do i look fat in this?

YES!!!!

i hate shopping for clothes. i hate looking at the racks, picking clothes that i think will look good, trying them on, sucking it in and trying to look skinny. and when i don't look good, it puts me in such a funk that i want to leave the store and be done with shopping... oh. and a big "no, no" is having tim tag along... he is just as miserable as me during these shopping sprees.

recently i went shopping at Motherhood Maternity. i have never been in one of these stores in my life until now... and believe it or not,  they actually give you a pillow to wear while you are trying on clothes to make you look fatter!!

i don't mean to toot my own horn, but every single article of clothing i put on looked GOOD! because i thought "theresa, you can look fat in this!!" and let me tell you... i looked fat in everything!!!

tighter fitting tops? why not? you are allowed to be fat! looser fitting tops? sure!!! the bigger you look the better!!! horizontal stripes? absolutely! they make me look twice as big and it is okay!!! because i am suppose to be looking a little chunky these days.

(just about 22 weeks!)

so. to wrap this up, i wish i had the excuse of being pregnant all the time. i had the BEST experience shopping for clothes ever. the $245.00 bill at the end just proved it.

ice cream for breakfast.

usually i am not much a dreamer... but lately my dreams have been crazy. i have dreamed every night this week and remember most with vivid detail. i have already dreamed three times about the baby. i dreamed it was a boy twice and a girl once. i dreamed that the baby was going to be born on may 18th and weighted 6 pounds 7 ounces. it seemed so real.

last night i had a dream that i was helping the boy scouts clean up the side of the roads. they all had trash cans and trash bags full of trash. but not me. i had a small trash can FULL of ice cream sprinkled with m & m's. i was eating it with a huge spoon and i had a very hard time sharing it with others. i literally could taste the ice cream.

the dream woke me up out of a deep sleep and i woke tim up this morning and said "i need ice cream." i haven't even wanted to touch ice cream in the past five months... and now i wanted it that second.

so low and behold, i ate a bowl of ice cream this morning for breakfast.  and i enjoyed it to the very last bite.

sorry cheerios. 

never use google.

a friend of mine asked where i was going to go with this blog now that i am pregnant... i told her i didn't want to bombarde everyone with pregnancy things because really how much can you take of that? but reality is... that's my life right now. i wake up. i think, i'm pregnant! i go all day. and think, i am pregnant! i go to bed and roll over. and think, i'm pregnant! so i will try to keep this pregnancy thing to a minimum... but i just can't help it! :)

the reason i have been quiet this past week is because...  I received a phone call tuesday night from my doctor and was told that i have an enlarged spleen (they found it on my ultrasound)...  my first thought was "what the heck is a spleen?" and one thing i have learned in this process is to NEVER use google.

after i googled "enlarged spleen" i frightened myself to death and stressed myself out for four days straight. after another doctors appointment, oodles of more blood testing and poking... everything came back wonderful and fine... the doctor has come to the conclusion that this could just happen because of pregnancy or maybe i have always had a slightly enlarged spleen (normal spleens about 12 cm and mine is about 14 cm) and we will be keeping an eye on it through the next few months with ultrasounds and check ups.

lots of ups and downs with the pregnancy...

praying that both me and the baby can finish the next nineteen weeks happy, healthy and stress free. i really want to enjoy this pregnancy.

have you ever scared yourself to death googling something?

sneak peek.

yesterday, tim and i had the chance to take a sneak peek at our baby. we had our 20 week ultrasound and it truly was amazing. hard to believe that little person is growing inside of me... i have really only felt the baby once so it seemed so unreal to me until i saw it moving up a storm on the monitor. we are "team green" with this little guy so we opted out of finding out the gender which makes it even more exciting.

we were given the ultrasound pictures afterwards... although, like i think for most ultrasound pictures, it looks like blobs of white and black. if you look hard enough, you can see the baby ready to give a "fist bump." Pound it!

after the ultrasound, i had a doctor's appointment and all went well. in fact, since i have been eating healthier over the weekend, i lost 3 pounds. which puts me at an 12 pound weight gain in twenty weeks. 

finally, i thought i would share a picture of last nights dinner... chipotle chicken salad. tim made his homemade salsa and guacamole to add to the salad... it was so good and i inhaled it in like two minutes...too fast to grab a photo... luckily, tim took a picture of his salad to capture the moment. 

