10 weeks plus: and already with the attitude.

today, we got to see a little heartbeat.  a little heartbeat and a baby fist pump.

i'm not even joking.  our baby was moving around like a totally active, full-of-attitude baby.

and it was suddenly all real.

i have been anxious. i'm not going to lie.  anxious and scared and worried that all wasn't well. i have heard of at least five women who have lost their first pregnancies, and i was worried that this would happen to us. it was the kind of worried not grounded in reality, and i could tell--it was the same kind of fear that i had about not getting pregnant at all, and look how that turned out--but it didn't go anywhere. it was still there, lodged in my heart just enough to close my mouth, to make me wait, to keep our news to ourselves.

in some ways, i'm quite glad we made that choice. it gave me time to adjust, time to try to figure out what i was doing, time to settle into the first trimester without worrying about a lot of people asking me questions. sometimes i like questions, but other times i just don't want them in my face. that's true of me in life as well, but i have felt more anxious and less adept at this pregnancy thing than i thought i would be, so time was exactly what i needed.

since we told our families, we had a support system, so it's been good.

it was only yesterday, really, that it began to feel real.  the kind of real that makes you inexplicably cry at a taylor swift video that shows a growing family, the kind of real that makes you nearly sob as you're driving home to "all because two people fell in love" and you picture how that phrase really just means everything to you right now.

the kind of happy that, in some ways, i haven't felt until it became a bit realer.

today the real just escalated.  i went for my first real ob appointment, with the meeting of the doctor and the exams and...finally...the ultrasound.

it went so quick that if you blinked it, you'd miss it.  but there Baby was, moving and jerking and looking so very baby-like. i barely saw the heart, but musicboy was there and saw it immediately. in those brief moments before the doctor froze the picture for measurements, i saw a spine and little hands and feet and the sweetest baby fist pump.

genuinely. it looked a little like a collegetown u cheer, which to this born and bred fan thrilled me.

what i loved most was, in that moment, i saw a little person with its own little personality.  and, for a moment, i thought "oh boy. this one's going to give us a run for our money."

bring it on, little baby. you wouldn't be ours if you didn't have sass to spare.