Pregnancy Symptoms: Early Signs:How We Knew We Were Pregnant?

Pregnancy Symptoms: Common Signs of Pregnancy

These symptoms can be early signs of pregnancy. Kathy and I experienced these.

1. Missed Period. This obvious, but important especially if occurring in conjunction with other symptoms.
   
2. Fatigue. Taking more naps, having your energy depleted is a common sign of pregnancy.
3. Nausea. This can include dizziness, picky eating, loss of appetite.
4. Intuition. Kathy and I sort of knew that we were pregnant.
5. Pregnancy Test: Positive. Still, even at this point there was a small amount of doubt.
   
6. Blood Test: Positive. Conclusive evidence and will pinpoint the week of gestation. We're not sharing any news with the family until we receive the results of this test.
   

Within our 7 weeks since conception, we experienced these signs and because of the frequency of these symptoms, we knew before taking the pregnancy test that conception occurred and we were parents!

Pregnancy Diet: Meals and Nutrition

Nutrition During Pregnancy: Key Foods For the Diet

Key foods to eat and why:

1. Orange Juice: folate. Freshly squeezed is easy if you pickup a Cuisinart Citrus Juicer. We bought ours right after our wedding.
2. Corn Flakes: folate.
3. Eggs: folate, choline.
4. Nuts: folate.
5. Pasta: folate.
6. Salmon: Omega-3
   
7. Spinach: Iron.
8. Beans, split pea, lentils, etc. Folate.
9. Milk.
   

Key foods to avoid and why:

1. Smoking, alcohol, caffeine, chocolate, energy drinks, herbal teas (effects not known).
   
2. Sushi and oysters: raw fish should be avoided.
3. Large fish: due to mercury.

Pregnancy Diet Idea #1: Peruvian Breakfast Potato and Egg Garden Salad

• 4 boiled eggs, halved.
• 3 boiled potatoes, sliced into little disks (4 slices each).
• 2 tomatoes, cut into wedges (8 wedges per fruit).
• 1/2 cucumber, sliced
• Red leaf Romaine lettuce, placed as a bed.
• 2 limes, squeezed.
• Assembly: Place on large serving plate, gently mix so yolks do not separate. Coat with lime juice and add salt to taste.

Oh My God: We're Pregnant!

On 9/26/08, Kathy and I took a pregnancy test, the second one actually since they are sold in packs of two. Kathy took the 1st one too early, about 10 days from today (9/26) which turned out negative. Weellll, this one turned out positive! I was waiting on the bed after fixing something for breakfast for us, and ran back upstairs. Kathy came out of the bathroom and blurted: "According to this test... you're gonna be a daddy". I knew it, I was very sure due to her earlier symptoms. I hugged her and couldn't remove the smile from my face. Little Baby Sexton is coming to our lives.


Here is a photo of the expecting parents, along with the most beautiful two pink lines from the EPT. This photo was taken at Momma Colleen's house. You can see a few paintings/prints hanging on the wall. Mary Lee and I bought these for Mom over 10 years ago when Mom first came out to california. I think I was 18 years old or so.


Expected delivery date: May 16th, 2009!

Later that morning, we went to a doctor's appointment, partly due to her throat hurting her, but also to make preparations to visit a gynecologist. The doctor took a blood sample, and we will know for sure on Tuesday. We're quite sure now, and the doctor stated that we're in the 7th week! We filled a prenatal vitamin prescription.


When I arrived to work, I immediately bought 'What to Expect When You are Expecting' and another pregnancy book called 'The Pregnancy Bible: Your Complete Guide to Pregnancy and Early Parenthood'.






It is Sunday now, and Kathy is having some nausea. I cooked her a magnificent breakfast, see the photo. Salad, eggs, potato, tomato, cucumber, and lime juice on top. I also cooked lentils, but Kathy only had a few. I've been reading about folic acid, and other topics related to prenatal nutrition. No sushi, raw fish, soft cheese, large fish from the ocean, etc. No smoking, drinking, drug use, or caffeine. We'd only have problems with the caffeine, since it is in so many things like coffee (duh), tea, chocolate, soda, red bulls, etc. Coffee we will have to be careful about.

Of course once one realizes quite late in the process that conception has occurred, a few weeks do go go by. From what I understand these are very important for neural tube development weeks. Thinking back, I remember Kathy and I juicing a lot of oranges (compliments of eBay), taking Centrum vitamins, and eating really healthy. I think the folate intake was great. On two occasions, we had a glass of wine or a beer. That's our confession, I think we're very lucky!

I printed out the first 20 weeks from a nice website called http://storknet.com. We read this on Saturday, cuddled up in bed, eating a great fruit salad, yogurt, corn flakes, wheat bread and cheese breakfast. I read the weeks aloud. We later jumped on http://www.baby.com and found an excellent slideshow showing gestational growth. We learned about things like the lanugo (hair covering the baby), and meconium. I remember Pete telling me about this one with Molly - "If that black tarry substance gets on anything, you have to throw it away". That kind of freaked me out back then.

We survived our first knowingly pregnant Sunday with Kathy's parents having a nice lunch. We brought a bag of coughdrops as sort of a decoy to help explain Kathy's symptoms. We are not yet ready to tell family, we want to be sure and at least find out on Tuesday more details. We plan sometime in mid-October. Family members reading this now, please forgive us, we are a little scared!

All Saturday night I spent with my head buried in baby nutrition readings as well as finally finishing that family budget! It is all accounted for even monthly spend for gas and grocery.

We're wrapping up our weekend studying (well Kathy's studying!). I opened up a uPromise account for our Little Baby Sexton. This will eventually turn into a 529 College Savings Plan. So far, I purchased a few Baby magazine subscriptions (American Baby, Parenting, and Fit Pregnancy). I received a $10 off the order, and on top of that 30% of the total went into the uPromise account. I found that Netflix has a uPromise promotion - signup and get $12 into your uPromise account. So I canceled my existing registration, and signed-up with a different credit card and address (thanks eBay for the work address). I should receive the $12 into the uPromise account in around 4-6 days. Last bit here, I applied for a Citi uPromise credit card, which carries an APR of 12% and no annual fees (not too bad). For any purchase we make, Citi will throw in an additional 10% into the uPromise account if the purchase is from a grocery store or drug store, otherwise it is a 1% kick-back. This 10% also applies to over 8,000 restaurants. Seems like many ways to save! Also, perhaps family and friends someday will give little uPromise gift for the 'good ole college fund'. Here is a website link for uPromise, if you buy anything through this website, you'll contribute to the Little Baby Sexton college fund!

I can feel such a wonderful change happening. I can summarize it up by saying that this is 'a dream is happening within a dream'. The first dream is 'Kathy', then the second dream is our 'baby'.

We have two placeholder names that we've had since our first year of dating. We refer to the conceptual baby boy as Johnny, and the figurative baby girl as Jenny! These aren't the names, well... we will see in May!

Thanks for reading! -Ed (aka Big Daddy).