My jean pant are too tight

But they just fit. Haha. Not much difference in the pic, but can definitely feel I've grown. I hope this is not indicative of things to come - I seriously don't want to be huge.

6 weeks on Wednesday - then 1 week 'til our first scan!

Your Pregnancy: Week 6
While you won't be able to find out the gender of your baby for several more weeks, the version you'll give birth to is being determined right now. Of course, your mother-in-law already knows it'll be a boy. And your sister is sure that it's a girl. And the medical expert that is your 5-year-old nephew says it's absolutely a boy (and if it's a girl, he doesn't want anything to do with it). Isn't it wonderful how clairvoyant people are?

Wondering what's up with your body, your baby and your life this week? Read on ...

What You're Thinking:

"If I put my head in my hands and stare down at my desk, it'll look like I'm working really hard and nobody will know I'm actually sleeping."

Your Body
You may be feeling super-tired or nauseous (or super-tired and nauseous—lucky you!) and your boobs are most likely killing you. This is due to the myriad of hormones raging through your body at levels rivalling a teenage boy's.

If you can't stay awake for the second half of Grey's Anatomy, blame it on the baby. Extreme exhaustion is often one of the first signs of pregnancy, and while your body will probably regain some of its strength by the time you enter your second trimester, you might find yourself nodding off during Dr. McDreamy's love scenes ... or worse, yours!

Your Baby
This week starts a period of rapid cellular development for your baby-to-be, who looks like a mini tadpole, with a tiny head and tail. His or her eyes, ears and mouth have begun to form (though they're a little more Discovery Channel "creatures of the sea" documentary than Gerber Baby at this point).

Other exciting milestones include:

Your baby's heart is now beating to a regular beat, although it's still too faint to hear.

His or her arm buds are just beginning to, well, bud. They look like teensy swollen bumps at this point. In a few days, they'll resemble itsy-bitsy flippers.

Your baby has grown to ⅛ inch long—about the size of one of the chocolate sprinkles on your last cupcake (and your last ice cream cone, and your last sundae and your last giant cookie ... maybe there is something to those rumors about pregnancy cravings!).

6 Weeks Pregnant

Symptoms & 5 week growth

that I'm having, Justin too apparently :) -

Extreme Hunger
Exhaustion by 12h30 - a 10 minute afternoon nap does wonders!
A bit teary
I was nauseous for about an hour yesterday, I'm hoping it's just because I was hungry!

5 weeks gestation

5 Weeks Pregnant

As early as this week, the plate that will become the heart has developed. Your baby's brain, spinal cord, muscles, and bone formation are also beginning to form. The baby's skeleton is forming at this time as well. The embryo has a distinct organization that has a top, bottom, left, right, front and back.

Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG)

is a glycoprotein hormone produced in pregnancy that is made by the developing embryo soon after conception and later by the syncytiotrophoblast (part of the placenta). Its role is to prevent the disintegration of the corpus luteum of the ovary and thereby maintain progesterone production that is critical for a pregnancy in humans. hCG may have additional functions; for instance, it is thought that hCG affects the immune tolerance of the pregnancy. Early pregnancy testing, in general, is based on the detection or measurement of hCG.

This hormone doubles every 24 to 48 hours in a healthy pregnancy. Because we were undergoing fertility treatment when we fell pregnant, we had to go for 3 blood tests spread apart to measure that this was increasing correctly.

So our measurements were:
1st Blood test (15 July) 131.5
2nd Blood test (17 July) 378
3rd Blood test (21 July) 2365

This is all good :D

Below is a chart that one can use to calculate weeks of gestation according to hCG measurements - but as you can see, this varies quite considerably - I reckon that today we are on 4 weeks 6 days.

The following is a list of serum hCG levels. (LMP is the last menstrual period.)

* 3 weeks since LMP: 5 - 50 mIU/ml
* 4 weeks since LMP: 5 - 426 mIU/ml
* 5 weeks since LMP: 18 - 7,340 mIU/ml
* 6 weeks since LMP: 1,080 - 56,500 mIU/ml
* 7 – 8 weeks since LMP: 7, 650 - 229,000 mIU/ml
* 9 – 12 weeks since LMP: 25,700 - 288,000 mIU/ml
* 13 – 16 weeks since LMP: 13,300 - 254,000 mIU/ml
* 17 – 24 weeks since LMP: 4,060 - 165,400 mIU/ml
* 25 – 40 weeks since LMP: 3,640 - 117,000 mIU/ml
* Non-pregnant females: <5.0 mIU/ml
* Postmenopausal females: <9.5 mIU/ml

We're Pregnant!

So through 2 years of our infertility journey (to be told later), on Wednesday the 14th of July we found out that we are pregnant, 23 months after our initial decision to "try". Only by the grace of God have we been blessed.



So I suppose this blog is for those family members and friends that want to keep up with the progress of our little nudger.

Thanks for reading.
Justin & Milly x