Baby Helms to Be: January 2010

Wow this is harder than I thought it would be. No wonder I was never good at keeping a journal. Better late than never right?

We had our first doctors apt. on Tuesday Jan 19th (yes I am a little late) and what an experience that was. Tim was working nights in the hospital so the poor guy had to stay up to make our 10:00 apt. after working from 5:30pm to 7:30 am. After filling out a ton of paper work that included asking us if we were related in anyway (GROSS!), we were able to go in for our first ultrasound at 9 weeks, 6 days. Since it is so early they of course have to do a transvaginal ultrasound (you can use your imagination to think about what that is). It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. And best of all we got to see BABY! Man, he/she was really moving around in there and the heartbeat was going a million miles per hour! It was the coolest thing I have ever seen and very surreal to think that a person is growing inside me. So here is the first picture of what we call "BABY". As Tim said in an email to our families "big ears, big belly, no butt a Helms for sure".

Overall the doctors apt. was a good experience, except for the gallons of blood they took from me. The doctor was concerned that the lining of my uterus in one spot was a little thin, so they sent us to a radiologist to double check that they baby had implanted in the correct spot. Sure enough the baby was in a great location and very healthy. They will continue to monitor the thickness of my uterine wall (I'm sure you all wanted to know that). Does anyone know of any good uterus strengthing exercises? We will keep you posted. We go in for our next apt. Jan 29th. Here are some updated pics, and I look HUGE! I swear I am not that big all the time, I must have just eaten or something.

Bouncer, "the ham", wanted to be in all the pics so we are getting ready to perform one of his greatest tricks!

The High 5! Oh my gosh I look big!

Me at 10 weeks. Oh yeah and our official due date is Aug. 18th 2010!

We decided to start a baby blog to share our story with the

friends and family that don't see us on a regular basis. So here it goes.....
We started trying back in October. Tim was on an externship for two weeks on the central coast. We decided to meet half way on the weekend at Angela (sister in law), Michael (Tim's older brother) and Carter's (our 7 mo. old nephew) house. It was very hard to be apart for two weeks. When Tim got home he brought up the topic of starting a family together. After some calculations, to make sure the baby wouldn't be born before Tim graduated we threw caution to the wind and started trying. Two months later a "slightly positive" pregnancy test left us very confused about our pregnancy status. We decided to just be patient and wait to take another test. The following weeks my body gave us glimpses of pregnancy so we were hopeful. On Christmas Eve we both had the day off so we decided to take a pregnancy test, which came back strongly positive! It was the best Christmas gift ever!
Tim was lucky enough to not have any patients at the hospital during Christmas so we were able to spend the holiday down in Martinez with my family. We were very excited about our secret but not quite ready to let the cat out of the bag being as it was still early in the pregnancy.
A few days later we drove down to San Diego to spend our second Christmas with Tim's family. (It was a long drive with a pregnant lady in the car, several pit stops). The weather was beautiful and we even got to spend New Years Eve day on the beach in the warm 75 degree sun! We quickly realized that we wanted to spill the beans in person since we don't get to see Tim's family that often. Ang, Mike, and Andrew were surprised but had their suspicions since I wasn't drinking alcohol at Thanksgiving. Tim's mom Joan was VERY surprised and almost choked on her yogurt (she wins my vote for the best reaction!) Ron and Fern (Tim's dad and dad's wife) were also excited, but Andrew had discussed his suspicions with them earlier so they weren't as surprised. The word was out and spreading quickly in San Diego thanks to Uncle Andrew! We knew we needed to get to Martinez quick before news traveled north.
A week later we headed to Martinez to celebrate dad and Taylor's birthday. Taylor made it easy on us and wanted to open presents as soon as we got there. Dad and Taylor started opening at the same time and dad was up and out of the room before Taylor could finish (I guess I can't blame him since he got the same birthday present from Taylor the year before, oops!) With the surprise about to be unleashed we called for dad to come back into the room. Taylor opened her present and told us to "shut up" as she held up a onesie that read "I love Auntie". Dad quickly knew that if Taylor was an Aunt that made him a Grandpa. Mom took a little longer to figure it out, asking us why we got Taylor such a small shirt. John Mark was also confused and sat with a puzzled look on his face. Taylor immediately posted that she was going to be an aunt on Facebook and now the whole world knows.