"Are You Showing Yet?"

For a few weeks now my belly has been playing a game of "now you see me, now you don't"!  Most of the time I just feel bloated and assume that's why my belly seems bigger than usual... and then by the next morning it's gone back down to normal.  But then there are the days when I don't necessarily feel so bloated and I look down at my belly in the mornings and see a tiny little awkward bump that sits right in between my pelvic bones!  To be honest, it's rather annoying... not knowing exactly what's making me look so big... but between the bloatedness and the rapidly growing 'Butterbean' inside me, I'm pretty confident that this size belly of mine is here to stay... and it's only going to get bigger!

So for several weeks now I've been hearing a lot of... "So are you showing yet?" Since Alec & I see my belly everyday, we really haven't seen a dramatic change. Truth be told though, I've been reluctantly hesitant about taking belly pictures so that family & friends can see and decide on their own whether or not my belly has gotten any bigger.  Certainly not for any superstitious reasons, but simply because I didn't want to follow the same pattern we did with the twins last year.  This time around, I definitely wanted to wait until my belly both looked and felt very much real, so I could proudly stand in front of the camera with a confident smile that says, "Yay, there is a growing baby in here!"

So according to our calendar we are now in week 15... and have successfully conquered the first trimester!!!  It wasn't as rough as I'm sure it couldn't been, but I'm definitely glad to see those first three months behind us!  I still feel fatigued and tired a lot (especially after working the morning shift), and still get random headaches every now and then... but I haven't felt really nauseous in a while, so I hope I've seen the last of those days!  Other than that I feel really good and looking forward to our next doctor's visit next week.  In the meantime, our little baby should now measure somewhere around four inches... about the diameter of a large orange.

Please note: I think the baby was quite eager to come out and play in front of the camera... as both Alec and I saw my belly way bigger in these photos than we did later on that day. (Of course the huge pancake, eggs, and bacon breakfast we had that morning couldn't have had anything to do with it!)

15 Weeks