Do you sometimes think that these ultrasound pictures look like black and white blobs? 

long kept secret.

i have discovered a big secret kept between women for many years. a secret i wish i would have been in on five years ago. but, of course, i couldn't be in on that secret until i got pregnant. for those of you not pregnant, be lucky you are reading this blog...

the secret is... maternity pants.

not sure why they call them maternity pants... they should just be called "stretchy" pants or "go comfortable" pants or even "going to a buffet" pants. these "go comfortable" pants can be stylish and fit amazingly to your body... they should sell these pants at all designer stores and not just in "maternity."

i think i will be wearing these pants long after this baby comes... and i see nothing wrong with this.

a scare.

it's hard to believe where i was this time yesterday... at the hospital.

let me rewind to wednesday. i woke up in the morning just not feeling right. i was getting pains in my stomach just about every 10-15minutes or so... i wasn't too worried at first, thinking it was just my stomach stretching and growing, but as the day went on... i just didn't feel well. when i got home, i took my temperature and had a slight fever. i went to bed with a massive case of the chills. i woke up to severe pain in the right part of my chest and after a while it went into my upper back on the right side. the pain subsided after a good hour but after talking with a few people, i thought i better call my doctor.

she immediately called me in and scared the crap out of me. she told me it could be a possible blood clot or my appendix and i need to get to the hospital immediately. me being alone at the doctors, started to tear up. i have never been to a hospital. how do i get in? what do i do? little did i know that they were waiting for me the minute i walked in with a wheel chair. tim and my mom arrived very quickly to the hospital right when i was about to be wheeled up to maternity. they checked on my little baby for about an hour or more... praise the lord that all is well.

(tim snuck this picture of me... 

i told him i wanted NO pictures of me in the hospital)

i was rolled down to a room where they tested my blood pressure, oxygen levels and temperature. they took oodles of blood, gave me a full ultrasound of all my insides, and i had my very first IV (i only ever saw that bag full of liquid on television shows) i sat for a long time resting, eating and stressing while waiting for results. the doctor returned with news that he thinks it is my gall bladder. i am now on a low fat diet and easing myself into foods to see how my body reacts.

so that being said... back on a diet. this one a little different than any other one i have done before.  my grandmom made me some of my favorite chicken noodle soup...and with that comes the good news.. i felt my baby move for the first time right after i ate a bowl... this baby was moving like crazy... amazing feeling... it must of loved her soup as much as i do! :)

praying for a healthy 20 more weeks! i don't want to see the hospital again until this little one is ready to make its appearance in may.

new year. new goals.

the kick off to 2012 is a lot different than the kick off to any other year i have had over the past ten years. usually the minute the new year kicks in i decide that i am going to lose twenty pounds. this is the first year when i am expecting to gain 20 pounds. crazy.

my diet is normal... i've averaged about 2000-2500 calories a day on a normal day... but it feels strange knowing that i am not cutting it down to my 1200 calories to start losing weight.

i am not going to lie. in the beginning of my pregnancy, i was sick all the time and most food sounded DISGUSTING to me. but for some reason mcdonalds and wendys cheeseburgers and fries sounded amazing. and sour cream and onion chips i could stomach. oh and a cheeto!! YUM!  but the thought of a vegetable made me want to throw up. or any kind of chicken or meat. or yogurt. yep, it was a mess.

now that i am well into my second trimester and i am no longer feeling sick,  i have been trying to eat much healthier. i have stayed far away from mcdonalds and working really hard to have homemade meals and not processed food like mac and cheese from a box!

so since my goal for 2012 is not to lose twenty pounds... i had to think of other goals to help me feel accomplished for the new year:

1. keep up the blogging: tim and i love looking back at the blog to bring back memories... it really is a good piece of history!

2. try to eat as healthy as i can to keep this little baby happy and healthy.

3. save money: i am working on being a stay at home mom (WOOOO HOOOO!!) next year and we need to get those finances set so we can enjoy this opportunity and not stress about it.

What are you 2012 Goals?