First Trimester is Almost Over!

First off, we want to thank everyone for the overwhelming amount of love and support after sharing the news! Thank you so much for all the sweet messages!!! I hope everyone continues to follow the blog and keep up with our journey! 3 months down....6 months to go! :)

We had our 12 week appointment last week and everything went great! Unfortunately no ultrasound this appointment, but we did get to actually hear the heartbeat for the first time. We loved this and a great way to know baby is doing ok! The baby's heart rate is staying around 160. All of my blood work so far came back normal and things are continuing to move along as smoothly as they can. Thank goodness!! My energy is starting to come back, which is really nice because we have lots of baby prep to get started on during the second trimester! :)

We have our 16 week appointment on February 15th for our routine monthly check up before our BIG 20 week appointment on March 11th when we find out if Baby Hawkins is a BOY or GIRL!!! :) Every appointment is exciting, but we are counting down the days until that one!!! We will be taking official gender predictions before then ;)

13 weeks photo :)  Belly has definitely started growing mixed with the less than attractive pregnancy bloat that pays me a visit everyday. I think this picture looks bigger than it actually is! Baby is now the size of a peach at 3 inches and and will have big growth spurts in the next couple weeks.

With Love,

The Hawkins 

Happy New Year from The Hawkins!

Happy New Year!!!

We are so excited to start off 2013 by announcing that we are expecting our first baby! We are officially a party of 3 :) We were surprised with the news right before Thanksgiving and it took a couple (ok..maybe 10) positive pregnancy tests to believe we really were pregnant!  We managed to keep it a secret until Christmas when we shared the news with our parents and siblings by way of special ornaments. It was a special moment for us to finally share the news that we will never forget. There is already so much love and excitement for our little baby and now we are excited to share this with the rest of our family and friends. We feel so blessed to have been given this precious gift and could not be happier during this time!! Baby Hawkins is due July 30, 2013!!

We have had two appointments and were spoiled with two ultrasounds this early on. After waiting 3 weeks from the time we found out, which was so hard to do, we finally got to see the doctor at what we thought was 8 weeks. After the ultrasound and seeing a tiny baby with a strong heart beating fast (heart rate of 139 to be exact) we were measuring a week early. Lucky for us, this meant we got to go back 9 days later for another ultrasound and the rest of the 8 week appointment. It was amazing to see how much the baby had grown and changed in just over a week! The arms popped out and he/she opened them up for us to get a perfect picture. The heart rate also went up a good bit to 169. It is the most amazing experience to look on the screen and see this tiny baby knowing that is our son or daughter...crazy!! We also love seeing that little heart beating so fast. I don’t think either of us realized we would be able to see that so early. It is truly a blessing and we feel really fortunate to get to experience this. We are already so in love with our baby!

Thankfully, the first trimester has been pretty easy with the worst part being fatigue. While it may have kicked my butt most days, especially at work, I will happily take that any day over some of the other dreaded first trimester symptoms and do know how lucky I am (sorry to those of you experiencing these symptoms!!) We are happy to be a few days away from the 12 week milestone about to enter our second trimester. I’ve been busy looking up anything and everything on Pinterest building a massive idea board for all that’s to come. Everything is so cute!! Can't wait to find out if we are expecting a boy or girl!

We want to thank our family for the love, support and prayers as our little family starts growing. We are beyond excited and can’t wait to share our journey with you all. For whoever wants to follow, I am planning to update this as we go along from each appointment and all the fun along the way :) Stay tuned!

Love you all!!

-Anna, Jared and Baby Hawkins :)

6 weeks, 6 days first ultrasound. heart rate 139

8 weeks, 2 days heart rate 169

8 weeks, 2 days heart rate 169