My name is Amanda I'm 23.
My birthday is february 28th 1988.
Im a first time mommy to my beautiful son Nation James :) who was born October 27th 2010.
Basically this blog is to chart me and Doug's journey as first time parents, hence the name "Learning as we go." So far being a mother is EVERYTHING I could have hoped for. Pregnancy on the other hand wasn't the best thing in the world. I was emotional, angry, hungry, and hot all the time. It seemed that if dragged on and on and I'm so very happy hes here finally.
Even though pregnancy was awful, I made some really good memories. I remember the day we found out that I was pregnant. It was March 8th and at the time we were living in Valley Village,CA with our roomate Annie. I walked out to the kitchen one morning and Annie was cooking as usual. I went to the fridge to get some water and I instantly felt flushed all over and then suddenly felt as though I would be sick. I ran out the front door and onto the outside hall/patio. I was hunched over feeling like I was going to throw up but never did thankfully. Noticing I also had not had my period, I told Doug we needed to get a test A.S.A.P and he agreed because he too had felt that I had been acting weird.
After we bought the test we came home and I went to take one. Now this wasn't the first time I had taken a pregnancy test, not that I have taken so many, haha, but I was familiar with procedure. Of course, I have always tested negative, prior to this time. As I put the test down it INSTANTLY came up positive. I was in shock. Even though I felt weird I had expected a negative. Last time I had a pregnancy scare it had been in August, and it turned out to be appendicitis, which at that moment seemed alot better then being pregnant. So as I sat there staring at the plus sign all that could come out of my mouth was "Oh Shit!" At that moment Doug chimed in wanting to know. I told him give me another pee stick!! At this point my heart is racing and so are my thoughts. This must be a defective test! This cant be real. I must have taken it wrong. 2nd test. I read the instructions and followed accordingly. Positive. What? No it cant be! I took another 4 tests in that hour. Positive, positive, positive, positive. Doug was laughing and smiling and I was sitting on the toilet looking at that fourth test scared and telling Doug this was not funny. We were incredibly poor so poor we barely ate! We were going to need a new place, a bigger place, a crib, a carseat, a stroller, diapers, and that was just the start! I was terrified. After a few days the news sank in. I had told alot of my friends via facebook pic of the positive test. We had gone to planned parenthood just to be extra sure. I was there too of course. They calculated I was 10 weeks but they were way off. I went to the OB a week later and I was only a month -6 weeks along.
That's the day my life was altered. I wouldn't say it completely changed until the day Nation was actually born. June 14th we found out it was a boy, which is what we had expected. I walked around proudly exposing my belly to all :) Eagerly walked the aisles of baby clothes at stores. Couldn't step foot in babies'r'us without losing my mind. So many decisions to make. Flying across country from Los Angeles to Indianapolis 27 weeks pregnant with only carry on bags, a puppy that must be in a special bag for puppys to be carried on the plane, and a 2 hour stay over in Phoenix wasn't the highlight of my life that's for sure. Having gestational diabetes after 32 weeks wasn't cool either. But we pulled through and the end result...so worth it. :)
