week 20 - HALF WAY!

HALFWAY! Little Hazelnut is ~6.5 inches long (which is really quite a small banana!) and weighs ~10.5 ounces. Apparently his little taste buds are already working, and he's swallowing a bunch of amniotic fluid every day (yum)!

Since 20 weeks is a milestone, we thought we would share about the day we found out we were pregnant, as well as how we shared the news with my family. Now first, for the day we discovered the marvelous news- January 15, 2011… what a beautiful day!

Let me give you a little bit of background. It took us a little while to get pregnant. As in, ten months… (frustrating). Throughout a large part of that ten months, I would read into every tiny little sign and symptom, think, ‘I must be pregnant!’ and pee on a stick. I was constantly met with negative results which was depressing (and not to mention expensive), so decided to stop taking pregnancy tests. I also started to exercise less , eat more, and consume full-fat dairy products… all in an effort to encourage conception. (I was willing to try just about anything... but this is neither here nor there…)
Anyhoo, in January, I was experiencing cramping (menstrual cramping if you must know) for 7 days straight sans menstruating (sorry boys). The cramps (and the need to pee) were waking me up in the wee hours of the morn, and on one such occasion I thought, ‘FINE. I’ll take a test!’ I had completely anticipated another negative result, but there—at 4AM—was a positive sign staring me in the face.

“LOWELL!!!!! IT’S POSITIVE!!! I’M PREGNANT!!!” (quite the wake-up call at 4am).

There was so much excitement and no more sleep to be had that night. Lowell maintains that it wasn’t quite the way he thought he’d find out that he was going to be a dad… but he’d take it!

Now about sharing the wonderful news. Growing up, my Dad took TONS of pictures of us and placed them in well-labelled albums (as in, we each have an album for nearly every year of our lives... for which we are SO thankful!). We thought we'd utilize my Dad's photographic diligence in our announcement. While my parents were away, we snuck in the house and started scanning pictures of everyone. From that, a photobook about the evolution of the G family was born. Here is the book in slideshow version...

Lowell & Julie Pregnancy Announcement Book from Lowell & Julie on Vimeo.

Maybe next time we'll show you some priceless family reactions caught on video! We also hope to include a picture of Hazelnut as OUR ULTRASOUND IS TOMORROW (and because I know you're still wondering...we still haven't completely decided whether or not to find out the sex)!!!