pregnancy!

oh my goodness. my life is a whirlwind. carter and i are pregnant!! and i've had a lot of questions. so let me answer some of the questions!

-- so my last period was august 13. but all of the pregnancy tests i took were negative. but september came and i never had a period. october came, and i never had one. finally my doctor ordered blood work and an ultrasound for me to see what was up. this was october 10. we thought i would show around 9/10 weeks, because that's where i was by dates. but the ultrasound only showed a gestational sac, which forms at around 4 and a half weeks. and the blood work showed hcg levels that were around the same time  (4/5 weeks). my doctor broke my heart and said she believed i was having a miscarriage. she ordered more blood work and told me to schedule another ultrasound, but that if i started cramping and bleeding i needed to go directly to the ER. the day before we went to raymond i called the clinic to ask if they had my results, and the nurse said my hcg levels were high, and that i was definitely pregnant. huge sigh of relief. my ultrasound today showed that i am 8 weeks and 4 days, putting my due date on june 14, 2013. so i'm assuming what happened is that going off my birth control in august caused me to skip my period in september, and THEN i got pregnant. but the point is -- i'm pregnant!!

-- yes, i went off my birth control. yes, carter knew. carter had been working out of town in the summer, and the weekend he came home we talked about it. i had read the talk called "children" by neil. l. andersen, and i felt strongly that it was meant for us. in the talk, he quotes rachel jankovic and says, "motherhood is not a hobby, it is a calling. you do not collect children because you find them cuter than stamps. it is not something to do if you can squeeze the time in. it is what god gave you time for." i've spent my whole life wanting to be a wife and a mother. i was a wife. now i wanted to be a mother.

-- no, i'm not sick. thank goodness. i haven't been sick at all. although i do suddenly have a lot of anxiety. for example, people. haha. being at church (stake conference, the temple dedication) with a lot of people in a tight space makes me really nauseous and nervous. even walking around at west edmonton mall on saturday made me crazy nervous. sitting in the passenger seat when carter or my mom is driving makes me incredibly nervous. i get shaky and i can't even look out the windshield. and my boobs have already grown. a lot. dislike.

so there you have it. 8 weeks of nicole's pregnancy. 220 days to go! :) :) :)