Good thing no one reads this because I’m so awful at keeping up with it! 17 weeks and counting…I feel like my pants are having issues…can’t ride em low, can’t raise em high. Pregnancy pants here I come! I haven’t felt little one move yet, but I can’t wait. Makes me nervous! I’d rather baby do hoola hoops in the belly than lie still. No other pregnancy news. I have a rather polka-dot belly right now due to the shots. I figure the next pregnancy picture I should paint on some other coloured dots and show my belly like that. Then no-one will know which are the real bruises…

Little late posting…but here it is:

Pregnancy Week 13:
Need some gas? Your wife has
some. Your baby is now the
size of the gas cap on your car

Week 13: Peach Average size: 2.9 in, .81 oz Teeth and vocal cords are appearing…

Can baby be an excuse for grumpy-ness? I was just grumpy, mean nurse for four straight days but sometimes patients just kinda set you off. First it’s the arguing with you every time you tell them something, then it’s being compared to John Travolta’s son…? (“You know who you look JUST like?”) And then it’s the inappropriate comments about how my outfit or hair or whatever was more attractive yesterday than today… then it’s the questions “what’s in that purple bottle you have there,” “what kind of coffee did you buy?” and “do you think robots will take over one day?” I mean really? And then the need for entertainment “so does the hospital have a pool, where’s the cable guy?” DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE?

arg. It’s either pregnancy hormones (which I’m really tempted to blame) or people are just C-R-A-Z-Y.

arg.

So I’m approaching week 12. I found this hysterical website…it was comparing baby sizes each week to fruit. I thought it was fun…but then I found the ‘male version.’ SO for humor and for interest, I’ll include each as I go along:

For female readers: Baby is the size of a plum!
Average size: 2.1 in, .49 oz

For male readers: Baby is the size of a small measuring tape this week.

Found out that almost all of baby’s vital organs are formed! Crazy!
So, we’ve started telling everyone about the pregnancy. Makes me nervous! Then when I feel a few cramps here and there I worry. But I had this epiphany the other day, if I start worrying now, I may NEVER stop. I guess those who are parents already can tell me if this is true or not. But the way I figure it, it’s not like pregnancy is the only time to be anxious for baby. Then there’s worrying about them in the crib, and when they’re sick, and when they start choking on cheerios, then there’s walking and wandering into dark corners….then teenaged years…it never ends? So I figure, maybe it’s best not to start?

So maybe I should start taking pictures of the belly. I’m not sure if I’m showing baby at this point, or if my intestines are just so darned crammed that they’re protruding from my abdomen a bit. Thing is, when I start taking belly shots you’ll have to ignore the ugly purple stains of bruises from my daily shots. Maybe I should paint the belly each time to cover it up? Could be interesting. If I am showing a bit, it looks more like I’ve eaten a few too many chocolate chips (not that I”m denying that really). But then the question is, what do I wear? The same thing every time? Not a lot fits WELL these days.

Oh and since everyone keeps asking, we’re not sure if we want to know the sex of the baby. We’re at a standstill on this issue. If you know the sex, then you may have the false pretense that you know what to expect, but of course, you won’t. But then…you can buy pink or blue socks ahead of time (tough choice).

We are excited to announce that Shannon is expecting! Thanks be to God for how amazingly He has blessed us.

We first found out that Shannon was pregnant while we were traveling through Europe on our way back from Africa. That gave us the opportunity to announce the news to my (Jason’s) family in Ontario in person, since we stopped there on the way back. That was a lot of fun!

This past Tuesday, we had our first ultrasound, and were very thankful to see that the baby is developing well. It was so incredible to see the baby actually moving around, and to hear the baby’s heartbeat! I especially like this picture, because you can see 4 individual fingers and a thumb, as the baby is holding his/her hand just in front of their nose. It looked like the baby was waving to us!

If you want to read more about the baby news, including Shannon’s story of how we announced the news, and her take on our first ultrasound, check out the new blog she’s set up JUST for the baby: http://babyibrink.blogspot.com. She’ll be posting more pics and posts there as the months go along. Please pray that everything goes well as we progress towards her late-January due date.

Precious moments to hear the heartbeat of your baby. I was so relieved to see baby up on the screen today at our first ultrasound. I still have had a hard time belieing there really is life in my womb. I believe and trust and KNOW it was God himself who allowed this life to be forming in me but I’ve been a bit anxious to see and hear proof. Baby was a bit of a jumping bean making it hard for us to snap pictures but this is the best one. I love his/her little foot up on the wall of his/her home (my womb). So cute.

This was the best part…so we stopped in Ontario to visit with Jason’s family and we weren’t planning to tell anyone. We kept saying, “well, I’m not that far along yet…what if something happens…” But we couldn’t help but tell them because we really wanted to do it in person. So we bought a couple shirts for me and some fabric paint….one shirt zipped up over the other one. At a casual family BBQ (after much razzing during the week about ‘when are you guys having kids?’) I got up to get more chicken from the BBQ and unzipped my shirt which had been blocking the news.

After we found out, we were in Spain and I saw this

So our story of finding out about baby ibrink (the reason I’m calling baby ‘ibrink’ is because we had a hilarious conversation…we thought it would be funny to name the baby “Isaac” or something with an ‘I’ because we could call baby ‘ibrink’… okay so it’s not that funny but for some reason we can only think of silly baby names so it WAS funny at the time).