after watching that movie I decided to look up their c-section rate.....37.1%  My other two options are Emory Johns Creek and North Fulton Regional right now I am currently having my prenatal care with Modern Ob/GYN and would deliver at Emory...I haven't really found to much wrong with them and the hospital but I have a better choice and now my choice. Alpharetta women's specialist and deliver at North Fulton. I have decided to go with a midwife and very excited to actually meet my midwife, well hopefully my midwife, lets all pray I like her so I don't have to hunt one down all over Atlanta haha. Oh by the way North Fulton c section rate is 10.4%

I am though going to start looking into water birth since north fulton does offer birthing tubs.

The First Trimester

I didn't really start this at the VERY beginning so I am going to play catch up and sum up the first trimester here.  I decided that I want a natural and drug free birth, well thats the plan atleast, and to do that Bradley Method classes were going to be the way to go. I still want to deliver in a hospital so if something does go wrong or if me or the baby needs in medical attention it wont be a problem. Ryan is being very supportive in all this and has gladly decided to give up his one day off of work for 12 weeks to come to birthing classes with me! (Love him for it!!!) We had found a doctor we thought we liked but realized we had a better option so we decided to go with a midwife and deliver at North Fulton(still making some final descisions on provider)..I have a bunch of decsion and ideas to work out and go over with my birthing plan but more on that later ...The morning sickness or in my case the all the day sickness wasn't to horrible. I had to make sure that I had something to eat almost every hour and I drank a bunch of water and poweraid but I never really got 'sick'(that lasted till about 9weeks or so). Around 10 weeks I started feeling pretty good but I still get really tired in the afternoon or really anytime I do to much of anything. Each day though I am feeling better and getting more energy so hopefully I will be able to start getting some things around the house done to prepare for our little one.

 Week 10 we got to go to the doctor to see our baby! It was a truly amazing thing, Ryan and I both got a little emotional being able to see for the first time a postive test turn into a hand that could wave at us! We got to see the little gummybear bouncing all around and even saw a little hand waving. When we heard the heartbeat I cried. Ryan and I are truly blessed and can not wait to welcome this bundle of joy in to our home!



Hopefully now that I am started every weekend I will be able to update this and add my pictures and such but here are a two that I have already taken.

How a Little Blue Cross Started it All

On July 1st 2012 I decided that since my friend had left an extra pregnancy test at my house I would take it for and then text here the pic of our two negative test and say wine and pizza night is still on..however after I peed on that little white and blue stick instead of sending a funny text to my friend, I made a very excited and emotional call to Ryan! That little blue cross is the begging of our biggest blessing!

Ryan and I had decided to keep it a secret till we could see the ultrasound, talk to the doctor and make it over our 10week hump (our miscarriage in 2009 was at 9w4d)...or so I thought we were going to keep it a secret. Evidently before Ryan could hang up the phone at work from me telling him that I was pregnant one of his coworkers came up to him and said "I know that face, Katie is pregnant" so by the end of the day everyone at his work knew. My parents and sister found out that day also since my mom heard I was going to to the drs the next day and figured it out. We then went to Ryan's parents to tell them since Ryan couldn't wait till that weekend when we would see them(I was also a little worried that the brothers that work with him would let it slip). Ryan's aunt was in town from California so she found out and so did the cousins. Well since it was looking like most the people we knew had already found out I figured we would go public with it since I didn't want someone to accidentally put something on my facebook before I did. That brings us to July 4th, I knew I wanted to do something fun or creative to let everyone in facebook world know I was preggers...This is what I came up with, every 4th of july I do the peachtree road race with my mom and some friends of ours so I posted a pic of my race number with the caption...

Registration....$55

New Shoes....$75

Doing my Tenth Peachtree Pregnant...PRICELESS