Weeks 5 and 6 were smooth sailing. Some would say that it was too early for any real symptoms at this point, but I chose to believe that I was going to get an exemption from morning sickness and nausea. Lucky for me, that proved to be true! I reasoned that my history of "tummy troubles" rendered me as having already put in my lifetime dues of feeling sick and icky. Of course, that's not how these things actually work. A girl can hope, though, can't she?

There are a lot of things you assume will happen during pregnancy that I was finding to be not at all true. During this time I felt great - completely normal actually - and didn't have any major, obvious, everything is changing type feelings. I thought everything would be different - especially how I thought and how I felt. Wasn't I supposed to be hugging a toilet and super emotional? And craving things?

On the other hand, one thing I didn't entirely expect was an overwhelming sense of wanting to LOOK pregnant immediately. I was willing my bump to grow because I wanted it to seem more real, and I wanted the world to know. But when your baby is only the size of a sweet pea, you have to be patient.

I will confess that by week 6 I was rocking a Bella Band. This was pretty ridiculous. If you look closely in the photo, you can see the black layer peeking out. In reality, my jeans buttoned just fine and I had no signs of a baby bump whatsoever. In my defense, my jeans did start to feel uncomfortable by the end of the day (likely baby bloat) and I didn't want to squish the little munchkin. Mr. Fix-It rolled his eyes at me many times during this phase. Looking back, I can't blame the man. But I was just so excited!

With week 6 also came a significant milestone. At the beginning of the week the pregnancy was confirmed via ultrasound! The doctors wanted to be sure that the baby had implanted properly, and that the location of implantation was compatible with pregnancy. If the embryo was in one of my fallopian tubes the pregnancy would be considered ectopic and not viable. Also, it is possible to have a "chemical pregnancy" where the hormones are present (confirmed by blood work) but the sac is empty/an embryo has failed to develop. Even though I was not especially worried that anything would go wrong, it was a huge relief that everything looked great! We had a sweet little blob doing exactly what it was supposed to do and our very first ultrasound picture.