We are having a baby! (Pt. 1)

Hiiii again guys! Yes, I’ve been missing in action again for a while but this time I have a really valid reason 😉 I’m pregnant and we are expecting a baby in 2022! I’m here to share about my pregnancy so far – are you up for it?

So, we already knew we wanted to try and have a baby when we moved back to Amsterdam (hence the 3 bedroom place). I stopped taking my birth control pill in January, knowing my body would need a few months to stabelize and get rid of the hormones. I downloaded an app (Clover) to keep track of my most fertile period and then we started practicing 😉

How I found out

At the end of May, one of my best friends Facetimed me with the news that she was pregnant. I was so happy for her, and we were saying how nice it would be to be pregnant together. My period was due in 2 weeks. As my period date got closer, I was getting more and more impatient. On the due date, I could not wait any longer and got an “early indicator” pregnancy test that measures the HCG values in your urine (a hormone). This is what I saw:

So you have a Control line (C) and a Test line (T). The control line is just to indicate that the test is working, the test line is your actual result. A veeeery faint line appeard, but it was so light that I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. So I sent the picture to my pregnant friend and she replied with OMMGGG CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! And then she had to explain to me that even the faintest line means you are pregnant, because it means that hormone is in your urine. And that means you are pregnant. Okkk, anyway – I wanted to take another digital test just to be sure. So I did, the morning after at 6AM:

You can see from my teary eyes how happy I was to see “Pregnant 1-2 weeks”. And that was the start of a very emotional day…

That same day, 2 June, our beloved cat Simba had his accident where he fell/jumped off the balcony. The day went from pure euphoria to the deepest desperation. I was scared to lose the baby because I was so heartbroken over losing Simba. I tried to contain my emotions as best as I could… Our poor tiger. One life is lost, and another is given.

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Telling the family

Of course you know that in the beginning everything is still very fragile. But we made the decision to tell our friends & family already early on. If I were to have a miscarriage, I also wanted to be able to fall back on my loved ones. But we wanted to tell our parents in person, so we had to wait a while… We would see my family in about a month, and Vitto’s at the end of July.

My parents of course were over the moon with the news, hearing they would get a first grandchild 🙂 I unfortunately didn’t take pictures of when I told them. I do have a picture of the day I told my mother’s family:

After this the countdown to the first echo started – since it the Netherlands they only do the first one at 10 weeks. So on 14 July, we got to see our little shrimp for the first time:

At this point, the baby is about 4 cm big and the size of a date – isn’t that crazy?

How I was feeling

I have to say – I was super lucky. I did not really have the nausea that you hear a lot of pregnant ladies have in the first trimester. I just noticed I was not very hungry for dinner and had a slight aversion of more savoury dishes, but I did not throw up once. I was also not tired – I even felt more energized than before! This also confused me a bit, because I always assumed that pregnancy side-effects were pretty common. Turns out, they are very personal 🙂

The next encounter with the baby was at 12 weeks – when we told Vittorio’s parents in Italy. But I will share that story and the rest of my pregnancy so far in part 2 😉

I promise this update will follow soon!
Xoxo
Clau